New homes: Here are the new developments going on sale in London this week October 29, 2018 New developments on the market this week Dalmeny Avenue, Islington From £480,000 Brand new one, two and three bedroom apartments are on sale in Islington, with a private balcony or patio for each home. Housebuilder Southern Spaces has fitted all kitchens with SMEG appliances, ample power points and the flats are also Sky + enabled. [...]
How much of Route 66 can you see in one weekend? We head to Chicago to find out… October 29, 2018 Route 66, America’s most legendary highway, is a month-long mission for many who attempt to drive the whole thing. It starts in downtown Chicago and ends 2,448 miles later in front of the Santa Monica Pier in Los Angeles. But what if you only have a weekend to Get Your Kicks on Route 66? With [...]
A Very Very Very Dark Matter review: Martin McDonagh’s twisted Han Christian Andersen biography is a weird blunder October 26, 2018 There’s lots to love about Martin McDonagh, author of such universally acclaimed works as In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths, The Pillowman, and lately the Oscar-nominated Three Billboards. His newest play, A Very Very Very Dark Matter, has all the hallmarks of his weirder writing. It’s a twisted, violent and deeply ironic reimagining of the life of [...]
Good Grief, Charlie Brown! at Somerset House review: A fantasyland for Peanuts fans October 26, 2018 Until March 2019 If you didn’t grow up reading Charles M Schulz’ cartoon strips, you might wonder what all the fuss is about. Isn’t it just a cartoon strip about an anthropomorphised dog designed to sell pencil cases? But despite the Schulz estate’s willingness to cash in on the Snoopy IP, Peanuts is something entirely [...]
The Wild Duck at the Almeida: Ibsen’s classic play has been carved up for this deconstructivist test of endurance October 26, 2018 Until 1 December There have been a spate of productions recently that take a classic play, lift up the hood, and have a real rummage around with the nuts and bolts. There was othellomacbeth at the Lyric, which spliced together the titular plays, casting the female victims of the former as the witches in the [...]
Edward Burne-Jones at the Tate Britain review: A load of daft paintings but some first-class curation October 26, 2018 Until Feb 2019 It’s easy to be sniffy about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a bunch of bohemian Victorians obsessed with mythology and romanticism, who spent their days painting big, silly pictures of King Arthur and sleeping with each other’s wives. They claim their highly decorative works harked back to the days before art became formalist and [...]
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey review: Ubisoft’s vast Greek sandbox can’t live up to its spectacular setting October 25, 2018 Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed series has been around since 2007, drawing in audiences with its finely tuned mix of stealth, parkour, and open-world adventure, and sending them on a murdery tour through history. Previous games in the series have explored time periods as diverse as the Italian Renaissance, Victorian London, and everyone’s favourite part of history: [...]
Have trainers, will travel: Nothing beats running when you need to get to know a city October 24, 2018 On Friday morning, somewhere along the windswept shore of Lake Ontario, I will pass a significant and, many will say, rather self-obsessed milestone. If all goes to plan I will run a minimum of five kilometres through Toronto, allowing me to add Canada to the list of countries I’ve run in, bringing the total up [...]
Measure For Measure: This buy-one-get-one-free Shakespeare is a sadly failed experiment October 23, 2018 Until 1 Dec It’s a strange coincidence that London last week saw the debut of two major Shakespeare productions in which two plays are staged back to back. In othellomacbeth at the Lyric Hammersmith, the Moor of Venice segued into the Scottish play, with the female victims of the first transformed into the preternaturally powerful [...]
The Inheritance at the Noel Coward Theatre: A virtuoso piece of theatre that ranks among the modern greats October 23, 2018 Until 19 Jan The Inheritance, set in New York’s gay community a generation on from the Aids epidemic, draws natural, inevitable comparisons to Angels in America. And while Matthew Lopez’s two-part, seven-hour epic is certainly worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as that superlative play, to think of it as merely a kind-of [...]