This may seem an odd choice for the opening number in a series about theatre books. An unreliable memoir of a forgotten figure who performed in a genre we rarely see. It's not, I guess, an essential text. But Charles Dickens' Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi, reissued by the enterprising Pushkin Press in a chubby little volume, gets to the heart of the theatre-going experience. It's both about our need … [Read more...]

I haven't got appreciably wiser as I've aged - how about you? Wandering around Rothko: The Late Series at London's Tate Modern yesterday morning, I realised how tempting but misleading it is to view an artist's work as an index of their physical age - or to read it retrospectively, looking backwards from their deathday. You might call this the Prospero Fallacy: the sense that a late work (in this … [Read more...]

In which Performance Monkey sets out his stall Welcome to Performance Monkey, a blog about theatre and dance. I enjoy watching productions, for work and pleasure, but like to think that a show doesn't end when the curtain falls. It's in talking with friends after a show that creative thinking begins, even if discussion often dissipates under pressure of hunger, gossip or public transport. This … [Read more...]