A Clever Woman review: A small film that asks big questions April 21, 2023 The Isle of Wight is the unlikely setting for an emotional goodbye in independent British drama A Clever Woman. Josie Lawrence and Tanya Myers play Dot and Phoebe, sisters who are both performance artists and arriving at the house of their recently deceased mother. Charged with clearing the place, memories begin to flood the rooms, [...]
Missing: Storm Reid stars in chilling look at the power of internet April 21, 2023 As smart phones have become a predominant part of our lives, Hollywood has attempted to make screen time cinematic. A variation of the found footage style of the late 90s, films like 2014’s Unfriended and 2018’s Searching tell a story through laptop and phone screens. The trend continues with Missing, a standalone sequel to Searching, [...]
Innocence at ROH: School shooting opera is brutal but brilliant April 20, 2023 Opera, that most dramatic of art forms, has routinely attracted the most tragic of narratives. Torture, tyranny, poverty: there is an opera for every personal and political hardship, and now, with Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence, there’s an opera for the most modern of tragedies, a school shooting. Innocence begins at the wedding of Stela and Tuomas, [...]
Wagatha Christie writer: ‘Vardy and Rooney are both incredibly clever’ April 20, 2023 Vardy v Rooney writer Liv Hennessy on the two iconic women behind Wagatha Christie, and the camp, maximalist British court system YOU’VE TWEAKED THE PLAY TO LEAVE A QUESTION OVER WHO WON. WHY?We don’t exactly leave the play on a question mark, as we have the judge’s verdict at the end! But yes, we definitely [...]
Mondrian and af Kilnt at the Tate Modern: Myriad mystical musings April 20, 2023 What a strange time it must have been to have lived through the discovery of radio waves and x-rays and radiation, to one day be told that an invisible, inscrutable world exists alongside the one you know, hitherto unnoticed, exerting a powerful, unknowable influence. The late 1800s were a time when spirituality and science seemed [...]
Doctor Who reveals new look as first drag queen villain revealed April 20, 2023 Doctor Who’s first drag queen villain has been revealed in new teaser photos published by the BBC. Jinkx Monsoon, the winner of the 5th series of Drag Race was announced earlier this month to be joining the 14th series of the science-fiction show. It’s not yet clear what role Jinkx will play, although early photos [...]
NDT Broadgate: £40m generated for UK economy by ‘revolutionary’ Canada arts project April 19, 2023 A piece of Canada land offered for free to 8,800 independent artists for twelve months has generated £40m in revenue for the UK economy. The NDT Broadgate initiative ran for twelve months in 2021 and 2022, providing rehearsal spaces, writing rooms, co-working areas, recording booths, studios and workshops to the creative community free [...]
Wagatha Christie, Ambassador’s Theatre, review: Can we put this (bad) joke to bed? April 18, 2023 Wagatha Christie was a great joke. The idea of Colleen Rooney being a modern day detective, the type Agatha Christie could have penned, is obviously hilarious. But can we end this joke now? Or I’ll call the real detectives in. In case you’ve been hiding in Miss Marple’s beehive for the past three years, this [...]
Graham Linehan, AKA Glinner, banned from Twitter… Again April 16, 2023 Graham Linehan, the creator of Father Ted now best known for his opposition to trans rights, has been banned from Twitter… Again. Linehan’s latest ban was for joking about killing protestors at a controversial women’s rights activist event in Belfast called Let Women Speak, although he had already received warnings from the platform about his [...]
Private Lives, Donmar Warehouse, review: Deliciously camp, everso restrained April 15, 2023 Private Lives review and star rating: ★★★ It’s been fifty years since the death of Noël Coward, the eminent British satirist who wrote frothy, seemingly throwaway comedic lines threaded with darkness and existential dread. Coward’s a complicated one: the style of his plays, and often, the language, can feel almost impossibly out of date, but his [...]