It is, at present, almost impossible to open a garden magazine, or the gardening pages of a national newspaper, without coming across an article on how we are all now kitchen gardeners and allotmenteers; the theme is that the uncertain economic conditions have turned us back to our gardens, to grow comestibles and thereby ensure
Parlour Song Almeida Tusk Tusk Royal Court Back in 1995 Jez Butterworth got tagged with the ‘Most Promising Playwright’ beeper and he still hasn’t shaken it off. Butterworth is an excellent second-rate writer, he has a wonderful knack for quirky comic dialogue but he wants to be a Great Artist too. A pity. All a
Someone needs to write a history of vibrato. Clearly this should be Roger Norrington: to judge from his words on Radio Three recently he has given the topic much thought and come up with some historically-based conclusions. I suspect he isn’t going to do it, though, because, like me, he is too busy chiselling out
Tony Manero 18, Key Cities This is a Chilean film of the kind that is probably only showing at an independent cinema quite far from you until last Thursday but that is life, so get over it. Also, the only Easter alternative seemed to be a big action flick starring Vin Diesel whom I have
‘Radio is a way of binding people together,’ says Lesley Douglas, former Controller of Radio 2 in a Guardian magazine cover-story this week celebrating the richness of British radio. ‘Radio is a way of binding people together,’ says Lesley Douglas, former Controller of Radio 2 in a Guardian magazine cover-story this week celebrating the richness
On the posters in the Tube at the moment are these adverts for Argumental, which is the Dave channel’s first self-generated panel show. On the posters in the Tube at the moment are these adverts for Argumental, which is the Dave channel’s first self-generated panel show. I don’t want to knock Dave too much because
Constable Portraits: The Painter & His Circle National Portrait Gallery until 14 June Sponsored by British Land The portrait was the dominant form in British painting up to the end of the 18th century, principally because this was what patrons wanted. Landscape painting was really the invention of Richard Wilson (1713–82), who inaugurated this particular
I Capuleti e i Montecchi; Dido and Aeneas; Acis and Galatea Royal Opera House There has been a three-week gap between the opening and closing sets of performances of the latest revival of Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi at the Royal Opera. Smitten by migraine on the first night, I had to leave in
‘Having every best seat in the house’ is how some describe seeing opera live on screen, and recently we’ve had the opportunity of seeing the nuts and bolts backstage, too. It was a bold initiative of English National Opera and Sky Arts to take the cameras behind the scenes on the first night of Jonathan
Kuniyoshi From the Arthur R. Miller Collection Royal Academy, until 7 June Sponsored by Canon The Royal Academy is making something of a reputation for staging exhibitions of Japanese printmakers: the current Kuniyoshi show follows on neatly from Hokusai (1991–2) and Hiroshige (1997) and adds considerably to our understanding of the genre. There hasn’t been
Dido, Queen of Carthage Cottesloe The Overcoat Lyric Hammersmith Simple plays can be the hardest to get right. James Macdonald has made a dogged assault on the earliest work of Christopher Marlowe. The story is lifted wholesale from Virgil. After Troy’s fall Aeneas arrives in Carthage where Dido promptly falls in love with him. When
Die Feen Châtelet, Paris Ernest Bloch’s Macbeth Bloomsbury Theatre Wagner wrote his first opera Die Feen (The Fairies) when he was 19 and 20. It was never staged or performed at all in his lifetime, and first performed in Munich in 1888, Richard Strauss having conducted the rehearsals. It was a big success, but has
The Boat That Rocked 15, Nationwide Now, although it has always been fashionable to take a bit of a pop at Richard Curtis and his ‘feel good’ movies (Four Weddings, Notting Hill, Love Actually) and I’ve been as guilty as anyone — I am just naturally bitchy, I’m afraid — I do think it is
Swan Lake American Ballet Theatre, London Coliseum A complex, somewhat troubled history has turned Swan Lake into the most manipulated ballet ever. The lack of strict historical constraints has frequently led ballet directors, repetiteurs and choreographers to feel more or less free to intervene in the text, often twisting its narrative and altering the traditional,
‘All critics are failed writers,’ someone with a New Zealand accent said on Desert Island Discs the other day. ‘All critics are failed writers,’ someone with a New Zealand accent said on Desert Island Discs the other day. Obviously I have completely blanked out who it was, but I do know she was talking out
Since the demise of Socrates in 399 BC, killed by the hemlock he was forced to drink on sentence from the state for corrupting the minds of Athenian teenagers, the Good Death has been deemed possible. According to Plato, his pupil, Socrates died with his senses intact, surrounded by those he loved and who loved
Television often throws up unpleasant images to surprise you, like finding an earwig in the sugar. The BBC has got the transmission rights for Formula One motor racing, and they were lucky in that the Australian Grand Prix (BBC1, Sunday), which opened the new season, proved a very exciting race, and was won by a
I tested the old Freelander when it first came out, taking it up the M6 into the Shropshire hills and returning with backache. That apart, I thought it a good car in four-door form, as did plenty of others — it became Europe’s best-selling smallish 4×4. But I and they were wrong: a component that
Van Gogh and the Colours of the Night Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam until 7 June Remembering his former teacher Vincent van Gogh, the painter Anton Kerssemakers described a walk one evening in 1884 from Nuenen to Eindhoven when Vincent suddenly stopped before the sunset, framed it in his hands and, half closing his eyes, cried
When some 700 people throng the auditorium at Earl’s Court to hear a debate about whether eco houses are ugly, then a frustrated tree-hugger like myself may feel that we are halfway to heaven, not that I plan to share my Elysium with Germaine Greer in ranting mode if I can avoid it. When some