Arts
Netflix’s Hostage is an act of cultural aggression
Apart from hunting, one of the very few consolations of the end of summer is that telly stops being quite…
Shallow and silly: Born With Teeth, at Wyndham’s Theatre, reviewed
Born With Teeth is a camp two-hander starring a pair of TV luminaries, Ncuti Gatwa and Edward Bluemel, as Marlowe…
Both thin and overblown: Royal Ballet’s A Single Man reviewed
A common flaw in narrative ballet today is the attempt to tell stories that are too complex and ramified for…
The problem with Chappell Roan
There is a downside to being fast-tracked into the position of this season’s newest pop sensation, and it became more…
Britain’s loveliest, most thoughtful festival
The last weekend of August is my favourite of the year. That’s when I pootle down to Cranborne Chase to…
A gallery that refuses to dumb-down
The DNA of Dulwich Picture Gallery is aspirational, in the sincerest sense. Opening in 1817 when private collections were still…
‘Modern pop makes me want to kill myself’: Neil Hannon interviewed
Search for a successor to Tom Lehrer, and you’ll be hard pressed to find any decent candidates. One of the …
The blood goes cold
Isn’t it weird the way our newspapers seem suddenly to have discovered the obituary. David Stratton, loved and revered for…
The man who can save classical music
John Gilhooly is sick of talking about the Arts Council of England. ‘Please tell me you’re not going to ask…
Dartmoor’s forgotten painter
Asolo exhibition opened at Oxford’s Ashmolean in October 1980 that appeared to mark the belated arrival of a major new…
I could never sit through it again: The Cut reviewed
What set this apart, I would suggest, is its deep and unremitting unpleasantness The Cut stars Orlando Bloom as a…
Mercifully short: Interview at Riverside Studios reviewed
Interview is a blind-date play. Only it’s not a blind date but a showbiz interview for a journal called the…
Another Traitors rip-off – and it might be even better than the original: Channel 4’s The Inheritance reviewed
Another week, another show striving desperately to become the new Traitors. So it is that The Inheritance brings a group…
Shambolic, spontaneously chaotic and combustible: the Lemonheads at SWG3 Galvanizers reviewed
Nowadays, when the default setting for live music is ruthlessly choreographed efficiency, there is a queasy kind of thrill in…
Huge Fun: Le Carnaval de Venise reviewed
Summer’s lease hath all too short a date, but there’s still time for one last opera festival. Vache Baroque popped…
Picasso’s ravishing work for the ballet
Visitors to the Victoria and Albert Museum’s new storehouse in Stratford’s Olympic Park are being enthralled by an atmospherically lit…
The time Spike Milligan tried to kill me
The theatre impresario Michael White rang me one day in 1964, and said he was presenting a play at the…
The brilliance of BBC Alba
During lockdown, a friend and I moved into a flat that had a difficult relationship with the TV aerial. Ineptitude…
In defence of Notting Hill Carnival
This isn’t going to be a piece celebrating the rich cultural tapestry of London’s Afro-Caribbean community, sombrely expressing the importance…
An English Chekhov: The Gathered Leaves at Park200 reviewed
Chekhov with an English accent. That’s how Andrew Keatley’s play, The Gathered Leaves, begins. The setting is a country house…
Fails to outshine the original: The Roses reviewed
The Roses is a remake of The War of the Roses (1989), the diabolically funny black bitter comedy that was…
A revelation: Delius’s Mass of Life at the Proms reviewed
Regarding Frederick Delius, how do we stand? In the 1930s, Sir Henry Wood believed that Proms audiences much preferred Delius…
Dark and ravaged places
Destiny was the first work commissioned under Anne-Louise Sarks’ directorship of the Melbourne Theatre Company and it’s appropriate that it…
