Arts feature

Why it’s important

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

Her dark materials

Mary Wakefield talks to Eileen Atkins about acting as an out-of-body experience. Eileen Atkins opens in The Sea at the Theatre Royal Haymarket on 23 January. The Eileen Atkins experience — the word ‘interview’ doesn’t even begin to describe it — starts for me at about 3.30 on a brilliant, sunny afternoon in December. There

Take another look at Millais

Andrew Lambirth urges those who think they don’t like this artist to go and see this show Last chance to see this large and lavish retrospective of the most famous of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Millais (Tate Britain, until 13 January). The Tate confidently asserts that John Everett Millais (1829–96) was the ‘greatest’ of the association