Arts
Sondheim understood Seurat better than the National Gallery
In Sunday in the Park with George, Stephen Sondheim catches something of what makes Georges Seurat so brilliant – not…
Suede turn their fine new record to mush at the Southbank
I think a lot about Wishbone Ash. A disproportionate amount. Partly because I have had to listen to them for…
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is anything but
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is, I have to tell you, anything but. I should have trusted the trailer. When…
Anna Netrebko’s still got it
In the opera world, you’re never far from a Tosca and last week we had two of them, both brand…
Is Grey Gardens the greatest documentary ever made?
A middle-aged woman wearing what looks like Princess Diana’s infamous ‘revenge dress’ and a balaclava from an IRA funeral approaches…
The makers of Doc don’t seem to trust the show
The drama series Doc began with the most literal of bangs. While the screen remained black, the sound-effects team knocked…
When Freud met Hitler
A new play by Lawrence Marks and Maurice Gran, the writers of Birds of a Feather, feels like a major…
Turning your brain to mush
The appointment of Dean Bryant as head of the Malthouse Theatre took some of us by surprise. He had just…
Lower your expectations for Spinal Tap II
This Is Spinal Tap is now such a deserved comedy behemoth that it’s easy to forget how gradual its ascent…
Netflix’s Hostage is an act of cultural aggression
Apart from hunting, one of the very few consolations of the end of summer is that telly stops being quite…
Shallow and silly: Born With Teeth, at Wyndham’s Theatre, reviewed
Born With Teeth is a camp two-hander starring a pair of TV luminaries, Ncuti Gatwa and Edward Bluemel, as Marlowe…
Both thin and overblown: Royal Ballet’s A Single Man reviewed
A common flaw in narrative ballet today is the attempt to tell stories that are too complex and ramified for…
The problem with Chappell Roan
There is a downside to being fast-tracked into the position of this season’s newest pop sensation, and it became more…
Britain’s loveliest, most thoughtful festival
The last weekend of August is my favourite of the year. That’s when I pootle down to Cranborne Chase to…
A gallery that refuses to dumb-down
The DNA of Dulwich Picture Gallery is aspirational, in the sincerest sense. Opening in 1817 when private collections were still…
‘Modern pop makes me want to kill myself’: Neil Hannon interviewed
Search for a successor to Tom Lehrer, and you’ll be hard pressed to find any decent candidates. One of the …
The blood goes cold
Isn’t it weird the way our newspapers seem suddenly to have discovered the obituary. David Stratton, loved and revered for…
The man who can save classical music
John Gilhooly is sick of talking about the Arts Council of England. ‘Please tell me you’re not going to ask…
Dartmoor’s forgotten painter
Asolo exhibition opened at Oxford’s Ashmolean in October 1980 that appeared to mark the belated arrival of a major new…
I could never sit through it again: The Cut reviewed
What set this apart, I would suggest, is its deep and unremitting unpleasantness The Cut stars Orlando Bloom as a…
Mercifully short: Interview at Riverside Studios reviewed
Interview is a blind-date play. Only it’s not a blind date but a showbiz interview for a journal called the…
Another Traitors rip-off – and it might be even better than the original: Channel 4’s The Inheritance reviewed
Another week, another show striving desperately to become the new Traitors. So it is that The Inheritance brings a group…
Shambolic, spontaneously chaotic and combustible: the Lemonheads at SWG3 Galvanizers reviewed
Nowadays, when the default setting for live music is ruthlessly choreographed efficiency, there is a queasy kind of thrill in…
