Arts Reviews

The good, bad and ugly in arts and exhbitions

Saturday

Andrew Lambirth

To the point

Ten years ago, Duncan MacAskill went into Rymans to buy some drawing pins and was struck by the range of colours on offer. That moment of revelation led him to construct a self-portrait from drawing pins, adapting the ideas of Seurat’s pointillism, and the ben-day dot approach of Roy Lichtenstein, to contemporary needs and materials. Now he has been commissioned by the Royal Opera House’s Deloitte Ignite festival, curated by Mike Figgis, to make two vast pin portraits for The Link at the ROH. These ‘paintings with pins’ hang near the box office over the exit to Covent Garden Piazza, and depict MacAskill’s father in black and white, and the

Andrew Lambirth

Sacramental vision

As the focus for an Easter meditation, David Jones’s ‘Sanctus Christus de Capel-y-ffin’ (1925), a small, heartfelt painting in gouache on paper, could scarcely be bettered. The Crucifixion takes place in a luminous landscape with the bird of hope in attendance. This is the world of medieval illuminated manuscripts and ivory carvings, a highly sophisticated spiritualised and classicised vision of existence that is sometimes dismissed as primitive. A Welsh hill pony is set off against a chapel, trees and a bridge over running water in an arabesque design quivering with natural and spiritual life. Rhythm is crucial. As Jones said, ‘I don’t care how static the subject is, but it

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

There will be blood | 7 April 2012

John Webster had one amazing skill. He could craft lines that glow in the memory like radioactive gems. ‘A politician is the devil’s quilted anvil; he fashions all sins on him, and the blows are never heard.’ Eliot loved him. Pinter used to stroll around the parks of Hackney shouting his soundbites into the sky. But Webster never discovered how to put his highly wrought lines into the mouths of likable or captivating characters. The Duchess of Malfi is a Jacobean slasher-play, a straight-to-video Tarantino blood-fest, full of cloaked assassins and scheming dukes. We’re in an Italian court where a beautiful noblewoman, played by Eve Best, has fixed her eye

Peter Hoskin

Twilight zone

I’m not sure that everything wrong with the world can be blamed on Twilight — but most of it can. Ever since those oh-so-dreamy vampire stories first set hearts a-fluttering and cash registers a-ringing, Hollywood has been looking out for other fantasy yarns to strip down and hawk to 13-year-old girls. And now it has alighted on fairy tales. Last year we had a film of Red Riding Hood (from the director of Twilight). This year we have Snow White and the Huntsman (with one of the stars of Twilight). And there are also adaptations of Beauty and the Beast and Sleeping Beauty on the way (and if they don’t

Michael Tanner

Standing room only | 7 April 2012

Of all the operatic ventures that have sprung up in England in the past 20 years, Birmingham Opera Company may well be the most remarkable. Its artistic director is Graham Vick, who is well acquainted with opera at its most elitist — he was artistic director of Glyndebourne from 1994 to 2000. BOC is at the other extreme, in that productions now regularly take place in a disused steel foundry on the outskirts of the centre of Birmingham, and the aim is to involve as many local inhabitants as possible. Over the past few years there have been impressive performances of Verdi’s Otello (it was televised, and survived the scrutiny

Kate Chisholm

Night life

He’s got the perfect voice for radio, gruff and gravelly, slow and measured so you can catch every word. His new series is not, as you might expect, on 6 or 1, or even 2, but on 4. Jarvis Cocker’s Wireless Nights (late on Thursdays) is quite a coup for the former Home Service, the Pulp frontman bringing a touch of street cred to the network once proud to be considered middle-of-the-road. Cocker promises that his series will wander through aspects of the night, drawing on the stories of those who stay awake through the witching hours. Tilly, a young shepherdess, is facing her first night shift alone, struggling to

Saturday

Andrew Lambirth

On the beach | 31 March 2012

As exhibitions in London’s public galleries become increasingly mobbed and unpleasant, it is heartening to report that the drive to take art to the provinces continues apace. New museums seem to be opening all over the country, from Wakefield to Margate, and although one may entertain doubts about their sustainability, their enhancement of our current cultural budget is very welcome. The latest public art gallery to open on the south coast is in Hastings, a once rather grand town that has in recent years been down on its luck. It takes more than an hour and a half to get there from London by train, and there isn’t a fast

Kate Chisholm

Close encounters

Kate Chisholm looks forward to The People’s Passion on Radio 4 which explores the role of the cathedral in a modern, secular world ‘We began by wanting to do something about cathedrals and the life that goes on within them,’ recalls Christine Morgan, head of religion and ethics at BBC Radio. That was about 18 months ago, when not much attention was being paid to these great beacons of British history and belief. But by coincidence (or perhaps divine intervention) cathedral stories have been hitting the front pages in recent months after the tortuous attempts by St Paul’s to extricate itself from Occupy London and its battle with money, capitalism

Michael Tanner

Straying from the brief

‘Praising! That’s it!’ Rilke exclaims in one of his ecstatic Sonnets to Orpheus. It seems to be an unconditional injunction, but he hadn’t tried being an opera critic, and I’d like to see anyone even try plausibly to praise either  of the two productions I saw this week. One was new and absolutely terrible, the other was old, neglected and may or may not be good — it wasn’t easy to judge. Tête à Tête is an opera company and enterprise that I have often admired and enjoyed, but its speciality is very brief works, which could hardly be staged alone, and which don’t demand of their librettist and composer

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Old meets New

It’s back. And I can’t believe I missed it the first time. Live Theatre’s dramatisation of Chris Mullin’s diaries has returned to Soho for a lap of honour. Richly deserved as well. The show moves unobtrusively between Mullin’s many spheres of interest. We see his home life as a father of two and as MP for Sunderland South. And we get an insider’s view of Westminster during the glory days of New Labour when parliament, and the entire country, was infatuated with its tooth-some superstar. Some of Mullin’s recollections have already acquired the status of classics. The late Tony Banks confided to him that no one ever saw Peter Mandelson

Deborah Ross

Defying logic

Switch is a French action thriller starring that lumbering wooden legend of French cinema, Eric Cantona, and it’s awful, but at least it is one of my favourite kinds of awful film: so awful it’s a triumph. If I were ever invited to lecture at film school — remarkably, I have yet to receive such an invite — the first thing I’d say is: girls, boys, although your narrative shouldn’t be predictable, it must add up in terms of what has gone before. Your characters shouldn’t change personalities overnight. Also, it always helps if the plot actually makes sense. This narrative follows no known logic: not internal, not external, and

Tim Stanley

Male order | 31 March 2012

I suspect that, when men and women watch Mad Men, they see very different things. Women probably see a witty indictment of male patriarchy. I, on the other hand, see Heaven on Earth. Everything shown on Mad Men is what male dinosaurs like me expect from western civilisation: liquid lunches, beautiful secretaries, exquisite suits and witty conversation. Alas, all of this is absent from the 21st-century workplace. Nowadays, downing half the contents of a bottle of Canadian Club whiskey in the middle of a business meeting can be a sackable offence. Mad Men returned to our screens on Tuesday night (Sky Atlantic) with a two-hour special. For those who care

Kate Chisholm

Con air

Imagine a small room, no windows, institutional cream on the walls. Bare of all decoration except for a circle of cheap chairs and the most basic of recording equipment. A gathering of people squeeze into the space — three young men, a strained-looking couple, an official-looking woman with clipboard and notes, a man in jeans with an earpiece. There’s not much room for manoeuvre, or to opt out of what’s going on. This is Prison Radio, an outreach scheme that began in HMP Feltham for young offenders in the early 1990s. Two radio producers wanted to do something about the high rates of self-harm, and of reoffending. Why not give

Andrew Petrie

Bad habits | 31 March 2012

When the late Ken Russell published his autobiography in 1989, he called it A British Picture. That title could just as easily describe The Devils, his 1971 adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudun, relating the true story of supposed demonic possession among Ursuline nuns in north-west France in 1634. Here is a world-class film by a British director, with British stars and crew,  sets by Derek Jarman and a score by Peter Maxwell Davies. So why is it only now getting a DVD release? Combining sexual abandon, outright blasphemy and scenes of convent life unlikely to be mistaken for The Sound of Music, The Devils fought a notorious

Saturday

Charles Spencer

Losing the plot | 24 March 2012

You know those sad, confused people you sometimes see, standing on street corners and shouting dementedly at passing cars. Well, the other week, that madman was me. I was in Sheffield to cover the Crucible’s Michael Frayn season, and had risen early to write my review. And then my usually reliable laptop failed to come up with an email connection. I kept trying, and failing, to get the copy across, then realised that unless I got a shift on I would miss my train. So I ordered a taxi and checked out. Only the taxi didn’t come and catching the train looked less and less likely. And it was then

Andrew Lambirth

Seeing the light

One of the more considerable pleasures of exhibition-viewing outside London recently was the Claude show at the Ashmolean. London exhibitions are becoming mobbed by crowds, and there is little enjoyment in shoving or being shoved in the supposed pursuit of artistic enlightenment, and absolutely no chance to contemplate individual pictures in the hurly-burly. As the devout will queue up to kiss the wizened toe of a saint, now the football fans of art will jostle to snatch the merest passing glimpse of a Leonardo or a Freud. The being there is all: the experience has very little to do with serious looking. Afterwards, you join the ranks of the blessed

Will Gore

Poirot power

Will Gore talks to David Suchet about his forthcoming West End role and his debt to the Belgian detective The first thing I notice about David Suchet is his facial hair. It isn’t a stick-on Poirot tash, unfortunately, but a grey beard that he has grown for his latest role, James Tyrone, in the West End revival of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night. The second thing is his smile. He greets me with a broad grin, and beams amiably throughout our time together. He has rehearsals to be getting on with, but is happy to let our scheduled 30 minutes stretch to an hour. Suchet is the most

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Rhythms of the Caribbean

There should be a sign on the door. ‘Plotless play in progress.’ Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, by Errol John, won first prize in a 1957 scriptwriting competition organised by Kenneth Tynan and judged by Alec Guinness, Peter Ustinov, Peter Hall and others. The West End promoters thought the script uncommercial and never gave it a decent shot at success. They had a point. Errol John, an apprentice writer, hadn’t learnt how to shape his tale for the theatre and give it that insistent rat-a-tat-tat rhythm of twists and surprises that audiences expect. His languid drama is set in a Trinidad ghetto where a crew of washouts and wanna-bes bicker

Deborah Ross

Man and boy

Totally unexpectedly, as I don’t like Brit gangster films particularly — so many sociopaths, so little time — I loved, loved, loved, loved, loved Wild Bill and, for those of you who are slow on the uptake, let me say four times more: I loved, loved, loved, loved it. It may not even be a gangster film proper, although it is certainly being sold as such, with a poster that’s all tattooed fist. This is a shame, as it’s actually a rather delicate and elegant piece of work combining great storytelling, a terrific script, and characters you can seriously care about, and do. It hits all the marks. You’ll laugh.

Michael Tanner

Fatal flaw | 24 March 2012

Judith Weir’s Miss Fortune, whose UK première was at the Royal Opera last week, has received the severest critical panning I can recall for any new opera. It is no masterpiece, but I wonder why it has been rounded on when so many new — not to mention old — pieces with no more going for them, so far as I can tell, get greeted warmly or at least tepidly. Admittedly, it takes an ambitious subject — Fate — and treats it in a largely unpretentious way. But Verdi’s La Forza del Destino takes the same subject and treats it in an utterly preposterous way, and has some dreadful passages