Light Lines: The Architectural Photographs of Hélène Binet ★★★★ Royal Academy of Arts | Oct 23, 2021 - Jan 23, 2022


Light Lines: The Architectural Photographs of Hélène Binet is the latest beguiling exhibition in the Sackler Wing at the Royal Academy of Arts. Binet is clearly enthralled by Junichiro Tanizaki's quotation: “We find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and darkness that one thing against another creates.” Many of the photographs show the striking interplay of these shadows and light which was, of course, something which influenced the designs of Le Corbusier and Zaha Hadid among others. Brutalist architecture suits her photographic style perfectly: the sharp lines and plain concrete creating wonderful contrasts. Binet has been said to think of her work as similar to a musician interpreting a composer's score – respectful to the original intention but with an individual slant. To add a little variation to twentieth century buildings, there are some beautiful photographs of birch trees against brickwork as well as serene views of Nicholas Hawksmoor's Christ Church Spitalfields. Working almost exclusively in black and white, and eschewing modern digital techniques, Binet avoids clichés and shows us, for example, some of the work of the Danish architect Jørn Utzon which isn't the Sydney Opera House. For us, one of the most interesting photographs shows the 1950s remodelling by Dimitris Pikionis of a simple stone pathway at the Acropolis in Athens – such beautiful textures and patterns. John Cage's comment seems to us entirely apposite: “There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time.”

Rated: ★★★★

Reviewed by D.S.J.
Image: Hélène Binet, Zaha Hadid, Glasgow Riverside Museum of Transport, United Kingdom, 2010. Courtesy Ammann Gallery, Cologne. © Hélène Binet.

When, Where, Getting there:
Map & Location: Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD, UK

Most Popular

Table 17 ★★★ Kiln Theatre | Sep 17 - Oct 24, 2026

Image
Table 17 is a charming little romcom about Jada and Dallas, who meet again after a failed engagement. What will Jada wear for the occasion? Is it a date or not a date? Will they get back together, or have they moved on? The humour is touching and will ring true with anyone who has ever experienced a failed relationship, although the story itself has a somewhat predictable feel. Martha Wallace as Jada and Jamel Westman as Dallas create thoroughly convincing and completely likeable characters. His faux cool and her needy strength generate plenty of laughter, but it is Michael Rishaw who almost steals the show in his turns as the camp, wisecracking maître d’, River, and Jada’s sport-obsessed co-worker and suitor, Eric. His transformations produce amazingly accurate and instantly recognisable types. He also serves as the narrator of this slight story, delivering its moral: “Maybe the lesson isn’t in the outcome, but in the effort. We all deserve such effort.” It is an understated plea for...
Full Details »

Stories – The Tap Dance Sensation ★★★★★ Sadler's Wells Peacock Theatre | Oct 23 - Nov 2, 2024

Image
Tap dancing is a form usually associated with those wonderful old Hollywood musicals of the 1930s and '40s, but the RB company brings this dance art into the 21st Century with an extraordinary production that also incorporates jazz dance and rap. Stories is a very meta narrative that recounts the experience of Icarus, a young actor who is playing a newspaper worker in a film. While the myth of Icarus is usually seen as a commentary on the hubris of a youth who misuses the invention of his father, in this version things are flipped so that the enthusiastic younger man is trapped in a power relationship with the Daedalus-like figure of his director. That dynamic is also mirrored in the story of the film which is being made – a naïve young worker is first abused by his boss and then lured into a struggle with a gambling gang lord. Stories explores these overlapping tales of manipulation and creativity in a manner that is wonderfully original and totally enthralling. The dance sequ...
Full Details »

A Small and Quiet Light ★★★ Orange Tree Theatre | Sep 21 - Oct 24, 2026

Image
Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan had an extraordinary life. Descended from the ruler of Mysore, Tipu Sultan, born in Moscow and raised in Paris, she fled to Britain with her family in 1940 after the fall of France. She joined the WAAF before being recruited by the Special Operations Executive and, in June 1943, was sent to occupied France by Lysander aircraft as a wireless operator. The life expectancy for wireless operators working in occupied France was said to be just six weeks, yet Khan continued operating in Paris for several months after the rest of her network had been rounded up. This is a life full of drama, but the challenge for any biographical play is to shape that material into a story with a clear point and a strong arc of development. The facts may all be fascinating, but the playwright must decide which to include, which to leave out and how much dramatic licence to take with the characters in order to make the story work. Unfortunately, A Small and Quiet Light sticks too clos...
Full Details »

Golden Boy ★★★★ Almeida Theatre | Sep 8 - Oct 31, 2026

Image
Written in 1937, Golden Boy is probably Clifford Odets’ most famous work. The story of a young man torn between becoming a violinist or a boxer is a critique of the corrupting influence of the materialism that underpins the American Dream. The theme echoes F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby , right down to the famous scene in which Gatsby contemplates his beautiful shirts. Young Joe Bonaparte is similarly seduced by a world that values appearances over substance when the gangster Eddie Fuseli showers him with silk shirts and other trappings of success. In forsaking his calling as a musician for the fame and money of boxing, Joe ultimately sacrifices not only his family ties but also his sense of self. The performances are uniformly strong. Josh O’Connor gives Joe an intense, increasingly volatile presence, convincingly charting his transformation from a gifted young musician into a man consumed by ambition and violence. Hayley Squires is equally compelling as the hard-nosed Lorna ...
Full Details »

Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists ★★★★★ National Theatre | September 19 - 26, 2026

Image
In Leipzig in 1930, Bertolt Brecht’s The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny was disrupted by Nazi supporters protesting against what they regarded as politically and morally offensive material. Unsurprisingly, Brecht is frequently referenced in Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists and, like Brecht’s work, Tiago Rodrigues’ drama proves to be both intelligent and incendiary. The play’s central premise is that a Portuguese family has created a rite of passage in memory of a woman who was murdered by Fascists. On turning 26, members of the family are expected to kill a selected fascist. The family members all take the name Catarina in memory of the murdered woman, and now it is the turn of one of the great-granddaughters of the family matriarch to carry out the ritual killing. When she hesitates to follow the family tradition, what ensues is a multi-layered exploration of resistance to authoritarianism and the morality of killing in the name of political resistance. The dense ...
Full Details »

Franz & Marie ★★ Charing Cross Theatre | Sep 28 - Nov 14, 2026

Image
Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck , written in 1836-37 and published posthumously in 1879, is acknowledged to be a series of fragments rather than a fully developed work. The challenge for any adaptor is to transform this political parable into a coherent and moving drama with psychologically complex characters. Woyzeck is the embodiment of the proletariat, exploited by those above him and subjected to a cruel scientific experiment. Given today’s political climate, with the power of oligarchs no longer concealed and the increasingly unsettling presence of AI, there would seem to be plenty here for an adaptor to explore. Unfortunately, this production fails to rise to the occasion. The characters remain largely one-dimensional and the story veers towards melodrama rather than tragedy. The decision to introduce Gaelic music and to create an almost céilí-like atmosphere is particularly unsuccessful. Some of the ballads are suitably plaintive, but their melancholy never deepens our understanding of ...
Full Details »

A Month in the Country ★★★★★ Donmar Warehouse | Aug 22 - Oct 3, 2026

Image
Brian Friel’s version of Turgenev’s A Month in the Country is more sexually and psychologically explicit than the original, with the character of Natalya firmly at its centre. Her boredom, sense of entitlement and neediness become the driving forces of a drama in which desire, jealousy and emotional frustration steadily destabilise a superficially tranquil household. Friel makes the play leaner, livelier and considerably funnier than the original. Turgenev regarded his plays as works to be read rather than performed, and Friel cuts the wordiness while bringing the characters’ suppressed feelings sharply to the surface. However, he retains Turgenev’s rich imagery. The curtain rises on a card game in which the comic tutor Schaaf declares that hearts are trump, neatly prefiguring the romantic entanglements to come. Aleksey’s kite, a symbol of youthful freedom and carefree abandon, vividly suggests why Natalya is increasingly attracted to the young tutor. Indeed, his exuberance stands in ...
Full Details »

Darkling ★★★★ Bush Theatre | Sep 5 - Oct 24, 2026

Image
On 3 December 1984, a leak of methyl isocyanate gas from the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, released a highly toxic cloud over the surrounding area. Thousands of people died within days, while many more suffered serious injuries and long-term health problems. The disaster is regarded as one of the world’s worst industrial catastrophes, with estimates of the eventual death toll reaching into the tens of thousands. The scale of the tragedy is almost impossible to comprehend, but in Darkling , Linnea Berthelsen creates an individual who becomes emblematic of those whose lives were devastated by the catastrophe. The overwhelming scale of the event is brought down to a human level, allowing the audience to grasp its impact through the story of one poor young girl and her family whose lives are shattered. The monologue evokes the everyday life of a girl growing up in the slums of Bhopal, capturing its mixture of joy and hardship. There is abuse and racism, but also a strong ...
Full Details »

Renoir & Love ★★★★ National Gallery | Oct 3, 2026 - Jan 31, 2027

Image
In a 1946 interview with the American journalist Jerome Seckler, Henri Matisse said, “I think that art must not be a disagreeable thing. There is enough unhappiness in life to turn one towards the joy.” The quotation might equally well describe Renoir’s attitude to painting. He stands out from his contemporaries in his celebration of humanity and his joyous embrace of modern life. The son of a tailor and a dressmaker, he came from a working-class background, yet his paintings rarely dwell on social questions. Instead, they embrace the world with an exuberance that is fundamental to his art. This exhibition, covering the first twenty years of Renoir’s working life, brings that joie de vivre into focus. Across six galleries, it traces his delight in the simple pleasures of good food, convivial company, romance and love through the themes of "The Bohemian Years", " Fêtes Galantes ", "Streets of Paris", "Beyond the City", "Family" and ...
Full Details »

HAM ★★ Soho Theatre | Sep 29 - Oct 31, 2026

Image
Ham is a Fringe show that is a take-off on Hamlet , but here the central issue is Hamlet’s decision to be vegan while his mother, Gertrude, continues to enjoy her sausages. This situation is explained to us by the show’s co-creators, Mary Higgins, apparently a real-life vegan who plays Hamlet, and Ell Potter, seemingly a real-life carnivore who plays Gertrude. The production is structured around the five acts of Hamlet , taking dialogue from Shakespeare and re-contextualising it around the new premise. The two cast members manage to draw considerable humour from this exercise, but by the time we reach the play-within-a-play, there may simply be too many levels of reality for the audience to process. We have Mary and Ell as characters putting on a version of Hamlet that now contains another play, and matters become even more mind-boggling when that play, with its bizarre sexual domination premise, turns into an audience participation exercise. It all begins to feel rather awkward and ...
Full Details »

The City Life Magazine | Reviews & Ratings