Too much artist and not enough art. That’s one problem with Total Eclipse, Christopher Hampton’s play about the titans of French 19th-century poetry. Another is presentation. The show is done ‘in the round’ on a raised slipway between two banks of seats irradiated by the glare reflected from the stage.
Read next
Trending
Newsnight doomed itself

Whither Newsnight? Or do I mean wither, Newsnight – shortly to be reduced to a 30-minute debate show shorn of more than half its staff. As a teenage news and politics junkie, I grew up on this programme, watching it from its 1979 inception and through its 1980s heyday when that broadcasting giant Sir John

Also in Arts Reviews
An amusing playlet buried in 150 minutes of rhetoric: Mates in Chelsea, at the Royal Court, reviewed

From the magazine

Comments
Don't miss out
Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.
UNLOCK ACCESSAlready a subscriber? Log in