Arts
Beauty, blarney and banshees
It’s a bit odd in its way that a fair fraction of the more or less British theatre we watch…
An enjoyably honest portrait of Rik Mayall
If you’ve tended to think Rik Mayall was both very funny and quite annoying, it turns out you’re not alone…
The power of Glengarry Glen Ross
The Old Vic presents an eccentric new version of David Mamet’s ultra-masculine play, Glengarry Glen Ross. Director Patrick Marber populates…
Choral church music must be heard within the liturgy
Choral church music is at its most effective when it’s embedded in the liturgy as it was designed to be,…
Anish Kapoor – spectacular, pompous and vulgar
I miss the New Labour years, when the government gushed money at cultural initiatives and Britain, previously a backwater in…
The joy of willow-pattern ceramics
My granny used Spode willow-pattern crockery for everyday use. There was another grander service for Sunday lunch, also blue-and-white chinoiserie:…
The uprising against ugly cities
Arriving in Oslo, the Barcode District is unavoidable. It is so named because its blocks are laid out like dominos…
An entertaining Rheingold from Grange Park Opera
Grange Park Opera has acquired a new chandelier for its theatre at West Horsley; a jumble of foliage and fairy…
Striped caps and striking shoes
June 11 saw the death of the Yorkshire-born English painter David Hockney who was arguably the most celebrated painter of…
A ballet masterpiece revived – but where’s the pony?
The choreographic partnership of Sol Leon and Paul Lightfoot has long been celebrated in mainland Europe: a new double bill…
Is there anything sadder than a Scots Gaelic lament?
Sad songs hit harder, I find, when their meaning hangs just out of reach. Aside perhaps from the exquisite ache…
Toy Story 5 contains delicious touches
Toy Story 5 – do we need it? One worries for the narrative integrity of characters when an IP is…
Clarkson’s Farm remains the best drama on TV
Aliens are very fashionable right now. Steven Spielberg recently announced that they are real and have been visiting us since…
Head to Deptford for one of the exhibitions of the year
Grim news from gallery-land, where even Manhattan’s mega-blue chips are shedding jobs by the truckload. ‘The market’s fucked,’ one soundbite-handy…
A play that shows Iranian society is like our own
Under the Shadow is a timely drama set in Tehran in 1988 during the Iran-Iraq war. Saddam’s missiles are raining…
The problem with ‘queer art’
In 1911 Duncan Grant’s ‘Bathing’ went on display as part of a design scheme for the dining room of the…
A man of music
The other day saw the opening of the Peter Corrigan Collection at RMIT which comprises his personal collection of architectural…
Spielberg fumbles his final sci-fi
Steven Spielberg has said his latest film, Disclosure Day, is ‘the summation of my life in science fiction’, which began…
Michelle Terry is ferocious in Brecht’s simplistic tutorial
Bertolt Brecht’s classic, Mother Courage, is about a female war profiteer who drags a wagon of supplies through no man’s…
The liberating delights of Aldous Harding
The first thing I did after getting home from the Barbican the other week was google ‘Aldous Harding neurodivergent’. It…
Another thriller, another teenage incel
At just over two hours, Martin Scorsese’s 1991 remake of Cape Fear was 20 minutes longer than the 1962 original.…
Delightful Rossini at Glyndebourne
It’s impossible to say what Rossini would have made of Glyndebourne’s production of Il turco in Italia, but you can…
This Lucian Freud belongs on the compost
From 1940, at Benton End, near Hadleigh in Suffolk, the artist Cedric Morris brought his eye to breeding irises. Eliminating…
