Lloyd Evans talks to Matthew Bourne about his new ballet Dorian Gray and co-directing Oliver! Matthew Bourne is a whirlwind. He’s a dynamo, a powerhouse, a force of nature. He has created the busiest ballet company on earth and turned Britain into the world’s leading exporter of dance theatre. His breakthrough came in 1995 with
Hadrian: Empire and Conflict The British Museum, until 26 October Sponsored by BP After last week’s Hadrian supplement in The Spectator, readers will be well-informed about this prince of emperors, so I will confine my remarks to a personal response to the exhibition. I must say immediately that it looks very impressive and that Sir
Mikhailovsky Ballet London Coliseum It is somewhat refreshing that the 2008 summer ballet season in London is not monopolised by either the Bolshoi or the Kirov/Mariinsky ballet companies as it has been for the past few years. The presence of two rarely seen formations, such as the Mikhailovsky Ballet and the National Ballet of China,
La Gioconda; Pulcinella; Iolanta Opera Holland Park On a hot fine evening in London there can’t be anywhere more delightful for an opera-lover than Opera Holland Park, which is now so comfortable, and has such high standards of performance, that to see a rarely performed work there is in all respects at least as enjoyable
The Female of the Species Vaudeville Hangover Square Finborough The Frontline Shakespeare’s Globe A first-class Aussie bitch-fight has erupted over a new West End comedy. Joanna Murray-Smith’s satire opens with a famous feminist author, Margot Mason, being held at gunpoint by a deluded fan and forced to explain the contradictions in her work. Margot Mason
The X-Files: I Want to Believe 15, Nationwide OK, straight to the point, because we are busy people, right? And when we are not busy we are pretending to be busy, right? So, The X-Files: I Want to Believe, worth your time? No. As it is, it’s 104 minutes that I won’t be getting back.
Marcus Berkmann on Travis Elborough’s nostalgia for LP records There’s a rather wonderful new book out by a man named Travis Elborough, which sounds a bit like one of those dead Dorset villages where every second house is a holiday rental. Mr Elborough’s previous book was a great thundering roar of nostalgia for the Routemaster bus,
Early mornings on Four have seen a miraculous appearance in the past fortnight with the emergence of the Evan and Nick Show. Not for years has there been a genuine double act on the Today programme; not since Brian Redhead and John Timpson in the 1980s when the Queen tuned in at ten past seven
A three-part series called Expedition Guyana was hurriedly retitled Lost Land of the Jaguar (BBC1, Wednesday) possibly in the hopes that viewers might think it was a spin-off from Top Gear, more likely because a BBC suit suddenly realised that the name ‘Guyana’ wouldn’t pull in viewers. No doubt someone else wanted to call it
