Features
Jasper Rees
Asked to nominate the most important playwright in America since the war, theatregoers would probably plump for Arthur Miller, Edward Albee or David Mamet. But in terms of sheer popularity there is another candidate. Neil Simon’s wiseacre comedies, many of them set in New York Jewish milieu into which he was born in 1927, were immensely popular from the off. His debut Come Blow Your Horn in 1960 ran on Broadway for nearly 700 performances.A child of the Depression who came of age at the end of the Second World War, he started out in radio and television writing gags for Phil Silvers and Sid Read more ...
James Bingham
Forty thousand choirs in the UK! Choral directors of the UK rejoice. Voices Now have finally published the Big Choral Census. They’ve put hard data to something we knew was true: there are loads of choirs and loads of people who love singing in them. Finally we can present government with solid evidence that meaningful investment into the art form will be money well spent. Surely a cause for celebration? Yes... but not entirely.I’ve lost count of the numbers of choirs I’ve come across that barely survive on their current membership. For non-auditioned choirs, dwindling numbers mean choirs can Read more ...
Jeremy Sams
I have many files, in bulging boxes and dusty corners of my computer, of projects that, for whatever reason, never came to fruition. To be honest I’ve forgotten most of them. And I wrongly assumed that The Enchanted Island would be one of those abandoned orphans. On the face of it the notion was fanciful. To make a complete opera out of a century of baroque music, with a new story and a new text in English. A Pasticcio, a shepherd’s pie of many ingredients, of the sort that Handel and Gluck organised in London in the 18th century. Or a Capriccio, redolent of those Italian oils of existing Read more ...
David Nice
Brits are the folk you expect to encounter the most in the rural-England-on-steroids of the beautiful Dordogne. In my experience they outnumber the French, at least in high summer, not just as visitors and retired homeowners but also as artisans selling their wares in Riberac's big Friday market. The Dutch are here, too, in force, and one of the long-term settlers, big Baroque name Ton Koopman, makes his own major contribution in August along with music-loving local Robert-Nicolas Huet. Their base is the atmospheric tiny settlement of Cercles, a place that feels as much end-of-the-road in a Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
North of Brisbane, south of Cairns and a short boat trip from the turquoise waters around the Great Barrier Reef, Townsville is the site of a north-east Australian military base. Despite its dry-tropical beachside glories, it’s not necessarily the most obvious setting for a world-class chamber music festival. Yet here, for 28 years, the Australian Festival of Chamber Music (AFCM) has been soundly embedded in the annual calendar, a much-loved national fixture.I attended this year’s session as both writer and participant, performing my narrated concert, Being Mrs Bach, which was Read more ...
Steve O'Rourke
Technical innovators, industry role models and champions of inclusivity make up the shortlist of nominees in the games category for this year’s h 100 awards, an event that recognises the 100 most influential and innovative people across the breadth of the UK’s creative industries.One nominee that could easily adopt all three roles is Dr Mick Donegan, founder of SpecialEffect a charity dedicated to helping people with physical disabilities play videogames. By using technology ranging from modified joypads to eye-control, Dr Donegan’s team have successfully found ways for thousands of people to Read more ...
Tatty Hennessy
F Off came about off the back of a meeting I had with Paul Roseby, the artistic director of the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain. I’d come in to talk to him about my writing and through complete coincidence, someone had just auditioned for Paul with a monologue from one of my plays, so we started talking about me potentially writing something for the NYT.Paul had been interested in putting social media on trial for a while and it was around the time that Mark Zuckerberg was testifying at the US Senate, so a play tackling the rise of social networks seemed like the perfect fit. Not Read more ...
Robert Carsen
In the time of composer John Gay, greed and self-interest were the main motives for life; and his work The Beggar’s Opera is an open critique on the way that society behaved. The work’s opening number sets the tone, basically saying: “we all abuse each other, we all steal from each other, we all want to get as much as we can and to hell with everybody else.”As the story develops we get endless examples of this attitude – particularly from the status quo officials who don’t seem to care where their money is coming from or whether people are innocent, so long as their pockets are lined. Yet Read more ...
David Nice
Unanticipated miracles happen every summer in the quiet paradise of Estonia's seaside capital. The first this year came as a total surprise. Having got off the afternoon coach from Riga last Monday and dumped bags at my villa base in Pärnu's garden zone, I headed back into town for the first event. Long on the cards were super-subtle Norwegian violinist Eldbjørg Hemsing playing Massenet and Saint-Saëns conducted by Paavo Järvi, the festival’s chief mind and heart, and young Estonian musicians from the Järvi Academy in Lepo Sumera’s bracing Musica Profana. But until I opened the programme, I Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Amidst ever-uncertain times, one thing is for sure: this country's ability to regenerate and renew itself theatrically remains alive and well. From an ever-bustling array of activity in the capital to all manner of bracing enterprise up and down the land, the British theatre continues to attract the best, and this year's shortlist for The Hospital Club's h 100 Awards amounts to a snapshot of excellence at this point in time. That the finalists range from an actor-turned-playwright (Arinzé Kene, author of Misty, main picture) to an entrepreneurial powerhouse based in the northwest (Alex Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Gusting. It’s not a word I’ve ever given much thought. You hear it on weather forecasts but I’m not a farmer of a fisherman so when they say it’ll be windy “with possible gusting speeds of up to 45 miles per hour” my brain doesn’t really register what that means on the ground. Until now. Camp Bestival 2018 was eventually defined by gusting (that and, apparently, Mary “Irrelevant” Berry). It was the unstoppable gusting that finally cancelled the festival a day early, a sad development but I could understand why. And I could feel it too, for by the time we left all my senses deeply knew exactly Read more ...
David Benedict
What’s that? Joan Crawford had no sense of humour? Well, take a look at It's A Great Feeling. It’s a pretty bizarre (and pretty bad) 1949 musical with Jack Carson and Dennis Morgan playing themselves running round the Warner Brothers lot attempting to make a picture. For reasons too daft to explain, they want to turn waitress Judy Adams (Doris Day) into their leading lady and all three wind up at a swanky gown shop. Doris disappears to try on a red gingham number, when who should pop up in a fur stole knitting what looks suspiciously like a baby bootee? Real-life Joan.Appalled by Read more ...