Culture

Culture

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

Henrietta Bredin

The glasses of time

Belatedly catching up with the BBC's Margaret on iPlayer. It wasn't the haircuts or the clothes that really characterised and dated the actors as politicos, it was their glasses. Huge great gig-lamps with clunkingly heavy frames and they were all wearing them, from John Sessions as a doleful Geoffrey Howe to Michael Maloney as a quietly manipulative John Major. It made it easier for the bespectacled to be convincing than, for example, Robert Hardy to make himself big and baggy and crumpled enough as Willie Whitelaw. Lindsey Duncan was compelling in the title role but just too beautiful and subtle for absolute verisimilitude.

4 March 2009

Alex Massie

The Ulster-Scots Style

Line of the day comes from David McNarry, an Ulster Unionist member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, looking forward (or not) to an entry to the Belfast Film Festival: "Porn is porn, is porn, is porn - and whether it is done Ulster-Scots-style, well, it really doesn't come into it," Aye, I guess that would be right, sure enough.

2 March 2009

Susan Hill

Essential viewing

They don`t make them like this any more – they make them differently. Whatever, the 1982 BBC television version of John le Carré's great spy novel Smiley's People is a masterclass - in adaptation, script-writing, filming and acting - and in its re-origination for DVD it comes up fresh as paint, no detail or shading lost. The first thing you notice is the extraordinary stillness and quietness of it. It takes you aback, takes ten minutes to get used to, and then enfolds you in total concentration. Contemporary television drama is noisy, loud and ubiquitous and, above all, especially in the thriller department, it caters for those with the attention span of a gnat. We are never allowed to linger.

28 February 2009

Mary Wakefield

‘The family didn’t approve of acting’

Arts feature

Mary Wakefield meets Niamh Cusack and finds an actress full of contradictions It’s oddly exciting, upstairs at the Old Vic: there are actresses rushing to rehearsal; the burble of PR ladies schmoozing the press; the sense of a curtain about to rise. A bright new play. I smile, look around hopefully for my interviewee-to-be, the actress Niamh Cusack, but instead a handsome bearded chap appears in front of me. ‘Oh, hi there, I’m Finbar Lynch [Niamh’s husband and co-star in Dancing at Lughnasa]. I’ll come back and take proper care of you in a second.’ What’s he talking about? Take care of me, how? I have no idea. I later find out that he thought I was an understudy, but though confused I feel also warm and included — a co-dancer at Lughnasa.

Andrew Lambirth

Out of proportion

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Van Dyck and Britain Tate Britain, until 17 May In the course of my work last week, which included attending the press view of van Dyck at the Tate and visiting a couple of artists’ studios, one in north London and one in Oxfordshire, I found myself thinking about the current state of exhibition catalogues. This train of thought was encouraged by having to carry the van Dyck catalogue around for two days, on and off public transport, along with the more essential items of the itinerant writer’s kit. I say ‘more essential’ because catalogues have become less useful as they’ve grown more unwieldy and overblown.

Michael Tanner

Words, not pictures

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Fidelio Cadogan Hall Vita Nuova Royal Festival Hall Birtwistle and Benjamin Linbury Studio Fidelio is an opera which, in my recent experience, almost always overwhelms me in a concert performance and almost always leaves me embarrassed or indignant when staged. Embarrassed, because the transvestite necessities of the heroine would almost never convince anyone, as Cherubino or Octavian can, or Handel’s galaxy of emperors sung by mezzos. Indignant, because the naïve assumption of the plot, that there is a Providence which ensures that things will turn out well for those with courage and conviction, is simply false, and that is much more manifest when acted out than when only sung. The climactic dungeon quartet is thrilling to listen to, almost always absurd to look at.

Lloyd Evans

Building blocks

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Three Days of Rain Apollo This Isn’t Romance Soho Richly sophisticated and over-contrived. This is the glory and the failing of Richard Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain. But, first, hats off to a writer who expects his audience to be smart, clued-in and intellectually curious. Dimwits, stay in the bar, we’ll join you later. The play opens in a disused office space in 1995 where three young adults who grew up together are tussling over their dead father’s will. Dad ran a hugely successful architectural practice and the plot turns on the ownership of an award-winning, postmodern house, built in the early Sixties, whose innovative design launched the careers of its creators but whose true authorship is in doubt.

Patrick Carnegy

Black and white magic

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The Tempest Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon Othello Hackney Empire No accident, one guesses, that the RSC comes good in the new year with two of Shakespeare’s most racially sensitive plays in touring productions that, happily, are at once bold and deeply rewarding. ‘A Tempest roars out of Africa’, trumpeted the Telegraph’s headline to a preview of a production hailing from Cape Town’s famous Baxter Theatre. And the headline gets it right, for the identification of Prospero’s spirits with a dazzling conjuration of African tribal magic brings a buzz to the play that fits perfectly with Antony Sher’s terrific debut in the leading role.

Deborah Ross

Banking on greed

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The International 15, Nationwide The Class 15, Key Cities The International is a big-budget action-espionage thriller starring Clive Owen as an Interpol agent determined to bring down a nasty bank called IBBC. Aside from doing the usual evil things banks do — like, I assume, having only one person behind the counter during the busiest times — it also runs brisk sidelines in arms trafficking, murder, supporting terrorism and promoting conflicts so as to profit from the debt it creates. (And you wonder why there is only ever one person behind the counter!) The bank’s ultimate aim is to make us all slaves to debt, which is a worry. I am a slave to debt already and, I’m telling you, it’s no joke.

Robin Holloway

Indelible impression

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By happy coincidence, all four of 2009’s major composers’ anniversaries link in a continuous chain, illustrating, directly or obliquely, two centuries of English musical life. By happy coincidence, all four of 2009’s major composers’ anniversaries link in a continuous chain, illustrating, directly or obliquely, two centuries of English musical life. Purcell, born 350 years ago in 1659 and dying at 36 in 1695, overlapped Handel (b.1685) by a decade; at Handel’s death 250 years ago (1759), Joseph Haydn (b.1732) was already a seasoned musician of 27; 1809, the year of his death 200 years ago aged 77, was also the birthyear of Mendelssohn, who, like Purcell, died all-too-young, at 38, in 1847.

Kate Chisholm

Switch off

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It might seem strange for someone who writes about radio to call on all listeners to switch off for half an hour a day. But after hearing the Archbishop of Canterbury and his guests talking about what silence means to them on Radio Three this week I feel compelled to recommend it. After all, the invention of the crystal set and microphone has added a potent new dimension to the endless babble of the world. A hundred years on, there’s scarcely a household in the land without access to a 24/7 stream of artificial sound. I confess I’ve been a hopeless addict all my life, although never so bad that I’ve carried The Archers into the garden. But now in reparation I’ve decided, instead of giving up chocolate or booze for Lent, to switch off.

James Delingpole

Shame about the moose

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Jeremy Paxman has a dark secret: in real life he’s an absolute kitten. Jeremy Paxman has a dark secret: in real life he’s an absolute kitten. He does continental, gay-enough double-cheek kisses, he doesn’t shout exasperatedly, ‘Come on!’ or pull appalled faces to indicate just how ignorant he finds you, and he has about him a general air of gentleness and kindness you just wouldn’t expect from the horrid interrogational techniques he uses on MPs. Even so, for the first few seconds of his new documentary series The Victorians (BBC1, Sunday), I did worry that he might be pushing his Mister Nice act just a bit too far. He’d put on this piping, sensitive, frankly a bit girlie narrator’s voice, as if to say, ‘Look.

26 February 2009

Matthew Dancona

Back in a Blur

Old rockers don’t die, they just go to Glastonbury. Or, in the case of our own Alex James, write a column for The Spectator. It is nine years since Blur played together and, though their forthcoming reunion tour has been public knowledge for a while, there is a special frisson in today’s disclosure that they will be headlining at the summer’s main festival: the annual riot of mud and noise known as Glastonbury.

23 February 2009

Alex Massie

A Night at the Oscars

Oscar commentary is outsourced to the always-splendid Peter Suderman: The half-calculated, half-panicked seesawing between self-important Art and anxious populism means that the Oscars aren’t really an indicator of quality anymore, but rather an indicator of Oscarness. Oscarness does, admittedly, overlap with quality (see last year’s awards), but it is not the same thing. Undoubtedly, the biggest triumph for Oscarness this year was Sean Penn’s Best Actor win for his portrayal of Harvey Milk. It’s part political statement, part Hollywood politics, and part bias toward the self-important and showy.

21 February 2009

Henrietta Bredin

Revealing the physicist’s soul

Arts feature

Henrietta Bredin talks to the baritone Gerald Finley about how he portrays ‘the destroyer of worlds’ At precisely 5.30 a.m. on Monday 16 July 1945 the world entered the nuclear age. The first atomic bomb exploded in a searing flash of light and a vast mushroom cloud unfurled in the skies above New Mexico. ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,’ thought Robert J. Oppenheimer, the physicist who had masterminded its development. It was typical of the man and the deep contradictions within his nature that these lines from the Bhagavad Gita should have come to mind, and that he should have named the project the Trinity Test in response to poetry by John Donne.

Liz Anderson

Liz suggests | 21 February 2009

Film There’s been a rush of good movies recently — Rachel Getting Married (with Anne Hathaway) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona, to name just two — and coming up is The Class, winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, which opens on 27 February. It’s based on an autobiographical novel by a French schoolteacher and centres on a class of 17/18-year-olds, I would guess, from racially diverse backgrounds in a poor suburb of Paris. It focuses on teacher-pupil relationships, with all the problems and misunderstandings that different cultures and languages can create in everyday classroom life. This documentary-style film is made with humour and compassion, and, though I thought it half an hour too long, is well worth seeing.

Michael Tanner

Double the pleasure

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Handel Wigmore Hall Die tote Stadt Royal Opera House The Wigmore Hall last Saturday afternoon and evening was a scene of sheer delight, with Handel’s Aci, Galatea e Polifemo being performed before tea, and Acis and Galatea in the evening. It was all masterminded by Paul McCreesh, with his Gabrieli Consort and Players, and a uniformly fine set of soloists, who also constituted the chorus. The Gabrieli Consort, which I unfortunately very rarely have cause to encounter in the pursuit of duty, is a wonderful early-instrument group, characterised by extraordinary sweetness of tone, and by an expressiveness which would be regarded as quaint if it didn’t emerge from the right kind of instruments.

Charles Spencer

Keep on smiling

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One of Van Morrison’s umpteen albums is called What’s Wrong with this Picture? It’s a question long-term fans are likely to echo as they contemplate the cover of his new release, Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl. One of Van Morrison’s umpteen albums is called What’s Wrong with this Picture? It’s a question long-term fans are likely to echo as they contemplate the cover of his new release, Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl. What’s wrong is that Van Morrison is smiling. This is, to say the least, unusual. Morrison is the most famous curmudgeon in popular music and he doesn’t do smiles. He prefers to appear on his record sleeves looking moody, depressed or downright aggressive.

Deborah Ross

Make my day, Clint

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Gran Torino 15, Nationwide Gran Torino is a Clint Eastwood film — what, he’s still alive? — and it’s about a grouchy old fella who is hard-core racist but then gets involved with the Asian family next door and, would you believe it, discovers they are quite decent, really. This is probably not a very good film. It is clunky, corny, overblown and so obvious it even features one of those early-on coughs you know isn’t going to pan out as good news. One day, I would like to see a non-meaningful cough in a film; would like to hear a doctor say, ‘The tests are back and it’s nothing, a tickle...’ It’s a 
small dream of mine. (I was always told to dream big, but never had the time or the energy.) Now, where were we? Oh, yes.

Kate Chisholm

Tormented talent

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When Sarah Kane’s play Blasted was premièred at the tiny upstairs studio in the Royal Court Theatre in London in January 1995, it created such a stir that her name was splashed across the tabloid newspapers. When Sarah Kane’s play Blasted was premièred at the tiny upstairs studio in the Royal Court Theatre in London in January 1995, it created such a stir that her name was splashed across the tabloid newspapers. How could a 23-year-old woman have come up with such an ugly, violent drama in which limbs are lopped off, eyes gouged out and so-called love is turned into a horrifying rape scene?

18 February 2009

Andrew Lambirth

All aboard

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The Art of the Poster — A Century of Design London Transport Museum, Covent Garden Piazza, WC2, until 31 March The first thing to say is that this is not an exhibition of posters. It is, in fact, an exhibition of the original art works from which were made some of the last century’s best LT posters. There are more than 60 exhibits, and many of the finest were commissioned by Frank Pick (1878–1941), a founding member of the Design and Industries Association and managing director of LT. He was one of those enormously influential background figures — like Jack Beddington at Shell — who was responsible for LT’s publicity from 1908, and aimed to sell the Underground through its destinations, its urban and green-belt attractions.

Lloyd Evans

Clinical analysis

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Woman in Mind Vaudeville On the Waterfront Theatre Royal, Haymarket The Stone; Seven Jewish Children Royal Court Blistering, searing, cracking, scorching. I’m describing the performances of Janie Dee and Stuart Fox in Woman in Mind, Alan Ayckbourn’s comedy about senile dementia. Smouldering, blazing, torrid, incandescent. There’s a few more. But a show can only take so much heat before it buckles and breaks. Janie Dee’s Susan is a frustrated upper-class sex-pot whose grip on reality is weakening and whose marriage to Gerald, a chortling musty vicar, has all but expired. Outstanding as the performances are they make the relationship seem pretty incredible.

Giannandrea Poesio

New ideas

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Les Ballets C de la B Sadler’s Wells Theatre Jérôme Bel Lilian Baylis Studio at Sadler’s Wells Within the past two weeks Sadler’s Wells played host to two memorable modern dance performances: Pitié! and A Spectator. They could not have been more different, and yet they both showed how, in an arts world plagued by unimpressive imitations and continuous regurgitations of old ideas, there are still those who can break stale moulds and make an impact. Neither Alain Platel and his Les Ballets C de la B, nor Jérôme Bel are everyone’s favourites. Their controversial works have often irritated dance-goers.

Simon Hoggart

Layman’s terms

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I often drone on about how there are television programmes made with love and there are those that are knocked out cynically, to win ratings and advertising, or because the programme makers are just too lazy to come up with anything new, challenging, informative or even entertaining. Hole in the Wall is obviously cynical, as is I’m a Celebrity. On the other hand, Strictly Come Dancing might be as camp as a drag act at Pontin’s, but it is at least made with craft and dedication. You may not care for the show, but somebody plainly cares about getting it right. A classic instance of getting it right is Iran and the West (BBC2), which has been running over three weeks on Saturdays.

Ursula Buchan

Winter drifts

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What is it with snowdrops? Why do people make so much fuss about them, when they are so small and relatively insignificant? These are questions that mystify people each February, as they view yet more images in newspapers or gardening magazines of chilly, brilliant white, droopy flowers on short stalks. I have, in the past, been equally stumped. However, gradually, two or three positive aspects of snowdrops have dawned on me, not all of which have anything to do with the flowers themselves. The first thing to note is that they flower (in the public mind, at least) mainly in January and February when there is not much else flowering (in the public mind, at least).

14 February 2009

Marcus Berkmann

Why now?

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January was a fierce month for celebrity life expectancy, especially if you are in your late forties and feel you grew up with these people. John Updike. Bill Frindall. Patrick McGoohan (‘I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered’). Ricardo Montalban (‘from Hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee’). Tony Hart and Sir John Mortimer and David Vine. But not John Martyn, please no, tell me that’s a mistake. True, he wasn’t in the best of health. Having drunk enough for two alcoholics and taken enough heroin to floor an elephant, he had his left leg lopped off in 2003 when a cyst exploded, and, once confined to a wheelchair, he piled on the weight.

Peter Phillips

Spiritual awakening

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People make assumptions about how other people think, and then influence the zeitgeist by broadcasting their findings. There is a circularity to this rule of thumb which is ultimately sterile, but which takes some deconstructing. One of the current such verities is that sacred music in worship is of no wide cultural relevance, either because it’s too clever and boring (polyphony), or too stupid and boring (folk masses); anyway it can be of no interest to anyone except fanatics. This is not a thought about the secular achievements of groups like the Tallis Scholars, but of the gradual revival of good singing in the Catholic Church in recent years.

James Delingpole

Eastern promises

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Iran And The West (BBC2, Saturday); Terry Pratchett: Living With Alzheimer’s (BBC2, Wednesday) Just in case you needed another reason to loathe and despise the French (I mean, as if Olivier Besancenot wasn’t enough), there was a corker in Norma Percy’s characteristically brilliant new documentary series Iran And The West (BBC2, Saturday). It concerned the Lebanese hostage crisis of the 1980s when the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia (‘practitioners’ as Jon Snow would no doubt call them) kidnapped dozens of Westerners, among them American journalist Terry Anderson, Archbishop’s envoy Terry Waite, and various Frenchmen and seemed determined to hold them indefinitely.

12 February 2009