The Feast review - slow-cooking folk-horror

★★★★ THE FEAST Bloody mayhem and an ache for roots in a Welsh-language horror

Bloody mayhem and an ache for roots in a Welsh-language horror

Lee Haven Jones’ Welsh-language folk-horror debut dissects a family’s treachery to the land in eventually apocalyptic fashion. It starts in silent, jagged style, the characters seeming as artificial as their minimalist house, abstract paintings and intensely designed rooms, set down like a lunar outpost in rugged Welsh farmland.

Edinburgh Fringe 2022 reviews: Kiri Pritchard-McLean / Lou Sanders / Snort

EDINBURGH FRINGE 2022: KIRI PRITCHARD-MCCLEAN / LOU SANDERS / SNORT Exploring Welsh identity; rollerskating diaries; New Zealand improv

Exploring Welsh identity; rollerskating diaries; New Zealand improv

Kiri Pritchard-McLean, Monkey Barrel 

Wearing a heavily sequinned leotard - she thought this was how we’d all dress after “living in trackies during lockdown” - Kiri Pritchard-McLean wants to address some very serious subjects, such as racism, imperialism and white privilege. But first she wants to deliver some funnies, and there are lots of them in Home Truths, a show bursting with energy and ideas.

Album: Gwenno - Tresor

★★★★ GWENNO - TRESOR Claustrophobia, folkiness and Cornish-language vocals rub shoulders

Claustrophobia, folkiness and Cornish-language vocals rub shoulders

“The historic, the prehistoric, the natural, architectural, geological, ornithological, or on the side of its folklore, Christian or heathen – the place teems with subject matter that is as curious as it is interesting.” So the Gothic Revival architect John Dando Sedding wrote of Cornwall in 1887.

Violet, Music Theatre Wales/Britten-Pears Arts review - well sung and played, but to what end?

★★ VIOLET, MUSIC THEATRE WALES/BRITTEN-PEARS ARTS Well performed, but to what end?

Anna Dennis shines, but composer Tom Coult and librettist Alice Birch play at anti-opera

Best new opera in years, they said – don’t ask who – after the Aldeburgh Festival premiere of Tom Coult’s Violet. I’d have been happy in Hackney had it been as good as, say, Philip Venables’ 4.48 Psychosis or Stuart MacRae’s The Devil Inside. Alas, nowhere near.

First Person: composer Gavin Higgins on his new cantata 'The Faerie Bride'

FIRST PERSON Composer Gavin Higgins on his new cantata 'The Faerie Bride'

Aldeburgh premiere tonight for setting of Welsh tale about acceptance of the other

I was a strange child, I didn’t really fit in. I would twitch and distort my face into awkward shapes. I obsessively bit my fingers and knuckles till they bled. I collected leaflets and piled them high in neat stacks in the corner of my room. I was constantly bombarded with invasive thoughts that would leave me completely paralysed. Teachers would admonish me for ‘showing off’, people would stare,  doctors would shrug.

The Corn Is Green, National Theatre review – Nicola Walker teaches a life lesson

★★★ THE CORN IS GREEN, NATIONAL THEATRE Nicola Walker teaches a life lesson

Dominic Cooke’s imaginative revival improves on Emlyn Williams’s 1938 play

Let’s talk repertoire. Over the past decade the range of British plays, especially those from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, has shrunk in state-subsidized theatres. You can no longer easily see work by Shakespeare’s contemporaries, Restoration rakes or Georgian comics. George Bernard Shaw is in hiding. English 19th-century problem plays are invisible.

Album: MWWB - The Harvest

Super-heavy psychedelic Welsh rockers' fourth is an epic, mind-frazzling treat

Wrexham band MWWB were known until recently as Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard. Perhaps they changed their name because its freak-friendly quality could be mistaken for spliffed Half Man Half Biscuit-style silliness. MWWB are no bong-head novelty act. THC-friendly they may be, but their stew of pummelling slug-riffage, Cocteau Twins-ish vocals, electronic ear-tickling, outright psychedelia, and sudden bursts of tunefulness is unique.

Manic Street Preachers, Brighton Dome review - solid gig occasionally explodes to another level

★★★ MANIC STREET PREACHERS, BRIGHTON DOME Solid gig occasionally explodes

Politically literate Welsh pop-rockers still have fire in their bellies

There is a three song segment midway through Manic Street Preachers’ set which suddenly ramps everything up. For this brief while, the performance and response in the sold-out, nigh-on-2000-capacity venue, elevates the concert from another decent gig on another tour in front of a devoted fanbase, to something more memorable and truly electric.

K-Music 2021: striking the right note for musical fusion

K-MUSIC 2021 Stars of this year's festival of Koren music discuss East-West fusions and shared roots

Stars of this year's festival of Korean music discuss East-West fusions and shared roots

It’s been eight years since the first K-Music landed in London, courtesy the Korean Cultural Centre UK, along with world, folk and jazz concert producers Serious.