Culture

Culture

The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.

Giannandrea Poesio

Three’s a crowd

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According to some sources, the legendary impresario Sergei Diaghilev invented the mixed-bill formula for ballet. Whether or not this is true, there are times when one wishes he hadn’t. One century later, they increasingly come across as hurriedly and/or inharmoniously put together. Take, for instance, the most recent Royal Ballet triple bill. Frederick Ashton’s 1980 Rhapsody was created for the Queen Mother’s 80th birthday and as a vehicle for the megastar Mikhail Baryshnikov. Although the work has many subtle layers, it retains much of its original ‘party piece’ essence, which calls for grandeur and sparkle. Alas, the redesigned sets and costumes do not provide either, nor did the corps de ballet’s dancing on the opening night.

Kate Chisholm

More 4

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Big changes are happening to the airwaves, part of the frenetic technological revolution that’s been unleashed by the development of a digital language. Big changes are happening to the airwaves, part of the frenetic technological revolution that’s been unleashed by the development of a digital language. Radio, against expectations, is proving itself a vital force in these fast-moving times, because it’s flexible, adaptable and still compelling. The human voice, the imagination of sound, will endure when perhaps TV will fade out, evolving into another kind of internet exchange.

James Delingpole

Our island story | 26 March 2011

Television

I vividly remember the moment when I saw my first black person. It was December in either ’68 or ’69, so I would have been three or four at the time, and my father’s works had arranged some kind of coach outing to meet Father Christmas. Seated near me was a black child a bit older than me, and I recall gazing fascinated at the blackness of his skin and noticing that it had white blotches on it like a mirror image of the dark freckles and moles on my skin. ‘Daddy, what are those white things?’ I asked, pointing at the boy’s skin. ‘Pigment,’ my father explained. I vividly remember the moment when I saw my first black person.

Ursula Buchan

To pastures new

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If you like to pass an idle half-hour, as I do, reading random entries in Who’s Who, you will be struck by how many distinguished people include gardening among their recreations. If you like to pass an idle half-hour, as I do, reading random entries in Who’s Who, you will be struck by how many distinguished people include gardening among their recreations. Indeed, it is the second most popular pastime — after golf, bizarrely — in the book. To pick just a few: the Duchess of Buccleuch and Queensberry, Lord Justice Goldring, Susan Hampshire, Mark Damazer, Maeve Binchy, Lord (Chris) Patten and Crispin Blunt MP all own up to spending their spare time gardening.

19 March 2011

Andrew Lambirth

Out of place

Exhibitions

Since pluralism in the arts became the order of the day, categories have been bursting at the seams, and the old definitions have lost validity. No longer does visual art denote painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing, but all manner of extraneous and tangentially linked activities as well. Film, installation and performance are crammed in under the same umbrella as Michelangelo, Dürer and Monet, when it’s painfully clear they have almost nothing in common with such illustrious forerunners. In fact, it’s extremely doubtful whether much of the stuff that currently parades under the banner of art has any justification for being there.

Michael Henderson

The great redeemer

Arts feature

Assailed on all sides by cultural vacuity, we are more than ever in need of the life lessons of Beethoven, argues Michael Henderson We do not, as a rule, meet all our loves at once. Those things which mean so much to us in our emotional maturity did not always strike us as special presences. Indeed, we may have been suspicious of, or felt hostility towards, some of the supreme works of art, and the minds that created them: many an indentured Wagnerian had first to leap through the magic fire of his initially forbidding music dramas. Last week, therefore, as I sat in the drawing-room of a house in central London, and watched Gábor Takács-Nagy, founder of the Takács Quartet, supervise another superb ensemble, the Belcea, as they played through Beethoven’s Op.

The Spectator

Barometer | 19 March 2011

Barometer

Midsomer and Soham The producer of ITV’s murder-mystery series Midsomer Murders was suspended after saying he didn’t want black characters on the show because it was ‘the last bastion of Englishness’. While many English villages still reflect Midsomer in their colour, it is over 200 years since a black man first settled in the English countryside. — Olaudah Equiano, a Nigerian-born slave who managed to buy his freedom, married in 1792 in the village of Soham, Cambridgeshire — now best known nationally for the murder of two school girls by Ian Huntley in 2002. — Equiano wrote an autobiography and died in 1797.

Liz Anderson

Rock on

Music

In December 1956, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins met at the recording studios of Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee. And Million Dollar Quartet, at the Noël Coward Theatre (booking until 1 October), charts this memorable get-together with 90 minutes of rock’n’roll played and sung by a not-exactly lookalike group of four — plus a few extras. In December 1956, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins met at the recording studios of Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee. And Million Dollar Quartet, at the Noël Coward Theatre (booking until 1 October), charts this memorable get-together with 90 minutes of rock’n’roll played and sung by a not-exactly lookalike group of four — plus a few extras.

Deborah Ross

Downhill all the way | 19 March 2011

Cinema

What the world needs now, perhaps as a matter of some urgency, is love, sweet love, but, failing that, wouldn’t a decent, warm, engaging rom-com do? It might but, alas, it isn’t Chalet Girl. What the world needs now, perhaps as a matter of some urgency, is love, sweet love, but, failing that, wouldn’t a decent, warm, engaging rom-com do? It might but, alas, it isn’t Chalet Girl. I’d like it to be Chalet Girl. I wanted it to be Chalet Girl. It’s got two excellent Bills in it — Nighy and Bailey — which made me hopeful, initially. But?

Lloyd Evans

Day tripper

Theatre

Like a lot of classics, Blithe Spirit doesn’t quite deserve its exalted reputation. Like a lot of classics, Blithe Spirit doesn’t quite deserve its exalted reputation. Every time I see it I discover a little bit less. Catty, slight, charming, clever and a touch too pleased with itself, the play shapes up as nothing more than an ingeniously plotted sitcom. It’s no surprise to learn that it was written in six days. The Blitz and the threat of sudden death had fostered a mood of defiant merriment in the British people which the play, dashed off in 1941, captures very skilfully. Thea Sharrock’s production is competent, slick and faintly heartless. Robert Bathurst brings a nice blend of suavity and huffiness to the role of Charles.

Patrick Carnegy

A theatre reborn

Theatre

The jam factory is no more. In one of the great theatrical transformations of our day, the RSC has unveiled its modernisation of Elizabeth Scott’s unloved theatre of 1932; unloved for its ungainly brick bulk on the Avon riverside but no less for the distance of its seating from the proscenium stage. There was much to be said for the earlier proposal of simply razing the building to the ground and starting afresh. What has actually happened is a classic British compromise whereby the best of the old has been spliced together with what is hopefully the best of the new. The jam factory is no more.

Michael Tanner

Verdi without the trappings

Opera

Scene: the Royal Opera House, last Friday, 10.35 p.m. In the last act of Aida, Amneris, in the formidable person of Olga Borodina, has just concluded her magnificent denunciation of priests: ‘Cruel monsters! You will always be thirsty for blood!’ and the final ten minutes remain, the exquisite scene in which the hero and heroine suffocate while singing their farewell to life. Scene: the Royal Opera House, last Friday, 10.35 p.m. In the last act of Aida, Amneris, in the formidable person of Olga Borodina, has just concluded her magnificent denunciation of priests: ‘Cruel monsters! You will always be thirsty for blood!’ and the final ten minutes remain, the exquisite scene in which the hero and heroine suffocate while singing their farewell to life.

Peter Phillips

The power of now

Radio and podcasts

Whatever lay behind Radio 3’s decision four years ago to reduce the number of live concert broadcasts to a mere handful, it cannot have been the recent phenomenal success of ‘live’ relays from the Met in New York to local cinemas. Whatever lay behind Radio 3’s decision four years ago to reduce the number of live concert broadcasts to a mere handful, it cannot have been the recent phenomenal success of ‘live’ relays from the Met in New York to local cinemas. Even the service of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s has been a hit in this format. The director of the Met says that 6 million people are expected to see his company in action this year via a cinema hook-up.

Simon Hoggart

Apocalypse now?

Television

The BBC’s Horizon is, amazingly, almost 50 years old and this week, in its The End of the World? Guide to Armageddon (BBC4, Thursday), it looked back at some of its scariest predictions. The BBC’s Horizon is, amazingly, almost 50 years old and this week, in its The End of the World? Guide to Armageddon (BBC4, Thursday), it looked back at some of its scariest predictions. The media have always loved frightening us to death, and there are plenty of scientists ready to help. The most recent, of course, is the greenhouse effect, and man-made global warming. I find myself an agnostic, lacking the absolute certainty possessed by many Spectator writers and, on the other side, the equal certainty of various scientists, politicians and activists.

Kate Chisholm

Trading places

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‘We are humbled,’ said Keiichi Hayashi, ‘we are humbled by the power of nature.’ The Japanese ambassador to the UK was talking on Monday morning’s Today programme on Radio 4. ‘We are humbled,’ said Keiichi Hayashi, ‘we are humbled by the power of nature.’ The Japanese ambassador to the UK was talking on Monday morning’s Today programme on Radio 4. It was a stark and moving moment. He spoke slowly, gently, thoughtfully, choosing his words carefully, the shock of what has happened in Japan echoing through his voice. In contrast, Jim Naughtie fumbled clumsily on air, unsure what to say, or how. He was in Japan, not Mr Hayashi. ‘You’ll know that I’m talking to you from Sendai.

16 March 2011

Rod Liddle

Much ado about Midsomer

An interesting case, the issue of Midsomer Murders and the producer (and creator) of the show, Brian True-May, who has been suspended for saying he deliberately kept ethnic minorities out of it to preserve its sense of “Englishness”. I wonder if the real reason he kept them out is that the point of the programme is to make the audience guess who has been committing all the murders and they might not have to guess very hard if there were blacks in it. (Because of the inherent racism of the viewer, of course, not because black people are more likely to commit crime.

14 March 2011

Alex Massie

Oliver Goldsmith Refashioned for the 21st Century

A stunt on Spanish TV goes horribly wrong and ends in tragedy as the innocent party here bites off more than it can chew and perishes in short order. The snake makes the mistake of feasting upon one of Israeli model Orit Fox's improbable breasts only to discover that where once lurked flesh there's now a super-sized bag of silicone. Silicone is not good for snakes.Not good at all. End of snake. It is, as Kieran Healy says, yet another example of Everything New Being Very Old. Recall, as you will, Oliver Goldsmith's* Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog: Good people all, of every sort, Give ear unto my song; And if you find it wondrous short, It cannot hold you long. In Islington there was a man, Of whom the world might say That still a godly race he ran, Whene'er he went to pray.

12 March 2011

Andrew Lambirth

Erotic review

Exhibitions

First, a note about naming. The artist here presented as Jan Gossaert (c.1478–1532) was formerly known as Jan Mabuse, so designated after the Walloon town he came from — Maubeuge in Hainaut. First, a note about naming. The artist here presented as Jan Gossaert (c.1478–1532) was formerly known as Jan Mabuse, so designated after the Walloon town he came from — Maubeuge in Hainaut. The Americans, meanwhile, miss out the e and spell his name Gossart, which makes the poor fellow sound even more like an underwear firm, though the word is itself more attractive-looking than its variant. So if you were wondering where this newly minted artist had sprung from, the likelihood is he was flying under different colours the last time you saw him.

Henrietta Bredin

A passion for music

Arts feature

Henrietta Bredin talks to the Earl of Harewood about a life in opera In his memoir, The Tongs and the Bones, the Earl of Harewood ruefully quotes his uncle, the Duke of Windsor, remarking, ‘It’s very odd about George and music. You know, his parents were quite normal — liked horses and dogs and the country.’ As it happens, George Harewood also likes horses and dogs and the country — and football and cricket and fishing — but in addition he has had, from an early age, an abiding passion for music. At the start of the second world war, while he was still at school, he notched up as many performances by Sadler’s Wells Opera as he could and tuned into static-ridden radio broadcasts of operas from Italy, Germany and Hungary.

Ed Rex

Read on

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I was nervous as I approached the man in Paddington station on Saturday night. We Brits tend to assume that being addressed by a total stranger means one of two things: either they want our money, or they’re mad (and the 48 copies of Ben Macintyre’s Agent Zigzag in my bag might have suggested the latter). I was nervous as I approached the man in Paddington station on Saturday night. We Brits tend to assume that being addressed by a total stranger means one of two things: either they want our money, or they’re mad (and the 48 copies of Ben Macintyre’s Agent Zigzag in my bag might have suggested the latter).

Marcus Berkmann

Remembering Rafferty

Music

It should no longer come as a surprise when old pop stars keel over and die. Ten years ago, obituary columns were dominated by heroes of the second world war, with the occasional member of the Carry On cast included for light relief. Nowadays, barely a day passes without some old heavy metal singer croaking, and a funk guitarist or two. The shock, if there is any, is that so many have survived so long. Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison were all 27 when they died, and years later Kurt Cobain secured his legend by hanging himself at exactly the same age, conscious that, if he had waited another year, his surviving relatives might not have been able to eat. Even if they make it through the tricky twenties, pop stars rarely seem to make old bones.

Deborah Ross

Defining women

Cinema

His & Hers is a film (obviously) which, by rights, should be as dull as dishwater, if dishwater is truly dull, which it sometimes is and sometimes isn’t. His & Hers is a film (obviously) which, by rights, should be as dull as dishwater, if dishwater is truly dull, which it sometimes is and sometimes isn’t. (I saw the face of Jesus in dishwater once; that was quite cool.) It’s a documentary featuring a group of Irish women — 70, in total — talking individually about the men in their lives: their grandfathers, fathers, boyfriends, fiancés, husbands, sons and grandsons, and that is it. Nothing else happens at all.

Michael Tanner

Winning way

Opera

Two of the most popular operas in the repertoire, works which I adore, but which I’m almost always disappointed by productions of; yet on two consecutive evenings in the Wales Millennium Centre I gained intense pleasure from each of them. Two of the most popular operas in the repertoire, works which I adore, but which I’m almost always disappointed by productions of; yet on two consecutive evenings in the Wales Millennium Centre I gained intense pleasure from each of them. What went right? Both Il Trovatore and Die Fledermaus are works of overflowing tunefulness, with almost inscrutable plots.

Lloyd Evans

Under the rainbow

Theatre

The pantomime, we’re often told, exists in no culture but Britain’s. Maybe we should look a bit harder. The Wizard of Oz is a children’s fantasy, epic in form, comic in idiom, populated by folksy stereotypes, which uses the metaphor of a journey to present a mythical clash between good and evil. It ends with order restored and virtue triumphant, and with the characters discovering that self-knowledge and wisdom are more valuable than the illusory contentments of wealth or power. All that’s missing is some bad acting and a few painfully ribald puns. The pantomime, we’re often told, exists in no culture but Britain’s. Maybe we should look a bit harder.

Giannandrea Poesio

To cut a long story short

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Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is to ballet what Pixar and DreamWorks movies are to cinema. Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is to ballet what Pixar and DreamWorks movies are to cinema. It takes a well-known children’s story and peppers it with references for an adult audience. And, like the Shrek saga or the recent Tangled, it combines storybook conventions with the latest performing trends, such as stunning visual effects and that episodic structure most musicals thrive on. Indeed, there were many moments when I expected characters to warble. Alas, they did not, even though singing would have been an ideal complement to the razzle-dazzle of the performance.

James Delingpole

Triumph of the West

Television

If at the beginning of the 15th century you’d had to predict who was going to dominate the world for the next 500 years, the answer would surely have been China. If at the beginning of the 15th century you’d had to predict who was going to dominate the world for the next 500 years, the answer would surely have been China. From the sophistication of its sanitation system to the size of its fleet, China — under the Emperor Zhu Di and his eunuch naval commander Cheng Ho — was a country going places. Its mighty, 400-foot-long ships sailed as far as Malindi on the East African coast and probably Australia. It had invented the clock and, of course, gunpowder. Europe, during the same period, was — relatively speaking — a stagnant, backward mess.

5 March 2011

Niru Ratnam

Aesthetic responses

Exhibitions

Over the past month I’ve strolled through Berlin’s Alte Nationalgalerie to examine Edouard Manet’s ‘In the Conservatory’ in close detail. Over the past month I’ve strolled through Berlin’s Alte Nationalgalerie to examine Edouard Manet’s ‘In the Conservatory’ in close detail. I’ve taken a look at what’s on offer on the stands of international art dealers including Gagosian and White Cube at the VIP art fair. I have also considered buying shares in a 1988 gouache by Sol LeWitt. And I’ve done all these things from my front room thanks to an internet revolution in the art world.