17th century
L'Incoronazione di Poppea, EBS, Gardiner, Colston Hall, BristolTuesday, 09 May 2017
Whatever musicologists may tell us about the patchy authenticity of Monteverdi’s last two operas, they unquestionably make a pair. Il ritorno di Ulisse is all about fidelity and ends with a love duet between the reunited husband and wife. L’... Read more... |
The Cardinal, Southwark Playhouse review - 'rarely produced play has renewed punch'Thursday, 04 May 2017
James Shirley is a rarely performed 17th-century playwright whose oeuvre has generally been consigned to theatrical study and research. Written for King Charles I at a time of great political upheaval and with the English Civil War looming, not to... Read more... |
The Miser, Garrick TheatreMonday, 13 March 2017
Trimmings, trimmings. They prove the final straw for Molière’s Harpagon in this new adaptation of the classic French comedy-farce. The menu for his wedding banquet – which he doesn’t want to spend a centime more on than he has to – is being... Read more... |
Bruegel, Holburne Museum, BathSaturday, 11 March 2017
Painted in c.1640, David Teniers the Younger’s Boy Blowing Bubbles depicts a theme that would have been entirely familiar to his wife’s great-grandfather, the founder of one of art’s most illustrious dynasties, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c.1525-1569... Read more... |
The White Devil, Sam Wanamaker PlayhouseThursday, 02 February 2017
It's no accident that when the Globe's Sam Wanamaker Playhouse opened in 2014 it was with The Duchess of Malfi. This wooden womb, with its thick darkness and close-pressed audience is made for the stifling, claustrophobic horror of revenge tragedy.... Read more... |
SilenceSaturday, 31 December 2016
Audiences cannot fail to register the enormity of Martin Scorsese’s achievement in Silence. At 160 minutes, it hangs heavy over the film: adapted from the 1966 novel by Japanese writer Shusaku Endo, Silence has been close on three decades in... Read more... |
Best of 2016: ArtThursday, 29 December 2016
Before we consign this miserable year to history, there are a few good bits to be salvaged; in fact, for the visual arts 2016 has been marked by renewal and regeneration, with a clutch of newish museum directors getting into their stride, and... Read more... |
Shakespeare Trilogy, Donmar at King's CrossThursday, 24 November 2016
If you are new to the Donmar Warehouse all-female stagings of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Henry IV – 2012 and 2014 respectively – the biggest surprise is not so much that these highly masculine dramas are performed entirely by women. It is their... Read more... |
Cymbeline, RSC, BarbicanTuesday, 08 November 2016
“Britain is a world by itself.” It could be the slogan of the year – and rather longer, probably – but the phrase comes from Shakespeare’s late romance Cymbeline. Its Act III scene, in which Britain announces that it is breaking its... Read more... |
10 Questions for Director Lucy BaileyWednesday, 26 October 2016
Theatre was not Lucy Bailey’s first target. At school she was a flautist, headed probably for music. Then, in her gap year, she took a job as a telephonist at Glyndebourne, and noticed a vigorous man with a beard – name of Peter Hall – moving people... Read more... |
Adriaen van de Velde, Dulwich Picture GalleryWednesday, 26 October 2016
Oh, those dogs: just a flick of the brush, and there they are, bursting with life. Pets, hunting dogs, companions, strays: romping on beaches, or in Dutch forests, living on farms and in imagined arcadias. Adriaen van de Velde was a 17th century... Read more... |
10 Questions for Conductor Sir John Eliot GardinerSunday, 16 October 2016
The Lobgesang "lies very near my heart," wrote Mendelssohn. And the composer was so self-critical that the published order of his symphonies bears no resemblance to their composition: this "Hymn of Praise", known as the Second, was the penultimate... Read more... |
