Arts
Teenage Swifties restored my faith in strangers
Taylor Swift is the last of the monocultural pop icons. Put it this way: I bet you’ve heard of her.…
‘Zings off the stage’: My Fair Lady, at Leeds Playhouse, reviewed
If you want to kill a musical, make it into a movie. Cats, Phantom of the Opera, South Pacific… cinema…
Greatness written all over him
It was fascinating to see Patti LuPone that immense Broadway musical star interviewed with such palpable reverence by the ABC’s…
Stylish and potent: The Bikeriders reviewed
Jeff Nichols’s The Bikeriders is based on the book by photojournalist Danny Lyon, first published in 1968, about his years…
The most original sea painter since Turner? Lowry
In 1958 an elderly gentleman staying at the Castle Hotel in Berwick-upon-Tweed gave the receptionist a doodle he had made…
Rushdie on how the best magical realism transcends fantasy
Ask the man in the street to quote a line from one of Salman Rushdie’s novels, and he might struggle.…
Riveting and exhilarating: Miss Julie, at Park90, reviewed
Some Demon by Laura Waldren is a gem of a play that examines the techniques of manipulation and bullying practised…
Does it matter how posh pop stars are?
‘A working class hero is something to be.’ Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer must have missed the conflicted, sardonic edge…
The problem with Swan Lake
Over this summer you can see Swan Lake performed at the Royal Opera House by the Royal Ballet; at the…
A sugar rush for the eyes: Glyndebourne’s The Merry Widow reviewed
In 1905, shortly before the world première of The Merry Widow, the Viennese theatre manager Wilhelm Karczag got cold feet…
Why you should never watch sci-fi series on streaming channels
Jason Dessen, the hero (and, as you’ll discover shortly, anti-hero) of Apple TV’s latest sci-fi caper Dark Matter, is a…
Meet the musicians trying to revive French-language pop
The other day, I went to see a nouveau riot-girl band called Claire Dance play in a disused factory in…
This shimmering desert haze
There’s something inspiring about getting an example of the national talent locking horns with the glory of traditional high culture,…
Limp and lifeless: Freud’s Last Session reviewed
Freud’s Last Session stars Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode and is a work of speculative fiction asking what would have…
Hard to get to grips with: Marie Curie: The Musical reviewed
Marie Curie: The Musical is a history lesson combined with a chemistry seminar and it’s aimed at indignant feminists who…
A fitting – and lovable – tribute to Frederick Ashton
I encountered Frederick Ashton at a dinner party shortly before he died in 1988. Frail and anxious, he clutched my…
‘I want every production I do to be the funniest’: an interview with Cal McCrystal
There are certain things that you don’t expect at the opera. Laughter, for example. Proper laughter, that is; not the…
How Miss La La captured Degas’s imagination
‘Can you come Saturday morning to my studio, 19 bis rue Fontaine?’ Degas wrote to Edmond de Goncourt in 1879.…
When piracy meets protest
Sometimes there are advantages to being ill-informed. Knowing embarrassingly little about why 30 Greenpeace activists were jailed in Russia in…
Thank goodness Busoni’s Piano Concerto is returning to the Proms
On 5 August, Ferruccio Busoni’s Piano Concerto will be performed at the Proms for only the second time. It should…
‘Psychedelic folk that twists and leaps’: Beth Gibbons, at the Barbican, reviewed
A decade ago, a group of people who owned small music venues came to the conclusion that the kinds of…
