Michael Bullivant tells Petroc Trelawny how he became Bulawayo’s chief musical impresario For an extraordinary month in 1953, Bulawayo became the epicentre of culture in the southern hemisphere. In celebration of the centenary of the colonialist and diamond magnate Cecil Rhodes, the Royal Opera House and Sadlers Wells Ballet took up residence. Sir John Gielgud
Lloyd Evans wanders round Inner Temple and discovers another world in the tangle of squares Where’s the best place to eat lunch in London? First let’s strike restaurants off the list. At a restaurant your plate of recently throttled livestock will have been executed by a pimply sadist, cooked by a cursing psychopath and delivered
Katie Mitchell explains to Henrietta Bredin how she is creating a parallel film world with Purcell’s opera It is 350 years since Henry Purcell was born and his music is, gloriously, being played and sung all around the country. And there are a lot of different Didos about: Christopher Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage at
Andrew Lambirth talks to Paula Rego about the new museum dedicated to her and the politics behind her work Paula Rego is an artist working at the height of her powers, internationally celebrated and with a museum dedicated to her about to open in her native Portugal. It’s been a long climb to this pinnacle
Henrietta Bredin talks to Jonathan Pryce about the difficulties he found with Athol Fugard’s Dimetos It is the end of a long day of rehearsal and Jonathan Pryce is sitting patiently at a scrubbed wooden table strewn with water glasses and roughly carved dishes, behind him a tangle of ropes and pulleys slung from an
Lloyd Evans visits the NoFit State Circus in Wales and watches an unusual rehearsal T here are lots of things you can’t do any more. Smoke in a pub. Buy a video recorder. Trust the bloke who runs your bank. And you can’t run away to the circus either. These days the wannabe stilt-walker or
It’s 20 years since the Berlin Wall came down. William Cook on the city’s changing face On the west bank of the River Spree, beside the old route of the Berlin Wall, there is a building which sums up the strange renaissance of this wonderful, awful city. The Hamburger Bahnhof used to be a train
Mary Wakefield meets Niamh Cusack and finds an actress full of contradictions It’s oddly exciting, upstairs at the Old Vic: there are actresses rushing to rehearsal; the burble of PR ladies schmoozing the press; the sense of a curtain about to rise. A bright new play. I smile, look around hopefully for my interviewee-to-be, the
Henrietta Bredin talks to the baritone Gerald Finley about how he portrays ‘the destroyer of worlds’ At precisely 5.30 a.m. on Monday 16 July 1945 the world entered the nuclear age. The first atomic bomb exploded in a searing flash of light and a vast mushroom cloud unfurled in the skies above New Mexico. ‘Now
Steven Berkoff admits to Lloyd Evans that, despite his reputation, he’s not tough at all On the waterfront. This, literally, is where I meet Steven Berkoff to discuss his stage adaptation of the classic Fifties movie. Berkoff’s east London office is a sumptuous, spotlessly clean apartment with wraparound views of the grey-green Thames. He strolls
A new arts centre with no public subsidy? Henrietta Bredin talks to its founder Peter Millican Let’s get one thing out of the way immediately — King’s (with an apostrophe) Cross in London is the location for the new and very splendid mixed-use office building and performance space, Kings Place, which has no business letting
Director Lindsay Posner finds something primal and truly disturbing in Arthur Miller’s play The day’s rehearsal is about to commence. The actors sit or stand around chatting, telling anecdotes, prevaricating, pouring one last cup of coffee — anything to avoid the moment when they have to begin committing emotionally and psychologically to Arthur Miller’s text.
Henrietta Bredin talks to Ian McDiarmid about turning a novel set in Scotland into a play Ian McDiarmid possesses a voice that, if he chose to let it, could curdle milk. Half-strangled and poisonously clotted it emerges in an evil flow in his portrayal of the Emperor Palpatine in the Star Wars films. As Satan
Andrew Lambirth looks forward to some great exhibitions in the year ahead There’s a very full year’s viewing ahead to cheer the eye and gladden the heart however bleak the financial prospects. For a start, the National Gallery is mounting a major exhibition focusing on the fascinating relationship that Picasso had with the art of
Ronald Blythe examines William Blake’s influence on the work of the 19th-century artist Samuel Palmer Samuel Palmer was in his early twenties when he wrote in his notebook, ‘The Glories of Heaven might be tried — hymns sung among the hills of Paradise at eventide…’ As a subject for a painting he means. Just before
Damian Thompson says we can learn a lot about Beethoven if we look beyond the symphonies Beethoven Unwrapped is the title of the year-long musical celebration marking the opening of Kings Place, the new ‘creative centre’ at King’s Cross. But does Beethoven, of all composers, need unwrapping? The answer is yes, more than ever, if
Saul Steinberg: Illuminations Dulwich Picture Gallery, until 15 February 2009 Cartoons & Coronets: The Genius of Osbert Lancaster The Wallace Collection, until 11 January 2009 Saul Steinberg (1914–99) was born in Romania and studied architecture in 1930s Milan. His first cartoons appeared in 1936 and he began to build a reputation, despite the threat of
Carolyn Bartholomew talks to Tilda Swinton, an actor who has made a career out of being unconventional Tilda Swinton is undoubtedly one of the great artists of her generation, although it is only relatively recently that she has become more conspicuous with mainstream films such as The Chronicles of Narnia and Michael Clayton (for which
Selina Mills on how some newly discovered tapes give us a glimpse into the life of Agatha Christie One hot summer’s afternoon in London, when I was five or six, I was sent to the garden of our house in Chelsea, rather than attending a birthday party, to contemplate a naughty deed. I can’t remember
Danny Kruger explains how his theatre company helps offenders to go straight Felicia ‘Snoop’ Pearson was a drug dealer, with a five-year stretch for murder behind her and no nice future ahead. But then a random meeting in a Baltimore nightclub, with an actor in the hit TV show The Wire, led to a starring