Critical Mash

Salome: Pawn or perp? Problem child or femme fatale? As Oscar Wilde's 1892 play about history's first recorded underage strip-tease artiste ends its run at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, Robert Thicknesse gathers the play's hot young Russian director Maxim Didenko and cultural polymath Yehuda Shapiro to look at how writers, painters and composers have slavered over John the Baptist's dancing nem...

Did James Bond prevent a generation of British men from putting on a suit, ordering fancy wine, going into a casino or having sex with someone, without feeling a sense that they were falling pathetically short of the master? Joining Robert Thicknesse to address the riddles of James Bond and to discuss the handover of creative control to streaming giant Amazon is a selection of the great and th...

With Stephen Sondheim’s swansong, based on two Bunuel films, coming to London soon, and Mark Anthony Turnage's opera Festen opening to rave reviews, Robert Thicknesse rounds up some luminaries who ought to know the answer: Don Boyd, elder statesman of the British film world, producer and director, whose lifelong ambition to bring opera and film together resulted most notably in the movie Aria ...

In this episode of Critical Mash, host Robert Thicknesse and guests take a dive into Jacques Offenbach’s opera The Tales of Hoffmann, coinciding with a new production at Covent Garden. Opera director James Bonas joins Lucy Lethbridge and Yehuda Shapiro to explore how Offenbach uses Hoffmann's uncanny stories to play with the clichés of romantic opera, doomed love, tragic heroines, and artistic ...

Critical Mash is moving on from the femme fatale to her scarcely less dramatic cousin, the homme fatale. Robert Thicknesse is joined this week by Sian Edwards, head of conducting at the Royal Academy of Music, and poet, playwright, and librettist Glyn Maxwell, as they delve into the pouting depths of the souls of brooding Byronic heroes. Their journey into the romantic wilds sees them explore c...

Difficult women and dodgy blokes. This week on Critical Mash, we're discussing The Taming of the Shrew, which has a new production at the Globe, and its musical imitator, Kiss Me, Kate at the Barbican Theatre.  On the agenda: theatre production, love in the face of societal judgement, romantic heroes, redemption and evolving cultural views on women. Regular hosts Robert Thicknesse and Lucy Let...

Carmen! Sex, gypsies, smoking, smugglers, sex, bullfighting, murder, and did we mention...sex? Just how did this outrageous French romp become the most popular and influential opera of the late 19th century? Regular hosts Robert Thicknesse and Yehuda Shapiro return for another scandalous episode of Critical Mash. This week they are joined by Sian Edwards, celebrated conductor, and former Music...

A river running with raw sewage, a parliament of self-serving rats and weasels, rapacious capitalism run amok...welcome to 1860s London! This episode of Critical Mash dons its Hazmat suit to plunge into the Thames with the new National Theatre play London Tide, adapted by Ben Power from Dickens's last novel Our Mutual Friend, with songs by Ben and PJ Harvey. Join us as we gasp through the fil...

Warning! This podcast contains modern art, the aestheto-apocalyptic consummation of the material world, and Bert Thicknesse. This time, Critical Mash tells you everything you need to know about expressionism, Kandinsky, Schoenberg, synaesthesia ... and how the world would be brought to orgasmic destruction by art and music! Our fearless hosts, Robert Thicknesse, Lucy Lethbridge, and Yehuda Shap...

Trigger Warning! This episode contains misogynoir, eye-gouging, heteronormativity and Bert Thicknesse. For our pilot episode of Critical Mash, Bert, along with co-hosts writer and author Lucy Lethbridge and opera reviewer Yehuda Shapiro, are joined by composer Elena Langer and theatre director Joe Hill-Gibbins, both of whom have recently been turning their boundless creative talents to infamous...