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Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme Hampstead Carrie’s War Apollo I want to be nice about this play but I simply can’t. Look at the idiotic title for starters. Frank McGuinness sets his drama in an Ulster barracks where a gang of recruits are preparing to fight the Hun in France. The characters, though competently drawn, are a weeny bit predictable. There’s the Belfast bullyboy, the young priest besieged by doubt, the shy kid whose mother is a closet Catholic and the Brokeback Mountain couple whose manful back-slapping hugs are a trifle more enthusiastic than strict camaraderie requires. The most fully realised character, Kenneth Pyper, is a mercurial jester who dominates the barracks with his insouciant rhetoric and unpredictable menace.

Beyond Bloomsbury: Designs of the Omega Workshops 1913–19 Courtauld Institute, until 20 September ‘It is time that the spirit of fun was introduced into furniture and into fabrics,’ proclaimed Roger Fry in 1913. ‘We have suffered too long from the dull and the stupidly serious.’ To this end he led a band of like-minded artists in the hand-production of decorative items for the home, operating from a three-storey townhouse at 33 Fitzroy Square that was both workshop and showroom. Among the clients were H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw and W.B. Yeats. Among the artists working for Fry were Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, Wyndham Lewis and Frederick Etchells, Gaudier-Brzeska and Winifred Gill.

It’s a rewarding moment for a stroll round the London galleries. Good art is still being made and exhibited (some of it even selling), while more historical figures such as Winifred Nicholson (1893–1981) and Robert Motherwell (1915–91) are being accorded the benefit of monographs and mini-retrospectives. Winifred Nicholson is often overshadowed by the ambitious and radical modernism of her husband Ben, and, although they split up in 1931 (he went off with Barbara Hepworth), they remained lifelong friends and artistic allies. Ben acknowledged Winifred’s inspiration and influence, particularly in the realm of colour, but her work still gets sidelined in the histories.

Jewels Royal Opera House Created in 1967 for a stellar cast of dance artists, Jewels is one of the most written about of Balanchine’s ballets. Intrigued by its uncommon structure, namely three choreographically diverse, plotless sections set to different music, dance writers have long debated the work’s possible meanings.

Even at 78 and from a distance, Sir Peter Hall has the look of an alpha male. There he is about 100 or so feet away, advancing towards me across the polished boards of his rehearsal room; head forward, bear-like, with the lonely charisma of a boxing champ. As he passes, the younger members of the Peter Hall Company fall back smiling, deferring. He’s king here, a Lear (act one). He pauses to pat a gamine young beauty on the arm, stroke his beard, pull his plump lips into a roguish grin — then moves on to the table where his lunch and I are waiting. One small sandwich, one large pile of lettuce. The great director sits, examines first me, then his lunch, then gives both of us a look of terrible, bored disappointment. Sir Peter Hall is a great connoisseur of life, a sensualist.