Monday, 30 May 2011

Theatre review: Horseless Carriage of Curiosities, Brighton Fringe Festival

In the mid-19th century, no self-respecting home was without an electric-shock machine, a state-of-the-art gadget that, it was claimed, could cure everything from poor eyesight to baldness to problems in the bedroom.
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Friday, 27 May 2011

Theatre review: Butley, Brighton Festival

Forty years ago Simon Gray wrote a play about a hard-drinking, venomously cruel English professor in the midst of a crisis. Directed by Harold Pinter and starring Alan Bates, Butley was his first big hit, swiftly transferring to Broadway and later being turned into a film. That it has since been neglected by directors has been attributed to Bates's indelible performance, though watching Lindsay Posner's revival, starring The Wire's Dominic West, you suspect there are other reasons why it has been given a wide berth.
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Sunday, 22 May 2011

More man, music, and mystique

What is it about Bob Dylan? Routinely hailed as the voice of his generation, a man who expanded the possibilities of popular song, he is treated with the kind of awe reserved for literary giants and continues to be the subject of academic enquiry; his vast body of work is studied at universities and endlessly picked over by critics and biographers.
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Friday, 20 May 2011

Book review: Reelin' In The Years by Mark Radcliffe

Named after a single by Steely Dan, Reelin' In The Years is a pleasant ramble through five decades of pop culture seen through the eyes of a music-loving northerner and told through a series of singles that each represents a year of his life.
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Wednesday, 18 May 2011

Music review - The Great Escape, Brighton

Brighton's answer to the South by South-West festival has, it appears, already outgrown its roots.
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Wednesday, 11 May 2011

Music review - Asian Dub Foundation, Brighton Festival

In his book 33 Revolutions Per Minute, Dorian Lynskey offers an intriguing challenge to the assumption that the protest song has had its day.
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Friday, 6 May 2011

The anti-popstar: Moby regains his focus

Moby's life has driven him to drink, drugs and therapy. Now we can see it too, in a photo album and show. He talks to Fiona Sturges and shows us some of his pictures
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