When Max Ernst was asked by an American artist to define surrealism at a New York gathering of exiles in the early 1940s, he pointed across the room at André Breton and said: ‘That is surrealism.’ Even today it can seem as if no other answer is available, so tenacious was his grip. A former
Grade: B- Given that Carrie and Corin are now in their fifties and one of them has settled down with a nice man, this is perhaps less Riot Grrl than Riot Lladies Who Lunch. You cannot expect fury to sustain itself for 30 years, not least when your band has long since ceased being an
Strange title, Juno and the Paycock. Sean O’Casey’s family drama is about a hard-pressed Dublin matriarch, Juno, whose husband Jack ‘the paycock’ Boyle refuses to support his family and spends all day drinking with his penniless cronies. The producers have labelled the show an ‘Irish masterpiece’, which raises the bar. Mark Rylance plays Jack as
It’s rare nowadays to see a new opera production that’s set in the period that the composer and librettist intended, but they do occasionally come along. In the case of Leonard Bernstein’s operas Trouble in Tahiti and A Quiet Place, the time and place are basically the whole plot. Trouble in Tahiti dates from 1951;
For most of my adult life, clever, well-read, feminist women have told me how much they love Jilly Cooper. It therefore came as a bit of shock when I finally tried her novels for myself and found what they contained. There is, for example, no mistaking Jilly’s scorn for women who are fat and/or hairy,
The Apprentice is a dramatised biopic of Donald Trump, covering his early business years. He has called the film ‘FAKE and CLASSLESS’ and ‘garbage’ – but he wishes it well. I’m pulling your leg. ‘It will hopefully “bomb”,’ he has said. He hasn’t seen it, as far as anyone knows – I wish I could
I think I’m through with Hofesh Shechter, and that’s a pity, because earlier work of his such as Political Mother thrilled me with its unedited passion and energy. But after several duds and misfires, I feel that with Theatre of Dreams he’s run out of ideas and hit a dead end. The title suggests what’s
It doesn’t matter which dictionary you consult, they all agree on what a song is: words, set to music, that are sung. Yet it’s also an entirely inadequate description, since there are so many types of song. Take David Gilmour and Neil Finn, both men of passing years who like to switch between electric and
