Rotterdam at Trafalgar Studios review: A touching and laugh-out-loud comedy about being transgender August 4, 2016 “Rotterdam is anywhere/anywhere alone” sang The Beautiful South back in the days of Britpop. Anywhere is right: the Dutch port city acts not only as a setting for this West End transfer, but also as a metaphor for transition, a halfway house where no one feels they truly belong. The story follows three British expats [...]
Exposure review: A cringe-inducing musical so awful it ascends like some horrible bird into a delirious realm of brilliant, unintentional comedy August 4, 2016 Like Chekhov’s prophetic gun above the mantle, any character who proudly shows off an ultrasound of their unborn son guarantees their own near-immediate demise. In this wonderfully terrible musical, a photographer barely has the foetal-snap out of his pocket before he’s bitten to death by snakes. His already grieving, prenatal son then explodes from rear [...]
Suicide Squad movie review: Jared Leto’s strong Joker game can’t save a film that’s too fixated on Margot Robbie’s behind August 2, 2016 There are lots of reasons to dislike Suicide Squad. It shamelessly fetishises guns, for instance, which in the current climate feels pretty distasteful. There are guns emblazoned with “love” and “hate”, guns made out of gold, guns that fly through the air in slow motion. It shamelessly objectifies women, particularly Margot Robbie and more particularly [...]
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child review at the Palace Theatre: A sappy script but possibly one of the best staged plays the West End has ever seen July 28, 2016 JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series stood apart from the canon of children’s literature by allowing its characters to grow up. Peter Pan famously never aged and Just William was 11-years-old for about 50 years. Harry, Ron and Hermione, on the other hand, were in their late 30s by the end of the seventh book, sending [...]
Now We Are Here at the Young Vic gets to the human stories behind the refugee crisis July 28, 2016 This latest play in the Young Vic’s refugee season was written by refugees themselves, in collaboration with local writers. In the first half, three actors take it in turns to tell the stories of Desmond, Mir and Michael (played with real charm by Gary Beadle, Manish Gandhi and Jonathan Livingstone). They sit on chairs and [...]
The Plough and the Stars at National Theatre’s Lyttelton: an emotional haymaker about the 1916 Easter Rising July 28, 2016 There’s a tried and tested formula to Sean O’Casey’s 1926 play The Plough and the Stars: he makes us care for his cast of quick-talking, hard-drinking Irish men and women, and then he makes us watch as their lives fall irrevocably apart. The sense of inevitability doesn’t make it any easier. The play caused riots [...]
Jason Bourne review: Matt Damon returns to the Paul Greengrass-directed franchise, but finds himself in surprisingly shallow waters July 27, 2016 Paul Greengrass returns to direct this fourth instalment of the Bourne franchise, with a plot cobbled thinly together from the previous three. Bourne (Matt Damon) is brought back from the cold when villainous Agency head honcho Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones) starts a covert intelligence program – Ironhand – operating beyond the radar of the [...]
Finding Dory review: Finding Nemo sequel starring Ellen DeGeneres is another glorious Pixar adventure that avoids feeling like a cash-in July 27, 2016 The title "Finding Dory" evokes a bunch of franchise-happy studio execs sitting around, looking at financial statements and wondering how to come up with a sequel given that Nemo is no longer missing. The film's laboured opening scenes do little to dissipate this odour of a cash-in: we meet young Dory (Sloane Murray), being taught [...]
The Fix review: A musical take on US politics that’s almost as entertaining as the real thing July 21, 2016 The long awaited splicing of House of Cards and hyper-camp musical theatre, The Fix is a boisterous show about one family’s desperate attempts to lay claim to the highest and most oval-shaped office in the land. When presidential hopeful Reed Chandler corks it during a scandalous act of extramarital sex-doing, the weight of his political [...]
11 things to do in London this weekend, including watching Usain Bolt, geeking out to Star Trek and enjoying William Eggleston’s photographs July 21, 2016 1. Go and see some filthy cabaret at the Hippodrome Cabaret, Hippodrome, Saturday, 19.30, from £15-£50 Inspired by 1930s Parisian cabaret but also swiping at the mainstream success of Cirque du Soleil, this is a sassy combination of smut and sparkle. 2. Remember your childhood watching The BFG Film, IMAX Waterloo, Saturday, 11.15, £20 A saccharine-sweet [...]