1930s
Barbara Hepworth, Tate BritainWednesday, 24 June 2015
One of the earliest surviving sculptures by Barbara Hepworth is a toad made from a khaki-coloured, translucent stone; you can imagine it cool and heavy in your hand, not so very different from the animal itself, in fact. Made nearly 30 years later,... Read more... |
Samson et Dalila, Grange Park OperaSunday, 21 June 2015
From “Printemps qui Commence“ (spring is beginning) to “Springtime for Hitler"... that really is quite some intellectual leap. Patrick Mason, an experienced and respected opera director, has uprooted the tale of Saint-Saëns's opera from biblical... Read more... |
DVD: The Dancing Years, The RatTuesday, 09 June 2015
The Dancing Years and The Rat are seemingly very different films. The Dancing Years (***, 1950) is a British musical which defines frou-frou. With a springing-off point in the dizzy world of the waltz-obsessed Vienna of 1910, its lingering shots of... Read more... |
Edmund de Waal: I Placed a Jar, Brighton FestivalTuesday, 19 May 2015
What strange things netsuke are. Tiny sculptures, usually made from wood or ivory and depicting anything from figures, to fruit to animals, they were first made in the 17th century as toggles to attach pockets and bags to the robes worn by Japanese... Read more... |
Woolf Works, Wayne McGregor, Royal BalletTuesday, 12 May 2015
On my way to the Woolf Works opening last night, I made the mistake of reading The Waves, Virginia Woolf’s most experimental novel. It was a mistake because even the briefest immersion in Woolf’s prose was a thousand times more exhilarating than the... Read more... |
DVD: The GroupTuesday, 07 April 2015
Mary McCarthy’s 1963 novel The Group inspired Candace Bushnell to write Sex and the City, a connection highlighted on this DVD of Sidney Lumet’s 1966 adaptation. Only the breezy style of the newsletter which keeps eight female friends from Vassar’s... Read more... |
Ravilious, Dulwich Picture GalleryMonday, 06 April 2015
Look at me, and think of England. This marvellous array of quirky, idiosyncratic watercolours by Eric Ravilious (1903-1942) from the 1930s until his premature death during wartime when his plane, on an air sea rescue mission for which he had... Read more... |
Indian Summers, Channel 4Sunday, 15 February 2015
In the tradition of A Passage to India, The Jewel in the Crown and Staying On, Indian Summers is ambitious, a serious soap attempting to show the dying days of the Raj through a host of interwoven personal and political attachments. Passions run... Read more... |
The GrandmasterFriday, 05 December 2014
Hong Kong master Wong Kar Wai has ventured into new territory with The Grandmaster. Many years in the making, his new film is a remarkable portrayal of martial-arts traditions, specifically the story of kung fu master Ip Man from his early life in... Read more... |
Ceremony of Innocence/The Age of Anxiety/Aeternum, Royal BalletSaturday, 08 November 2014
English National Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet have staged programmes of war pieces already this year; now here's the Royal Ballet bringing up the rear in its own inimitable (and rather oblique) fashion with a triple bill that picks up on and... Read more... |
First Episode, Jermyn Street TheatreSaturday, 01 November 2014
Rediscovered work offers aficionados a tantalising piece of the puzzle. Terence Rattigan’s callow debut, reborn after 80 years in obscurity, bears the hallmarks of his later plays, notably closeted ardour and the torment of unequal passion, but is... Read more... |
Imagine... The Art That Hitler Hated, BBC OneWednesday, 29 October 2014
Alan Yentob’s culture programme, Imagine, returned for its autumn season with a two-part examination of one of the most potently disturbing episodes in the history of art, let alone culture. Even before the programme’s title, masterpieces by such as... Read more... |
