Barber Shop Chronicles review: Inua Ellams’ razor sharp play draws profound connections between disparate men June 8, 2017 Set in half a dozen barber shops across two continents, Inua Ellam’s energetic, funny, banter-driven play seeks to join the dots between the experiences and opinions of black men in geographically disparate locations. And there are are plenty of dots to join in a play that ricochets between barber’s chairs as far apart as Johannesburg [...]
887 at the Barbican review: an unmissable evening for fans of Lepage’s brilliant brand of stagecraft June 2, 2017 French-Canadian auteur Robert Lepage returns to the Barbican with a solo show suffused from first second to last with his inimitable brand of heartwarming and absurd stagecraft. It's ostensibly a memoir about Lepage growing up in a working class tenement block in Quebec, with the building brought spectacularly to life by an incredible scale model, [...]
Zero Point at the Barbican review: a visually stunning but eventually tiresome mash-up of ballet and Japanese butoh June 2, 2017 For a while, Darren Johnston’s Zero Point is mesmerising: the bodies of a dozen or so Japanese dancers twist and warp as they contort through beams of light. Projections turn them into living blocks of static. At times they dance alone in the dark, your eyes only making out vague outlines of limbs. The audience, [...]
Into the Unknown at the Barbican: an anarchic journey through the world of science fiction June 2, 2017 Into the Unknown: A Journey through Science Fiction is a brilliantly anarchic history of the genre, succeeding both as a surface-level crowd-pleaser and a rigorous collection that will give fresh perspective to even the most ardent of nerds. The curation takes inspiration from the blockbuster exhibitions hosted by the V&A – from the moment you [...]
Champions League prize money 2017: Competition’s biggest earners Real Madrid and Juventus can win record prize in Cardiff June 2, 2017 This Saturday’s Champions League final between Juventus and Real Madrid pits two of the competition’s biggest-earners up against each other for the largest prize in its history. Juventus and Real Madrid are the highest and second-highest earning clubs from European competitions in the last five years, having been paid a respective €281m (£245.9m) and €277m [...]
Europa League prize money: Manchester United triumph more lucrative than their Champions League campaign May 25, 2017 Manchester United pocketed €14.7m (£12.7m) in prize money after winning the Europa League with a 2-0 win over Ajax in the final. The Premier League giants secured the final winner's prize of €6.5m to add to the €8.2m they'd already earned from European football governing body Uefa. Ajax, whose total wage bill is more than [...]
The Treatment review: A darkly satirical take on the movie business and its players May 5, 2017 The Treatment is a work of lofty, detached genius, reminiscent of the jostling intellectualism of Martin Amis – it's dense, complex, and utterly assured of its own brilliance. On face value, it’s about how the media – in this case, the film industry – edits and rewrites “truth” until it’s at best a distant cousin [...]
Sleepless review: A buzzing cast can’t rescue this low-rent Die Hard-alike May 5, 2017 Universally recognised as the greatest film about clambering around inside air vents ever made, Die Hard has inspired a long list of distinguished imitators, each of them about crawling around inside different kinds of building. Among them was 2011 French action film Nuit Blanche, about a bent cop who gets tangled up in a [...]
More than 70 MPs write open letter to BBC director general accusing the broadcaster of bias in its Brexit coverage March 21, 2017 A group of more than 70 MPs have published a letter to BBC director general Tony Hall attacking the broadcaster's Brexit coverage and warning that it could "undermine our efforts to carve out a new, global role for this country". "It particularly pains us to see how so much of the good economic news we've has [...]
Arsenal players want Arsene Wenger to sign a new contract, insists Gunners striker Olivier Giroud March 20, 2017 Arsenal striker Olivier Giroud has declared that he and his team-mates want Arsene Wenger to sign a new contract despite the team’s current alarming slump. Wenger’s future remains uncertain, with the Frenchman yet to reveal whether he intends to extend his 20-year stay in north London and club chiefs silent on an increasingly sensitive issue. [...]