Arts

Circus routine rather than theatre: Noises Off reviewed

12 October 2019 9:00 am

Michael Frayn’s backstage comedy, Noises Off, is the theatre’s answer to Trooping the Colour. Everyone agrees that it’s an amazing…

More misogynistic than the original: ENO’s Orpheus in the Underworld reviewed

12 October 2019 9:00 am

It’s Act Three of Emma Rice’s new production of Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, and Eurydice (Mary Bevan) is trapped…

Pure, undiluted genius: Succession reviewed

12 October 2019 9:00 am

I have never ever watched a TV series I have enjoyed more than Succession (Now TV). There’s stuff I’d put…

Imagine ZZ Top stuck in a lift with Gary Numan: Sturgill Simpson’s Sound & Fury reviewed

12 October 2019 9:00 am

Grade: A– The outlaw country genre has shifted a little over the decades since Waylon and Willie, with each proponent…

Only fitfully funny: Chris Morris’s The Day Shall Come reviewed

12 October 2019 9:00 am

The Day Shall Come is a second feature from British satirist Chris Morris and like the first, Four Lions, it…

Inspiring and sweet-smelling: David Nash’s 200 Seasons at Towner Art Gallery

You’ll be blubbing over a wooden boulder at David Nash’s show at Towner Art Gallery

12 October 2019 9:00 am

Call me soppy, but when the credits rolled on ‘Wooden Boulder’, a film made by earth artist David Nash over…

Anna Karenina

12 October 2019 9:00 am

Tolstoy’s most fascinating character, Anna Karenina clearly fascinates David McAllister who has recently announced his 20th and final season as…

A modern-day El Dorado: the Serra Pelada gold mine, Brazil, 1986

Sebastiao Salgado – master of monochrome, chronicler of the depths of human barbarity

5 October 2019 9:00 am

Occasionally, we encounter an image that seems so ludicrously out of kilter with the modern world that we can only…

Joyce DiDonato seduces you within the first 10 minutes: Royal Opera’s Agrippina reviewed

5 October 2019 9:00 am

‘Laws bow down before the desire to rule…’ Centuries before ‘proroguing’ had entered British breakfast-table vocabulary there was Handel’s Agrippina,…

Did Radio 2 really need to give us four days of the Beatles to celebrate Abbey Road?

5 October 2019 9:00 am

This Changeling Self, Radio 4’s lead drama this week, clearly ought to have gone out in August. It’s set —…

A solid costume drama but Dame Helen has been miscast: Catherine the Great reviewed

5 October 2019 9:00 am

It’s possibly not a great sign of a Britain at ease with itself that the historical character most likely to…

Spellbinding: Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck in Joker

If you ever want to sleep again, step away from Joker

5 October 2019 9:00 am

Judy is in cinemas this week and so is Joker and if you have to choose between the two, then…

Flimsy and pretentious sketches: Caryl Churchill’s Glass. Kill. Bluebeard. Imp. reviewed

5 October 2019 9:00 am

Caryl Churchill is back at the Royal Court with a weird collection of sketches. The first is set on a…

‘Body’ and ‘Fruit’, 1991/93, by Antony Gormley

A cast of Antony Gormley? Or a pair of giant conkers? Gormley’s new show reviewed

5 October 2019 9:00 am

While Sir Joshua Reynolds, on his plinth, was looking the other way, a little girl last Saturday morning was trying…

Violins of the ACO with Richard Tognetti

5 October 2019 9:00 am

Every year is a year of anniversaries, not least 2020 with the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook’s voyage along the…

The poetry of sewers

28 September 2019 9:00 am

‘Welcome,’ says our guide Stuart Bellehewe, with an imperious sweep of his arm, ‘to the cathedral of shit.’ Before us…

Radio 4’s The Art of Innovation is a series that — for once — deserves the label ‘landmark’

28 September 2019 9:00 am

Radio 4, how do I love thee? Rather as one loves the flocked wallpaper that came with the house. It…

Gloriously un-PC: Ronan Bennett’s Top Boy reviewed

28 September 2019 9:00 am

Sir Lenny Henry, the former comedian, is wont to complain to anyone who’ll listen that there isn’t enough ‘diversity’ on…

More Grace Kelly than Grace Jones: Welsh National Opera’s Carmen reviewed

28 September 2019 9:00 am

How do you take your Carmen? Sun-drenched exotic fantasy with a side order of castanets, or cool and gritty, sour…

You may not wish to kiss the ground when you finally leave the cinema, but I did: The Goldfinch reviewed

28 September 2019 9:00 am

The Goldfinch is an adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Donna Tartt that centres on a great work of…

One for pauper-gawpers: Faith, Hope and Charity at the National reviewed

28 September 2019 9:00 am

Tony Hawks’s musical, Midlife Cowboy, has transferred from Edinburgh to the Pleasance, Islington. At press night, the comedy elite showed…

Proggery beyond parody: Iggy Pop’s Free reviewed

28 September 2019 9:00 am

Grade: D+ Pleasant memories — of hearing ‘Raw Power’ for the first time and later the amiably shambolic chug of…

See You at the Toxteth

28 September 2019 9:00 am

The Toxteth is a hotel on Glebe Point Road in Sydney. Cliff Hardy probably called it a pub. Hardy was…

The untold story of Judy Garland

21 September 2019 9:00 am

Judy Garland is now a myth, a paradigm and a warning: don’t let your daughter on the stage! It’s the…

Simon Rattle’s Messiaen is improving with age

21 September 2019 9:00 am

Two flutes, a clarinet and a bassoon breathe a chord on the edge of silence. As they fade, the sound…