Theatre review: How To Hold Your Breath at the Royal Court February 13, 2015 Royal Court | ★★☆☆☆ Zinnie Harris’ How To Hold Your Breath begins with an intimate encounter. A man is alarmed to find the stranger he slept with isn’t a prostitute. She’s offended by his attempt to pay. It’s a zippy opening that makes the rest of the play feel leaden. The action shifts uncomfortably [...]
Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends – art review February 13, 2015 National Portrait Gallery: ★★★★★ Despite enjoying a successful career as a portraitist in the late 1800s, John Singer Sargent was overtaken by the lurch toward abstraction that took place in the subsequent century. His luscious, august paintings of society figures seemed to pull in the opposite direction to those throwing off the figurative constraints of [...]
Film review: Love is Strange is a backwards romance with heart February 12, 2015 Cert 15 | ★★★★☆ Traditional love stories end with a wedding. Love is Strange flips fairy-tale romance on its head, beginning with a marriage and following it up with a sweet, sad separation. Ben (John Lithgow) and George (Alfred Molina) have been together for 39 years, and when a law change in New York [...]
Something for half term February 12, 2015 SOLVE: MUSIC OF FIRE This event features a tour beneath the famous Globe Theatre, where you will encounter mysterious magicians and bizarre puppets who will give you clues about how you can stop the Globe burning down. It culminates with a show at the theatre itself. Ages 6 to 11, 16-20 Feb, shakespearesglobe.com LOL: MINI [...]
Film review: Shaun the Sheep February 6, 2015 Cert U | ★★★★☆ When the farmer in charge of Shaun’s farm goes AWOL, the herd set off on a daring adventure into the world of human beings to find him. At times it’s hard to keep track of which sheep is which, but that doesn’t matter – Aardman’s plasticine world is lit up with an [...]
Art review: Marlene Dumas at Tate Modern February 6, 2015 Tate Modern | ★★★★★ Working from photographs, South African figurative painter Marlene Dumas doesn’t represent life, she gives it. Indeed, it’s tempting to see her paintbrush as a defibrillator, jolting dead images to life. But no-one is being raised here; she doesn’t resuscitate her subjects so much as give them an afterlife, investing the long [...]
Theatre review: Di and Viv and Rose February 6, 2015 Vaudeville Theatre | ★★★☆☆ The programme for the Vaudeville Theatre’s production of Di and Viv and Rose features two pages of anecdotes from a wide range of women, from doctors to preachers, MPs to celebrities, about how they met their best friends. Infusing them all is a sense of effortlessness, of falling into friendships that [...]
Film review: Selma depicts a pivotal moment in Martin Luther King’s life February 6, 2015 Cert 15 | ★★★★☆ Selma does what Lincoln did so successfully and what Long Walk to Freedom made the mistake of not doing – instead of compressing a great life into two small hours, Ava DuVernay’s Martin Luther King biopic depicts a pivotal fragment of that life, one in which the greatness of the whole [...]
Film review: Jupiter Ascending leaves plenty of space for improvement February 5, 2015 Cert 12a | ★☆☆☆☆ Sean Bean probably resisted at first. I picture bitter arguments, impassioned pleas, point-blank refusals. Contracts will have been brought out, threats made against the future of his career, the safety of his family. Eventually he capitulated, agreeing to read the line. “Bees are genetically programmed to recognise royalty.” Jupiter Ascending’s [...]
Something for the weekend February 5, 2015 WATCH SIX NATIONS AT THE FALTERING FULLBACK The Six Nations Championships gets underway tonight and everyone knows watching rugby is as much about the craic as it is about the game. If you’re after somewhere lively to watch Wales vs England you could do much worse than Finsbury Park’s Faltering Fullback. Visit thefullback.co.uk BOW TO [...]