La Bayadère Royal Opera House I have often wondered what it is that makes the 1877 La Bayadère such a popular ballet. Certainly not the flimsy, derivative and highly unbelievable plot, as full of sensationalist twists as any mass-oriented 19th-century feuilleton; nor the music, a concoction of fairly uninspiring catchy tunes by the well-known 19th-century
It’s funny how much television depends on repetition. Daytime, especially. The same house is always being auctioned, the same chinoiserie discovered in the attic, the same boxes being opened on Deal Or No Deal. Even the new Countdown has eschewed new letters. It might have been fun if they added a few Greek ones. This
Unique Forms: The Drawing and Sculpture of Umberto Boccioni Estorick Collection, 39a Canonbury Square, N1, until 19 April The year 2009 sees the 100th anniversary of F.T. Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto, celebrated by a major reassessment of Futurism at the Tate in June. Meanwhile, the Estorick Collection has got in first with a small but select
Oliver! Drury Lane Roaring Trade Soho A show with an exclamation mark in the title has a lot of promises to fulfill. Oliver! opens on a magnificent note. The dark, silkily lit workhouse teems with the figures of stooped orphans who crawl up through the floorboards and march around the shadows like sad doomed little
Skin Deep Opera North Verdi’s Requiem Barbican It takes a brave person, or more likely couple, to attempt an operetta which effectively satirises contemporary fads, and the more obvious the target the more difficult to pull off the satire with the requisite degree of scathingness. David Sawer and Armando Iannucci have taken cosmetic surgery, and
I had a letter from my friend Leo the other day, one of the most interesting men I have ever met. The son of a navvy and a cleaner, he won an exhibition to Balliol to read English and when he arrived in Oxford his Geordie accent was so strong that he was often incomprehensible
In these dank days of January, the mind struggles to escape the claustrophobia of an English winter, weighed down by heavy grey skies or hemmed in by suffocating mists (pungent with the smell of jet fuel). A couple of atmospheric programmes on Radio Four this week came to the rescue, creating soundscapes so rich in
We can all recite the statistics, can’t we? I mean the percentage fall in shopping activity in December, the names of the high street retail businesses that have gone bust or been taken over, the numbers of shopworkers who have lost their jobs. We can all recite the statistics, can’t we? I mean the percentage
Manon Coliseum Ballet goers don’t seem to mind the endless flow of new productions of 19th-century classic works. Every year works such as Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Giselle and the ubiquitous Nutcracker are presented to audiences worldwide with new designs, new sets, new dramaturgic readings and, in some instances, with new choreography. Yet such a
If your concert-going habits mean that you always attend the same kinds of venue in the same kinds of town in the same country, the equation I am about to put to you may strike you as being rather odd. But the fact is that on the world stage there are socialist concerts and capitalist
Maybe it was too soon for Saturday night’s Archive on 4 to reflect on George W.’s reign as President of the US of A. After all, there are still three days left of his administration. But Bremner on Bush: A Final Farewell was a missed opportunity. Rory Bremner was presumably hauled in as presenter because
Well Apollo Hit Me! The Life and Rhymes of Ian Dury Leicester Square In Blood: The Bacchae Arcola So what does the theatre critic make of the recession? No one’s asked me, actually, so here goes. Leaving aside the obsessive 24-hour media coverage, there’s little trace of it in the real world. Immunise your bonce
Beth Chatto — A Retrospective Garden Museum, Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1, until 19 April The Garden Museum, situated in the old church of St Mary’s, hard by Lambeth Palace, has undergone a major refurbishment. It looks tremendous, much better than in the old days of slight muddle and a feeling of temporary storage. A
The Wrestler 15, Nationwide The Wrestler is Mickey Rourke’s big comeback movie in which he plays Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson, a professional wrestler of the kind so popular in the Eighties when they all had names like ‘The Ram’ or ‘Rock’ or ‘Bad Blood’ or ‘The Hulk’ or ‘Ayatollah’ and fought under the WWF banner,
Is it just me or is Fiona Bruce incredibly, incredibly annoying? I only ask because I didn’t have a view on the subject till I was watching her present The Real Sir Alan Sugar (BBC2, Sunday) and on at least two occasions found myself so cross it was all I could do not to smash
There are still some things that the BBC does incredibly well, and The Diary of Anne Frank (BBC1, Monday to Friday) was one. It’s the licence fee that allows the corporation to take these risks, and next time the Murdoch press whinges about it, you might contemplate the limitless dross we would have to suffer
Slumdog Millionaire 15, Nationwide From the wonderful things I’d already heard about Danny Boyle’s latest film Slumdog Millionaire I was fully poised to fall madly in love with it, and perhaps even run off with it although I would not have its babies — I’m through with having babies; I had one once, a boy,
William Cook talks to the creators of some of TV’s funniest and best-loved comedy programmes As our economy disappears down the plughole, along with the reputations of most of our bankers and politicians, the one consolation is that entertainers like Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross suddenly seem terribly passé. When you’re broke, there’s nothing entertaining
Bruegel to Rubens: Masters of Flemish Painting The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, until 26 April If you felt deprived of snow this Christmas, hasten along to The Queen’s Gallery, for there, in a splendid exhibition of Flemish painting from the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, is one of the best snow-scenes ever — Bruegel’s ‘Massacre
The Cordelia Dream Wilton’s Music Hall Sunset Boulevard Comedy Marina Carr is a writer of enormous distinction which isn’t quite the same as being a writer of enormous talent. She’s been given chairs by so many universities that she could probably open a furniture shop. However, a certain snippet of advice — don’t invite comparisons