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REGENTS PARK OPEN AIR THEATRE: Administration Assistant and Assistant to the Artistic Director
In pictures: Liverpool Biennial 2014
Should you feel guilty owning Rolf's art?
Two unknowns cast in new Star Wars
Grande tops first combined chart
The week ahead in arts
Shakespeare in Love
John Madden's movie, co-penned by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, won seven Oscars. Can this version repeat the feat with Oliviers? While it may not boast Judi Dench and Gwyneth Paltrow, it does have Lee Hall the powerhouse writer behind the stage version of Billy Elliott.
Noel Coward Theatre, London (0844 482 5141), booking until 25 October
Malevich
With his iconic Black Square of 1915, Kazimir Malevich liberated art from the shackles of representation. A century later, Tate Modern hosts the first major survey of his art for 25 years minus the square, too fragile to move from Moscow but replete with paintings, sculptures and drawings by the Russian revolutionary.
Tate Modern, London (020-7887 8888), 16 July - 26 October.
Drama questions 'group' murder rule
Crowd problems at Libertines gig
Iron Maiden headline Sonisphere
Conchita Wurst: 'Most artists are sensitive and insecure people. I am too'
The photoshoot is in full swing. The starlet is a vision: she flicks her long dark hair, pouts, and expertly twirls her rainbow-coloured couture gown, which swishes around her like a waterfall. "Let's try a sultry one," the photographer says and she turns up the oomph. Lit up by the bay window behind her, she is at once angelic and full-on glamorous. Her face is all fluttering eyelashes and glitter, accessorised with a thick, soft-looking beard.
In the two months since winning Eurovision with the rousing power ballad Rise Like a Phoenix, Conchita Wurst has gone from well-liked personality at home in Austria to global gay icon. Outside, the annual Gay Pride festival is in full swing and the crowd, many wearing fake beards, cheers: "Conchita! Conchita!" She has just headlined Pride in London; Madrid and Stockholm are next. She attended Vienna's star-studded Life Ball, and in Cannes celebrities lined up to be photographed with her ("It was just like, 'Alessandra Ambrosio, of course you can take a picture with me.' It was so, so weird").
Continue reading...McCartney resumes concert tour
Freaks and geeks mix with the stars at Melbourne's Oz Comic Con
There were plenty of comics, cosplay and cast members from Game of Thrones and X-Men on the first day of Oz Comic Con
Thousands of fans descended on Melbournes Royal Exhibition Centre on 5 July for the third annual Oz Comic Con. A strong lineup of television stars from the sci-fi and fantasy genre, including Game of Thrones and Doctor Who, was on offer, as well as from cult favourites like Community. Scores of pop-culture fanatics, some dressed in cosplay, were seen lining up for photos and autographs with the stars.
At midday Kristian Nairn, famous for his one-word role Hodor on Game of Thrones, took to the main stage with his co-star Daniel Portman, better known as the squire, Podrick Payne. For many fans, it was their first time hearing Nairn say more than just Hodor, and along with Portman, the actor and DJ proved to be an affable and funny panellist. Both stars delighted audiences with their insiders take and seemed to genuinely love being part of the show.
My new favorite people! Look at those little faces! @OzComicCon #Melbourne pic.twitter.com/WNfbBecZH4
A 20-year-old girl made this completely badass #transformers costume in two weeks, several hours a day #OzComicCon pic.twitter.com/ZQFpEzXC2U
Continue reading...Caitlin Moran: Making feminism fun
VIDEO: LatAm Beats: Ocean's Acoustic
Krapp's Last Tape review simplistic and unimaginative
Too much technical intervention lets Richard Wilson down not to mention Samuel Beckett
"I envy you," said a colleague, hearing I was going to see veteran actor/director Richard Wilson in Krapp's Last Tape. Well, having been, I cannot say I have seen. Samuel Beckett's 1958 text has the ageing Krapp sit at a table on which stands a reel-to-reel tape recorder. He selects spools from his archive and plays back memories recorded each birthday. Occasionally he eats a banana or disappears into darkness, from which issues sounds of chinking glass and pouring liquid. The drama of the piece lies in the interplay between the voices on the tapes and the character reacting (or not) to his youthful selves. Krapp's world becomes our own: its pettiness, its humour, its lost visions and, through all that, something tremulous, untouchable, yet inescapable the mystery of being. Great actors build this, little by little, with the audience, leading us to a state that simultaneously acknowledges and challenges isolation through the act of sharing.
Director Polly Findlay and designer Alex Lowde transform Krapp into a specimen to be examined. They encase him in a rectangular box. Its upper two thirds are glass windows. Spectators are seated all around. The box rotates continuously, clicking as it goes, setting a mechanical rhythm. Sometimes we see Krapp's face; sometimes his back; sometimes just an intervening bit of box. The taped voice and the living voice are both relayed through speakers; different from one another in quality but equal in artificiality (Dan Jones's sound design). Direct relation between performer and spectators is not possible; it is modulated by intervening technology. We become voyeurs of a surveillance spectacle.
Continue reading...Monty Python Live (Mostly) review Parrot fashion and no bad thing for that
Monty Python's reunion delivers few surprises but their comedic genius remains
"Our motto has been 'Always leave them wanting less','' Eric Idle joked in last week's press conference to launch Monty Python's series of reunion gigs at the O2, and frequently during this bells-and-whistles extravaganza you feel they have succeeded admirably. This is very much Idle's show; it was he who devised it in collaboration with Spamalot composer John Du Prez, and the shiny troupe of dancers choreographed by Arlene Phillips feels closer to the glitz of Broadway than to the original Flying Circus. Some of the more modest two-hander sketches, with their drab postwar costumes of trenchcoats and tweed, relying on word play, pauses and facial expressions, can seem dwarfed in comparison, yet it's here that the gold is to be found.
"Who'd have thought 40 years ago we'd be sitting here doing Monty Python?" Eric Idle asks, opening a reprise of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch that operates with an extra layer of irony now that the performers are the ageing millionaires they once pretended to be. If Python was a cult when it first appeared, it has since achieved the status of established religion for many fans; this first show sold out in 40 seconds, and plenty here are dressed up as favourite characters, calling out the lines of each sketch like a litany. If groundbreaking comedy relies on wrong-footing the audience with unexpected twists and unlikely juxtapositions precisely as these sketches did when they were fresh then this must be the opposite. But there's a different kind of enjoyment in the singalong delight of familiarity, and the Pythons serve that up with gusto.
Continue reading...On my radar: Dan Smith of Bastille
Dan Smith is lead vocalist, songwriter and producer of four-piece rock outfit Bastille. Their debut studio album, Bad Blood, went straight to the top of the UK albums chart before going on to become the biggest-selling digital album of 2013. In February 2014, Bastille won best breakthrough act at the Brit awards, with nominations for British group, British single of the year and British album of the year. Excluding remixes and covers, Smith writes and arranges all of Bastille's music; as of February, the band have sold more than 3m records in the UK. Bastille play T in the Park on 13 July and Somerset House on 15 July.
Continue reading...Brooks decision due early next week
Tennis Girl dress sells for £15k
<a href="/news-events-ab/news/mary-martin-wins-arts-business-midlands-board-member-ofthe-year-award">Mary Martin wins The Arts & Business Midlands Board Member of the Year Award</a>
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