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Boston Globe
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Cynthia Erivo opens the Spring Pops season in style
Without explicitly stating it, Erivo's set affirmed a Great American Songbook centered specifically around Black artists. With the lone exception of her leadoff number — a 'Don't Rain On My Parade' that could stand up proudly next to Streisand — every song on her set list was either written by a Black songwriter or strongly associated with a Black singer who delivered a definitive version. That meant room for Nina and Aretha, Prince and Peebles, even Screamin' Jay Hawkins, all treated as the standards they surely are. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up With a stage presence steeped in control and deliberateness whether singing or simply speaking to the audience, Erivo delivered strange bedfellows 'Ain't No Way' and 'I Put A Spell On You' as torch songs, and both 'At Last' and 'Stormy Weather' were lush and sweeping, with the singer slightly behind the beat on the latter and playing it for laid-back languidness. But her reserve occasionally made numbers like 'I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)' and 'I (Who Have Nothing)' a touch too genteel to burn. Advertisement It also gave unexpected moments added electricity. Erivo called for a redo at the start of 'I Can't Stand The Rain,' cuing the xylophone player to the proper tempo with her shoulders, maybe the only time she got the music physically into her body. And a cry of 'Yes!' from the audience immediately before the arrival of the title of 'Feeling Good' made her laugh at length and re-collect herself before diving in and dancing around the melody and rhythm with her voice. But Erivo was capable of electricity even when all went according to plan. 'The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face' was light and majestic even before Scott Johnson's delicately-plucked folk guitar and the string and horn swells, with Erivo singing the first verse a cappella with a gentle, masterful touch. And as she did, Lockhart slowly turned toward the audience with a knowing smile, as if making sure everyone understood what they were hearing. THE BOSTON POPS WITH CYNTHIA ERIVO At: Symphony Hall, Thursday Marc Hirsh can be reached at officialmarc@ or on Bluesky @ Advertisement
Euronews
19-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Euronews
Berlinale 2025 review: 'The Thing With Feathers' - Benedict Cumberbatch gets Babadooked
Grief is the gutting of the soul. Grief is love with no place to go. Grief is a revealing force. Grief is also the thing with feathers. Adapted from Max Porter's astonishing debut novella 'Grief Is The Thing With Feathers', writer and director Dylan Southern's big screen adaptation takes this fantastical yet deeply relatable story of loss and transforms it into a one-note cinematic fable that is just about saved by one of Benedict Cumberbatch's best performances. The central conceit sees an unnamed father (Cumberbatch) devastated by the unexpected death of his wife. A seemingly malign presence begins to stalk him in the house he shares with his two boys (Richard and Henry Boxall) – in the form of a crow. Is the graphic artist losing his grasp on reality or is has an uninvited house guest really burrowed its way into the family's life? If you're coming at The Thing With Feathers with a healthy appreciation of the source material – and if you were lucky enough to watch Cillian Murphy in the stage show – this cinematic take on Porter's novella will frustrate more than enthral. Granted, the film sticks closely to the chapter-like sectioning (Dad, Boys, Crow and Demon), but there's something missing here. For those coming blind, there's enough to admire, specifically Ben Fordesman's horror-coded cinematography and Cumberbatch's stellar performance. Whether he's fighting off despair through wallowing or indulging in whiskey-fuelled dancing, Cumberbatch manages to convincingly convey the full emotional scope of a mourning father trying to hold his family together and losing the ability to communicate. The way he delivers lines like 'you had an amazing mum' with his voice gently cracking is nothing short of heart-wrenching. Sadly, Cumberbatch's committed turn as a grieving widower is faced with on-the-nose needle drops (The Cure's 'In Between Days' and the dirty blues of Screamin' Jay Hawkins will always be welcome but are here utilised far too literally) as well as a feathered beastie which is given far too much screen time. Had the macabre depiction of grief been kept hidden a tad more, the film would have been stronger for it; by the final stretch, every time Corvus makes a cameo, you're praying for some wing clipping. In the stage version, Cillian Murphy played both Dad and Crow and this dédoublement worked wonders; here, the beaked Babadook may have been unavoidable as a cinematic character but it would have fared better as either a possessed doppelganger or a more eclipsed golem. David Thewlis does deliver the goods with his sinister delivery of lines like 'humans are incredibly dull except in grief' and 'you're such a cliché – you'll have the photo album out next!'. However, the anthropomorphic crow, while necessary, becomes a manifestation of grief that can't emerge from the shadow cast by Jennifer Kent. Add the absence of the novella's dark humour in favour of a pummelling-into-submission tonal level which could have done with more crescendos, and any self-awareness makes grief more frustrating than terrifying. Southern clearly understood the concept and intention, but transposing it on the big screen comes with a checklist of inevitable cinematic conventions that sadly eclipse some of the novellas' most heartrending moments and transform something unique into a forced metaphor. His valiant effort, nobly-intentioned as it is, just isn't as profound or radical as it could – and should - have been.
