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Musical triumph

Tristan und Isolde Royal Opera House Tristan und Isolde is a masterpiece that can be given widely different interpretations, since even by Wagner’s standards it is permeated by ambiguities. He may have intended, as he wrote in that famous letter to Liszt, to write ‘a monument to that most beautiful of dreams’, that is, completely

Take Two

A few weeks ago I was in Chichester, reviewing a fine revival of Terence Rattigan’s Separate Tables and suddenly experienced a great ache of nostalgia for the period immediately before my birth. A few weeks ago I was in Chichester, reviewing a fine revival of Terence Rattigan’s Separate Tables and suddenly experienced a great ache

Star quality | 10 October 2009

Scottish Ballet: 40th Anniversary Season Sadler’s Wells Theatre Scottish Ballet has been frequently praised for its stylistically impeccable and theatrically superb renditions of George Balanchine’s works. It is thus more than fitting that the company’s 40th-anniversary programme kicks off with Rubies, the sparkling central section of Jewels, his acclaimed 1967 triptych. Rubies, which is often

Moment of truth

I wonder how many people still listen to plays on radio now that there is so much competition for our attention from Twitter, YouTube and the hours taken up with Strictly Come Dancing. It’s not just that we’re being taken over by techie gadgetry so that there is less and less time to do anything

Art of darkness

The East Anglians; Subversive Spaces: Surrealism and Contemporary Art Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, until 13 December Most exhibitions of photographs could be viewed just as satisfactorily from an armchair with a book of high-quality reproductions, but not The East Anglians. There are 58 colour photographs in this show, and they need to be

Lloyd Evans

Gasping for entertainment

Breakfast at Tiffany’s Theatre Royal Haymarket Inherit the Wind Old Vic ‘What do you want?’ a film producer asks Holly Golightly about half an hour into Breakfast at Tiffany’s. ‘I don’t know,’ she says, ‘but if I find out I’ll tell you first.’ At this point my hopes for the evening collapsed. Rule one of

James Delingpole

There will be blood

All right, I surrender. There’s just no way on earth I can deal in 600 words with all the great, or potentially great, TV that has been on lately. Emma; Alex: A Passion for Life (the sequel to that moving documentary about the brilliant Etonian musician with cystic fibrosis); Generation Kill. Truly, it has been

The unbelievable truth

The Invention of Lying 12A, Nationwide The Invention of Lying is Ricky Gervais’s first film as a Hollywood writer and director — well, co-writer and co-director, with newcomer Matthew Robinson — and it is a disappointment. Probably, it won’t be the biggest or most tragic disappointment of your life. If you’ve always dreamed of becoming

Rough with the smooth

The Damnation of Faust Barbican Rigoletto ENO Berlioz called La Damnation de Faust ‘an opera without decor or costumes’, which is what I quite often wish all operas were. But as David Cairns writes in his characteristically illuminating but tendentious programme notes, ‘It is an opera of the mind’s eye performed on an ideal stage

Oasis of silence

Seconds after I filed last month’s column, Oasis broke up. Seconds after I filed last month’s column, Oasis broke up. As ever on such momentous occasions, I didn’t quite know how to respond. Would a street party be excessive? Might a night on the lash be considered lacking in respect? In the end I settled

The writing on the wall

Imagine the scene at some BBC committee meeting. The Chief Officer for Commissioning, Unit Programming is setting out the problem. ‘Gentlemen, recent controversies — the Ross/Brand phone calls, the ongoing problem of Ross’s £6 million annual salary, which is more than the entire budget for a year of the Today programme, our own excessive pay

Heartbeat of the past

‘Life consists not of a series of illustrious actions, or elegant enjoyments,’ wrote Dr Johnson (of whom you may think you have heard too much in the last few weeks, but he is often so pertinent). ‘Life consists not of a series of illustrious actions, or elegant enjoyments,’ wrote Dr Johnson (of whom you may

Spontaneous delight

Henry Moore Textiles The Sheep Field Barn, Hoglands, Perry Green, Hertfordshire, until 18 October Hoglands, the former home of Henry Moore (1898–1986) near Much Hadham in Hertfordshire, was looking radiant on the late-summer day I visited it. The Foundation that Moore set up to care for his estate and reputation acquired the house from his

Lloyd Evans

Ramshackle muddle

Mother Courage and Her Children Olivier Speaking in Tongues Duke of York’s Mother Courage, Brecht’s saga of conflict and suffering, is set during the Thirty Years’ War. The title character is a maternal archetype who ekes out a perilous existence selling provisions to the warring factions and chasing off the recruiting sergeants who want to

Ride with the devil

If Milton had owned a Land Rover he’d never have vanquished Satan and his fallen angels to nether regions of rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens and shades of death. If Milton had owned a Land Rover he’d never have vanquished Satan and his fallen angels to nether regions of rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs,

Web exclusive: Bestival the spectacular

Festivals, like Marmite, you either love them or hate them. My last festival, in July, was Latitude in Norfolk, which has been described as the “Waitrose of Festivals”. When I was tracking down tickets for the Isle of Wight’s Bestival, a friend, Laura, who lives on the island and is an experienced festival go-er, described

Worth the Price

A long drive mitigated by congenial and erudite company, through bosomy green hills under what felt like permanent soft mizzling rain, from one choice little festival on the Welsh borders, Presteigne, to another altogether more remote — Machynlleth, close to the coast, a tiny town (for all that a Welsh king once located his court

Lloyd Evans

False trails

The Shawshank Redemption Wyndham’s Othello Trafalgar Studios All change at Wyndham’s. The wayward sophistication and creative adventure of Michael Grandage’s first West End season has drawn to a close and been replaced by a karaoke version of The Shawshank Redemption. Smart move. Cameron Mackintosh, the theatre’s owner, must be hoping that this stale piece of

Remains of the day

Back in 1924 when radio was still a young upstart technology, full of daring invention and brazen self-confidence, a nature-loving cellist, Beatrice Harrison, sat in her Surrey garden and played duets with a nightingale, which were broadcast ‘live’ on the BBC’s Home Service. Back in 1924 when radio was still a young upstart technology, full