William Cook goes to Skegness and watches Cannon & Ball attract an adoring audience It’s August and Edinburgh is full of fashionable young comedians, but here in Skegness the Festival Fringe seems a million miles away. With its amusement arcades and fish and chip shops, this unpretentious place feels forgotten by the metropolitan arts establishment.
Sargent and the Sea Royal Academy, until 26 September John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) is an artist whose name arouses hopes of dazzling technical virtuosity even when his subjects are fairly run-of-the-mill. Famed as a portrait painter, his art (at its finest) has great glamour and stylishness, backed up by exuberant brushwork which can be truly
Die Walküre Longborough Not having been to Longborough and its opera festival before, I was bowled over by it in all respects. The much-referred-to extended garage is an extremely comfortable theatre, with more than 400 seats, and with plenty of space in the foyer to make intervals a far more agreeable affair than they are
The Prince of Homburg Donmar, until 4 September Danton’s Death Olivier, in rep until 14 October Welcome to London. This month we’re hosting the world’s very first, but probably not its last, Useless German Playwright Festival. Here’s a scribbler you may not have heard of. Heinrich von Kleist, born in 1777, angered his Prussian family
Regular readers may have noticed an embarrassing lacuna in this column. Having urged you to come up with your top ten albums of all time, to which you responded in such numbers, and with such entertaining and illuminating results, the sadist who set you the task has so far failed to deliver a selection of
Bolshoi Ballet Royal Opera House, until 8 August At the beginning of the second week of its new London season, the Bolshoi Ballet presented the classic Giselle, a ballet which, not unlike other 19th-century works, underwent myriad changes, cuts and choreographic adaptations. It was only after Mary Skeaping attempted to restore the original text in
‘I wish I knew,’ said the doctor in a rare moment of candour when asked, ‘What do you do with children who don’t want to take the tablets? ‘I wish I knew,’ said the doctor in a rare moment of candour when asked, ‘What do you do with children who don’t want to take the
