Colin Currie Quartet, Wigmore Hall review - toccatas for triangles and teacups

★★★★ COLIN CURRIE QUARTET, WIGMORE HALL Scintillating percussion virtuosity

Scintillating virtuosity from world-leading percussion quartet

I have never seen the Wigmore Hall stage more crammed with instruments than for this Colin Currie Quartet concert. Sadly the auditorium was not similarly packed, the hall’s admirable initiative of broadening its repertoire away from mainly dead Germans being disappointingly shunned by the regular patrons.

Samuel Takes a Break... in Male Dungeon No. 5 after a long but generally successful day of tours, The Yard Theatre review - funny and thought-provoking

'We don't use the word slave round here' - 21st century tourism skewered

You do not need to be Einstein to feel it. If the only dimension missing is time, 75% of a place’s identity can invade your very being, hollow you out, replace your soul with a void. It happened to me at Auschwitz and it’s happening to Samuel at Cape Coast Castle, Ghana.

Not at first. We meet him as our host, full of bonhomie, not just reading his script, but revelling in communicating his love of history to the tourists who come to the last staging post for slaves before the dreadful Middle Passage to the Americas. 

Fung, BBC Philharmonic, Weilerstein, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - clever and comical

★★★ FUNG, BBC PHILHARMONIC, WEILERSTEIN, MANCHESTER Clever and comical

First UK performance of new cello concerto by Katherine Balch given with uncanny skill

Placing the UK premiere of Katherine Balch’s whisper concerto (for cello and orchestra) after Haydn’s Symphony No. 100 was probably an inspired idea from the BBC Philharmonic and conductor Joshua Weilerstein.

Othello, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse review - 21st century interpretation delivers food for thought

★★ OTHELLO, SAM WANAMAKER PLAYHOUSE An Othello for our times, our city

An Othello for our times, our city

Detective Chief Inspector Othello leads a quasi-paramilitary team of Metropolitan Police officers investigating gang activity in Docklands. With a chequered past now behind him, he has reformed and has the respect of both the team he leads and his superior officers. But his secret marriage to Commander Brabantio’s daughter, Desdemona, unleashes a stream of racist invective from her father, triggering memories of abuse that are never far from the surface.

All of Us Strangers review - a haunting story about the power of love, masterfully told

★★★★★ ALL OF US STRANGERS A haunting story about the power of love, masterfully told

Andrew Haigh and a cast of four conjure up an intense emotional epic

Andrew Haigh’s films come at you like stealth bombers, presenting everyday scenes in a spare narrative style, and then using them to blitz you with unexpected emotions. His latest is no exception. 

A Woman Walks into a Bank, Theatre 503 review - prize-winning play delivers on its promise

★★★ A WOMAN WALKS INTO A BANK, THEATRE503 Russian tale resonates far beyond Moscow

Roxy Cook's dramedy has echoes of Chekhov in its melding of comedy and tragedy

We’re in Moscow (we hear that quite a lot) where an ageing woman on a rare trip out of her apartment block catches sight of an advert in a bank’s window. She is soon inside and subjected to a sales pitch by a keen young bank "manager", torn between his understanding of her dementia and the career-boost the loan will bring. Five months later, she’s in her little flat with a debt collector, a man even more ruthless in pursuit of his objectives  and events take an unexpected turn.

£1 Thursdays, Finborough Theatre review - dazzling new play is as funny and smart as its two heroines

★★★★ £1 THURSDAYS, FINBOROUGH THEATRE Beautifully delivered by two sensational leads 

Seldom does one see a writer's vision so perfectly realised on stage

It’s 2012 and the London Olympics might as well be happening on the Moon for Jen and Stacey. In fact, you could say the same for everyone else scrabbling a living in Bradford – or anywhere north of Watford – and we know what those left-behind places did when presented with a ballot box in 2016 and 2019.

A Stitch in Time review - feelgood Aussie indie with an undernourished script

An elderly woman's pursuit of lost dreams is given a light-touch treatment

There’s a faint whiff of Strictly Ballroom about Sasha Hadden’s Australian indie A Stitch in Time, another tale of people in later life rekindling lost dreams and a long-buried love while nurturing younger folk with the same passions. Here, though, this love is expressed in dressmaking rather than foxtrots and quicksteps.