Leaving Archa Theatre, Prague With the theatre playing such a large role in the social and political history of the Czechs, it is no wonder that former president Václav Havel’s new play has a political theme. Nor is the subject surprising: a leading politician comes to the end of his term of office. The surprise
Fifty years ago, when the Irish Georgian Society was founded, the bulldozer was a familiar sight in Ireland, trundling along elegant urban terraces and drawing up at the gates of country houses. One of the bulldozer’s prominent Dublin victims half a century ago was No. 2 Kildare Place. This 1751 gem, just next to the
West Side Story Sadler’s Wells Tête à Tête Riverside Studios, Hammersmith West Side Story is just over half a century old, and unlike most famous musicals of its period, or any other, it doesn’t just get ‘revived’ every now and then, it is very much in the repertory — but of what? There’s hardly such
Deep Cut Traverse Jidariyya Royal Lyceum 4.48 Psychosis King’s Theatre Eco-Friendly Jihad Underbelly Please Don’t Feed The Models Underbelly Scaramouche Jones Assembly Rooms Absolution Assembly Rooms Snap! That’s the sound of the credit crunch biting into attendance figures at Edinburgh. This year the Royal Mile teems with unloved luvvies urging discounted tickets on sceptical punters,
It’s not so bad being awake at three in the morning, with an unseasonably chilly wind blowing and the rain lashing at the window, when it gives you the chance to catch up with the World Service. During the day it’s always such a hassle to find the network unless you’re fully converted in all
One of my ambitions this summer is to try not to see even the tiniest glimpse of Olympics coverage on TV. This isn’t mainly a protest about how boring athletics are generally; or about China’s human rights record. It’s more that my hatred of the modern world has risen to such a pitch that I’m
Dybbuk King’s Theatre Britt on Britt Assembly Rooms Surviving Spike Assembly Rooms Perhaps it should be the Inter-notional Festival. The posh bit of Edinburgh, the International Festival, is incurably besotted with the idea of conceptual hybrids, of cross-fertilisation between cultures. Their first offering is Dybbuk, a show about Jews, ghosts and exorcism, set in Poland
Hamlet Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon Star casting at Stratford runs the risk of propelling a show into an orbit hard to track or make sense of. Such is inevitably the case with the casting of David Tennant as Hamlet. Director Gregory Doran apparently got the idea from the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? In
Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny Usher Hall Ysaye Quartet Queen’s Hall The Two Widows Edinburgh Festival Theatre The Edinburgh International Festival got off to a soggy start this year. The Usher Hall, where as always the opening concert took place, is heavily shrouded, while Stage Two of a renovation process which will
Josef Maria Auchentaller (1865-1945): A Secessionist on the Borders of the Empire Palazzo Attems-Petzenstein, Gorizia, Italy, until 30 September The story that unfolds in this fascinating exhibition is a strange and poignant one. The Viennese-born Auchentaller was a contributor to the Munich Secession of 1892 and a key player in the Vienna Secession of 1897,
Lecturing on a course in Seattle has taken me away from London in recent days, and therefore from the excitement of Roger Wright’s first Prom season. As Wright himself said in a preliminary interview, if the season goes well he will claim it as his first; if it goes badly he can reasonably say that
What a dilemma. The synchronised diving, with young Tom Daley taking part for Team GB, was due on at 7.30 on Monday morning, but that’s when I have to write my column. How could I watch the Olympics on TV when I should be writing about radio? And yet, having missed the cycling and Nicole
It’s three in the morning and a BBC executive is home in bed. Suddenly he wakes up, sweating. ‘What is it, darling?’ asks his solicitous wife. ‘I had a nightmare,’ he replies; ‘I dreamed that one of our viewers was bored. Bored! Just for a moment, but, my God…’ It’s the only explanation for some
I have always been reticent about recommending gardening books for anyone short of something to read on holiday. After all, gardening books are often heavy and unwieldy, their appearance is not improved by contact with sand or sangria, and they make you terribly homesick for your own garden. But, since reading Keith Simpson’s suggested summer
L’Incoronazione di Poppea The Proms Glyndebourne’s visits to the Proms are usually highly successful, which can seem odd considering that the home auditorium is so comparatively intimate, not to mention comfortable and air-conditioned, with fantastically good acoustics; while the Albert Hall is celebrated for its large-scale lack of any of those qualities. And Monteverdi’s last
It’s a topsy-turvy world at the moment, with New Labour tearing each other apart like Old Tories, and brothers Will and Ed transmogrifying into each other on The Archers. Even Radios Two and Four have been caught up in this changing-character business, with programmes you’d normally expect to find on Four’s schedule popping up on
Vilhelm Hammershoi: the Poetry of Silence Royal Academy, until 7 September The poet Rilke cautioned that ‘Hammershoi is not one of those about whom one must speak quickly. His work is long and slow…’ It is certainly muted, being composed mostly in shades of oatmeal and grey. Interiors and the fall of light were favourite
National Ballet of China: Swan Lake Royal Opera House My first article for The Spectator was a slightly long-winded analysis of the state of Swan Lake on the eve of the ballet’s centenary. It followed a far more pedantic four-part essay in the specialist magazine Dancing Times, of which the late Frank Johnson, my first
Her Naked Skin Olivier Elaine Stritch At Liberty Shaw In 2004 Rebecca Lenkiewicz got the black spot from the Critics’ Circle. Sorry, I mean she was voted ‘most promising playwright’. Less a gong, more a millstone. Praising writers for what they’ve done is fine. Praising them for what they may do in future is like
Elegy 15, London and Key Cities Elegy is about an ageing professor (Ben Kingsley) and a beautiful young woman (Penelope Cruz), and it is based on the Philip Roth novel The Dying Animal, which, in turn, takes its title from Yeats’s ‘Sailing to Byzantium’, in which the poet describes his soul as ‘sick with desire/and