politics
Shellsuit, Dublin Castle, CamdenTuesday, 03 August 2010
During the 1980s, a major artistic response to the Conservative government came in the form of a sustained surge in music that was, on some level at least, politically engaged. Not necessarily in the classic agitprop manner either. For every band... Read more... |
Arts Council spared - but UK Film Council is to goTuesday, 27 July 2010The Arts Council of England has escaped the government axe - unlike the UK Film Council. Reports over the past week or two paint a grim picture of diminishing arts budgets in Scotland, Wales and England while the Conservative-Lib Dem Government... Read more... |
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Chichester Festival TheatreMonday, 26 July 2010
If you could boil down Robert Tressell’s brilliant socialist novel to a single observation, it would be that rich people do nothing, while the poor work their (ragged-trousered) arses off. So it’s a very clever conceit on the part of Howard... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Milan: The Farce of Romeo and Juliet at La ScalaSunday, 25 July 2010
How often has one sat at a first night at the opera or ballet, groaning at missed cues, horrors with costumes, disasters with lighting: one thinks they should surely have got it right by this time? And the rest of the evening is somehow... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Playwright Howard BrentonSaturday, 17 July 2010
Political playwright Howard Brenton (b. 1942) is always in the process of being "rediscovered". Yet at the same time he has been at the heart of British theatrical life for the past 40 years, since his debut in 1969 with Christie in Love. True, he... Read more... |
Welcome to Thebes, National TheatreWednesday, 23 June 2010
“Tragedy reminds us how to live,” declares Moira Buffini’s democratically elected heroine, Eurydice. It’s a reminder the playwright herself and her latest work, Welcome to Thebes, is eager to provide. Following on the well-worn heels of last season’... Read more... |
Frost on Satire, BBC FourThursday, 17 June 2010
Remarkably, the most provocative moments in Sir David Frost's survey of TV satire were supplied by his own early-Sixties show, That Was The Week That Was, when he was still an oily young upstart on the make. The BBC's Director General himself had... Read more... |
Peckham Finishing School For Girls, BBC ThreeThursday, 17 June 2010
We know the format: take a bunch of posh, privileged types - held up as examples of cluelessness when it comes to how “ordinary” people live by privileged, overpaid TV executives - and plonk them down in the middle of some dodgy council estate.... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Rome: Orchestral Manoeuvres on the Dark SideSaturday, 12 June 2010
One of the downsides of the international media’s obsession with the crimes and misdemeanours of Silvio Berlusconi and his make-it-up-as-you-go-along style of government is that anything that doesn’t fit in with the overall narrative of the crazed,... Read more... |
Women Without MenFriday, 11 June 2010
Shirin Neshat's often compelling Women Without Men spirits us back to Tehran 1953, and the political atmosphere surrounding the British- and American-supported coup that deposed Iran’s first democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh... Read more... |
Art Gallery: Rude Britannia - British Comic ArtThursday, 10 June 2010
There’s a rich vein of comic and satirical humour that runs through British art. Hogarth set the trend in the mid-1700s and heralded a golden age of graphic satirists. These included the three masters of the form: Gillray, Rowlandson and Cruickshank... Read more... |
Rude Britannia: British Comic Art, Tate BritainWednesday, 09 June 2010
Satire, like roast beef, is what Brits are famous for and this exhibition takes us right back to its earliest days in graphic print. In the 1600s, Dutch allegorical prints were adapted by British printmakers to comment on contemporary issues and one... Read more... |
