Arts
Sledgehammer tactics
If there were special awards for Most Subtlety in a Television Drama, Tuesday’s Partygate would be unlikely to win one.…
Godot with gags: It’s Headed Straight Towards Us, at Park200, reviewed
It sounds like a barking-mad student sketch but the final product is marinated in wisdom and maturity. It’s Headed Straight…
Band of brothers
Over the past few years, the National have become the most important band in modern rock music. The strange thing…
Embarrassing bodies
While looking at Claudette Johnson’s splendid exhibition Presence at the Courtauld Gallery, I kept trying to pin down an elusive…
The full English
Opera North has launched a ‘Green Season’, which means (among other things) that the sets and costumes for its new…
Comic relief
‘Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum?’ More than 30 years after the Guerrilla Girls…
Romancing the stone
Calvin Po on the revival of building in the solid, sustainable, dependable material that lies readily beneath our feet
His brilliant boggling career
It’s interesting to see that Mel Gibson, no less, is in the blood and violence TV streamer The Continental which…
Dancing feat
Aaron S. Watkin, an affable bearded Canadian, is the new artistic director of English National Ballet. He arrives from Dresden,…
Arresting visual spectacle and superb fight scenes: Netflix’s One Piece reviewed
What would you say is the most successful comic-book series in history? If you’re thinking Tintin you’re not even close.…
Last orders
Ken Loach has said The Old Oak will be his last film – he’s 87; the golf course probably beckons.…
No balls
The first episode of George Osborne and Ed Balls’s new podcast, Political Currency, opened with an old clip of the…
Tidal power
In David Alden’s production of Peter Grimes, the mob assembles before the music has even started – silhouetted at the…
Northern lights
Claudia Massie on the spectacular new galleries that showcase the best of Scottish art for the first time
To die for
Seventy-five years after its release, Powell and Pressburger’s dazzling, much-loved classic is more timely than ever, says Robin Ashenden
Wagner rewilded
In Northern Ireland Opera’s new Tosca, the curtain rises on a big concrete dish from which a pair of eyes…
Cheesy skit
The playwright Sam Holcroft likes to toy with dramatic conventions and to tease her audiences by withholding key information about…
Gods and monsters
The Lesson is a literary thriller that is occasionally heavy-handed but also menacingly entertaining, plus you get Richard E. Grant…
Country’s Van Halen
Pop critics routinely make the mistake of assuming the most important acts are the ones copied by the groups they…
Four-minute wonder
As the sun sets on another too-long summer festival season, let us take a moment to reflect on the Festival…
Forgotten lives
What happens when a museum outlives the worldview of its founder? For publicly funded museums with collections amassed during the…
O come let us adore him
Earlier this year, the Guardian took a break from arguing that ‘cancel culture’ is a right-wing myth to ask the…
Diamond-bright hoot
Oh to be in London with Barrie Kosky calling the shots in the first part of Wagner’s Ring Cycle Das…
Mermaid out of her depth
It’s strange the different strands of culture we constantly negotiate. The Rolling Stones bring out a new album and this…
