Arts

Music

Rod Liddle

Oh dear, Abba’s new album is a bit of a dog: Voyage reviewed

I assume that somewhere on the guided ‘Piers and Queers’ walking tour of Brighton, the participants are enjoined to regard, in awe, the Dome — the venue at which Abba, on 6 April 1974, won the Eurovision Song Contest, thus both launching themselves as a wildly successful band and establishing the town (as it was

Arts feature

The tyranny of the visual

In 1450, the Duke of Urbino, Federico da Montefeltro, became monocular after losing vision in his right eye following a jousting accident. In order to improve the peripheral vision of his left eye, he had surgeons cut off the bridge of his nose. In Piero della Francesca’s 1472 portrait, the Duke is depicted in profile,

Theatre

Opera

This is how G&S should be staged: ENO’s HMS Pinafore reviewed

Until 1881, HMS Pinafore was the second-longest-running show in West End history. Within a year of its première it had broken America too; at one point there were eight competing productions on Broadway alone. The single most wrongheaded notion that still clings to Gilbert and Sullivan’s operas is that they’re somehow low-rent or parochial. They

Television

A blisteringly bonkers first episode: Doctor Who – Flux reviewed

BBC1 continuity excitedly introduced the first in the new series of Doctor Who as ‘bigger and better than ever’ — presumably because the more accurate ‘bigger and better than it’s been for a bit’ doesn’t have quite the same punch. Still, Sunday’s programme was a definite, even exhilarating improvement on those of recent years. Since

Cinema

A riveting cheese dream of a film: Spencer reviewed

Go see Pablo Larrain’s Spencer, which stars Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana, and the next day you will wonder: did I go to the cinema last night or did I have a cheese dream? Did she really clear the room of staff by saying she wished to masturbate, or was it the cheddar and crackers

Radio

The genius of Caveh Zahedi

365 Stories I Want To Tell You Before We Both Die is a podcast that experimental filmmaker Caveh Zahedi started at the beginning of this year. Each episode is a short story, ranging from six minutes to 30 seconds, told directly to the audience. Zahedi has been a quiet star of the American indie scene