Arts Reviews

Transfiguration Guildhall Art Gallery, until 4 October Transfiguration Guildhall Art Gallery, until 4 October Complaining the other day in these pages about the crowded nature of public exhibition spaces in London, I had momentarily forgotten the secret charms of the Guildhall Art Gallery. This museum, specialising in London subjects, receives scant attention in the press, and as a consequence it is less than mobbed by the public. Yet it has mounted a very creditable and popular-scholarly series of exhibitions, being particularly good on Victorian painters of the Frith and Watts type, while also dealing with modern and living artists. The permanent collection contains many treasures, some of which may be

Fathers Inside Soho Too True to be Good Finborough Oh, great. It’s one of those. Fathers Inside is a workshop-based outreach project directed by an actor/facilitator. Those last nine words encircle my heart like the clammy fingers of death. But the play is a surprise and offers a big, warm, manly handshake. It starts quietly. Seven young convicts on a drama course are getting to know each other. The atmosphere is steeped in hostility and male aggression. The dialogue feels ragged, conversational, obvious, boring even. And it’s not so much under-rehearsed as unrehearsed. This is deliberate. Life is unrehearsed, and this play’s amazing air of naturalism gradually sidelines your doubts

You wouldn’t necessarily have guessed this from the quality of commemorative programming on TV this week. You wouldn’t necessarily have guessed this from the quality of commemorative programming on TV this week. But just recently, we’ve marked the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of an event that used to be considered quite important and interesting. It was called the second world war. Now that it has been superseded by issues of such seismic significance as climate change, the childhood obesity ‘epidemic’ and Jordan’s on-off marriage to Peter Andre, one can of course fully understand why TV feels unable to give WWII the thorough and respectful coverage it did in the

So which pop radio station do you listen to? It’s a question people who run pop radio stations often feel compelled to ask, without really wanting to hear the answer. So which pop radio station do you listen to? It’s a question people who run pop radio stations often feel compelled to ask, without really wanting to hear the answer. Most of their friends and contemporaries listen to Radio Four, and so do mine. But I need music to work to, and to wash up to, and Radio Two has come to occupy a significant place in my life. Ah, Radio Two. Once old, fuddy and duddy, more recently it

There was, for a while, some debate in academic circles about whether there was such a thing as cannibalism. According to a handful of anthropologists, it was a Western invention — probably unwitting — to discredit ignorant savages. It now seems clear that this view was, to coin a phrase, political correctness gone mad. There are attested examples of people eating other people, and not only after plane crashes. But there’s no doubt that television eats itself. It nibbles at its past and chews away at its triumphs. In particular it likes to consume lovingly made programmes if only in the hope that this will enable the networks to create

The Golf GTI was unveiled in Frankfurt 34 years ago this month. If the ordinary Golf saved VW — ailing because Beetle sales were in long-term decline — then the GTI was the icing that made millions more want the cake. Planned as a limited edition of 5,000, it has gone on to sell 1.7 million worldwide (217,214 in the UK). Its effects spread well beyond itself. It wasn’t only that there were numerous buyers for the fashionable sporty version of what might otherwise have been seen as a humdrum hatchback (unpromisingly called ‘Rabbit’ in the US), but that the existence of this fashionable extra cast a glow of desire

(500) Days of Summer 12A, Nationwide (500) Days of Summer is a Hollywood romantic comedy with (unnecessary and annoying brackets) in the title just so we know it’s quirky, which it rather is, but it’s so in love with its own quirkiness it gets tiresome after a while. It’s just not as clever as it thinks it is although, having said that, I should point out it’s been a huge commercial and critical hit in America so maybe I’m just getting too old for dating movies generally. Or, as my five-year-old niece recently put it to me: ‘Deb, why are you all cracked around the eyes?’ Kids, couldn’t eat a

The Assault/The Last Days of Gilda Old Red Lion Eye/Balls Soho London in August. It’s the capital’s sabbatical. Theatre is all Edinburgh right now and the London-bound play-goer feels dislocated, irrelevant almost, alienated by accidents of chance and inclination, like a Hebrew at Christmas, a teetotaller on St Patrick’s day, an honest man in the Labour party. There’s still theatre to be had, though. The hunger remains, the unappeasable ache. A Brazilian double bill catches my eye. When it comes to Brazilian theatre — and I come to Brazilian theatre often — I’m more than an enthusiast, I’m a proto-fanatic. My expectations are vast. My sense of anticipation is beyond

Exactly ten years ago I visited Battersea Arts Centre to see eight short operas performed by Tête à Tête. Exactly ten years ago I visited Battersea Arts Centre to see eight short operas performed by Tête à Tête. It was a memorable evening, and showed what a good idea it is to encourage young composers to write quarter-hour-long pieces, instead of making a whole evening of their first attempt at opera. Inevitably, of course, there is a workshop aspect to these occasions, and anyone who feels understandably suspicious of workshops is likely to give them a wide berth — and thereby to miss a good deal of hit-and-miss pleasure. There