Arts Reviews

The good, bad and ugly in arts and exhbitions

Saturday

Kate Chisholm

Unsung poets

We might actually be glad of the time difference over in Australia this Christmas, so that we can switch on to Aggers and co. and listen in peace long after Aunt Maud has been safely tucked up with her mug of Horlicks and hot-water bottle. The Fourth Test in Melbourne promises to be the best present of the season, cheering up the nation and turning us all into Yes We Can people after decades of No Can Do. Who can remember a time when cricket has been so incredibly exciting, with England’s batters whacking the ball into triple figures, and wickets falling ball-on-ball not to the terrifying speed of the

Simon Hoggart

Top of the pops

The most watched programme on British television this year was the special live edition of EastEnders, broadcast in February to mark the soap’s 25th anniversary. The most watched programme on British television this year was the special live edition of EastEnders, broadcast in February to mark the soap’s 25th anniversary. This was the one — I assume you’re keeping up — in which Bradley Branning plunged to his death and Stacey confessed that she had killed Archie. At the end, some 16.6 million people were watching, which is roughly 28 per cent of the population, still a fraction of the 50 per cent who watched the old Morecambe and Wise

Ursula Buchan

Gardens: Beguiled by olive trees

Fashion may be Folly’s child, but that never stopped gardeners, when the urge was on them, from planting something à la mode. Fashion may be Folly’s child, but that never stopped gardeners, when the urge was on them, from planting something à la mode. That must be why olive trees (Olea europea), natives of the rocky dry soils of the eastern Mediterranean, are now so widely planted in British gardens. Prince Charles has them at Highgrove and they can be seen each year at Chelsea Flower Show so, hey, we all have to grow them, don’t we? If you want them to survive unscathed our new-style, old-style cold winters —

Saturday

Andrew Petrie

The road to ruins

Director Patrick Keiller made his name with London (1994) and Robinson in Space (1997), semi-documentaries recounting the peripatetic investigations into ‘the problem of England’ conducted by the unseen narrator and his fellow academic Robinson. The late Paul Scofield’s voiceover, rich in literary reference and understated satire, combined with meticulous shot composition to produce unclassifiable portraits of a country forever in decline from its literary and industrial pre-eminence. In the new film Robinson in Ruins, Vanessa Redgrave assumes Scofield’s role as narrator. Robinson’s research has narrowed in scope to the counties of Oxfordshire and Berkshire, but has taken a turn for the supernatural: he is convinced that the fall of meteorites

Andrew Lambirth

Exhibitions Round-up: lifting the heart

The run-up to Christmas is the perfect season for an exhibition of Andrew Logan’s joyful and extravagant art. The run-up to Christmas is the perfect season for an exhibition of Andrew Logan’s joyful and extravagant art. At Flowers (82 Kingsland Road, E2, until 31 December) is an installation of glittering sculptures which lightens the spirit and brings a song to the lips. Fashion meets fantasy in Logan’s signature mirror sculptures, his unique blend of resin, glass, fibreglass, paint and glitter. For the past 40 years, Logan (born 1945) has brought colour and light into people’s lives. He was a pioneer of the sensational long before the YBAs toddled into view;

Deborah Ross

All the lonely people

Whereas Sofia Coppola’s directorial breakthrough, Lost in Translation, featured two lonely souls rattling about in a Tokyo hotel, her latest film, Somewhere, features one lonely soul holed up in a Californian hotel, and isn’t half so good. Whereas Sofia Coppola’s directorial breakthrough, Lost in Translation, featured two lonely souls rattling about in a Tokyo hotel, her latest film, Somewhere, features one lonely soul holed up in a Californian hotel, and isn’t half so good. It’s not bad. It’s not hateful. It’s not evil. You won’t want to hunt it down and bring it to trial. But a second film about ennui suffers from ennui itself. And I’m not sure I

Michael Tanner

Gruesome fun

Having been away, I only got to Alexander Raskatov’s opera A Dog’s Heart at its fifth performance by ENO, by which time everyone knew that it was brilliantly mounted, but not of much musical substance. Having been away, I only got to Alexander Raskatov’s opera A Dog’s Heart at its fifth performance by ENO, by which time everyone knew that it was brilliantly mounted, but not of much musical substance. Actually, you could say the same for most of the new operas that ENO has mounted over the past decade, and from composers much better known than Raskatov. I’d be happy to volunteer a list. For me a good deal

Michael Tanner

Interview: Semyon Bychkov: his own man

Semyon Bychkov has rather unspectacularly become one of the world’s most sought after conductors, and at present he is in London to conduct a series of performances of Wagner’s now least often staged canonical opera, Tannhäuser, at the Royal Opera House. Semyon Bychkov has rather unspectacularly become one of the world’s most sought after conductors, and at present he is in London to conduct a series of performances of Wagner’s now least often staged canonical opera, Tannhäuser, at the Royal Opera House. He was trained in St Petersburg, at that time Leningrad, by the apparently legendary Ilya Musin; but at least as important was the long-time chief conductor of the

Lloyd Evans

Flawed curiosity

His brain clouded with opium fumes, Jean Cocteau wrote Les Parents Terribles in just one week. It opens like a Greek tragedy crossed with a madcap sitcom. The ageing beauty Yvonne prances around her Bohemian apartment pining and weeping for her son, Michael, who has gone missing. When he turns up safe and sound, she throws herself into ecstasies of relief, leads him to the chaise-longue and showers his face and lips with kisses. He then breaks the news that he’s in love with a typist. She reacts like a cobra touched with a cattle prod. Spitting with anger she denounces the ‘lying hussy’, and vows never to let an

Kate Chisholm

Speech impediment

It’s the juxtaposition of ‘u’ on ‘u’ that did for Jim. According to scientific study, a sequence of words with the same vowels in the same place can trip us up, as poor Jim Naughtie discovered on Monday morning. It’s the juxtaposition of ‘u’ on ‘u’ that did for Jim. According to scientific study, a sequence of words with the same vowels in the same place can trip us up, as poor Jim Naughtie discovered on Monday morning. If you missed the classic radio moment, he was trying to announce Jeremy Hunt, the culture minister, just before the eight o’clock news but didn’t quite get his name right, muddling up

James Delingpole

Juggling statistics

I love statistics. Possibly my favourite is the one from Bjorn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist: the total number of birds killed in the Exxon Valdez disaster was the same as are killed each day in the US flying into plate-glass windows or the same as are killed in Britain every two days by cats. It’s good because you can use it in so many different ways: to annoy cat lovers; to amaze friends at dinner parties; and above all to bait those tortured souls for whom Exxon Valdez has become the ne plus ultra of the kind of Man Made Eco Armageddon that must never, at all costs, be allowed

Sunday

Scott Jordan-Harris

TV: Why I Love … Mastermind

I’m often told I should go on Mastermind. Although this isn’t a compliment (it’s actually a very polite, and very British, way of asking, ‘Can we talk about something else now?’), I still take it as one. Whenever someone mentions to me that I ought to audition for a spot in The Black Chair it tells me that, conversation skills aside, I’m at least on course to be the kind of person I’d like to be. If someone told me I should try out for The Weakest Link or, worse, The National Lottery: In It To Win It, I’d take it either as an insult or a suggestion that I

Saturday

Andrew Lambirth

Light relief

The so-called Glasgow Boys had no manifesto, common background or style, apart from working in and around the city of Glasgow and sharing a belief in the importance of painting from direct observation and experience. They acknowledged the influence of the naturalism practised by the Barbizon and Hague schools in the later 19th century, and rejected narrative in painting and especially the sickly sentimentalism that bedevilled so much Victorian art. They were a loosely associated group of painters, sometimes called the Glasgow School but preferring to be known by the slightly more raffish title of the Glasgow Boys, who banded together principally to exhibit. This ploy worked and they achieved

Niru Ratnam

Come together

Niru Ratnam invites you to join in and take off your trousers in the name of art at the taxpayer’s expense — while you still can In the week before the G20 summit in early 2009, I found myself sitting at a large, round, glass-topped table in the new extension to the Whitechapel Gallery. A large tapestry copy of Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ hung on one of the walls nearby. Around the table were 30-odd people made up of students, random art folk, regulars of the Anarchist Bookshop located in the alley next to the gallery and, somewhat incongruously, the managing director of the Whitechapel Gallery looking dapper, if increasingly confused, in

George Hull

Broken hearts

In a bleak St Louis tenement, the Wingfields are buckling beneath the Depression and their mother’s old-fashioned aspirations. A framework of fire escapes and raised walkways provides convenient perches from which Tom (Leo Bill) can narrate and look on with foreboding as his lame sister is dressed and groomed for the long awaited ‘gentleman caller’. In a bleak St Louis tenement, the Wingfields are buckling beneath the Depression and their mother’s old-fashioned aspirations. A framework of fire escapes and raised walkways provides convenient perches from which Tom (Leo Bill) can narrate and look on with foreboding as his lame sister is dressed and groomed for the long awaited ‘gentleman caller’.

Deborah Ross

Incredible journey

Monsters is a sci-fi alien film and is being promoted as a sci-fi alien film but it’s not really a sci-fi alien film as it’s a love story with a beautiful and unexpected ending. Monsters is a sci-fi alien film and is being promoted as a sci-fi alien film but it’s not really a sci-fi alien film as it’s a love story with a beautiful and unexpected ending. It just happens to be set in the future and happens to feature aliens, and is one of those films that was made for next to nothing — $15,000! — and yet has proved both a critical and box-office success. Fifteen thousand

Lloyd Evans

Child abuse

Christmas approaches. And kitchens and playrooms across the land resound with the joyous tinkle of little Josephs and Marys rehearsing their roles in the Nativity play. My four-year-old son, making his debut in a farmyard cameo, has just one line, ‘I’m a donkey and I’m very tired,’ which he repeats endlessly to the delight of his beaming dad. So I can only imagine the levels of pride surging through the families of Ciara Southwood and Madison Lygo as they prepared for the lead roles of Mimi and Janey in the Royal Court’s new play Kin, which is set in a girls’ prep school. The homes of these lucky ten-year-old actresses

Michael Tanner

Magnificent Mozart

The subtitle of Mozart’s Don Giovanni is ‘Il dissoluto punito’ (the rake punished), that of Rossini’s La Cenerentola is ‘La bontà in trionfo’ (goodness triumphant), while Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea might well be subtitled ‘Vice rewarded’. The subtitle of Mozart’s Don Giovanni is ‘Il dissoluto punito’ (the rake punished), that of Rossini’s La Cenerentola is ‘La bontà in trionfo’ (goodness triumphant), while Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea might well be subtitled ‘Vice rewarded’. They are the three operas that Glyndebourne is taking round the country this year, whether with moralistic intent I don’t know. Large school parties attend these performances, and are extraordinarily well behaved in my experience; if they have

Giannandrea Poesio

Playing it safe

Put the life of a legendary music-maker/campaigner in the hands of a controversial choreographer and you’ll possibly end up with some explosive stuff. Put the life of a legendary music-maker/campaigner in the hands of a controversial choreographer and you’ll possibly end up with some explosive stuff. This is what the Broadway producer Stephen Hendel might have had in mind when he asked Bill T. Jones to direct and choreograph a musical about Fela Kuti. But whether or not he saw his dream realised, I am not sure. Fela! hails from Broadway where it has been a long-running sizzling hit. It has great music, an almost endless stream of colourful numbers

Kate Chisholm

Watching and waiting

Phew! We’ve just had a narrow escape, if reports are true that the Today programme has been ‘in talks with’ Katie Price, aka Jordan. Phew! We’ve just had a narrow escape, if reports are true that the Today programme has been ‘in talks with’ Katie Price, aka Jordan. In talks with? Is international-style diplomacy really necessary for Ms Price to be persuaded to accept such an invitation, guest-editing Radio 4’s flagship current-affairs slot one morning between Christmas and New Year? She has declined (it’s that world-shattering book on how to beat cellulite she needs to finish), and so we’ll have to put up with second-best, Colin Firth, whose qualifications for