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Rhod Gilbert, De Montfort Hall

Written by Veronica Lee Monday, 08 February 2010 14:58
Rhod GIlbert is, I suppose, what one would call a contrarian. Much that he comes up against in life appears to confound him and, perhaps as a consequence, a lot of things seem to go wrong (often at the same time), which causes him yet more rilement. Even the title of this show, Rhod Gilbert & The Cat That Looked Like Nicholas Lyndhurst, which I saw at the Leicester Comedy Festival, is in response to an annoying fan who brings the comic gifts of things that have been mentioned in previous show titles, such as grapes and mince pies. “I thought, I’ll show him,” says Gilbert. “There’s no way he can come up with a cat looking like the ginger-haired, moon-eyed actor from a popular sitcom. Petty, I know, but it gave me pleasure.”

Interview: Corinne Bailey Rae

Written by Peter Culshaw Monday, 08 February 2010 11:34
I meet Corinne Bailey Rae upstairs at Ronnie Scott’s in Soho – she wanders into the room and a couple of record company types intercept her. I hear phrases like “consumer segmentation”, “demographics”, “functionality of streaming” floating across the room – it sounds like someone has a new type of iPhone app they want her to sign up to. She looks polite, if a bit bemused. But in a depressed record business, Corinne Bailey Rae is a really big deal.

LSO, Gardiner, Barbican Hall

Written by Edward Seckerson Monday, 08 February 2010 10:00
18th-century manners, 21st-century instruments - the best of both worlds or a clear conflict of purpose? One would hardly expect a period specialist of Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s calibre and London’s most dynamic orchestra, the LSO, to be citing irreconcilable differences – and last night they didn’t. Their accounts of Beethoven’s first and last symphonies were, to say the least, explosive. But they were a good deal more, too, and the Ninth Symphony might well have startled, certainly thrilled, even Beethoven.
Modernist art movements are a lot like totalitarian regimes. They produce their declaratory manifestos, send forth their declamatory edicts, and, before you know it, a Year Zero mentality prevails: the past must be declared null and void. Seeking to overturn 1,000 years of Western civilisation with a universal aesthetic utopia of brightly coloured squares and boldly delineated lines, a confident Theo van Doesburg, founding member and chief theorist of the Dutch movement De Stijl, wrote, “What the Cross represented to the early Christians, the square represents to us all. The square will conquer the Cross.”  Blimey - and there you were, thinking the Dutch were always so reasonable, too.

London Sinfonietta, George Benjamin, QEH

Written by Igor Toronyi-Lalic Monday, 08 February 2010 02:00
To go to a contemporary classical concert and find a single completely successful piece is rare enough. For most modern compositions, the sieve of time has yet to separate the wheat from the chaff. But to go to a contemporary concert and find satisfaction in all five pieces programmed, and for all five pieces programmed to be from the mind of the same composer, is a testament to one thing; that George Benjamin is a total genius.

It’s a rare national culture festival that presupposes its audience will have no knowledge whatsoever of the culture concerned - or even be able to locate the country itself on a map. But that, we must assume from the “Azerbai-where?” promotional bus ads, was the starting point last November for organisers of the BUTA Festival of Azerbaijan Art, a series of very well-connected art and music events in London going on this month. Realistically, until petrol starts to be sold with a “produce of” notice, the country’s brand recognition looks set to stay on the low side.

Ponyo

Written by Sheila Johnston Saturday, 06 February 2010 19:30
Tucked away down a sleepy residential back alley in suburban Tokyo, Studio Ghibli, the headquarters of Hayao Miyazaki, is designed - by the visionary animator himself - in the shape of a boat. When I visited it five years ago, just before the release of his last film, Howl's Moving Castle, the team of young animators all had bowls of fish and terrapins on their desks. The result, Ponyo, is at last about to open in Britain: Miyazaki is a famously slow worker, and the delay has been compounded by a hold-up with distribution. But this irresistible marine fairy-tale is worth the wait.

John Bishop: Elvis Has Left the Building, Artsdepot

Written by Veronica Lee Saturday, 06 February 2010 14:26
John Bishop, who is from Liverpool, used to sell drugs for a living (insert own joke here). Actually the former sales and marketing executive for a pharmaceutical firm gets there first and makes a reference to the kids he grew up with: “Some of them ended up in the same industry, but they didn’t have Bupa.”

theartsdesk Q&A: David Greig

Written by Hilary Whitney Saturday, 06 February 2010 10:00

A new play by David Greig opens at the Hampstead Theatre for the Royal Shakespeare Company next week. A theatre director as well as playwright, Greig (b. 1969) is one of the most prolific and artistically ambitious playwrights of his generation and a key figure in the current burgeoning of Scottish theatre. In addition to an extraordinarily diverse range of plays such as Europe (Traverse Theatre, 1994), The Cosmonaut’s Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Former Soviet Union (Tron Theatre, 1999) and Damascus (Edinburgh International Festival, 2009), his work includes adaptations such as his version of Euripides’ The Bacchae, starring Alan Cumming (National Theatre of Scotland, 2007), translations and plays for young people.

HMV Next Big Thing: Marina and the Diamonds

Written by Joe Muggs Saturday, 06 February 2010 02:13

Around February, following a full month of “sound of next year” articles and programmes, surveys and round-ups, one starts to tire of getting told time and again what The! New! Thing! is. So for the HMV Next Big Thing concerts to be launching right now risks running up against jadedness – doubly so when all the acts on a bill to one degree or another are laden with 1980s pop references like virtually every other new band on the circuit right now.

Empire of the Seas, BBC Two

Written by Adam Sweeting Saturday, 06 February 2010 00:10
Dan Snow’s four-part history of the Royal Navy has been in many ways a marvellous thing, and a timely reminder of one of the central planks of our island story. At a moment when various brass hats are openly discussing the possibility of one of the UK’s armed services being dispensed with (and it won’t be the Army), Snow’s efforts may yet take on a greater significance than he imagined.

Is it too late to save the Cultural Olympiad?

Written by Simon Tait Saturday, 06 February 2010 00:05
We’d almost blown the so-called Cultural Olympiad, and if the appointment of Ruth Mackenzie as artistic director had come a moment later than the turn of this year, we would have done. Not my opinion: this from Tony Hall of the Royal Opera House, and he chairs the board that appointed her. More than that, on Friday Hall was given a cross-bench seat in the House of Lords to thump the tub for the arts in 2012, and we’ll take notice then. Won’t we?
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REALLY OLD, LIKE FORTY FIVE A sci-fi view of old age where robots rule >>

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LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR Poor mad Lucy is outsung by the man in the kilt >>

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