An Engrossing Beethoven/Bruckner Concert from Salonen and the Philharmonia This was my first time at the Philharmonia’s occasional Sunday at 3 pm concerts, in this case at the Royal Festival Hall for a Beethoven/Bruckner programme conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. It won’t be my last. The timing is ideal for those who don’t want to be […]
Blood of my Blood – Royal Court Theatre
Antebellum ancestor drama powerfully evokes the complications of legacy At the opening of Blood of my Blood, Talulah (Jodie Campbell) sings ‘You got a right to the tree of life’. She is a young Black British woman who has come to South Carolina to conjure her ancestor. The set, upstairs at the Royal Court, consists […]
Robert Ryman, The Real Thing
American Artist Robert Ryman’s Work Featured in Major Barbican Exhibition Robert Ryman, The Real Thing, the Barbican’s comprehensive retrospective of the American artist’s work, immediately faces the viewer with a conundrum. A former musician, Robert Ryman (1930-2019), believed that both music and painting were best understood through direct and immediate experience, rather than through intellectual […]
Affluenza – Riverside Studios
Andy Sandberg’s new play about how wealth and privilege can distort one’s moral compass gets off to a good start before losing its way
Jess & Morgs, Deepfake
The Award-Winning Duo Mash Dance and Technology in Deepfake “All the world’s information is in the palm of your hand, and you can’t believe a word of it”, says one of the lead characters in Deepfake, the latest multimedia dance-theatre work by the exciting duo Jess & Morgs. It’s a comment that should resonate with […]
The Brown Suite, Richmond Theatre
James Brown’s Legendary Music Anchors New Dance Show The Brown Suite Put together a powerful, evocative musical score and a cast of truly exciting dancers and you’re more than half-way to a crowd-pleasing show. A cogent plot would perhaps push things a bit further; but even with the flimsiest of storylines The Brown Suite is […]
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – @sohoplace
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? stars Gillian Anderson and Billy Crudup as a warring, alcohol-fuelled married couple
Pastoral, Pam Tanowitz Dance
Tanowitz Weaves Her Magic on Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony Pam Tanowtiz is becoming quite the regular on London stages and I, for one, am absolutely delighted. I’m not the only one: through her commissions for The Royal Ballet (her fifth piece for Covent Garden will open early next year), and the Barbican, where her third co-commission, […]
Evgeny Titov’s Parsifal
A Bloody Dystopian Parsifal A new Wagner production is always big news at the Royal Opera House. This season has two, with last night’s opening of director Evgeny Titov’s Parsifal to be followed in January by Götterdämmerung, the final instalment of Barrie Kosky’s Ring cycle. Parsifal is Wagner’s his final opera, a “Bühnenweihfestspiel” (“stage-consecrating festival […]
The Sleeping Beauty in Cinemas
ENB’s Signature Classic Comes to a Cinema Near You English National Ballet’s sumptuous The Sleeping Beauty, filmed at its Royal Albert Hall debut earlier this year and reviewed below, will be screened in cinemas nationwide 13 – 18 October. Kenneth MacMillan’s The Sleeping Beauty, entrusted in the UK to English National Ballet (ENB), is a […]