‘Joyful ritualistic salutation’ The nighttime economy, not just sounding like something straight from a Terry Pratchett novel, is a vital vein in what makes the UK unique. We lament the loss of pubs and the communities they provided, but the more than 800 late‑night venues that have closed since 2020 seem to have inspired far fewer tears. Somebody had to ...

“Talented, if slightly drunk seeming dancers” I braved torrential rain, compounded by a particularly violent and semi-hallucinogenic cold, plus a last-minute venue change, all to eventually arrive at Sadler’s Wells East for a thoroughly perplexing evening. Hours before, the owner of The Peacock’s building, LSE, informed the renters (Sadler’s Wells) that “unavoidable building works” (we wonder weather-related?) required the theatre ...

“Two performers at the very pinnacle of their game” “Encore” is the better-bred version of screeching “one more song” while drunk at a concert. Yet to be treated by the “greatest living string player” Maxim Vengerov and the piano spectacular Polina Osetinskaya to four of them seems to be sheer gluttony. It’s a chance to throw a curveball, a break ...

“I’m ready to weep” BBC Symphony Orchestra At the tail end of the Barbican’s Fragile Earth season, we are presented with an idealised vision of America’s past and a stark warning about its (and the world’s) future if the climate crisis is not averted. Aaron Copland wrote three ballets between 1938 and 1944. The final one was for the modern ...

‘A finely tuned watch of a show’ I have an odd relationship with both matrimony and immersive theatre-the two cornerstones of Dante or Die’s recent London premiere I Do. I both love and hate immersive theatre and am currently engaged but unmarried, so make of that what you will. If my fiancé is reading this (unlikely), that was a cheap ...

‘Eventual pleasure singularity’ We were only one hour into the eight-plus we had planned at the Barbican Sex Festival and had already hit a roadblock. Wandering around the stained and uncomfortably beautiful clothes of the exhibition Dirty Looks, and coming face to face with a gigantic photograph of a trussed-up vagina (by Michaela Stark), the Bonnie to my Clyde turned ...

‘Who? What? When? Why?’ Voilà! Festival ships over a tale of sisterhood, sacrifice and gentrification, in the shifting patter of Greek from Athens to London. The social drama should translate fairly easily, considering the common ground and universal themes. Konstantinos Avramis and his theatre company Dispositif. are a nomadic, experimental outfit, mixing physical and ritualistic theatre to deliver a political ...

‘More man than Pan’ So, Christmas is undeniably here, isn’t it? Halloween held it off for half a month, and then the igniting of an alleged 16th-century traitor slowed it some more. But those sleigh bells were always tingling through the month of October, rather menacingly in the background. Of course, it is the Barbican that confirms it. J.M. Barrie’s ...

‘Can I ever forgive Fisher?’ Have you ever been swimming with eels? A nightmare for some, a strange fascination for my friend and me. We spent last night sampling treats and tipples in the “Buckingham Palace of pie shops”. The year is 1862: the Cooke family built a temple to pies and eels just down from the newly built railway ...

‘Claustrophobic tables, admirable agility and warmth’ A forgotten London is glimpsed as you dip away from Liverpool Street and into the warren of snaking streets. Rain and a light fog add to the medievalism, although our destination is far from archaic. Or perhaps it is, in this fast-moving world of London restaurants? In 2014, Harneet Baweja and his wife Devina ...