sex
Manwatching, Royal Court review - the vagina manologuesTuesday, 16 May 2017
This monologue first saw the light of day at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2015. It's a frank – very frank – piece about female sexuality by an anonymous heterosexual female author, performed by a different male comic each night, who reads it sight unseen... Read more... |
The Handmaiden review - opulently luridFriday, 14 April 2017
Park Chan-wook is a Korean decadent and moralist who’d have plenty to say to Aubrey Beardsley. The lesbian pulp Victoriana of Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith proves equally amenable in this opulently lurid mash-up with a novelist he adores so much (the... Read more... |
Don Juan in Soho, Wyndhams Theatre review - 'David Tennant is Marber-Molière playboy'Thursday, 30 March 2017
Updating the classics is not without its pitfalls. How can a modern audience, which has a completely different set of religious beliefs, relate to a 17th century morality tale in which the lead character behaves really badly, but gets his... Read more... |
Harlots review - 'fun quasi-feminist costume romp'Tuesday, 28 March 2017
We like to think of Georgian England as a wellspring of elegance: the Chippendale chair and the Wedgwood teapot, the landscaped vista and the neoclassical townhouse. But, as subversively embodied in the mock heroic couplet, the seemly Age of Reason... Read more... |
Elle review - sexual violence, black humour and satireWednesday, 08 March 2017
As Elle’s director Paul Verhoeven put it, “we realised that no American actress would ever take on such an immoral movie.” However, Isabelle Huppert didn’t hesitate, and has delivered a performance of such force and boldness that even the disarming... Read more... |
See Me Now, Young VicSaturday, 18 February 2017
Sex workers come in all shapes and sizes. Everyone knows that. But why do they do it? Why does anyone take the risk of being intimate with a stranger for money? This new show, which was not only devised with the help of genuine prostitutes, but is... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Black Society TrilogyFriday, 10 February 2017
Mixing up your yakuzas and your triads can be a bloody business, as Takashi Miike’s films show in the goriest detail. The title of the earliest work in his “Black Society” trilogy, Shinjuku Triad Society from 1995, says it all – a Chinese... Read more... |
Dirty Great Love Story, Arts TheatreThursday, 26 January 2017
As the only inhabitant of Planet Earth who wasn’t knocked completely senseless by La La Land, it does occur to me that I might not be the most sympathetic reviewer of a rom-com. Still, I’m willing to give it a try. So here goes: written and... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Theo & HugoWednesday, 07 December 2016
Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau have described the budget on which they made their latest film Theo & Hugo – the French directors have been collaborators, as well as partners, since the mid-1990s – as a “pirate” one, its restrictions... Read more... |
DVD: TickledFriday, 02 December 2016
This story drops down the rabbit-hole so fast, you doubt it’ll ever hit bottom. Kiwi TV presenter David Farrier’s human interest items of the That’s Life/One Show sort led him to feature “competitive tickling” videos. His interest drew... Read more... |
Flaming June, Leighton House MuseumThursday, 24 November 2016
The chances are, you’ve only ever seen Flaming June in reproduction: since 1963 it has resided in the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico, an out-of-the-way location that reflects the universal disdain for Victorian art in the post-war period.... Read more... |
Lulu, English National OperaThursday, 10 November 2016
After a day of sheer pain, would it be endless night or cathartic relief at ENO? Both, must be the answer, and much more, all at once. Iconoclastic Frank Wedekind's "earth-spirit" Lulu, exploited as a street-child but now able to turn the tables for... Read more... |
