More from Arts

Wednesday

Andrew Lambirth

Moving vista

Joan Eardley The Fleming Collection, 13 Berkeley Street, London W1, until 20 December The interplay between realism and abstraction that occurred in the 1950s and 1960s in British art gave rise to a number of fascinating paintings as artists struggled to resolve the balance to their own satisfaction. The co-existence of these extremes in the art world had the effect of polarising opinion, yet some of the best solutions were supplied by those who could harness both drives and make them work in a single painting. Joan Eardley (1921–63) was one who mastered enough of both idioms to make an original statement, and who thus took the evocation of landscape to poignant new heights.

Michael Tanner

Twice as good

Cavalleria rusticana & I Pagliacci English National Opera Don Giovanni Royal Opera Cavalleria rusticana and I Pagliacci tend to be regarded by opera buffs as a couple of blowsy old tarts, still plying their trade long after they could plausibly expect any decent customers, and only to be contemplated or tolerated if they are wearing heavy disguise rather than merely thick layers of cosmetics. It’s to the credit of ENO and the team that has mounted the new production of what are routinely called ‘the terrible twins’ that they take both pieces seriously, and though there’s relocation in time and, with Pag., in place, they are not so ‘adapted’ as to be presented as more or as less than what they are.

Harry Mount

Finding Pooter’s house

These days, Charles Pooter, the City clerk and narrator of George and Weedon Grossmith’s The Diary of a Nobody (1892) — the enduring comedy of hum-drum middle-class, late-19th-century life — could never afford to rent (or buy) his six-bedroom house, The Laurels, in Brickfield Terrace, Holloway. The Pooters of this world fled north London a long time ago, driven to the commuter belt by soaring property prices. However big the collapse of the housing market, the Pooters could not possibly buy their way back to those comfortable years of meat teas, live-in maids, and champagne from Jackson Frères at three and six a bottle.

Charles Spencer

Credit where it’s due

This is a time for making the most of small mercies. One of the greatest of these, as the financial system collapses around us, is the splendid joke that is Robert Peston of the BBC. His extraordinarily camp, over-emphatic delivery would be perfect for reporting glitzy Broadway first nights but seems hilariously at odds with worldwide economic catastrophe. Peston has all the glee of the callow cub reporter rejoicing in the size of his scoop while lacking the imagination to understand the anxiety his excitable tales of doom-and-gloom might be causing others. Like poor Mr and Mrs Spencer of Claygate, Surrey, for instance, who somehow managed to commit themselves to £40,000 worth of home improvements (double glazing and a new kitchen) just before the current crisis went big time.

Kate Chisholm

Fickle fortune

‘I couldn’t understand most of it. I mean I could understand each word but not when they were put together,’ says one of the characters in Tulips in Winter on Radio Three on Sunday night. I knew immediately what he meant. There was something wonderful going on in Michelene Wandor’s play word for word, but I’m not quite sure I caught it all in just one sitting. Wandor, a prizewinning playwright with a passion for radio, has been inspired by Rembrandt’s paintings and Spinoza’s works of philosophy to create a drama about the Jews of Amsterdam in the 1650s who were caught up in the trading battles between the Dutch, the English and the Portuguese.

Saturday

Ursula Buchan

Garden shorts | 4 October 2008

Ursula Buchan on the new chief presenter of BBC 2’s Gardeners' World Where do you stand on the most important issue of the day, namely, whether the BBC should have passed over Carol Klein, to be chief presenter of BBC 2’s Gardeners’ World after the retirement of Monty Don, in favour of Toby Buckland? The news that Carol, a longstanding co-presenter, was not invited to apply has irritated not just feminists but the rest of us who think she is sparky, original, knowledgeable and with a very good eye. When pressed hard, she rather wittily referred to a ‘grass ceiling’ and you can see her point. Toby Buckland began his tenure on 12th September, and it was obvious pretty soon that he was personable and friendly, if entirely lacking Carol’s charisma.

Marcus Berkmann

IPod dilemma

A musician friend of mine acquired his first iPod recently, and like small boys who don’t realise that everyone else went through this about five years ago, he and I frequently discuss our battles with the things. A musician friend of mine acquired his first iPod recently, and like small boys who don’t realise that everyone else went through this about five years ago, he and I frequently discuss our battles with the things. To be fair, though, there is some substance to these conversations, as we are both fascinated by the way people listen to music — I as a fan and part-time critic, and he as creator, teacher and equally fervent consumer (mainly of 1970s Krautrock, the last time we spoke).

Lloyd Evans

Playing games

Six Characters in Search of an Author Gielgud Riflemind Trafalgar Studios Pirandello, the master of pretentious bombast, is perhaps the most talent-free of all Nobel laureates. Here he is in the West End with one of his better-known experiments updated by Rupert Goold and his collaborator Ben Power. Playing games with the conventions of theatre was Pirandello’s main gift to the trade and his supporters will tell you this play ‘analyses the relationship between fiction and reality’. But there’s nothing as rigorous or coherent as an analysis here. We start in the editing suite of a young female documentary-maker whose latest project has stalled. Enter a family of over-dressed show-offs who announce that they are characters abandoned by their author.

Kate Chisholm

Sound sensations

Why do some sounds endure to jolt the memory and take us back to a specific moment in time, like Proust’s taste sensations, while others fade away? The chunter-chunter-chunt of a steam train, for instance, is instantly recognisable even for those too young ever to have been on a ‘real’ steam journey. When they hear it they’re not being taken back to that excitement about travel before motorways and jet planes, before we became so restless for change and the sensation of moving on that we demanded much faster but far less interesting modes of transport. No, for those born post-1960, steam means something else, but what’s so odd is that the steam train is just as evocative to them as if they had been there when the Mallard hit 100 mph.

Wednesday

Andrew Lambirth

Meditation on meaning

Rothko Tate Modern, until 1 February 2009 The first thing that should be noted is that this exhibition is not the retrospective that its title implies. In fact, it’s a severely limited show, concentrating on the late work only. There are therefore none of the joyful, brightly coloured paintings that sell so well around the world in reproduction. This exhibition is an altogether more sombre experience, the work darker and more minimal. I wonder how many people will buy their tickets (£12.50 per head, concessions £10.50) expecting a feast of colour and be disappointed. I hope they won’t — this is a fascinating exhibition — but it is not a general introduction to the work of Mark Rothko (1903–70).

Deborah Ross

Losing is the new winning

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People 15, Nationwide How to Lose Friends and Alienate People is based on Toby Young’s best-selling memoir of the same name and, already, I know what you are thinking. You are thinking: what, a film based on Toby’s book? Well, he kept that very quiet, the sly old devil. Who’d have thought it? I even suspect that although, in the end, Toby did attend the recent glitzy, red carpet première in London — you saw him lined up with all the other celebrities in the following day’s papers, surely — he probably wasn’t that keen, probably protested with something along the lines of: ‘It’s just not my thing. Can’t I stay in and watch telly instead? You go. Who’s interested in me anyway?

Michael Tanner

Confusing frolic

La Calisto Royal Opera House Tosca Opera North, Leeds It’s not often that you find the Royal Opera going as far back as the 17th century, no doubt for the good reason that operas written then are not suitable for performance in such large houses. That hasn’t daunted the director David Alden, who, together with his set designer Paul Steinberg, has located the action of Cavalli’s La Calisto in a grand hotel, with gods behaving badly in 1920s clothing. The era of the grand Art Deco hotel, with its atmosphere of illicit trysts and shady goings-on, is so potent that even when staying in a Travelodge I still have hopes that I shall come across some pale replica, but naturally in vain.

James Delingpole

Campaigning genius

Jamie’s Ministry of Food (Channel 4, Tuesday); Ian Hislop Goes off the Rails (BBC4, Thursday) ‘People have a problem with me,’ claims Jamie Oliver, but I’m not one of them.

Robin Oakley

The turf | 1 October 2008

An old friend in journalism, well aware that he was prone to conspiracy theories, especially where his own career was concerned, used to say to me, ‘Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean the bastards aren’t out to get me.’ So were the authorities out to get Aidan O’Brien when they convicted him and jockey Colm O’Donoghue of team tactics in the recent Juddmonte International, won by Duke of Marmalade? I ask because some of the best-respected voices in racing have suggested that the motivation for the action against O’Brien was jealousy, because English trainers are having a comparatively poor season while O’Brien and his Ballydoyle team have already secured a phenomenal 20 Group One successes this season.

Saturday

Charles Spencer

Nanny knows best

Although I waste a lot of time these days gazing longingly at advertisements for luxury cruises in the Daily Telegraph, I don’t think I could ever leave England for good. Although I waste a lot of time these days gazing longingly at advertisements for luxury cruises in the Daily Telegraph, I don’t think I could ever leave England for good. A three-month cruise chasing the sun would be as long as I could bear to be away from home, and only then if I could take the cat Nelson with me as a cabin companion. But if anything ever does drive me into exile, it will be the irksome British habit of bossiness that seems to have become so much worse under the present government.

Robin Holloway

A unique acoustic

Robin Holloway on the unique orchestra layout that produces the Festspielhaus’s unique acoustic There was no space in my report last month, on a first visit to the Bayreuth Festival, for what was in retrospect its most exciting quart d’heure, a privileged informal investigation of the unique orchestra layout that produces the Festspielhaus’s unique acoustic. This, I was kindly permitted to explore one afternoon.

Alan Judd

Sense of occasion

The first Rolls-Royce I drove was a 1960s Shadow, across the Cairngorms on the glorious A939 to Tomintoul. It was a memorable drive, clear skies, snow-capped mountains, little traffic. When we returned to his Speyside house the owner suggested I try his Jaguar XJ6, which he thought a better drive than the Shadow. It was: even by XJ6 standards, the Shadow’s steering and suspension, geared for the American market, were too light and soft. But there was still something special about effortless stately progress behind that wonderful Spirit of Ecstasy. Shadows got better as they got younger and I suspect the subsequent Spirit was better still. But my next truly memorable RR drive was a 1954 Silver Dawn which I bought in London on behalf of a friend and delivered to Versailles.

Wednesday

Andrew Lambirth

Man as machine

Cold War Modern: Design 1945–1970 V&A, until 11 January 2009 It’s difficult not to admire the ambition of the V&A in mounting exhibitions which summarise and explain the great historical movements in design. There have been notable successes in the past, particularly with their surveys of Art Nouveau and Art Deco, but the closer the organisers approach our own times, the more fraught with complication is the enterprise. It’s almost impossible to locate and maintain any degree of objectivity about very recent happenings — we have no historical perspective on them and find it difficult to view them except in terms of personal preference.

Lloyd Evans

Peak performance

Ivanov Wyndham’s Theatre Now or Later Royal Court Rain Man Apollo Great directors have the power to alter taste. Michael Grandage’s avowed aim with this revival of Ivanov, which opens the Donmar’s year-long residency at the Wyndham’s, is to secure the play a permanent place in the repertory. But even a director as sure-footed as Grandage can’t overcome the script’s shortcomings. Dashed off in ten days by a 27-year-old Chekhov, it feels glib and careless, its imitative homages to Hamlet creaky and self-conscious. Ivanov is a country landowner, his debts climbing, his marriage sinking, infatuated with a neighbour’s young daughter and with a peculiar taste for philosophical ramblings.

Michael Tanner

Make do and mend

Otello Welsh National Opera, Cardiff La fanciulla del West Royal Opera House Otello, for me the most perfect though not the greatest of Verdi’s operas, continues Welsh National Opera’s survey of his late works, in a new production by Paul Curran. The first night was a much tamer affair than it should have been, though the performance wasn’t cautious or underprepared. Nor could one say that it was under- or miscast. Carlo Rizzi conducted a rapid but detailed account, with the orchestra on good form, though one could have wished for a stronger string section. The chorus was tremendous, with plausible movements during the opening storm scene, where often there is a lot of meaningless milling.