Arts
Losing the plot
By now a genuinely radical way to turn a Victorian novel into a TV drama would be to take that…
Callous to the core
Berlusconi: A New Musical, an excellent title, has opened at a new venue in south London, Southwark Playhouse Elephant. The…
From the sublime to the ridiculous
Godland is a film to see on the big screen: not just for its awesome, immersive cinematography, but because it…
Sweet nothings
Despite its widespread rating as one of his masterpieces, Frederick Ashton’s Cinderella is chock full of knots, gaps and stumbling…
Hounds of love
Walking on Hampstead Heath the December before Covid, I got caught up in a festive party of bichon frises dressed,…
Insider art
Stuart Jeffries meets the prisonerartists of HMP Grendon
Searching in vain for The African Queen
What a weird world we inhabit when it comes to popular culture or indeed to any culture high or low.…
If I were a rich man
I have a theory that many great artists’ strength is a product of their weakness. The flaw of the relentlessly…
Less than the sum of their parts
Recently in these pages, ruminating on the ghastly Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I wrote that music does not…
Whisky and cordite
Most of us are familiar with the notion of writer’s block, that paralysis of invention induced by the appalling sight…
Mummy’s curse
There are some films that you know will be quality simply by the actors who have agreed to be in…
Divine comedy
Accidental Death of an Anarchist has been performed all over the world with varying degrees of success. Written by Dario…
They’re creepy and they’re kooky
English National Opera has arrived at the Dead City, and who, before Christmas, would have given odds that this new…
Dotty and daffy
Getting the words ‘impressionism’ and ‘modern art’ into one exhibition title is a stroke of marketing genius on the part…
Talking dirty
Christine L. Corton on how fog gripped the Victorian imagination
Brooding beauty
The prospect of a revival of Rudolf Nureyev’s Don Quixote by the Australian Ballet in Melbourne is a reminder of…
Overseas aid
Is the World Service superfluous, or a vital adjunct of British diplomacy, wonders Oscar Edmondson
Art for art’s sake – and then some
It’s payback time: women, artists from ethnic minorities and non-western traditions are taking over the exhibition schedules. On the heels…
Side lines
Think of pop music as being like the parable of the sower. These days the seed falling on stony ground…
Domino effect
The Beasts is a rural psychological thriller from Spain that has won many awards across Europe and even though we…
On the sick list
Sunday-night dramas on the two main terrestrial channels definitely aren’t what they used to be. Not so long ago, you…
A pulse but no heart
The murderous odyssey of Bonnie and Clyde is a tricky subject for a musical because the characters are such loathsome…
Make mine a triple
It does no harm, once in a while, to assume that the creators of an opera actually know what they’re…
Cheap thrills
Robert Jackman on the rise of the modern British B-movie
