Arts Reviews Archives

Wednesday

2 Aug 2023

Bizarre and outdated: Word-Play at the Royal Court reviewed

The Royal Court’s new topical satire, Word-Play, opens with a gaffe-prone Tory prime minister giving a TV interview in which he commends Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech. The Downing Street press team suffer a meltdown as they struggle to draft an apology or a retraction. Opposition parties try to profit from the blunder and the PM’s words spread across the globe and earn him praise from various authoritarian governments, led by China. This opening scene makes sense only if the British prime minister is a white male named Boris but the author, Rabiah Hussain, hasn’t troubled to update her script in the light of recent developments. The result is

Graeme Thomson

The problem with pop-literary collaborations

‘We all secretly want to be rock stars,’ the 2022 Booker Prize-winning author Shehan Karunatilaka said recently. By ‘we’ he meant novelists, and he was more or less right. Most authors want to be rock stars, just as many rock stars aspire to bookish credibility. The former crave a whiff of glamour and instant gratification; writing offers precious little of either. Musicians seek gravitas and some wider recognition that they possess the tools to extend their literary genius beyond three verses and a killer chorus. Both parties tend to discover that they do what they do as a day job for a good reason. Morrissey tried his hand at long

Daisy Dunn

Beautiful and illuminating: Radio 4’s the Venice Conundrum reviewed

The playwright Carlo Gozzi marvelled at ‘The spectacle of women turned into men, men turned into women, and both men and women turned into monkeys’ in 18th-century Venice, and Jan Morris, visiting in the 1950s, did likewise. It would be more than a decade before Morris went under the knife, but already he was contemplating a transition more permanent than any he observed at carnival time. The Venice Conundrum, which aired on Radio 4 on Sunday, knitted together Morris’s most famous travel book with Conundrum, the story of his sex change, completed in the 1970s. I had my doubts about how well these two works would sit together, but the

Bryan Appleyard

As art it was terrible but the pre-teens loved it: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, reviewed

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) began as a joke in 1984, a parody of the superhero culture of the time. It was originally a comic book but the stories have since expanded into toys, TV series and films, both animations and acted. The films have grossed more than a billion dollars and are likely to go on grossing down the generations of pre- and early teens. I am telling you all this because I have only just found out and I have never before seen any other TMNT products. The latest – Mutant Mayhem – is an animated film. It is drawn in a style that suggests the animators were

Richard Bratby

An absolute romp framed by dutiful tut-tutting: Semele at Glyndebourne reviewed

If directors will insist on staging Handel oratorios as if they’re operas, it makes sense to pick Semele, which is practically an opera already. Under George II, opera was banned in London theatres during Lent (too exotick, too irrational), so Handel slipped his best material past the authorities by presenting it in concert format, set to biblical stories. Possibly by 1744 he was getting a bit careless, because there’s nothing remotely biblical about lovely, pouting Semele’s 24/7 shagathons (‘endless pleasure’, apparently) with King of the Gods and all-round studmuffin Jove. Handel’s sometime collaborator Charles Jennens denounced Semele as ‘no oratorio but a bawdy opera’: all the tunes, double the outrage.

Harry Mount

‘She had no neutral gear’: Lindy Dufferin remembered

In 1957, when my dear godmother, the Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava (1941-2020), was 16, she began her diary. The granddaughter of the Duke of Rutland and daughter of Loel Guinness, an MP, financier and Battle of Britain pilot, Lindy Dufferin had a gilded childhood. Her entries as a teen are like no other: ‘Randolph Churchill [Winston’s son] was staying the night here… It was most embarrassing because Randolph was very drunk…’ In October 1957, she was in Paris: ‘The Dutchess [sic] of Windsor came… I did a show of Rock & Roll. It was all great fun. Bon Soir!’ But, amid all the luxury, a note of seriousness enters

Robin Ashenden

The joys of provincial repertory theatre

Provincial repertory theatre, in which a semi-permanent company of actors performed a varied diet of plays for their community, week-in, week-out, has all but died out in Britain. Local theatres have become venues for visiting productions, one-off events and numerous outreach schemes, but the old continuity – a kind of magic – has gone. I caught the last of it as a child. I was nine years old when in 1979 the brand-new playhouse in my area – the Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich – opened its doors to the public, and for the next four years it would be the centre of my world. If I wasn’t watching shows there (and

Saturday

29 Jul 2023

Igor Toronyi-Lalic

In defence of the Arts Council

I once knew a monster who said she could not read Proust because there were no figures in Proust with whom she could identify… Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Aesthetics’ (1958-59) Getting an audience to identify themselves in a work – ‘being seen’ – is one of the only reasons why art is commissioned, celebrated or even allowed to exist today. In other words, the 21st century world belongs to Adorno’s monster: we just live in it. The 20th century’s definition of art, as expressed by another Frankfurt School philosopher Herbert Marcuse, where ‘art is committed to that perception of the world which alienates individuals from their functional existence and performance in

Wednesday

26 Jul 2023

Richard Bratby

The future of opera – I hope: WNO’s Candide reviewed

Bernstein’s Candide is the operetta that ought to work, but never quite does. Voltaire’s featherlight cakewalk through human misery, set to tunes from the West Side Story guy: what’s not to like? And what can be so wrong with its twinkle-toed score that the combined rewriting efforts (and this is not remotely the full list) of Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker and Stephen Sondheim have all failed to make it work as theatre? For my money it’s the ending. Voltaire coolly pricks his own bubble and tells us to get on with tending our gardens. Bernstein, the all-American idealist, just can’t, and he kills the whole thing dead with ‘Make Our

Michael Hann

A giddy delight: Regina Spektor, at the Royal Festival Hall reviewed

We’ll get on to the brilliance of Regina Spektor in a moment. But first a question: why are pop music fans treated so abysmally? The afternoon of Spektor’s second sold-out show at the Royal Festival Hall, the venue tweeted that she would be on stage at 7.30 p.m. She actually took to the stage a few minutes past 8 o’clock. Spektor was absolutely magnificent once she did come on. She filled the room with charisma, charm and wit If that were a one-off, so be it. But anyone who goes to a lot of shows is familiar with how malleable the concept of stage-time is in pop music. Lana Del

Deborah Ross

Dense and spectacular – and not pink: Oppenheimer reviewed

Oppenheimer is Christopher Nolan’s biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the brilliant quantum physicist and ‘father of the atomic bomb’ who was later haunted by what he’d created. Starring Cillian Murphy, and his cheekbones, the film is dense, ambitious, complex, so very long (three hours) and impressive, even if it does drag by the end. (When a film is so very long, that’s the price you pay.) I could go on and on but, for many, the main selling point will be this: it isn’t Barbie and it isn’t pink. If that’s all the thanks you get for developing the next generation of weapon, I’m glad I never bothered It’s a

Lloyd Evans

Finally an entertaining play at the Royal Court: Cuckoo reviewed

The boss of the Royal Court, Vicky Featherstone, will soon step down and she’s using her final spell in charge to try an unusual experiment. Can she entertain the punters and make them feel happy rather than forcing them to confront various forms of gloom, misery and despair? The answer is yes. Featherstone can tickle our funny bone if she wishes. Why haven’t trans activists denounced this show and demanded the performer’s cancellation? Cuckoo, by Michael Wynne, is a hilarious kitchen-sink comedy set in Merseyside with an all-female cast. Some critics have likened it to a Carla Lane sitcom and the domestic set-up owes an obvious debt to the Royle

Claudia Massie

Move fast to snap up one of Elizabeth Blackadder’s sleek cats at the Scottish Gallery

If there’s one thing the internet knows, it’s that cats sell. The Scottish painter Elizabeth Blackadder, who died in 2021 at the age of 89, knew it too. Her sinuous, characterful cat pictures, watercolours mostly but also oils and prints, helped cement her place as the nation’s favourite painter. She was an establishment favourite too, becoming the first woman to be elected to both the Royal Scottish Academy and the Royal Academy in London. In 1995, her cats adorned a set of Royal Mail stamps and, in 2001, she became the first woman to be appointed as Her Majesty’s Painter and Limner, a position unique to the Royal Household of

James Delingpole

University Challenge deserves Amol Rajan

I wish I could say that Bamber Gascoigne would be turning in his grave at what has happened to University Challenge. But unfortunately, I understand from people who knew the Eton, Cambridge, Yale and Grenadier Guards historian, playwright, critic, polymath millionaire and scion of the upper classes that he chose to compensate for his privilege by embracing progressive causes. So, chances are, the shade of Bamber is thrilled to bits at seeing his old quizmaster’s seat occupied by someone who drops his aitches and pronounces ‘h’ where it should be aspirated and landed a mere 2.2 from hearty, insufficiently medieval Downing. Bambi’s successor Jeremy Paxman probably isn’t too bothered either.

Laura Gascoigne

The wonders of 18th-century automata

At the Paris International Exhibition of 1867, Mark Twain was mesmerised by a life-sized silver swan with ‘a living grace about his movement and a living intelligence in his eyes… swimming about as comfortably and unconcernedly as if he had been born in a morass instead of a jeweller’s shop’. The Silver Swan has been its leading attraction, drawing spellbound visitors to its afternoon performances The jeweller’s shop this mechanical marvel had been born in 100 years earlier was Cox’s Jewelry Museum in London, but its mechanism of 700 components powered by three clockwork motors was the invention of Belgian-born horologist John Joseph Merlin (1735-1803), aka ‘the Ingenious Mechanic’. Turning

Igor Toronyi-Lalic

The West has much to learn from Hungarian culture

In central Budapest a crew from Hungary’s state TV is filming the unveiling of a new street sign. In honour of his centenary year composer Gyorgy Ligeti now has a road named after him. Contemporary classical music is deemed newsworthy in Hungary. Even more astonishingly – and anyone working in British classical music might want to sit down at this point – the ‘Ligeti 100’ concert at the Budapest Music Centre, dedicated to a clutch of bracing new works, was being filmed for transmission prime time on the Hungarian equivalent of BBC1. Here, we’d be lucky if it got a midnight slot on Radio 3. If much of the West’s

Wednesday

19 Jul 2023

Deborah Ross

Should be called Ken: Barbie reviewed

Finally, the Barbie film is here, for which we must be thankful, as the tsunami of pre-publicity meant you probably felt obliged to lock your bathroom door so the trailers didn’t follow you in there. They should have called this Ken but I guess that’s not going to help bring down the patriarchy It’s a film that wants to have it all ways. Let’s parody Barbie but also isn’t she a feminist? There’s of lot of zeitgeist appeasement going on here. But the production values are sensational and there are some excellent jokes, even if Ryan Gosling’s Ken leaves Margot Robbie’s Barbie standing. They should have called this Ken, but

Laura Gascoigne

Huge, impersonal canvases designed for the walls of billionaires: Tate Modern’s Capturing the Moment reviewed

‘Photography has arrived at a point where it is capable of liberating painting from all literature, from the anecdote, and even from the subject. So shouldn’t painters profit from their newly acquired liberty, and make use of it to do other things?’ argued Picasso. The inventor of cubism took advantage of his liberty in ‘Buste de Femme’ (1938) to turn Dora Maar into a precursor of Peppa Pig, flaring her nostrils to form a snout. Perhaps he wanted to teach a photographer a lesson about paint by rubbing her nose in it. Picasso didn’t abandon the subject or the anecdote. He was one of the first modern artists to turn

Damian Thompson

Why is this genius playing to a half-empty Royal Albert Hall? Benjamin Grosvenor Prom reviewed

There were times during last Friday’s First Night of the Proms when it felt as if we’d been transported back to Ohio during the Eisenhower administration. We could have been in Severance Hall, Cleveland, listening to its orchestra under George Szell – and there’s no higher compliment I can pay the BBC Symphony Orchestra, because the irascible maestro drilled his musicians to parade-ground perfection. You could tell the BBC orchestra was at the top of its game from the first snarls of the brass in Sibelius’s Finlandia – a more interesting piece of programming than it sounds. This was the choral version, in which the choir sings of Finland’s refusal

Lloyd Evans

Forgettable stuff: The Crown Jewels, at the Garrick, reviewed

In the 1990s, the BBC had a popular flat-share comedy, Men Behaving Badly, about a pair of giggling bachelors who were scolded and dominated by their mummy-substitute girl-friends. The author, Simon Nye, has written a historical crime caper about the theft of the crown jewels in 1671, as Charles II prepared to celebrate his tenth year on the throne. The psychological co-ordinates of the play are poorly handled. The thief, Colonel Blood, is an irritating Irish crosspatch who wants to drive the hated English from his homeland. Charles (played by Al Murray) is more attractive, a fun-loving gadabout who enjoys sex, jokes and science and who can’t bear Puritans. So