The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
‘I blame Princess Diana’, was my guest’s response to it all. Certainly, there is much we might lay at the feet of our long lamented People’s Princess, but I struggled to see how the current situation was her fault. The situation in question was as follows: a sizeable group of offended opera goers sought, with
Guillaume Tell Royal Opera House, in rep until 17 July There’s no such thing as a tasteful rape scene — or there certainly shouldn’t be. It’s an act of grossest violation, of primal violence. It’s also a reality — and a growing one at that — of contemporary warfare, a ‘weapon’ increasingly deployed strategically, coolly, by
In reply to Ann Baer, aged 101, of Richmond-on-Thames. Your handwriting, so perfect for its style And firmness, made me feel that this must be A brilliant schoolgirl. Hence my knowing smile At your comparing of my maple tree With Tennyson’s. But further down the page, And seemingly in passing, you revealed The
Ho hum. Bit icky. Not bad. Hardly dazzling. The lukewarm response to An Audience With Jimmy Savile has astonished me. This is the best docudrama I’ve seen on stage. From the early 1970s, Britain swooned before Savile. Marketing pollsters found him the country’s best-loved celeb (bar the Queen Mum). He enforced his influence by winning
In the last two decades of her life, Barbara Hepworth was a big figure in the world of art. A 21-foot bronze of hers stands outside the UN headquarters in New York, emblematic of her friendship with secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld — a Hepworth collector — and of her international fame. This was how a modern
Which of Wagner’s mature dramas is the most challenging, for performers and spectators? The one you’re seeing at the moment, seems to be the answer for me. The better I know them, the more apprehensive I get about whether I can rise to their level, and whether the performers can, and whether we can pace
‘Cringe!’ said Boy, after I’d exposed him to a few seconds of last week’s special nostalgia edition of TFI Friday. And he did have a point. From its once almost-daring name to its zany title graphics to its whatever-happened-to guest list (Shaun Ryder, Blur, Ewan McGregor), Chris Evans’s irredeemably Nineties game show now looks so
The writer and director Peter Bogdanovich has made three of my favourite films of all time (The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon, What’s Up, Doc?) but I don’t think I’ll be adding his latest, She’s Funny That Way, to the list. It’s a screwball comedy of the old school and, although it is slightly intriguing
It’s often not visual images that stimulate memory but a smell, a taste, the sound of pebbles crashing on to the beach, ice cream being scooped into a cone, seagulls circling overhead. Where was I when I first heard that sound? That’s why the National Trust (in association with the British Library sound archive) has
When Margaret Thatcher imagined perfect power, she thought of the orchestral conductor. ‘She envied me,’ said Herbert von Karajan, ‘that people always did what I requested.’ Power, however, is a mirage that fades as you get close. What Mrs Thatcher saw were the trappings, never the essence. Great conductors might get the glory, but someone
In its pomp, they used to say that what was good for General Motors, Detroit’s Medici, was good for America. Detroit was imperial. Like Rome, it stood for the whole. Michigan Avenue was like something from a Roman urbs: a decumanus maximus of this planned city that created and was enriched by the automobile. Then,
(For Karl) He doesn’t even bother to change out of his uniform, just goes straight to the pub after his walk in his red jacket and stays till late evening. He’s usually drunk by the time I get there — drunk and loud, but always pleased to see you. He must get through a
All hail Taylor Swift. How she must give baby boomers the fear. Not just baby boomers. Also those who came next, the Generation Xers, who seemed to define themselves culturally mainly via goatees, apathy and heroin. And my own rather listless, half-generation thereafter, with our bigger beards and binge-drinking. Taylor Swift makes us all look
Let’s face facts. Kirill Petrenko was no-one’s first choice as music director of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. His name came into the reckoning only after 124 orchestra members split fatally down the middle in an all-day election on May 11, half of them voting for the German favourite Christian Thielemann and the other half for
Last week festival goers were disappointed to learn that Foo Fighters had cancelled their headline slot at Glastonbury. While bookies were quick to offer odds on the different musical giants who could take their place at the music festival which takes places this weekend, the organisers ended up simply moving Florence and the Machine, who were already
There is a phrase that has been fashionable for years in wonkland — places like the upper echelons of the civil service and high-end think tanks. The phrase is ‘evidence-based policy-making’. There, I bet that’s got you going. When I was a citizen of wonkland and heard those words from the Sir Humphreys and Lady
L’acqua di Bonifazio This spa town sparkles on its hilltop: hydros, park For ballo liscio; stands For full dress orchestras, where guests remark On benefits for glands And organs as they feel the waters percolate, Diuretic. So, to springs Stiff couples waltz off to another date
I stole a blanket last night. Rather a nice one, in fact. I feel bad about it, of course, but guilt is less inconvenient than pneumonia; and after trying to blow-dry my waterlogged dinner jacket with the winds howling through Garsington Opera’s ‘airy’ pavilion, it seemed like pneumonia or the blanket were the options. Forgive
You’d think scientists might have realised by now that creating a race of super-robots is about as wise as opening a dinosaur park. Yet in Channel 4’s new sci-fi series Humans (Sunday), the manufacturers of the extremely lifelike cyber-servants known as ‘synths’ were weirdly confident that nothing could go wrong. Nor did it cross their
I often regret that I’m writing in the past tense here, but never more than about milonga. It is such a smash show in every way that by rights it would be having a six-month run where everyone can see it, rather than five measly days at the elite Sadler’s Wells dance theatre where people
We opera critics love gazing into crystal balls. We’re particularly good at discovering Ed Milibands and backing them to the hilt. Postwar opera is full of them. Take Hans Werner Henze. He was considered the future his entire life. Yet watching a presentation of two of his chamber operas at the Guildhall School of Music
Mr Holmes stars Ian McKellen as the great detective in his old age and while it could have proved a touching character study — who are you, not just when your mind starts to fail, but when the mind for which you are famed starts to fail? — it veers off in so many tedious
For nine years Patrick Marber has grappled with writer’s block (which by some miracle doesn’t affect his screenplay work), but the pipes are now ungummed and wallop! his new bolus of creativity splatters across the Dorfman stage. It’s a wordy three-hander set in the swamp of non-league football. Marber brilliantly captures the grubbiness and despairing
The award of a knighthood to the composer James MacMillan will have ruined last weekend for lots of unsavoury people: the Guardian arts desk, which decided he’d lost his mojo as soon as he turned his back on the left; Kirsty Wark, whose squawking is mimicked in MacMillan’s Scotch Bestiary; the SNP, which he detests;
Athens The air-raid siren howls Over the quiet, the un-rioting city. It’s just a drill. But the unearthly vowels Ululate the air, a thrill While for a moment everybody stops What they were about to do On the broken street, or in the slow shops, Or looks up for an answer Into the contrailled palimpsest
Look, could everyone please stop denigrating the Entourage movie for spurious reasons like ‘it feels like an extended episode of the TV series’? Since the US release a few weeks ago, critics across the Atlantic have booed and shamed writer and director Doug Ellin’s long-awaited reunion of Vinnie Chase and co for just that. As
After Jeremy Clarkson was suspended from Top Gear following a fracas with a show producer, reports soon emerged claiming Chris Evans would be his replacement. However, the radio host was quick to ‘categorically’ deny these reports: While Mr S had been more than happy to ‘discount’ his candidacy, it turns out that Evans should really never say
This post contains spoilers and discussion of the Season 5 Finale. My name is Kate Maltby, I’m a feminist, and I’m addicted to Game of Thrones. I’ve known I’ve had a problem for some time, really. It all started at the end of Season 3. Languidly cat-sitting for a friend (this is what all feminists do on our weekends),
James Turrell gave me extremely precise instructions. After dinner, I was to walk out through the grounds at Houghton Hall to the skyspace he has built. Here I should observe the gradual darkening above as brightness fell from the Norfolk air. At 9.40 p.m., I was to join him and the Marquess of Cholmondeley to
