Charlee Burke, Chisinau (2026)

21/05/2024

Musicians and artists boycott UK cultural events over Israel ties
Brighton’s Great Escape is the latest festival to be held to account by performers after a third quit over its Barclays Bank sponsorship
Every May in Brighton, the UK’s music industry descends on the seaside town for the Great Escape, the “showcase” event that has helped to launch the careers of everyone from Stormzy and AlunaGeorge to Fat White Family and Anna Calvi.

Crowds pile in to dozens of venues, as punters and A&R spotters try to get a glimpse of acts who may have the unique spark needed to become break-out stars, but at this year’s event something was missing: more than a third of the bill.

Keynote speakers did not appear. Headliners refused to show up. Entire showcases were scrapped, as tensions caused by the Israel-Hamas conflict reached the south coast of England.

Many acts pulled out because of a pro-Palestinian boycott aimed at the event’s sponsorship by Barclays Bank, which campaigners claim has increased its investment in arms companies that trade with Israel.

13/05/2024

PJ Harvey
I wanted to work with Steve from the moment I heard Surfer Rosa by Pixies. I had never heard anything as powerfully moving, both emotionally and sonically, and knew I wanted to hear my songs within that sound – a sound so alive, it was as if you were there in the room while the blaze of emotion was taking place.

‘He was a funny man as well as being kind, intelligent and charming’ … PJ Harvey in 1993.
‘He was a funny man as well as being kind, intelligent and charming’ … PJ Harvey in 1993. Photograph: Paul Natkin/Getty Images
Steve spent the first day of our recording session pacing and measuring the live room at Pachyderm [studio in Minnesota]. He would stand and look at the room a long time from different positions, intermittently clapping his hands. The band and I came and went, but Steve stayed from dawn till the late evening, absorbing and feeling the “shape” of the room, and learning what it could give him. I think we knew instinctively to leave Steve alone in the space to find what he was looking for.

He re-tuned Rob [Ellis]’s drum kit so it would be enhanced by the room and sing with it. He placed microphones in carefully measured positions to catch and open as sound met them at certain volumes. He set up our amps and guitars in the places he knew best for the room and the types of players we were.

He was driven. Driven to explore and learn from sound and space, but also mysteriously aligned with it in a way I didn’t quite understand, but knew to respect and try to learn from. He was an alchemist: patient, methodical, sensitive. Ready to capture the moment when it came. Work was hard and long as we all reached for something he knew would appear, and it did.

25/04/2024

Acouple on the stairs behind me, leaving the theatre. He: “And a band! What more could you ask?” She: “I can’t remember the last time I laughed so much…” Carlo Goldoni’s commedia dell’arte-inspired Il Servitore di Due Padroni, written in Venetian dialect about two and a half centuries ago, loses nothing in translation. Richard Bean’s award-garnered version, set in 1963 Brighton, was such a hit after its 2011 launch at the National Theatre in London that it went on to tour the UK three times and travelled abroad to the US, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand.

Good as that was, I think this new staging, by director Conrad Nelson, serves the text better – for two reasons. First, the ensemble is exceptionally strong – not only the 11 actor-musicians, but also the offstage artists (responsible for design, music, lighting, sound, movement and fight choreography and casting), and, like members of a commedia troupe, many are accustomed to working together, especially here, on the New Vic’s in-the-round stage. This gives the production its second advantage: the performers’ depth of rapport makes for seamless interactions and razor-sharp timings; it allows characters that might appear cartoonish to feel touchingly human.

First among equals is Michael Hugo, possibly the greatest actor-clown of the stage today, his physicality and rapport with audiences unmatched. Hugo is Henshall, the man who tries to double his income by secretly serving two guvnors staying in the same hotel (and unwittingly connected by one of the many plot convolutions). The famous central scene, where a hungry Henshall serves both guvnors a meal while trying to keep them apart, is taken to another level by the introduction of a hole in the stage, with stairs to a lower floor (Lis Evans’s design is played to eye-popping effect by Nick Haverson’s waiter, proving that there is no such thing as a small role). All in all, a hilarious combination of clockwork-clever plot and controlled chaos from a company who delight in delivering laughter to their audience.

16/04/2024

West Side Story’s Rachel Zegler and Heartstopper breakout Kit Connor are set to play Shakespeare’s tragic lovers Romeo and Juliet on Broadway.

Romeo + Juliet will premiere later this year from Tony award-winning director Sam Gold, who has previously taken on other Shakespeare plays such as Macbeth, Othello and King Lear.

“With the presidential election coming up in November, I felt like making a show this fall that celebrates youth and hope, and unleashes the anger young people feel about the world they are inheriting,” Gold said in a statement.

New music will come from Grammy winner Jack Antonoff, the singer and musician known for his many collaborations with Taylor Swift.

The official synopsis reads: “The youth are fu**ed. Left to their own devices in their parents’ world of violent ends, an impulsive pair of star-crossed lovers hurtle towards their inescapable fate. The intoxicating high of passion quickly descends into a brutal chaos that can only end one way.”

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Charlee Burke