Arts
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…
When Fauré played The Spectator
Gabriel Fauré composed his song cycle La bonne chanson in 1894 for piano and voice. But he added string parts…
Craving some alien spider insanity? Sting’s the film for you
This week, a horror film – and with it, a whole load of alien spider insanity. If you’ve been hankering…
Amazingly sloppy: Romeo & Juliet, at Duke of York’s Theatre, reviewed
Romeo & Juliet is Shakespeare with power cuts. The lighting in Jamie Lloyd’s cheerless production keeps shutting down, perhaps deliberately.…
Is there still life in British still life?
‘The tyrannical rule of nature morte is, at last, over,’ announced Paul Nash in the Listener in 1931. ‘Apples have…
Nickelback may not be cool but they are very good at what they do
In May 2013, Rolling Stone polled its readers in an attempt to discover which band might be crowned the worst…
This distorting mirror of cruelty
Every so often a bit of streamer television comes along and makes you grateful for what the form can achieve…
The jaw-dropping story of the British Museum thefts
It’s August 2023 when news breaks that artefacts have gone missing, presumed stolen, from the British Museum. I’m about an…
BBC1’s new Rebus is the kind of TV detective they just don’t make any more
Imagine a new series of Morse in which the real-ale-quaffing, jag-driving opera buff is turned into a speed-snorting mod on…
The weird, hypnotic world of Willie Nelson
Many years ago, I wrote a book about Willie Nelson. At its conclusion, I reached for an elegiac, valedictory tone.…
