The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
There’s an intriguing performance coming up at the Purcell Room on London’s Southbank next Tuesday. Façade, the collection of poems by Edith Sitwell set to music by William Walton, will be recited by another Sitwell (William, also known as editor of Waitrose Food Illustrated and Food Spy for the Evening Standard) for the first time
No blogging for the rest of the day, I suspect. Why? Because I* just unloaded and stacked 200 bales of hay. Best cold beer of the summer being enjoyed right now. *OK, other people helped.
Henrietta Bredin talks to Peter Manning about taking risks and creating opportunities There is an almost palpable forcefield of energy around Peter Manning. You expect a crackle of static to explode when he shakes your hand or wraps you in an enthusiastic hug. Concertmaster of the Royal Opera House orchestra, founder of the eponymous Manning
The BBC World Service’s drama department has been drastically cut back over the last few years and plays, squeezed out by news and current affairs, are difficult to find. But they’re usually worth looking out for on the website, or listed in ridiculously tiny print in the Radio Times. There’s often something a little bit
Tropic Thunder 15, Nationwide Unrelated 15, Selected Cinemas Tropic Thunder is an action comedy which stars Ben Stiller, is produced by Ben Stiller and is directed by Ben Stiller, from a story by Ben Stiller and a screenplay by Justin Theroux…and Ben Stiller. So if, after this movie, you don’t feel properly Stiller-ed, I can’t
The best enterprises look to the future but honour their past, which is why it was encouraging that the Royal Horticultural Society should last week have returned to the Inner Temple gardens to hold a show, almost a century after the last time it did so. The Great Spring Show was staged there from 1888
Turandot Hampstead Theatre Do You Know Where Your Daughter Is? Hackney Empire Eurobeat Novello Why the long wait? Brecht completed his last play, Turandot, in 1953 but only now does it receive its British premiere. This spirited, finely acted production provides the answer. The script is all wonky. Taken from the commedia dell’arte fable that
Clive Crook is on good form today: I am a huge admirer of Damien Hirst. Not of the art, which is rubbish, but of the sheer productivity and exuberance he brings to his life’s work of fleecing rich idiots. “Oh Damien, you’re a genius. Screw me over again.” “Why not,” he says, munching a bacon
Earth: The Climate Wars (BBC 2); Amazon (BBC 2); Tess of the d’Urbervilles (BBC 1) A Church of England official has issued an apology to the descendants of Charles Darwin for the Church’s ‘anti-evolutionary’ fervour towards his Origin of the Species. I wonder if in about 150 years’ time the BBC — presuming it still
Ancient Landscapes — Pastoral Visions: Samuel Palmer to the Ruralists Victoria Art Gallery, Bath, until 19 October Don’t be misled by the title: although in its entirety this is a wide-ranging exhibition, it was organised by Southampton Art Gallery (and thus draws heavily on that remarkable permanent collection) and was originally intended for a much
Don Giovanni Royal Opera House La Rondine Peacock Theatre This latest revival, for which the opening night received a great deal of publicity, and which began with Tony Hall, the Royal Opera’s chief executive, welcoming Sun readers and bidding them to come again — but at what price? — sported as distinguished a cast as
Igor Toronyi-Lalic looks back to the early 20th century when organs were in their heyday ‘As in England, in America the organ is King,’ wrote the French organ-composer Louis Vierne in 1927, following a phenomenally successful three-month tour of America and Canada. His 50 recitals had drawn in around 70,000 obsessed fans, including some 6,000
Matthew Bourne’s Dorian Gray Sadler’s Wells I often wonder whether in a society so greedily obsessed with the commercial acquisition of good looks Dorian Gray’s disquieting handsomeness and prolonged youth would still mean anything. Liposuction, steroids, laser hair-removal and impossible fitness programmes have eroded and detracted from what once was the notion of ideal beauty,
Although I spend my time working with counterpoint, and know jazz is as capable as any other sort of music at yielding the greatest delight in it, how jazz musicians organise their ‘compositions’ remains a complete mystery to me. I could more easily write a symphony than join in with a jam session. Are they
Pineapple Express 15, Nationwide Pineapple Express is a ‘stoner’ comedy from the seemingly inexhaustible, super-producer Judd Apatow and, in its defence, probably wasn’t made with a middle-aged housewife such as myself in mind. As it is, I’ve only ever done pot once and did not like it (my knees went). Apatow was, of course, also
Saint François d’Assise Royal Albert Hall As the climax of the Proms centenary of Messiaen, The Netherlands Opera brought his vast opera Saint François d’Assise to a sadly uncrowded Royal Albert Hall. And by Act III there was room for the prommers to lie in the arena as if they were fellow recipients of the
On the latest Spectator letters page you’ll find a response by Robert Weide to Toby Young’s Status Anxiety column last week. Weide’s the director of the forthcoming film of Toby’s semi-autobiographical book How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, and he objects to Toby’s account of the actress Kirsten Dunst’s on-set behaviour. As Weide puts
It was the final of Maestro on BBC TV last night and I have been glued to every episode. Despite being extremely wary to begin with at the thought of a bunch of amateurs plunging in to try their hand at something so complex as conducting, a skill that requires years of study to master,
Joan Rivers: A Work in Progress by a Life in Progress Leicester Square Theatre Liberty Globe Sons of York Finborough Let’s hear it for those ageing babes and their one-gran shows. Hip, hip, hip-replacement. Britt Ekland and Elaine Stritch are already at it, and here comes Joan Rivers who wastes no time wasting the opposition.
Francis Bacon Tate Britain (sponsored by Bank of America), until 4 January 2009 At Tate Britain is a glorious centenary show of paintings by one of our greatest modern painters, Francis Bacon. It’s more than 20 years since the last Bacon retrospective at the Tate, but the Bacon industry has been chugging steadily away in
If you’re able to read this magazine on Saturday in an unchanged world, it’s probably safe to assume that Wednesday’s gigantic experiment with particle physics has not brought about the catastrophe that some doomsayers have predicted. Big Bang Day was the moment when the scientists at the great Cern laboratory under the Alps finally switched
Lloyd Evans talks to the Donmar’s artistic director Michael Grandage about his Wyndham’s venture It might so easily have gone wrong for Michael Grandage. In 2002 he was appointed to succeed Sam Mendes as boss of the Donmar Warehouse. Mendes would be a hard act for anyone to follow, let alone a director with just
RocknRolla 15, Nationwide Guy Ritchie’s career has been in the doldrums recently. Having tried to remake Swept Away, then following it up with a Kabbalah-inspired remake of The Prisoner, he’s finally seen the error of his ways. He has now remade Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and the result, while hardly a classic, is
Tory Boyz Soho Sick Room Soho The Pretender Agenda New Players The Conservatives were once a party of proud Etonians and closet homosexuals; now they’re a party of closet Etonians and proud homosexuals. This is the background to Tory Boyz, a new play by James Graham for the National Youth Theatre which examines the shifting
Fandom can be a lonely place. If you love a band, truly love a band with that slightly teenage desperation you hope never to grow out of (until they make a substandard record and you abandon them forever), it’s a love affair like no other. Other fans may love the same band, but they love
Painting Family: The De Brays, Master Painters of 17th Century Holland Dulwich Picture Gallery, until 5 October Cecil Collins — A Centenary Exhibition Monnow Valley Arts Centre, Middle Hunt House, Walterstone, Nr Abergavenny, Herefordshire, until 14 September I must say I admire museums and galleries that put on exhibitions devoted to the revival of lost
Love and Other Demons Glyndebourne I only caught up with Glyndebourne’s newly commissioned opera at its penultimate performance. It was a courageous thing to put on a work by a composer as little known in this country as Peter Eötvös, and was rewarded at the seventh performance with a respectably full house. It isn’t a
The Duchess 12A, Nationwide The Duchess is probably no more than a most handsomely mounted costume drama which is no bad thing if you happen to like handsomely mounted costume dramas, and I do, I do, I do! Lavishly directed by Saul Dibb, whose previous work (the gritty London film Bullet Boy; the TV drama
Weddings! You couldn’t avoid them on Radio Four this week. As if Usha plighting her troth with Alan not just once, but twice, on The Archers Omnibus was not enough, those who were up early on Sunday might have been surprised to find themselves like flies on the wall listening in to the real-life wedding