More from Arts

Wednesday

Andrew Lambirth

The new vision

Framing Modernism: Architecture and Photography in Italy 1926-65 Estorick Collection, until 21 June Adrian Berg: Panoramic Watercolours Friends Room, Royal Academy, until 11 June Architecture exhibitions, as I’ve had occasion to note before, are not always the most visually exciting of events, principally because the experience of a building can only really be conveyed in front of it or inside it. Architectural models can be aesthetically pleasing quasi-sculptures, and plans or elevations can be beautiful drawings in their own right, but they are no substitute for the actual thing. The great stand-by in architectural exhibitions is the photograph, often a cunning shot of an interesting detail blown up to gigantic proportions to give a simulacrum of experiencing the building itself.

Ariane Bankes

We will remember

Art and Memory: New perspectives on memorial art West Dean, Nr Chichester, until 1 November There are those who haunt ancient churchyards in search of elegant epigraphs or curious carvings on lichened gravestones, but many focus only on what makes a good memorial when forced to do so by bereavement, and the desire to commemorate justly someone we loved. A few years ago we might have been forgiven for thinking that the fine art of letter-cutting was moribund, polished off by the dead hand of Church officialdom with its rules and regulations and its mania for neat, ‘easy to maintain’ burial plots, devoid of all interest and idiosyncracy.

Laura Gascoigne

Saying sorry in Seville

There’s been a lot of muttering lately about the word ‘sorry’ and the reluctance of politicians and bankers to say it — an unrealistic expectation, given that the logical follow-up is resignation. There’s been a lot of muttering lately about the word ‘sorry’ and the reluctance of politicians and bankers to say it — an unrealistic expectation, given that the logical follow-up is resignation. In Seville, they have a more sensible approach: instead of demanding personal apologies, they muck in for a mass penitence lasting a week. Before attending my first Semana Santa this year, I’d imagined it to be a punishing affair involving penitents shuffling on their knees. As I discovered, it is anything but.

Lloyd Evans

Poetic despair

Waiting for Godot Theatre Royal Haymarket Monsters Arcola Godot is one of the most undramatic pieces of theatre ever written and it contains a conundrum I’ve never seen satisfactorily resolved. As a playwright you aim to communicate emotion. If you can make the spectators feel what the characters are feeling, you have a success. However, if what the characters are feeling, and what the spectators are feeling, is suicidal boredom you have sabotage. Beckett takes a sado-masochistic pleasure in elasticating his play with tedious longeurs so that viewers don’t just watch the boredom, they share in it, live it, breathe it, die of it. Much as you try to counsel yourself, ‘Bored?

Kate Chisholm

Turn of phrase

In his Point of View this week (Radio Four, Sunday), Clive James wove together a subtle threnody on the virtues of having a Poet Laureate. He remarked on how good poets have the ability to conjure up ‘the phrase that makes your mind stand on end’, showing that it’s a quality shared by many prose writers too. The very existence of the Poet Laureate, argued James, is an acknowledgement by the state that there is something out there that the state cannot control — the national memory — and the national memory ‘travels’ in the language, which in turn is preserved, above all, by the poets. It was such a hope-inspiring thought amid the terrifying misuse of words, and ideas, by our current crop of state representatives.

Saturday

Lloyd Evans

Writer’s block

The Last Cigarette Trafalgar Studio Rookery Nook Menier Simon Gray’s twilight diaries may well be a prose masterpiece. That the stage adaptation hasn’t done them justice is a fact few want to admit. The ‘much-loved’ fallacy has descended over this production for understandable reasons. Gray was a darling of the theatre, and the cast — Felicity Kendal, Jasper Britton, Nicholas Le Prevost — are twinkly-eyed favourites from the national treasure trove. But even buckletloads of affection can’t disguise the mismatch between a meandering first-person narrative and the focused concision of the stage. Gray, a talented playwright, sidestepped the theatre and chose good old prose for his last testament. Strong hint there, I’d say.

Patrick Carnegy

Jesting in earnest

As You Like It; The Winter’s Tale Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon Back in the rehearsal room for the first time since his triumphant Histories cycle, the RSC’s artistic director Michael Boyd whisks As You Like It far away from the Forest of Arden. Not a tree in sight, and does anyone give a twig? Yes, the play’s in part a satire on the Elizabethans’ taste for awful pastoral verse, but Boyd wisely sets it on a clinically bare stage, asking us to respond firstly to its Mozartean games on the universal joys and terrible deceptions of human passion. The courtly costumes (puritanical black with white ruffs) could be 17th-century Dutch, while in the ‘forest’ pretty well anything goes.

Peter Phillips

Out of harmony

The current exhibition at Tate Modern (Rodchenko and Popova: Defining Constructivism, until 17 May) is rich in cultural reference, apart from any reference to music. Here we have Popova collaborating with theatrical producers and designers, Rodchenko working alongside film-makers and poets (especially Mayakovsky), and everyone in a headlong dash away from easel work towards sculpture, and even architecture. It was a time of quite glorious redefinition of life and culture, taking in anything and everything. Why is music kept apart? It wasn’t that the musicians themselves were silent. The new Soviet authorities had a liking for opera, hoping that such an obvious art form would appeal to the masses. Well-known operas were ridiculously recast with new libretti.

Michael Tanner

Wagner’s secret

Lohengrin Royal Opera House Nietzsche said of the prelude to Act I of Lohengrin that it was the first piece of hypnosis by music, and listening to the Royal Opera orchestra’s performance of it under Semyon Bychkov tended to confirm his claim, at any rate until the climax, where Bychkov pulled out a few stops too many, and made the piece sound almost vulgar. The opening, however, was exquisite, entrancing, the divided violins playing with such piercing sweetness that Wagner’s phenomenal feat of evoking the mystical by sensuous, even sensual means was as potent as I have ever heard it. This prelude, which has no predecessor in any work, retains its power to move and dazzle as much as any he wrote.

Deborah Ross

Star vehicle

Star Trek: The Future Begins 12A, Nationwide Listen, I’m no Trekkie, I don’t speak Klingon, I’ve never boldly been anywhere in the least bit exciting — my fear of motorways has always hampered me horribly in this respect — and I don’t like action epics but Star Trek: The Future Begins is quite fun. I’m not saying it’s fantastic fun, or the most fun you can have with your clothes on or, if you’re my age, off, but it is certainly vastly smarter and more enjoyable than most films of this type. Yes, there is a lot of bish-bash-boshing and, yes, the plot is barely comprehensible and, yes, there is a baddie intent on global domination rather than, say, free dental care for all and a happy-smiley sticker, even if you are a wuss.

James Delingpole

Grinning idiot

Easily the best thing that has happened to me recently was being called a warthog on TV by Charlie Brooker. At least that’s what I heard from people who’d seen Newswipe (BBC4 — http://is.gd/vztj). But it turned out I was just one of a number of hacks illustrating a point about opinion pieces written by people ‘grinning like idiots, or looking constipated, or pulling embarrassing warthog scowls’. I worship Brooker. You might not have heard of him because he writes for the Guardian, but he has been doing more TV of late — ScreenWipe, then Newswipe always worth catching, because it’s so pungent with loathing for the medium. It’s a privilege granted very few of us to be able to crap on our professions from within.

Kate Chisholm

Daring to be different

At last a late-night ‘comedy’ show on Radio Four that sounds a bit different. At last a late-night ‘comedy’ show on Radio Four that sounds a bit different. Bill Dare and his team of writers have been taking us on Tuesdays at 11 into their Secret World (Radio Four). It’s a universe in which you might find Peter Mandelson believing that he can fly (‘He may not be barking, but he’s on the A13 going east’), Tony Blair in therapy with Sir Alan Sugar, or Bob Geldof trying to explain to his daughter Pixie what charity actually means.

Wednesday

Andrew Lambirth

A place to linger

Isa Genzken: Open, Sesame! Whitechapel Gallery, until 21 June Passports: Great Early Buys from the British Council Collection Whitechapel Gallery, until 14 June The Whitechapel has just re-opened after a major renovation and expansion, increasing gallery space by 78 per cent, incorporating and transforming the old library next door as part of a Heritage Lottery Fund assisted project. The results are spectacular: the original exhibition spaces which have beguiled generations of gallery-goers are still there, looking better than ever, with the addition of several new areas to discover. As a result, the Whitechapel can offer a range of exhibitions at any one time and will no longer need to be shut for lengthy periods to rehang.

Saturday

Marcus Berkmann

Swan songs

Some say that pop music has nowhere else to go, but they are wrong: there is still extreme old age to negotiate. This week the American singer-songwriter, activist and folk evangelist Pete Seeger is 90 years old. Fifteen years ago, when he was 75, I’m not sure anyone was paying much attention. Folk music had drifted so far away from the cultural mainstream that search parties had given up for the night and helicopters had been recalled to base. Now, of course, everyone is a folk singer and Seeger is a revered elder statesman, with the satisfaction of having survived long enough to witness the revival of his own folk revival.

Alan Judd

Reasons to be cheerful

I’m no sharpshooter but molehills aren’t mountains, and at 100 yards over open sights, when you’re standing unsupported, a slither of white plastic stuck into one looks vanishingly small along the barrel of a Winchester 30-30. I’m no sharpshooter but molehills aren’t mountains, and at 100 yards over open sights, when you’re standing unsupported, a slither of white plastic stuck into one looks vanishingly small along the barrel of a Winchester 30-30. That’s the sort of rifle — almost a carbine — you might have seen John Wayne twiddling around his finger in ancient westerns, though I wouldn’t fancy firing with one hand.

Wednesday

Deborah Ross

Up to old tricks

Is Anybody There? 12A, Nationwide Is Anybody There? stars Michael Caine as a grumpy old fella who, begrudgingly, goes to live in an old people’s home where his fellow residents are played by Rosemary Harris, Elizabeth Spriggs, Peter Vaughan, Thelma Barlow, Sylvia Syms and Leslie Phillips but not Peter O’Toole, who appears to be the one that got away. (Apparently, he is quite nippy once he gets going and a devil to catch.) I was incredibly up for this film, imagining it as some kind of Cocoon, only hopefully not as rubbish. Plus it’s always nice to see the older actors doing their bit and taking the pressure off, say, Keira Knightley, who has been worked almost to the bone, the poor little thing.

Simon Hoggart

Best and the worst of times

Best: His Mother’s Son (BBC 2, Sunday) was, for those of us from a certain place and time, almost unbearably poignant. Ron ‘Chopper’ Harris — such a charming soubriquet — was a defender with Chelsea in the 1960s. He tells the story of his manager, Tommy Docherty, briefing him before a match against Manchester United. ‘They’ve got this new player called Best. Apparently he’s good. I want you to take him out.’ Harris pointed out that if he was too rough, he might get himself sent off. ‘Put it this way, son,’ said Docherty. ‘They’ll miss him more than we’ll miss you.’ And it is still true today. We miss him more than any other footballer.

Andrew Lambirth

State of transition

Mark Wallinger Curates the Russian Linesman Hayward Gallery, until 4 May Annette Messager: The Messengers Hayward Gallery, until 25 May For many people, Mark Wallinger (born 1959) is the man who likes horses. He is the artist with a passionate interest in racing and thoroughbreds, the successful competitor for the Ebbsfleet Landmark commission, in which he will place a vast sculpture of a horse in the heartlands of Kent to greet visitors to our green and pleasant racing stable. Now he has been invited to curate an exhibition for the upper floor of the Hayward Gallery. Its odd title will be familiar to football fans, referring to an infamous and still-debated decision in the 1966 World Cup.

Lloyd Evans

Holding court

Wall Royal Court Alphabetical Order Hampstead David Hare, that marvellously sophisticated, dazzlingly eloquent and faintly ridiculous left-wing brahmin, has written a sequel to Via Dolorosa, his absorbing meditation on the woes of Israel. After the blithering drivel of Seven Jewish Children, Caryl Churchill’s impenetrably tedious response to Israel’s incursion into Gaza, the Royal Court has restored some sanity and intelligence to the debate. Hare’s specific subject is the 486-mile wall (or ‘Fence for Life’ as the Israelis call it) currently being built to keep out suicide bombers. Wall, according to the programme, was ‘directed by Stephen Daldry’.

Saturday

Andrew Lambirth

Style and opulence

Baroque 1620-1800: Style in the Age of Magnificence V&A, until 19 July The Baroque is a style of drama, movement and opulence. Until the 19th century it was a term for the grotesque or absurd; then it was taken over by those who sought to categorise the mainstream developments of European culture. As an adjective, Baroque still means florid or overblown, but if the age it adorned was devoted to spectacle, it was also dedicated to unity and balance, unlike the sensationalism of today. I had misgivings about this exhibition.