Arts
The problem with the new Shakers biopic
Ann Lee was a sharp-tongued woman from the back streets of 18th–century Manchester, celebrated for put-downs worthy of Coronation Street’s…
Camp indulgence
Music has the odd quality of being an abstract art as well as one that generates great gulfs and legions…
Electrifying: Annie & the Caldwells, at Ronnie Scott’s, reviewed
Annie & the Caldwells are a long-running family gospel ensemble from West Point, Mississippi – father and sons playing guitar,…
Fascinating: The Fabulous Funeral Parlour reviewed
The Fabulous Funeral Parlour ended with possibly the least necessary caption in TV history: ‘Filmed in Liverpool’. Whenever I go…
Richard Jones’s Boris Godunov feels like a parody
Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov is back at Covent Garden, and there are ninjas. This isn’t a spoiler. There hasn’t been a…
Marvellously conservative: Cable Street reviewed
Cable Street is a musical that premièred last year at the Southwark Playhouse and has now migrated to the Marylebone…
Gripping: Melania reviewed
The documentary Melania, which follows the first lady in the 20 days leading up to her husband’s 2025 presidential inauguration,…
The joy of Paul Taylor
When the American choreographer Paul Taylor died at the age of 88 in 2018, he should have been consecrated a…
The demise of London’s junk shops
‘The place through which he made his way at leisure was one of those receptacles for old and curious things…
The alt-right are clueless about neoclassicism
The adherents of the American alt-right are not known for their delicate aesthetic sensibilities, but there is an exception. They…
Dazzled and satiated
It’s a tumultuous decade or so since The Night Manager burst onto our television screens and a while longer since…
Who stuck the great Emmylou Harris in a sports hall?
Somebody obviously thought it a good idea that Emmylou Harris play her last ever Scottish show in a soulless sports…
How fantastic to see Hogarth’s largest paintings in their original glory
The long overlooked staircase by Hogarth at St Bartholomew’s Hospital has been cleaned and restored in a £9.5 million scheme.…
The Neapolitan Horowitz
‘You play Bach your way, and I’ll play it his way.’ That remark by the Polish harpsichordist Wanda Landowska is…
Beautiful if hagiographic portrait of Godard
Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague dramatises the (chaotic) making of Breathless (1960), Jean-Luc Godard’s French New Wave classic. It’s a film…
Our verdict on the new In Our Time presenter
Melvyn Bragg’s first ever intro to In Our Time in 1998 clocked in at 21 seconds. Misha Glenny, meanwhile, took…
If this play is correct, the Foreign Office is a joke
Safe Haven is a history play by Chris Bowers who worked for the Foreign Office and later for the UN…
Gripping: Amazon Prime’s The Tank reviewed
I don’t know how it got past the increasingly powerful ‘All Germans were evil Nazis’ censors but Amazon has released…
Seductive Debussy and Ravel from the RLPO
Grade: A It’s a cliché that the best Spanish music was written by Frenchmen but it’s mostly true nonetheless, and…
In praise of French brothels
In the days of the Belle Époque and Jazz Age, a trip to Paris would have included, for the discerning…
Baton of iron
The Choral Directed by Nicholas Hytner Starring Taylor Uttley, Ralph Fiennes, Mark Addy, Carolyn Pickles. If it were in a…
Celluloid nostalgia for lost worlds
There’s a poignancy in turning back the clock to the Fifties and early-Sixties. Everyone remembers Marilyn Monroe singing ‘Happy Birthday,…
The depressed duck detective is back
Grade: B– It’s a duck, except he’s a detective. Or a detective, except he’s a duck. Anyway he wears a…
Why is this low-grade Ayckbourn play in the West End?
Woman in Mind is a dyspeptic sitcom set in 1986 starring Sheridan Smith as Susan, a moaning Home Counties housewife…
