Antony Gormley at the Royal Academy: An existential crisis has never felt so invigorating September 23, 2019 This giant Antony Gormley retrospective feels like the artist’s unified theory of everything. The works are drawn from four decades of output, but feel so indelibly fused with the famous halls of the Royal Academy you can barely imagine them elsewhere. Gormley bends and shapes the gallery to his will like a potter at a [...]
Peckham judged the world’s eleventh coolest neighbourhood September 18, 2019 “This time next year we’ll be in the top ten” Peckham has been named the world’s eleventh coolest neighbourhood in the 2019 Time Out Index. The south London hotspot may still be more globally famous for the antics of Del Boy and Rodney but a new generation of chefs, baristas and bartenders are turning it [...]
Downton Abbey film review: If you’re a fan of period dramas, this may be your Avengers September 13, 2019 Four years on from the final episode, Downton Abbey returns for more nostalgia and vicarious luxury. It’s 1927, and the reason for our return is the arrival of King George V and Queen Mary to the big house. This impending brush with royalty causes no end of chaos among the Downton residents, with the upstairs [...]
A Very Expensive Poison at the Old Vic review: A rare breed of play from the creator of Enron September 13, 2019 Part love story, part police procedural, part political satire, A Very Expensive Poison gleefully defies categorisation. Recounting the final days of Russian dissident Alexander Litvenenko, it takes a dark and complex subject and turns it into an utterly engrossing, formally experimental romp that wears its close to three hour run-time with surprising alacrity. Loosely based [...]
William Blake at Tate Britain review: A trip into the mind of a true revolutionary artist September 13, 2019 William Blake isn’t just an artist, he’s a figure almost as mythical as those he committed to paper, a part of the pop culture lexicon whose influence extends far beyond the works he left behind. He was famously plagued by phantasms: strange, demonic creatures that inspired his most iconic works. They appeared to him throughout [...]
Blair Witch game review: Bloober Team over-stretches with this ambitious but flawed tale September 11, 2019 There are moments in Blair Witch that live up to the promise of the source material, recreating the sense of suffocating panic that comes from being lost and alone. It’s an area in which Polish games developer Bloober Team has form: in psychological horror Layers of Fear, doors would flicker out of existence when you [...]
It Chapter 2 film review: Stephen King adaptation limps over the line September 6, 2019 Pennywise the dreadful clown is brilliant as a twisted metaphor for our childhood fears. He is less brilliant as a literal space alien who can only be defeated through some arcane Native American ritual. Alas, that’s where Stephen King’s bulging 1,200-page novel ends up. It proved to be the undoing of the 1990 TV mini-series, [...]
Hansard at the National Theatre play review: Political drama is a blistering debut September 6, 2019 George Osborne was in the audience for this blistering political drama by debut playwright Simon Woods, no doubt taking some credit for lines such as: “It’s so easy to mistake an expensive education for a genuine understanding of the world”. Hansard – the title taken from the verbatim record of everything said in Parliament – [...]
Control game review: Alan Wake developer perfects its formula with this sci-fi blockbuster September 5, 2019 When David Lynch and Mark Frost came up with the pitch for Twin Peaks, they ignored the prevailing wisdom for creating a TV show. First they mapped out the town itself – the sheriff’s station, the high school, the woods – then they imagined the kind of people who might live there. The murder mystery [...]
Appropriate at Donmar Warehouse review: An expert study of sibling rivalry August 30, 2019 There’s something special about an argument between siblings. No other type of altercation conjures up that same breed of no-holds-barred viciousness, which has the ability to transform even the most composed of us into a ill-tempered child as soon as the first insult is hurled. This is the object of study in Appropriate, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ play [...]