Issue 616

Hunger

Protest picture

'Were you out last night my friend?' 'Is it that obvious?' I say pulling down a wrinkled lower eyelid to expose an eye as bloodshot as those of the two men opposite me. They are hot young actor Michael Fassbender - all fair brown hair, blue eyes, slight…

Stephen Petronio Dance Company

As the enfant terrible of the dance world Stephen Petronio has worked with some of the world’s most recognisable names. Kelly Apter meets the man behind the stage magic

Quantum of Solace

Director Marc Forster has said in interviews that he agreed to do Bond because the producers asked him to make an art house version. Well, if this is art house then the Pope is atheist, Quantum of Solace starts with a trademark action sequence involving…

James Bond - Killer Tracks

When Bond's latest music maker, Jack White, told Rolling Stone magazine recently that he wanted to 'join the family of Barry, Bassey, Connery and Craig', he cleverly omitted any reference to the occasional black sheep of the 007 family. After all…

Jazzie B

Keep on movin'

'I never made house music, mate! You've got the wrong bloke.' He's got a point actually, maybe I have. Is this the same Jazzie B whose band Soul II Soul produced a genre defining album entitled Club Classics Vol. 1 just as house music was breaking…

Circuit training

‘Tangerine Dream,’ Kraftwerk’s Ralf Hutter said to Lester Bangs in a 1975 interview, ‘although they are German they have an English name, so they create onstage an Anglo-American identity, which we completely deny. We cannot deny we are from Germany…

Gerhard Richter

Man for all seasons

When Sonic Youth toured their 1988 Daydream Nation album in 2007 on the back of the same year's two-CD deluxe edition of what had originally been the New York art rock pioneers' final independent release, the original LP cover art was probably the last…

Dylan Moran

Good stock

Despite the current economic doom and gloom, or more likely because of it, live comedy is booming, with a host of big names currently touring the UK. And while luminaries like the Mighty Boosh, Sarah Silverman, Steve Coogan and Lee Evans have recently…

Slava’s Snowshow

After well over a decade on the road, Slava’s Snowshow continues to pack ‘em in. Steve Cramer reckons this is about childishness, love and pain

Michel Faber

Baptism of fire

Michel Faber is a tough act to follow, especially when you're Michel Faber. The chameleonic author has built an impressive back catalogue that flips between postmodern memoirs of a Victorian prostitute, ghostly love stories or a sci-fi thriller about a…

Birmingham Royal Ballet

George Balanchine, Kenneth MacMillan and Bronislava Nijinska – a heavyweight line-up of choreographers, all of whom have created a ballet to Stravinsky’s 1928 score, Le Baiser de la fée. So when British choreographer, Michael Cordor was asked to make a…

Rebel Waltz

It's been to Barcelona, to Shoreditch and even to Brazil, but Rebel Waltz co-founder Murray Richardson finds much amusement in the fact that his club, which celebrates its tenth anniversary here, will be happening on the very same street on which it was…

John Updike - The Widows of Eastwick

For almost half a century, novelist, poet and New Yorker writer John Updike has chronicled the concerns, thoughts and sexual foibles of the American middle class. Not always successfully though, as can be forgiven amidst a career which embraces almost…

Hunger

(15) 95min

In 1981, IRA member Bobby Sands allowed his body to become the ultimate instrument of protest when he led the Maze prison hunger strike in order to win political status for imprisoned members of the IRA. Directed by Turner Prize winning artist Steve…

Telefunken

Telefunken is a proper house night. Its music jacks in all the right places, its residents know how to mix without molestation and its guests are great. You can tell residents Alan Gray and Nick Wilson come from the right sort of background because…

The Caretaker

Pinter’s tale of a power struggle between three men, one destitute, one marginalised by mental health issues and one seeming to exist at the twilight edge of bourgeois respectability, assumes a new power in the current economic climate. When…

Alexander McCall Smith - La's Orchestra Saves the World

When a master of storytelling such as Alexander McCall Smith puts pen to paper, we have come to expect great things. And he doesn't disappoint with this latest stand-alone title, a warm and captivating tale of strength, passion and friendship set in…

Terence Davies

Liverpool echo

Of Time and the City is an idiosyncratic and deeply personal documentary essay, which draws on vivid archival footage and some inspired musical selections (everything from Mahler to Peggy Lee), it's narrated by Terence Davies, who peppers his commentary…

W.

The American aphorism that suggests 'any boy can grow up to be president' is blandly dramatised in Oliver Stone's outrageously timed film, the first biopic to consider the life story of a sitting US president. Fresh from his deadly pursuit by Anton…

Hydro

Straight outta Bellshill, Hydro grew up listening to his dad’s hip hop collection, split into ‘kid friendly’ and ‘non-kid friendly’ categories. He soon skipped the De La Soul and Tribe Called Quest and broke out the NWA and the Public Enemy. Moving to…

Shellac

'My band means too much to me for me to allow anyone to put me in a position of resenting my band. I insist that it remain a hobby for that reason. If it becomes anymore than a hobby then it becomes something that I rely on, and my frame of mind and my…

Martin Kershaw

A visit to the Eduardo Paolozzi retrospective at the Dean Gallery four years ago was the starting point for alto saxophonist Martin Kershaw’s ambitious new Hero as a Riddle project. A Scottish Art Council New Music Award has finally allowed Kershaw…

Jean Muir

Absolutely fabulous

Jean Muir didn't invent the little black dress, but she made it her own. The trailblazing designer, who established her own label Jane & Jane in 1962 before branching out under her own name in 1966, was loved not for her catwalk extravagance or her…

Suddenly Last Summer

Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer is the theatrical equivalent of a shot in the arm from a hypodermic needle, a visceral cocktail of madness, repressed sexuality and cannibalism all played out against the sweltering New Orleans heat. It’s also…

Hannah and Harvey

Young people's theatre

Mental illness isn’t something you see on the stage very often, and certainly not in a show aimed at children. But given that one in four of us will experience it at some point in our lives, we’re as well to find out about it sooner rather than…