Arts Reviews

The good, bad and ugly in arts and exhbitions

The man who got the West to fall in love with India’s sacred literature

The first European translation of the Bhagavad Gita, a dialogue between Prince Arjuna and Lord Krishna, appeared in English in 1785. Strangely, this classic of Indian spirituality, which is much concerned with liberation, was prefaced with talk of conquest, rightful dominion and chains of subjection. The translation had been produced under the auspices of the English East India Company, then in the process of claiming for itself ever-larger swaths of territory in India. The first edition incorporated a letter written by the governor-general in Calcutta, Warren Hastings, in which he compared the Gita with Homer and Milton. He also noted its usefulness as a source of intelligence on a newly

Americans still think ‘punk rock’ was about the music, bless them

Of their many cultural quirks, Americans retain a slightly ridiculous and yet rather touching belief in the power of ‘punk rock’ (nobody in the UK ever calls it that, of course: it’s just ‘punk’). Despite laying claim to the progenitors of the whole punk thing – the Stooges, the New York Dolls, the Ramones – Americans still don’t quite seem to understand it. They actually think it was about the music, bless them. More bafflingly, they seem to regard ‘punk rock’ as something that has enduring currency, rather than being a brief – though significant – cultural phenomenon of the mid-to-late 1970s that was more or less over before it

Modern, timeless, effortlessly avant-garde: Pasquarosa, at the Estorick Collection, reviewed

In February 1929, an exhibition by a young unknown female painter opened at the Arlington Gallery on Bond Street. This was not surprising in itself, given that the gallery specialised in lesser-known artists. More surprising was the fact that this artist was a woman – and Italian. As the critic Emilio Cecchi noted in the catalogue: ‘As regards the best Italian art of today the English public knows very little.’ What piqued people’s interest in this particular Italian artist was her fascinating backstory. Born in 1896 in Anticoli Corrado, a small hill town northeast of Rome known as a nursery for artists’ models, Pasquarosa Marcelli had never painted and was

Lloyd Evans

Duff nonsense: The Enfield Haunting, at Ambassadors Theatre, reviewed

The Enfield Haunting is a good old-fashioned horror show that wants to be a documentary as well. It’s based on a hocus-pocus yarn that made the front page of the Daily Mirror in 1977 and was swiftly forgotten. The play opens in an Enfield terrace that resembles a bomb site, complete with charred plasterwork, missing walls and ripped out floorboards. Peggy, a harassed housewife played by Catherine Tate, is struggling to cope with three teenage brats and a ghost that’s got loose in her home. Two ghosts, in fact. Peggy’s daughter, Janet, has been possessed by a demonic spirit that forces her to rasp out nonsense in a hoarse, throaty

Everything hits the spot: Royal Opera’s Elektra reviewed

Aristotle wrote that classical tragedy should evoke pity and awe. With Richard Strauss’s Elektra, the awe can be taken as read: a certain irreducible level of epicness is written into the score, even if – like Sir Antonio Pappano on the first night of this new production at the Royal Opera – a conductor takes the composer’s advice and treats it like Mendelssohn’s ‘fairy music’. But I genuinely hadn’t expected quite so much of the other emotion – pity, or if you prefer, compassion. There it was, though, welling up from the bottom of the orchestra, worrying away at one’s preconceptions, until in the Recognition Scene the eyes started to

James Delingpole

Gladiators was never good TV

I’m sure there’s a Portuguese word which describes ‘enforced nostalgia for a thing you never enjoyed in the first place’. Whatever it is, it applies in spades to BBC1’s reboot of Gladiators, which we’re now told was one of the landmarks of 1990s Saturday TV entertainment but which I don’t recall fondly one bit, despite having a child who would have been just the right age to enjoy it. What I do remember was the desperate contrivance of it all. The Fawn, I recall, was invited to go with our boy the Rat to write up a feature on the very first show and interview the stars. She came back

Sincere, heartfelt, true: The Holdovers reviewed

The first thing to say about Alexander Payne’s latest, The Holdovers, is that it’s not so much an inspirational teacher film as an uninspirational teacher film. You should know that before attending the cinema otherwise you might sit throughout in the brace position, fearing it could go all Dead Poets Society at any moment. It doesn’t. No one plunders Tennyson for motivational slogans even once. Instead, it feels sincere, heartfelt, true. You may even come away wishing  you’d had an uninspirational teacher when you were at school. The year is 1970 and it’s filmed as if it had been made in 1970 with static on the soundtrack, desaturated colours and

The stars are aligned for Royal Opera’s tantalising new production of Elektra 

About 30 minutes before the end of Richard Strauss’s Elektra, the universe splits open. Elektra, daughter of the murdered king Agamemnon, lives for the day when her brother Orest will return to avenge her father by slaughtering her mother. Now Orest is here and his sister no longer recognises him. Until suddenly, shatteringly, she does, and Strauss’s 109-piece orchestra unleashes a dissonant scream unlike anything that had been heard in European music. Indeed, for many listeners in 1909 it was the end of music. Satirists compared it to capital punishment (one cartoon depicted a quaking victim of ‘Elektra-cution’). When it transferred to Covent Garden in 1910, newspapers promised London audiences

Why has the BBC pulled its punches in this doc about the Indian super-rich?

The big finish to Streets of Gold: Mumbai, an excited look at the city’s ‘wealthiest one-percenters’, was an extravagant party hosted by ‘two of India’s most coveted fashion designers’. As the programme made clear, all the guests were rich and/or famous, and all were dressed to prove it. ‘If you’re basic, you’re not invited,’ said one – which, given that the idea of the party was ‘to celebrate diversity in all its forms’ some documentaries might have considered a remark worthy of further investigation. But not Streets of Gold. As the previous hour had demonstrated, its chief characteristic – never a good one for a documentary – was a marked

The confusing, overwhelming, exhilarating music of Jockstrap

Shall we get the pop predictions for this year out of the way first? Taylor Swift will continue to conquer the world; the charts will continue their descent into meaninglessness; some long-forgotten group or style will become inexplicably popular because kids use it to soundtrack their TikTok videos. There. That’s the coming year taken care of. And how did the old one wrap up? With a week of gigs in the run-up to Christmas that was so overloaded it was impossible to get to them all. That still left plenty of treats, though, beginning with Jockstrap. The band was joined on stage by strings, a percussionist, a soprano, as well

Poor Things is weird and wonderful – but not so weird I had to Google it afterwards

I’ve heard a few people say that, based on the trailer, Yorgos Lanthimos’s latest film, Poor Things, looks too weird for their tastes. To be honest, the trailer made me think this ‘gender-bending Frankenstein’, as it’s being sold, looked too weird for my tastes. But let’s be brave. It is Lanthimos after all (The Lobster, The Favourite), and it is the wonderful Emma Stone, whom we are always here for, so let’s not be too afraid. It is weird, no doubt. But it is the sort of weird we can do. And not so weird that I had to Google it afterwards. It has a simple narrative – a journey

Lloyd Evans

Donmar Warehouse declares war on Shakespeare

Many of today’s theatre directors seem to believe that Shakespeare’s work was a huge mistake which they have a duty to correct. According to Max Webster, the director of Macbeth at the Donmar, Shakespeare’s error was to write scripts for the stage which would work better as radio plays. His amended version is set in a fake recording studio where every seat is equipped with a set of headphones. Spectators must test the gear first to ensure that the stereo effect is working. If not, contact a member of staff, etc. David Tennant, playing the lead, transforms himself from a nice friendly Time Lord into an irascible Scottish warlord. He’s

Irresistible: Hansel and Gretel, at the Royal Opera House, reviewed

Fun fact: Engelbert Humperdinck composed part of Wagner’s Parsifal. Shortly before the première, it was discovered that Wagner’s score didn’t allow time for a crucial scene change. The 27-year-old Humperdinck, then working as Wagner’s assistant, composed a few temporary bars to cover the gap and, rather to his own surprise, found that they met with the Master’s full approval: ‘Why not? It should work!’ It’s worth knowing partly because of the light it throws on the practical, collegial working methods of music’s favourite cartoon supervillain, and partly because it reaffirms the originality of Humperdinck’s own best-known opera, Hansel and Gretel. How many artists could have flown that close to Wagner’s

Albums should be forced by law to reveal where each song was written

Bob Dylan is heading into the new year with a reduced property portfolio, having sold his Scottish bolthole, Aultmore House in Speyside, for a shade over four million quid. Though the spec looks grand – 16 bedrooms, 11 bathrooms, a folly (to complement his Christmas album, presumably) – only one aspect interests me: did Dylan ever write anything notable there? Is some piece of the Cairngorms National Park forever preserved in a line – perhaps the one he cribbed from Robbie Burns about his heart being in the Highlands – that came to him while gazing out enigmatically over the croquet lawn? Where musicians wrote their songs remains a crucially

It’ll make you cry despite being very ordinary: One Life reviewed

One Life is the story of Nicholas Winton (Anthony Hopkins), the British stockbroker who arranged the Kindertransport that saved hundreds of children from almost certain death in the Holocaust and be warned: you will need one tissue, if not two – maybe 12. Which isn’t to say it’s a great film. It’s fine, in its workmanlike way. But the story is so inherently powerful and moving and there is so much goodness and decency at work it will set you off. Take a whole box of tissues if you want to play it safe and would rather not deploy your sleeve. Hopkins’s performance is quiet, patient, masterly and as understated

James Delingpole

CBBC’s The Famous Five shows you can update a classic without trashing it

The new Doctor in Doctor Who has blond hair, blue eyes and a firm handshake, dresses in a splendid red coat and has an exciting catchphrase: ‘Hounds are running! Tally ho!’ No, not really. The new Doctor is so very much what you’d expect the new Doctor to be like that you can guess without my telling you. And it’s not that I think that Ncuti Gatwa is going to be bad as the Doctor. On the contrary, from what little I’ve glimpsed of him so far, he seems charismatic, energetic, and fun. But I do wish the BBC commissars responsible for the series would try to make their social

Lloyd Evans

Do we really need this unsubtle and irrelevant play about Covid?

Pandemonium is a new satire about the Covid nightmare that uses the quaint style of the Elizabethan masque. Armando Iannucci’s play opens with Paul Chahidi as Shakespeare introducing a troupe of players who all speak in rhyming couplets. A golden wig descends like a signal from on high and Shakespeare transforms himself into the ‘World King’ or ‘Orbis Rex’. This jocular play reminds spectators with a low IQ that Orbis is an anagram of Boris. The former prime minister, also labelled the ‘globular squire’, is portrayed as a heartless, arrogant schemer driven by ambition and vanity. He retells the main events of the pandemic with the help of an infernal