1950s
The Entertainer, Garrick TheatreWednesday, 31 August 2016
For the final show in his year-long stay at this West End address, Kenneth Branagh has chosen to revive and star in John Osborne’s 1957 play. By doing so, he finds himself once again treading in the footsteps of Sir Laurence Olivier, who originally... Read more... |
Carole King performs Tapestry, Hyde Park BST FestivalMonday, 04 July 2016
If last night made anything clear it's that some things are still some way beyond the reach of hipster reappropriation. The audience in Hyde Park for Carole King was 99% white and middle-aged, with the very few younger people scattered about... Read more... |
Catalogue d'Oiseaux, Aimard, Aldeburgh FestivalTuesday, 21 June 2016
"He is one of the few pianists who will not make them sound like angry birds," said young pianist-animateur Víkingur Ólafsson in Reykjavík when I told him that in little over 24 hours' time I'd be hearing Pierre-Laurent Aimard work his way through... Read more... |
Alex Katz, Serpentine GallerySaturday, 11 June 2016
Black Brook, 2014, is sublime. Two bands of acid-green grass frame a horizontal band of deep-violet water that appears to have hidden depths. Dotted randomly over the darkness are clusters of light blobs; they could be floating leaves or reflections... Read more... |
Ariane/Alexandre Bis, Guildhall SchoolWednesday, 01 June 2016
Common wisdom has it that the prolific output of 20th century Czech genius Bohuslav Martinů is very uneven, a judgment surely made without a complete hearing. Some listeners shrink from his fidgety polystylism. Many of us on the fringes of the... Read more... |
Jekyll & Hyde, Old VicFriday, 27 May 2016
From time to time theatre managements hit on the idea that danced drama should be part of their remit. Nick Hytner flirted with it at the National in his day with a run of productions for Lloyd Newson and his company DV8. Now Matthew Warchus, his... Read more... |
John Piper, Pallant House Gallery, ChichesterThursday, 28 April 2016
You wouldn't judge a painting on how it would look in your own home, but textiles are different: in fact it is exactly this assessment that counts. A length of fabric laid flat is a half-formed thing: it needs to be cut, stitched and draped before... Read more... |
Tom Jones's 1950s: The Decade That Made Me, BBC Two / Jim Carter: Lonnie Donegan and Me, ITVMonday, 18 April 2016
So just how grey were the 1950s? "It was grey," said Bruce Welch of The Shadows. Au contraire, said Joan Bakewell, the Fifties were "giddy and full of optimism." Veteran journalist Katharine Whitehorn added that not only were the Fifties not boring... Read more... |
DVD: Beat Girl, Expresso BongoFriday, 15 April 2016
“All over the world, young people between the ages of 14 and 20 gradually spend more and more of their time away from the good influences of their homes and schools. What sort of people are they growing up to be?” Although the stuffed-shirt narrator... Read more... |
Arnold Wesker: His Life and Career in 10 ScenesWednesday, 13 April 2016
Of all the dramas with the name Arnold Wesker attached to them, the most absorbing ran as long as The Mousetrap, but offstage rather than on. It was in the style of a remorselessly black farce, in which the little man as hero suffers an endless... Read more... |
Sunset Boulevard, London ColiseumTuesday, 05 April 2016
Could the fascination of Glenn Close's Norma Desmond transcend the frequent bathos of Lloyd Webber? Would they have sorted out the miking which wrecked last year's first choice of semi-ENO musical, the infinitely superior Sweeney Todd? Yes, to... Read more... |
Maigret, ITVTuesday, 29 March 2016
If you were expecting Rowan Atkinson to say "bibble" or make those Mr Bean gurgling noises, you came to the wrong classic detective drama. To play George Simenon's timeless French detective in a story subtitled "Maigret Sets a Trap", a melancholy,... Read more... |
