The Critics

The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.

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Richard Bratby

Portrait of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic – Britain’s oldest and ballsiest orchestra

Liverpool’s last ocean liner lies half a mile inland, on the crest of a hill. The Philharmonic Hall, home of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, sits between two cathedrals on Hope Street, its towers jutting over the city like twin prows. It’s an unavoidable metaphor: when you enter the Hall on a concert night, the first thing you see is a bronze memorial to the musicians of the Titanic. Everything about the Hall — the grand staircase; the long curving corridors; the art deco auditorium that looks like something from Alexander Korda’s Things to Come — suggests that you’re about to steam off on some fantastic voyage. I’ve heard concerts all over the world, but when I dream about music, it’s always at the Liverpool Phil.

Portrait of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic – Britain’s oldest and ballsiest orchestra
Richard Bratby

Portrait of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic – Britain’s oldest and ballsiest orchestra

Liverpool’s last ocean liner lies half a mile inland, on the crest of a hill. The Philharmonic Hall, home of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, sits between two cathedrals on Hope Street, its towers jutting over the city like twin prows. It’s an unavoidable metaphor: when you enter the Hall on a concert night, the first thing you see is a bronze memorial to the musicians of the Titanic. Everything about the Hall — the grand staircase; the long curving corridors; the art deco auditorium that looks like something from Alexander Korda’s Things to Come — suggests that you’re about to steam off on some fantastic voyage. I’ve heard concerts all over the world, but when I dream about music, it’s always at the Liverpool Phil.

Portrait of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic – Britain’s oldest and ballsiest orchestra
Richard Bratby

Portrait of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic – Britain’s oldest and ballsiest orchestra

Liverpool’s last ocean liner lies half a mile inland, on the crest of a hill. The Philharmonic Hall, home of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, sits between two cathedrals on Hope Street, its towers jutting over the city like twin prows. It’s an unavoidable metaphor: when you enter the Hall on a concert night, the first thing you see is a bronze memorial to the musicians of the Titanic. Everything about the Hall — the grand staircase; the long curving corridors; the art deco auditorium that looks like something from Alexander Korda’s Things to Come — suggests that you’re about to steam off on some fantastic voyage. I’ve heard concerts all over the world, but when I dream about music, it’s always at the Liverpool Phil.

Portrait of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic – Britain’s oldest and ballsiest orchestra
Lloyd Evans

Not even a genius could make Much Ado About Nothing funny

The RSC’s 2014 version of Much Ado is breathtaking to look at. Sets, lighting and costumes are exquisitely done, even if the location is not established with absolute clarity. The date is Christmas 1918 and we’re in a stately home that has been converted into a billet, or a hospital, for returning soldiers. The prickly Beatrice (Michelle Terry) seems to be an unemployed aristocrat working as a volunteer nurse. She fusses around the ward making discreet enquiries about an old flame, Benedick, whose memory she can’t shake off.

Not even a genius could make Much Ado About Nothing funny
Deborah Ross

I want to support cinema but I have my work cut out with Love Sarah

Some cinemas have reopened, with the rest to follow by the end of the month, thankfully. But the big, hotly anticipated films — Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, for example, or A Quiet Place II — won’t be out for a while yet, as opening schedules are adjusted. However, there is a new film that is cinema-only: it’s British, and it’s called Love Sarah. It stars Celia Imrie and is about three generations of women who seek to overcome grief by founding a bakery in London’s Notting Hill rather than running away to join Isis, say.

I want to support cinema but I have my work cut out with Love Sarah
Stuart Kelly

Spotting the mountweazels: The Liar’s Dictionary, by Eley Williams, reviewed

There is a particular sub-genre of books which are witty and erudite, comic and serious and often of a bibliophilic nature: such novels as Elaine di Rollo’s The Peachgrower’s Almanac, Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen’s The Rabbit Back Literary Society or Brock Clarke’s An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England. The problem with this form is that it can go badly wrong and teeter into pretentious whimsy. But when it goes right, as with Eley Williams’s The Liar’s Dictionary, it is sheer joy.

Spotting the mountweazels: The Liar’s Dictionary, by Eley Williams, reviewed
James Walton

The Sixties vibe: Utopia Avenue, by David Mitchell, reviewed

There aren’t many authors as generous to their readers as David Mitchell. Ever since Ghostwritten in 1999, he’s specialised in big novels bursting with storytelling in all kinds of genres — most famously Cloud Atlas, where six very different novellas were immaculately intertwined. Not only that but, as he’s said, ‘each of my books is one chapter in a sort of sprawling macro-novel’, with many of the same characters and events being either updated or given fuller backstories.

The Sixties vibe: Utopia Avenue, by David Mitchell, reviewed

Thursday

9 Jul 2020
Rory Sutherland
Rory Sutherland

Saying yes slowly is what’s hampering progress today

One of my long-held beliefs is that evolutionary biology should be taught extensively in schools. There may be some objections from religious fundamentalists, but these are silly. Evolution does not tell you anything about whether or not God exists; it simply proves that, if he does exist, he really hates top-down central planning. In any case, it would pay to teach evolution in schools even if evolution were not true — for the simple reason that by understanding evolutionary mechanisms, you are gifted with an entirely new way of looking at the world. In the words of the computer scientist Alan Kay: ‘a change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points.’ Like cryptic crosswords and detective fiction, which I also recommend for the brain, evolutionary thinking trains you to look beyond the obvious surface explanation (‘It’s an open and shut case,’ said Inspector Lestrade) to the alternative readings hidden beneath.

Saying yes slowly is what’s hampering progress today

Wednesday

8 Jul 2020

Thursday

2 Jul 2020
Leaf Arbuthnot and Igor Toronyi-Lalic

Culture is going underground: meet the rebel army

Among the first to arrive was a Labour grandee. Then others drifted over: academics, musicians, writers, a nurse. They came from different directions, some looking shifty, others excited. The secret meeting point was an inconspicuous pub in north London. Queueing shoppers nearby assumed the growing crowd was waiting to get into the supermarket. In groups of five those gathered were led down a suburban street to a derelict leisure centre. For one night only, the gym had been turned into a makeshift theatre. The audience, of up to 30 people, had congregated to flick a collective V at the social distancing measures, and to watch A Hero of Our Time, a three-hander adapted by HUNCHtheatre from the 1840 novel by Mikhail Lermontov.

Culture is going underground: meet the rebel army
Boyd Tonkin

Foreign fields: Boyd Tonkin chooses his favourite shorter classics in translation

If I had a rouble or a euro for every reader who fulfilled their lockdown promise to devour Dostoevsky, Tolstoy or Proust my bank account would hardly grow by a single penny. Duty, guilt and pride never made the pages turn more swiftly, whatever a book’s length. Almost all vows to catch up on doorstopper classics from the global canon will have failed to outlast the fallen blossoms. Yet you might more realistically blend discovery and delight by exploring some of the smaller miracles of great fiction in translation.

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