Glyndebourne Festival’s opening is always an exciting date in the calendar. This year it featured the inauguration of a beautiful temporary gallery in collaboration with the progressive dealer, White Cube, and an exhibition of a series of paintings, each of four whirling legs, feet and high-heeled shoes attached, by Georg Baselitz. They are very decorative, even … [Read more...]
Archives for May 2015
High Society no Longer Exists, but it’s Worth Making a Song and Dance about It
Kate Fleetwood (Old Vic) High Society Kevin Spacey leaves his post as artistic director of the Old Vic with one last wild and vibrant fling. He’s chosen as his final production the musical of the film of the play, High Society. As The Philadelphia Story, it was the original 1939 play and 1940 movie, both starring Katharine Hepburn; in 1956, and this version was one of Mr. Spacey’s early … [Read more...]
Mike Leigh’s Piratical Sense of Duty
We know from Topsy-Turvy that Mike Leigh loves Gilbert and Sullivan, so he was the obvious choice to mount the production of The Pirates of Penzance or the Slave of Duty that the English National Opera is counting on to rescue its shaky finances. In his programme essay he makes a good case for seeing Gilbert as a surrealist and a subversive, but not a satirist -- meaning that the point … [Read more...]