‘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 ...
‘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 ...
‘A tale of two cities, and a story of two shows’ Something that has been flashing around in my skull for a couple of weeks refusing to fit neatly into a review format, but will now be expunged into a feature that will encompass two. I sit here, gazing into one larger screen, with a smaller one clamped to my ...
‘Prefect addition to the glowing riot of culture and glitter that is Pride’ Right, I’ll hold up my red-nailed hands. This review is shamefully late, but your reviewer is but a simple homosexual. A man hopefully a little unlike you, considering all the effort I put into rampant individuality-but a human nevertheless. Drinking, overindulging, struggling through the subsequent Pride bacchanal, ...
‘Show political films politically, and queer films queerly’ Like the vibrating water glass as the T. Rex thumps along in Jurassic Park, Pride unrolls its stomping boots, ready to rampage across the country. But does it have to be only frozen daiquiris, ageing pop stars, and endorsements from arms dealers? The Barbican (and I) say no! So, we, the artistic ...
‘Theatrical beauty’ If you don’t love Fiddler are you even a musical theatre fan? Perhaps you’re not, I do pride myself on the mixed-bag readers of this site. Yet I would argue regardless of your relationship to a step-ball-change, you should. Here’s a quick history lesson, get comfy children. Sholem Aleichem’s Yiddish language stories were carefully musicalised by writer Joseph ...
‘Luminous prose, weaving emotion and poetry’ When London feels like it’s having a hot grey bowl of diffused sunlight pressed down upon it, many flee to the AC-wafted basement of the Barbican. But what is clicking along down there pulls more of a crowd than just those on the hunt for a cool troglodyte refuge. Samuel Beckett returns to one ...
‘swelling and quietly mournful’ We the assembled shuffle in our finery, clothes dancing with embroidered jasmine and cherry blossom. We wait, breath baited for the glowing diamond of classical music: Lang Lang, unassuming in black with a shock of dark hair, pacing on stage to weave the piano magic we have heard so much about. Starting playing at 3 this ...
‘Introducing both Hrůša and Biss, an utterly blissful experience from start to finish.’ The evening has a sense of celebration, of newly minted and upcoming grandeur. Jakub Hrůša’s face is one we will gladly get used to as he takes up his post as musical director of the Royal Opera House. Tonight, he leads the BBC Symphony Orchestra, weaving fellow ...
‘Leaving a warm feeling’ As a confirmed Londoner, my experience of British wildlife is pretty drab, with flashes of bushy vermilion tails disappearing into my bins. Elsewhere on these storied Isles, I admit to wonder, but rarely is it the focus of the nature industry’s fisheyed lens. The BBC series, headed by our lord and saviour Sir Attenborough, has other ...