Arts
Fright night
Good evening! Come shivering on in through the garden side door, my friends, and distance yourselves in a semi-legal fashion…
A romcom with very little com
In Black Narcissus, based on the novel by Rumer Godden, five nuns set off for a remote Himalayan palace in…
Whodunnit?
The Master of Flémalle was one of the first painters to depict in detail the reality of ordinary things. But who was he? Martin Gayford finds a prime suspect
All in the worst possible taste
Potted Panto is a 70-minute parody presented by two burlesque comedians. Jeff is a tall, playful bungler and his colleague,…
A fine romance
Sylvie’s Love is an exquisitely styled, swooning, old-school, period Hollywood romance and while it has been described as ‘glib’ in…
Blessed be the fruit
Laura Freeman is transported by J.C. Volkamer’s astonishingly beautiful ode to the citrus
Ambassador, you are really spoiling us
In classical music circles, Christmas arrives with the overture to Handel’s Messiah. Or so they’ll tell you. In truth, festivities…
Ned Kelly
All the young millennials I know were raging in Melbourne the other Saturday night and so were some of their…
Australian Brandenburg Orchestra
Time to look to the future; performing arts companies are encouraging us to do so through their subscription seasons now…
Recorded delivery
For an orchestra to lose one anniversary concert may be regarded as unfortunate. To lose two? Welcome to 2020. The…
Slow off the Marc
The Flying Lovers of Vitebskbegins with a phone conversation between a pretentious art critic and a man called Marc. This…
The Venus de Marlene
Tanjil Rashid on the legend of Dietrich
Pandemic panto
This pantomime was filmed by ‘legendary Blue Peter presenter’ Peter Duncan in his back garden over the summer. It was…
Pure genius
Of all the times and places to have been on the wrong side of history, I can’t imagine many worse…
Poetry in motion
How did the universe begin? Did the great god Bumba vomit us up, as the Kuba believe? Or did we…
The Midas touch
It’s well known that you should never meet your heroes because they will only disappoint you. Less commonly said, but…
Gary Garrels
Let me take you down the strange rabbit hole of contemporary art museum culture. The senior curator of painting and…
Richard Tognetti
There’s no doubt about the Australian Chamber Orchestra; full of confidence it is sailing into 2021 with its most ambitious…
This will hurt
County Lines is the kind of social realism that the British do so well, if not too well. In other…
Victorian values
Blackeyed Theatre is another victim of the virus. Its production of Jane Eyrewas midway through a UK tour, and due…
AC/DC: Power Up
Grade: C The fear is this: you’re wearing a leather jacket and hipster jeans and think you look cool, but…
About Schmidt
The sounds that Franz Schmidt made while learning the trumpet were pretty much unbearable, or so the story goes. In…
Spotted dick and custard
I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue has just been voted the greatest radio comedy of all time by Radio Times,…
The great awakening
Congratulations, everyone! It turns out we’re much better than those bigoted old Brits of the 1950s. After all, they were…
Going for a song
Alexandra Coghlan on how we became a nation of choirs and carollers
