At Home He Feels Like A Tourist

Month: March 2018

  • Napoleon Disrobed at the Arcola Theatre review ****

    Napoleon Disrobed Arcola Theatre, 7th March 2018 Here is JL David’s preposterously heroic painting of Napoleon Bonaparte Crossing the Alps. The Napoleon of Simon Ley’s alternative history The Death of Napoleon, is of a somewhat different hue. Ley’s novella, his real name was Pierre Ryckmans and he was a Belgian…

  • Black Panther film review ****

    Black Panther, 6th March 2018 The Tourist fancies himself as some kind of high culture dandy so he is normally dubious about fantasy, superhero, action genre films and the like. No plot. no characterisation, lazy, frequently daft, stultifyingly dull effects. There are exceptions if the ideas and treatments warrant it,…

  • Modigliani at Tate Modern review ***

    Modigliani Tate Modern, 5th March 2018 One Modigliani nude or one Modigliani portrait is a thing of not inconsiderable beauty. Less so, one hundred, or what feels like hundreds. The elongated bodies, the mask-like faces, the blank, almond-shaped eyes. Look beyond the USP’s though and the influences, from which Modigliani…

  • A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the ENO review *****

    A Midsummer Night’s Dream English National Opera, 4th March 2018 Out of a long list of wildly inappropriate events that I dragged BD along to when she was younger perhaps provocateur Christopher Alden’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in this very house was the most egregious. Not because the…

  • Lloyd Cole at G Live review ****

    Lloyd Cole G Live, Guildford, 3rd March 2018 No idea why I like the music of grouchy, arch, wistful, charter of failing relationships,  Lloyd Cole. I have never felt sorry for myself in my life. Well maybe a bit. Oh alright then, practically every day. Here is a man who,…

  • The Weir at Richmond Theatre review ****

    The Weir Richmond Theatre, 2nd March 2018 I am jealous of anyone who has never seen Conor McPherson’s 1997 play The Weir. They have something special to look forward to. I last saw it at the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh at the beginning of 2016 in a fine production directed…

  • Smile Upon Us Lord review at the Barbican Theatre review ***

    Smile Upon Us, Lord Vakhtangov State Academic Theatre of Russia, Barbican Theatre, 1st March 2018 OK. Sometimes you just have to accept that an artistic endeavour is a bit beyond your reach. For whatever reason it just doesn’t click. That is what happened here with Smile Upon Us, Lord. There…

  • Curtains at the Rose Theatre Kingston review ****

    Curtains Rose Theatre Kingston, 1st March 2018 Stage comedies don’t always stand the test of time too well. Comedy is elusive enough in the first place and may often be more rooted than tragedy to specific times, places or events. Comedic fashion chops and changes and what is acceptable shifts…

  • Julius Caesar at the Bridge Theatre *****

    Julius Caesar Bridge Theatre, 28th February 2018 I had really, really been looking forward to this. Julius Caesar is one of my favourite Shakespeare plays. Contemporary relevance of course, but Shakespeare always has relevance. My appetite whetted by the excellent RSC production I saw at the Barbican last month, (Julius…

  • Satyagraha at English National Opera review ***

    Satyagraha English National Opera, 27th February 2018 Finally I have got to see all three of Philip Glass’s seminal operas, Einstein on the Beach (the science-y one), Akhnaten (the religious one) and now this Satyagraha (the political one). Einstein on the Beach was a recreation of the original Robert Wilson…