By Ray Bennett
LONDON – President Richard Nixon had a great many enemies, real and imagined, but the one that finally did him in was television, as playwright Peter Morgan shows in his insightful and entertaining new play “Frost/Nixon” at London’s Donmar Warehouse. Continue reading
By Ray Bennett
LONDON – If the pairing of rock’s Mark Knopfler and country’s Emmylou Harris seemed unlikely, you wouldn’t have known it from the crowd reaction at their tour stop at Wembley Arena where the twangiest country and purest rock both went down very well.
The 100-minute show featured songs from the back catalogue of both artists as well as many from their new album “All the Roadrunning.” Both of them were in a good mood at the concert with Harris in full voice and Knopfler surer on guitar than with his growly vocals.
Harris kicked off with the guitar-driven “Right Now” then the fiddle and lap steel guitar came out as Knopfler moved into “Red Staggerwing,” both from the new album. Harris contributed two from her “Red Dirt Girl” album – “Michaelangelo” and the title track – followed by a pleasing duet with Knopfler on one of the new songs, “I Dug Up a Diamond.”
Harris paid tribute to English-born, Nashville-based songwriter Paul Kennerly, who she said had introduced her to Knopfler, before joining her current partner in a sterling rendition of Kennerly’s “Born to Run.”
The mix’n’match continued through the show as the set included classics such as “Boulder from Birmingham” from Harris’ 1975 “Pieces of the Sky” album and “Romeo and Juliet” from the Dire Straits “Making Movies” CD.
The band was outstanding with keyboard player Matt Rollings, an original member of Lyle Lovett’s Large Band, joining the unit that worked on the “All the Roadrunning” album. They were Guy Fletcher, keyboardist with Dire Straits and the Notting Hillbillies, guitarist Richard Bennett, bassist Glenn Worf, drummer Danny Cummings, and Stuart Duncan on any number of stringed instruments including mandolin, fiddle and banjo.
With Knopfler on lead and Harris also on guitar, the group achieved a rich depth of sound over which Harris’s impeccable voice soared and dived.
This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.
Argentinian star Elena Roger in the title role of ‘Evita’
By Ray Bennett
LONDON – Fans of the 1980s musical “Evita” who feared the long-running West End and Broadway hit had been sunk forever by the Madonna film version will be delighted to hear that it has re-emerged in a smashing new stage production. Continue reading
By Ray Bennett
LONDON – Roger Waters might have been the intellectual head of the Hard Rock Cafe’s Hyde Park Calling festival on Saturday night, with a meticulously thunderous set, but the Who were clearly the heart on Sunday night with a warm and raucous performance.
Carried out in blazing sunshine on both days, the well-organised event featured two stages with several acts that led up to the headliners including Texas, Starsailor, Razorlight and the Zutons.
Waters looked healthy and in remarkably good spirits Saturday night as he pushed his band’s huge sound through what was probably the best speaker system Hyde Park has ever experienced.
The centerpiece was an extraordinarily faithful rendition of the Pink Floyd album “Dark Side of the Moon” in its entirety with that band’s drummer, Nick Mason, on hand for added verisimilitude and Waters regular Dave Kilminster on guitar.
The performance held some 60,000 enraptured with its immaculate precision and powerful imagery. All the strange sounds from the album blared out across the park with bells and the noise of trains accompanying spectacular visuals.
In the first set, Waters paid tribute to Pink Floyd’s long-lost hero Syd Barrett with video footage to back a terrific delivery of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” followed by an even more exhilarating job on “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun.”
On the 90th anniversary of the start of the World War One Battle of the Somme, Waters clearly had war on his mind and his inclusion of “Southampton Dock” and “Fletcher Memorial Home” from the album “The Final Cut” spoke volumes. Backed by gripping video images, Waters lambasted Bush and Blair over Iraq and performed a new anti-war anthem, “Leaving Beirut”.
After concluding “Eclipse” just as the sun went down at the end of his second set, Waters pleased the crowd even more by ripping into “Another Brick in the Wall” and “Bring the Boys Back Home” before he ended with “Comfortably Numb”.
On Sunday night, Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey were in sparkling form and looking for fun as they bounded into “Can’t Explain” while images of their young selves along with their late 1960s bandmates Keith Moon and John Entwhistle flashed on the huge screens around them.
“Seeker” and “Who Are You” flashed by and then “Behind Blue Eyes”, as a genial Townshend urged the audience to buy Limp Bizkit’s version too so he would collect more cash. “Real Goodlooking Boy” led into a song titled “Bargain” from their upcoming album. It lacked familiarity but boasted the usual Townshend quality.
The songwriter sat with an acoustic guitar for what he called “my Donovan spot” with some odds and ends from various albums. Daltrey introduced another new song, “Mike Post’s Theme”, with witty references to the TV shows Post has scored, and then came a scintillating delivery of “Baba O’Riley.”
More classics were included – “The Kids Are Alright”, “My Generation” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again” – with the best from “Tommy” saved for the encore. Townshend’s playing was sensational with all the familiar moves and Daltrey was in excellent voice.
Daltrey had said earlier that it was great to see so many young fans who appreciated the Who’s music and when “Pinball Wizard” roared across the park, every voice, young and old, joined in to prove it.
This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.
By Ray Bennett
LONDON – Sometimes it requires an impeccable production to reveal the true beauties of a difficult show and Stephen Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park with George” has that in the wonderful Menier Chocolate Factory staging now at Wyndham’s Theatre in the West End.
The revival is a delight to both eye and ear as Sondheim’s ambition to meld his music with the artistry of Georges Seurat’s sublime paintings is fulfilled by director Sam Buntrock and her excellent cast and crew.
The 19th-century neo-impressionist’s most famous work, “Sunday in the Park,” is presented onstage in a thoroughly convincing way thanks to set and costume designer David Farley and the projection work of designers Timothy Bird and the Knifedge Creative Network.
James Lapine’s intelligent book draws together the characters that surrounded Seurat (Daniel Evans, pictured) and show him as not only an artist who marched to a different drummer but also a man who led a solitary life despite the love of the beautiful Dot (Jenna Russell).
Sondheim’s accomplishment is to match his music and lyrics to the very precise pointillist style of Seurat, who rendered people, animals and landscapes in pinpoints that together made images of extraordinary depth and color.
The entire first half of the show is taken up with George choosing the places and figures for his painting, moving back and forth from his studio and the park. Sondheim’s songs reveal the obsession that drives the artist and the sacrifices he is prepared to make in the esteem of his fellows in the art world and in his relationships with others, particularly Dot.
The second half is set in the 20th century with Seurat’s great-grandson working in new media and still striving to match the great artist’s ability to bring a semblance of understanding to unruly life.
So unlikely is it that all of these elements will mesh that the Chocolate Factory’s achievement is all the greater. Farley’s set design is simplicity itself and yet conveys not only the sharp focus of the artist’s studio but also the array of options complicating his work in the park. Farley’s costumes provide transport to that island in the river in the Paris of the mid 1880s.
The inspired projection work by Bird and the Knifedge team allow monkeys and dogs as well as human beings to be fully realized as part of Seurat’s imagination.
Caroline Humphries’ musical direction is sharpness itself while the singing is glorious. Russell uses an accent from northern England that gives a deeper resonance to words such as “Sunday,” while Evans is required to deliver some of Sondheim’s most inventive lyrics and he does so masterfully and infectious joy.
Venue: Wyndham’s Theatre, runs through Sept. 2; Cast: Daniel Evans, Jenna Russell, Gay Soper, Joanne Redman, Simon Green, Liza Sadovy, Alasdair Harvey, Christopher Colley, Sarah French Ellis, Kaisa Hammarlund, Mark McKerracher, Ian McLarnon, Steven Kynman, Anna Lowe, Lauren Calpin, Georgina Hendry, Natalie Paris; Music & lyrics: Stephen Sondheim; Book: James Lapine; Director: Sam Buntrock; Set and costume designer: David Farley; Projection designers: Timothy Bird and the Knifedge Creative Network; Musical director: Caroline Humphries; Lighting designers: Natasha Chivers & Mike Robertson; Sound designer: Sebastian Frost for Orbital. Menier Chocolate Factory production presented by Boyett Ostar, David Babani & Danielle Tarento for Chocolate Factory Productions, Caro Newling for Neal Street Productions, and Mark Rubinstein.
This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.
By Ray Bennett
LONDON – Sometimes it requires an impeccable production to reveal the true beauties of a difficult show and Stephen Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park with George” has that in the wonderful Menier Chocolate Factory staging now at Wyndham’s Theatre in the West End.
The revival is a delight to both eye and ear as Sondheim’s ambition to meld his music with the artistry of George Seurat’s sublime paintings is fulfilled by director Sam Buntrock and her excellent cast and crew.
The 19th-century neo-impressionist’s most famous work, “Sunday in the Park,” is presented onstage in a thoroughly convincing way thanks to set and costume designer David Farley and the projection work of designers Timothy Bird and the Knifedge Creative Network.
James Lapine’s intelligent book draws together the characters that surrounded Seurat (Daniel Evans) and show him as not only an artist who marched to a different drummer but also a man who led a solitary life despite the love of the beautiful Dot (Jenna Russell, pictured with Evans below).
Sondheim’s accomplishment is to match his music and lyrics to the very precise pointillist style of Seurat, who rendered people, animals and landscapes in pinpoints that together made images of extraordinary depth and color.
The entire first half of the show is taken up with George choosing the places and figures for his painting, moving back and forth from his studio and the park. Sondheim’s songs reveal the obsession that drives the artist and the sacrifices he is prepared to make in the esteem of his fellows in the art world and in his relationships with others, particularly Dot.
The second half is set in the 20th century with Seurat’s great-grandson working in new media and still striving to match the great artist’s ability to bring a semblance of understanding to unruly life.
So unlikely is it that all of these elements will mesh that the Chocolate Factory’s achievement is all the greater. Farley’s set design is simplicity itself and yet conveys not only the sharp focus of the artist’s studio but also the array of options complicating his work in the park. Farley’s costumes provide transport to that island in the river in the Paris of the mid 1880s.
The inspired projection work by Bird and the Knifedge team allow monkeys and dogs as well as human beings to be fully realized as part of Seurat’s imagination.
Caroline Humphries’ musical direction is sharpness itself while the singing is glorious. Russell uses an accent from northern England that gives a deeper resonance to words such as “Sunday,” while Evans is required to deliver some of Sondheim’s most inventive lyrics and he does so masterfully and infectious joy.
Venue: Wyndham’s Theatre, runs through Sept. 2; Cast: Daniel Evans, Jenna Russell, Gay Soper, Joanne Redman, Simon Green, Liza Sadovy, Alasdair Harvey, Christopher Colley, Sarah French Ellis, Kaisa Hammarlund, Mark McKerracher, Ian McLarnon, Steven Kynman, Anna Lowe, Lauren Calpin, Georgina Hendry, Natalie Paris; Music & lyrics: Stephen Sondheim; Book: James Lapine; Director: Sam Buntrock; Set and costume designer: David Farley; Projection designers: Timothy Bird and the Knifedge Creative Network; Musical director: Caroline Humphries; Lighting designers: Natasha Chivers & Mike Robertson; Sound designer: Sebastian Frost for Orbital. Menier Chocolate Factory production presented by Boyett Ostar, David Babani & Danielle Tarento for Chocolate Factory Productions, Caro Newling for Neal Street Productions, and Mark Rubinstein.
This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.
By Ray Bennett
CANNES — Brutal military repression looks the same everywhere and Francisco Vargas’ striking and poetic film “The Violin” in Un Certain Regard offers a plaintive cry on behalf of the oppressed. Continue reading
By Ray Bennett
LONDON – Ray Winstone at full throttle is like a force of nature and he’s firing on all cylinders as a passionate but corrupt English Premier League soccer manager in the scalding sports drama ‘All In the Game’ on ITV Thursday.
Spurning the shenanigans of ‘Footballers’ Wives’, this one-off telefilm also scythes down any romantic notions of football being ‘the beautiful game’ insisting instead that, as one character says, ‘the very soul of the game is rancid’.
Frankie (Winstone) is the popular manager of an ambitious club that has been given an expensive makeover by self-made millionaire George Swaine (Roy Marsden) but remains $60 million in debt and must struggle to maintain its place in the top division.
But while George and his savvy director of football Paul (Idris Elba) worry about results and falling attendance, Frankie is up to his foul mouth in the corrupt world of player transfers and kickbacks.
Television rights to the games of the 20 teams in the English Premier League have just been sold for around £1.7 billion ($3.15 billion) and that kind of money has generated an appetite that Paul alludes to in the film: ‘Wake up and smell the greed.’
Modern footballers, like American sports athletes, are paid huge fortunes and their written contracts are as worthless as one of Samuel Goldwyn’s famous verbal ones. Being young and mostly uneducated and gullible, they are ripe for exploitation by ruthless managers and sports agents.
In writer and executive producer Tony Grounds’s script, a gifted young player named Joel (Ike Hamilton) falls into the hands of not only Frankie but his sleazy son Martin (Danny Dyer), who hates football but loves the money it generates.
Grounds and director Jim O’Hanlon wisely spend very little time on the notoriously difficult task of simulating the game of football on film and focus on backroom treachery. Produced by the Manchester division of Paul Abbott and Hilary Bevan Jones’s Tightrope Pictures, the film has the crackle and pace you would expect from the makers of ‘Cracker’ and ‘State of the Play’.
It’s a good cast and Marsden (‘Dalgleish’), Dyer (‘The Business’), Elba (‘The Wire’) and Nicola Stephenson, as the mother of a boy whose football career ends abruptly, all make vivid contributions.
It’s Winstone’s show, however, as he makes the manager swaggeringly, charmingly and obnoxiously unforgettable. Granada International is handling international sales and they might need subtitles for some of his authentic Cockney slang. Crude, uncouth, and bitter, Frankie cajoles, bullies, sweet talks and begs in order to get his way with every second word having four letters. It’s a blistering performance.
Credits: Cast: Ray Winstone, Roy Marsden, Danny Dyer, Nicola Stephenson, Idris Elba, Ike Hamilton, Clare Perkins, Oscar Grounds; Writer and executive producer: Tony Grounds; Director: Jim O’Hanlon; Production designer: Donal Woods; Editor: Mark Thornton; Producer: Hilary Bevan Jones; Senior Commissioning editor for C4 Drama: Francis Hopkinson; Executive producer Tightrope: Paul Abbott; Director of photography: Peter Greenhalgh; Production designer: Donal Woods; Editor: Mark Thornton; Music: Johnny Clifford; Production: Tightrope North; Running time: 120 mins.
By Ray Bennett
LONDON – The town crier of angst, former Smiths front man Morrissey filled the capacious Alexandra Palace for the first London concert of his current tour Monday, but he looked too bored, tanned and well fed to sing persuasively about how rotten the world is.
Having disappeared for a long stretch, Morrissey has returned to a warm welcome from loyal fans if no one else. His new Sanctuary album, “Ringleader of the Tormentors”, reached No. 1 on the U.K. charts but it came and went quickly.
The crowd Monday gave him a lukewarm reaction and it’s no wonder as his performance was sullen and dispirited. “For what you are about to receive, may you be truly sorry” was the first thing he said onstage.
Professionally speaking, Morrissey is what’s known in England as “a miserable git” and his songs complain a great deal about life’s little ups and downs, especially death. You could call it whining, and you’d be right.
His songs have a callow sensibility and they’re delivered in melodramatic tones that only emphasize how vacuous they are. Most of the songs from the new album were featured in the set and proved indistinguishable being driven by three guitars and percussion while Morrissey had left his charisma at home.
The occasional Smiths song (“Still Ill”, “Girlfriend in a Coma”, “How Soon is Now?”) roused the crowd a little but it took a brief keyboard rendition of the old English wartime ditty “Maybe It’s because I’m a Londoner” to spark a sing-along.
There’s something off-putting about seeing a comfortably upholstered middle-aged man singing a song titled “Life Is a Pig Sty” when it’s quite evident which little piggy ate the roast beef.
This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.
By Ray Bennett
LONDON – Bernard Cornwell’s terrific creation Richard Sharpe, loyal soldier in the battles of the Duke of Wellington, hasn’t been seen in anything new on British television for eight years but he returns in great form Sunday in a new ITV1 two-parter, “Sharpe’s Challenge.”
Sean Bean is back as the dutiful rogue who rose from the unwashed ranks to become an officer in the British Army through all the fights against the French Emperor Napoleon up to the big one, the Battle of Waterloo. Daragh O’Malley plays Sgt. Harper with splendid exuberance.
Picture Palace’s Malcolm Craddock and Muir Sutherland have turned 15 of Cornwell’s 20-odd novels into TV movies that have proved popular around the world. They have yet to take the U.S. by storm, although that should change this summer when BBC America will broadcast the back catalogue and this new production.
Cornwell ranks as a master of popular historical fiction and his flare for adventure is matched by his attention to detail. The films are a little more relaxed about such things but they display a lusty sense of fun and Bean’s rough and rowdy presence makes them very entertaining.
“Sharpe’s Challenge” finds Sharpe retired and living in France, but grieving over the death of his wife. Napoleon has been defeated but the British Empire marches on and there’s still lots to do in faraway places.
When Wellington (Hugh Fraser) calls him to London and gives him an assignment to go to India to find a missing agent, Sharpe is not interested until he learns that the agent in question is his old fighting buddy Sgt. Patrick Harper.
Old loyalties die hard and the now Colonel Sharpe is soon riding in the fierce sun of India and having to deal with the same incompetent and arrogant British officers that he’s always encountered.
Inevitably there’s a great deal more to the situation than at first appeared and Sharpe and Harper become embroiled in a conflict with a renegade British officer named Dodd (Toby Stephens), who has sold his services to a corrupt Indian regime run by the gorgeous but deadly Mahuvanthi (Padma Lakshmi, pictured with Bean below).
There’s also the beautiful daughter of an English officer named Celia (Lucy Brown) who has been kidnapped, some tricky French soldiers to deal with and a crew of Indian thugs who like to drive nails into people’s heads.
Writer Russell Lewis has patched together some sequences from Cornwell’s previous adventures with the novelist’s blessing, and created a saga that Sharpe devotees will enjoy. Director Tom Clegg keeps things moving along nicely and Stephens and Lakshmi (writer Salman Rushdie’s wife) make a fine pair of villains.
Airs: April 23, April 24 ITV1 U.K.; Cast: Sean Bean, Daragh O’Malley, Toby Stephens, Padma Lakshmi, Lucy Brown;, Karan Panthaky, Shruti Vyas, Hugh Fraser, Michael Cochrane, Peter Symonds, Peter-Hugo Daly, Alyy Khan, Aurelien Recoing, Thierry Hancisse; Director: Tom Clegg; Writer: Russell Lewis; Director of photography: Nigel Willoughby; Production designer: Tom McCullagh; Editor: Chris Ridsdale; Composers: Dominic Muldowney, John Tams; Producers: Malcolm Craddock, Muir Sutherland; Executive producers: Stuart Sutherland, Kathryn Mitchell, Steve Wilkinson; A Celtic Films Entertainment/Picture Palace Films/BBC America co-production for ITV in association with Azure Films and HarperCollins.
This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.
