The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Premièred within two years of each other, Luchino Visconti’s film and Benjamin Britten’s opera Death in Venice both take Thomas Mann’s novella as their starting point. But from shared beginnings the two works diverge dramatically. The cloying visual beauty of the film, its pink-and-grey vision of Venice swaddled in Mahler strings, couldn’t be further from
‘I like not knowing why I like it,’ declared Fiona Shaw, the actress, about Georgia O’Keeffe’s extraordinary blast of colour, ‘Lake George, Coat and Red’. O’Keeffe was inspired by the lake in upstate New York but there’s no discernible lake on the canvas and no coat, although there is plenty of red. When Shaw is
Dear Evan Hansen, by Steven Levenson, opens as a standard American teen-angst musical. Evan is a sweaty geek with a crush on Zoe Murphy whose rebellious brother, Connor, is so disturbed that he styles his hair to suggest ‘school-shooter chic’. Evan tries to befriend Connor but gets shoved to the ground. Then, a bombshell. Connor
Anybody who watched the opening episode of The Baby Has Landed (BBC2, Wednesday) might have found themselves wondering if the patriarchy is quite as all-powerful as it’s cracked up to be. The programme follows ‘six families over six life-changing weeks’ as they welcome a new member — and on the whole features women who radiate
It’s morning in the garden of William Christie, and he’s talking about home improvements. ‘I planted three pines up there actually,’ he says, pointing. ‘One blew over in a storm in ’99. But I was able to plant on both sides and create a vista. It’s getting there.’ He gestures across topiary and lawns and
One of the most extraordinary paintings in the exhibition of work by Craigie Aitchison at Piano Nobile (96–129 Portland Road, W11) is entitled ‘Georgeous Macauley in Blue against a Red Background’ (1968). It depicts the sitter, a Nigerian who was Aitchison’s favourite model of the 1960s and ’70s, wearing a peaked cap and double-breasted jacket.
When the RSC does modern drama it usually lays on an ultra-worthy yarn with a huge cast, dozens of fancy costumes and a three-hour running time. Miraculously, its new co-production with the Arcola avoids these faults and delivers a terse, gripping 75-minute documentary drama based on the prison diary of Turkish journalist, Can Dundar. In
In every respect bar its austere pews, the Union Chapel is one of the best venues in London: beautiful and atmospheric, it encourages concert-goers to listen rather than chat. There’s no bringing in booze from the bar, so you’re not disturbed by people going hither and thither (though the couple next to me had smuggled
Billy Wilder, asked for his opinion of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical version of his movie Sunset Boulevard, famously replied: ‘Those boys hit on a great idea. They didn’t change a thing.’ I don’t think you could say exactly that about Netia Jones’s new staging of Philip Glass’s Orphée, a piece that takes the script of
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge recently met with survivors of national disasters. They were attending the launch of a new charity. The Duke made a short, supportive speech. But much more important was the private time he and the Duchess spent with the survivors. As Lord Dannatt, who was hosting the public meeting said:
Heinrich Schliemann had always hoped he’d find Homer’s Troy. Although he had no archaeological background to speak of, he did have money, and spades, and in the 1870s this would do. Tipped off as to the probable location of the ancient citadel — beneath Hisarlik on the west coast of modern Turkey — the Prussian
Batsford has just brought out a huge tome on Nova — ‘one of the most influential magazines in history’ — compiled by two of the magazine’s star art directors, David Hillman and Harri Peccinotti. It covers the ten years that the magazine existed, 1965 to 1975, and focuses on the brilliant and groundbreaking layouts it
I enjoyed watching the new Netflix epic, The King, which celebrated the brief life of Henry V. And it wasn’t just because of Robert Pattinson’s ‘Allo ‘Allo French accent in portraying the Dauphin. What gave me the most pleasure as I watched the French cavalry fall beneath a blizzard of arrows at Agincourt was the
Grade: B– Deutsche Grammophon have decided that Daniil Trifonov’s new Rachmaninov piano concertos with the Philadephia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin are a railway journey. The video trailer offers no explanation — but, boy, they certainly threw some cash at their conceit. The pianist is dressed like a Russian anarchist, wandering wild-eyed through a railway carriage.
‘Come up and see my Schieles.’ Those were the words that ended a friend’s fledgling relationship with an art collector. One evening looking at Egon Schiele’s skinny naked scarecrows was enough. Staging Schiele, a one-act dance piece by choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh, is unsettlingly faithful to the spirit of Schiele’s art. If the skin creeps, if
The Antipodes, by the acclaimed dramatist Annie Baker, is set in a Hollywood writers’ room. Seven hired scribblers are brainstorming a new animated feature under the direction of a mysterious, bearded multimillionaire, Sandy, who seems thoroughly bored with the movie-making process. The script is in its early stages and Sandy decrees that the central character
Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story is a drama about the breakdown of a marriage and it is, at times, devastatingly painful. ‘Divorce,’ says a lawyer at one point, ‘is like a death without a body.’ It’s certainly not the most fun you’ll ever have at the cinema — although it is witty and there are some
It was created in November 1957, a year before the BBC’s fabled Radiophonic Workshop, and was far more influential in shaping the development of electronic music, yet the Polish Radio Experimental Studio (PRES) is now virtually unknown even in Poland. Radio 3’s feature on Sunday night, Poles Apart (produced by Andrew Carter), made the case
Some last taboos, it seems, can remain last taboos no matter how frequently they’re confronted. Grief, the menopause, masturbation, mental illness are all routinely described that way whenever they get depicted on television — i.e. quite often. But perhaps the sturdiest last taboo of the lot is that older women can have sexual feelings: something
In 2011 Britain’s first skyscraper was finally given Grade I listing. The citation for 55 Broadway — the Gotham City-ish home of Transport for London, which sprouts up from St James’s Park Station — said that the building was important in a number of ways: its architect Charles Holden, the designer of Senate House and
There’s a book about musicals that every opera lover should read. Not Since Carrie by Ken Mandelbaum is a history of musical theatre’s greatest flops: a comprehensive study of the thousand ways in which a collaborative artform can crash and burn. It’s unbelievable stuff. The Broadway cast of 1961’s Kwamina participated in a voodoo ritual
In the unlikely event that Bruce Hornsby and Morten Harket, A-ha’s singer, ended up featuring in the Daily Mail for, I don’t know, getting into a fight in a supermarket over the last luxury Scotch egg, they would be described as ‘“The Way It Is” hitmaker’ and ‘the “Take on Me” star’. In neither case,
What makes someone become a pop star? Sometimes, it’s true, pop stardom arrives by accident, and its recipient responds not with joy, but horror. More often, though, pop stardom is sought, sometimes to make up for things that are missing in life, and the newly minted star embraces all the benefits fame brings, until those
As you enter the forecourt of the Royal Academy, you see them. A row of artistic titans, carved in stone, peer down from their alcoves in the higher half of the gallery’s façade. Thanks to the name plaques, they’re easily identified. You can see Pheidias, the genius of the Parthenon; Leonardo and Raphael; Sir Christopher
I went to the Battle of Ideas at the Barbican last weekend, a free speech festival organised by the Brexit party MEP Claire Fox, and listened to an interesting discussion about Life of Brian. The Monty Python film is exactly 40 years old, having been released in the UK on 8 November 1979. The opinion
The hammering downpour before the last round in Batumi was, in retrospect, a precious omen. After all, England’s medal drought in international team competitions has lasted nearly 20 years. This year our rain dances finally took effect, as we brought home the bronze medals from the European Team Championship last week. It’s our second major