"Actor: Christopher Robson"

• Dolores Claiborne | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £6.99   |  Saving you £7.00 (100.14%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Dark secrets, family torments and two murders swirl around the stoic, hardened figure of Dolores Claiborne (Kathy Bates), a housekeeper accused of murdering her employer of 22 years. Then there was that timely accident that took Dolores's husband (David Strathairn) during the solar eclipse of 1975. Yet with all the sombre suffering that follows Dolores like a miasma of pain, none of it compares with the heartache of a relationship she has with her grown daughter (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Although this flick is rife with horror, it is not of the supernatural kind, but rather of the torment only real people can impose on one another. The script is full of colourful language, and director Taylor Hackford successfully weaves several plot threads and psychological dilemmas throughout this engrossing tale without diminishing any of them. He not only culls intense performances from his cast, but he also brings to life the landscape around them. When Dolores Claiborne's best-kept secret is finally given up, it occurs under the surreal backdrop of a solar eclipse that is a truly sensational bit of cinematography. --Rochelle O'Gorman

• Handel: Xerxes | DVD | (16/08/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  The English National Opera has always had an attractively light touch in Handel; this classic production, designed by Nicholas Hytner (director of The Madness of King George and The Crucible), manages to preserve both the work's occasional passion and its undercutting of that passion into urbane absurdity. Anne Murray's Xerxes is a tyrant in love, who learns the hard way that he can neither play with, nor command, his subjects' affections; her forthright declamatory singing, not least in the famous "Larghetto", conveys both the petulance and the final grandeur of a man undergoing a sentimental education. Valerie Masterson and Christopher Hudson, as the principal pair of lovers, combine perfect singing with an attractive romantic ardour; Hudson in particular makes clear just how heroic a counter-tenor can sound, listened to without preconceptions. In the soubrette role of Atalanta, Lesley Garrett is a cute trouble-maker. Sir Charles Mackerras' conducting gives each of the genre arias of which the work consists both an appropriate intensity of emotion and an overall charm. The English libretto is by Hytner. The recording is decent PCM stereo and the picture, originally produced for TV broadcast, is in 4:3 ratio. --Roz Kaveney

• Innocent Sinners | DVD | (09/10/2017) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  A fine example of a 1950's post war drama produced by the Rank Film Studios and starring Flora Robson, David Kossoff, June Archer and directed by Philip Leacock. Lovejoy Mason (June Archer) is an independently minded young rascal living in bombed out London. Bored with her mundane existence Lovejoy finds an outlet for beauty and self-expression by building a small garden in the ruins of a bombed out church yard. Though she is ignored by her mother and ridiculed by other local children, Lovejoy is aided in her project by Tip Malone (Christopher Hey). Tragedy strikes when her garden is vandalised by a local boys' gang, however impressed by her determination, they offer to help her rebuild it. Lovejoy's troubles are not over, and she faces further challenges before she gets the garden of her dreams. Britain, like Lovejoy's garden, was rising from the rubble of war and thriving.

• Handel - Rodelinda | DVD | (21/01/2008) from £16.99   |  Saving you £8.00 (47.09%)   |  RRP £24.99

• Handel - Giulio Cesare (Mortensen, Concerto Copenhagen) | DVD | (03/09/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

• Les Miserables | DVD | (28/06/2004) from £3.99   |  Saving you £2.00 (50.13%)   |  RRP £5.99

  France 1796: in the new Republic poverty is rife and crimes harshly punished. Jean Valjean is sentenced to five years at the gallery for stealing a loaf of bread. There the Inspector of Guards Javert takes an intense loathing to him - and every rebellion on Jean's part is met with strict punishment and a longer sentence. Jean eventually escapes. Five years later he is living a respectable life as a Mayor when fate intervenes and brings him face to face with his old enemy Javert. Victor Hugo's enduring classic is lavishly recreated and performed by an outstanding cast.

• Handel: Ariodante | DVD | (23/06/2000) from £19.61   |  Saving you £8.37 (50.36%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Ariodante makes extraordinary vocal and acting demands, which the English National Opera brilliantly fulfils in a curious combination of baroque music and post-modern production styles. Handel's intensely emotional arias and the surreal staging combine their energies with powerful impact, aided by some imaginative choreography and a remarkable English singing translation of the Italian text. The subject is the painfully complex love entanglements of five characters: pure idealism and raging jealousy, nefarious plots and deceptions, unscrupulous exploitation, and opportunism, hopelessness mounting to the brink of insanity. The plot, as often happens in baroque opera, is riddled with improbabilities, exaggerations, and coincidence, but they matter not at all. It is essentially no more than a framework on which Handel mounts music of tender passion, rage, delirious joy, hope, resignation--nearly three hours of unrestrained emotional intensity and vocal brilliance. Ann Murray and Joan Rodgers are appealing as the young lovers Ariodante and Ginevra, but the show is nearly stolen by countertenor Christopher Robson as the villainous Polinesso, who convinces Ariodante that Ginevra has been unfaithful. Lesley Garrett performs brilliantly as Polinesso's dupe and accomplice, Dalinda, and Ivor Bolton conducts with a fine sense of baroque style. --Joe McLellan, Amazon.com