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With alarming regularity, there seems to be some business or other shutting up shop, despite the best efforts of their owner-operators. A message from Adrian’s Bar, in Glasgow, is indicative of the struggle: “ It’s no secret that independent bars, restaurants, live venues and creative spaces are struggling right now. It seems places are shutting down week by week, and bit by bit we are losing our places of culture and community. We have been no exception to the hardships faci

The thing about artificial intelligence is that it is all too easy to start looking it up online and going down a rabbit hole that will very quickly leave one very, very depressed. AI is causing and will cause privacy violations, market volatility, job losses, increased socioeconomic inequalities and criminal activity. It’s as if certain people want to blame everything on AI like they used to blame everything on Brexit. So it was pleasing that an AI webinar hosted by the Crit

I only really went to see this motion picture because some fellow theatregoers at press night of The Olive Boy  at Southwark Playhouse Borough recommended it. I found it overwrought with emotion – despite British accents, hardly anybody had a stiff upper lip, and most characters seemed to be prone to outward displays of anger or despair or depression or bereavement or some other Very Dark Feeling. Darkness being the order of the day, or rather the night, some scenes might as

A long list of “don’ts” was supplied to those given review tickets (I gave mine away, not because I was feeling generous in the festive season, but because my diary was full), far more than the usual reminders not to drop spoilers in reviews. Both the Trafalgar Theatre and the show’s own website  describe the play as follows:   “Oh, Mary! is an uproariously dark comedy about a miserable, suffocated Mary Todd Lincoln in the weeks leading up to Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.

Wicked Part Two, or Wicked: For Good , to give it its proper title, wasn’t as popular with cinemagoers as Wicked  Part One – this time around, by the time the theatre reviews for the festive season where done and I had time to head to the cinema, I wasn’t exactly spoiled for choice for screens that were still showing it. But I’m pleased to have discovered the Camden branch of the Curzon chain – it’s a little bit out of the way, below a railway line. Sitting in the screen you

It seems that these days, if you’re a younger man and you haven’t got mental health issues, are you just in denial? A generation ago, however, Bruce Springsteen (Jeremy Allen White) struggled with depression, although this film took practically the entire running time to get there. To be fair, it wasn’t entirely clear in the moment if he was just going through the sort of struggles many creative minds find themselves confronting – ever the perfectionist, in this case finding

“Fuck the Queen!”  is what this film asserts John Davidson (Robert Aramayo) called out at the Investiture in 2019 at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, where he was presented with an MBE, in recognition of his work to raise awareness and understanding of Tourette syndrome, a neurological disorder. Named for Georges Gilles de la Tourette (1857-1904), who published a study in 1885 of nine patients, all of whom had involuntary movements, or ‘tics’, a century later, Davids

This film covers some very well-trodden ground – in the United States, a generation ago, before the ubiquity of mobile telephony and...

The opening scene is instantly recognisable to almost anyone who has had the pleasure of walking for more than a few minutes in central...

A fascinating show that takes the audience through an intense rehearsal process undertaken by a community choir prior to its first public...

You know the kind of book that is difficult to put down, and if you can spare the time that very night, you plough on through and finish...

Top Hat at Chichester Festival Theatre. Photo credit: Johan Persson In this economy, I’m more inclined than I’ve ever been to take up a...

Talk about going into a show ‘blind’ – I had never heard of Carly Paoli. There was a part of me that thought I should go for David Phelps...

I couldn’t keep up with all of the various songs Jeremy Jordan and his longtime collaborator and musical director Benjamin Rauhala had...

(L-R) Lisa Maxwell (Elaine), Catie Davis (Director), Nuno Queimado (Rick) and Katie Cailean (Emma). Photography by Manuel Harlan. There...

Aaron Tveit did well to sell out the London Palladium – twice – to the best of my knowledge I hadn’t seen him perform in anything in...

There were all sorts of reasons not to see this production of Wild Rose . I initially got it confused with White Rose , a completely...

There are Kinky Boots  purists out there who hate this new touring show, because it is a non-replica production. I’m not sure why they...

"PHOTOS AND VIDEOS ARE NOT ALLOWED!" So here's a photo of the outside of the venue instead. No programmes were available – or if there...

It’s that Andrew Lloyd Webber musical I didn’t want to go to because it’s about trains, and I have had quite enough of them in recent...