Scotland
Peter Pan, Barbican TheatreFriday, 14 May 2010
“All over the world children are safe – but not here, not on my ship.” Despite its wild pack of homeless children, a flesh-eating crocodile and some of the most gut-punching depictions of parental grief in all literature, J M Barrie’s Peter Pan has... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Glasgow: Glasgow International Festival of Visual ArtSunday, 18 April 2010
During my two-day whistlestop tour of various galleries and arts venues across Glasgow, I’m afraid I didn’t spot one white bike. There are, apparently, 50 of them that punters are free to use for the two-week duration of the city’s second biennial... Read more... |
Paolo Nutini, Royal Albert HallSunday, 11 April 2010
Earlier this week, when the line-up for Richard Thompson’s Meltdown festival was announced, one name in particular will surely have raised a few eyebrows: Paolo Nutini. Among the appearances by serious old folkies and earnest young Wainwrights and... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Artist Douglas GordonSaturday, 10 April 2010
Since winning the Turner Prize in 1996 with Confessions of a Justified Sinner, Douglas Gordon (b. 1966) has lived in Germany, France, New York and Germany again. But in accent and attitude, he remains a Glaswegian. Those roots are being reaffirmed... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Donald RunniclesSaturday, 20 March 2010
Who's the greatest living British exponent of the late Romantic repertoire? Many would say Edinburgh-born conductor Donald Runnicles (b. 1954). Runnicles has spent the last 30 years quietly forging a formidable name for himself abroad, first, as a... Read more... |
Karine Polwart, Roxy Art House, EdinburghFriday, 12 March 2010
If ever there was a classic case of artist and audience meeting on terribly comfortable ground, Karine Polwart's performance at last night’s fundraiser for the Green Party was it. Held in a beautiful converted church, there was more than a trace of... Read more... |
Dunsinane, RSC/Hampstead TheatreThursday, 18 February 2010
Scottish playwright David Greig’s new play, for the Royal Shakespeare Company in their London season at Hampstead, picks up where Shakespeare’s Macbeth left off (almost). We are in 11th-century Dunsinane, the seat of power in Scotland. Macbeth (... Read more... |
Off Kilter, BBC TwoWednesday, 10 February 2010
Fife, like Scotland itself, is a mass of contradictions compressed into a relatively small space: beautiful beaches lie in the shadow of lowering tower blocks; the pink, plump prosperity of St Andrews rubs against the scar tissue of former mining... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Playwright David GreigSaturday, 06 February 2010
A new play by David Greig opens at the Hampstead Theatre for the Royal Shakespeare Company next week. A theatre director as well as playwright, Greig (b. 1969) is one of the most prolific and artistically ambitious playwrights of his generation and... Read more... |
Lucia di Lammermoor, ENOThursday, 04 February 2010
Is Donizetti's fustian operatic mash-up of Sir Walter Scott worth staging seriously? On CD, stupenda Sutherland and divina Callas continue to give us goosebumps with their darting, florid stabs at poor mad Lucia. If the difficult-to-achieve match of... Read more... |
Interview: Jonathan Meades, Auteur-at-LargeTuesday, 26 January 2010
In his forbidding dark suit and heavy-framed sunglasses, declaiming his artfully wrought texts to camera with the ominous certainty of a hanging judge, Jonathan Meades is one of TV’s most unmistakable presences. While it may be lamentable that we... Read more... |
War and Peace, Theatre Royal, GlasgowFriday, 22 January 2010
Two hundred costumes, over 60 solo roles and the world premiere of a great operatic composer's first thoughts: it's a task which would daunt the best-resourced opera company in the world. The fact that Prokofiev's initial, 11-scene meditation on... Read more... |
