By: Steve Dinneen

Life&Style Editor I'm the editor of City A.M. The Magazine, and editor of the daily newspaper's Life&Style section. We cover food, going out, art, technology and travel.

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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 [...]
Going off grid: How I spent a week living in an ‘apocalypse dome’

May 30, 2017

The more we learn about the effects of social media on the human psyche, the worse it seems to get. The planet is hooked on dopamine squirts triggered by clever algorithms developed by the world’s finest minds, for the sole purpose of keeping us scrolling. And scrolling, and scrolling. We’re connected to thousands of other humans from the second we wake to the [...]
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 [...]
Get Out film review: A brilliant scary movie where casual racism is the unseen terror

March 16, 2017

In this Stepford Wives-style horror the unseen terror is casual racism and the insidious force is cultural whitewashing. And while that premise could easily descend into a liberal jumble of earnest back-slapping, Get Out is smart enough to balance its message with a wicked comic streak and some serious horror nous. It follows a young [...]
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the Harold Pinter Theatre review: Imelda Staunton is sublime in this vicious, heartbreaking drama

March 16, 2017

Imelda Staunton is the furiously palpitating heart of this intoxicating – not to mention intoxicated – production of Edward Albee’s brilliant treatise on mid-life alcoholism. Often portrayed as a seductive Mrs Robinson figure, Staunton’s Martha is sexuality’s terrifying sunset, refusing to go gentle into that good night. Her conquest of the young academic Nick is [...]
Nier: Automata review: a thrilling, endearing, unhinged sequel to the cult classic from Yoko Taro

March 15, 2017

While big-budget western game franchises often stand accused of design-by-focus-group, their Japanese counterparts are still dominated by mercurial auteurs with singular – and often bizarre – visions. Legendary figures such as Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto, Dark Souls’ Hidetaka Miyazaki, Metal Gear Solid’s Hideo Kojima and Silent Hill’s Keiichiro Toyama are inextricably linked with the blockbuster [...]
Limehouse at Donmar review: SDP drama is an invigorating take-down of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour

March 10, 2017

"The Labour Party is fucked” is the axiomatic opening line of Steve Waters’ rousing new play. The year is 1981 and the location is the Limehouse kitchen in which the so-called “gang of four” Labour big beasts plotted the formation of the breakaway SDP. The parallels with Jeremy Corbyn’s party are dishearteningly clear. As now, [...]
Ugly Lies the Bone at the National Theatre review: War vet VR drama a rare flop for the NT

March 3, 2017

A perfect storm of poor acting, casting, script and execution beats all life from this under-powered story about a soldier dealing with the mental and physical effects of war. Jess returns home horribly scarred and in chronic pain, barely able to move her twisted body. In a bid to regain her lost freedom she embarks on a form [...]

Drone strikes and noise disputes: The soaring risks of the global data centre boom

Kylian Mbappe receives shares in On as he jumps ship from Nike deal

XPeng G6: The Electric SUV with Business Appeal

By: Steve Dinneen

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