Arts Reviews Archives

Saturday

20 Mar 2010

Making a difference

Many years ago, when I decided to ‘become’ a novelist, I shipped myself off to a village in south-west France called St Jean de Fos for three months, banned myself from reading any novels in English (lest they corrupt my style) and became an obsessive maker of French dishes like cassoulet because my first book was about a restaurant critic and I wanted to make it perfectly authentic. Many years ago, when I decided to ‘become’ a novelist, I shipped myself off to a village in south-west France called St Jean de Fos for three months, banned myself from reading any novels in English (lest they corrupt my style) and

Kate Chisholm

The long and short

It’s such an important book, the first great psychological novel, yet few people can with honesty claim to have read it, and even fewer to have read it all the way through, past the violent rape scene that takes place halfway through volume five. It’s such an important book, the first great psychological novel, yet few people can with honesty claim to have read it, and even fewer to have read it all the way through, past the violent rape scene that takes place halfway through volume five. Clarissa; or the history of a young lady is Samuel Richardson’s most prolix novel (at just about a million words, and eight

Robin Oakley

The trouble with Cheltenham

By the time you read this, I will either be taking Mrs Oakley out for a well-deserved dinner at Le Caprice or I will be carrying a sack of stones and a pair of leg-irons, looking for a deep river. The Cheltenham Festival will have come and gone, probably taking with it most of my betting money for the year. This column had to be submitted before the Festival but if by the time you see it Khyber Kim has been placed in the Champion Hurdle, Baby Run has won the Foxhunters, Mourad the Coral Cup and Enterprise Park the Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle the unseemly struggle over whether the

Andrew Lambirth

Interpreting history

Painting History: Delaroche and Lady Jane Grey National Gallery, until 23 May Just up the road from where I write is the dramatic ruin of Framlingham Castle, the historical seat of the Howard family and the Dukes of Norfolk. The castle was granted to Princess Mary by her half-brother King Edward VI, and she took refuge there when on Edward’s death his second cousin Lady Jane Grey was named as his successor, rather than she herself. The country was in the grip of its worst period of internal religious strife, which Protestant Edward had tried to avoid by commending devoutly Protestant Jane to the crown. But the Catholics would have

Wednesday

17 Mar 2010

Alex Massie

The Blarney Festival Arrives Again

Faith and begorrah it’s that time of year again. Time, that is, for the kind of “virulent eruptions of Paddyism” that, in the words of Ireland’s greatest newspaper columnist, is another form of “the claptrap that has made fortunes for cute professional Irishmen in America.” Yes it’s St Patrick’s Day and Myles na Gopaleen’s withering verdict on the nonsense of professional Irishism remains about the best there is. These days, mind you, it’s gone so far that you can no longer easily determine what’s pastiche and what’s become parody. In a curious way, the celebrations in New York, Chicago and Boston are the real deal and it’s the attempts to

Saturday

13 Mar 2010

Mary Wakefield

A woman of substance

Felicity Kendal tells a surprised Mary Wakefield of her admiration for Mrs Warren From the moment Mrs Warren bustles in halfway through Act I of Mrs Warren’s Profession, she’s clearly an excellent sort. ‘A genial and presentable old blackguard of a woman,’ says George Bernard Shaw fondly of his heroine. And she is a heroine, though she’s also a brothel-keeper as compromised as St Joan is righteous. I’ve only read the play, not seen it, but I’m also very fond of Mrs Warren, and, as I walk to the Comedy Theatre to meet Felicity Kendal, I begin to worry. Kendal playing Mrs Warren in the West End? The more I

Andrew Gilligan

Why does the BBC air Islamist propaganda?

Down at that self-proclaimed centre of ‘tolerance and harmony’, the East London Mosque, they’ve been holding some pretty tolerant and harmonious meetings lately. On 9 July last year, for instance, there was the half-day conference on ‘social ills’. One of the ‘social ills’ — with an entire session to itself — was ‘music’, described by one of the speakers, Haitham al-Haddad, as a ‘prohibited and fake message of love and peace’. Then there was the talk, on 26 June, by a certain Bilal Philips — named by the US government as an ‘unindicted co-conspirator’ in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. And if that particular outrage was a little too

Andrew Lambirth

Talking point

Michelangelo’s Dream Courtauld, until 16 May This is one of the series of exhibitions built around a single masterpiece from the Courtauld’s collection — in this case Michelangelo’s remarkable presentation drawing ‘The Dream’ — placed in an informative context of closely related loans. The Courtauld does it superbly: quietly stated, rigorously researched, laid out with clarity and authority. It is accompanied by a hefty but handsome catalogue (published by Paul Holberton, £30 in paperback), packed with scholarly exegesis, with particularly useful notes on individual exhibits. The show consists of a group of Michelangelo drawings, original letters and poems by the artist, and certain works by his contemporaries. I’m not entirely

Michael Tanner

Long evening with Handel

Tamerlano Royal Opera, in rep until 20 March Handel’s Tamerlano is rated extremely highly by the cognoscenti, indeed routinely listed as being among his two or three greatest operas. I have only seen it twice, once at Sadler’s Wells nine years ago in a production by Jonathan Miller, conducted by Trevor Pinnock, and now at the Royal Opera in a production by Graham Vick, with Ivor Bolton conducting. On both occasions I have been bored to the verge of paralysis, but more so by the present one. It lasts from 6.30 until 11 o’clock, with two relatively short intervals. So it is as long as Die Walküre or Tristan, though

Lloyd Evans

Sister act | 13 March 2010

Private Lives Vaudeville, until 1 May Party Arts, until 13 March This isn’t right. This can’t be happening. She’s over 50. Quite a bit over. In fact, she’s 53 and she’s playing the 29-year-old heroine in one of the finest comedies in the repertoire. And she’s doing it in London. And she isn’t even English. What possessed Kim Cattrall to imagine she could play Amanda in Private Lives? The answer turns out to be, supreme self-possession. From her first entrance, her starry grace communicates itself to the entire auditorium. The age question resolves itself straight away. She appears half-naked in a bathrobe. Her soft bare arms are plump and tanned

Patrick Carnegy

Storm still within

King Lear Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, in rep until 26 August At the prospect of every fresh attempt on the summit that is King Lear, one’s heart begins to sink — the bleak, bleak vision, the convoluted subplottings of son against sibling and father, of sister against sister, the merciless length of the play. It seems only yesterday that Ian McKellen triumphed in Trevor Nunn’s Stratford staging. But here’s the RSC with a new production, this time with Greg Hicks in the title role. For him it’s the culmination of a run of major roles in which his wiry physique and nervous intensity have always been memorable. Caesar and Leontes suited

Marcus Berkmann

Buggles are best

Hooray for the one-click purchase. Reading one of the music monthlies, I saw that the Buggles’s second album from 1981, Adventures in Modern Recording, had been released on CD, digitally remastered, with ten extra tracks I clearly had to hear. A mere week or so later, the package came through the letterbox, slightly battered but still just about recognisable as a CD. Anyone who suggests that Amazon has taken away the joy of shopping simply has no soul. I did have the album, once, long ago. When you lend someone an album that you don’t much like or that is easy to replace, they always return it promptly and in

Deborah Ross

From the Gothic to the Goth

Shutter Island 15, Nationwide The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 18, Nationwide. Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island is really rather outrageous. Thunder! Lightning! Crazies! Cliff drops! Creepy scientists! Nazis! It’s a madhouse thriller that plays like a wildly cranked-up B movie which, being Scorsese, must mean he intended it to play like a wildly cranked-up B movie. I can’t imagine he set out to make a deep, dark, intricately plotted mobster movie and this came out instead. What would he have said when he saw the final cut? Would he have slapped his head and exclaimed, ‘Bloody hell, where’s my mobster movie? This is a cranked-up B movie! I’m a schmuck!’?

Kate Chisholm

One true voice

‘The BBC is a part of public space because the public themselves have put it there,’ suggests the BBC’s DG, Mark Thompson, at the beginning of the report which is recommending, among other things, that Radio 6 Music and the Asian Network be shut down. ‘The BBC is a part of public space because the public themselves have put it there,’ suggests the BBC’s DG, Mark Thompson, at the beginning of the report which is recommending, among other things, that Radio 6 Music and the Asian Network be shut down. The report is all about this virtual concept, ‘the public space’, and claims that it’s an ‘open and enriching experience’,

Simon Hoggart

Guilty pleasures

I am, I hope, still too young to watch daytime television, but conversation can be slow in the care home where I visit my parents every week. Having something bland wittering on in the corner is a help. In the middle of the afternoon we have antique shows. Endless antiques. Just as we are soon going to run out of cooks, so that nobody will be able to have friends round if there isn’t a camera crew, so we must be getting short of antiques. They’ll have to start recycling. ‘Has this lovely piece been in your family for long?’ ‘Yes, my father bought it at a televised auction, ooh,

Alan Judd

Mr Bond’s favourite

Bond had no need for thought. He’d seen it as a concept in Detroit and Geneva in 2006. Now that it existed, he wanted it. He spoke once more, ‘Get it.’ Then added, very quietly, ‘Please.’ Bond was right to insist. When I first saw designer Marek Reichman’s concept Rapide in Geneva, I thought it possibly the most beautiful four-door car on the planet. We weren’t allowed to touch it, let alone drive it, and if Ford still owned Aston Martin we’d probably still be waiting for it. But the marque’s new owners gave it the green light and the result is — well, possibly the most beautiful four-door car

Tuesday

9 Mar 2010

Daniel Korski

The philosophy of war

Every war takes its time to produce a good film or even a piece of journalistic analysis that goes beyond running commentary. Apocalypse Now came years after the end of the Vietnam War and it took seven years before this year’s Oscar winner, The Hurt Locker, could be produced. The newspapers are full of excellent reporting from Kabul, with The Times Anthony Loyd, The Guardian’s Jon Boone and the NYT’s Dexter Filkens matching anything that came out of the Saigon. But sit-back-and-think-hard reporting has been rare. Nine years after the ousting of the Taliban, author Robert D. Kaplan’s piece “Man versus Afghanistan” in the April issue of The Atlantic

Saturday

6 Mar 2010

Henrietta Bredin

A view from the pit

Henrietta Bredin talks to the leader of ENO’s orchestra about working ‘in the trenches’ ‘Working in the trenches’ is how some people describe their lives in the orchestra pit, playing for opera performances. The traditional opera house has a horseshoe-shaped auditorium and the musicians are accommodated below stage level so that, ideally, the sound they make floats up and out into the theatre without overwhelming the singers. At Bayreuth, in the Festspielhaus that Wagner had built specifically for the performance of his own operas, the musicians are completely invisible, in a pit that is not just recessed well beneath the stage but is also covered by a hood. Janice Graham

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 6 March 2010

Mark Thompson’s strategic review of the BBC may be momentous in its implications, even though its actual cutbacks are minor (admit it: had you ever heard of, much less listened to 6 Music?). Mark Thompson’s strategic review of the BBC may be momentous in its implications, even though its actual cutbacks are minor (admit it: had you ever heard of, much less listened to 6 Music?). This is because it has abandoned the idea that the BBC has to do everything. Until now, the BBC has followed a ‘wider still and wider’ policy. It has defended every piece of junk and every market grab on the grounds that it must

Lloyd Evans

Great Scot — a triumph for Vettriano!

Every year the cream of Scotland comes to Boisdale of Belgravia to celebrate Scottish talent and to toast the winner of the Johnnie Walker Blue Label Great Scot award. Boisdale is quietly opulent. The mighty banqueting tables and blood-red walls decorated with country views suggest baronial splendour in a modern key. It’s Balmoral with central heating. Our host, Andrew Neil, began on a note of unapologetic patriotism. ‘Scotland invented the modern world,’ he said, and reeled off a list of his homeland’s greatest contributions to world culture. Tarmac, television and Tennent’s Super didn’t get a mention and instead he focused on ‘the decimal point, the cure for scurvy and the