Arts feature

Igor Toronyi-Lalic on the power of animation to subvert and propagate ideas The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the American army, on one of its first assignments, requisitioned Disney Studios and remained there for eight months. It was the only studio to suffer that fate but Walt Disney, ever the patriot, was more than obliging. By 1942, 93 per cent of his output (which was by now the largest of any Hollywood studio) was under government contract. He produced propaganda cartoons, such as the 1943 anti-Nazi film Education for Death, a series of animated instructional films — including, quite improbably, A Few Quick Facts about Venereal Disease — and enlisted Donald Duck full-time. In the words of one historian, Disney became a ‘bona fide war plant’.

Mary Wakefield talks to the RSC’s Michael Boyd and learns how he scared the Establishment Halfway through our interview, in the middle of a discussion about the future of the RSC, a tired Michael Boyd rubs his face with his hands, looks up at me through the gaps between his fingers and says, ‘Well, my aim was, and still is, to knock Shakespeare off his pedestal.’ Is that the last sentence you’d expect to hear from an enthusiastic director of the RSC? Half an hour ago, I’d have said so. Half an hour ago, I’d have prickled with outrage, made a tetchy little note in my reporter’s pad: ‘Boyd bonkers.’ But after only a short while in his company, I’ve been brainwashed — or re-educated, let’s say — by Michael Boyd.

Henrietta Bredin talks to the Young Vic’s David Lan and ENO’s John Berry about the joys of collaboration Walking into the Young Vic these days is a hugely pleasurable experience, and it’s even more of a pleasure to see the delight with which David Lan, its artistic director, looks around him at a theatre that has become so lively, busy and welcoming. The building recently underwent a much-needed overhaul and reopened in October 2006 — impressively on time and on budget — with three performing spaces, including two new studios, and public areas that are really appealing to spend time in.

Susan Moore on how the Americans have become net sellers of works of art Junius Spencer Morgan caused a sensation in 1876 when he paid the staggering sum of £10,100 — more than the National Gallery of London’s annual purchase grant — for Gainsborough’s celebrated portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. Since then a seemingly interminable line of nouveaux-riches American ‘Despoilers’ has relieved the impecunious (and often only too willing) European aristocracy of the art treasures their ancestors had amassed over the centuries. The phenomenon prompted the foundation of the National Art Collections Fund in Britain in 1903 to help save such treasures for the nation, and was subtly dissected by Henry James eight years later in The Outcry.

Mark Glazebrook talks to Sandy Nairne, who explains why the NPG is part of the life of London David Piper, director of the National Portrait Gallery 1964–67, was a brilliant historian and museum director who, while writing a book called The English Face, found that there’s no such thing. It vanished like the smile on Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire cat. Piper himself was disinclined to mastermind the much-needed radical reform of a musty old institution — a challenge successfully embraced by his young colleague and successor, Roy Strong. Strong’s Cecil Beaton show, a first for photography, drew previously undreamed of crowds. Today, attendance figures have risen to 1.6 million per annum.

Toby Jones on how theatre is being used in Malawi to help stop the spread of Aids The interior designer charged with decorating the IT suite probably didn’t have theatre in mind. I am staring at the pastel carpeting, Venetian blinds and the useless plug dangling from the overhead projector: we could be anywhere. The sex worker casually hands me her baby and takes to the carpet. As I rock the baby to sleep, I watch the mother and several of her sex co-workers acting out the moment a colleague of theirs declared herself HIV-positive. We are sitting in the British Council offices in Lilongwe, Malawi, where we have spent the afternoon singing and improvising with these 15 extraordinary women.

Laura Gascoigne follows in the footsteps of the 18th-century Grand Tourist ‘I was much disappointed in seeing Rome,’ complained the English traveller Sarah Bentham in the 1790s. ‘The streets are narrow, dirty and filthy. Even the palaces are a mixture of dirt and finery and intermixed with wretched mean houses. The largest open spaces in Rome are used for the sale of vegetables...’ The widowed stepmother of the philosopher Jeremy Bentham was equally underwhelmed by the Roman Campagna made famous by Claude. The city, she wrote, ‘appeared to be located in a desert’. For the 18th-century traveller in Italy several aspects of the Grand Tour were less than grand, but slumming it was part of the fun. Bentham was unusual in being a woman, and middle-aged.

Tom Hollander’s first meeting with a theatrical agent didn’t turn out quite how he expected It was the late Eighties and it paid to be brash. But I wasn’t brash I was green. Just down from university and wearing a second-hand double-breasted suit I had a meeting with London’s Most Powerful Agent. On Wall Street, Gordon Gekko. In Soho, Michael Foster. A man whose legendary temper had caused him, telephone in hand, to break his own finger while dialling. The extent of his rages were matched only by the size of the deals he got for his actors — deals rumoured to be so huge that other actors binge-drank at the thought of them.

James MacMillan explains why he hates the assumption that he is a liberal left-winger In my travels I see myself frequently described in foreign media as a ‘left-wing and Scottish nationalist’ composer. The latter label is ludicrous, and I just put it down to a foreigner’s ignorance and justifiable disinterest in the parish-pump tedium of devolved Scotland. It doesn’t bother me too much. The first, however, disturbs me much more. I used to be on the Left — I joined the Young Communist League in 1974, when I was just 14. Part of the motivation behind this was no doubt to annoy my devoutly Catholic relatives, who were all Labour supporters, but anxious, to the point of distraction, about insiduous Marxist manoeuvrings in the unions and in the workplace.

‘Mr Hallé’s Band’ began giving concerts 150 years ago. Michael Kennedy on the great orchestra On the wet evening of 30 January 1858 in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, which had been opened only two years previously, the 38-year-old Charles Hallé launched his privately funded series of orchestral concerts. On the same date next week, 150 years later, the orchestra still bearing its founder’s name will celebrate the anniversary with a programme introduced by Dame Janet Baker. In a century and a half it has had only ten chief conductors. The tenth, Mark Elder, will be on the rostrum. Carl Halle, as he was born, with no acute accent, was German and trained as a pianist although he conducted several operas in his home town of Hagen when he was 11.

Lloyd Evans believes that Wilde’s comedy is the best play ever written. The Importance of Being Earnest with Penelope Keith is at the Vaudeville Theatre from 22 January. My favourite play is on its way to the West End and I fully expect to be disappointed. It’s not that Peter Gill’s production of The Importance of Being Earnest hasn’t been widely praised. It has. But I prefer to see the play done by amateurs because with the sheen of professionalism stripped away the brilliance of the script becomes all the more evident. The Importance has been called the best comedy ever written. I’d say it’s the best play ever written. Its structure is flawless.

Mary Wakefield talks to Eileen Atkins about acting as an out-of-body experience. Eileen Atkins opens in The Sea at the Theatre Royal Haymarket on 23 January. The Eileen Atkins experience — the word ‘interview’ doesn’t even begin to describe it — starts for me at about 3.30 on a brilliant, sunny afternoon in December. There I am in her elegant, airy sitting room overlooking the Thames, surrounded by books and paintings, watching swans shimmy by outside. There I am stroking a cat, listening to Dame Eileen, and just becoming dimly aware that this is not going to be a very run-of-the-mill conversation.