The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
The pantomime, we’re often told, exists in no culture but Britain’s. Maybe we should look a bit harder. The Wizard of Oz is a children’s fantasy, epic in form, comic in idiom, populated by folksy stereotypes, which uses the metaphor of a journey to present a mythical clash between good and evil. It ends with
A young aristocrat and the daughter of a banished duke fall in love at a wrestling contest. Both are forced from court by family intrigue, and take refuge in the same enchanted forest. She recognises him, but not vice versa, since to avert assault she has disguised herself as a boy. Confusions ensue. Stephen Unwin’s
We critics know everything about the theatre. We see the best shows, we get the finest seats in the house and we’re occasionally treated to a fuming glass of vin ordinaire to lubricate our ruminations. And yet what do we really know? We critics know everything about the theatre. We see the best shows, we
Richard Bean is a creative nomad, a pix-and-mix sort of playwright who lights on subjects seemingly at random. He’s written about Brussels, racism, agriculture, social mobility and trawlermen. Now he’s taken on climate change and he’s hit the mark with delicious accuracy. This is his best play so far. The Heretic is set in a
An elderly stranger on a Jamaican train bets a young US Navy cadet that his lighter won’t light ten times in a row. If it does, the stranger’s Cadillac is his. If not, he forfeits the little finger of his left hand. The cadet accepts. Wouldn’t you? An elderly stranger on a Jamaican train bets
Forty years ago kids assumed that when they grew up they’d fly to Mars. They didn’t expect to find a world that was too scared to turn on a lightbulb. Forty years ago kids assumed that when they grew up they’d fly to Mars. They didn’t expect to find a world that was too scared
The teeny-weeny Bush Theatre is grappling with the monster of the free schools debate. In Little Platoons by Steve Waters the issues are laid out rather simplistically, naively even, which is perhaps just as well with undereducated dimwits from London comps, like me, in the audience. The pivotal character is a disaffected music teacher, Rachel,
The Almeida relishes its specialist status. The boss, Michael Attenborough, isn’t keen on celebrity casting because he wants ‘the theatre to be the star’. It’s a niche operation for purists and connoisseurs, for seekers and searchers, and for those who can spell Verfremdungseffekt without having to check (as I just had to) what the penultimate
An all-Hall haul this week. Sir Peter directs his daughter Rebecca in Twelfth Night at the National. This traditional and very fetching production opens in a sort of Elizabethan rock-star mansion where Orsino (Marton Csokas) lounges on a carved throne, in Lemmy locks and Ozzy cape, intoning the play’s gorgeous opening lyrics. Then the plot
Gently does it. The Fitzrovia Radio Hour takes us back to the droll and elegant world of light entertainment in the 1940s when the airwaves were full of racy detective shows and overheated melodramas about pushy Yorkshiremen and rogue Nazis. The show is set in a radio studio during a live performance and we watch
There’s gold out there. The search for lost masterpieces beguiles many a theatrical impresario but with it comes the danger that the thrill of the chase may convert a spirit of honest exploration into an obtuse reverence for the quarry. There’s gold out there. The search for lost masterpieces beguiles many a theatrical impresario but
It’s that time of year. The great reckoning is upon us. Insurance is being renewed. Tax returns are being ferreted out. Roofing jobs are being appraised and budgeted for. And spouses are being trundled into central London for the annual session of dialysis at the theatre. It’s that time of year. The great reckoning is
Michael Grandage, boss of the Donmar, is a most unusual director. He has no ideas. His rivals go in for party-theme, concept-album, pop-video Shakespeare (provincial folksiness in metropolitan disguise), but Grandage just goes in for Shakespeare. He arrives with no prejudices or pieties, only solutions. He’s the bard’s delivery boy. His current production of King
Deceptively attractive. Romeo and Juliet tempts directors and leads them on while keeping all its false doors and secret pitfalls out of view. Rupert Goold’s RSC production is two fifths good and three fifths indifferent. A respectable score. This lovely, tricky and rather silly play isn’t the work of a genius but of a jobbing
His brain clouded with opium fumes, Jean Cocteau wrote Les Parents Terribles in just one week. It opens like a Greek tragedy crossed with a madcap sitcom. The ageing beauty Yvonne prances around her Bohemian apartment pining and weeping for her son, Michael, who has gone missing. When he turns up safe and sound, she
Christmas approaches. And kitchens and playrooms across the land resound with the joyous tinkle of little Josephs and Marys rehearsing their roles in the Nativity play. My four-year-old son, making his debut in a farmyard cameo, has just one line, ‘I’m a donkey and I’m very tired,’ which he repeats endlessly to the delight of
The Nobel prize is nothing. The real badge of literary greatness is the addition of the ‘esque’ suffix to one’s name and, if you’re truly outstanding, the word ‘nightmare’, too. Franz Kafka manages this distinguished double, although some readers find the connotations of horror arise not so much from his totalitarian dystopias as from his
Ed Hall, boss of the Hampstead theatre, places before our consideration a new play by Athol Fugard. The gong-grabbing, apartheid-drubbing South African author creates dramas that are rich in humanity and compassion, filled with curiosity about the architecture of suffering, and distinguished by flights of poetic soulfulness. And by God, they’re dull. Fugard doesn’t do
As Iraq fades from view so does our outrage at the crimes it provoked. Three monologues by Judith Thompson may cure our amnesia. Forgetting atrocities is an essential preliminary to repeating them. We meet a girl soldier (based on Lynndie England although not identified as her), who faces trial for brutalising prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
It’s noisy here in the bar at the Old Vic; the air is teeming with thespy gossip and laughter and clinking glasses. It’s noisy here in the bar at the Old Vic; the air is teeming with thespy gossip and laughter and clinking glasses. I’m sitting in a corner with the actress Rachael Stirling, who
A wretched, stinking, mouldy, crumbling slice of old Glasgae toon has dropped on to the Lyttelton stage. Ena Lamont Stewart’s play, Men Should Weep, is an enthralling act of homage to her slum childhood and it follows the travails of the Morrison family, all nine of them, wedged into two filthy rooms in Glasgow’s east
I couldn’t wait for this one. Nina Raine’s debut play Rabbit was a blast. With exquisite scalpel-work she dissected the romantic entanglements of a quartet of posh young professionals. Her new effort, Tribes, opens on similar terrain. A family of bourgeois Londoners are seated around the dinner table punishing each other with rhetorical flick-knives. Dad
Thank God for the critics. All failings can be laid at their door. Robert Lindsay appeared on a telly sofa last week to repudiate the shirtier reviews of Onassis. ‘It’s not a critic play,’ he said. And I wondered if ‘critic’ had changed grammatical species and become an adjective meaning ‘good’. The show has its
Regime change at Hampstead Theatre. The era of special measures is over and Ed Hall, son of Sir Peter, has taken charge. Hall’s debut show is daring in its complete lack of audacity. Regime change at Hampstead Theatre. The era of special measures is over and Ed Hall, son of Sir Peter, has taken charge.
Who’s my favourite stage actress? Since you ask, Olivia Williams in Shakespeare and Nancy Carroll in anything. Who’s my favourite stage actress? Since you ask, Olivia Williams in Shakespeare and Nancy Carroll in anything. Currently, she’s starring in the weirdest show I’ve ever seen at the Almeida in Islington. Weird because it’s so predictable. The
‘We’re a beastly family, and I hate us!’ laments Sorel Bliss in Hay Fever. And at first it seems all four Blisses share that sentiment. ‘We’re a beastly family, and I hate us!’ laments Sorel Bliss in Hay Fever. And at first it seems all four Blisses share that sentiment. Each has invited a guest
Let’s talk about Tucker. The Beeb’s mockumentary The Thick of It has been hailed as a brilliantly incisive glimpse into the corridors of power, and its diabolical protagonist, the scheming spin-merchant Malcolm Tucker, is regarded as a hilarious portrait of a modern political propagandist. That’s one view, anyway. Maybe I’ve got a blind spot. Maybe
Clybourne Park Royal Court, until 2 October Tiny Kushner Tricycle, until 25 September Bash the bourgeoisie is a game the Royal Court likes playing and I’m always keen to join in. Bruce Norris, a brilliant American satirist, delighted us a few years back with The Pain and the Itch, a hilarious exposure of middle-class hypocrisy.
Counted? County Hall, until 22 May The Real Thing Old Vic, until 5 June Voting is so irrational as to qualify as an act of religious devotion. The process involves a fabulous confluence of approximations. Candidates offer a pattern of promises. Voters select the pattern that most closely meets their needs. And though there may