Arts
In defence of Little House on the Prairie
You can tell things have started to get really bad by the fact that they’re bringing back Little House on…
A funny, unorthodox Much Ado About Nothing
You may need to do a spot of homework before attending Tilly No-Body at the Arcola. Acted and written by…
Confessions II gets thrillingly close to vintage Madonna
There comes a point in the career of any established artist when looking backwards seems to be the only possible…
The Odyssey is shallow and tiring
The Odyssey is Christopher Nolan’s relentless, deafening three-hour take on Homer’s epic poem, and while it is technically impressive filmmaking…
The greatest symphony that no one’s heard of
I’ve been listening to a symphony that I would describe as an almost perfect masterpiece by a composer of towering…
Damien Hirst should burn down his gallery
I love my friends at the loucher fringes of the art world, but every now and again, someone does something…
Three cheers for Britain’s most unabashedly elitist school
As we ponder the ups and downs of our sporting record this summer, it might be worth noting our unquestioned…
To be trans Hamlet or not to be
Is there something strange about seeing a great comedian who identifies as a trans woman do a solo Hamlet, the…
Springwood is a waste of time
Springwood, set in June 1939, looks at a series of tricky meetings between the American president FDR and George VI…
The blackly comic life of Katie Price
These days, the 1990s seem to be regarded – especially by people too young to remember them – as a…
Alexis de Tocqueville’s America has vanished
When Alexis de Tocqueville arrived in New York in 1831, he found a city a quarter of the size of…
Lisette Oropesa triumphs in I puritani
Vincenzo Bellini realised early on that as titles go, Le teste rotonde ed i cavalieri (The Roundheads and the Cavaliers)…
Nothing can save Rosebush Pruning
Rosebush Pruning is one of those films where you’ll say to yourself at the end: what the hell have I…
The slipperiness of Harry Styles
For the first time at a gig, I spent much of Harry Styles’s show thinking about the maths. He’s cunningly…
Lartigue’s photos are made for the Insta generation
Will photography as an art form survive the age of Instagram? Now that we think we are all photographers, and…
Artists vs the Odyssey
It’s a noble story of one man struggling against monstrous odds, valiantly captaining his crew while trying to avoid being…
Tip-Toeing in Manchester
The world knows that Andy Burnham, the ‘King from the North’, was a very successful mayor of Manchester. There have…
The World Cup is evil
I tried to think, Pointless-style, of two of the countries least likely to be participating in the world kicky-ball nonsense.…
If you’re 12, you’ll love this game
Grade: B+ Why do elephants paint their balls red? So they can hide in cherry trees, of course. The principle…
A Sinatra musical for hardcore fans
Sinatra: The Musical dramatises the star’s career during a minor wobble in the early 1950s. After falling from grace, Sinatra…
It’s impossible not to be impressed by Metallica
The intensely ritualised choreography of the standard summer stadium show has one inbuilt structural issue, which is especially obvious when…
Funny, savvy, starry: The Invite reviewed
The Invite is a dramedy from the dinner-party-gone-awry genre about a marriage and whether a sex party might save it…
A spectacular new staging of L’Orfeo
Say what you like about Monteverdi, but he knew how to get his audience on side. ‘I greet you, heroes,…
The cult of Kahlo
A Max Beerbohm cartoon famously reduced Arthur Wing Pinero (author of that interesting play, The Second Mrs Tanqueray) to a…
Meet the last original punk still playing punk
It’s 50 years since an assortment of scruffy youths from the leafy suburb of Bromley, the grimy streets of Finsbury…
