Arts
Deserves its classic status: Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train at the Young Vic reviewed
Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train by Stephen Adly Guirgis deserves its classic status. This wordy and highly cerebral play pulls…
Promising but, compared to the first series, short of laughs: Fleabag reviewed
BBC2’s MotherFatherSon announced its status as a classy thriller in the traditional way: by ensuring that for quite a long…
Finally a Marvel film that doesn’t entirely bore the pants off Deborah Ross
Captain Marvel is the 654th film in the Marvel franchise — the figure is something like that, I think —…
Kathryn Stott – Artistic Director
Townsville is bouncing back; it is also tuning up for the Australian Festival of Chamber Music. Battered by the recent…
David Cairns explains how we learned to love Berlioz
According to his friend and fellow-composer Ernest Reyer, the last words Berlioz spoke on his deathbed were: ‘They are finally…
The only way to avoid Ariana Grande’s drivel is to move to Iran
Grade: D Among the many reasons for moving to Iran is this vapid, talentless, derivative, hyperbolically oversexed drivel aimed at…
I always come away more confused after listening to Moral Maze
Is it me or are we now faced (or perhaps I should say fazed?) much more often by stories in…
Phyllida Barlow’s sculptural wonderland reigns supreme at the Royal Academy
‘Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.’ If there’s an exception to prove Shaw’s rule, it’s Phyllida Barlow. The…
A torpid seminar on why Trump is the Antichrist: Shipwreck reviewed
When reviewers call a work ‘important’ they mean ‘boring’ and ‘earnest’. And in those terms Shipwreck is one of the…
I’ve never seen Coogan better or Partridge funnier: This Time with Alan Partridge reviewed
Steve Coogan is back as Alan Partridge but frankly who cares? Like Ali G, I’ve long thought, he’s one of…
Odious, endless dross: Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch reviewed
Please believe that I try to give every production my full attention, to do due diligence, to blink and miss…
Opera North’s Rite of Spring shows the advantages of confining the music to the pit
It was Stravinsky himself who suggested that, in order to preserve its difficulty, the opening bassoon solo of The Rite…
Peculiarly mesmerising: Hannah reviewed
Hannah stars Charlotte Rampling in a film where not much happens and not much happens and not much happens and…
Pinchgut Artistic Director Erin Helyard
A rarely performed sacred work by J. S. Bach and a masterpiece by Telemann that has never been performed in…
Here’s what I want from modern architecture, explains housing tsar Roger Scruton
The creation of a commission to examine beauty in new building created a stir in the media, with the chairman…
The first great English artist – the life and art of Nicholas Hilliard
When Henry VIII died in 1547, he left a religiously divided country to a young iconoclast who erased a large…
Few soldiers have seen as many terrible sights as Don McCullin
Diane Arbus saw mid-20th century New York as if she was in a waking dream. Or at least that is…
How good really was Berlioz?
Hector Berlioz was born on 11 December 1803 in rural Isère. ‘During the months which preceded my birth my mother…
If you’re tired of hygge then you’ll like Harald Sohlberg
If you’re tired of hygge then you’ll like Harald Sohlberg. The Norwegian painter eschewed the cosy fireside for the great…
Forget the Don – come for the Mataphwoar Ryoichi Hirano: Royal Ballet’s Don Quixote reviewed
The trouble with Don Quixote is Don Quixote. Whenever the doddering, delusional Don is onstage, tilting at windmills, riding his…
Enjoyably contrived: BBC1’s Baptiste reviewed
What’s the best way to start a six-part thriller? The answer, it seems, is to have a bloke of a…
The terrifying genius of Leonardo
A cataclysmic storm is unfolding. Dense, thunderous lines of black chalk sweep rapidly around the paper in frantic curls of…
‘Lock him in a motel & he’d do something astonishing’: Hockney on the genius of Van Gogh
Being in the south of France obviously gave Vincent an enormous joy, which visibly comes out in the paintings. That’s…
Crackles with nylon, self-regard and unearned privilege: On the Basis of Sex reviewed
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is too ill to sit on the Supreme Court. When she saw On the Basis of Sex,…
Why wasn’t Poetry Please in the Radio Times’s top 30 greatest radio shows of all time?
With the upsurge of listeners to Classic FM (now boasted to be 5.6 million listeners each week) and the imminent…
