Theatre review: Measure For Measure October 15, 2015 Young Vic | ★★★★☆ The Duke wades through a pile of blow up sex dolls, kicking plastic bodies out of his way. He pauses and says, “I love the people.” These inflatable citizens are no lewder than those who inhabit the city of Vienna in Shakespeare’s barmiest play. Often referred to as a “problem play”, [...]
Pan movie review: Director Joe Wright’s origin story employs all the tired cliches October 15, 2015 Cert PG | ★☆☆☆☆ When you were a child watching the Disney version of Peter Pan and you saw him fly through the window of the Darling household, all chilly in his tights and green tunic, did you ever think, “Who ARE you, Peter? Where do you COME from?” Me neither. No one cares. But for some [...]
Crimson Peak movie review: Guillermo del Toro’s gruesome gothic fairytale brings the art of darkness to the screen October 15, 2015 Cert 15 | ★★★★☆ Guillermo del Toro set out to create a haunted house drama to rival the very best in the genre – the Exorcists and the Shinings of the world. He succeeds with the haunted house part, but not so much the drama. Part gothic horror story, part ethereal fairytale, Crimson Peak follows Edith Cushing [...]
Teddy Ferrara review: a tangled play exploring homophobia, bullying and hate in the wake of tragedy October 15, 2015 Teddy Ferrara is a play that manages to say a very small amount about a great many things. It’s set around an American campus on which a dizzyingly comprehensive catalogue of LGBT issues are being tackled in the wake of a student suicide. To unpack, Christopher Shinn’s play explores homophobia in both its standard and [...]
Art review: Frank Auerbach, Tate Britain October 8, 2015 Walking through Frank Auerbach’s retrospective at Tate Britain is rather like flicking through a family photo album. It’s full of personal subjects that change incrementally over decades, of self-portraits, friends, his wife Julia and Mornington Crescent, where his studio has been since 1954. There’s also another reason to get up close and personal with [...]
Goya: The Portraits explores the legendarily dark artist’s less nightmarish output October 8, 2015 GOYA: THE PORTRAITS NATIONAL GALLERY RATING ★★★★☆ Goya is perhaps best known for his scary painting of a giant naked fella munching down on a little man, voraciously chomping his arm and head off with the wide-eyed expression of somebody who’s just remembered he left the patio door unlocked. It’s spooky business round Goya’s house, [...]
Suffragette movie review: Meryl Streep and Carey Mulligan star in this worthy tribute October 8, 2015 Cert 12A | ★★★★☆ “If we give women the vote, where will it end?” says a disgruntled Cabinet minister in Suffragette. “They’ll be wanting to be Members of Parliament next.” Well, here we are, not quite at the end, but closer to it than we were in 1912, when a faction of the women’s suffrage [...]
Medea, Almeida Theatre review: This tragedy will hit home, even if Euripides is all Greek to you October 8, 2015 The Almeida has saved the fiercest play in its ambitious Greek season for last. Medea – widely considered a proto-feminist text – was never going to be the hardest tragedy to drag into the 21st century. Even so, playwright Rachel Cusk’s modern re-telling is uncomfortably familiar. Her version of the titular Medea is a playwright [...]
Sicario movie review: Emily Blunt is embroiled in a brutally violent cartel drug war in this cloak and dagger thriller October 8, 2015 Cert 15 | ★★★★☆ Benicio Del Toro rocks some seriously distracting camel-toe in one harrowing scene, but that’s only the third or fourth most visceral image in Sicario. It’s a violent drug cartel thriller in which Emily Blunt plays Kate Macer, a steely FBI door-kicker who finds herself drafted into a highly secretive, off-the-books government [...]
The Walk movie review: Joseph Gordon-Levitt flies high in this vertigo-inducing IMAX 3D spectacle October 2, 2015 Cert PG | ★★★★☆ Joseph Gordon-Levitt puts on a wig and smiles enigmatically in this film about Phillipe Petit, the Frenchman who stunned onlookers and the world by walking a wire between New York’s Twin Towers in 1974. Director Robert Zemeckis tells the story of Petit’s training, and the plan that saw him and a [...]