Review of 2018: Part 2 – Live

This part focuses on LIVE things: mostly music and theatre. Part one (the best part) was about books, you can read that here. Without additional ado, here goes:



2018 had its challenges, but its artistic compensations too. If my seven-year-old self could have seen me in the staff box as Morrissey played 'Everyday Is Like Sunday', he would have first asked whether I'd already retired as a footballer, then asked me to explain exactly how my job was a job, and then felt curiously proud. It was a pinch-yourself moment, of which I've been lucky to have many. I may not see eye-to-eye with Mozza on Anne-Marie Waters, but we'll always have Viva Hate. Most of it, anyway. Not 'Bengali in Platforms'. I saw Lynne Ramsey talk about Morvern Callar (her reaction to seeing the movie for the first time since release, "What a weird fucking film"), Sally Rooney talk about Conversations with Friends, and Tom Courtenay get heckled by opponents of the 1960 Education Act during a seminar on Woodfall's kitchen sink cycle. The world seems to have moved on from stand-up Bridget Christie, judging by the words of friends and the empty seats, which is a shame, as she is better than ever and better than anyone else. I was invited to Edith Bowman's Soundtracking with Lenny Abrahamson, lured to the 2018 Panzini Lectures – blank space has never been so much fun – and dragged others to Elis James and John Robins' book tour. Is watching a man drunkenly planking while his friend recreates the whole of Freddie Mercury's Live Aid set in mime entertaining? I'm still not sure, but I think it is.

***

Gigs of the year:


This man was not in attendance.

10. A Celebration of John Williams/Star Wars: A New Hope in Concert (Royal Albert Hall) – Don't worry, they won't all be things that took place in my office and for which I was responsible for the PR. Just three of the first four, and then the #2. The Williams show was originally 'An Evening with John Williams' and then became 'An Evening without John Williams' as he was regrettably checked into hospital while preparing for the show in London. This created an awful lot of work for the Hall's handsome Press Manager, but we found enough Blitz Spirit that wasn't already being used for Brexit to rally round and win the day. I say 'we', it was mostly the London Symphony Orchestra and substitute conductor Dirk Brossé. It was a hell of a night: poignant, nostalgic, life-affirming, with one great piece of music after another: a triumphant Superman, a lilting, heartbreaking Schindler's List. No-one sounds quite like this orchestra. They were back the following month to accompany the original Star Wars (well, the '97 version) in full: as the two suns rose over Tatooine, the LSO rose to meet them.



9. HAIM (Alexandra Palace) – Being a HAIM fan is like being in a cool gang where everyone is really nice. Support came from Maggie Rogers, who rocked up on stage wearing a cape and got increasingly less interesting.



8. The Snowman (Royal Albert Hall) – I watch this every Christmas. For me it is Christmas, though it was only this year that I realised its ending is a metaphor for Christmas as a grown-up – or at least can be. I watched it with thousands of children, and the Royal Philharmonic playing the music live, and the moment when it becomes clear (after a little ingenious use of perspective) that The Snowman and Young David Bowie are flying was as exalting as ever. The kids loved the show, though despite the neat jokes (pineapple nose!), the bit they laughed at most was when the boy gets changed out of his pyjamas and you see his bum. (Technically this was the second half of a show, but it was on in the middle of the afternoon and I do have to do some work.)


This is actually from the 2016 performance, don't tell anyone.

7. Guy Barker's Big Band Christmas (Royal Albert Hall) – This is one of my favourite things we do, and now an indispensable part of my Christmas. Paloma Faith turned up in a Big Hat, but as ever the incomparable Vanessa Haynes stole the show. She is our Aretha and I still don't understand how she isn't the biggest star in the world.


Still not quite sure about this publicity shot tbh.

6. Paul Brady and Andy Irvine (Barbican Centre) – It's not every day you get to see one of your all-time favourite records played live, long after you thought any such opportunity must have passed. The first half was deep cuts and obscurities, the second half that immortal debut album, featuring Irvine's 'Bonny Woodhall' and Brady's immortal 'Arthur McBride', up there with the best seven minutes of my year.


Somewhere in there is Bjӧrk.

5. All Points East: Bjӧrk and Father John Misty (Victoria Park) – I returned to the fray of the 'outdoor gig' after six years, irresistibly tempted by the two headliners. Neither were as good as the last time I saw them (Bjӧrk in 2016, Misty last year), but those were some unscalable bars. Her absurd sets, magical soundscapes and conga of flautists, and his stripped-back singer-songwriter shtick made for a lovely night. Highlights: 'Isobel' and 'Holy Shit'. And the queues for the loos weren't too bad at all.



4. David Ford presents Milk and Cookies 2018 (Bush Hall) – With #s 8 and 7, think of this as the third part of an informal trilogy of Christmas musical traditions, in which Eastbourne's finest digs out the charity buckets, lays off the songs about dashed dreams and macro-economics, and cranks up his guitar for a succession of unmissable covers. This year's highlights included a heartbreaking piano-led take on Lionel Richie's 'Hello', a gorgeous 'God Only Knows' and an uproarious 'Go Your Own Way', before he made his peace with 'YMCA' (once his punchline in a muddled interview with Rolling Stone) in thrilling, climactic fashion. There was space for his own material too, including a metal-ish freakout to 'Requiem'.



3. Courtney Barnett (Brixton Academy) was blistering and brilliant: intense and heavy and heart-open, warts-and-all joyous. Go get her new record – her best yet – and I'll see you there next time.



2. Nine Inch Nails (Royal Albert Hall) – Fourteen years ago I came down from Manchester on the £1 Megabus to see my first gig in London: Nine Inch Nails at Brixton Academy. This time I got to promote the show. That's not a humblebrag, it's just a brag. I knew this would be great, but not how confrontational and brutal and majestic the new material would sound against the old. Amidst songs from The Downward Spiral and The Fragile, the absolute stand-out was a relentless, furious 'Copy of A'. Sensational light show too: snapping timers casting rhythmic, perverse and iconic shadows.



1. Susanne Sundfør: Music for People in Trouble AV (Barbican Centre) – She just gets better and better. A suite of 11 songs, staged with a deceptively tricksy, pixie-ish sense of fun (the whole band dressed alike in hooded black capes, behind a mesh of projections, so Sundfør will be apparently sat behind a guitar at stage left, then pop up at the piano on the far side), but with a greater emotional heft than any gig I have been to in years. The album, and the show, begin with the quiet naïve simplicity of 'Mantra' and build, via 'Undercover' (the song of the decade), to the towering, escalating wall of sound that is 'Mountaineers'. An utterly singular experience that for an hour takes you out of the world, and then allows you to live in it a little more happily.

***

Theatre of the year...

... is quite a grand title considering I've only seen a dozen things, but here are my six favourites.



6. Julius Caesar (Bridge Theatre) – My artistic appreciation of this production was hampered by having an overloaded kidney and a back spasm, meaning that Caesar was the only person who came out of this play worse than me... but through wincing eyes and a cloud of codeine I found much to love, especially the heartstopping 'Et tu, Brute?' set-piece, a sequence so profoundly moving that it has led me to stop using the phrase as a joke. The acting was variable and the Trumpian trappings a fairly unconvincing gimmick, but at its best it made Shakespeare new.



5. Witness for the Prosecution (County Hall) – As purely entertaining as anything I saw this year: a cleverly-staged production of the Agatha Christie story (memorably filmed by Billy Wilder in 1957): never profound or touched by genius, but remarkably enjoyable. It seems I can live without genius now and then.



4. Guys and Dolls in Concert (Royal Albert Hall) – I'm glad this was good, as I spent about a month working intensively on press for the show and we convinced lots of people to attend. Its abridged nature slightly undercut the play's emotional impact, but the numbers were astonishingly good. Clive Rowe's reprisal of his Olivier-winning role as Nicely Nicely meant that a show-stopping 'Sit Down, You're Rocking the Boat' was guaranteed, Adrian Lester's 'Luck Be a Lady' was great fun and director Stephen Mear's take on the 'Crapshooters' Ballet' was inspired, but it was Australian cabaret star Meow Meow who absolutely stole the show, shrinking the Hall's notably large stage with her mammoth talent, presence and charisma.


It's-a-me, Iago!

3. Othello (The Globe), in which Mark Rylance (as Iago), manages to play the first half of the play almost exclusively for laughs. Genuinely. Rather than wickedness, Iago's evasiveness commences (at least in appearance) as a kind of shameless, confounded innocence – and his plotting as a clever caper – somehow dragging us to his side. Then he starts to drip cruel and complex villainy, all the time looking like Super Mario. Sheila Atim, as a bullish, knowing Emelia, is excellent in support too. The best five quid I've spent since the Merlin Premier League 1993-4 sticker album.



2. The Sea Wall (The Old Vic) – Andrew Scott stands on an otherwise empty stage for half an hour and breaks our hearts. Theatre at its most primal, modern and moving.



1. The Writer (Almeida Theatre) – Oh to write like this. Ella Hickson's confounding, irresistible, meta-textual exploration of gender and sexuality begins with a two-hander between a misogynistic but superficially reasonable theatre director (Samuel West) and a feminist audience member (Lara Rossi), then snaps back to reveal that these are just characters, and that writer Romola Garai is going somewhere else: perhaps to a quasi-psychedelic lesbian rural idyll (complete with a subsequent, sarcastic post-modern deconstruction), perhaps to the brink of masculinity and beyond, attaining power and control at the expense of her identity. It is so entertaining, so funny, so clever and so packed with ideas that it's exhilarating, but it's also utterly haunting: a profoundly disquieting and disorientating piece of theatre. And it even acknowledges that preaching to a small, committed choir in an Islington theatre is a complete waste of time. Maybe I do need some genius now and again.

***



Exhibitions get just a brief mention this year, as I didn't go to many. My favourite was Ocean Liners: Speed and Style at the V&A, which included genuine bits of the Titanic, alongside a celebration of the Normandie's hilarious levels of excess (perhaps not so hilarious during the Depression), and a crash course in liner design. The Great British Seaside, at the National Maritime Museum, was also a lot of fun, bringing together the work of four very different photographers, each preoccupied with a vanishing culture, whether capturing its inherent quirkiness (Martin Parr), its poetry, offbeat dignity and key to national character (Tony Ray-Jones), or its scale if you put a camera a long way away (I wasn't as into Simon Roberts).

***

Thanks for reading. Part three will be about FILMS.

Review of 2017: Part 2 – Live

I'm not blasé about how lucky I am to have the job I do, to live in London, and to have just enough money to go to some incredible events (provided I don't go on holiday, and shop at Aldi quite a bit). In 2017, I've strolled around the Royal Albert Hall auditorium laying out Santa hats as Chrissie Hynde sang '2,000 Miles', gone for an extended drink with the Pern team after a day of filming with Christopher Eccleston, Paul Whitehouse and Nigel Havers, met Billy Bragg (straight in at #1 on the Nicest Celebs spreadsheet) and been to a celebration of Joe Orton featuring his sister Leonie, Kenneth Cranham and John Lahr. I've seen Allison Anders talk about Gas, Food Lodging, Bruce Robinson and Richard E. Grant discuss Withnail & I, and Kazuo Ishiguro reveal a deep love of screwball comedy. And through jobligations and a fast finger on the F5 button, I've been fortunate enough to go to the BAFTAs, Oliviers, the London Film Festival and the athletics world championships, and to see John Grant interview Elizabeth Fraser. It's been a bit daft.

That's everything that doesn't fit into my rigorously regimented Part 2 of the Review of the Year, which is split into Gigs, Shows and Exhibitions:

Gigs



12. The Best of Elmer Bernstein (June, Royal Albert Hall) – A fantastic concert showcasing Bernstein's pioneering work in everything from epics to comedies, Westerns to romances, and nature documentaries to sweaty, cynical, claustrophobic fag-end noirs. It was cosy, conversational and emotionally overwhelming in turn. Bernstein’s rhapsodic homage to/pastiche of classic Hollywood music – evoking the very history of Hollywood and composed for a ‘60s TV show called Hollywood and the Stars – was a revelation, captivating me with its sweeping, Steiner-esque beauty. Full review.



11. Martha Wainwright and Ed Harcourt (February, The Roundhouse) – An often brilliant evening in the company of one of the 21st century’s most compelling performers. Her new record is patchy, but she is such a mesmerising performer that she can wring brilliance from almost anything, her hips rotating sensually, her foot coming off the floor and her knee up towards her chest again and again in a mannerism that seems both inexplicable and inevitable, as much a part of her act as her easy humour, constant between-songs swearing and that unapproachable voice, racing over the octaves, blasting the roof off the Roundhouse or staying husky, deep and disgruntled somewhere in her larynx. Leonard Cohen’s 'Chelsea Hotel #2' is the highlight: among the most remarkable things I’ve ever seen or heard, at a gig or anywhere else (even after a false start in which she leaps straight into the second verse). At one point she’s crouched on the floor, her voice somewhere in the rafters, her heart somewhere in Hell. There are versions of it on YouTube, one from 10 years ago, another when she started doing it again live in December – clutching a lyric sheet, skitting around the tune – but nothing will ever come close to the way she sang it that night in February. It was revelatory. Full review.



10. The National (September, Hammersmith Apollo) – The best band since Suede (it's true, check your paperwork), and one of the most viscerally exciting live acts around. After three solid years of touring Trouble Will Find Me, they seemed keen to get away from it, delving further back into their catalogue and playing nearly everything from their new record, Sleep Well Beast. Highlights were a blistering 'The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness', a hushed, harmonised 'Dark Side of the Gym' featuring support act This The Kit, and a brass-backed take on that stuttering, syncopated hymn to escapism in a hellhole, 'Fake Empire'. My only quibble is that Matt Berninger, one of the most gifted lyricists of his generation and a dynamic stage presence, can't sing in tune live. It's not that hard.



9. Jens Lekman (March, Oval Space) – Glorious. Imagine how good he is when he doesn't have the flu. Full review.



8. David Ford's Milk and Cookies (December, Bush Hall) – Every Christmas, the protest-singing multi-instrumentalist puts down the economics textbook and plays a covers show for charity. Milk and cookies are on sale from a table at the back. This was the first time I'd been (though I've seen Ford live twice before), and it was a total joy, Ford effortlessly judging the mood as kicked off with 'Free Fallin' ', put his heart into a Whitney cover ('Didn't We Almost Have It All'), and played a joshing bromantic duet with Tom McRae (John Waite's 'Missing You'), between self-penned classics and randomly generated 'requests'. At one point, he asked the audience to sing a succession of notes, then used them as the synths for an inspired take on 10cc's 'I'm Not in Love'. What a treat. See you next year. I've put up a setlist (from memory) here.



7. Mike Heron and Trembling Bells (August, Cafe Oto) – As I said in the books review, my summer was commandeered by a burgeoning infatuation with the Incredible String Band. Robin Williamson's show at a Putney pub was distinctive and enjoyable, but ISB-free and dragged down by his wife's tuneless vocals. That felt in keeping with his character, and so did Mike Heron's hits set, backed by Glasgow folk-rock outfit, Trembling Bells. After support by a bad poet and a good young folkie, they took the stage for eight Incredible String Band numbers, including mesmeric versions of 'Douglas Traherne Harding' and 'A Very Cellular Song', probably the best thing Heron ever wrote. Pushing 75, he couldn't take a lead on all the numbers, so a backing singer unconvincingly deputised on 'Maya', but his voice has held up pretty well, and there's no questioning the enduring, singular quality of the material, nor the talent of his polished but flexible ensemble. He ended the show by duetting on the ISB rarity, 'Bright Morning Stars', with his daughter. Immediate reaction.



6. Yasmine Hamdan (March, Scala) – Every time I see her live, Lebanese electro-grunge pioneer Yasmine Hamdan features in this list. She topped it in 2014. The crowd was full of people farting and petting, but the performance itself was packed full of Hamdan's easy sensuality, instinctive creativity and megawatt charisma. The aftermath was somewhat spoiled by Yasmine not remembering me (we once hung out for like three hours) and then proceeding to offer me a fist-bump, which I misjudged and shook hands with. I can hear you cringing from here. Full review.



5. Susanne Sundfør (October, Union Chapel) – For me, one of this year's happiest musical discoveries, along with my numbers 10, 7 and 1. I saw her at the Scott Walker Prom in July (more of which later), and quickly became besotted. Y'know, musically. This show at London's most tranquil, atmospheric and welcoming venue (though the pews aren't ideal if you're a handsome 33-year-old press executive with a bad back) leant heavily on her new record, Music for People in Trouble, and its stylistic siblings: songs like 'Walls' and 'The Brothel', introspective, teasingly extroverted synth-folk ballads a world away from the stomping electro-pop of 2015's irresistible Ten Love Songs. Occasionally the show dipped into plonky nothingness, but there were stand-out moments from 'Reincarnation' to Paul Simon's 'American Tune', and when Sundfor rips the lid off that extraordinary voice for 'Trust Me' (a heart-stopping version) and the year's best song, 'Undercover', there's simply no feeling comparable.



4. John Grant (May, Union Chapel) – My first ever visit to Union Chapel was to see Review-of-the-Year stalwart John Grant, staying true to his reputation as rock's nicest genius with a charity show (to fund a kidney transplant for his friend Oleg) full of rarely-aired fan favourites ('Global Warming', 'You Don't Have To') and definitive versions. His 'Glacier' was the greatest I've ever heard, and I've seen him duet on it with Kylie. Full review.



3. Seu Jorge (May, Royal Albert Hall) – I loved The Life Aquatic from first sight, and one of its great joys is the Seu Jorge soundtrack: Portuguese-language covers of Bowie songs that give it so much of its poignant, perfect atmosphere. This year he toured those songs for the first time, pitching up at My Office for an intimate, conversational show. It was uplifting, unique, but deeply moving too: speaking very personally to the sell-out crowd, many of them sporting those iconic red beanies. “I am glad to see so many members of Zissou Team here,” says Seu. (A Team Zissou member calling Team Zissou 'Zissou Team” is the most Team Zissou thing ever). When a hidden screen comes down and his backdrop is The Life Aquatic and you realise that though it’s only 13 years, it’s already 13 years, and that the passing of time set to music is a rhapsodically poignant thing. Full review.



2. Prom 15: The Songs of Scott Walker: 1967-70 (July, Royal Albert Hall) – Perhaps the best show I've ever seen at work, a stunning reinterpretation of Scott Walker's early solo work from four of the most distinctive musical voices of later generations. Backed by Jules Buckley's impeccable Heritage Orchestra, each brought something different to the show, representing a different facet of Walker's mercurial persona: John Grant power and eloquence, Richard Hawley an urgent, tuneful melancholy, Jarvis Cocker a stage presence in place of the voice required to do Walker's songs justice, and Susanne Sundfør the insolent sensuality and super soaraway top notes. I'd come for Walker and Grant, but left as a Sundfør superfan. I first saw her in the soundcheck, doing something strange to 'The Amorous Humphrey Plugg'. By the end of the song I couldn't wait to hear more, and when she stepped out to sing it in Bond-theme style that night, I was just a foot away. It damn near lifted me to the ceiling. You can watch it here.



1. Father John Misty (November, Hammersmith Apollo) – In which the psychically tortured confessional artist puts on the most joyous pop concert of the year. Full review.

Would you like some more? I've written about plenty of other shows, from Jackson Browne being pretty damn great to Angel Olsen being pretty damn poor, and Richard Thompson not really being arsed.

Extra bits: Here are the best three pieces I wrote for the Royal Albert Hall blog this year: - My best pun of the year headlines this piece about Elmer Bernstein's greatest hits - Go behind the scenes at the filming of Brian Pern: A Tribute - And, after the untimely passing of the great Tom Petty, I wrote about seeing him live in 2012

***

Theatre


Yes, I like this sort of thing, what exactly is your point.

7. The John Wilson Orchestra presents Oklahoma! (August, Royal Albert Hall) – This counts, right? A semi-staged performance of Rodgers and Hammerstein's morally incomprehensible 1943 musical, in which the hero decides that a mentally ill love rival who owns pornography doesn't deserve to exist, and tries to convince him to commit suicide. Helluva show, though, powered by John Wilson's tight, exuberant orchestra, as a first-rate ensemble conjured Oklahoma from thin air with the help of a washing line, a couple of chairs, and impeccable song-and-dance smarts. Robert Fairchild was unquestionably the stand-out, but a mention too for Marcus Brigstocke. When I heard he was in it, I thought that was funny. It wasn't, but he was. I'd forgotten too how much great music there is in Oklahoma! I'll always prefer Rodgers and Hart to Rodgers and Hammerstein, but I prefer Rodgers and Hart to most things.



6. An American in Paris (March, Dominion Theatre) – An explosive, intelligent stage version of MGM’s 1951 masterpiece, direct from Broadway, which sags now and then in its book, but offers unmissable entertainment of a type rarely seen in the West End. It was the first night too, so Leslie Caron turned up to take a bow. Full review.



5. Girl From the North Country (July, The Old Vic) – A jukebox musical of Bob Dylan album tracks, allied to a Depression-era melodrama, and nearly as good as that sounds. Its greatest virtue was Shirley Henderson's performance. I've never been that taken with her, seeing her in films, but she had such a presence and physicality, flitting between pitiful and sensual, rabid and comatose, that I was transfixed. Though I tend to have a problem with portraits of mental disintegration which are big and tic-laden (as the journalist Tim Lott once wrote, a realistic piece of fiction about mental illness would just be very boring), this one managed to be funny, intelligently allegorical, moving and somewhat unpleasant, without traversing into unbelievability or hysteria, while her moments of lucidity unveiled an unexpectedly beautiful voice, shot through a Scandi-Minnesotan lilt. It was her, the songs and the atmosphere of quiet desperation that stayed with me, but mostly her. Full review.


Pennycooke as the dandyish Francophile, Thomas Jefferson.

4. Hamilton (December, Victoria Palace Theatre) – The top four could be in any order, really: I've been incredibly lucky to see four shows so thrilling and affecting in a single year. Lin-Manuel Miranda's Broadway sensation makes it to the West End in considerable style, delivering for an audience so hyped that they were whooping with barely-contained delirium when the lights went down. The writing is magnificent – two small moments that just blow me away are Lafayette's appearance in 'Guns and Ships' and "... we dream in the dark for the most time", a wail of impotence in the stand-out number, 'The Room Where It Happens' – and the staging and playing aren't far off. Rachel John (as Angelica) and Giles Terera (as Aaron Burr) are both incredibly classy performers, and there's explosive, pint-sized support from Jason Pennycooke. The West End audience seemed to retain its comfortable fondness for warbly show tunes (the cheesy if unquestionably effective 'One Last Time') over lightning-paced wordplay, but the atmosphere was something special all the same.



3. Angels in America (July/Aug, National Theatre) – The first half, Millennium Approaches, was astonishing: a clear-headed, literate and ambitious piece of art, lit by the NT's masterly, expansive stagecraft and a stunning ensemble. Part two, Perestroika, wasn't quite in my sweet spot, its abstract and metaphysical elements sometimes more confusing than compelling, but taken as a whole it was a vivid presentation of an extraordinarily ambitious, eight-hour play, with a sprawling focus but an enduring, unblinkered humanity. The performances from Nathan Lane (as Trump's mentor, McCarthyite lawyer Roy Cohn), Denise Gough and the relatively unknown James McArdle were absolutely terrific.



2. The Ferryman (August, The Gielgud Theatre) – What I always imagined theatre might be, and yet rarely is: both political and personal, with a specificity that gives it its universality, and a crackling, super-charged atmosphere that here buzzes with desperation, danger and the particular energy of unspoken love. Written by Jez Butterworth and directed by Sam Mendes, it stars Paddy Considine as a former IRA heavy whose tranquil farm life remains in the shadow of his brother's unresolved disappearance, setting up your expectations only to subvert them or – in the case of a moment of lucidity amidst the fog of dementia – time and heighten cliche with such effortlessness that it works just the same, before a descent into inevitable, ironic violence. Everything about the play is first-rate, but especially Laura Donnelly as the missing brother's wife. The play was based on Donnelly's own experiences, and her knife-edge performance is warm, tortured and erotic – sometimes all three at once.



1. Hamlet (April, Almeida Theatre) – Andrew Scott's Hamlet is the best I've seen − probing, philosophical, introspective and bitterly witty − and this intimate, innovative, cleanly modern production rises to meet him, keeping your attention rapt and your emotions engaged. He's also the first to whom I've felt a natural and personal connection, and it runs deep. He's groping in the dark, beset with an impotence of action from which he's trying to rip himself free, questing for self-knowledge, while praying for a relief from it. He's an existential Hamlet: thoughtful, melancholy, feeling deeply, a decent, anguished, emotionally tender Prince with an adolescent's loathing of hypocrisy and duplicity, a child's guilelessness, and a self-loathing born of immobility in the face of dishonour. In pegged black trousers and a collarless shirt, barefoot or in shiny black shoes, stripped to a vest highlighting his voluminous biceps, or dressed in cream and white for the graveyard scene, the wiry, wild-eyed Scott commands the stage, and all of your attention. Full review.

***

Exhibitions



"The bees are getting suspicious." My favourite exhibition of the year is on until April: the V&A's wonderful Winnie the Pooh: Exploring a Classic, which approaches its topic from the angle of E. H. Shepard's perfect illustrations. That was presumably through necessity, as Shepard's drawings are part of the museum's collection whereas the smaller number of Milne items are borrowed, but it offers a fascinating new perspective on the works, examining Shepard's preparation (sketches from life in the rural locations), his subtle tricks (lengthening Piglet's snout to bury it in a balloon, showing his ears streaming back in the force of a gale) and his genius, while celebrating a creative marriage of two forceful, remarkable talents that extended to the artistic layout of the text, which echoed and so enhanced the stories they were telling. Don't miss the little side-room which takes that one step further! The rooms are full of life-size recreations of the drawings, including a Poohsticks bridge with an electronic river, and of remarkable insights and artefacts. The best are the alternate, unused Shepard sketches, among 270 drawings that he donated the museum in 1973. What I also found fascinating, looking at a gallery of later Pooh editions illustrated by Shepard, is that it was only in his dotage that his colour portraits began to work. His watercolour paintings, at least in these reproductions, seem blocky and charmless, but when he returned to the subject in his eighties, his eyesight failing, he opted instead for simple washes over his old ink drawings, and it's those indelible editions (making Pooh's jackets red, where sometimes they'd been blue) which have become definitive – and rightly so. There are a few references to the abhorrent D*sney bastardisation of the books in the opening room, but otherwise we're fine.



Grayson Perry's small-scale offering at the Serpentine Galleries, The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever!, made me very happy: a sly, self-referential and extremely funny collection, from a vase decorated with delicately hideous cartoons of the Brexit mob to a tooled up motorbike for his teddy bear and (my favourite), a pastiche of miners' gala banners that contrasts the vilified 'archetypes' of the contemporary working class with the hazy image of their forefathers' macho monochrome nobility.



I saw two great exhibitions at the British Library, as well as their enjoyable Harry Potter one: a collection of Jane Austen's teenage writings in the Treasures gallery, and a fine study of the failed communist experiment – already in tatters by 1920 – in Russian Revolution: Hope, Tragedy, Myths. The Imperial War Museum's People Power exhibition was impressive, multi-faceted and a little unfortunate in having to follow the V&A's Disobedient Objects, which is one of the best exhibitions I've seen since moving to London, and dealt with a similar theme: public protest.

If you like the idea of going into a warm hut and trying not to stand on some butterflies, then I'd really recommend the Natural History Museum's ever-popular Sensational Butterflies (seriously, it's terrific).



My favourite of the art exhibitions was Tate Modern's Soul of A Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, which had its philosophically impenetrable collections of twigs, but also works like Benny Andrews' provocative, 'Did the Bear Sit Under a Tree' – with its challenging, tactile 3D created partially by using an everyday zip for a mouth – and Betye Saar's 'Sambo's Banjo', its gaudy exterior covered in the infantilising, dehumanising racism of a blackface caricature, while its inside contains a black figure strung up for a lynching. Saar said, though, that the plight of the black man in America was not hopeless, destiny was in his hands, and so a sniper rifle lies within reach, waiting for him to free himself. I was less enamoured of the Rauschenberg exhibition, though it contained the greatest factual description of an artwork ever written, though American Dream at the British Museum got me thinking about the ways we see America, and the ways it sees itself.

***

Thanks for reading.