It’s a bigly Trump-fest over at the Donmar, with adaptor Bruce Norris determined to make Brecht great again – or at least pointedly contemporary.
If Robert King and Michelle King, creators of The Good Wife, took the Joss Whedon line on sequels – “They are inevitably awful” – then we would not have The Good Fight (More4) gracing our screens. But, thankfully, this sequel (actually, more a spin-off) is far from awful – it's very, very good. You could say this is Frasier (born out of Cheers) rather than Joey (Friends).
The parallel universe of what was known as “race” cinema gets five packed DVDs here. Instead of cringing with sympathy at small, racistly conceived black roles in a classic Hollywood era which coincided with an American Apartheid, these are indie films made inside black neighbourhoods between the wars. Even when white writers or directors are involved – just as in the period’s record labels – authentic culture gets through.
Despites odd dives into atonal sound-colour, Ryley Walker’s third album shares much with the catalogue of Island Records circa 1971 and the more edgy Elektra singer-songwriter albums from around 1969. Not that it sounds dated. The daisy-fresh Golden Sings That Have Been Sung is timeless, yet so clearly draws from a deep knowledge of maverick solo artists like Tim Buckley and John Martyn that it inevitably evokes its foundations.
Sia, Mo, Adele, Lukas Graham and Coldplay. Those are artist names that speak of a general desire to make their owners accessible to the mainstream. Hieroglyphic Being is not that kind of name and the music he makes is equally abstruse. He’s called this album The Disco’s of Imhotep, which implies it will be danceable and have some conceptual association with mystical healing. It’s certainly danceable, but its edges are not gentle, and it’s also wilfully tricksy in places. Overall, however, for DJs, techno-heads and lovers of tough, crunchy electronica, there’s much to enjoy.
It's amazing that they've managed to sustain The Good Wife over seven series and 156 episodes which have, by and large, maintained a standard of writing and acting which can stand toe to toe with anything else on TV. Apparently it's now being dubbed "television's last great drama" in some quarters, not just because of its quality but also because it aired not on some boutique cable channel or on-demand subscription service but on the mainstream CBS network. You don't miss 'em until they're gone, and all that.
The Chicago Jazz Festival is a freebie extravaganza, held over the Labor Day holiday weekend, its massive crowds welcomed by the looming chromium jelly bean that is sculptor Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate. Onward into Millennium Park, right on the shore of Lake Michigan, there are a pair of long tents for the afternoon sets, with alternating bands ensuring constant musical motion.
One of the oldest and most striking venues in London lends itself to immersive theatrical experiences. A few years ago the Victorian interior of Wilton’s Music Hall was infused with pre-show activity to recreate the 1920s of The Great Gatsby. Now a similar flick of the wrist by the same director draws punters into the 1930s and an adaptation of one of cinema’s great con capers.
It wasn’t quite Ali vs Frazier. But the 1968 debates between William F Buckley, Jr and Gore Vidal were as bruising (nearly literally) as TV had seen, and haunted the protagonists for the rest of their lives. Morgan Neville and Robert Gordan’s documentary claims its aftershocks also damaged TV and America in ways we’re still suffering through.
We get the big city views of Chicago, the bright lights and the skyscrapers, a few times in Kim Longinotto’s Dreamcatcher, but for the most part we’re planted firmly down at street level, in areas of town probably you wouldn’t want to go to, a fair amount of the time at night. That’s where we first meet the film’s protagonist Brenda Myers-Powell (though I don’t think we ever actually hear her addressed by her surname), who’s cruising the streets, handing out condoms to any prostitute she can find.