- Hamlet, starring Michael Sheen at the Young Vic, London
Posted on 27 Jan 2012 in Blog-Theater, Theatre
The psychiatric setting also forces – or helps – the production into a particular vision of the play. In some ways this is quite an old-fashioned take, with Hamlet framed as a study of a mind in disintegration.
- Book Review: The Good, The Bad and the Multiplex: What’s Wrong With Modern Movies? by Mark Kermode
Posted on 09 Jan 2012 in Books, Movies, Non-Fiction Reviews
His opinions, though held intensely and vocally, are often unpredictable: he has long maintained The Exorcist to be the greatest film ever made, but has also in the past championed the work of Zac Efron and the Twilight franchise, and has recently taken to insisting that Jaws is actually a movie about adultery rather than, say, a large shark.
- Book Review: The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco
Posted on 04 Jan 2012 in Books, Fiction Reviews, Historical Fiction
So for those who may have been a little lost amidst the religious politics of The Name of the Rose or the Byzantine byways of Foucault’s Pendulum, this latest might seem to offer a more secure footing from which to enjoy Eco’s intellectual gymnastics. If the endpoint of the novel is The Protocols and mid-century European anti-Semitism, that’s handy. We know what we think about that.
- Dance Review: The Nutcracker, English National Ballet at The Coliseum, London
Posted on 31 Dec 2011 in Blog-Dance, Dance
For once the Mouse King is a genuinely compelling villain: his mask is a giant rodent’s skull with red eyes, his costume is murkily tatty and his dancing has a blend of exuberance and creepiness which makes him a joy to watch. James Streeter is the first Mouse King I’ve seen that Clara should be afraid of.
- Book Review: The Hillary Effect by Taylor Marsh
Posted on 20 Dec 2011 in Books, Non-Fiction Reviews, Politics
There may not be space in a blog post to let the reader weigh the words and come to their own conclusion, guided by your discreet commentary, but this habit of GLOSSING EVERYTHING IN ALL CAPS grates across two hundred and fifty pages. There’s little rhetorical virtue in having the last word in your own paragraph.
- One Man, Two Guvnors, Adelphi Theatre, London
Posted on 16 Dec 2011 in Blog-Theater, Theatre
For this show is funny. I mean, it is really funny. Not the kind of funny you might associate with a National Theatre adaptation of an eighteenth-century Italian play. It’s splutteringly, potato-throwingly, unreasonably hilarious.
- Ross Noble and Friends, Cranleigh Arts Centre, England
Posted on 16 Dec 2011 in Blog-Theater, Humor, Theatre
It showcased all of Noble’s best points: the delight in the ludicrous, the ideas tripping over each other to get out and the revelling in how foolish he may look to an audience. And of course The Voice.
- Theatre Review: Noel Coward’s Star Quality, Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford, England
Posted on 09 Dec 2011 in Blog-Theater, Theatre
There’s a feeling you get about ten minutes into a Noel Coward play. The lights have come up, the set has been admired, the opening salvoes exchanged and then – whether it’s Hay Fever, Present Laughter or Private Lives – you realize that we’re in here for the duration. It’s like a moment of mild claustrophobia.
- Theatre Review: The Holly and the Ivy, Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford, England
Posted on 02 Dec 2011 in Blog-Theater, Theatre
The characters are built with that terrific assurance of some mid-century writers (C.P. Snow and Anthony Powell spring to mind), which balances the need for them to represent social types or attitudes to life, whilst also allowing them rein to be individual and surprising.
- Theatre Review: Three Days in May, Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford, England
Posted on 28 Nov 2011 in Blog-Theater, Theatre
Clarke certainly made good on his obligations. He barked, he grunted, he rumbled, and, once you got used to the fact that he was acting on a slightly more heightened plane than the rest of the cast, he gave a surprisingly subtle account of a figure who was larger than life even during his life.
- Television Review: Page Eight on PBS
Posted on 06 Nov 2011 in Espionage, Mystery, Television, The Fourth Wall
British spies these days – the most interesting ones at any rate – are weary, compromised and full of a guilty nostalgia for the quiet savagery of the Cold War. Spy fiction is a way of thinking about British decline, the long loss of faith and loss of face that the last century brought from Suez onwards.
- Book Review: Jane Austen: Blood Persuasion by Janet Mullany
Posted on 03 Oct 2011 in Books, Fiction Reviews, Literary Themes, Writers
At root, the novel seems to rest on a misapprehension: that the world of Jane Austen would be more exciting if it had vampires in it. During it, we discover that in the first draft of Mansfield Park, Fanny was, in fact, one of said bloodthirsty beasties. Did anyone ever read Mansfield Park and think “Not bad, but it could do with more of the undead”?
- The Woman in White, Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford
Posted on 25 Aug 2011 in Blog-Theater, Theatre
Collins’ strong suit is suspense tinged with bafflement. When it works, you’re reeling from the last twist in the plot, and wondering where it’ll go next. When it doesn’t, you’re still trying to work out whose will has just been overturned by the return of the mysterious stranger who looks exactly like the missing heiress whose marriage records…and so the next twist is rather a moot point.
- The Turn of the Screw at Glyndebourne, Live Streamed via The Guardian
Posted on 22 Aug 2011 in Blog-Theater, Music, Opera, Theatre
Glyndebourne: one of the names in the British calendar. Up there with Wimbledon, Henley and other occasions which involve large quantities of strawberries being consumed in extremely specific clothing. With the added attraction of some of the best opera in the world.
- Anne Boleyn, at Shakespeare’s Globe, London
Posted on 22 Aug 2011 in Blog-Theater, Theatre
Despite the subject matter, and the evident success of the play, the particular style of performance the Globe encourages seemed to throw the play off kilter a few times. There was too much “playing at naughtiness”, an easy iconoclasm feeding off the sense that jokes about sex are risky and daring in a play about the Renaissance in Shakespeare’s “own” theatre.
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