Lloyd Evans believes that Wilde’s comedy is the best play ever written. The Importance of Being Earnest with Penelope Keith is at the Vaudeville Theatre from 22 January. My favourite play is on its way to the West End and I fully expect to be disappointed. It’s not that Peter Gill’s production of The Importance
The Age of Enchantment: Beardsley, Dulac and their Contemporaries 1890–1930 Dulwich Picture Gallery, until 17 February The Age of Enchantment: Beardsley, Dulac and their Contemporaries 1890–1930 Dulwich Picture Gallery, until 17 February Taste is strictly divided over the enchanted visions currently on view at Dulwich. It seems that people are rarely indifferent to this kind
La Cage aux Folles Menier Chocolate Factory The British Ambassador’s Belly Dancer Arcola Angry Young Man Trafalgar Studio La Cage aux Folles is a musical based on a classic comedy by Jean Poiret. Terry Johnson’s new version is perfectly agreeable. Nice sets, charming actors and the audience loved it. So what’s wrong? Well, the threadbare
No Country for Old Men 15, Nationwide No Country for Old Men, adapted by Joel and Ethan Coen from Cormac McCarthy’s novel, is not for the squeamish or easily spooked, or at least should not be for the squeamish and easily spooked. I am both — in spades — yet found it almost ecstatically absorbing.
The Adventures of Pinocchio Grand Theatre, Leeds It’s odd how, even if you try to ignore Christmas, it still manages to determine the shape of your end-of-year experiences. Three weeks ago, four days before Christmas Day, Opera North enterprisingly mounted the world première of Jonathan Dove’s 21st opera, Pinocchio. I haven’t seen any opera since,
By the time you read this I shall have watched two days of the 3rd Test between India and Australia at the WACA in Perth, and given a paper on how important good Church music is in the context of modern worship. Both events will not be without their political sides: the novelty of an
Lord Reith must be turning in his grave. Not with shock and horror, but in amazement that there are still moments on his beloved airwaves when you can imagine yourself back to the beginnings of the BBC, to a world without gizmos and celebrity knockouts and a time when broadcasters were confident enough of their
Foyle’s War is back on Sundays, sporadically, with Kingdom filling in the gaps on ITV. The BBC has followed Cranford with Lark Rise to Candleford, a series which makes the intervening Sense and Sensibility look harrowing by comparison. The danger to television is not dumbing-down but, on Sunday nights at least, a sort of down-filled
Among the serially misused words of our time — celebrity, passion, caring, genius — we must surely count ‘plantsman’. Thirty years ago, it was a term given only to exceptionally knowledgeable, enthusiastic and botanically inclined amateur or professional gardeners, as well as to particularly experienced and thoughtful nurserymen. However, in recent years, ‘plantsman’ or ‘plantswoman’
Life is too secure Security is a scary thing. I sometimes get the impression that my life, in so far as it is still my life, has been sealed in bubble wrap by major corporations and filed in a vault behind ten metres of steel. It is obvious, for example, that the only people now
