Arts
A perfect antidote
Anyone familiar with Joe Hill-Gibbins’s work will brace instinctively when the curtain goes up on his new Figaro. He’s the…
Bigamists, lunatics and adventurers
The world of 19th-century British music was raucous, but are there any masterpieces waiting to be rediscovered? wonders Richard Bratby
Difficult women
The director of Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi, talks to Sarah Ditum about her new biopic of Marie Curie, exile from Iran and her fears for the future of democracy
The abbey habit
The world may be going to hell in a handcart but some things remain reassuringly unchanged: Julian Fellowes period dramas…
The great pretenders
The accepted line about Bryan Ferry is that his is one of the greatest reinventions in English pop culture: Peter…
The rise and fall of Peter Bogdanovich
David Thomson talks to the director about Buster Keaton, falling out of favour with Hollywood, and his mentor Orson Welles
Strokes of genius
Martin Gayford
David Hallberg
The artistic leadership of a major performing company is, by definition, important. The Australian Ballet has a forthcoming vacancy of…
In a class of her own
Who was the most influential figure in 20th-century classical music? Stravinsky? Pierre Boulez? What about Bernstein or Britten? John Cage…
Earthly powers
Exhibitions about fungi, bugs and trees illustrate the depth, range and vitality of a growing field of art, says Mark Cocker
When perving was the norm
Misbehaviour is a film about the 1970 Miss World contest that was disrupted by ‘bloody women’s libbers’ — that’s what…
Waking the dead
‘No matter what they take from me,’ sang Whitney Houston towards the end of a peculiar evening in Hammersmith, ‘they…
Accentuate the negative
Sky One’s Breeders (Thursday) bills itself as an ‘honest and uncompromising comedy’ about parenting. To this end, the opening scene…
‘Irish writers don’t talk to each other – they shout abuse’
Sebastian Barry talks to Robert Jackman about family folklore, the joy of writing playsand why he is not an ‘Irish’ novelist
The stuff of nightmares
It must have been hard for Crystal Pite and Jonathan Young to live up to the success of 2016’s devastating…
Secrets and spies
Here’s the problem. Much communication is done online, especially by youngsters, and much drama focuses on communication. So how do…
David Williamson
‘That sinkhole of ambition and superficiality we call Sydney.’ That’s a direct quotation from the Melbourne Theatre Company’s promotion of…
Spooky delights
One of my perpetual gnawing terrors is that I’ll recommend a series that looks initially promising but turns out to…
Inside stories
Nicolaes Maes (1634–93) relished the simple moments of daily life during the Dutch Golden Age. A woman peeling parsnips over…
Oracles, perverts and the Dirtbag Left
For 500 years the State Oracle of Tibet has worked as a kind of angry immortal advisor to the Dalai…
Pyramid of piffle
The Prince of Egypt is a musical adapted from a 1998 Dreamworks cartoon based on the Book of Exodus. So…
Sisters are doing it for themselves
Military Wives is a British comedy drama starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Sharon Horgan. It is based on the true…
Naughty boy
In seven short years, Aubrey Beardsley mastered the art of outrage. Laura Gascoigne on the gloriously indecent illustrations of a singular genius
The alienation effect
‘People may say I can’t sing,’ said the soprano Florence Foster Jenkins, ‘but no one can ever say I didn’t…
Green Day: Father of All…
Grade: B+ It is an eternal mystery to me why Britain has never had much time for power pop, seeing…
