Arts
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…
The worst Arthur Miller play I’ve ever seen
All About Eve is Cinderella steeped in acid rather than sugar. Eve, or Cinders, is a wannabe star who uses…
Bangarra 30th Anniversary
A year of 30th anniversaries; the latest is Bangarra Dance Theatre founded in 1989 by a South African Cheryl Stone…
Meet India’s first – and only – professional western orchestra
It’s a 31ºC Mumbai morning, and on Marine Drive the Russian winter is closing in. The Symphony Orchestra of India…
The film makes you ashamed to call yourself a journalist: A Private War reviewed
A Private War is a biopic of the celebrated Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin who was, judging from this,…
A Winterreise that included a mistake of genius
Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of approach to performing Schubert’s Winterreise, though sometimes there’s doubt or dispute about which…
Danny Dyer is not so much an actor as a fairground attraction: Pinter Seven reviewed
The Dumb Waiter is a one-act play from 1957 that retains an extraordinary hold over the minds of theatre-goers. It’s…
The story of the River Clyde
It sounds like something out of Dickens or a novel by Thackeray, a classic case of high-minded Victorian philanthropy, but…
