Tennessee Williams’ semi-autobiographical “memory play” is sentimental by its nature. Memory takes poetic licence and is “seated predominantly in the heart”, Williams tells us in his opening. This production shows us how poetic it can be but also how nightmarish and tormenting. Exquisitely directed by Jay Miller, the story of pained family love between narrator … Read more
Nervous investors seeking news about the plunging markets on Monday afternoon would have been out of luck if they turned to the websites of The New York Post, The Daily Caller, One America News or The Blaze. Not one of those right-leaning outlets featured articles about the sell-off as the closing bell rang, cementing Wall … Read more
Should your social media occasionally present you with publishing-related content, you may have spotted proofs for Natasha Brown’s Universality on your feed last autumn. The excitement with which various “bookfluencers” clutched them was twofold. Brown appeared on the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list in 2023, and Universality is the follow-up to her 2021 … Read more
Taken too early by the Aids pandemic, the artist Larry Stanton created work for an exuberant, prodigious handful of years before dying in 1984 at age 37. Championed by David Hockney, whose work his paintings at time resemble, Stanton excelled in creating portraits of gay men that are at once guileless and penetrating. Clearing Gallery … Read more
A splashy new documentary that asserts the presence of extraterrestrial life on Earth and alleges a US government effort to hide information on possible alien activity is making waves at SXSW. The Age of Disclosure expounds upon years of congressional activity and testimony surrounding the presence of Unexplained Anomalous Phenomena (or UAP, a rebranding of … Read more
This week, the top copy editor of The New Yorker announced that the magazine had completed a “reëxamination” of its house style. A few things were changing. But its dedication to the dieresis — those two little dots that float above certain vowels, beloved by New Yorker editors and almost nobody else — was not. … Read more
In the mid-70s, Alan Jones was performing a particularly exquisite balancing act. A habitué both of Vivienne Westwood’s London boutique Sex and the gay clubs, he was on the frontline of two seemingly opposed cultures: punk and disco. Each camp might have thought the other completely incomprehensible – tuneless noise or vacuous hedonism – but … Read more
Tennis has Break Point. Rugby union has Six Nations: Full Contact. Nascar has Full Speed. Golf has Full Swing. Basketball has Starting 5. Cycling has Tour de France: Unchained. American football has both Quarterback and Receiver. Athletics has Sprint. What do all these documentaries have in common? They have all sprung up in the past … Read more
One of the most powerful scenes in Sister Midnight is also a quiet and unexpected one. The protagonist, Uma, sits idly with her neighbour Sheetal outside their adjoining homes in Mumbai. To pass the time, the bored housewives pretend to be divorcing one another. Amid the role play, Uma turns to her confidant and says: … Read more
Daniel Blumberg hands me his Oscar, as surprised as he is chuffed. Bloody hell, it’s heavy. Is it real gold? “I wish it was,” says the latest winner of best original score, for The Brutalist. (Apparently, it’s gold-plated bronze.) He puts it back on a shabby wooden shelf alongside his Bafta, also for The Brutalist, … Read more