Arts
Blasts from the past
Oh, nostalgia – so much better than it used to be! You’d never have guessed pop music was once the…
Miniature rite of spring
Imagine a folk dance without music. Actually, you don’t have to: poke about on YouTube and you’ll find footage from…
Three roled into one
Good, starring David Tennant, needs more dosh spent on it. The former Doctor Who plays John, a literary academic living…
Swerves of warmth and coolness
One of the great things about the Australian Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet is that the kids love it. Even the…
Weird and wonderful
The life of Emily Brontë is an enduring object of fascination. So small, the life, so sparse, so limited. Yet…
Anthem for end times
It was so dark, my friend noted, you could have had sex or done a Hitler salute. No stage lights,…
Fallen idols
The definition of ‘pop star’ in the Collins English Dictionary is unambiguous: ‘A famous singer or musician who performs pop…
The lying game
I shied away from conspiracy stuff during the Trump era. Not the theories themselves, but the huge volume of content…
Senior moment
We men all think we’ve still got it, even when we’re well past 50 and young women look straight through…
Farrago of jabber
The Doctor is an acclaimed drama from the pen of writer-director Robert Icke. We’re in a hospital run by a…
End of play
Zoe Strimpel on how identity politics is killing theatre
A sapphic rom-com not to be missed
What a relief it is that Virginia Gay’s adaptation of Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac should finally have opened in Sarah…
Paxman on Parkinson’s
On first impression, you might have thought that Unbreakablewas just a fairly desperate reality show cobbled together from I’m a…
A world apart
William Kentridge’s work has a way of sticking in the mind. I can remember all my brief encounters with it,…
Spark of genius
Lindsey Buckingham, at 72, still has cheekbones that cast shadows. He has the upright shock of hair, too, though now…
A line in the sand
Sam Kriss on Saudi Arabia’s $1 trillion eco-city
Vital statistics
In a week of slim audio pickings, I spent time reacquainting myself with some of the BBC classics and can…
Bones of contention
The Lost King is a comedy-drama based on the 2012 discovery of the remains of King Richard III beneath a…
After the fall
Clunk, clunk, clunk. John Gabriel Borkman opens with the obsessive footfalls of a disgraced banker as he prowls the attic…
Fifty shades of grey
Grey. More grey. So very, very grey. That’s the main visual impression left by Robert Carsen’s new production of Verdi’s…
Footy versus ballet?
All the different aspects of a culture collide and interconnect. Melbourne is the undisputed capital of Australian rules football (which…
French fancies
Mrs Harris Goes to Paris is a comedy-drama based on the 1958 novel by Paul Gallico about a cheerful, kind-hearted…
A feast for the eyes
Jonathan Meades on the art of menus
Elvis on the Eurostar
It would be easy to be a little dismissive of George Ezra. A wholesome late twentysomething hailing from the rock…
Why I love a cliché
You’d have to pay me an awful lot more than I get for this column to review Monster: The Jeffrey…
