Arts Archives

Life-affirming Mahler: Budapest Festival Orchestra/Ivan Fisher, at the Royal Festival Hall, reviewed

The Budapest Festival Orchestra and founder Ivan Fischer have a reputation for exciting and joyous performances of Mahler. Even in this most tragic of symphonies, Fischer gave a grateful, if slightly sparse, audience exactly what they wanted. Fischer and his orchestra’s talent was in the delivery, in the work’s ravishing tableaux, and not in its philosophical lessons. While the symphony’s themes: the death of tonality, the death of culture, the death of Mahler himself, constitute the material that binds the work as a whole, Fischer’s BFO demonstrated that a satisfying Mahler interpretation doesn’t need to make the music subservient to ideas about the music. Although delivering both would be the ideal.

17 May 2023

James Walton

Watching Queen Cleopatra felt like witnessing the death of scholarship

Television

The most controversial aspect of Netflix’s new drama-documentary Queen Cleopatra – not least in Egypt – was the casting of a black actress, Adele James, in the title role. After all, one of the few things that seems certain about Cleopatra’s early life is that she was a Macedonian Greek. Luckily, though, the show had a powerful counterargument to this awkward and Eurocentric fact. As the African-American professor Shelley P. Haley put it with a QED-style flourish, back when she was girl, her beloved (if uneducated) grandmother once said to her: ‘I don’t care what they tell you in school, Cleopatra was black.

Deborah Ross

Warm, charming and tender: Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret reviewed

Cinema

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret is an adaptation of Judy Blume’s seminal young adult novel (1970) about an 11-year-old girl who talks to God about her friends and boys and who she wants to kiss and whether she’ll ever get breasts or menstruate. (This could also be called Are You There, Margaret? It’s Me, Your Period, and I’ll Come When I’m Ready!) Not being the target demographic, I assumed I’d be bored to death but, ever the professional, I drank 12 espressos and 17 cans of Red Bull beforehand. That turned out to be wholly unnecessary. This is a wonderfully charming, warm, tender, pitch-perfect film, much better than anything else I’ve seen recently. So that’s a good outcome, even if I did jangle for days afterwards.

Melanie McDonagh

The Georgian fashion revolution

Exhibitions

Normally, when you look at portraits you feel obliged to focus on the sitter. But quite often you’re thinking, ‘Ooh, what a lovely frock.’ Or, ‘Fabulous breeches!’ Here it’s the costumes that take centre stage. The point that this exhibition makes is that costume spoke volumes about society, particularly in the long 18th century, over the course of the reigns (and regency) of the four Georges. Compare the flounces and silk of a portrait of Queen Caroline in 1771 with the simple classical white muslin cotton of Princess Sophia in 1796 and you find nothing less than a revolution. The change resembles what happened in dress after the Great War: bye-bye Edwardian hourglass, hello flapper. Here cotton, a fabric inexorably associated with slavery, tells a larger story.

Laura Gascoigne

The quiet genius of Gwen John

Exhibitions

In the rush to right the historical gender balance, galleries have been corralling neglected women artists into group exhibitions: the Whitechapel Gallery rounded up 80 women abstract expressionists for its recent Action, Gesture, Paint show. But imbalances can’t be corrected retrospectively. Rather than elevating women artists who didn’t make it in a male-dominated world – not all of whose work, if we’re honest, helps the female cause – we should be celebrating the grit and talent of the few who did. And Berthe Morisot and Gwen John – currently the subjects of solo shows at Dulwich Picture Gallery and Pallant House – had both in spades.

Michael Hann

The new Pogues: The Mary Wallopers, at O2 Forum Kentish Town, reviewed

Pop

I was listening the other week to a solo album by an ageing rock guitarist, once terrifically famous. It was really very good, but I couldn’t bring myself to care about it because it clearly didn’t matter: this man’s career is static and it is likely to remain so. The album will make no impact on the wider world and, despite liking it, I felt no need to listen again. Had it been the debut by a band of 21-year-olds, on the other hand, I would have been all over it. Rock and pop musicians are most interesting in the transitions; that is, on the way up or on the way down. The journey up always – but always – accounts for the most interesting bit of any musician’s memoir, because they’re remembering when life was exciting.

Lloyd Evans

Sad, blinkered and incoherent: Arcola’s The Misandrist reviewed

Theatre

A new play, The Misandrist, looks at modern dating habits. Rachel is a smart, self-confident woman whose partner is a timid desperado named Nick. Both accept that Rachel must make all the important decisions in their lives and she orders Nick to submit to ‘pegging’. After some perfunctory resistance, Nick obeys. ‘Lube me up,’ he cries and she plunges a pink truncheon deep into his digestive tract. Afterwards he claims that the experience was so uplifting that even his ancestors enjoyed a taste of bliss from beyond the grave. Lisa Carroll’s ironic and frivolous comedy is fun to watch. The characters are enjoyable and the lightweight, throwaway acting meets the script’s requirements.

Richard Bratby

Florid flummery: ETO’s Il viaggio a Reims reviewed

Classical

Lightning sometimes strikes twice. English Touring Opera hit topical gold last spring when, wholly by coincidence, they found themselves touring with Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian anti-war satire The Golden Cockerel. Now the company’s general director Robin Norton-Hale insists that their current tour of Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims – written in 1825 to celebrate the coronation of King Charles X of France – was fixed long before this month’s events at Westminster Abbey were even a glint in the Earl Marshal’s eye. Really? In truth, opera planning cycles generally operate in years rather than months. On the other hand, Il viaggio a Reims is an extravagant heap of dramatic (if not musical) flummery.

Adam Sweeting

‘Netflix are incredibly conservative’: documentary-maker Nick Broomfield interviewed

Arts feature

A documentary by Nick Broomfield is always to some extent about Nick Broomfield. He has cultivated an image as a gonzo filmmaker, striding into shot holding a boom microphone, headphones clamped over his ears, and in the politest possible way provoking chaos. ‘Unfortunately it comes very easily to me, to be slightly out of control,’ he confesses.

10 May 2023

Rupert Christiansen

Patronising to the people of Peterborough: BRB2’s Carlos Acosta Classical Selections reviewed

Dance

Fulfilling its sacred duty to serve regions that higher culture tends to avoid, Birmingham Royal Ballet made a midweek visit to the troubled city of Peterborough. Its New Theatre holds about 1,200 and is normally focused on tribute bands and stand-ups; I would guess that for Carlos Acosta’s Classical Selection only about 60 per cent of its seats had been sold or distributed, and predominantly to a white and female audience. Their response was moderately enthusiastic. Arts Council England’s embattled chief executive Darren Henley was in attendance; I wonder what lessons he drew from the performance. I didn’t feel it quite hit the spot.

Claudia Massie

‘I love twigs’: botanical painter Emma Tennant interviewed

Riveting and sumptuous: The Motive and the Cue, at the Lyttelton Theatre, reviewed

Theatre

The Motive and the Cue breaches the inviolable sanctity of the rehearsal room. The play, set in New York in 1964, follows John Gielgud’s efforts to direct the world’s biggest film star, Richard Burton, in Shakespeare’s most demanding play, Hamlet. A member of Gielgud’s company, Richard L. Sterne, recorded the process and his notes form the basis of Sam Mendes’s riveting production. The show is a must for anyone who works in the theatre or wants to. Directors, in particular, will relish the glimpse it offers into Gielgud’s approach to a uniquely demanding text and to a wayward superstar who was free to accept or to challenge the notes given during rehearsals.

Damian Thompson

The coronation music was – mostly – a triumph

Classical

Sir Hubert Parry was upgraded from knight bachelor to baronet by King Edward VII in 1902, and my goodness he earned it. His anthem for Edward’s coronation, I was Glad when they Said Unto Me, begins with a thrilling brass fanfare – or it has done since George V’s coronation in 1911: Parry’s original introit wasn’t sufficiently attention-grabbing, so he beefed it up. But the most spine-tingling moment has been there from the beginning. ‘I was…’ sings the choir on the tonic chord of B flat major – and then the word ‘glad’ bursts out where we aren’t expecting it, in G major.

Deborah Ross

Deeply moving but bleak: Plan 75 reviewed

Cinema

Plan 75 is a dystopian Japanese drama about a government-sponsored euthanasia programme introduced to address Japan’s ageing society. Aged 75 or over? Agree to die and we’ll give you $1,000 to spend as you like in your last days! With a collective funeral thrown in for free! Actually, it’s not sold aggressively like that, as this is an understated film. But, despite the hopeful ending, it is so sad and bleak that if you didn’t feel minded to take $1,000 before, you may feel like taking it afterwards. You could spend it on a spa break and a deluxe sushi platter, which is one of the options, if that takes your fancy. Aged 75 or over? Agree to die and we’ll give you $1,000 to spend as you like in your last days!

Daisy Dunn

Prayer for the Day is the best thing to wake up to

Radio and podcasts

As the owner of a radio alarm clock, I could theoretically start listening to the Today programme before I’m even awake, but I rarely do. I tell myself it’s too much for first thing; that it’s bound to put me in a bad mood with some interview or other; that Today can wait until tomorrow – or at least until I’ve had my breakfast and a blitz of the somewhat jollier Times Radio. The levée, I say in a Bertie Woosterish sort of way, demands something light. When you crave something thought-provoking but also comforting, nothing beats a few minutes of prayer But then I find myself waking up unintentionally early, switching to Radio 4 and discovering that Prayer for the Day is about to begin.

Graeme Thomson

Heartfelt but bland: Ed Sheeran’s – (Subtract) reviewed

Pop

Whether by accident or design, the mathematical theme of Ed Sheeran’s previous album titles (+, ×, ÷ and = respectively) resolves rather neatly with – (Subtract). I interviewed Sheeran around the time of × and found him likeable enough but a bit out of reach. Multiplication did indeed seem to be foremost on his mind. Perched on the edge of a bed in a room above RAK studios in central London, he came across as a man obsessed with sales figures and chart placings, a coolly pragmatic mix of talent and ambition. (You don’t think Sheeran is talented? I watched him entertain 60,000 people in a football stadium for two hours with just a guitar, loop pedals and a lot of chutzpah. He’s got talent, all right.

Richard Bratby

WNO sinks an unsinkable opera: The Magic Flute, at Birmingham Hippodrome, reviewed

Opera

As stage directions go, the The Magic Flute opens with a zinger. ‘Tamino enters from the right wearing a splendid Japanese hunting costume.’ That’s right, a Japanese hunting costume. What does that even look like? More to the point, what would a Viennese theatrical costume designer in 1791 have thought it looked like? Surviving evidence suggests that the answer was ‘nothing on Earth’, which is handy because it gives subsequent interpreters a huge amount of licence. Schikaneder’s rag-bag libretto has its quirks and non sequiturs, but it’s an astonishingly robust piece of theatre. I’ve seen The Magic Flute done as panto, as manga, as gothic fantasy and as 1970s British sci-fi. As long as a director preserves the essentials, it’s basically indestructible.

Laura Gascoigne

From Botticelli to Marvel: why artists love St Francis

Arts feature

‘A small, black, repulsive picture’ is not how most people today would describe Zurbaran’s haunting painting of ‘Saint Francis in Meditation’ (1635-9) in the National Gallery. But that was how one Protestant critic of its acquisition in 1853 described this image of an Italian saint satirised three centuries earlier by the German Lutheran cleric Erasmus Alber in his Koran of the Franciscans. Alber chose his title advisedly, for one of this peacemaking saint’s legendary acts of diplomacy was initiating an interfaith dialogue with the Muslim Sultan of Egypt, al-Malik al-Kamil. In 1219, so the story goes, Francis crossed to Damietta, then under siege by troops of the Fifth Crusade, slipped unarmed into the city and was arrested and brought before the Sultan.

3 May 2023

James Walton

Despite the lack of sex, stick with it: Paramount Plus’s Fatal Attraction reviewed

Television

With the current taste for remakes of erotic-thriller movies of the 1980s and ’90s, these are certainly good times for TV intimacy co-ordinators. Just two weeks ago, we had Netflix’s Obsession. Now Paramount+ has come to the slightly weird party, turning the daddy of them all, Fatal Attraction, into an eight-part series. In the original film, you may remember, high-flying married lawyer Dan Gallagher had an ill-advised weekend fling with Alex Forrest, who didn’t take him ending it terribly well. Instead she posed such an unhinged single-female threat to the nuclear family (and its pet rabbit) that cinema audiences famously cheered when Dan’s wife Beth did the decent thing and shot the mad cow dead.

Michael Hann

A phenomenally exciting new band: The Last Dinner Party, at Camden Assembly, reviewed

Pop

A user’s guide to how pop music works in the 21st century. Step one: you see a great new band. Step two: you tweet about them being very good. Step three: you get told by people that they are clearly nepo babies, denying crucial exposure to other bands. Step four: you discover that newspaper articles are using these Twitter conversations as evidence of a backlash about said new band. That’s what happened after I went to see the Last Dinner Party. For reference, the Last Dinner Party have released precisely one song: their debut single ‘Nothing Matters’, which had come out a few days before. On YouTube you can find complete recordings of some of the few shows they have played, filmed by zealous young fans.

Lynn Barber

‘I have uncancelled myself’: David Starkey interviewed

Shiny, smooth heavy metal for white incels: Metallica’s 72 Seasons reviewed

The Listener

Grade: B– Chugga-chugga, grawch, chugga-chugga. Never mind 72 seasons, it’s actually been a little over 500 seasons since Metallica first started bestowing their peculiarly Los Angeles brand of heavy metal – shiny, taut and smooth – on a grateful audience of dispossessed lower-middle-class white incels. And nothing very much has changed. They have got better, if by better we mean that they are now astonishingly tight, anchored by the literal, almost militaristic drumming of Lars Ulrich. You would think that after 42 years they might have come up with a riff that really sticks in the mind, if only perhaps by accident, like that chimp at the typewriter. But nope. This album is a profusion of guitar riffs, each piled on top of the other, and none of them touches the sides, sadly.

Damian Thompson

Emperor Bokassa might have been a cannibal but his coronation music is worth a listen

Classical

If being asked to write music for the coronation of a king is an honour, then doing it for an emperor is even more so, you might think. That was certainly the view of Jean-François Le Sueur (1760-1837), an opera composer who was made director of music at Notre-Dame by Napoleon. At the self-coronation of the ‘Emperor of the French’ in 1804, two choirs and orchestras performed pieces by Le Sueur, who dined out on it for the rest of his life. Fortunately for him, the French authorities, perhaps keen to forget the vulgar spectacle, never got round to clarifying who wrote what.

Deborah Ross

The magic is missing in this remake: Disney’s Peter Pan & Wendy reviewed

Film

Peter Pan & Wendy is Disney’s latest live-action remake (the animated version was in 1953) and it’s quite the sombre affair. It takes itself and its story so seriously that I kept waiting for it to be fun and it never was. There is an underlying sadness to J.M. Barrie’s original story, but it is also funny and joyous and exciting. Flying! Fairy dust! Ticking crocodiles! Pirates! That’s all here but somehow the magic is missing. Still, Captain Hook is played by Jude Law, who is at that stage in his career where he’s determined to have a good time and, from the look of it, he is definitely having a good time. At least one of us did (she says, resentfully).

Richard Bratby

Upstart Crow without the jokes: RSC’s Hamnet, at the Swan Theatre, reviewed

Theatre

The Swan Theatre has reopened after an overhaul and praise god: they’ve replaced the seats. The Swan is a likeable theatre; the only space in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s portfolio that still conveys a real sense of history, though until 2020 that came at the price of acute posterior discomfort. No more: and we can get on with enjoying the inaugural production, an adaptation by Lolita Chakrabarti of Maggie O’Farrell’s Shakespeare novel Hamnet. It’s a nice fit, and after the RSC’s success with Wolf Hall you can see the logic. It’s Shakespearean without too much of that difficult Shakespeare, plus you get the built-in audience that comes with an award-winning novel.

Lloyd Evans

So good it would have made Ibsen envious: Dixon and Daughters, at the Dorfman Theatre, reviewed

Theatre

Deborah Bruce's new play Dixon and Daughters is a family drama that opens on a note of sour mistrust. We’re in a working-class home in Yorkshire where a vituperative old crosspatch, Mary, has just returned from prison. Rather than accepting her daughters’ friendly welcome she treats them all with open hostility. Had Ibsen been in attendance, he would have blushed with envy Her first malevolent act is to try to evict Julie, even though her boyfriend has subjected her to horrific and repeated violence. And Mary is highly suspicious of the absent Briana who has changed her name and is threatening to return home, by force if necessary. What was Briana’s crime? And why is Mary so hostile to Julie who clearly needs her love and support?

Dan Hitchens

From Bayeux to Cartier-Bresson: how artists have brought the coronation crowds to life

Arts feature

In 1937, the Parisian communist newspaper Ce soir sent a 28-year-old would-be filmmaker on an unpromising first assignment. Henri Cartier-Bresson was to take photographs of the British coronation, an event of limited appeal either to Ce soir’s readers or to Cartier-Bresson himself. But on the streets of London, he discovered what would become his signature approach. Two Brylcreemed lads in their best suits, hoisting their girlfriends on to their shoulders for a better view He would turn away from the King, the procession, the organised magnificence, and focus solely on the crowds, looking for some fleeting moment in which the meaning of the day was concentrated.

26 April 2023

Jenny McCartney

How productive is it to listen to productivity gurus?

Radio and podcasts

I was making my way slowly through one of my dismally prosaic little to-do lists – ‘pay the water bill’ ‘wash hair’, etc. – when the voice of the journalist Helen Lewis came on Radio 4 talking about productivity. It’s the Holy Grail of modern life, apparently, and we are now constantly looking for ‘charismatic individuals’ to help us maximise it. Her writer friend Julian Simpson is obsessed with the topic, she said, even though he disarmingly admitted what some of us may quickly have suspected, that ‘my interest in productivity manifests itself when I need to be doing something else’.

James Delingpole

Purest fantasy but you’ll love it: Tetris reviewed

Television

Tetris is a righteously entertaining movie about the stampede to secure the rights from within the Soviet Union to what would become the world’s bestselling video game. The question you’re going to be asking yourself time and again – especially during the Lada-ZiL chase scene through the streets of Moscow in which our heroes try to elude the hatchet-faced KGB agents – is: ‘How much of this is true?’ And the honest answer is: ‘Not very much, actually.