Arts
Sweet nothing
How much weight of plot can dance carry? Balanchine famously insisted that there are no mothers-in-law in ballet, and masters…
Big glass slippers to fill
It sounds like a wet dream of musical theatre, doesn’t it? A Cinderella by Rodgers & Hammerstein in a visually…
Imperial measures
At the turn of this century, looking back on the late 1980s when the Pet Shop Boys could do no…
Special delivery
A youngish couple leave London and drive off excitedly to make a fresh start in more rural surroundings. They demonstrate…
One out of five
The point at which the heart sinks in this exhibition is, unfortunately, right at the outset. That’s where we meet…
Going public
It is high time we did justice to the treasures of the royal collection, says Jack Wakefield
This is going to hurt
Some things are done well in the Globe’s new Julius Caesar. The assassination is a thrilling spectacle. Ketchup pouches concealed…
Sea fever
You’ve got to hand it to Dame Ethel Smyth. Working in an era when to be a British composer implied…
For meta or worse
Bergman Island sounds, on first acquaintance, like a theme-park attraction. Roll up, roll up! Let us speed you through the…
Wizardly wham-bam
It’s an extraordinary thing in its way to revisit Harry Potter and the Cursed Child three years after its triumphant…
Northern exposure
When Nikolaus Pevsner dedicated his 1955 Reith Lectures to ‘The Englishness of English Art’, he left out the Scots. The…
Great Dane
Borgen star Sidse Babett Knudsen talks to Jasper Rees about why, after a break of ten years, the implausibly more-ish series is returning for a fourth season
Rotten Apples
Having now watched it to the end, I would say that Slow Horses (Apple TV+) is by far the best…
Tango traduced
Rambert ages elegantly: it might just rank as the world’s oldest company devoted to modern dance (whatever that term might…
Absolute beginner
The House of Shades is a state-of-the nation play that covers the past six decades of grinding poverty in Nottingham.…
A gigantic field of feeling
I was never into the blues that much. I listened to a bit of Roy Buchanan and Rory Gallagher but…
Lilacs out of the dead land
April is the cruellest month, but May is shaping up quite pleasantly and the daylight streamed in through the east…
Playing chicken with your conscience
Jade Goody appeared on Big Brother in 2002. She was a short, loud, blonde-haired woman who broadcast her every thought…
Cruise control
Top Gun is back, nearly 40 years after the original, with reprised roles for Tom Cruise (59) and Val Kilmer…
Great Tenor, shame about the bric-a-brac
Lohengrin is early, just after Tannhäuser in the cavalcade of Wagner’s masterpieces, with a swan-drawn Arthurian hero in thrall to…
Doors of perception
Describing the Venice Biennale, like pinning down the city itself, is a practical impossibility. There is just too much of…
Fresh knickers
Last April Fools’ Day, Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo wound up their award-winning film review show on BBC Radio 5…
Oops! He did it again
Every so often, Jason Pierce drifts into focus. It happened at the end of the 1980s, when his then group…
It pierces the heart
Terence Davies’s Benediction is a biopic of the first world war poet Siegfried Sassoon told with great feeling and tenderness.…
G-force
Imagine growing up with a whole orchestra as your plaything. Richard Strauss’s father was the principal horn of the Munich…
