Hadestown at the National Theatre review: Great tunes help mask a modern musical that doesn’t quite click November 16, 2018 Hadestown is the latest breakout musical to transfer from Broadway to London, with a run at the National Theatre almost certain to be followed by a sold-out stint on the West End. It’s a modern, stylised retelling of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, the original star-crossed lovers who even death couldn’t separate. After meeting [...]
Suspiria review: Call Me By Your Name director’s remake of Dario Argento classic is a wild ride November 16, 2018 Dario Argento’s horror masterpiece Suspiria shuns traditional storytelling. The absurdist fairy-tale about a young girl enrolling at a ballet school run by witches takes place in an hermetically sealed doll’s house filled with surreal nightmares. Gaudy, acid-trip visuals and layer upon layer of baroque texture create a sense of claustrophobic delirium that’s been aped – [...]
Pinter Three and Four review: The Harold Pinter Theatre continues its excellent run of the eponymous playwright’s short works November 16, 2018 The Harold Pinter Theatre continues its season of one-act plays written by its namesake with another six hours of rarely-performed material that can – nay, should – be viewed in a single, mammoth sitting. Pinter Three – there will be a total of seven productions, running through to next year – is the most challenging [...]
Dead In A Week (Or Your Money Back) review: A jokeless black comedy that fails to spin comedy from suicide November 15, 2018 Like cancer, terrorism, and Theresa May’s inbox, there’s not much fun to be found in suicide. But that’s not to say there’s no comedy in it. Chris Morris spun satirical gold out of slapstick jihadists in Three Lions, and life-affirming cancer caper 50/50 deftly showed the funnier side of a terminal illness. But black comedy [...]
New iPad Pro 12.9 inch review: The best tablet money can buy but can it replace your laptop? November 15, 2018 I’ve been writing about iPads for years, and each iteration comes with the promise that this is the one that will replace your laptop or desktop PC. And it’s always been true… for a small number of people. The iPad has been the only connected device my mother has used since she picked one up [...]
Why edgy art, craft gin and spa treatments are all part of the modern hairdressing experience November 14, 2018 The digital age has come for many traditional industries over the past few years, from taxi driving to hotels. But one trade that won’t be disappearing with the tap of an app is hairdressing. Anyone who has seen that video of the Boston Dynamics robot falling over while stacking boxes will know that androids aren’t [...]
Homes Future at the Design Museum is a mad, retrofuturist vision of how designers of the past thought the future might look November 14, 2018 That the British are obsessed with our homes is a truism. Few other nations obsess quite so much about daily fluctuations in house prices, or attach quite so much cultural and social cachet to the idea of home ownership. The tale of modern British history is in large part the tale of our relationship with [...]
The Weekly Grill: Mark Lloyd of Notting Hill restaurant Pomona’s on his best ever meal and his gran’s jam collection November 14, 2018 Who are you and what do you do? I am a cook who loves to travel, write, learn the ‘old ways’, forage for wild food and spend as much time outdoors as possible. I’m also the new executive chef at Pomona’s, a neighbourhood restaurant in Notting Hill. Tell us about your new menu It’s all [...]
Our resident chef Mark Hix on how to to get the most out of your pheasant November 14, 2018 Regular readers will have been following my series on zero-waste shooting, and over the last few weeks I’ve really started to experiment with my feathery harvest. There are too many boring pheasant recipes out there for my liking, worst of all the dreaded roast pheasant. My advice is do anything except roast it: they tend [...]
DEBATE: With calls to ban milkshakes, is an obsession with ‘public health’ harmful to our personal wellbeing? November 14, 2018 With calls to ban milkshakes, is an obsession with ‘public health’ harmful to our personal wellbeing? Daniel Pryor, head of programmes at the Adam Smith Institute, says YES. Should we ban sugar, spice, and all things nice? The lobby group Action On Sugar thinks so. Its advocates aren’t content to simply jail purveyors of so-called “freakshakes” [...]