Arts Reviews

The good, bad and ugly in arts and exhbitions

Saturday

Nadine Dorries

Nadine Dorries, Katy Balls, Edmund West, Sam Dalrymple, and Tanjil Rashid

32 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Nadine Dorries reads her diary (1:12); Katy Balls analyses the politics behind the Assisted Dying debate (5:58); Edmund West allows us a glimpse into Whitby Goth Week (11:55); reviewing Avinash Paliwal’s book India’s New East, Sam Dalrymple looks at the birth of Bangladesh (17:39); and Tanjil Rashid reveals William Morris’s debt to Islam (21:23).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Wednesday

Digby Warde-Aldam

We’ve got Francis Bacon all wrong

You have to hand it to the curators of this excellent survey of Francis Bacon’s portraits. Not only have they alighted at an obvious but under-explored vantage point from which to reconsider this most mythologised of postwar painters, securing some serious loans to make their point, they have also dared to open their show with what might be the single worst picture it contains. ‘Self Portrait’ (1987) speaks of everything that Bacon got wrong in his final decades: it’s recognisably the 78-year-old artist, dressing up as a younger version of himself. His lips are pursed, his face pockmarked with a spray of tiny red dots, his pate capped with a

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

I listened to a solid week of Woman’s Hour…

I was a weird kid, and though I harboured the usual innocent girlish ambitions of being a drug fiend and having sex with pop stars, I also nursed a desire to appear on Woman’s Hour. As a shy, provincial virgin, the programme opened up a world of women’s troubles from anorexia to zuigerphobia – and I was keen to have A Complicated Life. Here was the wet hand of today’s lily-livered sensibilities I had anticipated From my twenties to my fifties I appeared on it several times; my last outing was in 2016, as – like most other institutions – it was captured by the trans cult, leading to the

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

A flop: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, at Ambassadors Theatre, reviewed

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button carries a strap-line, ‘an unordinary musical’. Perhaps the word ‘extraordinary’ is simply too banal to capture the outstanding qualities of this unique show. The year is 1918 and a miraculous birth occurs in a remote Cornish fishing village. The newborn is not a baby but an adult pensioner, Benjamin, who emerges from the  womb wearing a three-piece suit, a pair of spectacles and a bowler hat. His shame-faced mother hastens away from the family home and takes a walk along the cliffs, which results in her death. Suicide, perhaps. And Benjamin’s angry father locks him in the attic and refuses to let him out.

Richard Bratby

Fails to ignite: Royal Opera’s Tales of Hoffmann reviewed

I couldn’t love anyone who didn’t love Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann. Everything – everything – is stacked against this opera. Offenbach left the score unfinished when he died, tormented with gout and pilloried by bores, at the age of 61. Some of its best-loved numbers were upcycled from his earlier hits, and at least one isn’t by him at all. Yet somehow, it lives. More than that, it soars: a tale of disillusion that glows with wonder and hope; a hymn to the sweetness of life and the miracle of art, held together against all logic by the sheer charisma of a composer who shot for the moon and

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Top tosh: The Diplomat reviewed

The Diplomat bears the same relationship to 21st-century ambassadorial geopolitics as Bridgerton does to the salons and social mores of early 19th-century England. The latter is Jane Austen as reimagined by a wannabe Jilly Cooper with a first-class degree in historical revisionism; the former is a bit like what The West Wing might have been if it had been written by Dan Brown and those behind the classic, early 1980s husband-and-wife mystery drama Hart to Hart. But I’m not sure this is necessarily a bad thing. A lot of chattering-class types have been glued to The Diplomat since the first season when it started last year and have been recommending

Deborah Ross

Is it meant to be a comedy? Gladiator II reviewed

It’s nearly 25 years since Ridley Scott’s Gladiator came out and you’ve probably been wondering what happened to the little boy in that film. I know I have. I can’t say it’s kept me up at night, but at the back of my mind it’s always been: where is Lucius, son of Maximus, nowus? Well, Lucius, son of Maximus, is nowus a strapping lad with thighs of steel who has been forced to become a gladiator and fight for his life just like his pop. This film borrows heavily from the first instalment. True, it does have some new elements. It has Paul Mescal, Denzel Washington, monstrous man-eating baboons, sharks,

Michael Hann

Perfectly imperfect: Evan Dando, at Islington Assembly Hall, reviewed

‘Can I have a photo with you, please?’ It’s the most embarrassing question you can ask of someone you’re interviewing. But I had to. Not only because Evan Dando is one of my favourite songwriters. But also – vainly – because years of on-off drug addiction (mostly on) mean Dando is no longer quite the beautiful young man he was when he became famous in the early 1990s. Back then, I’d have looked like a troll standing next to him. Now, not so much. It was a night of beautiful imperfection – the kind that feels truer than a thousand arena shows He still, however, looks better than he has

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Goodbye to MC5, the holiest of rock’s holy cows

Grade: D+ Ah, the original Linkin Park, except even more spavined. MC5 came outta Detroit in the mid 1960s and their shrieking blues metal ur-punk was afforded unnecessary respect because of their agitprop politics. Sucking up to the Black Panthers and running a bit foul of the law can do wonders for a slightly below-average blues band whose songs had energy and attitude – but nothing else. Here they are, back with their first studio album in 53 years: thanks for the merciful interregnum, if nothing else. When I say ‘they’, I mean the half-decent guitarist Wayne Kramer and, on one or two tracks, their original drummer, Dennis Thompson. Both

Tanjil Rashid

William Morris’s debt to Islam

When William Morris was born in Walthamstow, in 1834, it was little more than a clump of marshland at the edge of the Epping Forest. This was the terrain of his free, frolicsome childhood, and it would forever form his image of humble, Edenic England, uncorrupted by the industrialist’s yoke. About the only thing that remains of this prelapsarian Walthamstow, amid its railway lines and brownfield sites, is the family home where Morris grew up, in some splendour – now a gallery dedicated to his artistic legacy. ‘To us pattern designers, Persia has become a holy land, for there our art was perfected’ The landscape has been supplanted, and much

Thursday

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Trump’s comeback, Labour’s rural divide, and World of Warcraft

37 min listen

This week: King of the Hill You can’t ignore what could be the political comeback of the century: Donald Trump’s remarkable win in this week’s US election. The magazine this week carries analysis about why Trump won, and why the Democrats lost, from Freddy Gray, Niall Ferguson and Yascha Mounk, amongst others. To make sense of how Trump became only the second President in history to win non-consecutive terms, we’re joined by the journalist Jacqueline Sweet and Cliff Young, president of polling at Ipsos (00:58). Next: is Labour blind to rural communities? The changes to inheritance tax for farmers are one of the measures from Labour’s budget that has attracted the

Wednesday

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Spy-drama porn: Sky’s The Day of the Jackal reviewed

All the previewers have been drooling lasciviously over The Day of the Jackal reboot and, having seen the first three episodes, I quite understand why. This is coffee-table spy-drama porn perfectly calculated to satisfy all manner of lurid and exotic tastes. There’s sniper-rifle-assembly porn; foreign-property porn (the Jackal’s gorgeous mountain retreat near Cadiz with a to-die-for infinity pool); fashion-nostalgia porn (especially the brown suede jacket worn with a red neckerchief in homage to the original, starring Edward Fox); far-right German politician’s head exploding in a pink mist as the heavy calibre sniper round reaches the end of its remarkable, unprecedented two-and-a-half-mile trajectory porn. Even if you’re not a fan of

Richard Bratby

One beauty – one turkey: Wexford Festival Opera reviewed

‘Theatre within Theatre’ was the theme of the 2024 Wexford Festival and with Sir Charles Villiers Stanford’s The Critic, that’s exactly what you get. Conor Hanratty’s production showed the interior of an 18th-century theatre, viewed from the stage. In the second act it flipped around to reveal the audience’s perspective. Were we now the audience? Clearly we were; which was awkward because where does that leave a critic? Obviously, one can’t be the critic because there’s already one on stage (the clue’s in the title), and as it turns out, The Critic isn’t really about critics, at all. Whatever – you get the picture. It’s all very meta; and more

Daisy Dunn

Radio 4’s Lord Lucan series is rescued by a brilliant narrator

It was 50 years ago this week, on 7 November 1974, that Lord Lucan fled what was destined to become the most talked about crime scene of the 20th century. A coroner’s inquest jury named him as the killer of Sandra Rivett, his children’s nanny, but his disappearance ensured that he was never convicted of the crime – or of the attempted murder of his wife, Veronica. Stripping away the sensationalism of the story needn’t render it boring Understandably, given the mystery that still envelops his precise actions and whereabouts, Radio 4 has chosen to mark the anniversary with a soft question rather than to provide answers. Soft, but also

Nina Power

Sad but beautiful exhibition of Afghanistan’s war rugs

Decades after its inclusion in the Hippie Trail, Afghanistan is again open to tourism, according to the Taliban’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid. It is perhaps a source of regret for the group that the 6th-century Buddhas of Bamiyan are missing in action. They were blown up in 2001 either, depending on who you ask, because of Islam’s strict beliefs on anti-idolatry or to punish the West for offering money to preserve them rather than give aid to starving children. The war rugs, depicting camels and flowers alongside rocket launchers, are striking and jarring While the country continues to export fruit, nuts and insect resins – opium production was massively scaled back

James Walton

Too cautious and wildly over the top at the same time: Paddington in Peru reviewed

Toy Story or The Godfather? Which way would Paddington in Peru go? Would the third instalment of a much-cherished series prove even better than the second (which was even better than the first)? Or would it be a thumping disappointment? The anti-climactic answer turns out to be a firm ‘neither’. While enjoyable enough, this is a rare example of a film that’s both too cautious and wildly over the top at the same time. What really powers the film is the goodwill of the audience towards the franchise It begins with Paddington – voiced as irresistibly as ever by Ben Whishaw – getting a letter from the Reverend Mother at

Graeme Thomson

Terrifically good value: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds reviewed

A few years ago, I received an early morning phone call from Nick Cave’s former PR, berating me for not crediting his band the Bad Seeds in an album review. She was quite right. As Cave says, with a hint of paternal pride, during this powerhouse Glasgow show: ‘This band can do anything.’ It’s not just that the Bad Seeds’s task ranges from delicately enhancing the most nakedly exposed ballads to unleashing a raging firestorm of noise. It’s that supporting a performer as mercurial as Cave takes oodles of nous and empathy. He’s a wild thing, but they never once lose him. Cave brings to mind that volatile drunk left

Richard Bratby

The striking musical world of Welsh composer Grace Williams

Grade: A- There are neglected composers, and then there are Welsh composers. It’s just a question of geography. When Grace Williams’s Fairest of Stars was played at the Proms a few years back, it was hailed as a major rediscovery. That raised a few eyebrows in the Principality, where her music has long been standard repertoire. I grew up 20 minutes from the border and I’d played three of her orchestral works before I turned 30. Still, there’s always more to discover, and this new disc breaks over you with the force of a Snowdonia rainstorm. The BBC Philharmonic lives up to its reputation as the most brilliant of the

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Much more than just a game: World of Warcraft at 20

On 23 November, the video game World of Warcraft celebrates its 20th anniversary. That’s no small thing. By most metrics, it is the most successful video game of its type in history. At its peak, it had more than 12 million active subscribers, and in its two-decade-and-counting lifetime it has made more than three times as much money as the highest-grossing Hollywood movie of all time. Yet many, if not most, of you will never have heard of it or will have only the dimmest idea what it is. As someone who has played this daft game for several hours a week for years, I commend it to your attention,

Tuesday

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

A riveting show crammed with the kind of risky gags rarely heard on stage these days

How To Survive Your Mother is a play based on a memoir by political dramatist Jonathan Maitland. He portrays himself in the show, and he muses on the wisdom of turning his manipulative, devious, sex-mad mother into a dramatic heroine. In the end, he’s swayed by ‘Edinburgh derangement syndrome’ as he calls it. ‘You’re diagnosed with terminal cancer and you think: “Great, there’s a show in this.”’ Maitland’s account of his rackety childhood is crammed with risky gags rarely heard on stage these days His mother, Bru, was a Jewish refugee from Haifa who posed as a Frenchwoman with Spanish roots to protect herself from the anti-Semitic bigotry. Her self-taught