19th century
The Paradise, Series Finale, BBC OneWednesday, 14 November 2012
The BBC has other things on its to-do list at the minute. However, once all the newly installed acting heads have been replaced by actual heads, and the matter of the ex-DG’s severance pay sufficiently chewed over by the Corporation’s bosom pals in... Read more... |
CD: The Hot 8 Brass Band - The Life & Times Of...Tuesday, 06 November 2012
It's sad, isn't it, that we still live in a world where the more something sounds like a great party, the less “serious” it is considered? Think about how much deep meaning is attached by how many to, say, the portentous mitherings of Thom Yorke,... Read more... |
Nosferatu, TR Warszawa and Teatr Narodowy, Barbican TheatreThursday, 01 November 2012
The famous count could not have a more theatrical pedigree if he tried. The great actor-manager Henry Irving – tall, preternaturally thin, with a fixed glare (due, apparently, to extreme myopia) and a grand manner which gave way, said Bernard Shaw,... Read more... |
Charley's Aunt, Menier Chocolate FactoryWednesday, 03 October 2012
A revival of an old play with a broad sense of fun and a turbo-charged role for a co-star of hit sitcom Gavin & Stacey? No, not One Man, Two Guvnors, but this well-dressed production of the classy 1892 farce by Brandon Thomas starring Mathew... Read more... |
Mademoiselle Julie, Barbican TheatreFriday, 21 September 2012
Let one visual artist and one fashion designer loose on a theatre production and you may find both set and costumes upstaging the actors. Laurent P. Berger has designed a Miers Van der Rohe-type modernist glass box, with luxurious white surfaces and... Read more... |
HysteriaMonday, 17 September 2012
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” It is a truth less universally acknowledged that a married woman in possession of a rich Victorian husband must be in want of a... Read more... |
Anna Karenina: The RaveThursday, 06 September 2012
A curtain rises at the start of Joe Wright’s thrilling film version of Anna Karenina only for the finish several hours later to be accompanied in time-honoured fashion by the words “the end”. But for all the deliberate theatrical artifice of a movie... Read more... |
Anna Karenina: The PanThursday, 06 September 2012
“You can’t ask why about love,” Aaron Johnson’s Count Vronsky croons tenderly to his beloved, pink lips peeking indecently out through his flasher’s mac of a moustache. Maybe you can’t, but you certainly can ask why you’d take a thousand-page... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Cameron Carpenter/ Znaider, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, ChaillySunday, 02 September 2012
I'd love to see the stats on the last time a Prom was this packed for an afternoon organ recital. Were it not for the fact that organist Cameron Carpenter was sporting spandex trousers encrusted in silver glitter, a wife beater and Mohawk, you... Read more... |
St John's Night, Jermyn Street TheatreMonday, 16 July 2012
Before Ibsen was, well, Ibsen, he had a successful career as a failed playwright. Producing works on a spectrum between unremarkable and outright bad, he muddled his way through to his late thirties when the publication of Brand derailed what might... Read more... |
Dandy Dick, Theatre Royal BrightonWednesday, 04 July 2012
"I can’t live without horse flesh, if it’s only a piece of cat’s meat on a skewer.” So declares Patricia Hodge’s gung-ho racing fanatic Georgina in this straight-down-the-line revival of Pinero’s 125-year-old caper, which requires cast and audience... Read more... |
Lady Windermere’s Fan, Royal Exchange, ManchesterTuesday, 22 May 2012
It’s ironic that Oscar Wilde should escape to the Lake District in 1891 to write a play satirising London society, his first success in the theatre. He took such a shine to the region’s place names that he used them for some of the characters –... Read more... |
