Arts
Scouse style
Richard Bratby on Britain’s oldest and ballsiest orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, which has taken on everyone from gang leaders to Derek Hatton
Neil Young: Homegrown
Grade: B+ Neil Young has been mining his own past very profitably for a long time now, disinterring a seemingly…
No laughing matter
The RSC’s 2014 version of Much Ado is breathtaking to look at. Sets, lighting and costumes are exquisitely done, even…
Half baked
Some cinemas have reopened, with the rest to follow by the end of the month, thankfully. But the big, hotly…
Rooms with a view
Not long after the pubs, big galleries have all started to reopen, like flowers unfolding, one by one. The timing…
Floor show
Sophie Haigney on the weird and wonderful world of hotel carpets
The day the music died
Britain’s choirs are facing oblivion. Yet they’re also terrified of returning. One story explains why. Picture this innocent choral-society scene…
Wendy Bowman, 2019 by David Darcy Darling Portrait Prize 2020
She is not a theoretical or idealogical environmentalist. Wendy Bowman became an activist when her crops were ruined by polluted…
A drive on the wild side
When a 90-minute documentary is introduced with the words ‘This is the M25’, you’d be within your rights not to…
Going underground
Leaf Arbuthnot and Igor Toronyi-Lalic on the new cultural rebels
Dysfunctional music by dysfunctional people
A star is born, but instead of emerging into the world beaming for the cameras, he spits and snarls and…
The Bard in the bedroom
Nicholas Hytner’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream opens in a world of puritanical austerity. The cast wear sombre black costumes and…
Audio onanism
In Beeb-dominated Britain, the commercial triumph of podcasting — epitomised by Spotify’s recent £100 million deals with Joe Rogan and…
The great pretender
In the past Werner Herzog has given us a man pushing a ship up a mountain, a 16th-century conquistador going…
Creative destruction
For three months art lovers have had nothing but screens to look at. As one New York dealer complained to…
Keith Urban using a Maton guitar, recording Gimme Shelter in Olympic Studios, London
We are critical of ourselves for not designing or manufacturing things any more. Well, there is a contrary example in…
New word order
I was going to write about Monument Valley, and I suppose I will eventually, but first I have to write…
Beige-washed Burton
The BBC has been having a good pandemic. Stuck at home, a generation raised on podcasts and YouTube has discovered…
Homage to Avalonia
Televising Glastonbury has changed the festival, and in turn transformed television, says Graeme Thomson
Age of stuckism
I’m in Mayfair and I’m boarding an airplane. Or rather, I’m boarding an approximation of an airplane. In the centre…
Nearly nul points
This comedy stars Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams as an Icelandic duo whose biggest dream is to represent their country…
Eroticism and ecstasy
Wayne McGregor’s Morgen! and Frederick Ashton’s Dance of the Blessed Spirits are the first pieces of live dance — streamed…
Chekhov by Zoom
The Beeb has released Simon Godwin’s Hamlet staged by the RSC in 2016. The director makes one major change and…
Bob Dylan: Rough and Rowdy Ways
Grade: A ‘Rough’ in terms of the mostly spoken vocals, but only ‘rowdy’ if you’re approaching your 80th birthday, which…
Pure poison
The big mistake people make with Alan Bennett is to conflate him with his fellow Yorkshireman David Hockney. But whereas…
