When Punch magazine first printed its cartoon about a curate’s egg, the joke was very clear. Fearful of offending his superior, the bishop, the curate describes the egg he has been served for breakfast as having “excellent” parts. For reasons that...
I do not know and am not qualified to say if Huang Ruo’s newly commissioned piece, “City of Floating Sounds,” is a great work of music. What I do know and can say, with gratitude and certainty, is that the event the ‘composer and conceptual artist’...
Resist the urge to bolt the door and close the curtains when you spot the words “Jehovah’s Witness” in the promotional blurb for Brook Tate’s confessional show, “Birthmarked.” If anything, think of this as your opportunity to turn the tables; to...
Befuddled, bamboozled and more than a little punch-drunk. In this emotional/intellectual state, I stumble from the Quays Theatre at the Lowry after 12 rounds – or was it 80 minutes? – with the Igor x Moreno contemporary dance piece...
‘The Accountants’ is a cross-cultural collaboration between choreographers and video designers at Factory International. And there is so much energy and devotion to the project in evidence that the audience can’t help but want to love it...
It has been a particular gripe of mine that middle class writers often present the poor as a subhuman genus, pouring neat vodka on their morning cornflakes. Determinedly bucking this trend, we now have ‘Sweat’, an American import by...
In 1991, the artist, Cornelia Parker enlisted the help of the British army to blow up a garden shed. She and her team then collected the scorched and twisted fragments of the shed and its contents (purposefully curated to echo the horticultural and...
Ellen Kent has been touring operas for donkey’s years (32 years, to be precise), and I’ve been watching them throughout that time. There are certain things you can bank on with this company. If you start out fearing opera is pretentious, an Ellen...
Joyous, informative, inspiring. This is a show not just for mothers and daughters, but for fathers and sons (who also, of course, need to know about fantastically great women). Kate Pankhurst’s book, adapted for the stage by Chris Bush, is threaded...
Seeta Patel is surely the UK’s prime proponent of Bharatanatyam, the classical south Asian dance form. Whilst it is still the case that this form is less well known in this country than Kathak, that is in the process of changing, due in large part...
Martin Thomasson