Arts Reviews

The good, bad and ugly in arts and exhbitions

Wednesday

Deborah Ross

Both compelling and repulsive: The Whale reviewed

I can’t work out if Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale, which stars Brendan Fraser as a man weighing 600lb – that’s 42 stone in real money – is ‘abhorrently cruel’, as some have said, or a film of ‘rare compassion’, as others have said. Either way, it is compelling, although whether that’s for the right reasons or wrong reasons, I also can’t work out. You certainly can’t take your eyes off Fraser, much as you’d sometimes wish to. Is this really sweet, klutzy ‘George, George, George of the Jungle (watch out for the tree!)’? After years in the wilderness, Fraser has now been nominated for an Oscar. So what we can

Graeme Thomson

Two of Scotland’s most inventive solo musicians: Fergus McCreadie, Maeve Gilchrist + Mr McFall’s Quartet reviewed

Folk is the Schiphol of Scottish music. Eventually, every curious traveller passes through. From arena rockers to rappers, traditional music remains an undeniable source. Which is why the second word in ‘Celtic Connections’ is at least as significant as the first. Now in its 30th year, lighting up the otherwise unpromising prospect of a Glasgow January, this year’s instalment of the roots festival features artists from all corners of the globe. Many of them would regard folk only as their second or third musical language, rather than the mother tongue. One of the early highlights makes the point rather beautifully. It’s a homegrown affair, showcasing pianist Fergus McCreadie and harpist

Laura Gascoigne

The county that inspired a whole way of painting: Sussex Landscape, at Pallant House, reviewed

In a national vote on which county’s landscape best embodies Englishness, every county would presumably vote for itself. But when the War Office commissioned Frank Newbould in 1942 to design a poster with the patriotic slogan ‘Your BRITAIN – fight for it now’, it featured Sussex, with a shepherd herding sheep in the foreground and Belle Tout lighthouse on the distant horizon. In the ‘green and pleasant’ stakes, Sussex holds the advantage that the seeds of our alternative national anthem ‘Jerusalem’ were sown during William Blake’s stay from 1800 to 1803 in the coastal village of Felpham near Bognor Regis. But while it has prompted the occasional poem, Sussex has

Revd Steve Morris

My hunt for the Holy Grail: Damned drummer Rat Scabies interviewed

Most former punks end up touring the nostalgia circuit or cropping up at conventions. Not Christopher John Millar, aka Rat Scabies. When Scabies hit middle age, the legendary drummer with the Damned began to hunt for the Holy Grail. ‘We all started off criticising government and I’ve ended up looking for pixies,’ explains Scabies. In 2005, the music journalist Christopher Dawes wrote a rollicking account of a trip he took with Scabies to the epicentre of it all, Rennes-le-Château, a tiny village atop a rock overlooking the River Aude in the Languedoc. Rat Scabies and the Holy Grail has taken its place as a minor gonzo classic. Dawes lived across

Tuesday

Zoe Strimpel

Still fabulous: Savage Love podcast reviewed

Two podcast MOTs this week. I am a long-term listener of sex and relationships podcast Savage Love, hosted by Seattle-based Dan Savage. And tuning in to his most recent instalment, I can confirm it is still fabulous. A quick primer for those not familiar: Savage is famous for giving the world such gems as ‘monogamish’ (mostly monogamous; Savage and underwear model husband Terry were monogamish before becoming poly),  ‘fuck first’ (do the deed before, not after, your huge romantic meal), and ‘DTMI’ (dump the motherfucker). Savage’s intelligence, mellifluous voice, encyclopaedic knowledge of kinks and sexuality, intriguing politics (a true man of the left, he has lost patience with cancel culture and

Wednesday

Frank Lawton

The art of art restoration    

When I first saw ‘The Triumph of Death’ (1562-63), by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the painting throbbed: this land was sick, smothered in smoke; the fires on the horizon had been burning for ever, turning earth into dirt, air into haze. All was dull, lethargic, ill. When I saw the painting again some years later, the smoke had cleared. Patches of green pushed up from the canvas; the peasantry’s clothes were suddenly bright; the sun appeared to exist. In its new clarity, some of the painting’s jaded horror had been replaced by a sort of comedy. The work had been restored, but something had been lost. That ‘something’ is much

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Pure, heavenly escapism: The Unfriend, at the Criterion Theatre, reviewed

The Unfriend is a smart new family comedy which opens on the sunlit deck of a cruise ship. Peter and Debbie, a boring middle-class couple, are introduced to a clingy American tourist, Elsa, who worms her way into their affections. Before they know it, they’ve agreed to let her visit them at home after the cruise. A few weeks later, she shows up unannounced. By now the pair have learned from Google that Elsa is suspected of murdering her husband and several other members of her family. But they’re far too nice, and too English, to tell her to get lost. The crafty Elsa forms an alliance with their angry

Michael Hann

A brilliant show : The 1975, at the O2, reviewed

The great country singer George Jones was famed not just for his voice, but also for his drinking. Once, deprived of the car keys, he drove his lawnmower to the nearest bar. In the very good Paramount+ drama about Jones and Tammy Wynette – entitled George and Tammy, so there’s no excuse for forgetting – Michael Shannon, playing Jones, is asked time and time again why he keeps on making such a mess of his life and his career. ‘That’s what the people want from me,’ he shrugs in reply. That came to mind watching the 1975’s return to British arenas, in a tour grandiosely and amusingly billed as ‘In

James Walton

A ‘look at these funny people’ doc that could have been presented by any TV hack: Grayson Perry’s Full English reviewed

For around a decade now, Grayson Perry has been making reliably thoughtful and entertaining documentary series about such things as class, contemporary masculinity and modern secular rituals. (All a lot more fun than they sound, I promise.) Equipped with an infectious Sid James laugh and an impressive commitment to affability, he’s demonstrated a willingness to listen to opposing views, even to the extent of allowing his mind to be changed. He’s then turned his findings into both a convincing thesis and an art exhibition of some kind. So what’s gone wrong in Grayson Perry’s Full English? The main problem, I think, was inadvertently laid bare right at the start of

Rupert Christiansen

Mel C’s debut as a contemporary dancer is impressive: How did we get here?, at Sadler’s Wells, reviewed

‘We hope you enjoy the performance,’ announced the Tannoy before the lights went down for How did we get here? – the accent being put on ‘hope’, as though enjoyment was unlikely. I took a deep breath in anticipation of modern dance at its most portentous and pretentious, my expectations already depressed after imbibing some hot air from a note in the programme – ‘we feel our power, all the way to the edges of ourselves’ and so forth. How did we get here? Or should that be What am I doing here? But what transpired was a thing of simple beauty: spare, precise, lucid, free of wanton gimmicks or

Laura Gascoigne

A crash course in all things Hispanic: RA’s Spain and the Hispanic World reviewed

‘Spain must be much more interesting than Liverpool,’ decided the 12-year-old Archer M. Huntington after buying a book on Spanish gypsies in the port city. The family of American railroad magnate Collis P. Huntington had just docked at the start of an 1882 European tour that would introduce Archer to the National Gallery and the Louvre. ‘I knew nothing about pictures,’ he later admitted, ‘but I knew instinctively that I was in a new world.’ It was the Hispanic world to which he was most attracted, and he hatched a plan to create a museum devoted to its study. His preparations were thorough; he learned Arabic as well as Spanish

Deborah Ross

Cheesy but full of love: The Fabelmans reviewed

There can’t be anyone anywhere who hasn’t somehow been touched by a Steven Spielberg film. Some of us, for example, haven’t  dipped their toe into the sea for going on 40 years now. (Thanks for that, Jaws.) He has thus surely earned the right to finally turn the camera on himself, as he does with The Fabelmans, a memoir based on his childhood and discovery of filmmaking. This could have been sentimental and soggy, a ‘magic of the movies’ endeavour. There is some of that, but this is more than that. It’s about family, and the complexity of family, and it’s intensely personal, moving, absorbing and full of love. He

Richard Bratby

Stirring and sophisticated: RLPO, Chooi, Hindoyan, at the Philharmonic Hall, reviewed

Daniel Barenboim was supposed to perform with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra earlier this month. His recent health concerns made that impossible, but it was a reminder that for the first time since the appointment of the late Libor Pesek in 1987, the RLPO is under the direction of a conductor soaked in the German tradition. Domingo Hindoyan, the orchestra’s chief conductor since autumn 2021, was born in Venezuela and has a soft spot for French music, but Barenboim is his mentor and there’s a gravity – an intellectual centre – to his conducting that made me eager to hear him get to grips with the sacred monsters of German

Wednesday

Richard Bratby

Reduced me to a tearful, choked-up mess: Royal Opera’s Magic Flute reviewed

‘The rays of the sun conquer the night’ sings Sarastro, at the end of Mozart and Schikaneder’s Die Zauberflöte. It was the Royal Opera’s first performance of January 2023 and there’s something profoundly consoling about seeing this of all operas at the midnight of the year. The lights dim; five chords ring out and that first triplet from the violins falls quietly into place as Mozart engages the gears and together we move off on our long, sweet journey towards light. In David McVicar’s staging, robed figures process down the auditorium bearing glowing orbs, while Tamino, in late 18th-century frock-coat and knee-boots, clambers out from the boxes and vanishes through

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Comes close to perfection: Watch on the Rhine, at the Donmar Warehouse, reviewed

Watch on the Rhine is the curiously misleading title chosen by Lillian Hellman for a wartime family drama that became a film starring Bette Davis. The location is not Europe but America and the show opens with Fanny Farrelly, a member of the New England gentry, arriving in her sumptuous drawing room for breakfast. The character of Fanny is an instant classic. A crashing snob, a bundle of nerves, a lethally bitchy matriarch, she dominates her household by cultivating favourites and crushing enemies with her venomous tongue. And yet her servants treat her with tolerance and affection. To them she seems a tricky but essentially decent oddball who needs careful

Graeme Thomson

Beautiful bleakness crowned with slivers of hope: John Cale’s Mercy reviewed

There’s a case to be made for John Cale being the most daring ex-member of the Velvet Underground. Lou Reed redefined the transgressive possibilities of literate three-chord rock’n’roll. Cale, arguably, has travelled even further. A Welsh miner’s son who won a scholarship to Goldsmiths, Cale engaged with the early flowerings of Fluxus before mixing with John Cage and La Monte Young’s Theatre of Eternal Music in New York’s downtown avant-garde scene. His droning viola, hammering piano and relentless bass brought the serrated edge to the Velvet Underground’s art music. More than anyone in the band, he rendered Reed’s whiplash words in sound. After leaving in 1968, Cale’s solo career has

Daisy Dunn

Is Matthew Parris the modern Plutarch? Radio 4’s Great Lives reviewed

Whenever I listen to Great Lives on Radio 4, which is often, I am reminded of the gulf between fame and achievement. How is it that some people do so much, yet remain obscure, while others seem to be carried forward with perpetual momentum after doing just one thing? A good many of the lives dissected on the programme over the years have been completely unfamiliar to me. I’ll spend the half hour puzzling over why they are not better known. Where would we be without Great Lives? There is minimal appetite in trade publishing for books about esoteric figures. And just imagine pitching a biopic of Hertha Ayrton, Eleonora

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Heist drama with a novelty spin that isn’t very novel: Netflix’s Kaleidoscope reviewed

Kaleidoscope is a fairly routine eight-part heist drama with a supposed novelty spin: apart from the beginning and the end, you can view the episodes in any order, meaning that each viewer has a slightly different experience. If I sound mildly sceptical, it’s because the novelty isn’t actually that novel. B.S. Johnson got there 54 years earlier with his 1969 novel-in-a-box The Unfortunates, an account of a football match in which the chapters were loose bound so that they could be shuffled and read in whatever order you wished. A few years ago, I bought a rare first edition from Simon Finch which I thought would become very valuable but

Deborah Ross

Formulaic and untrue: Bank of Dave reviewed

Bank of Dave is the ‘true(ish)’ story, as this puts it, of Dave Fishwick, the Burnley businessman who wanted to set up a high street bank to help the local community. He was, Fishwick said in a recent interview, at home when the call came from Piers Ashworth in LA. ‘He’s the writer of Mission Impossible and he’d heard about my story and he said: “Dave, I want to make a Hollywood film about your life.” You get this a lot in Burnley, ha!’ I was made up for Dave, who seems like an excellent fellow, and this does have all the makings of one of those British underdog dramas

Laura Gascoigne

The grisliest images are the earliest: Bearing Witness? Violence and Trauma on Paper, at the Fitzwilliam Museum, reviewed

‘Graphic’ scenes of violence are now associated with film, but the word betrays an older ancestry. The first mass media images to shock the public were engravings documenting contemporary social ills pioneered by the Victorian magazine The Graphic, though the association goes a long way further back, to Jacques Callot’s etching series ‘Miseries of War’ (1633) recording atrocities perpetrated by both sides during the French invasion of his native Lorraine in the Thirty Years’ War. The grisliest of those images, ‘The Hangman’s Tree’, is the earliest work in Bearing Witness? Violence and Trauma on Paper, at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. The prints and drawings on display are not all