Plain English

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’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...]

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...]

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...]

  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...]

  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...]

  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...]

  Here we are, in an enormous converted hen-house, sitting in plush red velvet seats. They are a tiny bit too small for 21st century bums, and they are numbered with gold-coloured tabs – a dead giveaway that they have been salvaged from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.  The man in the pit, Anthony Negus, is the UK’s most eminent Wagnerian. We are about to witness a performance of … [Read more...]

photo by Mark Douet Our more or less local country house summer opera season has started with a pair of pieces at Garsington Opera at the gorgeous Getty estate, Wormsley. There’s something magic about the location, with its long, long drive to the ever more comfortable “temporary” auditorium, and the view from it over the landscaped pond. This is an area we know well. Here Paul Getty tried, and … [Read more...]