Oil at the Almeida is a challenging, ambitious play about the history of the oil business October 20, 2016 Ella Hickson’s hugely ambitious new play knits together a sprawling 160 year geo-political soap-opera with a touching – but never candy-coated – story about a mother and daughter. Almost unfathomably dense – six years in the writing – it follows the trajectory of the oil industry from its early days as an energy source of [...]
The Dresser at the Duke of York Theatre: a savage but loving tribute to ham theatre October 20, 2016 Dementia, Shakespeare and the Blitz collide gloriously in Ronald Harwood’s tragicomedy The Dresser. Set in wartime 1940s, it tells the tale of a deteriorating actor known as “Sir” and the theatre’s dresser, Norman, whose job it is to coax and bully the ailing grandee through his 227th rendition of King Lear. A reflection on Harwood's [...]
Rhythm Paradise Megamix is worth dusting off your 3DS for October 20, 2016 Videogames excel at wish fulfilment. For example: we’ve all dreamed of being a little rabbit travelling across an ocean by rhythmically jumping off the backs of a line of giant turtles, or being a floating bow and arrow shooting at ghosts, or a set of tweezers plucking hairs out of onions with faces drawn on [...]
The Apprentice 2016: Here’s what happened in last night’s episode October 14, 2016 In last night’s show candidates undertook a Lord Sugar favourite – the advertising task. But the outcome was less Mad Men, and more men bickering over a bus shelter advert. As usual for this challenge, the teams were given a product and a random adjective to use when marketing it. This year, they had to flog a pair [...]
Shopping and Fucking review: An explosively sensory play whose simple message is marred by the grotesque October 13, 2016 Sex and love are reduced to transactional commodities in the colourfully named Shopping and Fucking. In Mark Ravenhill’s controversial 90s play, some young folk have wilfully inducted themselves into a kind of sexual servitude. Rent boys leap out of cardboard packaging, and the stage is made to resemble the set of a gaudy shopping channel, [...]
Inferno review: Tom Hanks and his frantic legs investigate every tomb in the world in Dan Brown’s latest October 13, 2016 The latest in Dan Brown’s “what if your dad was Jason Bourne” series (following The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons) sees Tom Hanks being chased into roughly four thousand museums and churches by shady government cabals, each time escaping through secret catacombs and ancient tunnels that only he knows about. The twist in [...]
One Night in Miami at the Donmar Warehouse is a powerful account of the night Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali, with the help of Malcolm X October 13, 2016 “Why am I so pretty?” asked Cassius Clay – as he was called back in 1964 – on the night he defeated Sonny Liston to become the heavyweight champion of the world. Rather than hit the clubs, the 22-year-old spent the night eating vanilla ice cream in a hotel room with three superstars of the civil [...]
The Mountaintop play at Young Vic review: a searing, sexy, devastating imagining of Martin Luther King Jr’s last night October 13, 2016 Martin Luther King Jr is one of the towering figures of the 20th century. A champion of African-American culture and people, a religious leader, a community organiser, a crusader for civil rights, an exemplar of non-violent resistance, a model of masculinity, a moral touchstone, an icon, a martyr, a secular saint. A play about his [...]
Movie-length games: new titles you can play in under three hours, including That Dragon, Cancer and Virginia October 12, 2016 These movie-length games pack an emotional punch but won't lead to you getting a messy divorce because you neglected your family to farm credits to pay for a new colour of rocket launcher. That Dragon, Cancer Platform: iOS That Dragon, Cancer is less a game than an interactive art installation about a grieving family coming to [...]
Mafia III review: An evocative open-world shooter that’s only slightly more fun than a horse head in the bed October 12, 2016 Mafia III is the third instalment of a game franchise all about the mafia. This may sound a little glib, but here’s the thing: the implications of choosing a title as bold as ‘Mafia’ are significant. The word is laden with cliché. By using it, you’re invoking some of the most significant movies and novels [...]