Arts
Divine comedy
Patriots, by Peter Morgan, is a drama documentary about recent Russian history. And though it’s a topical show it’s not…
The art of window-peeping
Themed exhibitions pegged to particular pictures in museum collections tend to be more interesting to the museum’s curators than to…
Genesis of a Dreamcoat
Just the other day came the announcement that a new production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat was to…
Brought to book
You may already have read early reviews of Netflix’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion saying it’s ‘the worst adaptation ever’…
Resculpting the past
Rather than tearing statues down, Hew Locke believes in reworking them to highlight their place in our imperial history. Stuart Jeffries speaks to him
Shelley addict
Last week I heard the actor Julian Sands give a virtuoso performance of work by Percy Bysshe Shelley to mark…
Chekhov in a straitjacket
The Southbury Child is a comedy drama set in east Devon featuring a distressed vicar, Fr David, with a complex…
Nick Cave: Seven Psalms
Grade: B There has always been a seriousness and intelligence about Nick Cave quite at odds with that which usually…
Hot stuff
One legacy of lockdown in the classical music world has been the sheer length of the 21-22 season. In a…
Softly, softly
Grizzled police officers of the old school should probably avoid Channel 4’s Night Coppers for reasons of blood pressure. Like…
Enthralled
The news that Germaine Greer had put herself into a retirement home in sight of the Queensland forest she had…
Mourning glory
On Tuesday night I was at the world première of a motet by Sir James MacMillan and I don’t think…
The dying of the light
Cornelia Parker wasn’t born with a silver spoon in her mouth, but when she was growing up her German godparents…
Knives out
Daisy Dunn on the art of surgery
Sons of a preacher man
A few years ago, I spoke to Mick Jagger and asked him which of the (relatively) new crop of rock…
One man and his robot
Brian and Charles is a sweetly funny mockumentary about a lonely Welsh inventor who is not that good at inventing.…
Location, location, location
Roy Williams’s new play is a wonky beast. It has two dense and cumbersome storylines that aren’t properly developed. Dawn…
The thrilling game
‘The Terminal List is… a dated and drably made eight-part military thriller that offers little intrigue or excitement,’ says the…
A very polished performance
Sam Neill is one of those Kiwis we want to claim as we do everyone from Russell Crowe to Neill’s…
P is for pointless
The Princess, a new documentary film, is the first re-framing of the Princess Diana story since it was last re-framed,…
Indie heaven
‘Well, it’s just not Glastonbury, is it?’ said my daughter aggressively, when told that our yurt featured an actual bed,…
How to get it all wrong
The Glass Menagerie directed by Jeremy Herrin is a bit of an eyeball-scrambler. The action takes place on a huge…
More melancholy, please
The Yeomen of the Guard has been called the ‘English Meistersinger’ but the more you think about that, the dafter…
Not one for the naive
The Undeclared War has many of the traditional signifiers of a classy thriller: the assiduous letter-by-letter captioning of every location;…
Miracle in an evening gown
When Motown first packaged up a roster of artists and songs that could be embraced by a non-black audience, no…
