Arts
High resolution
Jimmy Chin is part Bear Grylls, part David Attenborough: he both climbs snow, ice and rock and films other mountaineers doing it too, writes Theo Zenou
As You Like It
As You Like It is middle Shakespeare, probably lateish 1590s. It’s not one of the earlier happy comedies like the…
The weird turned pro
Pop quiz time: which act was named Melody MakerGroup of the Year in 1975? The answer is not, as you…
Adele: 30
Grade: C The problem I have is that I thought she was pretty awful before — when she was just…
Formula milquetoast
If it weren’t for this job I sometimes wonder whether I’d even bother watching TV at all. This mood strikes…
Too much cod and not enough camp
Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci has been much anticipated. The cast is stellar. It’s based on a luscious, true story…
Sublime – and ridiculous
It’s the final scene of The Valkyrie and Wotan is wearing cords. They’re a sensible choice for a hard-working deity:…
Our old Macca
The Paul people are out in force these days. A New Yorker profile, a book and a new documentary have…
Guilt-free hilarity
World-class sex bomb Janie Dee stars in a fabulously silly revival of the American comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha…
Wild at heart
On 13 July 1815, John Constable wrote to his fiancée, Maria Bicknell, about this and that. Interspersed with a discussion…
The Guinea Pig club
Lloyd Evans on a musical that tells the story of the pioneering maverick whose methods for treating disfigured second world war airmen revolutionised plastic surgery
Don’t forget the motor city
No Sudden Move, Directed by Steven Soderbergh, Streaming on Amazon Prime
Sean Connery
Anyone who cares about the theatre should rush to see Kendall Feaver’s Wherever She Wanders which Griffin Theatre Company is…
Putting on the glitz
From quartz to quince: Daisy Dunn on the art and science of Fabergé
A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do
Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog could also be called The Power of Benedict Cumberbatch, as he’s so spectacular.…
Soul searching
No musician ever went bust overestimating the public desire to hear classic soul. Slapping on a Motown backbeat has revived…
The root of the matter
Thanks to Covid, the days are gone — or at least suspended — when a TV travel programme meant a…
In a class of its own
Mike Leigh’s classic, Abigail’s Party, has been revived under the direction of Vivienne Garnett. The script is a guilty secret…
Beach House: Once Twice Melody
Grade: B+ Everything these days devolves to prog — and not always very good prog. Where once synths were vastly…
An honorary Frenchman
When the Courtauld Gallery’s impressionist pictures were shown at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris in 2019, the Parisian public…
Men in black
Martin McNamara, the writer of Mosley Must Fall, a play on Radio 4 this week, must have had a jolt…
Whistling the scenery
With Glyndebourne’s The Rake’s Progress, the show starts with David Hockney’s front cloth. The colour, the ingenuity, the visual bravura:…
Bert Newton
And so the world finally bestirs itself in the direction of going out because it’s now allowable. A young millennial…
The unseen Victoria Wood
For a few years now I have been living with Victoria Wood. That sounds all wrong, obviously, and yet no…
Modern master
Gossipy, amusing, a little vain, Albrecht Dürer was a 16th-century Andy Warhol, says Martin Gayford
