mental health
Aftermath: Art in the Wake of World War One, Tate Britain review - all in the mindTuesday, 05 June 2018
Not far into Aftermath, Tate Britain’s new exhibition looking at how the experience of World War One shaped artists working in its wake, hangs a group of photographs by Pierre Anthony-Thouret depicting the damage inflicted on Reims. Heavy censorship... Read more... |
McQueen review - the dark brilliance of Alexander McQueenTuesday, 05 June 2018
Lee Alexander McQueen said that he pulled the horrors out of his soul and put them on the catwalk. Eight years after his death, and three years after the record-breaking Savage Beauty retrospectives at the Metropolitan Museum and the V&A, his... Read more... |
CD: Kanye - YeFriday, 01 June 2018
Would it come as a terrible surprise to learn that this record is highly problematic? Well, duh. Kanye West is the sad clown narrating the global tragicomedy, a troll on an epochal scale, a bundle of contradictory drives all attempting to express... Read more... |
The String Quartet’s Guide to Sex and Anxiety, Brighton Festival review - molto nervosoFriday, 25 May 2018
Calixto Bieito has a reputation as a radical theatre-maker, and by any standards The String Quartet’s Guide to Sex and Anxiety is an unusual, genre-breaking piece; Bieito has described it as “like a symphonic poem for a quartet of musicians, and a... Read more... |
Tully review - Charlize Theron plumps for sentimentThursday, 03 May 2018
Inside Tully – or maybe inside Charlize Theron’s massively pregnant belly – is a darker, more daring film trying to get out. There are startlingly original moments, but it’s as if writer Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman, creators of Juno and... Read more... |
4.48 Psychosis, Royal Opera, Lyric Hammersmith review - despairing truth in song and speechThursday, 26 April 2018
Depression, with or without psychotic episodes, is a rare subject for drama or music theatre - and with good reason: the sheer unrelenting monotony of anguish and self-absorption is hard to reproduce within a concentrated time-span. So we still... Read more... |
Booby's Bay, Finborough Theatre review - a bit fishySaturday, 03 February 2018
Carry on out of London past the Finborough Theatre and you hit the A4. Follow it east as it becomes the M4, take a southern turn at Bristol for the M5 and you’re in the West Country. Bude and Bodmin, Liskeard, St Austell, Padstow, Mousehole, Newquay... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Television PersonalitiesSunday, 21 January 2018
How much of someone else’s despair is it possible to take? What are the limits on putting a sense of desolation or isolation into a song? Can such naked expression be mediated by a glossy production or crowded instrumental arrangements which... Read more... |
Out from the Darkness: painting out prisonMonday, 13 November 2017
When I was sent to an adult high security prison aged 14 all the normal colour, shapes and movement that I saw around me each and every day as a child disappeared. It wasn’t there. Prison does that; it’s all straight lines, hard on the eye, hard to... Read more... |
The A Word, Series 2, BBC One review - is it turning into 'Emmerdale' with a twist of autism?Wednesday, 08 November 2017
At its weakest The A Word is just Emmerdale with a twist of autism, especially when the drama swivels away from the little boy to focus on adult infidelities, a grumpy patriarch, sibling rivalries and comedy Poles wisecracking in subtitles. But at... Read more... |
Chris Packham: Asperger's and Me, BBC Two review - 'like an alien from another planet'Wednesday, 18 October 2017
Chris Packham, who devises and presents programmes about nature and animals, has described himself as "a little bit weird". This autobiographical documentary about himself explained what being on the autistic spectrum meant to him in particular in... Read more... |
Billion Dollar Deals That Changed Your World, BBC Two review - Big Pharma gets a diagnosis: it’s sickThursday, 28 September 2017
“What if the way people understand the world is wrong? What if it isn’t politicians that shape the way people live their day-to-day lives, but secret business deals?” This is the question at the heart – and at the start – of Jacques Peretti’s... Read more... |
