The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Fidelio Cadogan Hall Vita Nuova Royal Festival Hall Birtwistle and Benjamin Linbury Studio Fidelio is an opera which, in my recent experience, almost always overwhelms me in a concert performance and almost always leaves me embarrassed or indignant when staged. Embarrassed, because the transvestite necessities of the heroine would almost never convince anyone, as Cherubino
Three Days of Rain Apollo This Isn’t Romance Soho Richly sophisticated and over-contrived. This is the glory and the failing of Richard Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain. But, first, hats off to a writer who expects his audience to be smart, clued-in and intellectually curious. Dimwits, stay in the bar, we’ll join you later. The
The Tempest Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon Othello Hackney Empire No accident, one guesses, that the RSC comes good in the new year with two of Shakespeare’s most racially sensitive plays in touring productions that, happily, are at once bold and deeply rewarding. ‘A Tempest roars out of Africa’, trumpeted the Telegraph’s headline to a preview of
The International 15, Nationwide The Class 15, Key Cities The International is a big-budget action-espionage thriller starring Clive Owen as an Interpol agent determined to bring down a nasty bank called IBBC. Aside from doing the usual evil things banks do — like, I assume, having only one person behind the counter during the busiest
By happy coincidence, all four of 2009’s major composers’ anniversaries link in a continuous chain, illustrating, directly or obliquely, two centuries of English musical life. By happy coincidence, all four of 2009’s major composers’ anniversaries link in a continuous chain, illustrating, directly or obliquely, two centuries of English musical life. Purcell, born 350 years ago
It might seem strange for someone who writes about radio to call on all listeners to switch off for half an hour a day. But after hearing the Archbishop of Canterbury and his guests talking about what silence means to them on Radio Three this week I feel compelled to recommend it. After all, the
Jeremy Paxman has a dark secret: in real life he’s an absolute kitten. Jeremy Paxman has a dark secret: in real life he’s an absolute kitten. He does continental, gay-enough double-cheek kisses, he doesn’t shout exasperatedly, ‘Come on!’ or pull appalled faces to indicate just how ignorant he finds you, and he has about him
To say that this first volume of Samuel Beckett’s collected letters is a puzzle and a disappointment is to suggest that one might have had specific expectations of it. Where did this cryptic and poetic writer come from? What did so very affectless an author sound like when he was talking in his own voice
Here at last is a novel informed by exceptional intelligence. The blurb states that the author, Simon Mawer, was born in England, but it seems likely that his ancestry was Czech, since he is acquainted with the language and the customs of pre-war Czechoslovakia and has learned of its travails during the German and Russian
Iain Sinclair is as dark as London scribes come. Engaged in a lifelong literary project, he records his own psychic and physical travels around the city, identifying what he calls ‘disappear- ances’ — people, buildings, spaces that no longer exist, but that haunt the present. While Peter Ackroyd is in thrall to London, revelling in
Madame de la Tour du Pin’s Journal d’une Femme de Cinquante Ans, with its vivid descriptions of her experiences during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire, is one of the most enthralling memoirs of the age: a hard act, one would think, for a biographer to follow. Caroline Moorehead succeeds in doing so triumphantly
Like virtually everyone middle-aged and middle-class in this country, I am a beneficiary of the cult of Civilisation — Kenneth Clark’s ‘personal view’, stretching in 13 episodes from the Vikings to Van Gogh, which was broadcast on BBC2 in 1969 and on BBC1 two years later, as well as appearing as a sumptuously illustrated, best-selling
Old rockers don’t die, they just go to Glastonbury. Or, in the case of our own Alex James, write a column for The Spectator. It is nine years since Blur played together and, though their forthcoming reunion tour has been public knowledge for a while, there is a special frisson in today’s disclosure that they
Via Terry Teachout, the Elegant Variation republishes a list of books written between 1945 and 1985 that James Wood recommends you read. What’s notable is not so much the list itself as the extent to which it contradicts the view that Wood takes a particularly docrtinaire view of fiction. True, he may be most famous
Oscar commentary is outsourced to the always-splendid Peter Suderman: The half-calculated, half-panicked seesawing between self-important Art and anxious populism means that the Oscars aren’t really an indicator of quality anymore, but rather an indicator of Oscarness. Oscarness does, admittedly, overlap with quality (see last year’s awards), but it is not the same thing. Undoubtedly, the
Henrietta Bredin talks to the baritone Gerald Finley about how he portrays ‘the destroyer of worlds’ At precisely 5.30 a.m. on Monday 16 July 1945 the world entered the nuclear age. The first atomic bomb exploded in a searing flash of light and a vast mushroom cloud unfurled in the skies above New Mexico. ‘Now
Film There’s been a rush of good movies recently — Rachel Getting Married (with Anne Hathaway) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona, to name just two — and coming up is The Class, winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, which opens on 27 February. It’s based on an autobiographical novel by a French schoolteacher and centres
Handel Wigmore Hall Die tote Stadt Royal Opera House The Wigmore Hall last Saturday afternoon and evening was a scene of sheer delight, with Handel’s Aci, Galatea e Polifemo being performed before tea, and Acis and Galatea in the evening. It was all masterminded by Paul McCreesh, with his Gabrieli Consort and Players, and a
One of Van Morrison’s umpteen albums is called What’s Wrong with this Picture? It’s a question long-term fans are likely to echo as they contemplate the cover of his new release, Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl. One of Van Morrison’s umpteen albums is called What’s Wrong with this Picture? It’s a question long-term
Gran Torino 15, Nationwide Gran Torino is a Clint Eastwood film — what, he’s still alive? — and it’s about a grouchy old fella who is hard-core racist but then gets involved with the Asian family next door and, would you believe it, discovers they are quite decent, really. This is probably not a very
When Sarah Kane’s play Blasted was premièred at the tiny upstairs studio in the Royal Court Theatre in London in January 1995, it created such a stir that her name was splashed across the tabloid newspapers. When Sarah Kane’s play Blasted was premièred at the tiny upstairs studio in the Royal Court Theatre in London
During the Arctic weather I re-read that finest of winter pastorals, ‘Snowbound’ by John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-92). It gripped me, as it always does, by its combination of intense realism about the present and its imaginative sympathy for the past. Whittier describes heavy snow sealing off a household in the early 19th century, about the
The Art of the Poster — A Century of Design London Transport Museum, Covent Garden Piazza, WC2, until 31 March The first thing to say is that this is not an exhibition of posters. It is, in fact, an exhibition of the original art works from which were made some of the last century’s best
Woman in Mind Vaudeville On the Waterfront Theatre Royal, Haymarket The Stone; Seven Jewish Children Royal Court Blistering, searing, cracking, scorching. I’m describing the performances of Janie Dee and Stuart Fox in Woman in Mind, Alan Ayckbourn’s comedy about senile dementia. Smouldering, blazing, torrid, incandescent. There’s a few more. But a show can only take
Les Ballets C de la B Sadler’s Wells Theatre Jérôme Bel Lilian Baylis Studio at Sadler’s Wells Within the past two weeks Sadler’s Wells played host to two memorable modern dance performances: Pitié! and A Spectator. They could not have been more different, and yet they both showed how, in an arts world plagued by
I often drone on about how there are television programmes made with love and there are those that are knocked out cynically, to win ratings and advertising, or because the programme makers are just too lazy to come up with anything new, challenging, informative or even entertaining. Hole in the Wall is obviously cynical, as
What is it with snowdrops? Why do people make so much fuss about them, when they are so small and relatively insignificant? These are questions that mystify people each February, as they view yet more images in newspapers or gardening magazines of chilly, brilliant white, droopy flowers on short stalks. I have, in the past,
The Ends of Life: Roads to Human Fulfilment in Early Modern England, by Keith Thomas The English past is not what it was, for professional historians anyway. The rest of us still talk about the Tudors and the Stuarts, about Renaissance and Reformation and the Augustan Age. But within the academy all these dynasties and
Rhyming Life and Death, by Amos Oz Rhyming Life and Death is set in Tel Aviv during one night in the early 1980s, and concerns a man we know only as ‘the Author’, who spins fiction from his surroundings to pass the time. The Author is a famous middle-aged novelist, who happens also to be