| | | Jack O'Connell: 'Eventually the wheels come off, everything explodes' | | by Eva Wiseman Sep 5, 2021 | | Actor Jack O’Connell is known for going to physical extremes to show the vulnerability of violent men. But what does masculinity really mean to him? Are you here to see man?” asks a Spanish waiter as I walk through the café garden, and points towards the table just beyond the loos where Jack O’Connell stands, his hand raised in a solemn hello. Yes I say. Yes I am. To sit in the dark and watch Jack O’Connell’s work, from the very earliest characters he played (a boy accused of rape in The Bill, Pukey the skinhead in This Is England) through to self-destructive lad Cook in teen drama Skins and the boy incarcerated with his dad in prison drama Starred Up, followed by a squaddie in Northern Ireland in the Troubles film ’71, is to watch a slow portrait of contemporary masculinity. What O’Connell does, with his eyes and voice, and careful violence, is show the vulnerability beneath his characters’ cracked shells, and I’m keen now to find out how much of them is him, and how much of him is them, and what he’s learned about masculinity. Continue reading... | | | | | This Way Up: chaotic coming-of-age black comedy for the over-30s | | by Natasha Sholl Sep 5, 2021 | | There’s nothing two dimensional about this beautifully layered, hilarious and romantic post-breakdown comedy • This Way Up is streaming in Australia on Stan. For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click here For those mourning the Fleabag shaped hole in their hearts, I hereby present to you: This Way Up. Season one of this Bafta-winning show begins with Aine (Aisling Bea, also its screenwriter) checking out of rehab after a “teeny weeny” nervous breakdown. “Is she, um … is she fixed?” Aine’s sister Shona (Sharon Horgan) asks the nurse before leaving. “It’s just, I didn’t really see this coming, so…” It is with this trepidation that we watch the next two seasons of the compellingly funny and chaotic This Way Up, wondering not only whether Aine is fixed, but just how close we all are to the things we don’t see coming. Aine works as an ESL teacher and through her position we have an insight into immigration, the absurdity of the English language, Brexit and Love Island. It’s also how we come to meet Etienne, a young French boy she has been asked to tutor, and his father, Richard (Tobias Menzies). Continue reading... | | | | | Sarah Harding, singer with Girls Aloud, dies aged 39 from breast cancer | | by Ben Beaumont-Thomas and Mark Brown Sep 5, 2021 | | Fans and figures from show business pay tribute to pop star who was diagnosed in August 2020 and wrote memoir during her illness The pop singer and TV personality Sarah Harding, who had 21 UK Top 10 singles as a member of Girls Aloud, has died aged 39 from breast cancer. Her mother, Marie, announced her death on Instagram, prompting a flood of tributes from fans and figures from showbusiness. Geri Horner, the Spice Girls singer and a judge on the TV talent show that created Girls Aloud, wrote: “Rest in peace, Sarah Harding. You’ll be remembered for the light and joy you brought to the world. X” Continue reading... | | | | | Sinfonia of London/Wilson/ Chiejina review – a remarkable debut for Vertigo orchestra | | by Tim Ashley Sep 5, 2021 | | Royal Albert Hall, London
The first live concert for the Sinfonia, which once recorded the Hitchcock soundtrack, was exceptional, featuring the exquisite voice of Francesca Chiejina The Sinfonia of London was famous in the 1950s and 60s as a recording and film orchestra, its credits notably including the Bernard Hermann soundtrack for Hitchcock’s Vertigo. It was re-formed in 2018 by John Wilson, again initially as a recording orchestra, its players hand-picked from orchestras and chamber ensembles in the UK and abroad. Their debut Prom was also their first live concert: it was a remarkable occasion in so many ways. The programme examined the decadence and decline of 19th and 20th-century Vienna, and the main work was Korngold‘s Symphony in F Sharp, completed in 1952, after the composer’s return to Europe from his Hollywood exile. Opinions differ as to both its quality and meaning, though essentially it’s an act of mourning for a world torn apart by Nazism and war, rooted in a retro musical language drawing on Mahlerian post-Romanticism. Continue reading... | | | | | Sundown review – Tim Roth a wonderfully relaxed sociopath in Venice's funniest film | | by Xan Brooks Sep 5, 2021 | | Michael Franco’s latest collaboration with the actor sees Roth on a Mexican beach holiday, blissfully unaffected by grief Neil Bennett is enjoying a nice holiday at a Mexican resort with his sister, Alice, and her two teenage kids. They’ve got the sea view and the infinity pool and a hotel entertainer to sing for them over supper. Then all of a sudden, disaster. The phone rings; their mother’s dead. So Neil does what any sensible son would do in his position. He pretends he’s lost his passport and therefore can’t fly home for the funeral. The woman’s dead anyway, so what does she care? Clearly it’s wrong to laugh at Michel Franco’s brilliant Sundown but I’m afraid that I did all the same – several times while watching the movie; several more times when remembering it afterwards. It’s the funniest film in this year’s Venice competition, also maybe the nastiest, although it never reaches for laughs or disgust and might just as easily be read as a small-scale human tragedy. Sundown shows Neil’s decision, then proceeds to stroll alongside him like an innocent party. It’s an approach that makes the film all the more blackly comic. Continue reading... | | | | | Sarah Harding's heart-on-the-sleeve energy made pop look like fun | | by Michael Cragg Sep 5, 2021 | | The self-described ‘Big Mouth’ brought a rock’n’roll ethos to the manufactured Girls Aloud For the release of Girls Aloud’s signature 2004 single Love Machine, the girlband juggernaut’s long-term graphic designers Form created a fictional magazine cover for each member. While Cheryl Tweedy is coquettish in cat ears for the stylish Love … mag and Nadine Coyle graces the cover of the Hello!-esque Aloud!, Sarah Harding appears in army fatigues on the cover of Girls, her warpaint augmented by a huge sparkly grin. It quotes a lyric (“We’re heading for war”) accompanied by text that hammers the message home: “Fighting talk from Sarah.” It’s the perfect encapsulation of the pop persona that Harding, who has died from cancer at the age of 39, attracted and often relished: the unruly, fun-loving, tomboyish rebel – or, as she described it in her 2021 memoir, Hear Me Out, the “rock chick, blonde bombshell, party girl, the caner of the band”. It was Harding’s energy and passion that often gave Girls Aloud an extra frisson of excitement on stage, whether she was endearingly stumbling through dance routines or hitting the odd bum note. Post-Spice Girls, UK pop had become polished and pre-teen again, but with Girls Aloud there was a sense that you should expect the unexpected. Much of that revolved around Harding. As a teenager in Manchester, she was a huge fan of Liam Gallagher, and brought a rock’n’roll ethos to a manufactured band that could easily have defaulted to rote media-trained sheen. (Tellingly, her favourite Girls Aloud single was the pummelling, guitar-led Wake Me Up.) Continue reading... | | | | | 'Unreal': Samaritans volunteer has life turned around by six-figure book deal | | by Dalya Alberge Sep 5, 2021 | | James Norbury’s self-published Big Panda and Tiny Dragon inspired by the lives of callers to helpline A man living below the poverty line, helping others as a volunteer with the Samaritans, who self-published a book after literary agents showed no interest in his earlier work has had his book snapped up in a six-figure deal by publishers in 20 countries so far. James Norbury, a 44-year-old self-taught artist and writer, who lives in Swansea, has had his life turned around after his collection of drawings of two unlikely friends – a panda and a dragon – captioned with life-enhancing proverbs, was picked up in the deal, an extraordinary achievement for a debut author. Continue reading... | | | | | Two pints of lager and a view of St Paul's: the secret life of London's most thrilling boozers | | by Oliver Wainwright Sep 5, 2021 | | What makes a pub special? From the perfect place to flog atomic secrets to the official strictly protected viewpoint for St Paul’s, a new book tells the amazing stories behind the city’s greatest bars When you stumble out of the medieval warren of Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese pub on Fleet Street, it’s easy to think you’ve had one too many. As you gaze east towards the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, the skyscrapers of the Square Mile appear to lean back in a woozy limbo, as if lurching to get out of the way.
It’s not the effect of the real ale, but the result of a curious planning rule. The City of London’s policies have long specified the pavement outside this particular pub as the hallowed spot from which Wren’s dome must be perfectly visible against the sky. Even the towers that stand behind it to the east, like the Cheesegrater and the Scalpel, derive their strange chamfered forms from having to preserve a sacred gap behind the cathedral’s silhouette, when seen from outside the pub.
Trace the lines of London’s historic protected views, and you’ll find that many of them end up outside pubs. It reflects not just the fact that the surveyors enjoyed a pint or two, but the central importance of the public house in shaping the history of the city – a phenomenon that is celebrated in a new book.
“There are already so many books about pubs,” says David Knight, co-author of Public House with Cristina Monteiro. “We wanted this one to be different. It’s not a guide to the best places to have a pint but a collection of social and cultural histories, trying to bring together a more diverse range of voices to explore the value of pubs to the city and society.” While the majority of pub literature may be of the stale white male genre, this compendium includes South Asian Desi pubs, African-Caribbean pubs, and a range of pubs that have played a role in LGBTQ+ history. Continue reading... | | | | | Channel 4 opens new HQ in Leeds as it fights against privatisation | | by Helen Pidd North of England editor Sep 5, 2021 | | Bosses hope move away from London will soften government attempts to sell off broadcaster Channel 4 will open its national headquarters in Leeds on Monday as it fights against a government threatening to sell it off to the highest bidder. About 200 of the channel’s 912 staff will initially work out of the former Majestyk nightclub, in a move that has been three years in the making after Leeds beat off competition from Birmingham and Manchester. Continue reading... | | | | | Idles review – primal howls and bullish power for the pits | | by Huw Baines Sep 5, 2021 | | Clifton Downs, Bristol
Joe Talbot dominated the Bristol band’s post-lockdown homecoming with spring-loaded unpredictability It’s an eternal question: is it a faux pas to wear a band’s T-shirt to one of their shows? The implied answer from thousands of Idles fans wandering the rolling fields of Clifton Downs is no. This is a sprawling event, featuring 16 acts on three stages, plus bonus late summer sunshine, and yet a reminder of who’s topping the bill is never more than a few feet away. “We haven’t done this in a while, and neither have you,” vocalist Joe Talbot says from the stage, the afternoon’s disparate gatherings having coalesced into one heaving mass. It’s only a white lie. After travelling down the M4 like a 10-legged version of Phil Collins, this is Idles’ second outing of the day, following a lunchtime appearance at Wide Awake festival in London. That engagement apparently blew any cobwebs away. Continue reading... | | | | | Hilary Mantel contrasts Dominic Cummings with Thomas Cromwell | | by Aamna Mohdin Sep 5, 2021 | | Author adds Cromwell wouldn’t have gone on holiday during a crisis, in apparent shot at Dominic Raab Dame Hilary Mantel has said Dominic Cummings “created a picture of himself as an outsider” that was intrinsic to his rise, while Thomas Cromwell had been able to truly “conquer the hierarchy”. The novelist, 69, who has published a trilogy of books about Cromwell, concluding with The Mirror and the Light in 2020, compared the two political figures during an appearance on BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show. Continue reading... | | | | | Yoko Ono: Mend Piece for London; This Is the Night Mail – review | | by Tim Adams Sep 5, 2021 | | Whitechapel Gallery, London
Ono invites visitors to repair the world by reconstructing broken teacups, while the Norwegian artist Ida Ekblad conjures surprises from a huge private collection, with a little help from WH Auden There is something appropriate about the piles of broken crockery that greet visitors to the autumn programme of exhibitions at the Whitechapel Gallery in east London. Yoko Ono’s Mend Piece, in which gallery visitors are invited to reconstruct teacups from pottery shards using glue, string and sticky tape, briefly captures a returning-from-lockdown determination to put things back together again (even while keeping a sanitiser bottle to hand). Ono first presented this piece in 1966 at John Dunbar’s Indica Gallery in Mayfair (she met John Lennon when he came to a preview of the show). If things felt like they had fallen apart and needed fixing back then, that need only feels amplified just now, 55 years on. With that repair shop spirit in mind, I sat at a white table along with a few others and tried ham-fistedly to piece and stick and tie together something that might once again hold water. “Mend carefully,” the artist instructs, “think of mending the world at the same time.” If the cup is anything to go by, that process might be a little harder than even Ono could imagine. After a few concentrated minutes, I placed my wonky vessel on the adjacent shelves alongside the rest of the tragically optimistic teaset. Continue reading... | | | | | Autumn TV: our experts pick the best of the new season | | by Barbara Ellen, Michael Hogan, Ammar Kalia and Guy Lodge Sep 5, 2021 | | From major new dramas featuring Olivia Colman and Stephen Graham to Peter Jackson’s Beatles series and the return of Succession, here are the must-see shows for the coming months Angela Black
ITV, date tbc
ITV has a reputation for delivering taut, female-led psychological thrillers, and Angela Black fits right in. In six parts, written by Harry and Jack Williams (The Missing; Liar), it stars Joanne Froggatt in the title role, as a woman in a seemingly idyllic marriage, but whose husband (Michiel Huisman) is secretly abusive. When she’s approached by a private investigator (Samuel Adewunmi), will she finally break free? With themes echoing Sky Atlantic’s Big Little Lies, this could be compelling viewing. Barbara Ellen Continue reading... | | | | | Afghan musicians silently await their fate as Taliban's ban looms | | by Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul Sep 5, 2021 | | Amid upheaval across the country, it remains unclear whether a new government will forbid music as it did 25 years ago The shutters have been down all along Kharabat Street, the storied heart of Afghan musical life, since the Taliban swept into Kabul in mid-August. Musicians have taken their instruments home, or crammed them into store rooms, waiting to see if the group will do the unthinkable again, and ban music as they did 25 years ago. Continue reading... | | | | | Miriam Margolyes: It was my duty to tell truth about Du Pré's death | | by Vanessa Thorpe and Eva Wiseman Sep 5, 2021 | | Veteran actor has no regrets about controversial claims that tragic cellist died from lethal injection in assisted suicide Miriam Margolyes has defended her controversial decision to reveal what she believes is the truth about the early death of the great British cellist Jacqueline du Pré. In her new memoir the actor claims that a mutual friend was responsible for secretly assisting the suicide of 42-year-old Du Pré, who was suffering the serious effects of multiple sclerosis. It is, Margolyes argues, now her duty to speak out, three decades on, although she knows some readers will question her right to tell such a private story. Continue reading... | | | | | Once Upon a Time in Nazi Occupied Tunisia review – stiff with humorous intent | | by Susannah Clapp Sep 5, 2021 | | Almeida, London
Mirth and menace fight it out in Josh Azouz’s play of shifting alliances, with Adrian Edmondson on fine form as a knitting Nazi officer The action is tragic; the dialogue frequently grisly-comic. The title of Josh Azouz’s new play tips its hat to Once Upon a Time in America/in Hollywood. The design nods at Beckett. Max Johns’s plywood set, over which a sun hangs like a garish tambourine, features a Godot-like single plant, first a cactus (which has horrible significance) and later an orange tree. In Happy Days mode, a head pokes up from the plywood, the body buried, the mouth working overtime. Once Upon a Time in Nazi Occupied Tunisia sets out to shock and to lure by unexpected contrast, delivering a dark, second world war episode in bright language. Tunisia in 1943 is run by the Nazis. Jewish men are being set to work in labour camps. Muslim Arabs are being tempted to collaborate with the occupiers by the promise of throwing off their French colonial past. The state of Israel does not yet exist: “Palestine: remind me where that is again.” Continue reading... | | | | | Annette review – Leos Carax's bonkers but beautiful musical fantasy | | by Mark Kermode Sep 5, 2021 | | Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard are all but upstaged by their puppet child in this tragicomic pop opera Carlo Collodi’s 19th-century tale The Adventures of Pinocchio has cast a long shadow over cinema, inspiring everything from a 1911 Italian live-action silent to Matteo Garrone’s 2019 Pinocchio, via such diverse fare as Disney’s 1940 animation and Spielberg’s futuristic 2001 sci-fi AI: Artificial Intelligence. A Guillermo del Toro stop-motion adaptation is also forthcoming. In the meantime we have this tragicomic musical fantasy from Cannes best director winner Leos Carax and American pop maestros Sparks, in which a starry cast is augmented – and arguably upstaged – by a puppet in the title role. With a rise-and-fall nod towards A Star Is Born, Annette follows the operatic misfortunes of dyspeptic comedian Henry McHenry (Adam Driver) and beloved soprano Ann Defrasnoux (Marion Cotillard), a couple whose celebrity marriage provokes a media frenzy. Henry (whose Ape of God act plays like a cross between Bill Hicks and Steven Wright) became a comedian “to tell the truth without getting killed”; Ann is “always dying” in theatrically staged romantic encounters. Together, the couple produce life in the figure of baby Annette – brilliantly portrayed through puppetry (plaudits to Estelle Charlier and Romuald Collinet), presenting an artificial yet eerily lifelike embodiment of their union. Continue reading... | | | | | | | |
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