The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
The acronym for Arts Council England is rather unfortunate at the moment. The organisation is being accused of many things: being overly close to government, underfunded and blinkered – but nobody thinks it is ace. Even friendly culture critics are losing patience. As the august arts commentator Richard Morrison recently wrote in the Times: ‘The
There is a (possibly apocryphal) story about William Morris, where he spends most of his time in Paris inside the Eiffel Tower’s restaurant because ‘that is the only place where you can’t see the damned thing’. Aviva Studios risks a similar fate. Designed by architects OMA as the permanent performance venue for the Manchester International
Grade: A The last song the Beatles ever recorded was called, appropriately enough, ‘The End’, on the Abbey Road album. As a consequence of digital sorcery, however, ‘Now and Then’ is the last song we will ever hear from them – a demo passed from John to Paul, dubbed over in the early 1990s by
Ben Duke belongs to a class of younger choreographers who have decided to flout the convention that dancers should remain silent on stage. Liberating their voices is by no means a new phenomenon (in 1961 Frederick Ashton had Svetlana Beriosova speak verse by Gide in his sadly forgotten Persephone), but it’s one that particularly suits
Branagh vs Lear. The big fixture in theatreland ends in a win for Shakespeare’s knotty and intractable script which usually defeats any attempt to make it coherent or dramatically pleasing. This truncated version is a two-hour slug-fest set in the stone age – and it sort of works. The warriors fight with sharpened walking sticks
In 1633, British merchants travelling east were issued with a royal command from Charles I: ‘As the king has considered that there is a great deal of learning fit to be known written in Arabic, and great scarcity of Arabic and Persian books in this country… every ship… at every voyage shall bring home an
Bodies is another of those ‘ingenious’ time-travel apocalypse mash-ups so tricksy and convoluted that by the time the ending comes you’re praying fervently that the nuclear bomb will go off and everyone will die as punishment for the hours of life you’ve wasted on this angsty, politically correct, humourless tosh. The premise is initially intriguing:
Dream Scenario is a high-concept dark comedy about celebrity and cancel culture. It stars our old pal Nicolas Cage who, blame it on what you will – tax bills, divorce bills, the price of butter – has appeared in some abominable dreck down the years but has never turned in a boring performance. Mad, yes.
A violinist friend in the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra used to talk about an orchestra’s ‘muscle memory’; a collective instinct that transmits itself, unspoken and unconscious, among the members of the ensemble. The occasion was a return visit from Sir Simon Rattle, a good decade and a half after he’d left Birmingham. At that
In May 1966, Bob Dylan toured the UK with The Band, minus drummer Levon Helm, and abrasively pulled the plug on any lingering notions of his being a mere folk singer. Playing two sets every night – the first acoustic, the second electric – even the solo numbers were wild, lysergic, unravelled. The electric ones
There’s always been something at once girlish and steely about Joni Mitchell, the stellar Canadian whom Rolling Stone called ‘one of the greatest songwriters ever’. As Radio 4’s Verbatim programme in honour of her 80th birthday reminds us, a stubborn hopefulness has carried her through turbulent times. Perhaps growing up in Saskatchewan, where winter temperatures
Author Matthew Vaughan spent much of his life in the church – and even preached the gospel in Pakistan – but never considered himself a fan of Christian media. ‘To be honest, most of the films I saw were pretty corny,’ he tells me over the phone from his home in Birmingham. For Vaughan, that
‘Only with women’ is a phrase used by more cynical TV types for a show that takes something that’s been done before with men, but by changing the gender of the characters can pose as ground-breaking. It sprang to mind this week when both of BBC1’s big new dramas unblushingly took the only-with-women approach; the
‘You cannot begin by calling me France’s most famous living artist!’ Thus Sophie Calle objected to the first line of the obituary I wrote for her, commissioned for the enormous exhibition, À toi de faire, ma mignonne (‘Over to you, sweetie’), that currently occupies the whole Musée National Picasso-Paris. But modesty aside, it is a
You won’t see two more contrasting shows this year than Corinne Bailey Rae performing her album Black Rainbows and Brian Eno presenting work with a symphony orchestra. One had music that did everything; one had music that did very little. But both were overwhelming and filled with joy of rather different kinds. When Bailey Rae
The name of Ditchling used to be synonymous with Eric Gill, but since he was outed as an abuser of his own daughters the association has become an embarrassment. Obliged to quietly drop its most famous name, Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft has been exploring less controversial connections. Its latest show, about Bourne and
The documentary Beyond Utopia follows various families as they attempt to flee North Korea. It is eye-opening and outstanding. In essence, it is a life-or-death thriller told in real time where the stakes could not be higher. I watched at home, via a screening link, with a twenty-something who did not look at her phone
There’s something mesmerising about watching a good mimic. And Aimée Kelly, who plays fetish photographer Irina Sturges in Soho Theatre’s Boy Parts, is a very good mimic. Across the 80 minutes of this one-woman performance, she inhabits the bodies of dozens of characters, each a carbon copy of the worst kind of person: oleaginous city
Lyonesse by Penelope Skinner takes a while to get going. The central character, Elaine, is a washed-up British actress (Kristin Scott Thomas) who lives in a crumbling mansion in Cornwall where she dreams of making a comeback as a movie star. She contacts a clueless researcher, Kate, and asks her to drive down from London
Opera North is ending its autumn season with a big-hearted production of a lopsided opera. There’s much to love about Puccini’s La rondine, and much to drive you up the wall. This bittersweet love story about an older woman and a younger man, set in Paris and Nice and channelling the operetta sweetness and sparkle
One thing that exasperated me intensely during my many years as an opera critic was the assumption that I must be a passionate admirer of Maria Callas. She is the only prima donna who most people have heard of, and her supreme status has long been taken for granted, to the point at which the
Left-liberals despise AI-generated art. Not because of the themes explored by its adherents (that would be akin to disliking canvas and paint due to the way Goya used them), but because, they say, it has the potential to steal work from artists. Both in the sense that it deprives them of opportunities, and that it
Joseph Haydn, it’s generally agreed, invented the string quartet. And having done so, he re-invented it: again and again. Take his quartet Op. 20, No. 2, of 1772 – the first item in the Takacs Quartet’s recital last week at the Wigmore Hall. The cello propels itself forward and upward, then starts to warble like
Tis the season of horror, as it’s Halloween, which we celebrate in this house by turning off all the lights and pretending not to be in. (We look forward to it every year. It’s nice occasionally to go bed at around 5 p.m. and pretend not to be in.) But I thought I’d show willing
If you’re not remotely interested in football or celebrity, I recommend Netflix’s four-part documentary series Beckham. Yes, I know it’s about a famous footballer who happens also to be a celebrity and who, furthermore, is married to the famous model/celebrity/whatever who used to be in the world’s most famous girl band, the Spice Girls. But
In 2012, Jeff Lynne released Mr Blue Sky: The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra. Except it wasn’t. It was 11 new re-recordings of classic ELO songs – which isn’t the same thing at all. Lynne, bless him, believed that having gained more experience as a producer, he could now improve the songs that made
Architects are often snobby about – and no doubt jealous of – the designer Thomas Heatherwick, who isn’t an actual architect yet still manages to wangle important building commissions. And he knows this. In his documentary for BBC Radio 4, Building Soul, where he examines what he calls the ‘blandemic’ in today’s architecture, he asks
Sir John Lavery has always had a place in Irish affections. His depiction of his wife, Hazel, as the mythical figure of Cathleen ni Houlihan, which appeared on the old ten shilling and subsequently on the watermark of the Irish pound notes, meant, as the joke went, that every Irishman kept her close to his
A recent Sunday Feature on Radio 3 contained some of the best insults I have ever heard. Contributors to the programme on the early music revolution were discussing the backlash they experienced in the 1970s while reviving period-style instruments and techniques. Soprano Dame Emma Kirkby remembered one critic complaining that listening to her performance was