Arts Reviews

The good, bad and ugly in arts and exhbitions

Saturday

Alan Powers

Vertically challenged

St Paul’s Cathedral is quite rightly something of a national obsession. No other building has protected ‘view corridors’ as a result of legislation in 1935, when new building regulations allowed the surrounding buildings — notoriously a telephone exchange to the south — to overtop the cathedral’s cornice line. These corridors, extending like an unseen net as far afield as Richmond Hill, make architects unaccountably cross, as if they were an unfair curb on the alliance of art and Mammon. Thank God they are there, and that the tallest buildings, springing up once again like genetically modified beanstalks, are at least corralled east of Bank. St Paul’s Cathedral is quite rightly

Giannandrea Poesio

Visual pleasure

According to the programme note, the message in Thierry Smits’s To the Ones I Love ‘does not direct itself to the mind but to the senses’. According to the programme note, the message in Thierry Smits’s To the Ones I Love ‘does not direct itself to the mind but to the senses’. Well, his work is certainly a pleasant sensory experience. Neat patterns of colour, possibly recalling the chakras or energy centres that, in Eastern philosophy, govern our senses and feelings, mark the sections of this one-hour dance. The undeniable prowess of the nine handsome black male dancers with their superbly co-ordinated movements, derived from a mix of idioms, adds

Michael Tanner

Conflicting passions

Francesco Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur, his biggest success, dating from 1902, leads a fringe existence, but it persists thanks primarily to the name role, dramatically meaty and not imposing too great a strain on the performer. Francesco Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur, his biggest success, dating from 1902, leads a fringe existence, but it persists thanks primarily to the name role, dramatically meaty and not imposing too great a strain on the performer. It has been mainly associated with singers at a fairly late stage — or thinking they were — of their career, Magda Olivero and Renata Tebaldi being the most notable. What is undeniable is that it is a vehicle, primarily

Deborah Ross

Catching up with Clooney

There are quite a few reasons to like The American. It is an action film with almost no action, making it a non-action action film which, I now know, is my favourite kind of action film. It stars George Clooney, and while I have tried to imagine Mr Clooney doing something uncharismatically — rinsing out his pants in the sink, say, or hosing down the car on a Sunday morning — I cannot. I’d buy a ticket for both. And it’s directed by Anton Corbijn, the Dutch photographer turned film-maker who made Control, the excellent film about Joy Division, and who knows how to compose a shot gorgeously. There are

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

No laughing matter

The Nobel prize is nothing. The real badge of literary greatness is the addition of the ‘esque’ suffix to one’s name and, if you’re truly outstanding, the word ‘nightmare’, too. Franz Kafka manages this distinguished double, although some readers find the connotations of horror arise not so much from his totalitarian dystopias as from his prose. But it’s best to approach Kafka with an open mind. The Nobel prize is nothing. The real badge of literary greatness is the addition of the ‘esque’ suffix to one’s name and, if you’re truly outstanding, the word ‘nightmare’, too. Franz Kafka manages this distinguished double, although some readers find the connotations of horror

Henrietta Bredin

Anthony Whitworth-Jones: Garsington on the move

When is a country-house opera not a country-house opera? When it no longer has a country house attached. This is what is about to happen to Garsington Opera, which is moving, lock, stock, barrel and picnic basket, from the exquisitely planned and intimate gardens of the Bloomsbury-redolent Garsington Manor near Oxford to the wide-open rolling hills of the Wormsley Estate in nearby Buckinghamshire. The move is a change and a challenge that the company’s general director, Anthony Whitworth-Jones, seems thoroughly to relish. ‘It’s enormously exciting,’ he says. ‘Once we knew we were going to have to move from Garsington the hunt was on for a suitable place, and we had

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Tendentious drivel

It told the story of two best mates, Frankie and Peter, serving in an unidentified northern regiment in Afghanistan where Peter quickly discovers he can’t cope under fire — and as a punishment is made the unit’s ‘camp bitch’ by the sadistic Lance Corporal Buckley (Mackenzie Crook). ‘Our interest’s on the dangerous edge of things. The honest thief, the tender murderer, the superstitious atheist.’ So I suppose you could argue that  Jimmy McGovern was merely following the fine tradition of Robert Browning when he wrote his drama about cowardice, bullying and murder among British soldiers on the frontline in Afghanistan. But I wouldn’t. I think Accused (BBC1, Monday) was despicable:

Kate Chisholm

Plain speaking

Thank heavens for radio, and its ability to survive the depredations of new technology (even the botched introduction of DAB). Channel Four’s much-hyped adaptation of William Boyd’s novel, Any Human Heart, is just so lazy, letting the images do all the work, without bothering to create a coherent or dramatic script. A radio dramatisation of the book would have had to work much harder to ensure that the characters were brought to life. No fancy costumes or fabulously elegant settings to tell us where we are, and in what decade. No tricksy graphics at the beginning, either. Just plain words, carefully crafted to lead the listener through the narrative. Thank

Saturday

Andrew Lambirth

Small blessings

As I pointed out last week, one of the chief attractions of the Treasures from Budapest show at the Royal Academy is the inclusion of two rooms of Old Master drawings. For those of us who find large exhibitions overwhelming, there is a refreshingly modest display of French drawings (admission free) at the Wallace Collection, which makes a good companion to the RA’s blockbuster. The earliest work is a fanciful, somehow ethereal, black-chalk and brown-wash 16th-century drawing of a water festival at Fontainebleau, by Antoine Caron. Much tougher is a neighbouring red-chalk study by Jacques Callot, ‘Ecce Homo’. Despite a certain vulgarity of pose and gesture, it has a brash

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

A good life

As she prepares for the role of Mrs Malaprop, Penelope Keith talks to Lloyd Evans, who finds her decisive, cheerful, pragmatic and modest, with a tendency to break into fits of unexpected giggles A winter off. That’s what Penelope Keith had planned for this year. But when an opportunity arrived to play Mrs Malaprop in Sheridan’s The Rivals she couldn’t turn it down. ‘It’s one of the great women’s parts so I thought I must have a bash at that.’ We meet in a compact, slightly unloved dressing-room in the Theatre Royal, Brighton, where she sits in light-brown slacks and a soft-pink cardigan with her back to a bright mirror

Ed Rex

World Music

Sitting at my computer, headphones in hand and wearing top-half concert dress, bottom-half pyjamas, this is shaping up to be the most bizarre performance I have ever given. I’m about to join Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir, made up of singers from all over the world recording themselves singing his composition Sleep. Sitting at my computer, headphones in hand and wearing top-half concert dress, bottom-half pyjamas, this is shaping up to be the most bizarre performance I have ever given. I’m about to join Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir, made up of singers from all over the world recording themselves singing his composition Sleep. As I come to the end of the

Deborah Ross

Deathly dull

By the time a film franchise arrives at its seventh and penultimate instalment, you probably know if it is something you enjoy or not, or at least I would hope so. Generally, Harry Potter is not something I’ve enjoyed over the years so, by the same logic, I shouldn’t have bothered with this but, having skipped the last one, I was curious. Have the characters grown up, and has the franchise grown up with it? To save you having to skim to the end for an answer, I will give it to you now: no. This film is the same as all the other films, which is fine if you

Michael Tanner

Mangled Mozart

Don Giovanni is an opera which gives plenty of scope for alternative interpretations, as has been very clearly demonstrated in the past 30 or so years, since directors took over as the determining force in productions. But there are certain basic features which any production, to be taken seriously, must respect. The two most obvious are that the Don must be a figure of riveting allure, and that social position is a key factor in the development of the action, at any rate until that gets dispersed in the ill-organised Act II. Once these are in place, there is plenty of room for dealing with such matters as how appealing,

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Too much chat

Ed Hall, boss of the Hampstead theatre, places before our consideration a new play by Athol Fugard. The gong-grabbing, apartheid-drubbing South African author creates dramas that are rich in humanity and compassion, filled with curiosity about the architecture of suffering, and distinguished by flights of poetic soulfulness. And by God, they’re dull. Fugard doesn’t do action, romance or suspense. He does chat. Lots of it. His monologues stream in and out of one another in a textured gloop of Oscar-hinting earnestness. Generally, he deploys the same easy-to-assemble stage furniture: a shack dumped on the orange savannah surrounded by poverty-stricken fences. The shack can be assembled from the contents of a

Simon Hoggart

Hard times

Courtroom dramas filled the schedules this week, with Jimmy McGovern writing a series for the BBC called Accused (BBC1, Monday). Mr McGovern, who invented Cracker, does grim. In a McGovern drama, things start badly in the first five minutes. Then they get worse. Occasionally, events might take a turn for the better. Ha! Don’t be fooled. They are about to get unimaginably grimmer. It would be fun if the BBC persuaded him to adapt some P.G. Wodehouse. ‘Biffo Prendergast is hopelessly in love with the Hon. Letitia Honeysett. But the bluebird of happiness is about to be sucked into the aircraft engine of his life. She accuses him of rape

Kate Chisholm

Ray of sunshine

Could there be subtle changes taking place at Radio 4 HQ? Late last Friday night, A Good Read was dropped in favour of a repeat of a half-hour profile of the extraordinary Burmese campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi. Maybe the new Controller of Radio 4, Gwyneth Williams, who has spent much of her BBC career at Bush House, most recently as director of the English branch of the World Service, is beginning her makeover of the station, tilting its axis of interest outwards to the world beyond Portland Place. The timing was perfect — just after the news broke of Suu’s imminent release from house arrest — which set me

Ursula Buchan

Gather ye roses

Can there be many spare bedrooms in the country that do not have at least one, and probably four, prints of Redouté rose engravings hanging on the walls? I know ours does. Can there be many spare bedrooms in the country that do not have at least one, and probably four, prints of Redouté rose engravings hanging on the walls? I know ours does. People who do not think they know the name of a single botanical artist will have heard of Pierre-Joseph Redouté, the 19th-century Belgian-born artist who did so much to instil the French (and later the English) with an enduring love for the rose. He did this

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Glory Days of Advertising

The More Doctors Smoke Camels Than Any Other Cigarette! advertisement is, I think, pretty familiar. Those were the days! Here’s a terrific collection of splendid (and some not so splendid) ads from the Mad Men era (and some from before it). Among my tobacco-favourites: “Born Gentle”? Class. Don Draper would have been proud. Rightly so, too. Should have been accompanied by another ad making a “Born Free” case. Then there’s this Marlboro gem: “You need never feel over-smoked” is a mild form of genius. Clearly this boy would grow up to be the Marlboro Cowboy. And, seasonally, this: It’s true: smoking is fun! Finally, for pipe smokers everywhere: All gone

Saturday

Andrew Lambirth

Fresh and feisty

Harry Becker (1865–1928) is one of those artists too often dismissed as being of regional interest only, who feature but rarely in the art chronicles of the period. Harry Becker (1865–1928) is one of those artists too often dismissed as being of regional interest only, who feature but rarely in the art chronicles of the period. He is most widely known for his illustrations to Adrian Bell’s celebrated Suffolk trilogy — Corduroy, Silver Ley and The Cherry Tree — and it is worth noting that Becker’s pictures were matched to Bell’s prose after the artist’s death, though they seem to be made for each other in their near-perfect fit. Becker

Igor Toronyi-Lalic

The art of giving

How will the arts world plug the funding gap? Igor Toronyi-Lalic investigates It’s an idea so simple in concept, so elegant in execution, so bursting with potential, that you kick yourself for not thinking of it yourself. ‘You put your project here,’ explains 28-year-old solicitor and budding internet entrepreneur Michael Troughton, scrolling down the front page of his flash new website. ‘And you put your money there.’ Even his cat comes to investigate. What Troughton is describing is WeFund.co.uk, the first British attempt to apply crowdfunding to arts financing. Barack Obama used crowdfunding for his 2008 presidential bid — that is, asking a lot of people to give a small