The Tortured Poets Department depicts a spell of post-breakup mania against the perfect backdrop of the Eras tour – a thrillingly immature reality undermined by safe musicAs The Tortured Poets Department (TTPD) finally sees its official release, the intention behind the title remains as enigmatic as it was when Taylor Swift announced it two months ago....

At the world’s biggest barrel of laughs, Hannah Gadsby, John Kearns and Rose Matafeo rub shoulders with homegrown stars-in-the-making. Our writer has the time of his lifeWhat’s the biggest comedy festival in the world? Parochial Britons would say Edinburgh. Internationalists may consider Montreal’s Just for Laughs. They would all be wrong. Just for...

Queen Elizabeth Hall, London Hofesh Shechter’s young company are an international bunch but their slo-mo curves and sudden shocks deliver some startling home truthsThere’s an irony, of course, in a piece about English identity that’s made by an Israeli choreographer, with a cast from Taiwan, Iceland, Belgium and elsewhere, just two Britons among them....

St John’s Smith Square, London Lee Reynolds’ reduced arrangements of Schoenberg and Mahler were convincing and involvingThe concerts of the Society for Private Musical Performances that Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils established in Vienna in 1919 regularly included performances of arrangements that reduced contemporary orchestral scores to more convenient...

Queen Elizabeth Hall, London Hofesh Shechter’s young company are an international bunch but their slo-mo curves and sudden shocks deliver some startling home truths about the UKThere’s an irony, of course, in a piece about English identity that’s made by an Israeli choreographer, with a cast from Taiwan, Iceland, Belgium and elsewhere, just two Britons...

Sketchwriter’s take on memoir of PM who screwed up catastrophically and quickly but thinks there’s still work to doI was impatient to get going. Plans had been made. I picked up my phone. “ChatGPT. Write me a memoir in the style of an excitable five-year-old on acid.”“We’ve only got 10 years to save the west,” I declared solemnly. Continue reading...