ART & EXHIBITIONS
What a disappointing month! I can’t really see the point of Rothko and found his Tate Modern exhibition dull. The Miereles installations and Gonzales-Foerster in the turbine hall at the same venue were only slightly more interesting. The Royal Academy’s GSK Modern was another dull affair; if this lot are the best of British [...]
Archive for January, 2009
The Rest of January
Posted in Art, Classical Music, Film, Photography, tagged Art, Classical Music, Film, Photography on January 31, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Into The Woods
Posted in Theatre on January 31, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
This is one of my favourite Stephen Sondheim shows, and here it gets an excellent fringe outing upstairs at the the Gatehouse pub in Highgate.
The story weaves the tales of Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack & The Beanstalk and Rapunzel with a story of a baker and his wife who can’t conceive. The witch [...]
Mrs Affleck
Posted in Theatre on January 29, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
This is an adaptation of Ibsen’s Little Eyloff set in 50’s Kent, though I’m not really sure why. I haven’t seen Ibsen’s original, so I don’t know whether it’s the play, the adaptation or the production – but this just doesn’t work.
As much as I like both Claire Skinner and Angus Wright, there is [...]
Every Good Boy Deserves Favour
Posted in Theatre, tagged Theatre on January 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Tom Stoppard refers to this as a ‘real play’. I would call it a sketch. Despite this, it retains its inventivness and originality 31 years on. No-one else has tried anything like it, and you don’t say that very often.
It is a piece for actors and orchestra, who interact on stage, on the incarceration of political [...]
Simply Cinderella – Leicester
Posted in Theatre on January 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
This was as much a visit to see friends and to see Leicester’s new theatre, Curve, as it was to a new British musical directed & choreographed by Adam Cooper.
On the inside, the main auditorium is a conventional modern theatre, but it sits surrounded by a 5-story high foyer on the other side of which [...]
Carousel
Posted in Theatre, tagged Theatre on January 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I’ve fond memories of Nicholas Hytner’s NT production so I was a bit concerned it might be a hard act to follow, but it isn’t. It’s not the best Rogers & Hammerstein show, but even second division R&H normally shows up other musicals.
The problem with the show itself is that it becomes silly, sweet and [...]
Faust
Posted in Theatre, tagged Theatre on January 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
For a show that’s part of the London International Mime Festival, this has got a lot of words! Some are surtilted and some not, which seems to me to rather defeat the point of surtitling.
It’s the Faust tale – of sorts – and the three Russian eccentrics are clearly very talanted, but it didn’t really hold [...]
Complicit
Posted in Theatre, tagged Theatre on January 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I think the Old Vic must be jinxed with new plays – or Mr Spacey just ain’t good at picking them?
This isn’t really a play – its a series of comments, observations, meditations on a subject which are presented in a pretentiously obtuse way in an attempt to give them weight. It doesn’t illuminate the [...]
Roaring Trade
Posted in Theatre on January 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
It must be very annoying to write a play about the obscenity of The City’s trading system and find that by the time it’s produced it has all been exposed and we’re all rather pissed off having to shell out for the mess it resulted in while most of them are lying on a beach [...]
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Posted in Theatre, tagged Theatre on January 17, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
This is the second production in the RSC’s London season and it’s delightful.
It looks magical; three walls of mirrors and a multitude of little lights that rise and fall from the rafters.
The ensemble are uniformly excellent (particularly good at the verse) with feisty lovers and terrific Brummie builders as the rude mechanicals (Joe Dixon’s Bottom is [...]
