Arts Reviews

The good, bad and ugly in arts and exhbitions

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Dimbleby Fail

I didn’t watch Question Time last night, but there seems to be some stushie over David Dimbleby’s refusal to allow Nicola Sturgeon to talk about fiscal autonomy. “This is for a UK audience!” squawked our host, shutting down any discussion of a matter that, whatever he may believe (if he knows anything about the subject) is not in fact of merely local, tartan interest.  I don’t quite agree with everything Joan McAlpine writes here but many of her points are well-made. Dimbleby’s attitude – assuming it has been reported correctly – reflects a London-based parochialism that does neither him nor the Corporation any credit. This is not a Scotland vs

Monday

Kate Maltby Kate Maltby

THEATRE: Over Gardens Out

Riverside Studios stills owes much of its reputation as one of London’s most daring powerhouses of fringe theatre to Peter Gill.  As its founding Artistic Director, Gill inaugurated the Riverside tradition of high-risk commissions from young, experimental troupes alongside the latest international innovators. So now that Gill has entered his eighth decade still a major force in British theatre, it’s refreshing to see his old haunt reviving two of his earliest plays, showcasing his writing at its most rebellious and raw. Riverside Studios stills owes much of its reputation as one of London’s most daring powerhouses of fringe theatre to Peter Gill.  As its founding Artistic Director, Gill inaugurated the

Saturday

Andrew Lambirth

Venetian Visions

Andrew Lambirth finds the National Gallery’s new exhibition on Canaletto and his contemporaries both illuminating and enjoyable Giovanni Antonio Canal (1697–1768), better known as Canaletto, is a safe bet and a crowd-pleaser, and the weary critic is entitled to ask — not another Canaletto show? What can there be left to say? But note the exhibition title — Venice: Canaletto and his Rivals. Venice comes first, the great tourist trap herself, kingdom of the sea and romance-magnet, and in the placing of the words the unashamed popularism of the show emerges. Or so the cynic might think. In fact, this exhibition is not simply a celebration of Venice, but a

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Eastern promise | 23 October 2010

The Singapore Symphony Orchestra is like a teenage athlete just about to hit peak form. This could be one of the great orchestras of the 21st century. So could its rival, the Malaysian Philharmonic. We all know that Asia produces dazzling soloists. But orchestras? I was sceptical until I heard the Singaporeans at the Southbank Centre this month. Accompanying Stephen Hough in Mendelssohn’s First Piano Concerto, they matched his virtuosity with their bouncy brio. The conductor, Lan Shui (above), had the sections swaying like stalks in a gale in Rachmaninov’s Isle of the Dead and Debussy’s La Mer. The encores: Bernstein’s Candide overture, taken at a lick that would have

Peter Hoskin

Interview – Tomas Alfredson: outside the frame

Without warning, Tomas Alfredson jumps up and starts wading about the room like a water bird treading over lily pads. ‘There’s a famous sketch by a Swedish comedian,’ he explains by way of a voiceover, ‘in which he’s walking through a meadow of tall grass. He’s walking, struggling through this grass that reaches up above his waist.’ Alfredson pushes out at imaginary foliage around his midriff. ‘Then he steps out into a road and you realise that — all that time — he wasn’t wearing any trousers. Completely naked from the waist down.’ The mime stops as suddenly as it started. ‘That is the cinema of paranoia!’ And that is

Deborah Ross

Gang of four

Red is not a very good film and neither does it try to be. It puts in very little effort and, instead, relies almost entirely on the pulling power of its all-star line up: Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman, Richard Dreyfuss, Brian Cox and a cameo from Ernest Borgnine, who is now 93. (I put that in because I know you’ll ask yourself, ‘Bloody hell, how old is he now?’ Well, he’s 93. ) It’s billed as an ‘explosive action comedy’ but the ‘explosive action’ and ‘comedy’ are so workaday even Helen Mirren brandishing a machine gun while wearing a sexy white evening dress can’t save it

Michael Tanner

Who’s deceiving whom?

The more often I see Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, the more I am bewildered and fascinated by it. The more often I see Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, the more I am bewildered and fascinated by it. There is no question that it is one of his most brilliant operatic scores, if not the most brilliant of all. One thing that never fails to astonish is the variety of interpretations that the work is susceptible of, both the score and the drama, though of course in a fine production they are complementary — and almost every production I’ve seen has been good. The latest version, from Opera

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Greek myth

Thank God for the critics. All failings can be laid at their door. Robert Lindsay appeared on a telly sofa last week to repudiate the shirtier reviews of Onassis. ‘It’s not a critic play,’ he said. And I wondered if ‘critic’ had changed grammatical species and become an adjective meaning ‘good’. The show has its moments but the script is devoid of dramatic intelligence. Proper plays open with a dilemma that enlists the audience’s sympathies, unifies the action and creates suspense. Plenty of options were available to playwright Martin Sherman. Would Onassis succeed in replacing Maria Callas with Jackie Kennedy? Would he destroy his son Alexander’s romance with an ageing

Giannandrea Poesio

Postmodern spirit

Once upon a time, in America, a group of dancers and performance artists gathered in the Judson Church Theater and challenged long-held artistic tenets. The historical significance of their provocative aesthetics led scholars to label their art ‘postmodern dance’, even though there was more to their creations than just dance. A few decades later, their works have not lost their appeal, even though their principles have been regurgitated and tiresomely plagiarised. Take, for instance, Trisha Brown’s Flower of the Forest, the choreographic installation that greeted viewers outside the Queen Elizabeth Hall over the weekend. Moving through a web of ropes and strategically placed garments, two dancers inhabited the suspended clothing,

Kate Chisholm

Revolting listeners

A rare but threatened species, in dire need of a campaign to save it from extinction, could be heard on Saturday night. Stages of Independence, showcasing the work of ten African playwrights, is likely to be one of the last-ever original World Service productions when the threatened cut to its budget goes through. Twenty-six BBC reporters and cameramen were rushed off to the Chilean desert to film what was undeniably a fantastically dramatic story. But were that many really needed? Meanwhile, a staple output of the BBC, and part of its Reithian mission — free access (at the touch of a button, and no longer at the cost of a

Simon Hoggart

United Nations

There have been the usual moans about the BBC spending £100,000 on coverage of the Chilean miners. There have been the usual moans about the BBC spending £100,000 on coverage of the Chilean miners. I suppose the figure includes wages that would have been paid whether the people were in South America or Shepherds Bush, and, if accurate (I suspect the real cost was much more), it strikes me as minuscule — around two-thirds of one penny for every person in the country, an astounding bargain. There are some events which, in Bagehot’s phrase, ‘rivet’ the world, both in his sense of binding us together and in the more modern

Tuesday

The Spectator

Across the site | 19 October 2010

Just to point CoffeeHousers in the direction of a trio of delights across the site. First up, is Lloyd Evans’ review of a talk by Kevin Spacey that the Spectator hosted last week, which you can read over at the Spectator Arts Blog. And we also have a web exclusive review, by Lloyd again, of a Spectator debate on faith schools, here.     Then there’s our vote for The Greatest Parliamentarian of the Last 25 Years. There are only a few days left to nominate your choice for the award, which you can do so here. The most persuasive nomination that we receive will win its author a pair of

Sunday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The politically correct James Delingpole

What’s happened to James Delingpole’s sense of humour? He is one of the funniest writers in the country, acute and truthful and unworried by the constant spite and derision of the faux left libtard bien pensant arseholes who swarm around the internet like sea lice around a sewage outlet pipe. He is also, I ought to add, a good mate of mine, even if politically we are delingpoles apart, most of the time. But there is something which does not quite ring true in his attacks upon a film made by Richard Curtis for the 10:10 climate change movement, exemplified by his piece in this week’s magazine. He has been

Claudia Massie

ART: Dutch landscapes

The big event this year at the Queen’s Gallery in Edinburgh is an exhibition of Dutch Landscapes. Van Gogh fans will be disappointed, as these paintings are exclusively 17th Century – and rightly so, as it is in the work of this period that the art of landscape painting actually originated. Formerly a peripheral element to the action in what were usually either religious or mythical narratives, the landscape would step forward to take centre stage in Dutch art in the immediate aftermath of the Netherlands’ liberation from Spanish rule in 1648. The new Dutch republic became a fertile land for a generation of aspiring artists, the most illustrious of

Saturday

William Cook

Mrs Gaskell’s bicentenary: Knutsford’s Amazons

On the southern edge of Manchester, a few miles from the airport, there is a commuter town where the Victorian novel remains very much alive. This year Knutsford celebrates the bicentenary of its most famous daughter, who immortalised this ‘dear little town’ in several of her finest stories. More than 150 years after it first appeared, in weekly instalments in Dickens’s Household Words, Cranford remains Mrs Gaskell’s most enduring creation. And in these streets you can still trace the outline of the world that she created. Elizabeth Gaskell was born in 1810, in Chelsea, the daughter of a Unitarian minister. Her mother died when she was a few months old,

Andrew Lambirth

Taking to the skies

In the first retrospective of his work for nearly 40 years, Peter Lanyon (1918–64) is given the kind of recognition long his due. In the first retrospective of his work for nearly 40 years, Peter Lanyon (1918–64) is given the kind of recognition long his due. A major figure in the St Ives group, his work holds its own on an international stage even though it remains rooted in his native Cornwall. He was an inventive and innovative painter who conjured up the sensation of being in certain places and experiencing particular weather conditions. This was not an art bound to the earth’s surface, and it began by delving beneath

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

When Stone gets stick

‘I saw this goddam politician on your British television last night,’ says the film director Oliver Stone. ‘He was yapping about how he can’t cut the defence budget because of blah, blah, blah.’ Was it, by any chance, Liam Fox at the Tory party conference? ‘Something like that… I thought, this is so disgusting.’ His voice is dry and cool, but the words are angry. ‘This love of national security is insane,’ he continues. ‘If you build the foundation of your society on security, you’re going to be disappointed. People talk about terrorism: but if your entire national debate becomes about fighting terrorists, you lose. They win.’ It’s the same

Peter Hoskin

Tales from Afar

If you heard Australian bluesman C.W. Stoneking’s first album, King Hokum, then you will know what to expect from his second: Jungle Blues. If you heard Australian bluesman C.W. Stoneking’s first album, King Hokum, then you will know what to expect from his second: Jungle Blues. If you didn’t, then let me point out that Stoneking is a prize mimic. With a banjo in his hands, and the wail of a Howlin’ Wolf or Robert Johnson in his throat, this 36-year-old (white) man (raised by American parents in an Aboriginal community) sets about recreating every lurch and inflection of 1920s blues and calypso music. The horns swoon, the drums shuffle

Michael Tanner

Opera Perfect performance Michael Tanner

Promised End Linbury Studio, in rep until 16 November Radamisto English National Opera, in rep until 4 November ‘There is perhaps no play which keeps the attention so strongly fixed; which so much agitates our passions and interests our curiosity. Promised End Linbury Studio, in rep until 16 November Radamisto English National Opera, in rep until 4 November ‘There is perhaps no play which keeps the attention so strongly fixed; which so much agitates our passions and interests our curiosity. The artful involutions of distinct interests, the striking opposition of contrary characters, the sudden changes of fortune, and the quick succession of events, fill the mind with a perpetual tumult

Deborah Ross

Nice work, Zuck!

The Social Network 12A, Nationwide The Social Network is a brilliantly entertaining and fascinating film about a subject in which I have absolutely no interest: Facebook. I could be no more surprised if, say, someone were to make a brilliantly entertaining and fascinating film about fish-gutting or car-tuning or being put on hold by the bank before finally being put through to someone you can’t understand. (I am thinking of outsourcing myself to Bombay, just to be similarly annoying.) But this hurtles along so smartly and masterfully the subject sweeps you up as does its main, knotty character: a man who cares nothing for money yet makes zillions while losing