Ben Whishaw sits unrecognised, wearing a black T-shirt and drinking red wine in a dark corner of the Royal Court’s café. He has just come off stage from rehearsing Mike Bartlett’s new play Cock — in which he plays a chap who takes a break from his boyfriend and accidentally meets the girl of his
The Sacred Made Real: Spanish Painting & Sculpture 1600–1700 National Gallery, until 24 January 2010 If Spanish 17th-century painting and sculpture don’t immediately appeal to you, be prepared to try the new show at the National Gallery — it’s a revelation. I was brought up in the Church of England and used rather to look
The Rise and Fall of Little Voice Vaudeville Life is a Dream Donmar Midnight in a northern slum. The pubs have closed and a boozy, blousy, past-it single mum is trying to seduce a handsome young talent scout. He deters her advances until he hears her teenage daughter, alone in her bedroom, singing jazz classics.
Twelfth Night Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon It’s a welcome refreshment after the RSC’s recent dramatisations of hard drinking and mass starvation in Russia to be landed on the sun-soaked coast of Mediterranean Illyria, and especially so in the company of a new and exquisitely beguiling Viola. Director Gregory Doran has been to much scholarly trouble in
An Education 12A, Nationwide An Education is based on the memoir by the journalist and interviewer Lynn Barber, with a screenplay by Nick Hornby, and, although the word from all the various festivals has been that it is wonderful, I know you will not believe it unless you hear it from me so here you
The Turn of the Screw English National Opera L’heure espagnole; Gianni Schicchi Royal Opera House Each time I see Britten’s The Turn of the Screw I am more impressed by the brilliance of the music, and more irritated by the unprofitable ambiguities of the drama. The first revival at the Coliseum of David McVicar’s stunningly
The new Wexford Opera House has certainly raised the profile of opera in Ireland. You cannot argue with a prize-winning building that is one of just four large purpose-built opera auditoriums in these islands, alongside Glyndebourne, Covent Garden and the Wales Millennium Centre. Built with Irish taxpayers’ money, it would be a sick Irish joke
I have just inherited my College’s collection of long-playing records, now redundant, with permission to retain, give away, otherwise dispose of if and as possible. I have just inherited my College’s collection of long-playing records, now redundant, with permission to retain, give away, otherwise dispose of if and as possible. The cumbrous piles, gradually easing
Wonderland: The British in Bed (BBC2, Thursday) consists of long periods of boredom interrupted by moments of extreme embarrassment. The notion is to get couples — old, young, black, Sikh, gay — to sit up in bed next to each other, in nighties and jimjams, and talk about their lives as partners. Presumably, the notion
‘I want people to feel quite shocked,’ said Professor Tanya Byron in her opening lecture for Radio Three’s annual Free Thinking festival. ‘I want people to feel quite shocked,’ said Professor Tanya Byron in her opening lecture for Radio Three’s annual Free Thinking festival. This year’s theme is the 21st-century family and Byron, the clinical
