Embedded somewhere in the Christmas story no doubt is the idea of much being contained in a small space — or Multum in parvo as the restored road signs leading into Rutland have it. The opposite, which I will leave you to chisel into Latin for yourselves, presumably gets less attention in the Bible, yet
Tony Hall tells Michael Prodger about how he transformed the Cultural Olympiad into the London 2012 Festival The most obvious gift possessed by Tony Hall, or Baron Hall of Birkenhead to give him his proper title, is for cleaning up an almighty mess. When he joined the Royal Opera House in 2001, after a long
Frank Rich loved it. ‘Noises Off,’ said the great N’Yawk critic, ‘is, was and always will be the funniest play written in my lifetime.’ Michael Frayn conceived the idea of writing a farce about farce while watching one of his early plays from the wings. The frantic hustle-bustle of the actors behind the scenes was
Those seeking to banish the January blues should hotfoot it to the Cambridge Theatre for a gloriously uplifting injection of energy and exuberance courtesy of the RSC’s Matilda the Musical. Roald Dahl’s celebration of the redeeming power of the imagination is magically translated to the stage by writer Dennis Kelly and lyricist Tim Minchin. Watching
‘It is impossible that you should not have sensed,’ wrote Wagner to Ludwig II shortly before the first performance of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, ‘under the opera’s quaint superficies of popular humour, the profound melancholy, the lament, the cry of distress of poetry in chains, and its reincarnation, its new birth, its irresistible magic power
One of my resolutions this year is to make a lot more money. But how? In fact, I’ve noticed recently, it’s very simple: all you have to do is take a popular character with enormous worldwide brand recognition (e.g., King Arthur, James Bond, Sherlock Holmes) and shamelessly reinvent him for the youth demographic. So, for
The last major show of paintings by Edward Burra (1905–76) was at the Hayward Gallery in 1985 and I remember visiting it with a painter friend who was rather critical of what she called Burra’s woodenness and lack of movement. At the time, I was impressed by her criticisms, but now they rather seem to
Firstly, my review of 2011, which I was going to do in photographs until I realised I didn’t take any, and then in animal thumbprints, but they are quite rubbish. My dog, for example, looks nothing like a dog. So I will spare you my review of last year — my giraffe is getting there,
‘Do you feel like crying?’ asked Shaun Keaveny on his 6 Music breakfast show this week, before replying, ‘Text us your tears.’ It was Tuesday, the first day back at work for many listeners. And Keaveny was trying to cheer us up. Then he played ‘Grey Day’ by Madness. Keaveny’s lucky. 6 Music reckons that
