Arts
Morrissey remastered
Many of us who grew up loving the Smiths have rather shelved that affection in recent years. Many of us,…
Spooky furniture
‘I’ve actually seen ghosts.’ This statement comes less than ten minutes into the first episode of Dark House, a limited-series…
Clive Owen
A time of plague makes us brood on the culture we share in the absence of personal preference. One person…
Roll over, Beethoven
Ian Pace on musicology’s culture wars
Such sweet sorrow
‘It’s generally agreed that in contemporary practice, this opera proposes significant ethical and cultural problems,’ says the director Lindy Hume…
A spoonful of Sugar
Murder Island features eight real-life ‘ordinary people’ seeking to solve a fictional killing on a fictional Scottish island. What follows…
Di another day
This week, an excellent film (Moving On) and a film that isn’t at all, but is entirely worth it as…
Sent to Coventry
The story is likely apocryphal — and so disgraceful I almost hesitate to tell it — but it goes like…
Hals apoppin’
Since art auctions were invented, they have served to hype artists’ prices. It can happen during an artist’s lifetime —…
Remaking history
The Normal Heart is not about Aids. Larry Kramer’s play is set in New York in 1981 at a time…
Heath Ledger
It’s weird to hear news of artistic life in the midst of Covid. The Sydney Theatre Company has a new…
Comic genius
A global pandemic is no match for the Marvel multiverse, says Rosie Millard
Hot mess
These days, James Bond can no longer just be the main character in the Bond films. He’s also had to…
Revival of the fittest
In Oliver Mears’s new production of Verdi’s Rigoletto, the curtain rises on a work of art. The stage is in…
High Jencks
An editor once told me: always look at the loos. It was remarkable, she said, how many grand cultural projets,…
The beautiful and damned
Nick Cave has always been drawn to parable and fable, but more than ever these days he is engaged in…
About more than just the music
The single most boring and pointless thing that is ever said about rock and pop — and it always comes…
Alan key
Given my affection for M*A*S*H, I can’t think why I haven’t listened to Alan Alda’s podcasts before now, besides the…
Going for Goldberg
I sometimes think the classical record industry would collapse if it weren’t for the Goldberg Variations. Every month brings more…
A script to raise whirlwinds
Boy meets girl. Girl gets pregnant. Then the entire world collapses. That’s the story of Camp Siegfried, which is set…
Nic Denton and Frances O’Connor
As the northern hemisphere, that ambiguous spectral homeland we’re conscious of, starts to open up, it’s easy to be envious…
Going for a song
A new musical history is being written for Britain, says Nicola Christie
Lindsey Buckingham: Lindsey Buckingham
Grade: B– The first time Lindsey Buckingham had a big falling out with Stevie Nicks we at least got some…
Phantom thread
Blithe Spirit is a comedy with the plot of a horror story. Charles, a middle-aged novelist, lives happily with his…
There will be blood
Like musical supergroups and Olympic basketball teams, ballet galas tend to prize individual gifts over group cohesion. A recent one…
