No production of Aida will ever improve on the one I saw in 1962 at the Baths of Caracalla in Rome. (I was only 21, and with my father – so if my memory has burnished or slighted some of the details, forgive me.) The Triumphal March had not one, but two corps de ballet (some dancers and acrobats, I regret to say, in blackface – but it was a long time ago), and they were preceded by live … [Read more...]
Archives for 2017
After Degas: Burrell Collection at the National Gallery
A small Degas show, “Drawn in Colour,” at the National Gallery until 7 May, comprises a splendid group of pictures, chiefly on loan from the Burrell Collection, near Glasgow, complemented by some from the National’s own horde. It’s a little difficult to find, as it’s not in the Sainsbury wing, but in the main-floor galleries, and the National Gallery’s disability-challenging signage doesn’t … [Read more...]
Upstairs & Downstairs at the Royal National Theatre
photograph Johan Persson It’s said (by Michael Coveney, in his superb new book, London Theatres, Frances Lincoln, £30) that the auditorium of the 1,100-seat Olivier Theatre (upstairs at the Royal National Theatre) is modelled on the amphitheatre at Epidaurus. This makes it an especially poignant venue for a revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies, which depicts a reunion of the chorus … [Read more...]
The Artist in His Studio – Matisse: and These are a Few of His Favourite Things
The artist’s studio is different things to different people. I’ve been in quite a few of these (often magical) spaces. The first I can remember is Barbara Hepworth’s in Cornwall, and most of what I recollect about that visit is the ashtrays, which were everywhere. Duncan Grant’s studio at Charleston had half-full ashtrays as well, also a decorated fireplace with a lovely metal stove, bottles of … [Read more...]
A Scientific Cure for Mosquito Bite? Not the Higgs Boson.
You have to wonder a little why Lucy Kirkwood’s new play (at the Dorfman, National Theatre, directed by the NT’s head honcho, Rufus Norris) is called Mosquitoes. The nasty wee beasties are the special research interest of one of the minor characters in this drama of love and loss against a background of trailblazing science – and his big idea is to wipe out malaria by targeting “the mosquito at … [Read more...]
Take it from an old friend, Bob, you just gotta see this
Girl from the North Country, which has just opened at the Old Vic is not easy to describe. Other theatrical events have had strange origins – for example, most of Peter Sellar’s oeuvre, or Jonathan Miller’s staging of the Matthew Passion; but the genesis of this play with music, written and directed by Conor McPherson, strains the imagination. According to the Old Vic programme essay, about four … [Read more...]
What a Swell Party. Wonder Why we Were There?
What a swell party it was, to be sure. Our taxi driver asked the armed policeman whether he could drive through the front gate of Buckingham Palace? He was told no, so he made a virtuoso U-turn and deposited my wife and me at the head of the queue, where we showed the guards our photo-ID, plus a bank statement giving our names and full postal address. Then we were gently herded into the vast … [Read more...]
Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday Lives on in London
In her photographs, the multiple Tony-winner Audra McDonald looks nothing like Billie Holiday. But when she appears at Wyndham’s Theatre in Lanie Robertson’s Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill wearing a slinky white dress, and, later, pins a gardenia to her hair, she is the spitting image of the drink-and-drugs victim who was one of the great jazz singers ever. What’s more, the … [Read more...]
The Rust-Belt Country House Opera that Pleases All the Senses
There is usually something unsatisfactory about productions of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. The story is just plain weird: a ditsy, tiny young woman is found on the banks of a pond in the forest by a “giant” man. The next thing you know they are married, living in his ancestral castle presided over by his grandfather, the bride rapidly falls in love with her husband’s younger … [Read more...]
Dick Smith: Fly a Kite, Make Art History
At Flowers Gallery, 21 Cork Street in London until 15 July is a stunning show, Work of Five Decades, of “paintings” by an old friend, Richard Smith (1931-2016). The scare quotes are there to note that several of the works have sculptural qualities and ambitions. Some are mobiles, and some extend and stretch the canvas in ways that make the picture plane three dimensional – a practice … [Read more...]