The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Honestly, Polish films. They come over here, open in cinemas — our cinemas; your local Odeon — and, if that weren’t enough, they are smart and they are funny and it shouldn’t be allowed. What is the government doing about this? Does the government even know exactly how many Polish films are actually coming over
Doubt: A Parable is a small intriguing play set in a New York Catholic school. When a 12-year-old boy is caught getting smashed on altar wine, the fanatical head teacher, Sister Aloysius, starts to investigate. She’s convinced that the lad has been corrupted by a charismatic and handsome young priest Fr Flynn. Outraged, Fr Flynn
Sorry, you’re not getting your Christmas present this year. Yes, I know what you want: one of those columns where I avoid TV altogether and just rant madly about myself for 800 words. Well, tough. It’s been one of the crappest, most hateful years of my life and, though I’m not holding you all totally
Twenty seven years after it was grounded by sudden death, the Zeppelin flies once more – and none of us can quite believe it. The three surviving members of the ultimate rock group – Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, and John Paul Jones – take to the stage at London’s O2 Centre, joined by Jason Bonham,
The BBC’s version of the Nativity this Christmas will depict Mary and Joseph as asylum seekers rejected by brutal Britain. Yes, once again the Beeb plays fast and loose with history so that we can all think the worst of our country. So let’s remember some facts. First, this country’s record in giving genuine asylum
Serendipity is the best aspect of travel — the chance encounter, the unexpected discovery — and a journey overland to China by rail can throw up all sorts of surprises. In Moscow we bumped into the countertenor Michael Chance, who was there for the first of a series of recitals with the Soloists of Catherine
Theatres of Life: Drawings from the Rothschild Collection, The Wallace Collection, Manchester Square, London W1, until 27 January 2008 Pop Art Portraits, National Portrait Gallery, until 20 January 2008, Sponsored by Lehman Brothers Waddesdon Manor, the stately home of the Rothschilds near Aylesbury now managed by the National Trust, is lending for the first time
Bauhaus 1919–1933, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, until 17 February With all the ‘boundary-blurring’ going on in contemporary art, the old distinction between art and craft ought to be history. But snobbism is apparently so hard-wired into our aesthetic psyche that the distinction has managed to survive by appealing to the Wildean doctrine, ‘All art
Mark David Chapman killed John Lennon on 8 December 1980 as he returned to his New York home after a recording session. As Lennon entered his apartment building, Chapman drew a pistol, called out to Lennon, then shot him several times. This film, based on Chapman’s own journals as well as various transcripts, is told
Happy Christmas, New End The Seagull; King Lear, New London A blast of seasonal cheer at the New End Theatre. Paul Birtill’s bitter and hilarious family satire, Happy Christmas, starts like a subversive salute to The Homecoming. Upwardly mobile John introduces his posh fiancée Mary to his dysfunctional all-male family. The script is crammed with
George Balanchine’s Jewels is an ideal acquisition for the Royal Ballet, for the evening-long work provides the artists with a stimulating stylistic and technical challenge. Created in 1967, this triptych of independent dance episodes was inspired by the choreographer’s visit to the New York showrooms of Van Cleef & Arpels. Hence the idea of translating
I went out on the razzle with a bunch of reformed drunks last weekend. God, it was fun. The aim was a serious walk, eleven and a half miles, kicking off from Eastbourne, walking over Beachy Head and the Seven Sisters, before doing a sharp right for the final slog to the village of Alfriston
The Rake’s Progress, Royal College of Music; The Turn of the Screw, English National Opera The Royal College of Music’s Britten Theatre is the ideal size for Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, indeed the ideal size for almost every opera I can think of until the first third of the 19th century. What must make it
The onset of Advent in the last days of November is supposed to be the herald of great joy at the jollities to come, but for most of us who have left childhood behind it seems to have become a season of dread. How to get through all that shopping and scribbling of cards with
No doubt one reason why British people like Kath & Kim (often on BBC2, now on Living, Thursday) is that it takes the mick out of Australian suburban life. That makes those of us who lead British suburban lives feel superior. But it’s more than that. It’s very funny. It’s worth watching just for the
I spent last weekend at the Aldeburgh Documentary Festival and it’s an event I can thoroughly recommend. It’s been going for 13 years now, with a programme devised by Craig Brown, and the roll-call of speakers it attracts is hugely impressive. On a blowy wet Suffolk day it’s extraordinary to be able to take refuge
On Tuesday Chiwetel Ejiofor and Ewan McGregor take on Othello at the Donmar. If the show hasn’t sold out already, it soon will. Doubtless the starry cast will help shift a lot of tickets but so will the play’s peculiar ‘self-rationing’ effect. Of Shakespeare’s four great tragedies, Othello is the least often revived. The play
What has come to be known as the Sex Show at the Barbican has received mixed reports. Some people dismiss it out of hand (and unseen) while others profess to enjoy it immensely. One painter I know loved it, but then he is a voyeur both by profession and inclination. I approached it with an
Percy Wyndham Lewis 1882–1957, Design Centre, Rugby School, until 8 December In the 1915 Vorticist Manifesto, published in the movement’s magazine Blast, Wyndham Lewis (he dropped Percy) wrote: Lewis is one of them, as this first-rate exhibition at his alma mater — he was a pupil for two years from 1897 — amply demonstrates. It
Just outside Florence’s city walls, marooned in the middle of a huge great ring road, lies a foreign field that is for ever England. Well, it’s really for ever Switzerland. The English Cemetery of Florence is owned by the Swiss Reformed Evangelical Church and is officially called the Protestant Cemetery of Florence. But, because the
The ambulance creeps to a halt outside the Brixton Academy at 9.15 on the evening of Amy Winehouse’s second London gig on Friday and is greeted with a ripple of excitement by the crowd. ‘She’s arrived’ is the whisper through the queue. And whether by this means or another, Amy does indeed arrive, beetling on
As the holiday season is all but upon us, I thought I would take a moment to reflect on Christmas movies of the past and the standards that have been set. There was one called Jingle All the Way that I liked very much indeed. It was about a man of foreign heritage who spoke
L’Elisir d’amore; Das Wunder del Heliane After not seeing Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’amore for years, I went to two new productions of it in five days. The Glyndebourne one, which I reported on last week, is admirable, but the Royal Opera production is in some ways better still. That surprised me, because the director is Laurent
The Dysfunckshonalz!; Some Kind of Bliss; William Blake’s Divine Humanity The spirit of punk and its exhilarating lunacies are brilliantly captured in a new show at the Bush. Mike Packer’s affectionate satire tells the story of The Dysfunckshonalz, a major punk band of 1977, who 30 years on are approached by an American bank eager
It’s not what you think, we were warned by Jenny Uglow, the far-seeing biographer of Hogarth and Elizabeth Gaskell. Those ‘dark Satanic mills’ and ‘mountains green’ of William Blake’s epic poem were never intended as an anthem in praise of England’s democratic virtues. Blake was neither a conservative, nor nostalgic for an imaginary golden past.
On the very night that Monarch: The Royal Family at Work (BBC1, Monday) was being broadcast whom should I bump into at the Pen International quiz at the Café Royal in the queue for the coats but Stephen Lambert. Lambert, you may remember, was the head of the independent production company RDF who personally edited
The competitive spirit never ceases to amaze me and it was flamboyantly evident last night at a gathering in Hammersmith Town Hall to raise funds for RAPT, the Rehabilitation for Addicted Prisoners Trust. In what has now become a popular and lucrative annual event, people buy seats at tables named after different prisons – we
Igor Toronyi-Lalic on the important role opera played in the early days of cinema In 1978, the Swiss impresario Rolf Liebermann picked the veteran American director Joseph Losey to direct a film adaptation of Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni. At that point they hadn’t yet met or spoken but Liebermann, having passed over Franco Zeffirelli and
Home and Garden: Domestic Spaces in Paintings 1960–2004; Geffrye Museum, Kingsland Road, E2, until 4 February 2008 The final part of a quartet of exhibitions devoted to the subject of Home and Garden, competently supported by a useful catalogue, is currently enlivening the Geffrye Museum in London’s East End. It’s a pleasure to visit: the