Archives for June 2009

There was no halfway house with Pina Bausch. As my editor remarked earlier today, you were either a devotee or sceptic, and if a devotee you were very devoted. There will be many tributes to Pina Bausch in the next few days - I'm writing one myself. So this is just a memory. Of the first time. For many years, Bausch's company (Tanztheater Wuppertal) didn't appear in London - there was no stage … [Read more...]

I was much tickled this afternoon to read the performance artist and lecturer Lois Weaver recalling a visit to David Hare's play The Secret Rapture. Her colleague Peggy Phelan, a reluctant co-attendee at the matinee performance ('this sea of the well-behaved'), became exercised during the scene in which the heroine's dangerously obsessive ex bursts in on her with a gun. The dynamic of the play was … [Read more...]

We critics - dressed in our usual dowdy - were discombobulated when we arrived at Sadler's Wells last week for English National Ballet's tribute to Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. There was a red (actually black) carpet, and a healthy jostle of paparazzi. Not, it turned out, for us (who knew?), but because there were British stars in attendance. Jeremy Irons, Stephen Fry, Matt Smith (who? The new Dr … [Read more...]

Helen Mirren sickens in the sunlight, bends double with torment, makes clammy advances to her stepson and scrabbles at herself in remorse. It's quite unlike the starchy home life of our own dear queen, as portrayed in Mirren's previous Oscar-winning performance. But this is a Racine queen - Phèdre, whose toxic desire blights her family in the 1677 French tragedy. Many have welcomed big-screen … [Read more...]

We can probably file this under marketing rather than fund-raising, but the Goodman Theatre's latest wheeze - a money-back guarantee for a new play by Migdalia Cruz - is certainly eye-catching. I've written a piece for the Guardian's theatre blog here, wondering if punters would really have the gall to demand a refund after sitting through an evening at the theatre. Early comments suggest that … [Read more...]

Many theatres search for a stonking family show that will unite the generations, and it is hardly surprising that they frequently turn to classic children's literature. Those classic stories, though: aren't they weird? No, really. Especially those developed in the dark stew of Victorian morality and the hothouse of the subsequent fin-de-siecle. The period provides a rich source for theatrical … [Read more...]

If there was an award for best-dressed Hamlet, Jude Law would walk it. His smart-suited performance bucks a trend for geek-chic Hamlets. Admittedly this isn't a brand new trend: since David Warner's Aldermaston scarf in 1963 or Mark Rylance's stripy pyjamas (nothing better to suggest an antic disposition) in 1989, Hamlets have dressed to express that they are off message and out of joint in the … [Read more...]

Well, maybe it is great, after all. Am still in a bit of a fanboy daze about Arcadia, Tom Stoppard's 1993 play which has just received its first major London revival. I was asked to write something in advance about its claims to be a 'great' play, and had to confess that I was uneasy about the term. Greatness, especially in theatre, is a mutable concept: each age takes what it needs from the past, … [Read more...]

It's rare for a living artist to be the focus of individual celebration, outside of a major arts festival. But this spring, London has allowed audiences to focus on two idiosyncratic American artists and provided a spotlight on their often complex work. The differences in reception have been marked. Although critical opinion was divided on the merits of recent work by Frankfurt-based choreographer … [Read more...]

Blogs are notorious for elevating the minutiae of the blogger's life into distended posts. Well, grab a couple of matchsticks for your eyelids, Gladys, because minutiae don't come much more minute than this. The scene is a checkout queue in my local supermarket. The time is a quiet weekday morning. So quiet, in fact, that few of the lines are open, and the gent in front of me has a full family … [Read more...]