Features
Rory Mullarkey
“The Cherry Orchard is the greatest play ever written,” I declared, confidently, aged 16, to my mother, having just read The Cherry Orchard for the first time. She responded to my claim with a non-committal snort – remembering, perhaps, the production of The Seagull (the previous month’s “greatest play ever written”) I had dragged her to the Saturday beforehand, and which I had forbidden her from leaving at the interval because she was so bored – and continued with what she was doing, namely driving us to the dentist.But maybe her snort was prematurely dismissive? I’ve returned to the play Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
In a career that began in 1967 and may yet have further life in it, Genesis have sold 150 million albums (and possibly more), and in their original incarnation with Peter Gabriel as vocalist were an influential force in the development of progressive rock. They then enjoyed an extraordinary rebirth when Phil Collins took over the microphone, and with albums like Duke, Abacab, Invisible Touch and We Can’t Dance blossomed into one of the most popular acts of the Eighties and Nineties. They became flag-wavers of a record industry pumped up on the compact disc boom and the MTV revolution.But Read more ...
Owen Richards
Clio Barnard has quietly been building a reputation as one of Britain’s most human storytellers. Her debut feature The Arbor was a mesmerising look at the life of playwright Andrea Dunbar, blurring the line between documentary and performance. While filming, she befriended children on the estate who would steal metal for scrap – they would be the inspiration for her acclaimed sophomore release, The Selfish Giant.Her new film Dark River stars Ruth Wilson as Alice, who returns to claim rights to her family farm after the death of her abusive father. Her brother Joe, played by Mark Stanley, Read more ...
Bryony Lavery
I never have the idea of adapting anything at all myself. The suggestions always come from directors or theatre companies. Someone calls me to say, Would I be interested in adapting this book… and I say… "Let me read it and get back to you”, then I sit down and whizz through it… and… if my heart lifts at the thought, I say “yes”. If it sinks… I decline politely. You have to be excited by the work of someone who is, in fact, going to be The Head Writer.So far, I have been The Junior Writer or, as I position myself, Assistant to… Mr Robert Louis Stevenson, Mr Bram Stoker, Ms Kate Atkinson, Ms Read more ...
Jasper Rees
In 11 seasons of Frasier, John Mahoney played Marty Crane, a cussed blue-collar ex-cop who couldn’t quite understand how his loins came to produce two prissily cultured psychiatrists. His ally in straight-talking was his physiotherapist Daphne, whose fish-out-of-water flat-cap vowels were apparently the result of a gap in the scriptwriters’ field of knowledge. “When they wrote that Daphne is a working girl from Manchester," explained Mahoney, "they had no idea what that meant. The accent really threw them." It wasn't apparent from his Midwestern growl, but Mahoney was the one who was able to Read more ...
Richard Farnes
Commentators have, over the years, variously described Un ballo in maschera (A Masked Ball) as all things to all people: Verdi’s Tristan und Isolde, Verdi’s masterpiece, Verdi’s Don Giovanni, a pure love poem, and much more. It seems to me to be one of his most consistently exciting works, perfectly proportioned and dramatically astute.Interestingly, in this instance Verdi did not feel the need to make the extensive revisions that he undertook to the operas either side of it in his canon – Simon Boccanegra, La forza del destino and Don Carlos. Its creation was relatively swift, and its Read more ...
theartsdesk
With forelock-tugging celebrations of a choreographer who died 25 years ago and a summer visit by the Mariinsky the highest-profile events in the calendar, 2017 may not be remembered as a vintage year for British dance. But there were striking moments aplenty if you knew where to look for them, and companies, directors and dancers making magic even in ordinary circumstances. As the year ends, theartsdesk correspondents cast their minds back and pick out the best of those magical moments. As always, the criterion is memorability: this is not a comprehensive review of who was worthy or Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The Edinburgh Fringe is usually the high point of the year for comedy, but in truth it wasn't a solid five-star year – although there were some stand-out performers. And if the test of good comedy is the shows that stay with you, and which you want to see again, then a few are definitely up there.Chief among that group was Hannah Gadsby's Nanette, an astonishing piece of work that she says is her valedictory show. That's because making comedy for other people from her life and experiences as a gay woman growing up in a deeply conservative and homophobic Tasmania – many of them painful or Read more ...
David Nice
Did Simon Rattle's return to the UK as Principal Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra live up to the hype? Mostly, and when it did, the music-making was superbly alive. But it's vital to observe that another orchestra and chief conductor have been carrying on equally important and sometimes groundbreaking work in the same hall. The two other main London orchestras over at the Southbank, and the rest around the UK, all in excellent hands, have continued to deliver at the highest level. We're currently living in the strongest times, artistically speaking, for classical music across the Read more ...
David Nice
It may not have been the best year for eye-popping productions; even visionary director Richard Jones fell a bit short with a tame-ish Royal Opera Bohème, though his non-operatic The Twilight Zone is something else. Instead there's been time to reflect on what makes a true company. While English National Opera, after the end of Mark Wigglesworth's short but unsurpassable tenure, showed what a shortened season looks like – the London Coliseum no longer "the home of ENO", Bat out of Hell taking over from June to August – others continued to blaze a trail forward.Top prize for showing Read more ...
David Nice
Faced with yet another new work premiered by the Borodin Quartet, Shostakovich asked a daunting question: "but have you played all of Haydn's quartets yet?". Of course they hadn't, and felt justly rebuked. As a listener and sometime performer, I feel the same anxiety about living long enough to experience Bach's 200-plus sacred cantatas, the largest, most ingeniously varied and certainly greatest body of religious music in the western world - and if there's a dud, I haven't heard it yet.Planning your audio adventure should be easy enough: resolve to take in a cantata on every Sunday and other Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Nureyev, the most notorious new production at the Bolshoi Ballet’s modern history, premiered last night in Moscow to a 15-minute standing ovation and exclamations of official approval even by Putin’s press secretary – but the ballet’s creator and director languished under house arrest, refused permission to see his own ballet. Members of the creative team took the curtain calls at the great colonnaded theatre by the Kremlin wearing T-shirts with the face of Kirill Serebrennikov on them, while spectators chanted “Kirill! Kirill!”, according to news reports.Serebrennikov, a leading figure in Read more ...