Theatre
Was it curvature of the spine? Was it a club foot? Was it just an epic dose of facial acne? We don’t know exactly where, how or in what degree Richard III’s deformities manifested themselves.
Was it curvature of the spine? Was it a club foot? Was it just an epic dose of facial acne? We don’t know exactly where, how or in what degree Richard III’s deformities manifested themselves. Nor did Shakespeare. So he just went with a hunch. In Sam Mendes’s modern-dress production, Kevin Spacey offers us Richard as a double paralympian. He has a mini-excrescence, like a junior dinosaur egg, obtruding meekly from the back of his crisply laundered white shirt. He also has a fabulously twisted and withered left leg, that is emphasised by a line of stylish black-leather buckles worn,...
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Sir Tom and Sir Trevor — Stoppard and Nunn — have teamed up to realise Sir Trevor’s ‘40-year dream’ of bringing Sir Tom’s breakthrough play to the West End.
Sir Tom and Sir Trevor — Stoppard and Nunn — have teamed up to realise Sir Trevor’s ‘40-year dream’ of bringing Sir Tom’s breakthrough play to the West End. I couldn’t make the opening night and Sir T (x 2) had restricted press seats to that performance only so I had to make my own arrangements. What a bunch of highwaymen those ticket agencies are! (I’ll get to the play in a second.) You have to pay for the privilege of paying for the privilege. The fee amounted to 20 per cent of the entire outlay. But the author’s royalty...
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I bumped into a restoration expert last week. ‘What’s new in heritage these days?’ I asked him. ‘Oh, same old, same old,’ he told me.
I bumped into a restoration expert last week. ‘What’s new in heritage these days?’ I asked him. ‘Oh, same old, same old,’ he told me. In similar vein, London has been enjoying a spate of classic revivals on stage. At the Donmar a production of Schiller’s Kabale und Liebe (Intrigue and Love) has been barmily retitled Luise Miller. This promotes a minor character to the protagonist’s role. It incorrectly suggests the atmosphere of Romford roundabouts and roaring hen parties. And it echoes the author’s name too so you can’t write ‘Luise Miller by Schiller’ without having to delete and think...
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Here’s the thing. This box-set business. Do you get it? I tried. I failed. But everyone else goes stark raving mad about these fictional treasures. Once you’ve sampled a box set (or boxed-set?), you’re hooked.
Here’s the thing. This box-set business. Do you get it? I tried. I failed. But everyone else goes stark raving mad about these fictional treasures. Once you’ve sampled a box set (or boxed-set?), you’re hooked. You won’t be seen again until you’ve visited every corner of the dream kingdom encased within its magical walls. Didn’t happen to me, though. I sat through the first six minutes of The Wire in total bafflement. It seemed to be a style programme about a clique of young entrepreneurs posing on a sofa which, perhaps to facilitate the public’s admiration of its proportions, had...
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Rupert Everett doesn’t care for critics.
Rupert Everett doesn’t care for critics. ‘You see them coming into the theatre,’ he says, ‘like the homeless who’ve lost their soup-kitchen, shuffling in with their plastic bags, deranged and vacant.’ After watching him play Henry Higgins in Pygmalion the reviewers have dumped poor Rupe in the poop. ‘Sad to witness,’ said one. ‘Lacking in intellectual joie de vivre,’ lamented another. ‘Respectable,’ said a third. (I bet that hurt.) And Everett, a leading practitioner of bitchcraft, lashed out and accused his attackers of not being able to afford their own sandwiches.
He’s right to cavil at the cavillers because...
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A miracle at the Barbican. I reached the venue after a mere half an hour blundering around following directions from helpful staff.
A miracle at the Barbican. I reached the venue after a mere half an hour blundering around following directions from helpful staff. The main stage, which is so vast it feels like an open-air theatre, is the result of an alluring misconception of scale. You build a venue the size of the cosmos and you get universal art. But art finds its own measure. If the habitat suits the substance all should be well.
The latest delight here is an update of Sheridan’s The School for Scandal directed by Deborah Warner with a very classy cast and an absolute...
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