The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
In response to this post, a reader asks how did I like the Fry and Laurie TV adaptations? Well, only up to a point is my answer. They are, probably, as good an effort as television can muster but they still, to my mind, fail to cut the mustard. An honorable failure, then. Or rather,
Clemency Burton-Hill, who will be presenting The Proms on BBC 4 this summer, offers her suggestions for what to do and see on the cultural front this summer here. Well worth a read.
There’s no denying we are heading into a major recession. The newspapers are full of doom and gloom, inflation rates are sky-high, there’s an epidemic of knife crime, global warming weather seems to have totally bypassed England and yet everyone I met this weekend who’d been to see Abba’s Mamma Mia was grinning from ear
Noah Millman, one of my favourite bloggers, on Brian Dennehy appearing in Krapp’s Last Tape: It’s a marvelously devastating bit of theater, as Beckett should be.Krapp’s Last Tape is – and should be – a particularly uncomfortable play for a blogger. Here sits a man, a writer, having reached his grand climacteric, looking back on
James Walton suggests reading George Orwell in order to understand the appeal of Carry On films Recently, we’ve been hearing quite a lot about how the winds of revolutionary change blew through Britain in 1968. Which doesn’t really explain why, in 1969, the highest-grossing film at the UK box office wasn’t Midnight Cowboy, The Wild
Festivals In only its third year, the laid-back Latitude (17-20 July) has gained a reputation for being one of Britain’s finest festivals, and it certainly has one of the most enticing and interesting line-ups of any event this summer. More than a merely musical extravaganza, the beautiful site on Henham Park Estate in Suffolk will
My body aches, my bones creak and I have a nagging headache that paracetamol won’t shift. It’s a bit like having a hangover again, but mercifully without the attendant guilt. As I write, my son Ed, his friend Ollie and I have just spent the weekend at Guilfest, accurately and succinctly billed in the Daily
My interest in ridiculous sacred words began with a Victorian edition of Verdi’s ‘Requiem’, which I met at school. At the unbelievably splendid, and brassy, ‘Tuba mirum’ we were asked to sing the translation: ‘Hark! The trumpet sounds appalling’. I later discovered that there is a very enjoyable sub-culture of these things, mostly hidden away
Margaret Mellis: A Life in Colour Until 31 August Constructed: 40 Years of the UEA Collection Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, until 14 December The painter and construction-maker Margaret Mellis has led a remarkable and productive life, though sadly she is now living out the remainder of her existence in the twilight of Alzheimer’s, confined
Masterpiece Watercolours and Drawings Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, until 9 November Even passion has its limits. The first Lord Leverhulme — that ‘Soapy Billy’ who founded Lever Brothers — was a man of many passions. Uxoriousness, philanthropy and, of course, hygiene swayed this confident, capable Victorian magnate. So, too, did art. Leverhulme devoted
Criminals can turn into detectives: consider the career of Eugène-François Vidocq, thief, convict and subsequently head of the Paris Sûreté. And, as we have seen recently in London, political journalists can metamorphose into successful politicians. So it is not all that surprising that, once in a while, an art critic should cross the line and
On the Rocks Hampstead In My Name Trafalgar Studios All Nudity Shall Be Punished Union Uh oh. Writers writing about writers writing. Amy Rosenthal’s new play is set in 1916 in a Cornish village. D.H. Lawrence, suffering from writer’s block, has suggested to the publisher John Middleton Murry and his lover Katherine Mansfield, who is
Mamma Mia PG, Nationwide Mamma Mia has to be the most fun you can have with your clothes on. Or is it off? When you get to my age, it’s such a struggle to remember. Either way, though, if you are now expecting this review to be subtly and cleverly interweaved with punning ABBA song
My favourite part of Banged Up (Channel 4, Monday) — the new reality show in which juvenile delinquents get to spend ten days in fake prison so they’re never tempted to end up in a real one — was the bit where the other inmates discovered Barry was a nonce. ‘Oi, Bazza. Just dropped me
Henrietta Bredin visits Oslo’s new opera house and finds it impressive, both inside and out Oslo is a small city, with a population of just over half a million, but it now boasts, funded entirely from the public purse, and on budget — Olympic Committee, please note — a spanking new all-singing, all-dancing opera house
Marcus Berkmann on Michael Jackson It seems hard to believe, but on 29 August Michael Jackson will be 50 years old. Maybe fortunately in this case, the music industry doesn’t really go a bundle on 50th birthdays: I believe there’s another half-hearted greatest hits coming out, but that’s about it. How will Jacko celebrate? I think
The Mist 15, Nationwide As any fan of Howard Hawks, George A. Romero or John Carpenter will know, it’s not the monsters outside your window that you should worry about. It’s the people who are trapped indoors with you. Your friends, family, acquaintances and colleagues. The Humans. They’re the most horrific things of all. This
Le nozze di Figaro Royal Opera House The first night of the latest revival of the Royal Opera House’s Le nozze di Figaro I count among the dozen, or perhaps fewer than that, most glorious evenings I have spent in the theatre. Figaro is the opera that a critic sees most often, and it is
Black Watch Barbican Whatever Happened to Cotton Dress Girl? New End Divas Apollo Disney does death. That’s how Black Watch looks to me. The hit show has arrived in London with its bracing portrait of the famous Highland regiment. All its tactics and traditions are presented without criticism, including its devious recruitment policy. Get
Radical light: Italy’s Divisionist Painters 1891-1910 National Gallery, until 7 September, Sponsoered by Credit Suisse Divisionism is based on the scientific theory of the prismatic division of light into the colours of the spectrum. It’s more familiarly known as pointillism and its greatest exponent was Georges Seurat. Italy bred a minor outbreak of Divisionism, and
Does Kylie Minogue deserve an OBE? News of her honour has irked the usual suspects, perhaps because they are not up to date with her career and cultural achievement. Virgin Radio was once caught out in this way. It launched in 1994 with a a daft slogan “we’ve improved Kylie’s songs – we’ve banned them.”
Melissa Kite meets Martina Navratilova, nine times Wimbledon singles champion and now pioneer of ‘tennising’ — an artistic technique that creates Jackson Pollock-style patterns The jet set are strolling across the manicured lawns of corporate Wimbledon. Glistening white marquees filled with champagne and canapés await them at the Fairway Village and Wimbledon Club, just over
Beyond the Work of One — Oxford College Libraries and their Benefactors The Bodleian Library, Oxford, until 1 November, admission free A few years ago, my old tutor, the much- missed Angus Macintyre of Magdalen College, gave me a letter that meant I could get into the Codrington Library — Nicholas Hawksmoor’s 1716 gem at
Alexander Stoddart unravels the relationship between art and politics The great British philosopher Brian Magee, writing about Richard Wagner’s political life, points out that it is wrong to think of the Sage of Bayreuth moving to the Right in his later life. Magee’s proposal is compelling; Wagner leaves left-wing politics precisely as men who are
I guess it’s no surprise that, while the rest of us were twiddling the dials on our cheap plastic transistors (made in Japan) to find Radio Caroline, the future Archbishop of Canterbury as a teenager in the Sixties was tuning in to Radio Three. He was hoping to hear the first blast of the latest
2,000 Feet Away Bush Relocated Royal Court The Chalk Garden Donmar America is nuts about paedophiles. That’s the take-home message of Anthony Weigh’s new play 2,000 Feet Away, which stars Joseph Fiennes. The title refers to a provision of Megan’s law which sets out the minimum permissible distance between the home of a paedophile and
Since the recent death of Karlheinz Stockhausen, his compatriot Helmut Lachenmann, 73 this year, has inherited the Emperor’s mantle of grandiose invisiblity. I’m pitching it with provocative unfairness! Yet the struggle to extract gold from their mass of water or rock is beset with legitimate reservations that cannot be begged: Stockhausen the visionary charlatan–genius, Lachenmann
When I was up at Oxford, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, my deepest wish was to find a letter one day in my pigeonhole informing me that a distant relative had died and that henceforward I was entitled to style myself the Marquess of Wessex (or wherever), until eventually I inherited my dukedom. That
Gerald Kaufman on the late, great dancer and film star ‘who could stop a man by just sticking up her leg’, and the accidents that led her to a role that became a movie sensation When I discussed Singin’ in the Rain with Cyd Charisse, who died last week, she was of course aware that