Critical Week: Let it burn

A much-promised heatwave failed to materialise in London this week. It's been a bit warmer, but not worth planning to be outside instead of in a cinema. Press screenings this week were lower key than they have been - no blockbusters this week. Caleb Landry Jones has been rightfully winning awards for his textured turn in Nitram, a fact-based story from Australia that's involving and very chilling. 

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
The Quiet Girl • Vortex
Everything Everywhere All at Once
This Much I Know to Be True
ALL REVIEWS >

Two films skilfully mangled genres. Emergency looks like a standard American stoner comedy romp, but is actually much darker and deeper in its exploration of race and class issues. All My Friends Hate Me looks like a standard British reunion comedy, but is actually an unnerving exploration of 30-something insecurities. The experimental military drama Foxhole takes a pointed, involving look at war by putting its cast into action on three very different battlefields. The Chilean drama The Sea tackles issues of love and sexuality in offbeat, impossible to stereotype ways. And the documentary The Princess chronicles Princess Diana's life using only news and paparazzi footage, creating a powerful narrative in the process.

This coming week, films to watch include Tom Cruise's 35-years-later sequel Top Gun: Maverick, the 50-years-later sequel The Railway Children Return, Jesse Buckley in Men, Rebel Wilson's comedy Senior Year, the Romanian drama Uppercase Print and the Chinese drama River of Salvation.

Cabaret: Making your mind up

Eurovision (Your Decision?)
writer-director Tim McArthur
with Lucy Penrose, Tim McArthur,
Sarah Moore, Christian Andrews
Above the Stag, Vauxhall • 6-14.May.22

Celebrating its #secondcoming after last year's hit run, this superbly well-assembled cabaret show counts down to the real Eurovision Song Contest by taking audience members on a gleefully irreverent trip through the competition's long history. And while it sometimes gets a bit silly, the show manages to strike just the right balance between snarky satire and heartfelt homage. It also features some seriously gifted performers in a terrific venue, complete with table service throughout the show.

As hosts Katie and Demetrius (Lucy Penrose and Tim McArthur) surge onto the stage with their shimmery outfits and ludicrous accents, we immediately know right where we are: a grand European arena filled with screaming fans, ready to watch a parade of colourful musical numbers, hopefully of the bonkers variety. What follows are 14 Eurovision hits, staged with elaborate choreography and performed with a riotous succession of wigs and costumes by four up-for-it performers: Penrose, McArthur, Sarah Moore and Christian Andrews.

Sound of Silence

The musical highlight is Penrose's soaring rendition of Sound of Silence (Australia 2016 - right), while the most enjoyably nutty number is the spacetacular Dancing Lasha Tumbai (Ukraine 2007 - below), only marginally more camp than the original version. A strong second place in this category would be the amusingly quirky staging of Think About Things, Iceland's catchy entry to the cancelled 2020 competition. The UK is represented by four numbers, including the blissfully choreographed ditty Flying the Flag (2007), Ooh Aah ... Just a Little Bit (1996), Making Your Mind Up (1981's winner) and a pastiche rendition of Cliff Richards' Congratulations (which only missed the top spot by one point in 1968).

Sweden's 2015 winner Heroes

All four of the performers display impressive vocal and dance skills along the way, always with a sly wink to the audience. They are also more than willing to lose all of their dignity along the way. During the interval, we get to vote for our winner, followed by a special performance from a guest singer who delivers the standards All of Me and I've Got You Under My Skin with effortless charm. Finally, there's the voting tally, which is as ridiculous as we hope it will be, followed by a frantically quick change to get back into the right wigs for the big reprise finale. It's impossible not to have a great time at an evening like this, and it's hard to imagine that it's not on its way to becoming a beloved annual event on its own.

Dancing Lasha Tumbai

For information, visit ABOVE THE STAG >

6.May.22

Stage: Make a connection

Rewriting and Science Fiction
by Burrows & Fargion
with Jonathan Burrows, Matteo Fargion
Lilian Baylis Studio, Sadler's Wells, London • 5-6.May.22

Delightfully off the rails, this performance continually challenges the audience to make connections in everything that happens on the stage. Choreographer Jonathan Burrows and composer Matteo Fargion have been working together for three decades and have almost supernatural timing as they mix comedy, music and choreographed movement to create something that's both surreal and deeply engaging.

Rewriting is a reworking of an abandoned three-year project during which a series of thoughts were collected on 108 cards. Burrows uses a series of random-seeming, increasingly elaborate movements as he tells the story, lays out the cards and reads comments from them, while Fargion accompanies him on a small electric keyboard. It's properly uncanny to watch as they mix carefully memorised actions with sometimes improvised dialog. What emerges is a series of oddball connections between ideas, motion and music that exist only in our imagination.

Science Fiction is also about this interaction between expectations and reality. This time, Fargion and Burrows take positions on opposite sides of the stage, so far from each other that we can only watch one at a time. With synthesisers, percussion and voices, they perform a series of call and response riffs that echo and blur, expand and reverberate as they move from isolated notes into a full-on wall of rather glorious noise.

Each of these pieces is performed with a cheeky sense of humour that's thoroughly infectious. This is mainly because it's so impossible for us to predict where things might go next, even as we desperately try to second guess them. But it's clear that Burrows and Fargion know exactly what they are doing. We may not be able to understand what any of this means, but that seems to be the point. It's possible to get the message even if it's never spoken. And even if the performers gleefully try to keep us from finding it.

For information, visit SADLER'S WELLS >

photos by Urška Boljkovac, Hugo Glendinning • 5.May.22

Stage: So in love

Love Is Only Love
by Sam Harrison
director Jason Morell
with Sam Harrison, David Seadon-Young
lighting David Howe
choreography Nicky Griffiths
musical director John Reddel
The Other Palace Studio, London • 29.Apr-15.May.22

Returning to The Other Palace after its pre-pandemic sold-out run, this buoyant two-man show is a personal memoir expressed through the prism of iconic Broadway musicals. It's wonderfully comical and evocative, a reminder of those yearning expectations about love that are so superbly expressed in song on stage. Writer-performer Sam Harrison recounts his story with energy, humour and deep emotions that are never sentimentalised. And it's the refreshingly positive story of a gay man who ultimately finds true romance.

With only two chairs on the stage, Harrison begins at age 6 with his discovery of Hello Dolly, which awakened something inexplicable inside him and sparked a desire to find a love of his own. His father begrudgingly accepted that he wouldn't follow him as a rugby star, so instead enrolled his son in ballet class. As the years pass, Harrison is joined by David Seadon-Young, playing a variety of other people in his life, including several boys he found attractive for many different reasons. This leads to depictions of a few extended relationships as a teen and later.

Throughout the show, key moments are heightened with classic Broadway numbers, performed in a lovely stripped-down style by Harrison, Seadon-Young and pianist John Reddel. Nicky Griffiths' exuberant choreography inventively fills the small studio stage, most memorably as Seadon-Young performs a hilariously over-confident number as a very young dance student. Even with the minimalist staging, there are lovely little touches along the way as Harrison contextualises love for family, friends, crushes and lovers.

Harrison has terrific presence, conveying his hopefulness as he seeks for meaning and understanding in the world around him. Thankfully, darker issues like coming out and homophobia remain deep in the subtext, as the script focusses on connections and understanding. Harrison creates delightful textures in the various relationships played out with Seadon-Young, who rises to the considerable demands of each role with layered explosions of sparky comedy and emotion. Both actors have soaring voices and easy physicality, providing likeable details that make this show unusually resonant. What lingers is the celebration of the joy of falling in love. And how beautifully classic Broadway composers expressed that in song.

For information, visit THE OTHER PALACE >

photos by Manuel Harlan • 4.May.22

Critical Week: Silent running

It's been another eclectic week at the movies, with a couple of terrific in-cinema screenings alongside other films I watched on screener links at home. And I've also had several stage shows to watch as well, which I'm also reviewing here. Easily the best film I saw this week was the Irish drama The Quiet Girl, anchored by a remarkable performance from newcomer Catherine Clinch (above). It's a beautifully understated story told through perceptions and emotions rather than plot. A real stunner. Virtually the opposite was the mega-blockbuster Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which is consistently entertaining thanks to a terrific cast and lots of whizzy visuals. But even though director Sam Raimi stirs in some comedy and horror, it feels oddly aimless.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
The Swimmer • Eleven Days in May
PERHAPS AVOID:
Escape the Field
ALL REVIEWS > 

A bit further afield, I watched the rather simple-minded thriller Escape the Field, about a group of people who find themselves in a cornfield and must solve puzzles to get out alive. It's violent and nasty and never surprising at all. The Danish-made but Norway-set Wild Men is a fascinating black comedy about masculinity, with all kinds of emotional, social and action textures woven in. From Iran, Atabai is a complex portrait of a man who returns to his small hometown for a revelatory journey of self-discovery. And the documentary Eleven Days in May, narrated by Kate Winslet, is the harrowing but urgently important account of more than 60 children killed by Israeli bombs in Palestine over a brief period a year ago.

Coming up this next week, I have a mix of press screenings in cinemas and online, including Eugenio Derbez in The Valet, Caleb Landry Jones in Nitram, the comedy thriller Emergency, the British comedy All My Friends Hate Me, the military drama Foxhole and the Chinese animation blockbuster Boonie Bears: Back to Earth.

Critical Week: Watch the hands

Actual in-person screenings were back with a vengeance this week, after a recent slow stretch. And yes, it was great to settle into proper cinemas and screening rooms to watch movies on a big screen where they belong. Especially a film as visually astounding as Everything Everywhere All at Once, which stars Michelle Yeoh as a middle-aged woman thrown into parallel-reality craziness. Thankfully, the filmmakers remember that this is about real human emotions rather than wacky science. The big screen also helped with the lavishly designed Downton Abbey: A New Era, a return to the upstairs-downstairs drama with an enormous ensemble of likeable characters, each of whom somehow gets some good screen time. It's just what's expected, which is both comforting and a bit boring.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Casablanca Beats • Firebird
The Feast • Vortex
ALL REVIEWS >

Elsewhere, Mark Wahlberg tells the inspiring true tale of boxer-turned-priest Father Stu. There's only a slight rough edge to what should be a more complex story. Sophie Marceau is terrific in I Love America, a gentle comedy about a French filmmaker who moves to California. And the Moroccan drama Casablanca Beats bristles with life as a rapper teaches a group of lively, politically engaged students to create music.

A little further afield, Nick Cave lets the cameras watch as he and Warren Ellis create music in the gorgeously shot documentary This Much I Know to Be True. Robert Bresson's masterful 1959 morality tale Pickpocket gets a pristine big-screen restoration. And the documentary White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch just about makes sense of the clothing brand's horrible history of employment prejudice, while completely missing the point of why the clothes were so popular (and perhaps aren't so much now).

This coming week features another long weekend, and I'll also be watching a range of films including Benedict Cumberbatch in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the Irish coming-of-age drama The Quiet Girl, the Danish black comedy Wild Men, the chilean romance The Sea, the Iranian drama Atabai, and the Palestinian bombing doc Eleven Days in May.

Critical Week: I'm kinda busy

It was a relatively slow week for film screenings - and a short one after the Easter Monday holiday. Although I did have a couple of stage productions to cover, which is always a nice switch-up from being in a cinema. As for the films, there were two thoroughly unimpressive American independent productions. The starriest was Unplugging, with Eva Longoria and Matt Walsh (plus Lea Thompson and Keith David in scene-stealing roles). It's a corny romcom that hinges on technology addiction. Equally undercooked was the existential comedy I, Challenger, starring James Duval as a stoner trying to improve his luck with an absurd stunt. Neither film is very good, but they kill the time amiably enough.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Playground • Petite Maman
Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
Hit the Road • The Northman
PERHAPS AVOID:
Unplugging • I, Challenger
ALL REVIEWS >

Much better, and far more challenging, is Gaspar Noe's inventive drama Vortex, which follows an elderly couple (Dario Argento and Francoise Lebrun) as they grapple with ageing, mortality and memory. And Kota Yoshida's unhinged Japanese triptych Sexual Drive is packed with warped humour and clever insight into the nature of attraction and desire. Finally, I had Upon Her Lips: Butterflies, a collection of five short films looking at female identity from intriguing angles.

Coming up this next week, we have the entire cast back on the big screen for Downton Abbey: A New Era, Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All at Once, the mystery thriller Escape the Field, the French-Moroccan drama Casablanca Beats, the Nick Cave/Warren Ellis documentary This Much I Know to Be True and a screening of the restored 1959 Robert Bresson classic Pickpocket.