Arts
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
The Queen’s Gambit
As the Covid virus recedes even from Victoria – and the South Australian scare proves less serious than it looked…
Eryn Jean Norvill
Normality is returning, bit by bit, to public entertainment.Apparently fifty thousand people can go to a football match, yelling themselves…
Drama vs display
It is amazing what fine performances you can get beamed to your computer these days. Slightly less amazing is the…
Drama gold or bullion dross?
Unlike with every other BBC period drama series these days, I didn’t have to sit through Small Axe: Mangrove grumbling…
A salmagundi of tedium
The White Pube started life as an influential art blog, written by Zarina Muhammad and Gabrielle de la Puente. The…
It’ll blow you away
When I recommend this documentary to people, telling them it follows the journalistic investigation into a fire that broke out…
Lloyd Evans
Sasha is angry. He’s a gay artist on his way to his niece’s birthday party and he keeps popping codeine…
Quite contrary
Frankly, it is rather hideous — but also quite wonderful, shimmering against the weak blue of a late November sky.…
‘It was like a survivors’ circle’
Michael Hann talks to Corey Taylor, front man of ‘the most revolting band in the world’, about PTSD, Donald Trump and life after alcoholism
Here come the judge
1968 was a year of recurring turbulence for the United States, all of it witnessed in American living rooms, courtesy…
Billy Wilder
Slowly the world of the arts starts to take a timid step forward in plague-torn Australia. Just as alarming new…
