The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
The Writer as Migrant, by Ha Jin Three quest-ions, labelled as ‘Aristot- elian’ by the author, begin the Rice University Campbell Lectures delivered by Ha Jin in 2007: to whom, as whom, and in whose interest does a writer write? To which the reader might respond: can any writer truthfully answer any of these questions?
Henrietta Bredin talks to Ian McDiarmid about turning a novel set in Scotland into a play Ian McDiarmid possesses a voice that, if he chose to let it, could curdle milk. Half-strangled and poisonously clotted it emerges in an evil flow in his portrayal of the Emperor Palpatine in the Star Wars films. As Satan
Manon Coliseum Ballet goers don’t seem to mind the endless flow of new productions of 19th-century classic works. Every year works such as Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Giselle and the ubiquitous Nutcracker are presented to audiences worldwide with new designs, new sets, new dramaturgic readings and, in some instances, with new choreography. Yet such a
If your concert-going habits mean that you always attend the same kinds of venue in the same kinds of town in the same country, the equation I am about to put to you may strike you as being rather odd. But the fact is that on the world stage there are socialist concerts and capitalist
Maybe it was too soon for Saturday night’s Archive on 4 to reflect on George W.’s reign as President of the US of A. After all, there are still three days left of his administration. But Bremner on Bush: A Final Farewell was a missed opportunity. Rory Bremner was presumably hauled in as presenter because
A Pantocrat who should be on everyone’s curriculum The decision by the authorities to drop Coleridge from the syllabus of state schools is intended as another nail in the coffin of English literature. He is to be replaced by a person unknown to me but apparently popular on TV quiz shows. No reason is provided
It’s bloody depressing being a columnist right now. The meltdown is easily the most important topic, but how many variants of this can you produce before readers give up? Or think they have read it all before? I was going to give you the latest economic horror story of our L-shaped downturn but instead I’ll
Ron Howard’s movie Frost/Nixon is that rarest of things: a film that not only replicates the brilliance of the stage play that inspired it, but transcends the original. Peter Morgan’s drama about the unforgettable interviews between David Frost and former President Nixon in 1977 gives Howard magnificent source material, to which he adds all the
Ach, Sir John Mortimer, creator of Rumpole of the Bailey and leading champagne socialist, has died. Sad. From a piece I wrote about him way back in 2002: Mortimer belongs, I think, in the vanguard of the supporting cast, a second lieutenant rather than a leader himself. He’s too reticent to play the
Well Apollo Hit Me! The Life and Rhymes of Ian Dury Leicester Square In Blood: The Bacchae Arcola So what does the theatre critic make of the recession? No one’s asked me, actually, so here goes. Leaving aside the obsessive 24-hour media coverage, there’s little trace of it in the real world. Immunise your bonce
Beth Chatto — A Retrospective Garden Museum, Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1, until 19 April The Garden Museum, situated in the old church of St Mary’s, hard by Lambeth Palace, has undergone a major refurbishment. It looks tremendous, much better than in the old days of slight muddle and a feeling of temporary storage. A
The Wrestler 15, Nationwide The Wrestler is Mickey Rourke’s big comeback movie in which he plays Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson, a professional wrestler of the kind so popular in the Eighties when they all had names like ‘The Ram’ or ‘Rock’ or ‘Bad Blood’ or ‘The Hulk’ or ‘Ayatollah’ and fought under the WWF banner,
2666, by Roberto Bolaño Not every writer would write a novel in the form of a completely invented encyclopaedia of imaginary writers and call the result Nazi Literature in the Americas. Not everyone, either, would write a novel in two paragraphs, the second less than 12 words long, or produce a novel about a torturer-poet
The Dog: 5000 Years of the Dog in Art, by Tamsin Pickeral Dogs: History, Myth, Art, by Catherine Johns The Horse: A Celebration of Horses in Art, by Rachel and Simon Barnes These three books are concerned with the representation in art of man’s most successfully domesticated wild animals,: the dog and the horse. Dogs,
The Outlander, by Gil Adamson The Outlander, a strikingly good first novel by the Canadian poet Gil Adamson, is a drama of extremity and isolation set in the Rocky Mountains of Canada in the early 1900s. Much of it reads like a pastiche Western with elements of supernatural grotesquerie out of Stephen King or even
Journals: 1952-2000, by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr, edited by Andrew Schlesinger and Stephen Schlesinger Before sitting down with this hefty doorstopper of a diary, first ask yourself whether you agree — or can imagine yourself agreeing — with the entry Arthur Schlesinger, Jr made on 27 March 1950: ‘I adore sitting around hotel rooms with politicians
Byron in Love, by Edna O’Brien ‘We would entreat him to believe that a certain portion of liveliness, somewhat of fancy, is necessary to constitute a poem,’ wrote Henry Brougham in the Edinburgh Review, when the young Byron was unwise enough to expose his first, dismal book of juvenilia to the gaze of ‘Citizen Mob’,
I suppose it must have seemed a neat idea at the time, but Dan Drezner is absolutely correct: Bono’s debut column for the New York Times is simply gibberish*. I guess one of the perks of celebrity is being able to find a publisher for nonsense that would, quite correctly, be rejected out of hand
Circus Cirque du Soleil has taken a surreal turn with its latest show, Quidam, at the Albert Hall: a headless man with an open umbrella, a crowd of people wearing white protective overalls doing, well, nothing much … but it’s the acts what count. Most are thrilling: a couple lift, stretch and contort themselves in
There are still some things that the BBC does incredibly well, and The Diary of Anne Frank (BBC1, Monday to Friday) was one. It’s the licence fee that allows the corporation to take these risks, and next time the Murdoch press whinges about it, you might contemplate the limitless dross we would have to suffer
Slumdog Millionaire 15, Nationwide From the wonderful things I’d already heard about Danny Boyle’s latest film Slumdog Millionaire I was fully poised to fall madly in love with it, and perhaps even run off with it although I would not have its babies — I’m through with having babies; I had one once, a boy,
Evelyn Waugh told Nancy Mitford he was ‘surprised to find’ that Proust ‘was a mental defective. He has absolutely no sense of time.’ Evelyn Waugh told Nancy Mitford he was ‘surprised to find’ that Proust ‘was a mental defective. He has absolutely no sense of time.’ (Joke, given the novel’s title?) ‘He can’t remember anyone’s
William Cook talks to the creators of some of TV’s funniest and best-loved comedy programmes As our economy disappears down the plughole, along with the reputations of most of our bankers and politicians, the one consolation is that entertainers like Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross suddenly seem terribly passé. When you’re broke, there’s nothing entertaining
Bruegel to Rubens: Masters of Flemish Painting The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, until 26 April If you felt deprived of snow this Christmas, hasten along to The Queen’s Gallery, for there, in a splendid exhibition of Flemish painting from the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, is one of the best snow-scenes ever — Bruegel’s ‘Massacre
The Cordelia Dream Wilton’s Music Hall Sunset Boulevard Comedy Marina Carr is a writer of enormous distinction which isn’t quite the same as being a writer of enormous talent. She’s been given chairs by so many universities that she could probably open a furniture shop. However, a certain snippet of advice — don’t invite comparisons
Cecilia Bartoli Barbican Turandot Royal Opera House For this year’s appearance at the Barbican, Cecilia Bartoli, ever exploratory in her repertoire, chose an evening of canzone, songs by composers and a few by singers of the bel canto repertoire. She was accompanied by the hyper-reticent Sergio Ciomei at the piano. Admittedly, the accompaniments to these
And so to the records of the year. I usually do this piece in December, but as all sensible shoppers know that’s the worst month in the year to buy anything for yourself — particularly music, in what is very much a buyer’s market. Amazon’s prices, normally comfortingly low, lurch up into realms of profitability
Phew! Normal service has been resumed. No more panto; no more guest editors forcing Evan, Jim, Ed and Sarah into embarrassingly coy interviews with Karl Lagerfeld et al.; no more year-end reviews of the year behind and portentous glimpses of the year ahead. I don’t know why every year we have to go through this
The Natural History of Unicorns, by Chris Lavers ‘A long time ago, when the earth was green,/ There were more kinds of animals than you’ve ever seen./ They’d run around free while the earth was being born,/ But the loveliest of all was the unicorn.’ So Shel Silverstein’s saccharine ditty informed generations of kiddies. As