Arts
On the offensive
Mark Mason talks to Clive Anderson about mistaken identity, Macbeth and making a career out of being a bit of a smartarse
Made for telly
It’s a sweltering night in Manhattan, circa 1947, and on the doorstep of a brownstone tenement three women are waiting…
Running on empty
Steve McQueen’s ‘Static’ (2009) impresses through its sheer directness — and it’s very far from static. A succession of helicopter-tracking…
Beckett would approve
An office worker stands on the ledge of an open window about to leap. Two colleagues enter, ignoring him completely.…
The appeal of psychopaths
Ever since the end of Gomorrah season four (Sky Atlantic) I have been bereft. I eked it out for as…
Justin Bieber: Changes
Grade: D– For my first review of popular music releases in 2020 I thought I’d deposit this large vat of…
Greed is bad
Greed is Michael Winterbottom’s satire on the obscenely rich and, in particular, a billionaire, asset-stripping retail tycoon whose resemblance to…
Lost in translation
You won’t find much Jane Austen in the myriad adaptations of her novels, says Claire Harman
Vol-au-vent horror
Not much was clear in the opening scenes of The Pale Horse (BBC1, Sunday), which even by current TV standards…
Family matters
History will record Leopoldstadt as Tom Stoppard’s Schindler’s List. His brilliant tragic-comic play opens in the Jewish quarter of Vienna…
Local hero
Blood Wedding, by the Spanish dramatist Federico Garcia Lorca, is one of those heavyweight tragedies that risks looking a bit…
Wigging out
British Baroque: it was never going to fly. Les rosbifs emulating the splendour of le Roi Soleil? Pas possible. Still,…
Fellatio-free
Calixto Bieito’s Carmen: three words to make an opera critic’s heart leap. Until quite recently, Bieito was the operatic provocateur…
Tinkerbell Regency
‘Too pretty,’ blithers Miss Bates in the Highbury haberdasher as she plucks at a silken tassel. ‘Too pretty’ goes for…
No Pay? No Way!
As a sort of protest, I am not going to the opening of No Pay? No Way! at the Sydney…
The Happy Prince
Many people have had a go at it. Ever since Oscar Wilde published The Happy Prince and Other Tales in…
Warts and all
Jan van Eyck changed the art of picture-making more fundamentally than anyone who has ever lived, says Martin Gayford
On the bias
The Gift is three plays in one. It opens in a blindingly white Victorian parlour where a posh lady, Sarah,…
Apex carnivore
Beethoven wears a feather boa and pink shades. He wrangles an electric guitar. A red lightning flash streaks across that…
And did those feet
Writers like walking. When people ask us why, we say it’s what writers do. ‘Just popping out to buy a…
Women of the cloth
My step-grandmother Connie was an inspired needlewoman. For ten years, as a volunteer for the charity Fine Cell Work, she…
Mettle detector
SAS: Who Dares Wins (Channel 4, Sundays) is literally the only programme left on terrestrial TV that I can bear…
Material world
You might have thought Madonna was not a singer but a professional footballer judging by the talk before she took…
Space invaders
Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite won the Bafta for best foreign film and is up for six Oscars and it is an…
Things that go bump
Pregnancy has always been a public spectacle – and as the Foundling Museum’s new exhibition shows, a dangerous one
