More from Arts

Saturday

Michael Tanner

Elusive Mozart

Don Giovanni Glyndebourne, until 27 August Rigoletto Welsh National Opera, on tour Glyndebourne’s new production, by Jonathan Kent, of Don Giovanni is a wretched failure, not gross like its last one, in which the characters waded around in shit and Don Giovanni disembowelled a dead horse to eat its innards, but as irrelevant to the essence of what now seems to be Mozart’s most elusive dramatic work. In 15 years of reviewing I haven’t seen a production which was even approximately adequate, presumably because, while Mozart could perform a miraculous balancing act with his central figure, we no longer can. Gerald Finley, the extremely experienced performer of the title role, here makes him a man without qualities.

Deborah Ross

Labour of love

Toy Story 3 U, Nationwide The third and final film in a franchise isn’t usually up to much, but not so with Toy Story 3. It may even be cinema’s first must-see sequel to a sequel. It is wondrous and a delight and because those deliriously talented people at Pixar obviously love these characters to death, then so too do we. In fact, it’s the only press screening I’ve ever attended where everyone stayed right to the very end of the final credits, presumably because the characters were still chatting away in a frame to the side, and no one wanted to leave them behind; no one wanted to say that final goodbye to Woody or Buzz or Jessie or Slinky Dog or Mrs Potato Head, who, in the five years since the last movie, may have had work done on her nose.

Simon Hoggart

In deep water

What a strange organisation the BBC is! Imagine the meeting at which they discussed the cancellation of Hole in the Wall, the world’s most mindless game show. What a strange organisation the BBC is! Imagine the meeting at which they discussed the cancellation of Hole in the Wall, the world’s most mindless game show. It didn’t have terrible ratings, but was stoned to death by jeering critics and Harry Hill’s mockery. ‘Gentlemen, I am delighted to inform you,’ says HOCMIGS, (head of commissioning, mindless game shows), ‘that we have found a replacement even more mindless, more tooth-furringly, goose-bumpingly dreadful than Hole.’ A rather odd individual at the end of the table squeaks up.

Kate Chisholm

Male fix

The hotly tipped new Men’s Hour programme on Radio 5 Live sounds so 21st century. The hotly tipped new Men’s Hour programme on Radio 5 Live sounds so 21st century. Its presenter Tim Samuels promises a potent mix of emotional candour (inspired by Tony Soprano’s sessions on the couch) combined with, and I quote, ‘the intelligence’ of Woman’s Hour. So are women at long last truly going to be credited with thinking power and talent while male idols such as Jamie Cullum and José Mourinho are to provide merely therapeutic gravitas? I wish.

Saturday

Deborah Ross

Pursuit of love

Leaving 15, Key Cities London River 12A, Key Cities Leaving is a French film while London River is kind of French and although I don’t really know what this has got to do with anything I do know the following: they’ll both put you through the wringer. One (London River) will put you through it rather more than the other but, make no mistake, both will do the job, and it’s best you are warned in advanced. No one likes being put through a wringer unexpectedly. It can ruin your day. And make you late for work. First, Leaving. This is the properly French film, set around Nîmes, written and directed by Catherine Corsini and starring the bilingual Kristin Scott Thomas. Can you take your eyes off Ms Scott Thomas? You cannot.

Kate Chisholm

Caving in

We should be worried. The announcement that BBC 6 Music is going to be saved from the cost-cutter’s axe may sound like a victory for Everyman, as opposed to the mindlessness of the Jobsworths in Finance. We should be worried. The announcement that BBC 6 Music is going to be saved from the cost-cutter’s axe may sound like a victory for Everyman, as opposed to the mindlessness of the Jobsworths in Finance. But the money to keep Lauren and her team going will have to come from somewhere, and the most likely target, as ever, will be those departments whose budgeting can’t be accounted for in noughts and crosses. Will there be enough money in the pot to fund the ambition of series like The History of the World...?

Wednesday

Laura Gascoigne

Mapping the land

Familiar Visions: Eric & James Ravilious, Father & Son Towner, Eastbourne, until 5 September Ravilious Woodcuts Charleston Farmhouse, until 30 August Everyone, but everyone, has heard of Charleston, the East Sussex farmhouse with the beautiful walled garden transformed by the decorative geniuses of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant into a bijou Bloomsbury-on-the-Downs. But few people know about Furlongs, a couple of miles across the fields, the decidedly unpicturesque flint-built cottage where from 1933 the designer Peggy Angus presided over a rather more basic bohemian establishment, visited regularly by Eric Ravilious.

Andrew Lambirth

Passion killers

Beauty & Power: Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes Wallace Collection, Manchester Square, W1, until 25 July Caravaggio’s Friends & Foes Whitfield Fine Art, 23 Dering Street, W1, until 23 July William Crozier: Early Work Pyms Gallery, 9 Mount Street, W1, until 20 July The temporary exhibition galleries of the Wallace Collection are in the basement, next to the lavatories, and while I was there more visitors came down for the purposes of relieving themselves than to acquire new knowledge and experience of Renaissance and Baroque bronzes. It’s a shame if this show is being overlooked, because there hasn’t been a display like it in England for more than 30 years, and there are indeed fine things to be seen.

Lloyd Evans

Act of disturbance

The Tempest Old Vic, until 21 August Sucker Punch Royal Court, until 31 July Last week when I trotted over to the Old Vic to see The Tempest I had no idea I was about to experience one of the strangest performances of my life. About 20 minutes into the show a heavily built man arrived and installed himself with much effortful wheezing and groaning in the seat just behind me. His rasps and gasps continued for some time and when their tremors finally subsided I was able to return my attention to the play. But then he fell asleep. And then he started snoring. And snoring and snoring.

Michael Tanner

Cause for celebration

Simon Boccanegra Royal Opera House, in rep until 15 July Manon Royal Opera House, in rep until 10 July The Royal Opera’s latest revival of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra is notable above all for Plácido Domingo’s assumption of the title role, that is, his British debut as a baritone. It is also notable for his rapid recovery from serious illness, and his giving every appearance of being in fine fettle. Those combined circumstances made it difficult, at any rate for me, to decide just how artistically successful his transformation, and thus the whole revival, actually was.

James Delingpole

Twisted brilliance

What am I doing reviewing a documentary about the baroque? I hate the baroque — have done for as long as I can remember — and I expect it’s probably the same with you. What am I doing reviewing a documentary about the baroque? I hate the baroque — have done for as long as I can remember — and I expect it’s probably the same with you. Apart from being an essential sign of aesthetic superiority (we much prefer neoclassical in this country, don’t we, those of us who’ve spent time living in places like Peck quad, what, what, what?) hating the baroque is also the most wonderful time-saver.

Saturday

Charles Spencer

Fighting addiction

As was so often the case with Bertie Wooster when he faced an interview with his fearsome Aunt Agatha, I feel a sense of impending doom as I write this on a beautiful morning in late June. The roses smell sweet, the sun is shining, and a light breeze is blowing through my study window. I ought to be at peace with the world but, in a few days’ time, the chickens will come home to roost, and the prospect is making my stomach knot with an all-too-familiar mixture of guilt and fear. My wife and her sister came into some money following the death last summer of their mother.

Andrew Lambirth

Relative values | 3 July 2010

The Wyeth Family: Three Generations of American Art Dulwich Picture Gallery, until 22 August There have been a number of painting dynasties in the history of art — families such as the Bruegels, the Bellinis and the Tiepolos — but fewer in recent years, British art having favoured the older brother syndrome (Paul Nash and John, Stanley Spencer and Gilbert). The Wyeth family is a glorious exception, an American family obsessed with realist painting, and an encouraging phenomenon to study. Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009) is the best known of the painter Wyeths, and indeed the most talented. He is a remarkable artist, and it is his name that will probably attract many of the visitors to Dulwich.

Michael Tanner

Awe and gratitude

Die Meistersinger Welsh National Opera, Cardiff and touring Welsh National Opera’s new staging of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is a triumph. Not an unqualified one — I doubt whether there has ever been such a thing — but enough to leave the audience feeling that mixture of glowing wellbeing and sadness that this work alone engenders. WNO has a distinguished history of Wagner productions, thanks above all to the close relationship which it had with Reginald Goodall in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and which resulted in the most inspired performances of Tristan und Isolde that I have ever attended. By then Goodall had had his say with his great, enormous accounts of The Mastersingers with ENO a decade before, and the Welsh company moved on with him to Parsifal.

Deborah Ross

Let’s blame Fabio

Shrek Forever After U, Nationwide Shrek Forever After proves, once and for all, that this franchise is now a busted flush — personally, I’ve never seen a flush so busted — and while it would be wrong to blame Fabio Capello, just because he’s being blamed for everything else around here, let’s do it anyhow. Fabio: how could you? Yes, it is wrong, but it’s also jolly handy, and kind of fun. I even blamed Fabio for meaning to go to the gym this morning and then not bothering. That’s how handy he is. Anyway, Shrek. Shrek is the big, silly, noisome green ogre whom, in the past, I have loved properly and sincerely. But the Shrek in Forever After is not my Shrek, just as he’s not the Shrek of the first film (sublime) or the second (sublime plus).

Lloyd Evans

Children, beware

Sorry! Footsbarn Theatre, Victoria Park and touring As You Like It Old Vic, until 21 August Footsbarn Theatre’s new production Sorry! isn’t the greatest show on earth but it may well be the strangest. The conjunction of opposites permeates every level of this peculiar enterprise. The name is English. The players are French. They perform in English and French simultaneously. Sponsored by the Barbican, the show is staged several miles from the City in an east London park. The arena is a big top but the show transcends the circus tradition and offers a bizarre mixture of drama, acrobatics and trained livestock. Most strangely for a circus it has no scruples about frightening small children. My four-year-old son panicked as soon as the entertainment began.

Kate Chisholm

True blues

Talk of blues music and you’re likely to think of Muddy Waters, B.B. King and Howlin’ Wolf, but most of these guys actually learnt their craft from women like Memphis Minnie, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Precious Bryant. Talk of blues music and you’re likely to think of Muddy Waters, B.B. King and Howlin’ Wolf, but most of these guys actually learnt their craft from women like Memphis Minnie, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Precious Bryant. In Lady Plays the Blues on Saturday, Cerys Matthews (who usually DJs on BBC 6 Music) took us to the Mississippi Delta to talk to people who knew these extraordinary female singers and guitarists.

Simon Hoggart

Character building

Years ago, not long after Tony Blair’s first landslide, I was asked by London Weekend Television to co-write a sitcom. Years ago, not long after Tony Blair’s first landslide, I was asked by London Weekend Television to co-write a sitcom. The idea was to satirise New Labour, and it was cunningly set, not in the Houses of Parliament, but in a flat nearby shared by three Labour MPs. It was a sort of political version of Craggy Island, as in Father Ted. There was the MP who didn’t give a damn and regarded loyalty to the party line as the sign of a wimp — he was loosely based on Bob Marshall-Andrews. There was a young woman loosely based on another Labour MP whom I won’t name; she was a slavish follower of whatever the leadership wanted her to say, do or think.

Saturday

Andrew Lambirth

Kaleidoscopic vision

The Summer Exhibition Royal Academy of Arts, until 22 August The Weston Room is packed with prints as usual, but also features five display cases of artists’ books, including work by such masters of the genre as Ron King, Ken Campbell and Ian Tyson. Among the prints I particularly liked Bronwen Sleigh’s hand-coloured etching, Terry New’s digital print, Cornelia Parker’s etched worry lines, the screenprints of Stephen Chambers, Eileen Cooper’s linocuts, Ivor Abrahams’s ‘Suburban Totem’ and etchings by Paula Rego, Frank Auerbach, John Carter, Peter Freeth and Eileen Hogan (a pale beauty of Bryanston Square). The Small Weston Room is a typical feast of tiny paintings, and supremely popular with the buying public.

Michael Tanner

Curses and blessings

Idomeneo ENO, in rep until 9 July Lohengrin City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Mozart’s Idomeneo remains, despite the best efforts of its proselytisers, a connoisseur’s piece. For all its beauties and its emotional power, it is a predominantly static work, and one in which one can’t really care all that much about what happens to the central sympathetic characters — think of the Da Ponte operas and of Die Zauberflöte, by contrast, and the point is made. Katie Mitchell, who directs the new production at ENO, ‘places Idomeneo’s timeless dilemma in a contemporary context’, according to the programme. She would. One wonders, first, if Idomeneo’s dilemma is timeless.