The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Pete Hoskin on the Hollywood actor James Stewart, who was born 100 years ago The great director and critic François Truffaut once labelled James Stewart as one of those rare actors who could be ‘moving and amusing within the same scene’. Quite so. On the one hand, Stewart — angular, lanky, and awkward in action
It’s tough out there in the crazy world of pop. Two years ago The Feeling were the most played act on British radio. Their debut album, Twelve Stops and Home — almost certainly the only album in history to be named after a late-night Tube journey from Leicester Square to Bounds Green — sold 1.5
The Taming of the Shrew; The Merchant of Venice Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon While the RSC’s Histories sequence is rightly grabbing critical and popular acclaim in London, what’s left for visitors to Stratford over the summer? To The Taming of the Shrew and The Merchant of Venice will shortly be added a revised revival of Gregory
Macbeth Opera North Punch and Judy Young Vic The Minotaur Covent Garden Don Giovanni English Touring Opera, Cambridge In a hectic and heterogeneous operatic week, three out of four of the things I saw were successful or even triumphant, so you couldn’t call it typical. Opera North’s new production of Verdi’s Macbeth largely erased memories
I’m writing this on the May Day bank holiday, with birds singing outside, probably in terror as the cat Nelson is on the prowl, searching for some luckless fledgling to kill and devour on our doorstep. He will then roll on his back, wave his legs in the air and look cute, expecting to be
Special to Souter-born, Phoenix-residing reader MG, here’s a photograph of Selkirk, taken from the hill above my parents’ house:
Mari Lassnig Serpentine Gallery, until 8 June Alison Watt: Phantom National Gallery, until 29 June When I first saw the card for Maria Lassnig’s show I thought it was just another young or middle-aged artist trying it on. Then I discovered that Lassnig was born in 1919, and I wanted to know more. Had she
All empires eventually bite off more than they can chew. Rome and the Barbarians, the latest exhibition under the new management at Palazzo Grassi in Venice, suffers from the same syndrome. It aims to cover the entire first millennium of the Christian era by displaying more than 2,000 artefacts, from 200 collections in 23 countries,
Tinderbox Bush The Year of Magical Thinking Lyttelton If you aren’t sure what to make of the present, try shoving it into the future. This trusted device is employed by Lucy Kirkwood (who writes for Channel 4’s admired show Skins), in her first stage play, Tinderbox. We’re in a nightmarish England, seared by Saharan heat,
Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? 12A, Nationwide OK, we’re busy people, so straight to the point on this one, and yet I’m already struggling, because there isn’t any point to get straight to. This is a pointless film. It is sans point, has zilch point, scores nul points in the point department.
This week marked the start of the 15th year of The Simpsons (Channel 4, often). The other day I went to a talk by Tim Long, the executive producer of the show, who said that it was popular in almost every country in the world, with the exceptions of Germany and Japan. He thought that
It was a daringly original thing to do. To write a play where the heroine stays silent for most of the time. And the drama’s creator, Anthony Minghella, cleverly conceals her reason for doing so until the very last sentence. I can remember listening to Cigarettes and Chocolate when it was first broadcast back in
A reader asks polymathic Tyler Cowen for his country music recommendations and Tyler responds here, cautioning, mind you, that: I might add the whole list comes from someone who was initially allergic to country music, so if that is you give some of these recommendations a try. Just think of it as White Man’s Blues.
Peter Phillips on a Zambian chamber choir which decided to perform Byrd, Tallis and Tippett As calling cards go, renaissance polyphony would not seem to promise a ticket to anywhere much, unless to heaven. When I started giving concerts in 1973, the received wisdom on the subject, even in the UK, was that whole concerts
Iron Man 12A, Nationwide Iron Man is a Hollywood superhero blockbuster and probably the first of a franchise, even though it already feels like the 64th. These movies are always, in their way, whopping piles of junk, but they can be hugely enjoyable whopping piles of junk. The first Superman with Christopher Reeve, Tim Burton’s
‘Could you account for everything that surrounds you in the course of a single second?’ asks one of the characters in Peter Ackroyd’s first play for radio, Chatterton: The Allington Solution (Thursday). ‘All the intentions, the wishes, motives, perceptions, judgments that swirl around any one of us.’ It’s a provocative question. And especially now in
I’m always on the lookout for writers who’ve had well-paid, fun, fulfilled lives but I hardly ever find them. Jane Austen, for example. You’d think that the very least God would have given her in return for Emma and Pride and Prejudice would have been a single man in possession of a good fortune, a
We’ve just launched Apollo magazine’s Muse blog. It’s a new and exciting destination for news and topical comment on the latest debates, controversies and happenings in the art world. It will also feature a weekly competition, the first of which can be accessed here.
Gone With the Wind New London Theatre How did they get it so wrong? Turning chicklit’s greatest story into a hit musical should have been a doddle. Just put the characters on stage and let the warm romantic breeze of the narrative carry you safely home. And that’s exactly what Trevor Nunn has done and
Henrietta Bredin talks to Sally Burgess about taking on the role of Carmen Just as dancers are fortunate if they have especially long legs and strong, flexible feet, there are all sorts of different physical attributes that can help a singer to produce a good sound. But there’s a particular facial, or cranial, disposition which
The Minotaur Royal Opera For the first time in the 12 years that I have been reviewing opera weekly, I have been to the first performance of a masterpiece. The Minotaur, so far as I can tell from one intense experience, has all of Harrison Birtwistle’s strengths and none of his weaknesses. He likes to
Small Change Donmar War and Peace, I and II Hampstead Oh my God. Did that really happen? I knew nothing about Peter Gill’s 1976 play, Small Change, before arriving at the Donmar to see this revival under the author’s own direction. It’s a love letter, an immensely detailed and spectacularly superficial account of the working-class
Something so weird has happened to the way we live now that Radio Two has decided it needs to dedicate a week’s programming to Let’s Talk About Sex. It’s designed, says the billing in Radio Times, ‘to encourage parents to speak more freely to their children about sex and relationships’. But there’s already so much
Whitechapel at War: Isaac Rosenberg and his circle Ben Uri Gallery, 108a Boundary Road. London NW8, until 8 June It seems that Isaac Rosenberg thought of himself as a poet rather than as a painter, but that is to undervalue his distinct dual contribution as an artist. Although he exhibited little in his short lifetime,
Persepolis 12A, London and key cities Persepolis, an animated feature about coming of age in Iran, is kind of interesting and is kind of original but its telling moments are told so often it’s like going out to dinner and being served the same course over and over. You’ll look at it coming and think,
Nothing is sacred or unchanging. One of Radio Three’s most reliable sources of musical pleasure, the weekly Saturday opera relay from the Metropolitan in New York, has recently rendered itself all but unbearable. Not in performance standards, which continue a norm of decency and are at best superlative — casting just about the best money
In the 19th century, the painting of flowers was mainly the preserve of maiden ladies with too much time on their hands, whose watercolours would be framed by indulgent brothers, and hung on bedroom walls. Scientific botanical painting was left to talented, poorly paid artists, whose work was reproduced in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine and other
In honour of the nicest day of the year so far: I wander’d lonely as a cloudThat floats on high o’er vales and hills,When all at once I saw a crowd,A host, of golden daffodils;Beside the lake, beneath the trees,Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. This afternoon, at home. Though since we’re at the foot
Igor Toronyi-Lalic on the power of animation to subvert and propagate ideas The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the American army, on one of its first assignments, requisitioned Disney Studios and remained there for eight months. It was the only studio to suffer that fate but Walt Disney, ever the patriot,