Arts
Kings of Convenience: Peace or Love
Grade: A– The problem with Norwegians is that they are so relentlessly, mind-numbingly pleasant. Well, OK, not Knut Hamsun or…
This will hurt
Before the National Theatre produced Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood they had to make a decision. How could they stuff…
Tsar quality
There are worse inconveniences than having to wear a face mask to the opera. But there’s one consequence that hadn’t…
Anya Taylor Joy stars in the new Mad Max
It’s funny to reflect how the performing arts, theatre in particular, are a lot stronger when they have a literary…
Spring Waters
Recent decades have seen the opening or upgrading of numerous performing arts centres throughout regional Australia enabling the development of…
Queen of Bohemia
Nina Hamnett’s art has long been overshadowed by her wild, hedonistic life, but that is changing, says Hermione Eyre — and about time
Who goes there?
Death of a Black Man is a little-known script from the 1970s written by Alfred Fagon who suffered a fatal…
Howard’s way
There was no printed programme for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra’s first concert under its music director designate Domingo Hindoyan.…
Agricultural revolution
I was at a party the other day when who should accost me but Jeremy Clarkson. There were lots more…
Aural hot chocolate
I’ve given up comfort food. I’m trying to shift lockdown pounds that have left me with the physique of the…
Sweet nothings
Our hosts are Lauren and Drew and they want to talk about Karl Ove Knausgaard. Or rather, they want to…
Two men and their dog
At the time Supernova went into production one headline read: ‘What did we do to deserve a love story starring…
GB News has chutzpah but does it have legs?
Help! If I’m too kind to GB News, my bosses at LBC will be cross as the channel nicked their…
Andrea Riseborough
National Treasure is a remarkable piece of TV drama, and it looks for a long, bewildering moment like a masterpiece.…
Divine Vinyl Survives
Two weeks ago, a fire broke out at the Universal Studios in Hollywood, 13 years to the day after another…
What a song and dance
In The Heights is an adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s smash-hit stage musical — the one he wrote before Hamilton —…
The people’s choice
Richard Bratby talks to one of Britain’s most successful impresarios about his promoter’s nose, Arts Council spinelessness and ENO madness
Divine comedy
Godot Is a Woman opens with three tramps standing on a bare stage beneath a solitary upright. This isn’t Samuel…
Ska struck
When Trojan Records attempted to break into the United States music market in the early 1970s, it hit an insurmountable…
Star trek
Now that all of the billionaires are going into space, the night sky holds a special new kind of allure.…
Drawing breath
Amid the greatly exaggerated reports of the death of painting issued and reissued over the course of the past century,…
The play’s the thing
Let me start with a spot of admin: if you’re wondering what The Speccie makes of GB News, it’ll be…
Dylan
Bob Dylan turned 80 the other week. Does that seem to consign not just the vanished twentieth century but the…
Festival music in Townsville
For those music lovers who can travel, the prospect of a festival in Townsville in mid-winter is an alluring one.…
Kitsch tomfoolery
The latest movie to turn into a musical is Amélie, from 2001, about a Parisian do-gooder or ‘godmother of the…
