Arts
Watch the 1978 version instead: Superman reviewed
My father took us to the cinema (Odeon, Leicester Square) once a year at Christmas and in 1978 the film…
A contradictory staging, but the music floods the ear with splendour: Semele at the Royal opera reviewed
The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there – and opera directors really, really wish they didn’t.…
What we get wrong about modernism
In The Art of the Novel, Milan Kundera writes, witheringly: ‘we must reckon with the modernism of fixed rules, the…
Grayson Perry has pulled off another coup at the Wallace Collection
This show was largely panned in the papers when it opened in April, with critics calling it ‘awkward and snarky’,…
More drama-school showcase than epic human tragedy: Evita reviewed
Evita, directed by Jamie Lloyd, is a catwalk version of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. The actors perform on the…
The greatest photography exhibition of all time
I am sitting on a neat little park bench in a tiny medieval town in rural Luxembourg, and I am…
Bush noir
Barry Jones likes to allude to the fact that John Adams declared that he had to study agriculture and warfare…
Depressingly corny: Quadrophenia, a Mod Ballet, reviewed
It’s all very well for people like me to sneer at dance makers for drawing on classic rock as a…
The greatest decade for British painting since Turner and Constable? The 1970s
Slowly the canvas was unfurled across the concrete floor of a warehouse on an industrial estate in Suffolk. On and…
No amount of discourse will make a good pop song into a great one
There is no higher calling than making great pop music, and no mechanism by which such an achievement can be…
The political climate at Glastonbury was not especially febrile
Everyone who wasn’t at Glastonbury this year knows exactly what it was like: a seething mass of hatred and rabid…
Brave and beautiful: Longborough’s Pelléas et Mélisande reviewed
King Arkel, in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, is almost blind, and he rules over a kingdom of darkness. Debussy’s score…
The Simpsons may be genius – but it’s also evil
Marge Simpson is dead. But does anyone care? I’ve written loads of pieces over the years about the genius of…
Scooby-Doo has better plots: Almeida’s A Moon for the Misbegotten reviewed
A Moon for the Misbegotten is a dream-like tragedy by Eugene O’Neill set on a barren farm in Connecticut. Phil…
Landscape designer Tom Stuart-Smith on mistakes, sand and weeds
If you’re looking for an early example of Tom Stuart-Smith’s work, you’d have to go to a car park to…
Jurassic Park Rebirth is the dumbest yet
Midway through Jurassic World Rebirth the scientist character played by Jonathan Bailey, whom we can all immediately spot as a…
Last days, spare room
In a world of international horrors and hopes it is weird to have one of the weirdest true-life crime stories…
The vicious genius of Adam Curtis
In an interview back in 2021, Adam Curtis explained that most political journalists couldn’t understand his films because they aren’t…
Dua Lipa sparkles at Wembley – but her new album is pedestrian
If, as is said, there are only seven basic narratives in human storytelling, then there should be an addendum. In…
None of Mitfords sound posh enough: Outrageous reviewed
There aren’t many dramas featuring the rise of the Nazis that could be described as jaunty, but Outrageous is one.…
The Ministry of Lesbian Affairs is as sweet and comforting as a knickerbocker glory
The Ministry of Lesbian Affairs is a comedy that feels as sweet and comforting as a knickerbocker glory. The show…
I’ve rarely seen a happier audience: Grange Festival’s Die Fledermaus reviewed
‘So suburban!’ That’s Prince Orlofsky’s catchphrase in the Grange Festival’s new production of Die Fledermaus, and he gets a lot…
Alfred Brendel was peerless – but he wasn’t universally loved
In middle age Alfred Brendel looked disconcertingly like Eric Morecambe – but, unlike the comedian in his legendary encounter with…
Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? The BBC, it seems
‘What a lark!’ I thought to myself as I rose on a hot June morning to listen to a documentary…
