Arts
Bizarre and outdated: Word-Play at the Royal Court reviewed
The Royal Court’s new topical satire, Word-Play, opens with a gaffe-prone Tory prime minister giving a TV interview in which…
The problem with pop-literary collaborations
‘We all secretly want to be rock stars,’ the 2022 Booker Prize-winning author Shehan Karunatilaka said recently. By ‘we’ he…
Beautiful and illuminating: Radio 4’s the Venice Conundrum reviewed
The playwright Carlo Gozzi marvelled at ‘The spectacle of women turned into men, men turned into women, and both men…
As art it was terrible but the pre- and early-teen audience loved it: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem reviewed
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) began as a joke in 1984, a parody of the superhero culture of the time.…
An absolute romp framed by dutiful tut-tutting: Semele at Glyndebourne reviewed
If directors will insist on staging Handel oratorios as if they’re operas, it makes sense to pick Semele, which is…
‘She had no neutral gear’: Lindy Dufferin remembered
In 1957, when my dear godmother, the Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava (1941-2020), was 16, she began her diary. The…
The joys of provincial repertory theatre
Robin Ashenden remembers the heyday of local repertory theatre – now sadly in terminal decline
Magniloquent horror
The experience of watching Warwick Thornton’s The New Boy, his film with Cate Blanchett as the nun running an orphange…
The future of opera – I hope: WNO’s Candide reviewed
Bernstein’s Candide is the operetta that ought to work, but never quite does. Voltaire’s featherlight cakewalk through human misery, set…
A giddy delight: Regina Spektor, at the Royal Festival Hall reviewed
We’ll get on to the brilliance of Regina Spektor in a moment. But first a question: why are pop music…
Dense and spectacular – and not pink: Oppenheimer reviewed
Oppenheimer is Christopher Nolan’s biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the brilliant quantum physicist and ‘father of the atomic bomb’ who…
Finally an entertaining play at the Royal Court: Cuckoo reviewed
The boss of the Royal Court, Vicky Featherstone, will soon step down and she’s using her final spell in charge…
Move fast to snap up one of Elizabeth Blackadder’s sleek cats at the Scottish Gallery
If there’s one thing the internet knows, it’s that cats sell. The Scottish painter Elizabeth Blackadder, who died in 2021…
University Challenge deserves Amol Rajan
I wish I could say that Bamber Gascoigne would be turning in his grave at what has happened to University…
The wonders of 18th-century automata
At the Paris International Exhibition of 1867, Mark Twain was mesmerised by a life-sized silver swan with ‘a living grace…
The West has much to learn from Hungarian culture
Hungarian culture is living through a golden age, says Igor Toronyi-Lalic, and the West has much to learn from it
Can ballet survive the culture wars?
Despite #MeToo and the new resistance to male bullying, the dance world is still ferocious and unforgiving, writes Rupert Christiansen
An album of not terribly happy ballads: Blur’s The Ballad of Darren reviewed
Bands that have hung around, or gone away and come back again, occupy an increasingly sizeable percentage of pop’s bandwidth.…
The stuff of nightmares: Retrievals podcast reviewed
It is the stuff of nightmares, or a queasily dystopian film plot. A woman is undergoing a surgical procedure in…
Rewriting history
If you don’t subscribe to every last detail of the LGBTQ+ agenda, then basically you are a Nazi. This was…
Forgettable stuff: The Crown Jewels, at the Garrick, reviewed
In the 1990s, the BBC had a popular flat-share comedy, Men Behaving Badly, about a pair of giggling bachelors who…
Why is this genius playing to a half-empty Royal Albert Hall? Benjamin Grosvenor Prom reviewed
There were times during last Friday’s First Night of the Proms when it felt as if we’d been transported back…
Huge, impersonal canvases designed for the walls of billionaires: Tate Modern’s Capturing the Moment reviewed
‘Photography has arrived at a point where it is capable of liberating painting from all literature, from the anecdote, and…
Should be called Ken: Barbie reviewed
Finally, the Barbie film is here, for which we must be thankful, as the tsunami of pre-publicity meant you probably…
Kundera’s last laugh
So now Milan Kundera is gone at the age of 94. It’s easy to forget the tremendous weight, the sheer…
