Arts Reviews

The good, bad and ugly in arts and exhbitions

Monday

The Spectator

Ingmar Bergman RIP

The death of Ingmar Bergman coincides with the re-release of his greatest film, The Seventh Seal (1957), a meditation upon death and the fear of godlessness set in the middle ages but inspired by the nuclear terrors of the Cold War. The bleakness of Bergman’s oeuvre is undeniable, but his films were not cold: there are few more affecting explorations of the life of the elderly than Wild Strawberries, or poignant explorations of a relationship than Scenes from a Marriage or its recent sequel Saraband. Fanny and Alexander is, amongst many other things, one of the most visually sumptuous films of the twentieth century. So many directors wanted to be

Saturday

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Wish fulfilment

Which super power would you choose? When I was young, the one I quite wanted was invisibility. I imagined myself sneaking into the bedrooms of all the girls I fancied and persuading them that I was an incubus come to satisfy their every desire. An ability to arrest time with a stopwatch would be a handy power too, as would being able to fly or teleport. But the impression I get with super powers is that you’re not allowed to be too greedy. I was trying to think which low-level super power I’d accept today and I realised how unambitious I’ve become. Being able to go to the loo without

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Bowled over

Adorable, sensational Joseph. I was bowled over by this show, not just by the slick vitality of the 60-strong cast, not just by the teasingly satirical hippy-trippy lighting effects, not just by Preeya Kalidas’s gloriously stylish Narrator, and not just by the Mel Brooksian chorus-line of high-kicking Jewish shepherds, no — by the material. Talk about genius from nowhere. The script originated as a 20-minute end-of-term sketch for the pupils of St Paul’s in west London. Its charm and its technical brilliance were noticed immediately and the show, once expanded, launched its authors heavenwards. Tim Rice’s lyrics are joyously witty. When Joseph declares that Pharaoh’s dream foretells years of plenty

Robin Holloway

Making connections

In idle mood — perhaps prompted by the news of terrible further flooding — I’ve just listened for the first time in many years to Peter Grimes. In idle mood — perhaps prompted by the news of terrible further flooding — I’ve just listened for the first time in many years to Peter Grimes. Idleness scarcely survives the excitement that involves the listener from the opening bar. It’s difficult to understand Britten’s later disclaimer to a young admirer embarked on his own first opera — ‘but Grimes is full of howlers!’ — for everything now, 60-plus years after, has long since seemed so absolutely right. These six decades have consolidated

Deborah Ross

Family favourites

As you’d expect — doh! — The Simpsons Movie has some glorious lines in it. Lisa to Marge: ‘I’m so angry.’ Marge to Lisa: ‘You’re a woman. You can hold it in for years.’ Bart to Homer: ‘This is the worst day of my life.’ Homer to Bart: ‘No, son. This is the worst day of your life so far.’ No one, by the way, says: ‘When writing about the Simpsons, there will always be a “doh!” so get it out the way quick’ but you will note that I have been clever enough to do so, all the same. There are no flies on me. Yes, yes, yes…almost since

Patrick Marmion

Celebrity squares | 28 July 2007

Autograph-hunters are easily maligned. When not frequenting sci-fi conventions, they are to be found lurking like discomfited pigeons at film premières or the opening nights of West End theatre productions, clutching pocketbooks bearing signatures of the famous. Autograph-hunters are easily maligned. When not frequenting sci-fi conventions, they are to be found lurking like discomfited pigeons at film premières or the opening nights of West End theatre productions, clutching pocketbooks bearing signatures of the famous. Their glasses are bottle-bottomed relics of the NHS. They reek of sweat and charity shops. Their anoraks are zipped up tight, come rain or sun. A nervous chortle plays on their lips and their eyeballs glisten

Tom Rosenthal

Bare necessities | 28 July 2007

The Naked Portrait Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, until 2 September, then Compton Verney, Warwickshire, from 29 September to 9 December The advance publicity I saw for this on the whole excellently curated exhibition contained a health warning: ‘Please note this show contains nudity. Children under 16 must be accompanied by an adult.’ The title comes from the phrase used by Lucian Freud for several of his nudes but, alas, for the prurient, there are few images that might disturb or inflame either adults or children, except perhaps one of a woman holding a silk rosette bearing the word ‘Boob’ against her own left breast mutilated (but not removed) by

Michael Tanner

Scratching the surface

Così fan tutte; Summer ConcertRoyal Opera House The Royal Opera, for its last revival of the season, got Jonathan Miller to make over his 1995 production of Così fan tutte, everyone’s favourite Mozart opera these days, owing to its sceptical view of sexual relationships, combined with a subtle acknowledgement of how painful we often find it to be as fickle as we are, how unwilling we are to be so much at the mercy of our impulses. Mozart’s own mixed feelings on the matter are shown by the interestingly different attitudes of his two spokespersons Don Alfonso and Despina to the same phenomenon: she is hard-bitten, resolutely superficial and mercenary,

Andrew Lambirth

Going Dutch | 28 July 2007

Andrew Lambirth delights in the National Gallery’s exhibition of a Golden Age I’ve been reading Still Life with a Bridle by the poet Zbigniew Herbert in preparation for Dutch Portraits: The Age of Rembrandt and Franz Hals at the National Gallery. It’s a fascinating collection of essays which examines and pays tribute to the Golden Age of Dutch art and the society that produced it. Packed with unusual and stimulating perceptions, not to mention poetic inventions, the book only increases one’s sense of wonder at such an efflorescence of talent concentrated in one unprepossessing place over a relatively short period. (This exhibition covers the years 1599–1683 and runs until 16

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

James Bond vs. Jason Bourne

Peter Suderman and Isaac Chotiner each highlight an interview with Matt Damon (who is promoting the latest Jason Bourne thrilla, The Bourne Ultimatum). I like Damon. He’s an increasingly interesting actor and his excellent performance in The Good Shepherd last year was every bit as under-rated as the movie itself. Nevertheless, he’s also an ass. Evidence for the prosecution? Matt Damon’s amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne shares initials with another notorious screen operative. But other than that, Damon doesn’t see any similarities between Bourne and James Bond. Bond is “an imperialist and he’s a misogynist. He kills people and laughs and sips martinis and wisecracks about it,” Damon, 36, told The

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Shambo RIP

It’s official. A nation mourns. Mr Eugenides strikes a mournful, plangent note: Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy T-bone,Silence the tambourines and with muffled drumsBring out the burger buns, let the ketchup come. Let cattle trucks circle moaning round the barnScribbling in the dirt the message, Shambo Is Dead,Put mournful garlands round the white necks of the temple monks,Let the government veterinarians wear black rubber gloves…

Wednesday

Saturday

Simon Hoggart

The good and the bad

These are difficult times for the BBC. The fine for the Blue Peter phone-in fraud was, in its way, as big a shock as the famous vandalising of its garden. The silly Crowngate affair in which what they claimed was the Queen staging an angry walk-out turned out to be her staging an angry walk-in. And some ratings have been very poor. The drama True, Dare, Kiss broadcast last week got a miserable 3.2 million viewers, one of the smallest ever Thursday peak-time audiences on BBC1. Over on BBC2, Alastair Campbell’s diaries rose from 1.3 million viewers on Wednesday to a hardly impressive 1.5. It all implies a nervous institution

Kate Chisholm

A life examined

Back in the US in the Fifties, just as atomic fear was gripping the American nation and the McCarthyite witch hunts were at their most vicious, a rather extraordinary radio programme was created by the journalist Edward R. Murrow and his production team at CBS radio. This I Believe presented ‘The living philosophies of thoughtful men and women in the hope that they may strengthen your beliefs so that your life may be richer, fuller, happier.’ With a title taken from Murrow’s Quaker upbringing, the idea that sustained the programme was that by examining and revealing the things which make us tick, the beliefs by which we operate our daily

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Water torture

Glass Eels / Love’s Labour’s Lost / Saint Joan Squelchy trotters up in Hampstead. Nell Leyshon’s new play is set on a Somerset flood plain where a family of bumpkin farmers are coping with a suicide. Before the action commences Mum has done a Virginia Woolf in the nearby river and her premature submersion furnishes the play with its central motif. During the action, the stage gradually fills with water. OK, fills. What happens is that a super-slow trickle very nearly covers the actors’ ankles. It doesn’t help that this liquid is the pure and pristine variety piped in by Thames Water (see website for details) while the script refers

Deborah Ross

Super-size fun

This film is fun. It is fun, fun, fun, fun, fun. It might be the most fun you can have with your clothes on or, if you have been married a good while, then with them off. John Travolta as Mrs Edna Turnblad is fun. Christopher Walken as Mr Wilbur Turnblad is riotous fun. Newcomer Nikki Blonsky as Tracy Turnblad, the big girl with the big hair and the big heart, is fun and she’s a terrific dancer. From its opening number — the pounding showtune ‘Good Morning Baltimore’ — this film leaps at you with such joy and vigour and generosity you cannot reject it. It pins you down

Michael Tanner

Bach wins through

Bach’s St Matthew Passion doesn’t seem an obvious ‘Glyndebourne opera’, except from the point of view of the non-Londoner having to use public transport to get there, who might well regard the whole outing as a penitential pilgrimage. At the third performance the atmosphere did seem unusually hushed. What we were offered was an almost entirely silent play within which a performance of Bach’s masterpiece took place. The idea, a notably bad one of the producer Katie Mitchell’s, is that in a school somewhere in Europe there has been a shooting, with many children, whose photographs we are shown, killed. Four travelling players come and console the mourners, enlisting the

Giannandrea Poesio

Summer treats

The summer ballet season in London, with the traditional arrival of illustrious foreign guests, has a well-established historical tradition. It was during the summer months that, in the 19th century, famous and not-so-famous foreign ballet stars appeared on the stages of theatres such as the Her Majesty’s, the Alhambra and the Empire. Later on, renowned ballerinas such as Lydia Kyasht, Olga Preobrajenska and the legendary Anna Pavlova came to London in summer with small companies or groups, leading the way for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, the quintessential ‘visiting’ ballet company of the first half of the past century. Since then, the summer ballet season in London has provided dance goers with

Andrew Lambirth

Bringing peace to the spirit

Hockney on Turner Watercolours at Tate BritainAnnely Juda — A Celebration at Annely Juda Fine Art If you enter Tate Britain via the side entrance on Atterbury Street, you will find five large new landscape paintings by David Hockney hanging above the stairs to the main galleries, to celebrate his 70th birthday. Each painting is composed of six canvases in two layers of three. All depict the same stretch of woodland in east Yorkshire, seen at different times of year. I am not an admirer of Hockney’s recent landscape paintings, finding the colours insensitive and the drawing surprisingly inexact. His purples and oranges are not quite wild enough, while his

Stephen Pettitt

A fine balance

The word ‘virtuoso’ is often bandied about. Stephen Pettitt explains what it means to him Serious music critics — and I do not except myself from the breed — have many tendencies that mark them out from the rest of society. One of them is the habit of bandying around the word ‘virtuoso’. We know what it means, or at least we think so. A virtuoso is a musician who can play with panache a score of seemingly impossible technical difficulty. A virtuoso performance — for, yes, our word can be used adjectivally — is one in which said virtuoso, or ensemble of virtuosi, has succeeded in demonstrating that panache.