Intelligence is not exactly the first quality you look for in a musical. Of course there have been a few intelligent examples of the genre – mostly by Stephen Sondheim, and I’ll concede that there are a few intelligent, or at least witty instances of musical theatre from Cole Porter, Oscar Hammerstein, Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, Kurt Weill and the Gershwin brothers. Even … [Read more...]
Archives for August 2016
Chrome Yellow: the Colour of the 2016 Edinburgh Festival
Cecilia Bartoli as Norma (Photo Credit: Hans-Jörg Michel) Last year’s was the first Edinburgh Festival I’ve missed for twenty-something years, and I was very pleased to return this year, if only briefly, to attend half a dozen performances at the International Festival. Next year will be the 70th anniversary of the great post-War European cultural gathering initiated by the late Sir Rudolf … [Read more...]
Young Chekhovathon for Chekhovaphiles (of all ages)
Young Chekhov A bit of a sucker for aesthetic marathons, there’s nothing I like better than taking a whole week out of one’s life to hear and see Wagner’s Ring; Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach had me avid for tickets; a painter’s late-career retrospective is usually my kind of show; and from the sublimity of Proust, and at least some of the 12 volumes of Anthony … [Read more...]