Arts
Bruce Springsteen: Only the Strong Survive
Grade: B What’s the worst-ever cover version (after Madonna’s hilarious stab at ‘American Pie’)? I reckon Creedence Clearwater Revival’s interminable…
Dine with the Devil
The Menu is a comedy-horror-thriller set in an exclusive restaurant on a private island and it gives the rich a…
Comic genius
Mathew Lyons on the life lessons of Peanuts
A lustre that is blinding
Does Milly Alcock find her characters inside herself or does she sketch them from outside? ‘It’s both,’ she says. ‘You…
To B or not to B
Paul Weller releasing a collection of solo B-sides is cause for mild celebration. After all, the Jam were one of…
The curious case of Malcolm MacArthur
Non-fiction tells you what happened, fiction affirms the kinds of things that happen. According to Aristotle, anyway. So while journalism…
Hide and seek
Jafar Panahi’s No Bears is, first and foremost, a wonderful film. More than this, you don’t need to know but…
Privates on parade
During the 1964 debut of Carolee Schneemann’s ‘Meat Joy’ in Paris, a man in the audience tried to throttle the…
Gross profit
Gratingly edgy soundtrack, stomach-churning gore, torture, witchcraft, sadism and an indigestible title. The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself sounds…
Towering achievement
The screw may twist and the rack may turn: the Tower of London, in Jo Davies’s new production of The…
At His Majesty’s pleasure
Damian Thompson on King Charles III’s love of classical music
Insane profligacy
The UK Drill Project is a cabaret show that celebrates greed, criminality and drug-taking among black males in London. It…
Theatre of the soul
Whatever you think of the question of the Voice it was fascinating to hear Noel Pearson, that most formidable and…
A matter of life and death
Living is a remake of one of the great existential masterpieces of the 20th century, Kurosawa’s Ikiru (1952), which didn’t…
No country for old men
Tanjil Rashid talks to Kazuo Ishiguro about his long and underexplored love affair with film
Written in stone
‘Poor old Mornington Crescent, I feel sorry for it with this highly made-up neighbour blocking the view it had enjoyed,’…
Busy Lizzie
Elizabeth the First is a ten-part American podcast series that isn’t about Elizabeth I at all. The assumption of its…
Bad education
King Hamlin is a shock-horror drama about gang crime in London. Hamlin, aged 17, has left school without learning any…
Man up
Sunday’s SAS Rogue Heroes – about the founding of perhaps Britain’s most famous regiment – began with a revealing variation…
The eyes have it
Do you remember Osvaldo Golijov? Two decades ago he was classical music’s Next Big Thing: a credible postmodernist with a…
Prepare for lift-off
The first time I saw Franz Ferdinand was at the sadly lost Astoria, just after the release of their first…
Grace and lucidity
The news of Carmen Callil’s death last week shocked the literary world even though it was expected. She made an…
But what about the plot?
You wouldn’t like Tamerlano when he’s angry. ‘My heart seethes with rage,’ he sings, in Act III of Handel’s opera…
One long moan of woe
I was moved and shaken by Crystal Pite’s Flight Pattern when I first saw it in 2017. In richly visualised…
