Album: Self Esteem - A Complicated Woman

Dissecting the utter tripe 21st-century western women navigate every day. In song!

Given that Prioritise Pleasure was Rebecca Lucy Taylor’s (RLT) Back to Black, and that there’s been a lengthy wait for this new release, it’s no wonder that there’s so much anticipation around A Complicated Woman. Add to the mix her frankly jaw-dropping performance alongside Jake Shears in Cabaret in the West End, and you might be forgiven for expecting big changes. But Self Esteem knows a winning formula when she’s on to one.

Ghosts, Lyric Hammersmith Theatre - turns out, they do fuck you up

★ GHOSTS, LYRIC HAMMERSMITH Ibsen screams into 2025 in this perfect reimagining

Ten years on, Gary Owen and Rachel O'Riordan top their triumphant Iphigenia in Splott

A single sofa is all we have on stage to attract our eye - the signifier of intimate family evenings, chummy breakfast TV and, more recently, Graham Norton’s bonhomie. Until you catch proper sight of the room’s walls that is, which are not, as you first thought, Duluxed in a bland magnolia shade, nor even panelled with upmarket modernist abstract paintings, befitting of the whiff of wealth that suffuses the space. It’s a man’s head, repeating and repeating and repeating, turned away, bull-necked, present but not present, intimidating from beyond the grave.

The Importance of Being Oscar, Jermyn Street Theatre review - Wilde, still burning bright

★★★ THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING OSCAR, JERMYN STREET THEATRE One man play from 1960 given a compelling revival

Alastair Whatley honours his subject in a quietly powerful performance

It’s a greater accolade than a Nobel Prize for Literature – one’s very own adjective. There’s a select few: Shakespearean; Dickensian and Pinteresque. Add to that list, Wildean. 

The White Lotus, Series 3, Sky Atlantic review - hit formula with few surprises but a new bewitching soundtrack

★★★★ THE WHITE LOTUS, SERIES 3, SKY ATLANTIC Hit formula with few surprises but a new bewitching soundtrack

Thailand hosts the latest bout of Mike White's satirical takedown of the rich and privileged

The return of Mike White’s hit series can be celebrated for one major reason: its extraordinary music. That may sound like a minor reason, but this third iteration of the show confirms that the show's sound world is key to its success.

Unicorn, Garrick Theatre review - wordy and emotionless desire

★★ UNICORN, GARRICK THEATRE Wordy and emotionless desire  

New West End drama about spicing up marriage is oddly lacking in passion

Since when has new writing become so passionless? Mike Bartlett is one of the country’s premiere playwrights and his new play, Unicorn, is about radical sexuality and desire. It’s already made a big splash by being put straight on in the West End, yet the experience of watching it feels like a real turn off. It’s a masterclass of bad writing and unemotional acting.

It's Raining Men review - frothy French comedy avoids dating-app reality

★★★ IT'S RAINING MEN Frothy French comedy avoids dating-app reality

Laure Calamy shines as a dentist whose marriage is in trouble

Iris (Laure Calamy) and her husband Stéphane (Vincent Elbaz) haven’t had sex for four years. Waiting at school for the parent-teacher conference (they have well-behaved daughters aged ten and 15), she bemoans this fact to a friend, though, she maintains, she has no intention of leaving him.

“Have you considered taking a lover?” asks a mother (Olivia Côte) who’s overheard her. There are apps, she tells Iris, even ones specifically for married people. No sooner said than done. From then on, Iris’s phone doesn’t stop buzzing.

All's Well That Ends Well, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse review - Shakespeare at his least likeable

★★★ ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL, SAM WANAMAKER PLAYHOUSE Despite its compansations, the play is hard to watch

New production lands on shaky ground in 2024

"All’s well that ends well". Sounds like the kind of phrase a guilty parent says to a disappointed child after they’ve been caught in a white lie and bought them a bag of sweets to smooth things over. It’s a saying that betokens bad behaviour, a need to sweep things under the carpet, portending a fresh start. There’s an edge of power in it too, implying that the speaker can now define their interlocutor’s feelings. In short, it’s ugly.

Blu-ray: Crumb

Terry Zwigoff's landmark, cracked family portrait of misanthropic comix genius R Crumb

Robert Crumb puts America’s racist, misogynist Id on paper with self-implicating obsession. Terry Zwigoff’s 1995 documentary on the underground cartoonist and his even further out family is reissued as the channels for such purging, pungent art have contracted further, zealously policed by Left and Right dreams of moral perfection.