Arts
Soapy and sentimental: Ken Loach’s The Old Oak reviewed
Ken Loach has said The Old Oak will be his last film – he’s 87; the golf course probably beckons.…
Enjoyable and informative but where’s the drama? Political Currency reviewed
The first episode of George Osborne and Ed Balls’s new podcast, Political Currency, opened with an old clip of the…
ENO’s Peter Grimes shows a major international company operating at full artistic power
In David Alden’s production of Peter Grimes, the mob assembles before the music has even started – silhouetted at the…
The splendour of Edinburgh’s new Scottish galleries
Claudia Massie on the spectacular new galleries that showcase the best of Scottish art for the first time
The dazzling classic The Red Shoes has several unfashionable lessons for us today
Seventy-five years after its release, Powell and Pressburger’s dazzling, much-loved classic is more timely than ever, says Robin Ashenden
Wagner rewilded: Das Rheingold, at the Royal Opera House, reviewed
In Northern Ireland Opera’s new Tosca, the curtain rises on a big concrete dish from which a pair of eyes…
Cheesy skit: A Mirror, at the Almeida Theatre, reviewed
The playwright Sam Holcroft likes to toy with dramatic conventions and to tease her audiences by withholding key information about…
Menacingly entertaining thriller, despite the clichés: A Lesson reviewed
The Lesson is a literary thriller that is occasionally heavy-handed but also menacingly entertaining, plus you get Richard E. Grant…
If you can’t get something out of the songs of Shania Twain, you’re a lost cause
Pop critics routinely make the mistake of assuming the most important acts are the ones copied by the groups they…
In praise of the Festival Song – the four-minute wonder that can sustain a career for decades
As the sun sets on another too-long summer festival season, let us take a moment to reflect on the Festival…
You don’t have to be ‘woke’ to be troubled by the Fitzwilliam Museum’s links to slavery
What happens when a museum outlives the worldview of its founder? For publicly funded museums with collections amassed during the…
A Picasso doc that – amazingly – focuses on how great he was
Earlier this year, the Guardian took a break from arguing that ‘cancel culture’ is a right-wing myth to ask the…
Diamond-bright hoot
Oh to be in London with Barrie Kosky calling the shots in the first part of Wagner’s Ring Cycle Das…
Mermaid out of her depth
It’s strange the different strands of culture we constantly negotiate. The Rolling Stones bring out a new album and this…
Rejoice that Hyperion’s impeccable back catalogue is finally available to stream
At the beginning of the 1980s a former ice-cream salesman called Ted Perry drove a London minicab to raise money…
Watch three irascible women screaming at each other: Anthropology, at Hampstead Theatre, reviewed
Anthropology is a drama about artificial intelligence that starts as an ultra-gloomy soap opera. A suicidal lesbian, Merril, speaks on…
You’ll have a lump in your throat: BBC Radio 4’s Four Sides of Seamus Heaney reviewed
It’s now been ten years since Seamus Heaney died, and after a great poet’s death it’s natural, I suppose, that…
A haunting masterpiece: Northern Ballet’s Adagio Hammerklavier reviewed
One could soundly advise any choreographer to avoid music so transcendentally great in itself that dance can add nothing except…
Surreal, pacy and fun: Christian Marclay’s Doors, at White Cube, reviewed
Sliding doors may change your life, but there’s no mystery in their transparency. A hinged wooden door is another matter;…
Why I’m addicted to Australian MasterChef
Why is Australian MasterChef so much better than the English version? You’d think, with a population less than a third…
Mildly pleasant 1980s hard rock: ‘Angry’, by the Rolling Stones, reviewed
The new Rolling Stones single, supposedly their best in many a decade, is called ‘Angry’. And while on the surface…
Someone stop Kenneth Branagh: A Haunting in Venice reviewed
A Haunting in Venice is Kenneth Branagh’s third Poirot film (after Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the…
Why is Frans Hals still not considered the equal of Rembrandt?
Why is Frans Hals still not considered the equal of Rembrandt, asks Craig Raine
Poets don’t stink
The Australian Book Review poetry prize is upon us again and it’s worth mentioning that the ABR editor Peter Rose,…
