Arts
A sugar rush for the eyes: Glyndebourne’s The Merry Widow reviewed
In 1905, shortly before the world première of The Merry Widow, the Viennese theatre manager Wilhelm Karczag got cold feet…
Why you should never watch sci-fi series on streaming channels
Jason Dessen, the hero (and, as you’ll discover shortly, anti-hero) of Apple TV’s latest sci-fi caper Dark Matter, is a…
Meet the musicians trying to revive French-language pop
The other day, I went to see a nouveau riot-girl band called Claire Dance play in a disused factory in…
This shimmering desert haze
There’s something inspiring about getting an example of the national talent locking horns with the glory of traditional high culture,…
Limp and lifeless: Freud’s Last Session reviewed
Freud’s Last Session stars Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode and is a work of speculative fiction asking what would have…
Hard to get to grips with: Marie Curie: The Musical reviewed
Marie Curie: The Musical is a history lesson combined with a chemistry seminar and it’s aimed at indignant feminists who…
A fitting – and lovable – tribute to Frederick Ashton
I encountered Frederick Ashton at a dinner party shortly before he died in 1988. Frail and anxious, he clutched my…
‘I want every production I do to be the funniest’: an interview with Cal McCrystal
There are certain things that you don’t expect at the opera. Laughter, for example. Proper laughter, that is; not the…
How Miss La La captured Degas’s imagination
‘Can you come Saturday morning to my studio, 19 bis rue Fontaine?’ Degas wrote to Edmond de Goncourt in 1879.…
When piracy meets protest
Sometimes there are advantages to being ill-informed. Knowing embarrassingly little about why 30 Greenpeace activists were jailed in Russia in…
Thank goodness Busoni’s Piano Concerto is returning to the Proms
On 5 August, Ferruccio Busoni’s Piano Concerto will be performed at the Proms for only the second time. It should…
‘Psychedelic folk that twists and leaps’: Beth Gibbons, at the Barbican, reviewed
A decade ago, a group of people who owned small music venues came to the conclusion that the kinds of…
Phantom of her own career
Sunset Boulevard is one of the weirdest entertainment phenomena in the history of the world because it starts as a…
How a TikTok dance craze turned into a brainwashing cult
Because you don’t – I hope – use TikTok you will never have heard of the Wilking sisters. But back…
Eddie Izzard’s one-man Hamlet deserves top marks
Every Hamlet is a failure. It always feels that way because playgoers tend to compare what they’re seeing with a…
Shiny, raunchy, heartless spectacular: Platée, at Garsington, reviewed
Fast times on Mount Olympus. Jupiter has been shagging around again and now his wife Juno has bailed on their…
Under the Taliban, Afghan light entertainment accrued unusual weight
For a television talent show, Afghan Star had unusually high stakes. When it first hit Afghanistan’s screens in 2005, four…
Breathtaking: Mary Cassatt at Work, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, reviewed
Work – in the sense of toil – is about the last thing a 19th-century painter wished to be associated…
Minor Linklater but fun: Hit Man reviewed
Richard Linklater’s Hit Man is a minor Linklater but a minor Linklater is still an event. Also, after all those…
The craft renaissance
As long ago as the 1960s, the poet Edward James was worried that traditional crafts were dying out. Having frittered…
An imperfectly articulated plot
It seemed, on the face of it, a bizarre idea: opera at the Margaret Court arena. And Opera Australia was…
An exclusive look at Graham Linehan’s Father Ted musical
The tree-lined streets of Rotherhithe are an odd place to unveil a West End musical. But this is a suitably…
Arresting and memorable: Compagnie Maguy Marin’s May B reviewed
Samuel Beckett was notoriously reluctant to let people muck about with his work, so it’s somewhat surprising to learn that…
