Based on a famously audacious wartime plot, “Operation Mincemeat” is “a brilliant spy thriller, a brilliant comedy, and a brilliant musical all rolled into one”, said Tim Bano in The Stage. This “exhilarating” production began life in 2019 at the tiny New Diorama Theatre in London, and has since enjoyedContinue Reading
Netflix’s drama-documentary made headlines last month when the Egyptian government denounced it as a “historical fallacy”, because the show insists that Cleopatra was black, said Anita Singh in The Daily Telegraph. No one knows what colour Cleopatra’s skin was, but she is widely believed to have been of Greek-Macedonian descent. Continue Reading
Cannes Film Festival has come under fire for selecting a film starring Johnny Depp as its opener this year, less than a year after the actor won a bitter defamation trial against his ex-wife Amber Heard. Just as controversial as the film’s place at the top of the famed festival’sContinue Reading
Speculation is rife that the relationship between “This Morning” darlings Philip Schofield and Holly Willoughby is on the rocks, with rumours of behind-the-scenes tension. The “golden couple of daytime TV” are having a “relationship crisis”, said Anita Singh, arts and entertainment editor of The Telegraph. “This is the duo whoContinue Reading
Vanessa Brown, from Nottingham Trent University, on Eurovision as a vehicle for promoting greater acceptance. With an aesthetic dependent on novelty and spectacle, and a structure that’s both disjointed and drawn-out, Eurovision – for some – cannot fail to fail. In its “failed seriousness” (the phrase writer Susan Sontag usedContinue Reading
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Pablo Picasso’s death, and museums across Europe and the US are “pulling out all the stops” to celebrate his life and work. Among the most essential destinations on any “immersion tour” is Málaga, says Andrew Ferren in The New York Times. Picasso wasContinue Reading
Olly Mann and The Week delve behind the headlines and debate what really matters from the past seven days. With Julia O’Driscoll, Harriet Marsden and Jamie Timson. This episode was recorded before third-party candidate Muharrem İnce withdrew from the Turkish election on Thursday afternoon. His absence is thought likely to increase theContinue Reading
Twenty-six acts will perform at Saturday’s Eurovision Song Contest final in Liverpool to an expected global audience of 160 million viewers. With an entry from Austria that sees the singers possessed by the spirit of gothic American writer Edgar Allan Poe and an Australian five-piece band fronted by an immigrationContinue Reading
The ancient civilisations of Greece and Persia were enemies for centuries – and their disagreements didn’t only find expression on the battlefield, said Daisy Dunn in The Daily Telegraph. As this “major new exhibition” demonstrates, they had starkly contrasting attitudes towards luxury goods. From the Persian perspective, “lovely things” suchContinue Reading
Many people realise that Boris Johnson is a dishonest chancer who lacks any real convictions, said David Gauke in The New Statesman. Less obvious – at least to those outside Whitehall – is “quite how extraordinarily inept he was at performing some of the basic functions of being prime minister”.Continue Reading
