The Times - UK (2022-04-30)

the times | Saturday April 30 2022 saturday review 3

Czech dancer Mr Kriss goes for a spin at Breakin’ Convention at Sadler’s Wells. Below: Nicola Walker in The Corn Is Green

active attractions in the foyers, including

live DJs, workshops and “have-a-go graffi-

ti”. Sadler’s Wells, London EC1 (sadlers

wells.com), tonight & Sun

Alex O’Connell

Pop

Foals

Riding a late Noughties trend for ultra-

complex math rock, the Oxford band

Foals have since loosened up and devel-

oped into a leading alternative live act. The

pugilistic singer Yannis Philippakis is a

dynamic, stage-diving frontman, and the

band’s mix of Kraftwerk-style metronomic

precision, pop melody and hands-aloft

anthemic bombast fills the biggest hall

admirably. This series of concerts herald

the band’s forthcoming album, Life Is

Yours. Olympia, London W6, tonight & Mon;

Empress Ballroom, Blackpool, Thu & Fri

(foals.co.uk)

Will Hodgkinson

Visual art

Reframed: The Woman at the

Window

Surely every Dulwich Picture Gallery

visitor pauses, bewitched for a mo-

ment, to return the gaze of the

rosy-cheeked Rembrandt girl

who, leaning her elbows

on a trompe-l’oeil

ledge, looks out from

her window with a

faint smile. The gal-

lery now makes this,

one of the most popu-

lar pictures in its perman-

ent collection, the starting point

of a show of 40 works,

old masters through to

modernists, all of which fea-

ture the same entrancingly

enigmatic motif. Dulwich

Picture Gallery, London

SE21 (dulwichpicture

gallery.org.uk), Wed-Sep 4

Rachel Campbell-

Johnston

first day in her new job as a Birimingham

detective. Her first investigation is a

“culturally specific homicide” involving

sections of the city’s Muslim and Hindu

communities. This peek inside an under-

explored area of policing certainly feels

fresh — Ray is ITV’s first female Asian

detective lead — and the interplay

between her personal experiences and

work is handled skilfully. ITV, Mon

Ben Dowell

Classical

Hallé/Elder

The great Manchester project, bringing

the city’s two symphony orchestras to-

gether to celebrate the 150th anniversary

of the birth of Ralph Vaughan Williams,

continues with Mark Elder conducting the

Hallé in two highly contrasting works. A

Sea Symphony, in which Roderick Willi-

ams is the baritone soloist, is a choral work

with mystical settings of Walt Whit-

man; with its violent, nihilistic

atmosphere, the far bleaker

Symphony No 6, composed

at the end of the Second

World War, alludes to nu-

clear apocalypse. Bridgewater

Hall, Manchester (halle.co.uk),

tonight

Neil Fisher

Dance

Breakin’

Convention

The annual festival

of hip-hop dance

theatre is back for its

19th year, with acts

coming from the UK and

farther afield including

Peru, Canada, the US and

the EU. Curated, as always,

by the irrepressible Jonzi

D, Breakin’ Convention

takes the best of the

street and brings it to the

stage. Arrive early and

check out the inter-

Film

Playground
This gut-wrenching feature debut from
the Belgian writer-director Laura Wandel
follows seven-year-old Nora (Maya Van-
derbeque, uncannily brilliant), and her re-
assuring elder brother, Abel (Gunter Du-
ret). Abel belongs to a gang of bullies, one
of whom says, with hints of prison movie
toughness: “We run this school. If you
snitch you’re dead.” Yet Nora’s presence by
Abel’s side suddenly exposes his potential
weakness, and the bullies, sensing blood,
turn on him instead. One quibble is that
Wandel’s depiction of cycles of abuse (the
bullied become the bullies), although legit-
imate, happens far too speedily, but other-
wise this is a film of few mistakes, a truthful
dissection of schoolyard morality.
In cinemas
Kevin Maher

Theatre

The Corn Is Green
Cutting edge it certainly ain’t, but Dominic
Cooke’s revival of Emlyn Williams’s semi-
autobiographical play is absorbing enter-
tainment all the same — the tale of a work-
ing-class Welsh lad who is taken under the
wing of a teacher who recognises that he
has talent. Cooke has turned the piece —
first staged in 1938 — into a memory play
to help to smooth off some of its rough
edges. There’s a sotto voce chorus of sing-
ing miners too. Nicola Walker (of Unfor-
gotten fame) is passionate and fiery as Lily
Moffat, the no-nonsense mentor deter-
mined to set the world to rights. Lyttelton,
National Theatre, London SE1 (national
theatre.org.uk), to Jun 11
Clive Davis

Television

DI Ray
Rachita Ray (Parminder Nagra) has to put
up with a lot of so-called microaggres-
sions, whether it’s being confused for a
convenience store worker or being given
the lanyard of another Asian PC on her

Cover story 4-5

The Conversations with Friends

director, Lenny Abrahamson,

tells James Marriott what we

can expect from the series

What the critics are watching and listening to

showing this week

Contents

My

culture

fix 6

The conductor

Edward

Gardner’s

picks,

including Queen

Interview 10

The Australian

comic novelist

Steve Toltz tells

Robbie Millen

about his hilarious

new book

Books 12-21

How the Oxford chumocracy

screwed up Britain — and Mick

Herron’s new spy thriller

TV and radio 23-51

Colin Firth stars in The Staircase,

plus The Terror returns

Puzzles 52-55

Crosswords, sudoku, Scrabble

and your favourite brain teasers

Cover photograph

Enda Bowe/BBC

CZECH VIBES PARIS

Hugo Rifkind 7

“It is good, and I was really

worried it wasn’t going to be”:

Ten Percent reviewed

Music 8-9

Bob Stanley discovers the true

origins of pop music, and what

came before rock’n’roll, in his

new book Let’s Do It

Music 11

Lev Parikian unveils the

secrets of Vaughan Williams’s

The Lark Ascending, Britain’s

favourite classical hit