L’Etoile at the Royal Opera House review: Chris Addison stars in this daft but enjoyable production February 4, 2016 Royal Opera House | ★★★★☆ This is the first time the Royal Opera House has staged Emmanuel Chambrier’s opéra bouffe L’Etoile, and it’s clear the production team has gone to great lengths to make it accessible, while acknowledging that the story is anything but. It’s essentially a hyperactive farce, where practically everyone is in disguise [...]
Iphigenia in Splott at the National Theatre review: A pitch perfect performance from Sophie Melville February 4, 2016 Temporary Theatre, National Theatre | ★★★★★ In Ancient Greece, Iphigenia was sacrificed by her father, King Agamemnon, to conjure up a wind so his ships could sail to Troy. Despite the passing of millennia, she’s still a lamb to the slaughter in this new play set on the streets of modern day Splott in Cardiff. Hooded [...]
Goosebumps review: A mediocre attempt to cash in on the 90s horror series February 4, 2016 Dir. Rob Letterman | ★★☆☆☆ If you grew up in the 90s, the pseudonym RL Stine will conjure images of creepy critters including the egg monsters from Mars and Grool, a toothy sponge who lives under the sink. Goosebumps books sold over 350m copies in their heyday, but that was way back in 1997. Which begs [...]
Billy Zane talks Zoolander 2, the future of Hollywood and having the ghosts of Picasso and Hemingway hanging over him February 4, 2016 Billy Zane is drawing me a diagram of his Theory of Everything. He’s on his fourth draft and a little pile of crumpled sheets of paper are piling up beside his Bloody Mary. It’s a kind of business model for the creative industries, a way to bring together media, advertising, luxury goods and philanthropy, dotted [...]
Oscar Wilde’s grandson Merlin Holland on Dorian Gray, censorship and posthumous pardons February 3, 2016 After years in the back room, Oscar has finally found his way onto the Oxford English syllabus,” says Merlin Holland, with both pride and indignation. Most of us in this noisy cafe off Carnaby Street wouldn’t be on first name terms with Oscar Wilde, but as his only living grandson and the sole executor of [...]
Brace yourselves, City folk, pick-up artist Daryush “Roosh” Valizadeh is coming to town February 2, 2016 Jilted lovers and misogynists often find February’s romantic festivities hard to swallow, so to keep solidarity up they’re meeting at the Royal Exchange this weekend. Daryush “Roosh” Valizadeh, a self-proclaimed “pick-up artist” who was famously interviewed by the BBC over the Men’s Rights Movement and his attempts to teach blokes to chat to womenfolk, is organising [...]
Yen at the Royal Court review: A candid exploration of teenage poverty, sexuality and neglect January 28, 2016 Royal Court | ★★★★☆ In the new post-Benefits Street dispensation, references to “poverty porn” have become commonplace. Initially this meant a sort of guilty pleasure at watching the pitiful antics of a presumably scrounging underclass, but the term has become ever less metaphorical. Earlier this month social commentators flaunted their sincerest outrage at popular trouser-free [...]
Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse at the Royal Academy review January 28, 2016 Royal Academy | ★★★★★ At the turn of the century the concept of the modern garden – a tended, cultivated individual plot to be enjoyed as a respite from urban life – increased in popularity throughout Europe and the US, with fervent intellectual interest in botany. The Royal Academy captures the artistic reaction to this in [...]
Herons at the Lyric Hammersmith review: a soaked stage sets the scene for this brutal play January 28, 2016 Lyric Hammersmith | ★★★★☆ It’s testament to Billy Matthews’ excellent performance in Herons that, just a few minutes into the play, I wanted to clamber up on to the flooded stage and punch his character in the face. He plays Scott, a feral, hateful teen who wages a warped campaign of bullying and wild aggression against [...]
Spotlight film review: a real-life story that’s as slow and forceful as a steamroller January 28, 2016 15 | Dir. Tom McCarthy | ★★★★☆ The Da Vinci Code was ridiculed for the moment Tom Hanks cried, “I need to get to a library. Fast!” In Spotlight, a trip to the library is a genuinely exciting proposition. It’s a nuts-and-bolts examination of the Boston Globe’s exposé of systematic child abuse within the Catholic [...]