The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
‘Places in Cookham seem to me possessed by a sacred presence of which the inhabitants are unaware,’ wrote Stanley Spencer. Mystically devoted to the Berkshire village near the Thames where he grew up, Spencer was synonymous with Cookham as early as 1912, when he was at the Slade; ‘Cookham’ was his nickname. His greatest work
The path that links the Spice Girls to Jeffrey Dahmer – necrophile mass murderer of at least 17 men – is a circuitous and unusual one. It involves the establishment of Mothercare and Harold Wilson’s Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the New York underground of the early 1980s. The thread that joins the
Who doesn’t love Paddington? The winsome marmalade junkie has arrived at the Savoy Theatre in a musical version of the 2014 movie. First of all, the show is sensational. Absolute box-office gold, full of joy, mirth and spectacle. It’s also quite pricey but never mind. Sceptics who feel indifferent to children’s fiction will be relieved
Two years ago I was flown to Reykjavik to interview the Icelandic performance artist Ragnar Kjartansson. It was a weird old trip, booked in at 48 hours’ notice, but Ragnar was consistently charming and generous. Indeed, the only slightly touchy moment came when I asked him about his 2012 video installation The Visitors, a berserk
I called on Hugo Wolf the other week, and he didn’t look too great. He wouldn’t, of course; he died in a mental asylum in 1903 after suicide attempts, professional disappointment and the slow poison of tertiary syphilis. His face gazes glumly out from his monument in Vienna: above him, a single laurel branch, beneath
The Christmas film Goodbye June marks Kate Winslet’s directorial debut. It’s based on a screenplay by Joe Anders – the 21-year-old son she had with Sam Mendes. I would like to be gracious about it. But it would help if it were a better film. It’s about four, fractious adult children who are forced to
Secrets of the Conclave seemed rather optimistically titled, given that everybody at this year’s papal election had made a solemn vow before God not to divulge any. But, while we duly heard nothing about backstage politicking – apart from regular assurances that none took place – this respectful and quietly charming documentary did succeed in
By all accounts, the world première of Elgar’s Sea Pictures at the October 1899 Norwich Festival made quite a splash. Elgar conducted, and the soloist was the 27-year-old contralto Clara Butt – dressed in a silky, sinuous number which drew gasps in those corseted late-Victorian days. Elgar thought she looked ‘like a mermaid’; the critics,
The Nativity. In ‘Over 2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance’, Elizabeth Bishop ends her travelogue-poem – St Peter’s, Mexico, Dingle, Marrakesh – by opening the Bible. ‘(The gilt rubs off the edges/ of the pages and pollinates the fingertips.)’ She gives us the famous stable, ‘lulled within, a family with pets’. Domesticated, nothing out of
All My Sons, set in an American suburb in the summer of 1947, examines the downfall of Joe Keller, a wealthy and patriotic arms manufacturer. During the war he was falsely accused of selling wonky parts to the US military which caused the deaths of 21 airmen. He blamed his partner for the blunder but
The playwright Peter Nichols created a character based on Tom Stoppard. Miles Whittier. On a car journey across London, I once asked Peter why he was so irked by Stoppard. Thelma, his wife, answered for him: ‘He uses all the oxygen.’ But Stoppard was miles wittier. Asked by a punter, after the New York first
The Beast in Me is one of those ‘taut psychological thrillers’ that everyone talks about in the office. This might sound disparaging – as it is, obviously – but I have to admit that, having succumbed in desperation (because, as usual, there is so little else on), I did find the show pretty addictive and
Bruckner at the Wigmore Hall. Yes, you heard right: a Bruckner symphony – his second: usually performed by 80-odd musicians – on a stage scarcely larger than my bedroom. How? Welcome to Anthony Payne’s very smart 2013 chamber arrangement. Bruckner on Ozempic. Composition is an Alice in Wonderland activity. A key duty is mastering how
Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly stars George Clooney as a handsome movie star playing a handsome movie star who has an identity crisis and is forced to reflect on his life. It’s being sold as a Hollywood satire, but it’s far too affectionate to be biting, and contains moments where it drowns in schmaltz. For a
Slavoj Zizek Hegel thought that, in the movement of history, the world spirit passes from one country to another, from the East to the West. Something similar happened at the beginning of the 21st century: the world spirit passed from cinema, the art of the 20th century, to the TV series. At the top of
Even if you think you don’t know William Nicholson, it’s a fair bet that you’ve come across his work. If you’ve read those excellent children’s books, The Velveteen Rabbit or Clever Bill, you’ll have taken in his drawings – never wholly sentimental, even the rabbit – into your mental world. And if you’ve seen his
It was such an enticing programme, too. The Philharmonia had booked Evgeny Kissin, the last great piano prodigy of the Soviet era and one of the superstars of the late 1980s and early 1990s. And then there was the music: three Russian showpieces, including Rimsky-Korsakov’s enchanting and almost unplayed (in the UK, anyway) single-movement Piano
There were times watching Radiohead’s first UK show for seven years when Ricky Gervais came to mind. As Thom Yorke dad-danced around the circular stage in the middle of the arena, his bandmates all hunched over their equipment – which made it resemble a server room of a call centre – I felt as though
Most choreographers today have lost interest in using music as anything more than a background wash of colour and mood. More’s the pity. For an earlier generation the idea that the dance grew through the music – into and out of it – was of the essence: or, as Balanchine famously said: ‘See the music,
End is the title chosen by David Eldridge for his new relationship drama. Clive Owen and Saskia Reeves star as Alfie and Julie, a pair of wildly successful creative types who live in a mansion near Highgate. Both are 59. Alfie is a retired DJ who made a fortune touring the world at the height
Anybody growing weary of the debate surrounding the BBC’s unexamined assumptions and biases about modern politics might have expected to find some relief in a scholarly documentary about the sack of Rome in AD 410. Sad to say, though, the first episode of Civilisations: Rise and Fall offered very little of it. Of course, it’s
Left-Handed Girl is a Taiwanese drama about a single mother who moves back to Taipei with her two daughters to run a noodle stand in the night market. It’s one of those films where the stakes don’t appear that high – will the mother make the rent this month?; will the littlest daughter settle at
When Gurdain Ryatt, Ojas Adhiya, Milind Kulkarni and Murad Ali Khan take to the stage at Milton Court this Sunday they will be united by a common language: the tradition of Hindustani Indian classical music, rooted in the north of India. Ryatt and Adhiya’s job will be to keep beats circulating on their pitched, drum-like
Everyone loves a private view, and I am no exception. I don’t know how many hours I must have spent trudging around central London’s art galleries in search of warm white wine – my social life doesn’t extend much beyond the confines of that circuit to be honest. Lately, however, I’ve been to some dreadful
Stravinsky’s The Firebird begins in darkness, and it might be the softest, deepest darkness in all music. Basses and cellos rock slowly, pianissimo, in their lowest register; using mutes to give the sound that added touch of velvet. Far beneath them rumbles the bass drum: a halo of blackness, perceptible only at the very edge
The Thing With Feathers is an adaptation of Max Porter’s acclaimed novella about a widower who is left to raise his two sons after his beloved wife’s sudden death and whose grief is embodied in the form of a monstrous, giant black crow. It stars Benedict Cumberbatch, who gives his absolute all, but while the
A male British rapper who is unafraid to show tenderness and vulnerability is not a particularly new phenomenon: Dave, Stormzy, Headie One and Kano have all walked this path in recent times. None, however, has made emotional fragility his USP to quite the same extent as Loyle Carner, who writes about his children, his masculine
Pluribus is another drama set in the dystopian future. But on this occasion the integrity of the entire human race depends not on someone ordinary and likeable who could almost be you, but on a bolshie, misanthropic middle-aged lesbian called Carol. Carol (Rhea Seehorn from Better Call Saul) is so grumpy that when in flashback
The Royal Ballet has scheduled what – on paper at least – looks like one of the most dismally dull and cautious seasons I can recall. The company is hobbled by a £21.7 million government loan (that had tided the place over during Covid), which the Royal Opera House is being forced to ‘service’. One