The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Henrietta Bredin on how book illustrations can bring the narrative to life The illustrations in children’s books play a crucial role in expanding the imaginative horizons of the reader and fixing the story in the memory. The very best book illustration is so inextricably linked to the text that it is hard to think of one without the other.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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).
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?
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.
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.
Veronica Lee profiles the playwright as the Old Vic revives his best-known work Alan Ayckbourn, so theatre lore has it, is the second-most performed British playwright after Shakespeare. So why has he become so unfashionable among theatre cognoscenti? Partly, it’s his own doing. In 2002, disillusioned by the musical-laden, drama-free territory it had become and despite his many successes there throughout his career, he announced a West End hiatus on his work (only recently ended for a revival of Absurd Person Singular with Jane Horrocks). Plus, he insists on premiering all his new work in his beloved home town of Scarborough.
Well, yesterday actually. Sheep graze under an oak tree at twilight. Looking east towards Selkirk.
Theatre It promises to be a wonderful autumn for London’s theatre-goers. Ivanov, Tom Stoppard’s adaptation of Chekhov’s early play, has opened the ‘Donmar at Wyndham’s’ season, to superb reviews. Joining it in a quest to bring the increasingly dowdy West End into repute is No Man’s Land, Harold Pinter’s 1975 masterpiece, revived at the Duke of York’s with Michael Gambon and David Bradley assuming the roles of Hirst and Spooner initially taken by the great knights, Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud (and, 17 years later, at the Almeida, by Pinter himself opposite Paul Eddington). The Norman Conquests, the three-parter with which Alan Ayckbourn conquered the West End three decades ago, is being staged at the Old Vic.
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 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.
There was a sad moment in The Family (Channel 4, Wednesday) this week when Dad, the very long-suffering Simon Hughes, is inspecting his daughters’ bedroom, and doesn’t like what he sees. He has been assured that the room is neat and clean, so he responds with a blast of sarcasm. ‘Oh, look at this tidy, tidy, tidy room, oh crumbs, how tidy it is, all this stuff doesn’t exist, it’s a figment of my imagination...’ I felt a blast of pity for him. Most dads, like me, would have given up long ago but he goes onward, ever onward, in the quest for orderly bedrooms. Sisyphus had it easier with his rock. Of course, the kids don’t see it that way.
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.
Edie Lush attends the record-breaking Sotheby’s sale of Damien Hirst’s artworks, and wonders whether it is all a metaphor for the recent madness of financial markets Last Monday was a historic day. Lehman filed for the biggest bankruptcy in history; the insurance giant AIG teetered on the brink; the Dow had its worst day since 9/11 — and in Mayfair an extraordinary event occurred at which seemingly few of those present had even heard of the credit crunch. Buyers and gawkers queued outside Sotheby’s to get in for the historic evening’s sale of works by Damien Hirst. Minutes after it began, auctioneer Oliver Barker’s hammer went down on the first painting — a triptych of butterflies, manufactured diamonds and household gloss paint on canvas.
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.
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.
The last ever episode of The Wire was (finally) broadcast in Britain last night. Not, to their shame, on the BBC or Channel 4 but on the obscure, little-watched (hell, little-known) FX channel. A quiet end then. Coincidentally, the end came as, for the fifth time, the clowns who divvy up the Emmys failed to recognise The Wire's genius. In five years the show secured a paltry two nominations and didn't win once.
There’s an intriguing performance coming up at the Purcell Room on London’s Southbank next Tuesday. Façade, the collection of poems by Edith Sitwell set to music by William Walton, will be recited by another Sitwell (William, also known as editor of Waitrose Food Illustrated and Food Spy for the Evening Standard) for the first time since Edith herself astonished audiences with her sonorous, incantatory delivery (it has to be said that she also made some of them giggle uncontrollably). He’ll be accompanied by singer Pippa Longworth who, thanks to the family connection, has been given permission to rummage in Edith’s dressing up box to borrow some of her fabulously elaborate clothes and massive, ornate jewellery.
No blogging for the rest of the day, I suspect. Why? Because I* just unloaded and stacked 200 bales of hay. Best cold beer of the summer being enjoyed right now. *OK, other people helped.
Henrietta Bredin talks to Peter Manning about taking risks and creating opportunities There is an almost palpable forcefield of energy around Peter Manning. You expect a crackle of static to explode when he shakes your hand or wraps you in an enthusiastic hug. Concertmaster of the Royal Opera House orchestra, founder of the eponymous Manning Camerata chamber orchestra and now music director of Musica Vitae in Sweden, his relish for a challenge, for fresh stimuli, is voracious. He is a violinist, a conductor, and now a galvanising producer and artistic director. His current, most pressing preoccupation is with a fabulously multi-layered and ambitious project, the performance of a new opera he has commissioned, for the Manning Camerata to play.
The BBC World Service’s drama department has been drastically cut back over the last few years and plays, squeezed out by news and current affairs, are difficult to find. But they’re usually worth looking out for on the website, or listed in ridiculously tiny print in the Radio Times. There’s often something a little bit different about them, an outside-the-box atmosphere, created for an audience that might not, for instance, quite understand what the NHS stands for in the United Kingdom, and the traumatic impact of the case of The Good Doctor (broadcast this Saturday evening and repeated on Sunday). It’s ten years since Harold Shipman was arrested on suspicion of murdering one of his patients.
Tropic Thunder 15, Nationwide Unrelated 15, Selected Cinemas Tropic Thunder is an action comedy which stars Ben Stiller, is produced by Ben Stiller and is directed by Ben Stiller, from a story by Ben Stiller and a screenplay by Justin Theroux…and Ben Stiller. So if, after this movie, you don’t feel properly Stiller-ed, I can’t think where you would go from here. I would also like to ask: how much Stiller-ing do you need? Whatever, it’s a send-up of Hollywood which starts rather dazzlingly — at last, a funny film that’s actually funny! — but then droops horribly, even becoming a victim of all the absurdities and excesses it is attempting to satirise.
The best enterprises look to the future but honour their past, which is why it was encouraging that the Royal Horticultural Society should last week have returned to the Inner Temple gardens to hold a show, almost a century after the last time it did so. The Great Spring Show was staged there from 1888 to 1911, until it outgrew the site and moved to the Chelsea Hospital grounds where it has remained ever since. This year’s show, a ‘Floral Celebration’, was appropriately enough, supported by the City firm of solicitors, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and it attracted 16,000 people over three days. Its staging should have cheered all those who think the Society has become a little careless of its two-day London Flower Shows in recent times.
Turandot Hampstead Theatre Do You Know Where Your Daughter Is? Hackney Empire Eurobeat Novello Why the long wait? Brecht completed his last play, Turandot, in 1953 but only now does it receive its British premiere. This spirited, finely acted production provides the answer. The script is all wonky. Taken from the commedia dell’arte fable that inspired Puccini’s opera, this is a laborious political allegory about an impotent Chinese emperor, his spoiled eldest daughter and a rambling public conference that pitches two symbolic groups against one another, ‘the clothesmakers’, (standing for the Social Democrats), and ‘the clothesless’ (the Communists). The issues Brecht is examining are lost in the past and located two continents away.
Clive Crook is on good form today: I am a huge admirer of Damien Hirst. Not of the art, which is rubbish, but of the sheer productivity and exuberance he brings to his life's work of fleecing rich idiots. "Oh Damien, you're a genius. Screw me over again." "Why not," he says, munching a bacon butty. Quite so. And why not indeed?
Earth: The Climate Wars (BBC 2); Amazon (BBC 2); Tess of the d’Urbervilles (BBC 1) A Church of England official has issued an apology to the descendants of Charles Darwin for the Church’s ‘anti-evolutionary’ fervour towards his Origin of the Species. I wonder if in about 150 years’ time the BBC — presuming it still exists which I won’t let it do, I promise, once I’ve become your emperor — will make similar amends for having been wrong about absolutely everything from Israel, Europe, Islamism and multiculturalism to women, children, animals and, above all, global warming.