World War Two
Privates on Parade, Noël Coward TheatreTuesday, 11 December 2012
It’s brash, jolly, stuffed with wildly politically incorrect language, double entendres and spoof-laden song and dance. But beneath its brightly painted face, its stockings, suspenders and corsets, its uniforms and bravado, Peter Nichols’ 1977... Read more... |
Black-Out Ballet: The Invisible Woman of British BalletTuesday, 11 December 2012
In 2006 an elderly dancer died in Bexhill-on-Sea, Sussex. She was 88, and had once been one of Britain's most recognised ballerinas. Why did she die in obscurity? Why is the great ballet company that she ran now a forgotten name? This was what I set... Read more... |
At Your Service: The Birth of Privates on ParadeSaturday, 01 December 2012
It was in Singapore in 1947 that my real education began. For the first time I read Lawrence, Forster, Virginia Woolf, Melville, Graham Greene and Bernard Shaw’s political works, becoming a lifelong Leftie. When Stanley Baxter explained... Read more... |
Goodnight Mister Tom, Phoenix TheatreWednesday, 28 November 2012
Love and loneliness, broken homes and broken hearts, child abuse and communities clinging on through war... This adaptation of Michelle Magorian's children's book treats the darkest and most difficult of themes with a firm but tender touch,... Read more... |
The Promise, Trafalgar StudiosTuesday, 20 November 2012
An expert cast delivers on their promise in Aleksei Arbuzov's triangular Russian drama from 1965 of the same name, which offers up war and peace and the shifting tides of love. There's so much of the last, in fact, that Alex Sims's production at... Read more... |
Photo Gallery: They That Are LeftSunday, 11 November 2012
For the past 10 years Brian David Stevens has been taking photographic portraits of veterans on Remembrance Sunday. The images play on the notion of the unknown soldier. Each subject is portrayed without the distinguishing marks of regiment or rank... Read more... |
To Rome With LoveTuesday, 11 September 2012
Woody Allen plays tour operator (yet again) in the excruciating To Rome With Love, and the result is not a pretty sight. Oh, sure, the Eternal City looks great, in the manner of one of those vibrant, come-hither videos that one might expect at a... Read more... |
The Best of Men, BBC TwoFriday, 17 August 2012
Lucy Gannon is the doyenne of drama-lite. Anyone who has seen Bramwell or Soldier, Soldier or Peak Practice will know her scripts, no matter how much suffering the characters undergo, will leave the viewer feeling better.... Read more... |
theartsdesk Olympics: Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia!Saturday, 21 July 2012
It was Lenin who realised early in the Russian Revolution that “of all the arts, film is for us the most important” and Hitler and Goebbels perceived the immense propaganda potential of the Olympics through the medium of film. The 1936 Olympic Games... Read more... |
Yael Bartana: And Europe Will Be Stunned, Artangel at Hornsey Town HallMonday, 28 May 2012
In the cool, dim, municipal modernist interior of Hornsey Town Hall you’re confronted with a neon sign: And Europe Will be Stunned. It's the title of the trilogy of films at the heart of this Artangel-commissioned show by Israel-born Yael... Read more... |
Hitler's Children, BBC TwoThursday, 24 May 2012
Did Magda Goebbels do her children a favour by murdering all six of them in the bunker? Her rationale, as reported in the film Downfall, was the impossibility of imagining a life after Hitler for anyone called Goebbels.Most descendants of the Nazi... Read more... |
The Life and Death of Colonel BlimpFriday, 18 May 2012
It’s impossible to think of a contemporary British director or writer-director team making six consecutive masterpieces as did Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger when they followed The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) with A Canterbury Tale... Read more... |
