Great expectations | 22 April 2006
ENO is having a mini-festival of operas whose plots relate to Greek mythology. Offenbach’s La belle Hélène is in a production from Paris’s (the city) Ch
Arts
Dreamy moments
What a relief it must have been for Hugh Grant when he realised he could relax and play bastards. What torture it must have been to be made housewives’ choice after playing characters so totally unlike himself (Charles in Four Weddings, the nincompoop in Notting Hill, Edward Ferrars in Sense and Sensibility). With what joy
Comfortless aesthetic
The classic Modernist interior familiar to us all is a white cube, minimally furnished and adorned, the clean geometric lines of the architecture given prominence at the expense of fittings and fixtures. As the visitor steps into the V&A’s homage to Modernism, it’s at once clear that the design of the show will not mirror
Charcoal mastery
In his foreword to the catalogue of John Hubbard’s Spirit of Trees, Duncan Robinson, the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, invokes John Constable. Indeed if Constable were alive today he might be John Hubbard. Although Hubbard is American, he has lived in Dorset for 45 years and although his paintings are far more abstract than
Honours and rebels
With the government and the opposition flogging peerages to raise money for party funds, Radio Four decided to look back at the 1920s master of this practice, the former Liberal prime minister David Lloyd George, and J. Arthur Maundy Gregory, the crook he used to negotiate prices (The Man Who Sold Peerages, Easter Saturday). Matthew
The nuns’ story
Nostalgia is not what it used to be, but then in television it rarely is. For example, Dr Who (BBC1, Saturday) is back with David Tennant as the 10th full-time doctor and Billie Piper as his 21st female assistant. The show was first screened the day after JFK was assassinated. Frankly, it’s a bit of