Frankenstein (2025)
Del Toro translates the nineteenth-century tragedy into our twenty-first-century psychological vernacular.
Criticks – BSECS online reviews
The eighteenth century was the first great age of criticism. In this spirit, the Criticks website provides entertaining, informative and provocative reviews of events and media that are of interest to scholars of the eighteenth century. These complement the reviews of books that are published in the journal of the Society, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies.
Plays, concerts, operas, exhibitions, films, trade fiction, broadcasts and online resources are here considered in depth by experts in the field. If there is an event that you would like to see reviewed in these pages, or if you would like to review for us, please contact one of the editors below:
Criticks Editor
Criticks Subject Editors
Fiction: Helen Dallas
Fine and Decorative Art: Miriam Al Jamil
Media: Gráinne O’Hare
Music: Brianna Robertson-Kirkland
Theatre: Isabel Azar
The Testament of Ann Lee
Ann Lee is played by Amanda Seyfried, in an intense and moving performance.
Wright of Derby: From the Shadows (National Gallery)
The silence of light and shadow dulls the chatter of Wright’s subjects, immobilising squabbling children and gesticulating lecturers into quiet, almost spectral forms.
Marie Antoinette Style (V&A)
Marie-Antoinette Style reveals that despite her tragic end, Marie-Antoinette remains as fashionable today as she was in eighteenth-century France.
Sarah Lethieullier’s Dolls’ House at the Huguenot Museum
Viewing Sarah Lethieullier’s dolls’ house at close quarters is an excellent experience, and one made all the better for its presentation in the Huguenot Museum.
Unearthed: The Power of Gardening (British Library)
Although difficult issues of ignorance, exploitation and commercial greed are addressed, the overall sense of this exhibition is one of hope, of the power of gardening and nurturing the land to heal
A Palimpsest of Country House Culture – Austen and Turner: A Country House Encounter (Harewood House)
These three players—Austen, Turner, Harewood—weave themselves in each gallery’s themes, bringing to our attention myriad resonances and surprises.
Miss Austen (BBC)
To reduce Austen’s writing to a set of aesthetics and tropes, punctuated by the clanging thud of exposition, is surely its own kind of disservice.
Widow Clicquot
Widow Clicquot is an aesthetically stunning production, but it has to be said that sometimes this contracted pacing of the story dulls the impact of Barbe-Nicole’s incredible highs and devastating
The School for Scandal (RSC)
In an age when fake news is rampant, conspicuous consumption thrives and self-presentation are the obsession, the production successfully exposes the paradox that exposing oneself is also a social