Japan
The Centaur and the Animal, Sadler's WellsTuesday, 01 March 2011
To achieve a black stage that emits or reflects no light is a hell of an achievement. To place a huge black horse with black rider onto that stage, without the slightest noise, and to contrive a black shadow on the black, is to create an image found... Read more... |
The Mikado, English National OperaSunday, 27 February 2011
At 25 years old, Jonathan Miller’s Mikado may be more Grande Dame than ingénue, but it still has a Charleston kick in its step and a shimmy in its pearls. Styled and stylised, chic and slick, it's as far from the operetta’s ubiquitous am-dram... Read more... |
ConfessionsTuesday, 15 February 2011
Based on a novel by Kanae Minato, Tetsuya Nakashima’s provocative, serenely sinister thriller is fuelled by the murderous desire of its teens and the righteous anger of their teacher. Best known for the inebriated mania of Kamikaze Girls and... Read more... |
Shun-kin, Complicite, Barbican TheatreSaturday, 06 November 2010
Complicite’s Shun-kin delivers sex and violence aplenty. A warped, wilfully kinky fusion of the two lies at the core of the play and its central relationship – sexy, edgy material with just the right degree of poetry to help smooth its way across... Read more... |
The Thrill of It All, Forced Entertainment, Riverside StudiosTuesday, 26 October 2010
It’s pretty hard to describe a Forced Entertainment show. But let’s try anyway: imagine a stage full of crazy dancers, the men in black wigs, the women in white ones, prancing around, flinging their arms in the air, mistiming their high kicks, and... Read more... |
Fashion Gallery: Future Beauty - 30 Years of Japanese Fashion, Barbican GalleryThursday, 21 October 2010
Exhibitions about fashion tend to divide the public. Those passionately interested in fashion go to them; everybody else doesn’t. There’s a prevailing view that we already hear enough about top models, superstar designers and their attendant... Read more... |
BBC Symphony Chorus, Stephen Jackson, Royal Albert HallMonday, 09 August 2010
Every year there are a couple of Proms that have a haphazard look about them, as if a fire had suddenly broken out in the BBC archives, and the programming committee grabbed whatever came to hand – a piano quartet, a couple of choral odes and a... Read more... |
Two ballerinas retire - how grateful are we?Saturday, 03 July 2010
Two leading ballerinas retired this week on either side of the Atlantic, Darci Kistler of New York City Ballet and Miyako Yoshida of the Royal Ballet. Both are in their mid-forties (not old for a ballerina) and each is an exemplar of certain best... Read more... |
DVD: Red SunSunday, 13 June 2010
Hollywood westerns and Japanese samurai movies have long been generic companions. Akira Kurosawa borrowed from the films of John Ford for his chambara (a term referring to period drama with swordfighting), while Hollywood borrowed back again by... Read more... |
Kabuki, Sadler's WellsFriday, 04 June 2010
It is hard to think of anything more "foreign" than kabuki to the Anglo style of acting, a style which reveres naturalism and makes "reality" its ultimate aim. Yet kabuki is gaining a knowledgeable – and welcoming – audience in London. The Shochiku... Read more... |
After Life, BarbicanSunday, 16 May 2010
"We need to inform you officially. Mr Walter, you died yesterday. I’m sorry for your loss." It comes as no great surprise to learn that Michel van der Aa’s opera After Life is based on a Japanese film. The Borgesian hyper-real scenario, the no-place... Read more... |
City of Life and DeathFriday, 16 April 2010
From The Bridge on the River Kwai onwards, the Japanese haven’t tended to come up smelling of roses in war movies. Kind of unsurprisingly. In recent years it was Clint Eastwood who moved the story on. In Flags of Our Fathers he painted the... Read more... |
