• Icebreaker at Kings Place review ****

    Icebreaker: Velocity Kings Place, 5th May 2018 Anna Meredith – Nautilus Michael Gordon – Yo Shakespeare Paul Whitty – nature is a language – can’t you read? David Lang – Slow Movement Louis Andriessen – De snelheid (‘Velocity’) Boundaries. And their close, and troublesome cousins, borders. The bane of human existence. Setting them, seeing them,…

  • Our Country’s Good at Theatre Royal Stratford review ****

    Our Country’s Good Theatre Royal Stratford East, 28th April 2018 Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good is one of my favourite plays. As it is for many theatre-goers. The context, the “First Fleet” of British convicts sent to Australia with their Royal Marine guards in the 1780s, and the setting, Sydney Cove in New South Wales,…

  • Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at the Barbican review ***/***

    Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Gustavo Dudamel (conductor) Barbican Hall, 2nd May and 4th May 2018 Esa-Pekka Salonen – Pollux Edgar Varese – Ameriques Shostakovich – Symphony No 5 Beethoven – Symphony No 9 “Choral” Canny students of architecture will realise that the pic above is not of the Barbican. The Brutalist Barbican Estate is a…

  • Shostakovich from the Philharmonia and Ashkenazy review ****

    Philharmonia Orchestra, Vladimir Ashkenazy (conductor), James Ehnes (violin) Royal Festival Hall, 29th April 2018 Dmitri Shostakovich Violin Concerto no. 1 in A minor, Op.77 Symphony no. 4 in C minor, Op.43 Apparently Vladimir Ashkenazy was at the premiere of the Fourth Symphony. In 1961, in Moscow, 25 years after it was written, DSCH having withdrawn…

  • Nine Night at the National Theatre review *****

    Nine Night National Theatre Dorfman, 3rd May 2018 You never quite know what you are going to get at the National Theatre. Mind you the Dorfman has turned into a pretty safe bet. After a painful 90 minutes, (it seemed much longer), sitting through the first half of Absolute Hell in the Lyttleton, I was…

  • The Phlebotomist at Hampstead Theatre review *****

    The Phlebotomist Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, 2nd May 2018 The Phlebotomist is sold out for the rest of its runs. So you had better hope that it pitches up elsewhere, ideally with the current cast and creatives, for it really is an excellent play. There are three almighty talents on show here. Writer Ella Road in…

  • Pressure at the Park Theatre review ***

    Pressure Park Theatre, 26th April 2018 I had high hopes for Pressure. I have said before that the Park Theatre has a knack of mounting a wide array of productions, which, on paper at least, sound interesting, though execution can be variable. If I am honest Pressure, initially, wasn’t one of them. But the reviews…

  • Instructions For Correct Assembly at the Royal Court Theatre review ****

    Instructions For Correct Assembly Royal Court Theatre, 23rd April 2018 I was much taken with Thomas Eccleshare’s previous outing, Heather, on a recent outing at the Bush Theatre (Heather at the Bush Theatre review *****). Instructions for Correct Assembly looked similarly intriguing and, much to my surprise, I manage to rope in both the SO…

  • Much Ado About Nothing at the Rose Kingston review ****

    Much Ado About Nothing Rose Theatre Kingston, 20th April 2018 Come on fellow residents of the Royal Borough of Kingston and London Borough of Richmond – both upon Thames. Get your collective arses over to the Rose Theatre to see this new version of Much Ado About Nothing, celebrating the 10th anniversary of your local…

  • Pericles, Prince de Tyr at Silk Street Theatre review *****

    Pericles, Prince de Tyr Barbican Silk Street Theatre, 19th April 2018 Trust me. You can trust experts. Parading your own ignorance against all the evidence of those who know more than you, just to satisfy your own prejudice, is an ugly human foible. In the very small commercial world of which I was once a…

At Home He Feels Like A Tourist