Sir Alfred Munnings lived his life in true bohemian style, ‘carousing with gypsies and horse-trainers, living rough and constantly on the road’. Summer in February is based on his early life living in Cornwall, with Munnings played by Dominic Cooper: ‘Irrepressible as an electric eel, and twice as dangerous’. But does the film live up to Munnings’ art – and, of course, to the hype? The problem with films about artists is, says Andrew Lambirth, the art. But Summer in February is ‘as vivid and visually complex as a Munnings masterpiece’ – in fact, almost as good as the book.
Eugene O’Neill’s Strange Interlude, on at the Lyttleton, has been cut down from 5 to just 3 and a half hours – but even that seems a bit long for a play where not much happens for the first hour. But ‘is this play any good? In a word, yes’, says Lloyd Evans in this week’s theatre review.
‘Despite the wordiness, the time-wasting, the monstrous plotlines, and the barmy experimentation, the show steals up on you and takes you by surprise. During the final hour I was so immersed in the characters’ lives that I was gripped by their every move.’
Ever since James Delingpole first saw previews of The Returned a month or so again, he has been waiting impatiently for the rest of the series to be broadcast. And now, finally, his prayers have been answered. The Returned is, he says, ‘the best series you will see on TV all year’. The trailer is below, and the next episode airs on Channel 4 this Sunday.
Lohegrin is an opera with such wonderful feel and colour that Michael Tanner thinks ‘it’s impossible not to wish that Wagner had continued in the same vein for one more’, This production, by the Welsh National Opera, is ‘a magnificent achievement’, while the conductor Lothar Koenigs ‘clearly loves every bar’ of the music, and ‘elicits from the orchestra… performances one would be delighted to hear anywhere’. Praise indeed.
Comments