A striking musical drama, written and directed by Jacques Audiard, Emilia Perez constantly shocks and surprises. Rita (Zoe Saldana) is an overqualified and undervalued lawyer at a Mexican firm that is more interested in getting criminals off the hook than bringing them to justice. After one such case, she is sought out by whispered, gravelly…
What should and does one do if one’s loving husband/father turns into a wild animal – I mean literally a wild animal? In a nutshell, that is Wolf Man. It is 1995 and we are in remote woodland in Central Oregon. Former military man and single father Grady Lovell (Sam Jaeger) is bringing up his…
In a comic tour de force, Samuel Barnett has the audience in the palms of his hands. We hang on his every word, as he changes tack, time and again. It is a triumphant monologue, written by Marcelo Dos Santos and directed by Matthew Xia. The said performer, who assumes multiple character voices with aplomb,…
Subterfuge and tension abound in the compelling papal thriller Conclave. The Pope has died and cardinals have been summoned from around the world to elect his successor. The man charged with the responsibility of seeing the process through to finality is the College of Cardinals dean, Brit Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes). Of late, he has…
Fear of coming out and the judgment associated with doing so are the subject of a new musical, focusing on the LGBTQIA+ community. A cast of 21 sings and shimmies its way through 16 numbers, including a reprise, as the story surrounding the final days of a political campaign unfold. It is 2017, at the…
This all singing, all dancing, hit song fest just gets better and better, year after year. What a show! What a production! Elvis may have officially left the building, but Bill Cherry, for one, does a mighty job of looking and sounding like The King, who would have turned 90 this week. And he’s up…
“This fuzzed-out live set from 1992 documents High Rise at their noise-soaked best.” Album Overview: Even though they are one of the most legendary bands of the 90s Japanese psychedelic underground scene, High Rise have a fairly small body of work, and until recently it’s been hard to get a hold of their records. The…
Percival Everett’s James, a reimagining and recontextualising of Huckleberry Finn is a masterpiece. Satirical, cutting, compassionate, but also in many ways reverential to the original text. Francis Spufford delivers an amazing alternate history crime novel in Cahokia Jazz. Noir detective styling allows an exploration of a richly imagined alternate America of the 1920s with a…
It’s lively. It’s cheery. It upends political correctness. In fact, it is the perfect holiday treat. I speak of School of Rock The Musical, featuring the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber, with lyrics by Glenn Slater and book by Julian Fellowes. Based on the 2003 film, which was a hit for Jack Black, who played…
Paddington (the voice of Ben Whishaw) gets back to his roots in a rollicking adventure with the Brown family in Paddington in Peru. The intelligent bear remains living comfortably with the clan, although there is now little connection between the parents and their two children. Judy (Madeleine Harris) is applying for university entrance and mum…
