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Lexical trivialities

A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky Lyric, Hammersmith, until 5 June Counting the Ways Oval House The Lyric theatre in Hammersmith has an eccentric approach to the dearth of writing talent. Unable to find a good playwright, it has commissioned three bad ones to showcase their talentlessness in a single work. One assumes that

Emotional ties

Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be. Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be. There is so much demand that the past is constantly creeping nearer to the present. The BBC is running an Eighties season in which it celebrates events that seem pretty close to most of us. Soon it’ll be looking back, misty-eyed,

Vote of confidence

I might have to eat my hat, having declared not so long ago that BBC 6 Music would not be much missed if it were cut from the schedules. Recent audience figures from Rajar (Radio Joint Audience Research) have revealed a huge jump in listeners in fewer than three months from just over 600,000 to

Chelsea challenge

As you make your sandwiches and get out your comfortable shoes ready for a day at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show next week (24–29 May), do spare a thought for the 600 exhibitors of show gardens, plants, floral arrangements, educational exhibits and sundries. As you make your sandwiches and get out your comfortable

Figuring it out

Being a figurative painter today is probably no more challenging or rewarding than it has ever been. When immersed in the business of putting paint on a surface you are faced with the same problems: colour scheme, composition, gesture and the task of communicating the idea. Although it can help in finding the right audience

Caravaggio the confessor

Caravaggio’s paintings were inextricably bound up with his life and provide a virtual narrative of his turbulent development, a story fraught with ambiguities and alternative readings. Caravaggio’s paintings were inextricably bound up with his life and provide a virtual narrative of his turbulent development, a story fraught with ambiguities and alternative readings. This almost confessional

Classic treasure

The Greek and Roman Collections Sculpture Promenade 2010 Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, until 28 January 2011 Virgil was wrong — don’t be afraid of Greeks bearing gifts, particularly if you’re a British regional museum. While our government has cut its grant to the Fitzwilliam by two per cent, Greek zillionaires have stepped admirably into the breach

Scottish clash

Highlands and Islands: Paintings and Poems Fleming Collection, 13 Berkeley Street, W1, until 5 June Pictures are usually exhibited with closed-shop segregation from the other arts, so it is a joy to find the bounds broken by this exuberant celebration of one of the oldest and most beautiful places on earth. The show announces the

Into the woods

Robin Hood 12A, Nationwide Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood is ‘the untold story of the man behind the legend’, and if it had remained untold I do not think it would have been a tragedy. At nearly two and a half hours it is horribly long. (If they ever ask me to give a talk at

Lloyd Evans

Harmless fun

Dirty White Boy: Tales of Soho Trafalgar Studio 2, until 22 May Holding the Man Trafalgar Studio 1, until 3 July Blogs and blogging, bloggers and bloggery. What’s it all about? At first sight blogomania looks like an entirely new literary form. A second glance reveals that it’s the oldest genre of the lot: oral

Contemporary crackers

Triple Bill Royal Opera House, last perf. 15 May There was a time when the thrill of a ballet première could be sensed the moment you entered the theatre. Today, the disillusioned public, tired of the high percentage of choreographic garbage it is frequently subjected to, takes little or no notice. It’s a pity, for

Word power

It’s like entering another country, listening in to the BBC’s World Service, and such a relief to escape for a while the interminable chattering about what’s going to happen in Westminster. It’s like entering another country, listening in to the BBC’s World Service, and such a relief to escape for a while the interminable chattering

James Delingpole

Tales of the unexpected | 15 May 2010

The closest I’ve come to seeing a ghost was a few months ago when we went to stay in a haunted house. The closest I’ve come to seeing a ghost was a few months ago when we went to stay in a haunted house. We had a deeply uncomfortable night during which it was cold

Out of time

Aida Royal Opera House, in rep until 16 May Powder Her Face Linbury Studio, in rep until 12 May In the programme for the Royal Opera’s new production of Aida, George Hall tells us that ‘the total number of complete or substantially complete recordings of Aida, made either live or in the studio, currently stands

A world apart

John Tunnard: Inner Space to Outer Space until 6 June St Ives and Beyond until 31 May Pallant House Gallery, Chichester John Tunnard (1900–71) is one of that shamefully extensive body of distinguished 20th-century British artists whose work is largely unfamiliar today. For reasons best known to itself, the Tate doesn’t see it as its

Damp squib | 8 May 2010

Four Lions 15, Nationwide Four Lions is Chris Morris’s comedy — comedy of terrors? — about a group of home-grown Muslim suicide bombers, an idea so thrillingly audacious that, when I first read about it, I thought, as you probably did: where is Mr Morris going to hide? In Salman Rushdie’s sock drawer? But while

Lloyd Evans

Tangled threads

Women Beware Women Olivier, in rep until 4 July Hair Gielgud, booking until January 2011 Women Beware Women deserves a subtitle: spectators beware seldom revived classics. Thomas Middleton’s 1622 play is set in the duke’s court at Florence, where greed, lust, incest and the hunger for power are running rampant. Middleton is much admired, little