Arts Reviews Archives

Saturday

14 Jul 2012

Double vision

Michael Frayn is a schizophrenic. His creative personality bestrides the English Channel. When he’s at home he writes traditional West End farces with amusing titles and plenty of jokes. When he sits at his European desk he comes up with dour, static, talk-heavy historical dramas with boring titles and no jokes at all. Democracy, written in 2003, is a classic Euro-bureau production. Frayn invites us to examine Willy Brandt’s stewardship of West Germany in the early 1970s. Willy is referred to throughout as ‘Villy’ which, for some reason, sounds even more silly than just Willy. Chancellor Villy has a couple of problems. He’s an idealist and he wants the free

Francesca Steele

Culture notes: 00 heaven

It took Ian Fleming just eight weeks to write his first James Bond novel but the legacy of his eponymous spy has been far less fleeting. Fifty years after 007 first made it on to the big screen in Dr No (see Sean Connery, above) a Barbican exhibition is celebrating with a stunning display of Bond gadgets, clothes and paraphernalia, such as Jaws’ metal teeth (until 5 September). Designing 007: 50 Years of Bond Style has more than 400 such items, playfully arranged in rooms recalling Bond’s own stomping ground: a casino, M’s office, and so on. There is Ursula Andress’s white bikini, Scaramanga’s golden gun, even an Aston Martin

Deborah Ross

Male order

For those of you who scan speedily to the bottom of reviews to see if a film is worth seeing — don’t worry; I always do it myself — I thought I would do you a favour and put the last paragraph first, as follows: Is Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike worth seeing? Yes. But also ‘no’. But mainly ‘yes’. So it’s a ‘yes’ with some ‘no’ caveats. I can now see this isn’t so helpful. Best scan, I’m afraid. Still, at least you know I’m on your side. Set in the world of male strippers, and written by the actor Channing Tatum, who has said it is loosely based on

Friday

13 Jul 2012

Fraser Nelson

Dirty, ugly things

Sometimes fiction can be more accurate than published facts. Ten years ago a film, Dirty Pretty Things, told about the plight of illegal immigrants into Britain and the least-explored scandals of all: the black market trade in human organs. It was an aspect of Britain’s secret country, the black market occupied by a million-plus souls that produces a tenth of our economic output. Most of these people work illegally, perhaps in criminal endeavour or perhaps honestly, but in fear of immigration police. It is, by definition, an unregulated environment in which all manner of evil can be incubated. It is becoming clear now that one of these evils is the

Saturday

7 Jul 2012

Andrew Lambirth

Prophet of alienation

Nothing gains headlines for art quite like high prices. A few weeks ago, one of the versions of Munch’s famous image of ‘The Scream’ was sold at auction for £74 million, which couldn’t have been bettered as advance publicity for the Tate’s new show. Admittedly, there is not a single version of that key painting in this exhibition (owners are jittery about loaning them — particularly since one was stolen from Norway’s National Gallery in 2004), but there are plenty of other treats for admirers of this Scandinavian ray of sunshine. Among his favourite subjects were sickness and death, lust and jealousy, fear of sexual disease and even fear of

Giannandrea Poesio

Grim realities

It was somewhat weird that Pina Bausch’s Palermo Palermo opened on the same night as Spain’s victory over Italy in the Euro 2012 final. After all, the Sicilian capital was long dominated by the Spaniards. Yet in Bausch’s Tanztheater vision of Palermo there are no references to such history, bar a few Spanish-looking steps set to the Spanish-influenced Sicilian music in part one’s frenzied finale. What one gets instead are more or less explicit flashes of the city’s more contemporary and often grim realities: from the mafia ritual of kissing the boss’s hands, to garbage piling up in streets, via evocations of Sicilian mourning, immigration and emigration. The evening starts

Kate Chisholm

Hooked by chance

I know we’re all supposed to be taking advantage of the new technologies and listening to whatever we fancy on the radio whenever we like. But I reckon you have to be under 25 to really get the hang of listening by download, podcast and stream rather than at the switch of a button. When, in any case, are we supposed to find the time to download it all and catch up with what we’ve missed? It’s like the conveyor belt in The Generation Game. By the time you realise you’ve missed something vital and/or desirable, the next week’s goodies are on offer. That’s why I’m still a switch-it-on-and-see-what’s-on listener,

Sarah Drury

Culture notes: All shipshape

The museum Titanic Belfast (above) opened recently to commemorate the centenary of one of our best-loved disasters. If you think you know everything there is to know on the subject, or more than you really want to, think again. Hull 401, as she was known to Harland and Wolff, may yet prove to be the making of the city that famously said, ‘She was all right when she left here.’ In a building designed to echo the lines and forms of both ship and iceberg, overlooking the very slipways from which she and her sister ship Olympic were launched, the museum sets up a dialogue with the past in a

Lloyd Evans

Disquieting truths

Fear is a new drama by Dominic Savage and it’s one of the nastiest plays I’ve ever seen. It’s also one of the most scrappily written. Yet the subject matter and the clunky script make it weirdly captivating. We meet a pair of teenage muggers who hang around posh bits of London scoping out victims and totting up their ‘net worth’. A typical yuppie banker sports about five grand’s worth of portable accessories: Swiss watch, smart phone, designer briefcase, bespoke shoes, wallet full of cash. And these two muggers are expert valuers of lucrative prey. When they strike, they seek more than just upmarket goods. They want revenge as well.

Jonathan Bate

The play’s the thing

History, geography, politics, news, entertainment: the world is at our fingertips, staged before our eyes through the click of a mouse. Before the age of the internet was that of television, and radio before that. In the 19th century, you went for your weekly fix of politics, news, opinion and enlightenment to papers such as The Spectator — its name a nod back a further 100 years, to the first of the great periodicals that emerged from the coffee-house culture of the early 18th century. According to the influential historian and sociologist Jürgen Habermas, it was in that coffee-house culture of the Whig world of Joseph Addison and his Spectator

James Delingpole

Not much cop

Among the many reasons I shall miss Simon Hoggart’s presence as my Spectator co-TV critic is that I used to rely on him to take the heat off me. Since landing this gig all those years ago, I’ve always felt something of an imposter owing to my extreme reluctance to sit down and watch any more TV than I absolutely, strictly have to watch. Simon, on the other hand, was so conscientious he’d often review three or four programmes in a week. If this were the second world war, I’d be the equivalent of some Cairo desk wallah, while Simon would be a Soviet punishment battalion. But just because Simon’s

Peter Hoskin

Teenage dream

It’s Katy Perry! In 3D! And you’re almost certainly not going to see it! But for most of those who are, this is probably as good as cinema is going to get this year, or perhaps ever. Indeed, this documentary about Ms Perry’s rise to pop hyper-stardom is — to steal the title of her third studio album — a teenage dream. For many teenage girls (and younger), this is a chance to see their heroine’s life in exacting high definition. For many teenage boys (and older), it will be something else entirely. And in 3D too! But first some background information for those who are unfamiliar with Katy Perry

Michael Tanner

Troy story

In the late 1970s the Royal Opera announced that it would be performing Berlioz’s Les Troyens and Wagner’s Ring in alternate years, the idea being that the two great 19th-century operatic epics would prove equally popular. We never found out whether they would have done, since while the Ring cycles continued, Les Troyens never got off the ground, and has not been performed complete at Covent Garden for 40 years. My hopes for the new production were extremely high, and only moderately dashed by Jonas Kaufmann’s withdrawal from the role of Enée, one of grand opera’s least rewarding: as a character he is no less unsympathetic than Aeneas always is,

Brendan O’Neill

Rating movies

If, like me, you thought the British Board of Film Classification was staffed by red pen-wielding fuddy-duddies, think again. At the entrance to its office in Soho Square, I’m greeted by its youthful, engaging press officer. Wearing what I think young people call ‘killer heels’, and treating me to an anecdote about how she copes with the ‘boring’ Euro 2012 football by drinking lots of wine, she couldn’t be less like Mary Whitehouse if she tried. She introduces me to David Austin, head of policy. He’s not even wearing a collar and tie, never mind a censuring grimace. Within 20 minutes of my meeting him he has used the c-word

Saturday

30 Jun 2012

Laura Gascoigne

Madrid’s golden triangle

Under the statue of Charles III in the Puerta del Sol a hellfire preacher is competing for custom with a mariachi band. ‘Porque la paga del pecado es muerte!’ he shouts. ‘Ay, ay, ay, ay,’ they sing, ‘porque cantando se alegran, cielito lindo, los corazones.’ The weather is with the preacher: the cielo is not lindo. The El Greco cumulonimbus overhead flickers with lightning as God adds a rumble of thunder to the mix. Apart from the angry heavens and the five police vans lined up opposite — for prevención, they tell me — there’s little sign that Spain is on the brink. The leaning towers of Bankia may be

Will Gore

Viewpoint: Screen test

Before 2006, the idea of watching a play or an opera from the discomfort of a cinema seat, with the scent of popcorn, nachos and hotdogs wafting through the air, would have been ludicrous. But New York’s Met Opera’s broadcast of a live performance of The Magic Flute to cinemas changed that. Arts institutions the world over, from Glyndebourne to the Bolshoi Ballet, started to copy the Met and soon cinemagoers were pouring out of multiplexes, amazed at the intimacy and immediacy of these screenings. The amalgamation of live performance and cinema sounded, to my ears at least, to be a terrible idea. When I finally took the decision last

Angela Summerfield

Culture notes: Good as gold

An enthralling exhibition at Goldsmiths’ Hall, Gold: Power and Allure (until 28 July), which charts Britain’s history and celebrates exquisite artistry and craftsmanship, awaits those who venture into the City this summer. The grand opulence of the Hall is a superb setting: the deep plum-red, gilded and mahogany furnishings and the grand marble Staircase Hall enhance the magnificence of the display and serve to remind us that gold was not only worth its weight (unlike paper bank notes), but also played an important psychological role in Britain’s dominance on the world stage. More than 400 gold objects, from 2,500 BC to the present, are on display. Drawn from major institutions

Lloyd Evans

Hippie haven

A mad leap into the dark on the South Bank. And I’m all for mad leaps into the dark. A big-name cast has been assembled for a new play by an untested writer at the 900-seater Lyttelton theatre. Cripes. Stephen Beresford is a Rada graduate who knows his way around the dramatic repertoire. And he seems to have approached his first commission from the National in a spirit of dazzling insouciance. ‘Hey, I’ll just nick everything from Chekhov: the plot, the setting, the characters, the relationships and the atmosphere. And no one’ll notice!’ Well, there are smarter ways to go poaching. If you steal from a lesser dramatist, you can

Simon Hoggart

Power failure

You wouldn’t necessarily use the word subtle to describe a programme in which a well-dressed, well-spoken woman describes a speech that’s been altered as ‘pencil-fucked, completely’ but Veep (Monday, Sky Atlantic) is subtle, sinuously subtle. In his way Armando Iannucci is as creative with the English language as James Joyce. He is proof that doing an English degree at Oxford is not necessarily, to adapt another of his phrases, ‘like using a croissant as a dildo — it doesn’t do the job and it leaves a lot of mess’. His neologism in The Thick of It — ‘omnishambles’ — is now as much a part of our political vocabulary as

Deborah Ross

Tangled web

The Amazing Spider-Man isn’t so amazing, actually, and is a reboot of a remake, or a remake of a reboot, or a remake rebooted, and remade, rebootingly. It’s hard to keep up with these franchises when they swish back and forth all the time, determined to squeeze every last penny out of cinemagoers who should have more sense, yet don’t seem to mind sitting though the same film over and over. This has an excellent cast: Andrew Garfield, Sally Field, Martin Sheen, Emma Stone. It is 3D. The CGI is state-of-the art. And, fair play, it does try to inject meaningful emotion. But it’s a superhero movie and sticks to