Soul at Hackney Empire review: This play about the life of Marvin Gaye fails to hit any high notes June 17, 2016 Soul | Hackney Empire | ★☆☆☆☆ On April Fools Day, 1984, Marvin Gaye was shot and killed by his father in the house they shared. Gaye’s was a life ripe for drama, and Roy Williams’ new play explores it, seeking to answer the questions essential to understanding the man. Who was Marvin Gaye? Why [...]
Where You’re Meant to Be Film review: Arab Strap singer Aiden Moffat meditates on life, death, rivalry and the cultural importance of music June 17, 2016 Where You're Meant To Be | Dir. Paul Fegan | ★★★★☆ This wistful documentary about a folk-music tour by former Arab Strap singer Aiden Moffat starts out as a road trip but becomes a meditation on life, death, rivalry and the cultural importance of music. The voice-over, delivered in Moffat’s distinctive dry prose, is [...]
Long Way North film review: Beautiful animation hides an age-old story June 17, 2016 Long Way North | Dir. Rémi Chayé | ★★☆☆☆ Long Way North is at its best when nothing’s happening. The French-Danish animation, set in St Petersburg and voiced in English, unfurls languidly, idling over shots of the sun setting over the Winter Palace, or seagulls slowly circling a ship adrift in a blue ocean. The [...]
Late Night at the Barbican review: a surreal mesh of dance, sorrow and economic woe June 17, 2016 Late Night | Barbican | ★★★★☆ Three couples sit in the wreckage of a music hall. A song comes on and they start to dance, expressionless, waltzing in neat circles around each other. Every so often one breaks ranks to stand before a microphone and deliver opaque lines of dialogue. Europe has fallen. War and [...]
Aladdin at the Prince Edward Theatre review: A gloriously magical and hilarious production that hits all the right nostalgic notes June 16, 2016 Prince Edward Theatre | ★★★★☆ Musicals inspired by Disney films have a chequered track record. Luckily, Aladdin joins The Lion King and Mary Poppins in the halls of success, leaving Tarzan and The Little Mermaid in the doldrums where they belong. While there were some children in the audience, most appeared to have been dragged along [...]
The Conjuring 2: The Enfield Haunting film review: An overlong, but well-crafted horror with a genuinely unpleasant demon June 16, 2016 Dir: James Wan | ★★★☆☆ The world’s creepiest couple, Ed and Lorraine Warren, return to investigate another paranormal case. This time, they’ve been asked by the Catholic church to visit somewhere more diabolical than their supernatural adventures have ever taken them: Enfield, north London. Described as “England’s Amityville”, they find a poverty-stricken single-parent family who are [...]
The Tate Modern extension will help transform the gallery into the world’s most cutting edge art space June 14, 2016 It’s been 14 years in the planning, it’s four years overdue, and it cost £260m. But the extension to the Tate Modern will finally throw it’s doors open to the public on Friday. So has the project, the recipient of the largest cultural fundraising effort ever seen in the UK, been worth the wait? Has [...]
The Deep Blue Sea review: Terrence Rattigan’s evocative portrayal of post-war Britain’s uncertain future June 9, 2016 National Theatre | ★★★★☆ This new production of Terrence Rattigan’s 1952 play evokes brilliantly both the uncertainty of the decade in which it was written and its universal insights about relationships. It opens with a bungled suicide: Hester Collyer (played by Helen McCrory), the estranged wife of a judge, has tried to gas herself but forgot [...]
Where to Invade Next review: Michael Moore back on form with film that questions US’s place in the world June 9, 2016 WHERE TO INVADE NEXT (15) | Dir. Michael Moore Michael Moore is back behind and in front of the camera for his first film in six years. The baseball capped antagonist visits several countries across Europe to see their approaches to issues including commerce, education, crime and healthcare, hoping to bring home ways to improve the [...]
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2016: blockbuster works by Marina Abramović, Gilbert and George and Eva & Adele overshadow the brilliant up-and-coming talent June 9, 2016 British sculptor Richard Wilson coordinates the 248th annual Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, the world’s largest open submission art show. It’s naturally a mammoth, exhaustive exhibition, taking up most of the RA’s main galleries, its walls crammed with images competing for attention. With more than a thousand pieces on display, how does one begin to digest [...]