France
Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: La maladie de la mort / The End of EddyWednesday, 22 August 2018
La maladie de la mort ★★★ Toxic masculinity in all its appalling variety is a hot topic across Edinburgh’s festivals this year – just check out Daughter at CanadaHub and even Ulster American at the Traverse for two particularly... Read more... |
theartsdesk at Itinéraire Baroque 2018 - canaries in front of a Périgord altarMonday, 20 August 2018
Brits are the folk you expect to encounter the most in the rural-England-on-steroids of the beautiful Dordogne. In my experience they outnumber the French, at least in high summer, not just as visitors and retired homeowners but also as artisans... Read more... |
Prom 45, Capuçon, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Nott - scintillating new era for Swiss magiciansFriday, 17 August 2018
Who is the greatest British conductor in charge of a major orchestra? It's subjective, but my answer is not what you might expect. Jonathan Nott has done all his major work so far on the continent. He left the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra in excellent... Read more... |
Blu-ray: La Belle et la bêteFriday, 10 August 2018
Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la bête had been planned as a slice of wartime escapism, a distraction from the privations of war. The film was also a chance for Cocteau to give his male lead Jean Marais a less overtly sexy role than his fans were used... Read more... |
Annie Ernaux: The Years, review - time’s flowSunday, 05 August 2018
“When you were our age, how did you imagine your life? What did you hope for?” It is a video of a classroom south-east of the Périphérique separating Paris from the working-class suburbs. The students are mostly girls between fifteen and sixteen and... Read more... |
Roderic O’Conor and the Moderns, National Gallery of Ireland review - experiments in Pont-AvenWednesday, 01 August 2018
In the autumn of 1892 Émile Bernard wrote home to his mother that, following the summer decampment to Pont-Aven of artists visiting from Paris and further afield, there remained "some artists here, two of them talented and copying each other. One... Read more... |
CD: Jah Wobble - Dream WorldSaturday, 28 July 2018
He's known for his myriad collaborations – Public Image Ltd, Primal Scream, The Orb, The Edge, Can, all the way through to recent work with singers PJ Higgins and Hollie Cook – but Jah Wobble really deserves attention in his own right. A cosmic... Read more... |
Prom 5, Pelléas et Mélisande, Glyndebourne review - for the ears, not the eyesWednesday, 18 July 2018
What a fabulous score Pelléas et Mélisande is, and what a joy to be able to hear it in a concert performance without the distraction of some over-sophisticated director’s self-communings. Well, if only. What last night’s Prom in fact served up was a... Read more... |
Georges Simenon: The Krull House review – timely revival for a noir masterworkSunday, 08 July 2018
Georges Simenon began to write his Inspector Maigret mysteries in the early 1930s. Not long after after, the famously productive Belgian-born novelist – who could polish off a Maigret inside a fortnight – branched out into more ambitious, less... Read more... |
CD: Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch - ÉpoquesSunday, 08 July 2018
At its most impactful, Époques is an aural analogue to the occasions in Tarkovsky’s Stalker when the explorers of “The Zone” find their perceptions of what might be reality warped, and when there’s a growing realisation that this may be a place with... Read more... |
The Jungle, Playhouse Theatre review - new territorySaturday, 07 July 2018
"I am dead," declares Okot before recounting the horrors he survived to reach Calais. Each time, he says, "I died." How many times can you die before you are truly dead? What is it that finally kills you? These are the questions at the heart of... Read more... |
diep~haven 2018 review - a missed connection?Tuesday, 26 June 2018
The daily car ferry from Newhaven in Sussex to Dieppe in Normandy is an unlikely phenomenon. Neither port is very large; neither region very populous, and the journey sways you along for four contemplative hours. It enjoys the custom of truckers,... Read more... |
