Arts Reviews

The good, bad and ugly in arts and exhbitions

Wednesday

Oscar Edmondson

Do we need the BBC World Service?

In 1957 the BBC removed the head of the Russian Service. Anatol Goldberg was by all accounts a remarkable broadcaster, tasked with coordinating, producing and narrating the BBC’s radio output to the USSR at one of the most volatile periods of the Cold War. Internal reports praised his navigation of the ‘complications’ of Russian programming. So why was he demoted? The answer lies in the long history of British government interference in the World Service.  Today harmony reigns between state and Service: the government announced a one-off £20 million payment to the World Service in last week’s updated Integrated Review. Yet last year foreign-language broadcasting was facing a £28 million

Laura Gascoigne

Don’t miss the exquisite Native-American carvings at the Sainsbury Centre

It’s payback time: women, artists from ethnic minorities and non-western traditions are taking over the exhibition schedules. On the heels of the seven women expressionists in Making Modernism at the Royal Academy comes Souls Grown Deep like the Rivers: Black Artists from the American South. ‘We are aware that art history has excluded a lot of artists and it is incumbent on us to broaden our perspective,’ said Academy secretary Axel Rüger at the press view – and for anyone who failed to grasp the magnitude of the moment one of the artists, Lonnie Holley, added: ‘This is the Royal Academy of Arts. This is not just some come-by-lately museum,

Michael Hann

Pretty, charming and largely unremarkable: Devonte Hynes & the LSO reviewed

Think of pop music as being like the parable of the sower. These days the seed falling on stony ground comes from the young rock bands, while the stuff that’s finding fertile earth is on the edges of R&B where it shades into other styles, especially psychedelia. It works from both ends: the Australian group Tame Impala went from being a workaday psychedelic rock band to being festival headliners by bringing dance music into their sound. Meanwhile within black music, Janelle Monae – perhaps better known as an actor – and Solange Knowles are regarded by critics as something not far short of deities for their Afrofuturist, trippy takes on

Deborah Ross

I never knew a game of dominoes could be so menacing: The Beasts reviewed

The Beasts is a rural psychological thriller from Spain that has won many awards across Europe and even though we don’t set any store by awards – the multi-Oscar winning Everything Everywhere All At Once is known as Extremely Baffling As Well As Dull in this house – it is a riveting, merciless study of human nature, so cleverly tense throughout that even a game of dominoes becomes menacing. You didn’t know a game of dominoes could be menacing? Trust me, it can. You might never be able to look at a pack of dominoes again without feeling menaced. Directed by Rodrigo Sorogoyen and co-written with Isabel Pena, the film

James Walton

Makes a change to see such reassuringly competent policemen: ITV1’s Grace reviewed

Sunday-night dramas on the two main terrestrial channels definitely aren’t what they used to be. Not so long ago, you could bid farewell to the weekend with a reliable cocktail of lovely scenery, eccentric but good-natured rustics and plots carefully designed to warm the cockles. Now we have The Gold on BBC1 providing a meticulous analysis of recent economic history – while on ITV1 the new series of Grace began with an episode that hinged on one simple question asked early on: ‘What kind of sick mind dresses up in a full latex bodysuit and assaults his victims with a dildo?’ The programme is based on the bestselling novels by

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Drab by comparison to the film: Bonnie & Clyde, at the Garrick Theatre, reviewed

The murderous odyssey of Bonnie and Clyde is a tricky subject for a musical because the characters are such loathsome wasters and their grisly ambition is to fleece poor people at gunpoint during the Great Depression. They’re famous for stealing from banks but they changed tack once they realised that grocery stores and funeral parlours were easier to rob. The little guy was their real target. In this revived musical, written in 2009, the principal figures have no redeeming qualities at all. Bonnie is a beautiful brain-dead popsicle who dreams of becoming a poet or a movie star. Nowadays she’d be ranting on TikTok from the front seat of an

Richard Bratby

If you’re anywhere near Edinburgh, get a ticket: Scottish Opera’s Il trittico reviewed

It does no harm, once in a while, to assume that the creators of an opera actually know what they’re doing. Puccini was clear that he wanted the three one-act operas of Il trittico to be performed together and in a particular order. Promoters and directors have had other ideas, and between the wars it was apparently common to perform the triptych’s comic final opera, Gianni Schicchi, in a double bill with Strauss’s Salome, which must have been an interesting night out. Come for the necrophilia, stay for the lulz. But Scottish Opera’s new production presents Il trittico in the form the composer intended, and what d’you know? It works.

Robert Jackman

The rise of the modern British B-movie

If there’s a phrase that captures the frantic energy of the modern British B-movie, it’s the concept of the ‘heart attack shoot’. And Rhys Frake-Waterfield knows more about it than most. ‘It’s not unusual to spend more than 12 hours on set,’ says the happy-go-lucky thirtysomething director during a short break from promoting his new low-budget slasher. The breakneck pace means that the shooting of an entire feature can be wrapped up in weeks, thus ensuring the project is as cheap as possible. Cutting corners is a necessity. ‘On Winnie the Pooh, we tried to save time by not reshooting any scenes,’ he says. ‘Unless the actors made a really

Wednesday

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Why does everyone hate Max Reger?

The German composer Max Reger, born 150 years ago next week, is mostly remembered today for countless elephantine fugues and one piece of lavatory humour. When he was savaged by the Munich critic Rudolf Louis, he wrote back to him: ‘Sir, I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your review before me. In a moment it will be behind me.’ The quip was probably borrowed from Voltaire, but since no one can find it in his writings the credit has gone to Reger. Max Reger was probably the most technically accomplished writer of large-scale fugues since Bach But let’s not dwell on the image of

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

A ripping production with plenty of laughs: Guys and Dolls, at the Bridge Theatre, reviewed

Further than the Furthest Thing is an allegorical play set on a remote island populated by English-speakers from all over the world. Dialect experts will have a ball unscrambling the set-up. First we meet Auntie Mill, a white Scotswoman whose husband, Uncle Bill, is a black fisherman with a West Country accent. Their nephew, Francis, is a mixed-race teenager whose verbal mannerisms seem to originate from North Yorkshire. And he has a pregnant girlfriend, Rebecca, who looks east Asian but talks like a Dubliner. This crazy muddle may be a deliberate assault on the entire cult of colour-blind casting. Or it could be a thoughtless embrace of chaos. Either way,

Graeme Thomson

The most exciting live band in Britain right now: Young Fathers, at the O2 Academy, reviewed

There are several reasons why Young Fathers currently feel like the most exciting live band in Britain, but for now let’s concentrate on effect rather than cause. The Edinburgh trio have somehow managed to dispense with all the froth and blather of concert-making – gratuitous chat; choreographed audience interaction; the fat and gristle – to deliver a show that is all attack. Every minute is a prime lean cut, direct and thrilling. They don’t mess about during the first of two sold-out Glasgow shows, but then brevity appears to be a kind of manifesto. The new album, Heavy Heavy, their fourth and not quite their best, lasts barely 30 minutes.

Daisy Dunn

A short introduction to the philosophy of Moomin

One of the lesser-known schools of modern philosophy is the Philosophy of Moomin. Like Cynicism or Epicureanism, it is difficult to pin down precisely, but subscribers speak of the importance of the individual, of liberalism and acceptance, and of the life-affirming joy of feeling. In the words of Moominpappa: ‘Just think, never to be glad or disappointed. Never to like anyone and get cross at him and forgive him. Never to sleep or feel cold, never to make a mistake and have a stomach-ache and be cured from it, never to have a birthday party, drink beer, and have a bad conscience… How terrible.’ Within this philosophical school, Moominpappa’s wife,

Rupert Christiansen

Generous, boundless, turbo-charged: Turn It Out with Tiler Peck and Friends, at Sadler’s Wells, reviewed

The death last week at the age of 83 of the sublime Lynn Seymour – muse to Ashton and MacMillan, the creator of roles in Romeo and Juliet and A Month in the Country among many others – set me thinking gloomily about the current dearth of ballerinas with her questioning intelligence and free spirit. So much technical proficiency around, so many elegant gymnasts, Dutch dolls and Sugar Plum Fairies, but so little distinctive personality or temperament. Where is the mystique, the grandeur, the ability to ambush our emotions? Her clarity of articulation is bobby-dazzling, her energy apparently inexhaustible Tiler Peck is among the best of the new breed. Star

Deborah Ross

Made me laugh for all the wrong reasons: Allelujah reviewed

Allelujah, based on the stage play by Alan Bennett, is set in a geriatric ward in a Yorkshire hospital and has a stellar cast: Jennifer Saunders, Derek Jacobi, David Bradley, Julia McKenzie, Lorraine Ashbourne, Dame Judi Dench – but not Dame Maggie Smith, inexplicably. Maybe she missed the call. It’s directed by Richard Eyre and produced by Nicholas Hytner, among others, so it has all the credentials you could wish for and yet, and yet, and yet. It’s weirdly lifeless and perfunctory and introduces a tonal shift at the end that belongs to a different film. That part did make me laugh but for all the wrong reasons, alas. The

James Delingpole James Delingpole

What a gloriously easy living Chris Rock makes from his comedy

Chris Rock was paid $20 million for his 70-minute Netflix special, so by my reckoning his riff on whether or not the royal family are racist must have made him more than a million quid. Was it worth the money? Well, I enjoyed it but I’m not sure how well it will translate here, in precis, with all the swearing removed. At that altitude, bodies get frozen to three times their normal weight Rock begins by pointing up the absurdity of Meghan Markle (winner of the ‘lightskin lottery’, he says) complaining to Oprah: ‘I didn’t know how racist they were.’ ‘It’s the royal family!’ expostulates Rock. ‘They’re the OGs [Original

David Sexton

The exquisite pottery of Lucie Rie

Lucie Rie had no time for high-flown talk about the art of ceramics. ‘I like to make pots – but I do not like to talk about them,’ she’d say. ‘I am not a thinker, I am not an art historian, I just do.’ It was her profession, she would maintain. Rie’s work is astonishingly self-sufficient. She belonged to no school and left none Her distaste for people preening about her craft went a bit further too. ‘I don’t like pots, I just like a few pots,’ she stated. When I interviewed her for the Sunday Telegraph back in 1988, she even said: ‘It’s extraordinary but I hardly like any

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

The cult of Morse

I am on the Inspector Morse walking tour in Oxford, which is led by a donnish man called Alastair. We look like the funeral cortege of a man whose death is under investigation. Oxford is a major character in Morse. I think of it as the antagonist. There is something very cold about the city, and unexpressed. Oxford’s novels are few – elves, talking lions, a bit of class. Its subconscious is rarely exposed: crime fiction must do it.  Three series grew out of Colin Dexter’s 13 novels: Inspector Morse (1987-2000); Lewis (2006-2015), in which Morse is a spectral presence, which suits him (he would be a good ghost); and

Thursday

William Moore William Moore

Don vs Ron: the fight for the American right

29 min listen

In the cover piece of this week’s magazine, deputy editor Freddy Gray writes about the fight for the American right: it’s Don (Trump) vs Ron (DeSantis). Who will win? On the podcast, Freddy is joined by Amber Athey, Washington editor of The Spectator‘s world edition. (00:37) Political editor Katy Balls writes in this week’s magazine that small boats are a big election issue. Rishi Sunak has promised to stop the illegal crossings, but what will it cost him? Katy is on the podcast with Spectator contributor Patrick O’Flynn. (10:49) And finally, would you let a man with an axe into your house for the sake of art? Cosmo Landesman’s father did, and he

Wednesday

Richard Bratby

Electrifying: London Handel Festival’s In the Realms of Sorrow, at Stone Nest, reviewed

Hector Berlioz dismissed Handel as ‘that tub of pork and beer’ but it wasn’t always like that. Picture a younger, sexier Handel, rocking into Rome aged 22 and challenging Scarlatti to a keyboard duel. The Italian elite couldn’t get enough of Il caro Sassone, ‘the darling Saxon’, and he repaid them with 80-odd short Italian cantatas: little controlled explosions of character, colour and flamboyant melody in which his whole future career as a musical dramatist can be heard in concentrated form. This was an encounter with a genuinely evil work of art For the London Handel Festival, the director Adele Thomas staged four of these pocket-operas. The setting was Stone

James Walton

Watch some liars claim that youth and beauty don’t go together

Back in 1990, Grandpa from The Simpsons wrote a letter of protest to TV-makers. ‘I am disgusted with the way old people are depicted on television,’ he told them. ‘We are not all vibrant, fun-loving sex maniacs. Many of us are bitter, resentful individuals who remember the good old days.’ Thirty-three years on, it’s a protest that continues to fall on deaf ears, as we saw once again in the first part of Kathy Burke: Growing Up (Wednesday). The starting point was Kathy’s own 58th birthday, which had clearly come as rather a shock to her – and, given her take-no-nonsense (polite version) spikiness, you might have thought that the