Here We Are, National Theatre review - Sondheim's sensational swan song

★★★★★ HERE WE ARE, NATIONAL THEATRE Sondheim's sensational swan song

The late composer bids farewell with a show made-to-order for now

You don't have to be greeting the modern day with a smile unsupported by events in the wider world to have a field day at Here We Are. The last musical from the venerated Stephen Sondheim has only grown in import and meaning since I caught its New York premiere some 18 months ago.

My Master Builder, Wyndham's Theatre review - Ewan McGregor headlines stillborn Ibsen riff

★★ MY MASTER BUILDER, WYNDHAM'S THEATRE Ewan McGregor headlines stillborn Ibsen riff

Starry new writing premiere struggles to connect

It's both brave and bracing to welcome new voices to the West End, but sometimes one wonders if such exposure necessarily works to the benefit of those involved. And so it is with My Master Builder, American writer Lila Raicek's Ibsen-adjacent play that nods throughout at the Norwegian scribe's scorching 1892 The Master Builder only to suggest that director Michael Grandage might have been better off staging that classic title instead: his Wild Duck, dating back to his Donmar tenancy, remains the stuff of legend. 

The Accountant 2 review - belated return of Ben Affleck's lethal bean-counter

★★★ THE ACCOUNTANT 2 Belated return of Ben Affleck's lethal bean-counter

Horror, humour and mind games combine in Gavin O'Connor's sequel

It’s been nine years since Ben Affleck’s original portrayal of Christian Wolff in The Accountant, who’s not only an accountant but also a super-efficient assassin working for the highest bidders. In this follow-up, again directed by Gavin O’Connor and written by Bill Dubuque, Affleck barely seems to have aged, and he's still solitary, anti-social and probably autistic.

Album: Mark Morton - Without the Pain

★★★ MARK MORTON - WITHOUT THE PAIN Second solo album from Lamb of God guitarist lays down hefty southern boogie

Second solo album from Lamb of God guitarist lays down hefty southern boogie

Mark Morton is best known as a guitarist with US metallers Lamb of God. They’ve been going for three decades, established and successful, at the more extreme, thrashier end of the spectrum, but still achieving Top Five albums on the Billboard charts.

Album: Bon Iver - SABLE ƒABLE

An album of exquisite wonder

With a sound that's instantly recognisable, Justin Vernon – known as Bon Iver - continues to astonish. Purveyor of wonder, sculptor of enchanting sounds, he treads a miraculous path between melancholy and joy and has established himself as one of the great voice of contemporary indie pop.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: The Musical, Theatre Royal Bath review - not a screaming success

★★★ ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS: THE MUSICAL, BATH Not a screaming success

1950s America feels a lot like 2020s America in this portmanteau show

In Italy, they did it differently. Their pulp fiction tales of suburban transgression appeared between yellow covers on new stands and spawned the influential Giallo movies of the Sixties and Seventies, gory exercises in an offbeat, highly stylised film language – cult movies indeed.

Album: Perfume Genius - Glory

Album seven from an artist carving out his own space in the most modernist of ways

I can’t stop reading and re-reading the review copy I got of a new book, out next week. Liam Inscoe-Jones’s Songs in the Key of MP3: the New Icons of the Internet Age is one of those books where you’ll find yourself shocked that it didn’t exist before: it’s a mapping out of the modern musical and subcultural landscape on terms defined by the millennial artists who’ve come to define it.

La Cocina review - New York restaurant drama lingers too long

★★★ LA COCINA New York restaurant drama lingers too long

Struggles of undocumented immigrants slaving in a Times Square kitchen

La Cocina is one of those films that cuts an excellent trailer, succinctly delivering just enough characters, plot and visual flair to entice an audience that enjoyed recent dramas set in restaurant kitchens like The Bear, Boiling Point and The Menu.

All Happy Families review - unhappy in their own way

Indie comedy-drama tackles toxic masculinity in the post-#MeToo era

Director Haroula Rose’s gentle, good-hearted new comedy-drama All Happy Families takes its title from the famous first sentence of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”