Arts Reviews

The good, bad and ugly in arts and exhbitions

Thursday

Deborah Ross

Painful, funny — and with a brilliant twist: The Farewell reviewed

The Farewell is a quiet film that builds and builds and builds into a wonderful exploration of belonging, loss, family love, crab vs lobster, and hiding feelings, even though it may be tough to hide yours and you’ll shed a tear or two. I know I did. It is written and directed by Lulu Wang, who was born in Beijing but emigrated with her family to America when she was six, and it is loosely a memoir. The film opens in Changchun, a city in China’s northeast, with an elderly woman being diagnosed with stage four lung cancer and given maybe three months to live. This is Nai Nai (Zhao

Robert Jackman

Is it time to give up on the Ibsen adaptations?

Pub quiz question: what do John Osborne, Brian Friel and Patrick Marber have in common? The answer is they’ve all written their own versions of Hedda Gabler. Although none of them, it should be noted, to any particular critical acclaim. Is it time to give up on the Hedda adaptations altogether and just stick to the original? Or maybe opt for a different tack: why not let a woman have a go? Step forward, Cordelia Lynn, a 30-year-old playwright with three London productions under her belt. Having updated Chekhov’s Three Sisters for the Almeida this spring, she now turns her attention to Ibsen. And she isn’t afraid to get stuck

James Walton

Abba, Twitter vs Instagram, and papal selfies: the modern face of the Catholic Church

As a lifelong Catholic, I’ve often thought that two of the Church’s chief characteristics are a) how weird it is when you think about it; and b) how weird it is that so few people in it think how weird it is when you think about it. Happily, if a little smugly, I have to say that nothing in the first episode of Inside the Vatican (BBC2, Friday) caused me to revise this theory. There was a time, of course, when allowing TV cameras to film your institution was a risky strategy, as St Paul’s cathedral and the Royal Opera House can testify after those fly-on-the-wall series of the 1990s

Kate Chisholm

What’s the point of the Today programme?

What else is there to write about in the week that John Humphrys, that titan of the BBC airwaves, retires from his duties on the Today programme? Love or hate his terrier-like style of interviewing — baiting and occasionally biting his victims metaphorically on air — there’s no denying his stature as a news broadcaster or his influence on that staple of the Radio 4 schedule. He will surely be missed, much as Sue MacGregor, Brian Redhead, Jim Naughtie et al are missed, their presence in our lives determined by that early-morning slot, the first voice we might hear each day, the voice that brings news of never-to-be-forgotten events, the

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

How refreshing to see a show about prejudice that barely mentions white people

Lynette Linton opens her stewardship of the Bush with a drama about racial and sexual bigotry. Four British women decide to start a girl band but only one of them, Yomi, happens to be straight. The script mixes confessional monologues with bitchy interactions over kitchen suppers. Beth, whose parents are West Indian, once dreamed of living in suburban bliss with ‘a little concrete garage for my car’. She named her imaginary children ‘Pauline, Graham and Amanda’. But when she embraced black culture she threw out her Dostoevsky novels and her Dire Straits albums and invested in jazz-funk records and the works of Toni Morrison instead. Anyone with a lifelong allergy

Thursday

Laura Freeman Laura Freeman

The many faces of William ‘Slasher’ Blake

‘Imagination is my world.’ So wrote William Blake. His was a world of ‘historical inventions’. Nelson and Lucifer, Pitt and the Great Red Dragon, chimney sweeps and cherubim, the Surrey Hills and Jerusalem in ruins, the alms houses of Mile End and the vast abyss of Satan’s bosom.  He saw the fires of the Gordon Riots and the serpent in the Garden of Eden. His subjects were Milton and Merlin, Dante and Job, ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ and the Book of Revelation. He held infinity in the palm of his hand, yet worked through the night to write and grave all that was on his mind. ‘I have

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Funny, short and cheap to stage, Hansard is an excellent bet for a transfer

Hansard is the debut play by actor Simon Woods, who enjoys a deep knowledge of his subject. The characters are a middle-aged couple, the Heskeths, who occupy ‘a country house in Oxfordshire. Georgian. Good bones. Not large’. The year is 1988 and Robin is a busy Tory MP whose wife Diana has realised that she loathes the Conservative party and all its doings. ‘They talk a good game,’ she says, ‘but they’re unbelievably dangerous.’ As a lifelong leftie, she has even started begging strangers to vote against her husband, whose policies ‘inflict damage on the most vulnerable in society’. She also suspects him of philandering and has taken to appearing

Laura Freeman Laura Freeman

Nothing sings and shimmies like Alvin Ailey

Hit them with your best shot? Or save the best till last? Almost 30 years after Alvin Ailey’s death in 1989, his dance company still ends every night with Revelations, an autobiography in ballet and gospel music.  First danced in 1960, and presented at Olympic opening ceremonies and presidential inaugurations, Revelations remains an electrifying piece. Ailey’s gift was to borrow elements of African, Asian and Native American dance and set them to a score of traditional spirituals and gospel rock. On the strength of this bill — the second of three programmes the troupe is performing at Sadler’s Wells — his successors have yet to make anything that sings and

Kate Chisholm

General de Gaulle’s advice to the young Queen Elizabeth

There were so many ear-catching moments in Peter Hennessy’s series for Radio 4, Winds of Change, adapted from his new book by Libby Spurrier and produced by Simon Elmes. Harold Wilson answering a journalist’s question after a sleepless night while awaiting the results of the 1964 election, quizzical, cheeky and so quick off the mark. When asked if he felt like a prime minister, he replied: ‘Quite honestly, I feel like a drink.’ Later he was waylaid at Euston station having just got off the morning train from Liverpool and was still unsure of the result. (Labour won by just four seats after 13 years of Conservative rule.) At 3.50

James Delingpole James Delingpole

With these documentaries, the BBC has lost any claim to impartiality

Because the rise of the Nazis is a topic so rarely mentioned these days, least of all in schools, the BBC has produced a helpful three-part explainer of that title (BBC2, Mondays) showing why the story of Hitler is even more relevant today than it was in the 1930s. Back in the day, the BBC might have been content to strive for an objective take on the subject, perhaps with a voiceover by Samuel West and lots of period footage. But the danger of that approach, the BBC has since realised, is that it runs the risk of viewers making up their own minds what to think. Some of them

Deborah Ross

Extremely predictable and extremely dull: Downton Abbey reviewed

The much-anticipated film version of Downton Abbey has arrived and I suppose you could describe it as the Avengers Assemble of period drama, where everyone turns up and just does it all over again, but minus the throat kicks in this particular instance. Also, it’s critic-proof and the fans will race to see it even though it is, in truth, extremely predictable as well as extremely dull. Lady Mary? Wasn’t she interesting once? Didn’t she kill a Turk with sex? Why is she now so blah? Some throat kicks would have been welcome, actually. More throat kicks and fewer of Carson’s moralistic pep talks might have worked wonders. The film

Thursday

Geoff Dyer

On photography, shrines and Maradona: Geoff Dyer’s Neapolitan pilgrimage

At the Villa Pignatelli in Naples there is an exhibition by Elisa Sighicelli: photographs of bits and pieces of antiquity from, among other places, the city’s Archaeological Museum. Put like that it doesn’t sound so interesting but the results are stunning. Walking through the Archaeological Museum after seeing the exhibition it was difficult to discover the original objects from which Sighicelli’s samples were taken. One instance, a tight crop of fingers pressing into a calf, is from a highly elaborate, much restored and augmented sculpture with so much going on — a naked swirl of bodies, a rearing horse, a sympathetic doggy — it’s hard to imagine how she found

Taki

My soulmate Brian Sewell

Romy Somerset is the sweetest, nicest young girl in London. She’s also my goddaughter and I remember, during her christening at Badminton years ago, the present duke’s mother staring at me rather intently while the minister was going on about love, trust and faithfulness. At lunch afterwards I asked Caroline Beaufort: ‘Why the looks?’ ‘I was wondering if you recognised any of those words,’ said a laughing duchess. Well, I do now that I’ve become monogamous on account of ‘force majeure’, but that’s not the point of my story. I am quite annoyed with Romy because she sent me a book that I have been unable to put down, one

Miguel Cullen

Why has figurative painting become fashionable again?

The figure is back. Faces stare, bodies sprawl, fingers swipe, mums clutch, hands loll. The Venice Biennale was full of it. After decades of being pushed to the margins, figurative painting is once again dominating the art world. Peter Doig, Alex Katz, Chris Ofili and Jenny Saville head the sales at auction houses, but there is a whole market of up-and-comers snapping at the heels of these established names. How has this happened? Until quite recently, the figure, like melody in music, was associated with the most reactionary elements within art. The body emerged out of the second world war a wreck, blinking amid the glare and slash of abstract

Deborah Ross

Is this film saying relationships between teachers and kids are OK? Scarborough reviewed

Scarborough is a small British film but it will give you a very big headache. Its subject is teachers who have relationships with pupils and it’s well directed and well performed — Jodhi May is always worth the price of a ticket whatever — but I’m still trying to work out what it has to say. That these relationships are sometimes OK? That they never are? That we shouldn’t judge? God, I hate cinema when it makes you think. And gives you these big headaches. The film is based on the play by Fiona Evans, first staged at the Edinburgh festival and then at the Royal Court in London. Adapted

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

A decorative pageant that would appeal to civic grandees: The Secret River reviewed

The Secret River opens in a fertile corner of New South Wales in the early 1800s. William, a cockney pauper transported to Australia for theft, receives a pardon from the governor and decides to plant a crop on 100 acres of Aboriginal land. His doting wife, Sal, begs him to take her and their young sons back to her beloved London. They make a deal. William must succeed as a farmer within five years or pay for their passage home. He clashes with a tribe of spear-waving Aboriginals who make it clear that they want him off their ancestral turf. Neither side speaks the other’s language. ‘This is mine now.

James Walton

I have no clue what’s going on but can’t wait to find out: BBC1’s The Capture reviewed

How did the police ever solve any crimes before CCTV? That was the question which sprang to mind watching the first episodes of two highly promising new crime dramas this week. It’s also the central question now facing the detective in one of them. Part police officer, part career women, Rachel Carey in The Capture (BBC1, Tuesday) is being fast-tracked through the system to the traditional disapproval of her grizzled, old-school boss DCI Alex Boyd — imaginatively known as Boydy. Fortunately, Rachel (Holliday Grainger) won’t be with his unit for long. Having saved Britain from a deadly terrorist attack while working for special ops, she’s been sent there temporarily to

Kate Chisholm

Why 80 per cent of young people in this Macedonian town have turned to posting ‘fake news’

It’s such a relief to turn on the radio and hear the voice of Neil MacGregor. That reasoned authority, his deep knowledge of history and how things have come to be as they are, his measured common sense and ability to see round an argument or story. He’s like the voice of how things used to be, when the world was not so topsy-turvy and the news reports made sense. His series, As Others See Us, returns to Radio 4 this week (produced by Tom Alban), taking him this time to Singapore, the USA, Australia, Poland and Spain to talk to people there about Britain’s past connections, present woes and