Rory Bremner is in a hurry. The controversial impersonator surges into his production office a few minutes late for our meeting. ‘So sorry. Did they tell you? We overran,’ he says in his light, energetic voice. ‘Won’t be a sec. Got to go to the loo. Ooh! Too much information.’ A few minutes later he
Here are two of the big hitters of Impressionism, both represented by shows which only investigate very particular aspects of their work. Monet and Renoir are names guaranteed to provide good box-office returns, but will the public be satisfied by the choice of work attached to their brand labels? Of course the RA and NG
At the age of only ten, Leon Kossoff undertook a momentous journey across London on his own. He travelled from his family home in the East End to Trafalgar Square and, having mounted the steps, entered the National Gallery. At first, the early Christian art he encountered inside filled the boy with fear. But after
Forget London, Paris and New York. For any serious collector of art and antiques there is just one unmissable event: The European Fine Art Fair at Maastricht. No one could have predicted 20 years ago that this once modest fair in a small Dutch town few had heard of before the eponymous treaty would become
I Want Candy is a British sex comedy, which should already sound alarm bells, but I will plough on heroically, as is my nature. It’s about two lads from Leatherhead — wannabe producer Joe (Tom Riley) and earnest auteur Baggy (Tom Burke) — who are still at film school yet are desperate to break into
‘I’m not a snob. Ask anyone. Well, anyone who matters.’ The author of this self-knowing gem is Simon LeBon and I read it on a freesheet discarded on the bus that took me to see Martin Crimp’s state-of-the-nation play, Attempts on her Life. Amazingly, this tossed-aside gag was the high point of my evening. Mr
The first revival of Thomas Adès’s The Tempest showed that, impressive as the first series of performances had been, three years ago, they were sketchy compared with what we see and hear at Covent Garden this time round. Certainly it sounded far more exciting this time: the opening deluge of sound was both more overwhelming
It is not surprising that Baroque operas have long attracted the interest of contemporary choreographers. Apart from the numerous dance passages that punctuate these works, their classically inspired plots, rife with political, cultural and social metaphors, are inexhaustible and stimulating sources of inspiration for any modern-day artist. Not to mention the fact that a radical
I wonder whether Cameron and co. in their attempts to stir up worries about climate change, carbon emissions and the future of the planet ever spend much time listening to nature in the raw. Of course, to understand what’s happening on a global scale might well require expensive flights to the far reaches of the
