Culture

Ghost Town 12A, Nationwide Ghost Town stars Ricky Gervais in his first leading Hollywood role, and how much you like this film will probably depend on how much you like Gervais — what? You expected him to turn in a Daniel Day-Lewis-type performance? — and how much Gervais you can take at one sitting; the two not being the same at all. I like Gervais but now realise there is only so much I can take at the one sitting. Bubbles likes Gervais but says there is only so much he can take at the one sitting. Meanwhile, Bubbles’s fiancée, Goldie, says, ‘I haven’t been exposed to a lot of Gervais so really cannot comment.’ Further, it’s just such a relentlessly mainstream rom-com, so without bite, it’s as if The Office never happened.

The Burial at Thebes The Globe Walton double bill Linbury Studio, Royal Opera House What is our best chance of experiencing Greek tragedies as works that are alive and life-giving, as we can sometimes experience Shakespeare? I’m taking it that we don’t understand Greek, but there are major problems even for those who do. Seamus Heaney, like many fine poets, has provided a version of two of Sophocles’ plays, and Dominique Le Gendre has made an opera of his text of Antigone, called The Burial at Thebes in Heaney’s version. The opera received its première at Shakespeare’s Globe last week. Peter Manning, concertmaster of the Royal Opera Orchestra, conducted. It was a remarkably dismal occasion, despite the balmy weather and the silent crowded house.

The great days of cinema are not over: they live on in Terence Davies, writes Peter Hoskin How to write about the cinema of Terence Davies? Words just don’t stand a chance. I could deploy every superlative going, and reduce every one of the three short films and five feature films he’s directed into their constituent parts — a dash of low-key acting here, some liquid camera movements there — but nothing could convey or explain the unique emotional power they have. Quite simply, his films need to be seen and experienced. And preferably on the silver screen, so the magic can really take hold. It’s fortunate, then, that the fifth of those feature films — Of Time and the City, a documentary about Liverpool — is about to be released into cinemas.

Compagnie Beau Geste Parsons Green Toilet Tango Bathstore, Baker Street Stephen Petronio Dance Company Queen Elizabeth Hall Australian Ballet Sadler’s Wells Theatre Manon Royal Opera House The dancing digger and its partner, the exceptional Philippe Priasso, are back in town. Aptly regarded as a highlight of last year’s Dance Umbrella, Compagnie Beau Geste’s Transports Exceptionnels by the choreographer Dominique Boivin has made a triumphal comeback to the joy of all those who had previously missed it and the happiness of those who wanted to see it again.

Dominic Cooke on why we must guard against a self-perpetuating climate of fear and timidity Forty years ago, the Theatres Bill removed from the Lord Chamberlain his centuries-old power to censor the British stage. Under a law unchanged since 1843, every work intended for production in British theatres had first to be submitted to, and approved by, his office. Each work came back with a report from one of the censors, who became renowned for their hypersensitive ability to read sex and subversion into the most innocent of dialogue.

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.