Arts
Man and boy
So how exactly did Tony Soprano become a New Jersey mob boss? It’s 1967 and young Anthony is struggling to…
Follow the science
It is, of course, not unknown for a man to become famous with the support of his family — and,…
Flower power
Elizabeth Blackadder, who died last month at the age of 89, was probably the most distinctive botanical artist of our…
Snap, crackle, shriek…
So it finally happened: I experienced my first vocal setting of the word ‘Covid’. An encounter that was, inevitably, more…
Diane Lane
It was doubly sad the other night to see Virginia Gay deliver a speech from her Covid-cancelled Cyrano on the…
Giving the devil his due
The Sopranos – the greatest television show in history – far outshines its progenitors, says Tanya Gold
No cojones
It’s a hard heart that doesn’t warm to the musical drama Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. I don’t have a hard…
Sub standard
Tense, claustrophobic, gripping, thrilling, realistic: just some of the adjectives no one is using to describe BBC1’s Sunday night submarine…
The yumminess of paint
‘Painting has always been dead,’ Willem de Kooning once mused. ‘But I was never worried about it.’ The exhibition Mixing…
Teenage kicks
For a one-hit composer, we hear rather a lot of Pietro Mascagni. His reputation rests on his 1890 debut Cavalleria…
Hot metal and methadrine
They may no longer get many teenagers at their shows spending all their money on merchandise, then throwing up on…
Crime and punishment
How do we have difficult conversations? Especially in an age of polarisation, where everything is immediately politicised? But also where…
Cold spell
Frozen the musical declares war on woke politics. The 2013 Disney movie has been turned into a song-and-dance show that…
Thomas Mann
And so Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge is Melbourne’s musical-in- waiting. The show that can only go on when we’re 80…
Tsunami of piffle
Deep breath. Here goes. Winsome Pinnock’s new play about Turner opens with one of the most confusing and illogical scenes…
Man up
‘The world is hell, and men are both the tormented souls and the devils within it.’ This was the cheery…
Sale of the century
In my bedroom there is a small lidded laundry basket. It was designed by Geoffrey Lusty for Lloyd Loom, a…
Darkness visible
Translating the story of Jimmy Savile to stage or screen is a creative minefield, says Jonathan Maitland, who knows from first-hand experience
Divine comedy
Arthur Sullivan knew better than to mess with a winning formula. ‘Cox and Box, based on J. Maddison Morton’s farce…
Bricking it
Herself is an intensely powerful film about domestic violence that isn’t Nil By Mouth or The Killer Inside Me or…
Crude mittens
Let me give you a free piece of relationship advice: just break up. If it’s more work than pleasure, if…
Charlie Watts
The endless news is of shows locked down as every form of life is locked down in a nation struggling…
Kanye West: Donda
Grade: C– The nicest thing one can say is that this is a marginally better album than we would have…
White mischief
Every now and then, you see a new series — Succession, say, or Chernobyl or To the Lake — which…
Another Albion
As August unwound, the EIF settled into the cavernous gazebo that is Edinburgh Park, and things began to loosen up.…
