Arts
If we offer Ian McKellan a peerage, will he promise not to inflict his King Lear on us again?
Gandalf, also known as Ian McKellen, has awarded himself another lap of honour by bringing King Lear back to London.…
Radio 4 brings back the dead
If proof were needed that radio will survive the onslaught of the new (or rather now not-so-new) digital technologies, albeit…
It will save some marriages – or end others: The Escape reviewed
Dominic Savage had an early start. In Barry Lyndon (1975), Stanley Kubrick’s sprawling take on Thackeray, he played a prepubescent…
Wayne Blair
Such a lovely title, it’s hard to believe that The Long Forgotten Dream hasn’t been used before. The title belongs…
Why the National Garden Scheme beats the Chelsea Flower Show hands down
What could be more British than nosying around someone else’s private property while munching on a slice of cake? The…
Fascinating, powerful and brilliantly done: Apostasy reviewed
For many years I would chat genially with our local Jehovah, Stephen, who came door-to-door every few months or so,…
Why the scream of the elephant is much more chilling than the roar of a lion
Raw, earthy, ear-piercing. It’s hard to decide which was more terrifying and unsettling: the roar of the elephants in Living…
Sacha Baron Cohen isn’t funny – especially when he’s mocking the powerless
Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest series Who Is America? isn’t funny. But then, nor was his terrible 2016 movie The Brothers…
Nolde was giddily optimistic about the Nazis – they rewarded him by confiscating his works
The complexities of Schleswig-Holstein run deep. Here’s Emil Nolde, an artist born south of the German-Danish border and steeped in…
One of Alan Bennett’s finest efforts: Allelujah! reviewed
Alan Bennett’s new play, Allelujah!, is an NHS drama set in a friendly hospital in rural Yorkshire. Colin, an ambitious…
A proper old-fashioned stinker: ITV’s The Bletchley Circle – San Francisco reviewed
After just one episode, The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco (ITV, Wednesday) seems certain to stand out from the crowd. In…
Thrilling energy & humour from Longborough Festival Opera: Ariadne auf Naxos reviewed
‘They’ve dined well, they’ve drunk their fill, their brains are dull and slow. They’ll sit snoozing in the dark until…
John Russell
Once he was known as ‘Australia’s lost impressionist’ and referred to as John Peter Russell. Now at the Art Gallery…
Barry Humphries on Trump, transgender ‘rat-baggery’ and causing maximum offence
‘I’m an amateur,’ Barry Humphries tells me. The Australian polymath uses the word in its older sense of ‘enthusiast’ rather…
An embarrassing and misshapen dud: Opera Holland Park’s Isabeau reviewed
I’ve been trying to pinpoint the exact moment when it became impossible to take Mascagni’s Isabeau seriously. It wasn’t when…
Channel 4 doesn’t do ‘news’ in any meaningful sense of the word – it’s pure propaganda
When President Trump refused to take a question from a CNN reporter at the Chequers press conference last week, I…
If you like monstrosities, head to the Hayward Gallery
One area of life in which globalism certainly rules is that of contemporary art. Installation, performance, the doctrine of Marcel…
The marketisation of BBC radio is a recipe for creative disaster
There’s been a lot of fuss and many column inches written about levels of pay at the BBC, as revealed…
Extraordinary power and simplicity: Lehman Trilogy reviewed
Stefano Massini’s play opens with a man in a frock-coat reaching New York after six weeks at sea. The year…
Paul Simon says farewell with a daring and inventive show that left some restless
Early in 1987, a middle-aged woman approached me on the record counter of the Slough branch of Boots. ‘What do…
Dreary, familiar, empty watch – until Streep appears: Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again reviewed
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again aims to do what it says on the can. That is, be Mamma Mia,…
Cast members of An Ideal Husband
He was already skating on thin ice when Oscar Wilde opened his newest play at the Haymarket Theatre on 3…
Aida
Aida was commissioned from Giuseppe Verdi to celebrate the opening of the Opera House in Cairo in early 1871, the…
The ‘idiot’ artists whose surreal visions flourished in Victorian asylums
In G.F. Watts’s former sculpture studio in the Surrey village of Compton, a monstrous presence has interposed itself between the…
Appealingly meaningless and improbable: Christo at the Serpentine Lake reviewed Plus: memorably pointless paintings at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery
It’s not a wrap. This is the first thing to note about the huge trapezoid thing that has appeared, apparently…
