Culture

Criminals can turn into detectives: consider the career of Eugène-François Vidocq, thief, convict and subsequently head of the Paris Sûreté. And, as we have seen recently in London, political journalists can metamorphose into successful politicians. So it is not all that surprising that, once in a while, an art critic should cross the line and turn curator. After many years of writing about exhibitions, for the first time I am organising one myself (or, more precisely, co-arranging it with Anne Lyles of Tate Britain). Even less amazing, I suppose, is that the job turns out to be rather different from what I had imagined.

On the Rocks Hampstead In My Name Trafalgar Studios All Nudity Shall Be Punished Union Uh oh. Writers writing about writers writing. Amy Rosenthal’s new play is set in 1916 in a Cornish village. D.H. Lawrence, suffering from writer’s block, has suggested to the publisher John Middleton Murry and his lover Katherine Mansfield, who is also blocked, that they rent adjoining cottages. This promises to be a meagre, literary love-in but the play succeeds extremely well, even for a sceptic like me who remains unconvinced by Lawrence’s obese sentiment-laden novels. (My preference is for the eerie, formless and completely masterful late poems like ‘The Mosquito’ and ‘Baby Tortoise’).

Mamma Mia PG, Nationwide Mamma Mia has to be the most fun you can have with your clothes on. Or is it off? When you get to my age, it’s such a struggle to remember. Either way, though, if you are now expecting this review to be subtly and cleverly interweaved with punning ABBA song titles then you can just forget it. My, my, how can I resist it? Easily, my dears; easily. Or, as Bubbles says, ‘Gimme, gimme, gimme a man after midnight.’ Well, it just goes to show; you can live with someone for years and years and years and still not know everything about them.

The Mist 15, Nationwide As any fan of Howard Hawks, George A. Romero or John Carpenter will know, it’s not the monsters outside your window that you should worry about. It’s the people who are trapped indoors with you. Your friends, family, acquaintances and colleagues. The Humans. They’re the most horrific things of all. This dreary set-up has inspired a handful of great films — from The Thing from Another World (1951) through to Night of the Living Dead (1968) and The Thing (1982). A rich lineage, indeed. And although it doesn’t add anything particularly new, Frank Darabont’s The Mist may well deserve a place alongside them.

Le nozze di Figaro Royal Opera House The first night of the latest revival of the Royal Opera House’s Le nozze di Figaro I count among the dozen, or perhaps fewer than that, most glorious evenings I have spent in the theatre. Figaro is the opera that a critic sees most often, and it is right that it should be, since it is not only an incomparably great work, but also one which can survive performances of very different levels of achievement. What one hopes for from the Royal Opera, and on this occasion gets in fullest measure, is a superb amalgamation of the arts of singing, acting, producing, conducting. The cast is almost flawless, and so are the other ingredients, but what matters is not perfection but inspiration, and we had that above all from Sir Charles Mackerras.

Black Watch Barbican Whatever Happened to Cotton Dress Girl? New End Divas Apollo   Disney does death. That’s how Black Watch looks to me. The hit show has arrived in London with its bracing portrait of the famous Highland regiment. All its tactics and traditions are presented without criticism, including its devious recruitment policy. Get ’em young is the technique. The regiment offers teenage drifters a blend of stability, adventure and booze-soaked camaraderie, and the army becomes a surrogate family with ready-made bonds of loyalty to the past. Recruits are taught to revere the regiment’s history, ‘the golden thread’, which is exhibited here as a romanticised cartoon celebrating the footsoldier’s role in British imperialist expansion.