The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
The Chinese are coming — or, rather, they’ve come. China Design Now at the V&A is the latest arrival in the China Now Festival — a nationwide celebration of all things Chinese, leading up to the Olympic Games. It kicks off tomorrow – and runs until 13 July – but I was lucky enough to
I’m indebted to an old college buddy for alerting me to this description of David Irving’s recent appearance on Irish TV’s venerable The Late, Late Show. As the programme’s website put it (emphasis added): In 2006 David Irving was jailed for denying the holocaust ever happened. Despite being branded an anti-semitic, active holocaust denier in
Who else reckons that Mr Darling’s plodding budget could have used a lively soundtrack? Well, here’s my recommendation: Goody Two Shoes by Adam and the Ants. The lyrics pretty much sum up the whole sorry affair! “Put on a little makeup makeup Make sure they get your good side good side If the words unspoken
Perhaps it’s greed. Or is it greed laced with betrayal? Certainly it’s unseemly. As their careers draw to a close, British authors have developed a habit of stuffing their collected notebooks into a rucksack, hopping to America on Virgin and flogging their life’s jottings to the highest bidder. In 2006 Salman Rushdie accepted an undisclosed
Pompeo Batoni 1708–1787 National Gallery, until 18 May The first impression offered by the Batoni exhibition in the Sainsbury Wing is one of dullness. I tend to do a quick reconnaissance of any show before starting the serious work of looking in detail, in order to gauge its range and extent, and my initial response
Mrs Spencer had to spend five days in Paris during half-term observing ballet classes, so my son Edward and I tagged along too, on the strict understanding that watching dance lessons was absolutely not on the agenda as far as we were concerned. It came as a jolt to realise that my first visit to
Touring the more rural college campuses in the United States with Victoria’s Requiem is a very modern challenge. To be sure, the inmates of these Young People’s Homes have little experience of performers and performances which do not actively sell themselves, so I can imagine that the reality of 11 people standing more or less
Insane in the Brain Bounce, Peacock Theatre An upbeat, street-dance version of Romeo and Juliet, presented by Rumble, was one of the hottest tickets at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival. Some critics did dislike it as yet another example of modern-day cultural and artistic madness, but others welcomed its innovative approach to the creation of both
Megan finally gets to see The Pogues live and, happily, it’s worth the wait: Did I mention that for the actual last song, at the end of the second encore, Spider Stacy did his signature “bashing a beer tray against my head” percussion act? I mean, it really doesn’t get much better than that.
If you haven’t seen Mad Men—the drama set in a Madison Avenue advertising agency in 1960—already, I’d thoroughly recommend watching it. (You can catch up on the first episode here.) It is the best drama that there has been on TV in quite a while. As James Delingpole says in the magazine this week, it
The Royal Ballet Royal Opera House It is a well-known fact that ballet lives, thrives and survives in a world of its own. By the time the ‘new’ ideas developed in other artistic contexts have seeped through its thick artistic, technical, cultural and social barriers, the other arts have already moved on. Luckily, such a
You have neat, slicked-back hair which never gets dandruff. You keep a pile of beautifully laundered white shirts stacked in your office drawer. You look great in your sharp suit and so does everyone else in theirs. The girls in the office are there to service your every need, and actually discuss with one another
Amnesia? Forget about it. That’s my advice to dramatists considering handling this theme on stage because it always generates the same problem. Memory equals personality so a character without a memory isn’t a character. He’s some clothes. The central figure in The Living Unknown Soldier is a French major suffering from total memory loss after
Modern Painters: the Camden Town Group Tate Britain, until 5 May The Millbank branch of the Tate empire is currently blessed with two major loan exhibitions of painting, and if you find the Peter Doig retrospective a bit too thin for your taste, the thick dry crusty surfaces of the Camden Town Group’s pictures may
Lucia di Lammermoor Coliseum Gentle Giant Linbury Studio Despite two attempts, I haven’t managed to see ENO’s new production of Lucia di Lammermoor with its announced cast. My first try was sabotaged, as so many plans are, by Network Rail, which is still after 12 years working on ‘essential maintenance’ of a ten-mile stretch of
The Other Boleyn Girl 12A, Nationwide The Other Boleyn Girl, based on the bestselling historical romance by Philippa Gregory, stars Natalie Portman as Anne Boleyn and Scarlett Johansson as the other girl, her ‘plainer’ sister Mary, which, considering Scarlett Johansson has just been voted the most beautiful woman in the world, must be a lesson
Melancholy is a peculiarly English malady; almost you might say a national characteristic, born out of our long, dark nights and grizzly, indecisive weather. That dampness of the soul and ambient miserableness is almost like a national uniform; just think of late-Seventies rock or the Jacobean poets, the Brontë novels or Francis Bacon. The Swinging
Mark Glazebrook talks to Sandy Nairne, who explains why the NPG is part of the life of London David Piper, director of the National Portrait Gallery 1964–67, was a brilliant historian and museum director who, while writing a book called The English Face, found that there’s no such thing. It vanished like the smile on
Henrietta Bredin talks to Ian Bostridge about his passion for Lieder and his plans for the future On an eye-wateringly bright and freezing cold day, Ian Bostridge contrives to look svelte and leggily elegant despite the fact that he confesses to wearing a thick layer of thermal underwear next to the skin. As soon as
Salome Royal Opera House Salome Royal Opera House What is a producer, or, as they more often like to be called these days, director, to do if he is asked to produce/direct a work about which he has no interesting ideas and none comes along during the production process, and the invitation comes from a
Flight London Coliseum Flight London Coliseum Ballet galas might be the dream of every spectacle-craving balletomane, but they can easily become a nightmarishly boring series of ‘party pieces’ if they are not properly organised. Luckily, this is not the case when a company such as Ensemble Production takes over, as demonstrated by a number of
On the other hand, some actors really are loopy to the tonsils. To wit, alas, the lovely Marion Cotillard, who is, it seems, a pretty keen conspiracy theorist: Marion Cotillard : J’ai tendance à être plutôt souvent de l’avis de la théorie du complot. Xavier de Moulins : Un peu parano ? M. C. :
Alexander Rodchenko: Revolution in Photography Hayward Gallery, until 27 April There’s a whole separate exhibition in the downstairs galleries of the Hayward. It’s called Laughing in a Foreign Language and is supposed to explore the role of laughter and humour in contemporary art through the work of 30 so-called international artists. As an exhibition, it’s
The Guardian had an interesting — and, frankly, terrifying — piece the other day by Nick Coleman, the Independent’s long-serving and shamelessly cerebral rock critic. I used to know Nick slightly: we talked drivel on the same radio show for a while a dozen years ago, and he wrote a piece about my first cricket
Margot at the Wedding Nationwide, 15 Margot at the Wedding is one of those unsettling and bothersome films which will bother and unsettle you during, afterwards and possibly for much of the next day, like a flea in the ear. If this is your sort of film, then you will like it and if you
Brief Encounter The Cinema Haymarket The Homecoming Almeida Under the Eagle White Bear Bit of a spoiled brat, the Cinema Haymarket. Can’t decide what it wants. Originally built as a theatre, it defected to the movies for many years but having tired of hosting popcorn blockbusters it’s now receiving plays again. Lovely auditorium, though. Wide
The Lady’s Not For Spurning (BBC4, Monday) was ostensibly about Margaret Thatcher and the baleful influence she had on the Conservative party after 1990. It was actually about Michael Portillo’s long quest for redemption. This has been going on since May 1997, when he lost his seat. As he pointed out in this documentary, which
Only this column would persuade me to get up at 6.30 on a Sunday morning. Six-thirty! In my other life I pore over the collected works of the 18th-century writer Dr Johnson, who constantly struggled to persuade himself out of bed before noon. He liked the idea of early rising, and each New Year resolved
Quick Oscar** thought: no American actor or actress won an Oscar this year. The four acting awards went to: Tilda Swinton (Scotland), Javier Bardem (Spain) Daniel Day-Lewis (England/Ireland) and Marion Cotillard (France). Have the Americans ever been shut out like this before? Does it mean anything beyond the fact that the Oscars are an increasingly