Arts Reviews

The good, bad and ugly in arts and exhbitions

Friday

Kate Maltby Kate Maltby

In A Forest, Dark and Deep

Neil LaBute is hard to like but easy to admire. So goes conventional wisdom on the subject of one of America’s most verbally violent playwrights. It’s a shame, therefore, that in this new tale of Hansel and Gretel grown up and gone wrong, there’s still plenty to discomfort but little to impress. Fortunately, Hollywood stars Matthew Fox (Lost) and Olivia Williams (Rushmore, The Sixth Sense) lend real wit and power to LaBute’s depiction of sibling warfare. In their capable hands, LaBute’s rehash of clichés about the opposition of educated woman to working class man becomes highly entertaining, if never quite enjoyable. LaBute seems to delight in the role of macho

Saturday

Andrew Lambirth

Lines of beauty | 2 April 2011

So far, 2011 has been a good year for drawing. The great Pre-Raphaelite drawings show at Birmingham is still fresh in my mind as I write this review of a superb Watteau exhibition at the Royal Academy (supported by Region Holdings) and a select survey of Victorian drawings and watercolours at the Courtauld. Watercolours are often described as a form of drawing, though they are in fact made with paint. So they occupy a hybrid category, allowing rather too great a laxity of definition, as can be seen in the Tate’s current watercolour compendium. But there is no uncertainty about the Academy’s show: this is all drawings, and of a

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

The power of words | 2 April 2011

Tom Conti tells Mary Wakefield how to get inside a woman’s mind I watched Shirley Valentine again last night. It’s different when you’re older. At 14 it’s impossible to imagine that any sane woman would talk to a wall — or put up with that dour, demanding husband for so many years. When you’re 35, well, it doesn’t seem so far-fetched, does it? Tom Conti (as Costas, the love interest) looks better, too, this time round — more attractive. When you’re a teen, you’ve no idea how rare it is to find a middle-aged man who looks good in jeans. As the credits scrolled up over sundown in Mykonos, I

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The art of giving | 2 April 2011

The investor Jonathan Ruffer reveals why he is spending £15 million to buy 12 great paintings from the C of E – and give them back ‘It’s the pearl of great price,’ says Jonathan Ruffer. Like the merchant in the Gospel, he is selling all that he hath. With the proceeds, he is buying the 12 Zurbaran paintings of Jacob and his Brothers at Auckland Castle, the palace of the Bishop of Durham. And when he has bought them from the Church of England, he will give them back, keeping them in the castle, thus bestowing them upon the people of the north-east in perpetuity. The price is £15 million.

Kate Maltby Kate Maltby

A Cause for Celebration

We theatre hacks are running out of superlatives to describe the current flowering of Terrence Rattigan revivals around the centenary of the writer’s birth. Notorious in his own day for his ability to dissect the morality of the midcentury Establishment, Rattigan follows in the grand tradition of Wilde and Coward in crafting witty, sexually ambiguous and quintessentially English social dramas, scored through with darker, more urgent concerns with the search for a moral existence. It would be a cruel irony if this run of productions were to have the effect of lifting Rattigan’s oeuvre out of a temporary unpopularity, only to leave it suffering from overexposure. But with revivals as

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

A pair of shockers

Michael Attenborough, the spirited maverick who runs the Almeida, has lavished a first-rate production on David Eldridge’s new play. Michael Attenborough, the spirited maverick who runs the Almeida, has lavished a first-rate production on David Eldridge’s new play. All that’s missing from this slick, visually pleasing show is any thought or utterance worthy of adult scrutiny. The script introduces us to a TV presenter, Lucy, recently dismissed for smoking heroin in her dressing-room. Skint, hooked on drugs and profoundly depressed, she follows a predictable downward spiral into theft, prostitution and homelessness and from there to counselling and the delusional ‘contentment’ of abstinence. Eldridge is remarkably uncritical of the drug myths

Deborah Ross

Lost children

I didn’t much like Oranges and Sunshine and I’ll tell you for why: it takes one of the most obscene scandals in 20th-century British politics — the mass forced deportation of British children to Australia, which began in the 1920s and continued right up until 1970 — and all but kills it off with its self-righteous stance, plodding script, mournful violins and clunky construction. I didn’t much like Oranges and Sunshine and I’ll tell you for why: it takes one of the most obscene scandals in 20th-century British politics — the mass forced deportation of British children to Australia, which began in the 1920s and continued right up until 1970

Giannandrea Poesio

Turning point

One of the intriguing components of The Most Incredible Thing, Javier De Frutos’s latest creation, is its structure. One of the intriguing components of The Most Incredible Thing, Javier De Frutos’s latest creation, is its structure. Intentionally steering away from the aesthetic developments that informed theatre dance for more than a century, De Frutos has opted instead to revive and revisit the compositional formulae of the late 19th-century three-act ballet. Bold and risky as that sounds, such a decision fits perfectly with the kaleidoscopic score which the Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe have been working on since 2008 and the storyline, derived from the tale by Hans

Kate Chisholm

History through sound

Diaries and letters tell us a lot about how people lived from day to day yet there’s often something missing. video platform video management video solutions video player Diaries and letters tell us a lot about how people lived from day to day yet there’s often something missing. How did they experience the world through sound? What did they themselves sound like, their voices, their accents? The aural experience of the past is lost to us. Now, though, we have the technology to record just about anything we want. A huge new department at the British Library in St Pancras (the revamped National Sound Archive) is dedicated not just to

Simon Hoggart

Personal grooming

I found myself among a group of young people the other day, and they were talking with much hilarity about The Only Way Is Essex (ITV2, Sunday and Wednesday). This is cult television, adored by the generation that watches it. The show is a strange hybrid: real people play themselves under their real names, but with much of the script and many of the plots written for them. So it’s a reality show that has more or less ditched reality. The cast are young Essex people with money. They spend their time in expensive cars, in the gym, or making themselves beautiful in salons and nail bars. Nail bars! No

Wednesday

Kate Maltby Kate Maltby

A(nother) Magic Flute

A new opera has breezed through London’s Barbican Centre. It’s a tale of arduous quests, initiation and male friendship, lyrical in its romantic sweetness, and vaguely reminiscent of the later Mozart. But Mozart’s The Magic Flute it most certainly is not. It is always courageous to take on the opera purists, but it is not quite clear how bold the usually fearless Peter Brook has been in titling his adaptation A Magic Flute. It is scarcely a step away from the original title: just enough of a retreat to avoid comparisons to conventional productions, but not exactly a leap into the unknown. Musically, the production is as lily-livered as the

Saturday

Andrew Lambirth

East Anglian friends

Three exhibitions in East Anglia serve to remind us that museums and galleries outside London continue to programme stimulating events. At Norwich Castle is an excellent survey of British art from the beginning of the first world war to the end of the second — a time of great richness and considerable innovation. There’s so much of interest and value here that it’s difficult to decide what to mention and what to leave out. Three exhibitions in East Anglia serve to remind us that museums and galleries outside London continue to programme stimulating events. At Norwich Castle is an excellent survey of British art from the beginning of the first

Nicola Mccartney

Maastricht treats

The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) takes place in Maastricht, Netherlands, every year. It showcases the finest examples that the most prestigious commercial galleries of the international art world have to offer — from ancient to contemporary art and design. The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) takes place in Maastricht, Netherlands, every year. It showcases the finest examples that the most prestigious commercial galleries of the international art world have to offer — from ancient to contemporary art and design. Exhibits are heavily vetted and scrutinised for their provenance before the wealthiest dealers, collectors and heads of museums are allowed in to make their purchases. It is a true celebration

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Following in the family footsteps

Lloyd Evans meets Niamh Cusack, who ‘absolutely wasn’t going to be an actress’ She doesn’t usually do it this way. When Niamh Cusack heard that the Old Vic was planning to stage Terence Rattigan’s final play, Cause Célèbre, she read a synopsis, found a part that excited her, and asked her agent to get her an audition. ‘I’ve never approached a production like that,’ she tells me. ‘But it’s a cracking play, really, well written — a rollicking courtroom drama with great characters and fascinating relationships.’ We meet in a dressing-room at the Old Vic and make ourselves comfortable amid the higgledy-piggledy apparatus of a Feydeau farce whose run is

Michael Tanner

Spellbound

English Touring Opera continues to be the most heroic of companies. This spring season it is performing at 17 locations, from Exeter to Perth, Belfast to Norwich. And in the many years that I have been going to its productions, there has been no compromise in standards and absolutely no contraction of repertoire to the familiar and the safe, if anything the reverse. Last autumn it premièred Goehr’s tough Promised End, an immense artistic achievement. And now they are putting on Tobias Picker’s Fantastic Mr Fox, an operatic adaptation of Roald Dahl, with young children from each of the relevant towns playing the fox cubs — and having their names

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Sibling opposition

Hard to like, impossible to discount. Neil LaBute delivers another of his exquisitely sordid insights into the damaged terrain of the privileged bourgeoisie with his new melodrama, In a Forest Dark and Deep. The setting is a small house near an American university. College lecturer Betty is being helped by her trailer-trash brother Bobby to clear out the detritus left by a departing tenant. LaBute’s storyline adheres very strictly to the timetable laid down by screenplay seminars: every 20 minutes a new revelation flips the plot entirely on its head. This tick-tock regularity gives the play an unwelcome air of artifice. First we learn that Betty is more a sugar

Giannandrea Poesio

Three’s a crowd

According to some sources, the legendary impresario Sergei Diaghilev invented the mixed-bill formula for ballet. Whether or not this is true, there are times when one wishes he hadn’t. One century later, they increasingly come across as hurriedly and/or inharmoniously put together. Take, for instance, the most recent Royal Ballet triple bill. Frederick Ashton’s 1980 Rhapsody was created for the Queen Mother’s 80th birthday and as a vehicle for the megastar Mikhail Baryshnikov. Although the work has many subtle layers, it retains much of its original ‘party piece’ essence, which calls for grandeur and sparkle. Alas, the redesigned sets and costumes do not provide either, nor did the corps de

Kate Chisholm

More 4

Big changes are happening to the airwaves, part of the frenetic technological revolution that’s been unleashed by the development of a digital language. Big changes are happening to the airwaves, part of the frenetic technological revolution that’s been unleashed by the development of a digital language. Radio, against expectations, is proving itself a vital force in these fast-moving times, because it’s flexible, adaptable and still compelling. The human voice, the imagination of sound, will endure when perhaps TV will fade out, evolving into another kind of internet exchange. Wireless itself now means something quite different from those first crystal receivers, but nothing it seems can kill off that intimate connection

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Our island story | 26 March 2011

I vividly remember the moment when I saw my first black person. It was December in either ’68 or ’69, so I would have been three or four at the time, and my father’s works had arranged some kind of coach outing to meet Father Christmas. Seated near me was a black child a bit older than me, and I recall gazing fascinated at the blackness of his skin and noticing that it had white blotches on it like a mirror image of the dark freckles and moles on my skin. ‘Daddy, what are those white things?’ I asked, pointing at the boy’s skin. ‘Pigment,’ my father explained. I vividly

Ursula Buchan

To pastures new

If you like to pass an idle half-hour, as I do, reading random entries in Who’s Who, you will be struck by how many distinguished people include gardening among their recreations. If you like to pass an idle half-hour, as I do, reading random entries in Who’s Who, you will be struck by how many distinguished people include gardening among their recreations. Indeed, it is the second most popular pastime — after golf, bizarrely — in the book. To pick just a few: the Duchess of Buccleuch and Queensberry, Lord Justice Goldring, Susan Hampshire, Mark Damazer, Maeve Binchy, Lord (Chris) Patten and Crispin Blunt MP all own up to spending