Culture

Culture

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

Michael Tanner

Dying of love

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‘I fear the opera will be banned — unless the whole thing is parodied in a bad performance — : only mediocre performances can save me! Perfectly good ones will be bound to drive people mad, — I cannot imagine it otherwise.’ So Wagner famously wrote to Mathilde Wesendonck, his muse while he was composing Tristan und Isolde, when he was writing Act III. If he’d seen the Glyndebourne production, first unveiled in 2003 and now revived with a largely identical cast, he would not have worried about the dangers of experiencing what everyone agrees is a uniquely intense work, unique both in kind and in degree.

Peter Phillips

Musical gazumping

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Why do people spend their lives doing something which makes them nervous, even to the point of making them sick? I have watched musicians go on stage so frightened that it has been obvious to everyone present that they could not possibly be about to perform as well as they could. They look pale, they may be physically shaking, they are swallowing hard. What lies ahead of them seems like sheer hell. How can they bear to put themselves through this every time they want to ply their trade? They remind me of sportsmen. In fact at one level the two ways of life are quite closely linked by gesture and terminology.

Andrew Lambirth

Artistic harmony

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If you are planning a holiday visit to Shakespeare country and fancy a change of mood and visual pace from the usual round of sightseeing and theatre-going, Compton Verney is a splendid alternative destination. Besides the remarkable permanent collections of paintings, Chinese bronzes and English folk art, there is a programme of changing exhibitions which make something of a virtue out of contrasting the historic with the contemporary. Thus an older master will be shown side by side with a modern (a previous grouping was the sculptor Messerschmidt with Van Gogh and Francis Bacon) in order to strike new resonances from each by this unexpected juxtaposition.

Mark Glazebrook

Move over, Monet-maniacs

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On 30 January 1999, not long after the Royal Academy had mounted its second Monet exhibition, The Spectator published my first exhibition review. It was about a renewal of Cubism in the sculpture of Ivor Abrahams and began as follows: ‘The end of a century, like a wedding, notoriously calls for something new. A millennium apparently calls for New Impressionism, although in a recent speech at the Royal Academy Gordon Brown made a special point of not claiming Monet for New Labour, despite his admiration for the great man’s credentials, such as his stance on the Dreyfus case.

4 August 2007

Interconnect

Brimming over with music

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‘Hello, Gavin. Have you got the sackbuts with you?’ Administrative magician Rebecca Rickard is dealing with what is, for her, a fairly ordinary sort of phone call in the greater scheme of things. As it turns out, Gavin (Henderson) has indeed got no fewer than three sackbuts, and is planning to bring them with him the following morning on the London to Totnes train. Three musicians in this, the first week of the 60th Dartington International Summer School, will no doubt be duly grateful. The Summer School is a unique gathering point for musicians of every possible description and of varying standards of ability.

Andrew Lambirth

Birth of the seaside

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If we must have frequent Impressionist exhibitions, and it’s clear from the public’s insatiable appetite for them that we must, then at least let’s have good ones. The current show at the Academy is a well-conceived and enjoyable expedition into a theme. All too often themed shows seem forced — the art selected to illustrate an idea, rather than the idea helping us to focus on key works of art. Impressionists by the Sea is both interesting and revealing, and it includes a good percentage of high-quality art into the bargain. An excellent show for those who prefer the idea of the seaside to the actuality of overcrowded or rain-despoiled beaches.

Roderick Conway-Morris

Fount of all gardens

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According to an Hellenic historian, Nebuchadnezzar built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon in the 6th century BC to make his wife, who was from a mountainous region of Iran, feel at home. In fact, he and other rulers of Mesopotamia before him (the first such gardens were probably at Nineveh) were seeking to impress a much wider audience, and the Babylon version made it on to the list of the Seven Wonders of the World. The archeological evidence is limited, but these gardens very probably occupied a series of terraces of an enormous ziggurat that would have been visible from miles away.

Michael Tanner

Boundless passion

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L’Amore dei tre Re; Macbeth Montemezzi’s L’amore dei tre Re has had a puzzling history. It was first performed at La Scala in 1913 and was quite successful; far more successful under Toscanini at the New York Met, until after the second world war, and a fair number of performances elsewhere, often as a vehicle for one of the great lyric sopranos. In 1952 it suddenly disappeared from the repertoire, and revivals since have been increasingly rare. As so often, Opera Holland Park has come to the rescue. With what seems to be a guaranteed audience, it can stage what it likes, and it likes so-called verismo operas, though the label is absurd almost whenever it is applied, and certainly in this case.

Lloyd Evans

Wordless wonders

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A strange night at the Soho. Before curtain-up the place was crowded with people excitedly conversing with each other yet there was practically no noise. They were deaf. Signed conversation requires full and constant eye contact, which makes it more intense, intimate and animated than our conversation, and as I watched the deaf exchanging their artful, fascinating hand-dances I felt an enormous pang of envy. What a club to belong to! And this turned out to be the theme of the play. John and Alison, both deaf, have a daughter who needs a mechanical implant to improve her hearing. Alison is keen but John fears that the doctors are plotting to ruin his family.

Charles Spencer

How to feel young again

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The older I become, the easier I find it to sink into that old-gittish state of believing everything has got worse with the passage of time. In my childhood there was the hippie movement, when young people felt that peace and love and expanding your mind might be a nice idea, helped along by the occasional mild, non-psychosis-inducing joint. Nowadays, the drug of choice is cheap booze, with rampaging chavs turning town centres into a Hogarthian nightmare of vomiting and violence fuelled by alcopops and super-strength lagers. Then there are South West Trains, which drive me to the brink of apoplexy almost every day of the week.

Kate Chisholm

Midnight’s children

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Yet another rash of programmes has erupted marking the anniversary of yet another of Britain’s disastrous foreign policy decisions. At midnight on 14 August it will be 60 years since Nehru, as the prime minister of newly independent India, pronounced those fateful words, ‘A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.’ Yet another rash of programmes has erupted marking the anniversary of yet another of Britain’s disastrous foreign policy decisions.

Simon Hoggart

Misleading the public

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I was fascinated to watch the low-key struggle the other day between BBC and ITV executives, and members of the Commons culture committee. The television people said they were appalled by the chicanery revealed in various programmes — premium-rate phone-ins, the show about the Queen, for example — and would take urgent steps to make sure it never happened again. Mark Byford, the BBC’s deputy director-general, seemed to be in a state of anguish. One member of the committee said afterwards that he feared he might demonstrate his contrition by slitting his wrists in front of them. The MPs were rather sceptical, especially about the BBC’s decision to make 16,000 employees attend a course to teach them how to avoid misleading the public.

30 July 2007

The Spectator

Ingmar Bergman RIP

The death of Ingmar Bergman coincides with the re-release of his greatest film, The Seventh Seal (1957), a meditation upon death and the fear of godlessness set in the middle ages but inspired by the nuclear terrors of the Cold War. The bleakness of Bergman's oeuvre is undeniable, but his films were not cold: there are few more affecting explorations of the life of the elderly than Wild Strawberries, or poignant explorations of a relationship than Scenes from a Marriage or its recent sequel Saraband. Fanny and Alexander is, amongst many other things, one of the most visually sumptuous films of the twentieth century. So many directors wanted to be Bergman, not least Woody Allen whose various homages to the Swedish master occasionally strayed into parody.

28 July 2007

James Delingpole

Wish fulfilment

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Which super power would you choose? When I was young, the one I quite wanted was invisibility. I imagined myself sneaking into the bedrooms of all the girls I fancied and persuading them that I was an incubus come to satisfy their every desire. An ability to arrest time with a stopwatch would be a handy power too, as would being able to fly or teleport. But the impression I get with super powers is that you’re not allowed to be too greedy. I was trying to think which low-level super power I’d accept today and I realised how unambitious I’ve become. Being able to go to the loo without ever again needing to wipe your bottom — I’d be quite happy with that. Always going to sleep within 30 seconds of one’s head hitting the pillow, that would be even better.

Lloyd Evans

Bowled over

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Adorable, sensational Joseph. I was bowled over by this show, not just by the slick vitality of the 60-strong cast, not just by the teasingly satirical hippy-trippy lighting effects, not just by Preeya Kalidas’s gloriously stylish Narrator, and not just by the Mel Brooksian chorus-line of high-kicking Jewish shepherds, no — by the material. Talk about genius from nowhere. The script originated as a 20-minute end-of-term sketch for the pupils of St Paul’s in west London. Its charm and its technical brilliance were noticed immediately and the show, once expanded, launched its authors heavenwards. Tim Rice’s lyrics are joyously witty.

Robin Holloway

Making connections

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In idle mood — perhaps prompted by the news of terrible further flooding — I’ve just listened for the first time in many years to Peter Grimes. In idle mood — perhaps prompted by the news of terrible further flooding — I’ve just listened for the first time in many years to Peter Grimes. Idleness scarcely survives the excitement that involves the listener from the opening bar. It’s difficult to understand Britten’s later disclaimer to a young admirer embarked on his own first opera — ‘but Grimes is full of howlers!’ — for everything now, 60-plus years after, has long since seemed so absolutely right. These six decades have consolidated the work as a permanent cornerstone.

Deborah Ross

Family favourites

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As you’d expect — doh! — The Simpsons Movie has some glorious lines in it. Lisa to Marge: ‘I’m so angry.’ Marge to Lisa: ‘You’re a woman. You can hold it in for years.’ Bart to Homer: ‘This is the worst day of my life.’ Homer to Bart: ‘No, son. This is the worst day of your life so far.’ No one, by the way, says: ‘When writing about the Simpsons, there will always be a “doh!” so get it out the way quick’ but you will note that I have been clever enough to do so, all the same. There are no flies on me. Yes, yes, yes...almost since day one back in 1990 The Simpsons has proved itself a masterpiece and at some level you could even say that I now live according to Simpsonian wisdom.

Patrick Marmion

Celebrity squares | 28 July 2007

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Autograph-hunters are easily maligned. When not frequenting sci-fi conventions, they are to be found lurking like discomfited pigeons at film premières or the opening nights of West End theatre productions, clutching pocketbooks bearing signatures of the famous. Autograph-hunters are easily maligned. When not frequenting sci-fi conventions, they are to be found lurking like discomfited pigeons at film premières or the opening nights of West End theatre productions, clutching pocketbooks bearing signatures of the famous. Their glasses are bottle-bottomed relics of the NHS. They reek of sweat and charity shops. Their anoraks are zipped up tight, come rain or sun. A nervous chortle plays on their lips and their eyeballs glisten with furtive anticipation.

Tom Rosenthal

Bare necessities | 28 July 2007

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The Naked Portrait Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, until 2 September, then Compton Verney, Warwickshire, from 29 September to 9 December The advance publicity I saw for this on the whole excellently curated exhibition contained a health warning: ‘Please note this show contains nudity. Children under 16 must be accompanied by an adult.’ The title comes from the phrase used by Lucian Freud for several of his nudes but, alas, for the prurient, there are few images that might disturb or inflame either adults or children, except perhaps one of a woman holding a silk rosette bearing the word ‘Boob’ against her own left breast mutilated (but not removed) by surgery.

Michael Tanner

Scratching the surface

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Così fan tutte; Summer ConcertRoyal Opera House The Royal Opera, for its last revival of the season, got Jonathan Miller to make over his 1995 production of Così fan tutte, everyone’s favourite Mozart opera these days, owing to its sceptical view of sexual relationships, combined with a subtle acknowledgement of how painful we often find it to be as fickle as we are, how unwilling we are to be so much at the mercy of our impulses. Mozart’s own mixed feelings on the matter are shown by the interestingly different attitudes of his two spokespersons Don Alfonso and Despina to the same phenomenon: she is hard-bitten, resolutely superficial and mercenary, he is bitter, disillusioned, malicious.

Andrew Lambirth

Going Dutch | 28 July 2007

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Andrew Lambirth delights in the National Gallery’s exhibition of a Golden Age I’ve been reading Still Life with a Bridle by the poet Zbigniew Herbert in preparation for Dutch Portraits: The Age of Rembrandt and Franz Hals at the National Gallery. It’s a fascinating collection of essays which examines and pays tribute to the Golden Age of Dutch art and the society that produced it. Packed with unusual and stimulating perceptions, not to mention poetic inventions, the book only increases one’s sense of wonder at such an efflorescence of talent concentrated in one unprepossessing place over a relatively short period. (This exhibition covers the years 1599–1683 and runs until 16 September, sponsored by Shell.

27 July 2007

Alex Massie

James Bond vs. Jason Bourne

Peter Suderman and Isaac Chotiner each highlight an interview with Matt Damon (who is promoting the latest Jason Bourne thrilla, The Bourne Ultimatum). I like Damon. He's an increasingly interesting actor and his excellent performance in The Good Shepherd last year was every bit as under-rated as the movie itself. Nevertheless, he's also an ass. Evidence for the prosecution? Matt Damon's amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne shares initials with another notorious screen operative. But other than that, Damon doesn't see any similarities between Bourne and James Bond. Bond is "an imperialist and he's a misogynist. He kills people and laughs and sips martinis and wisecracks about it," Damon, 36, told The Associated Press in an interview. "Bourne is this paranoid guy. He's on the run.

Alex Massie

Shambo RIP

It's official. A nation mourns. Mr Eugenides strikes a mournful, plangent note: Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy T-bone,Silence the tambourines and with muffled drumsBring out the burger buns, let the ketchup come. Let cattle trucks circle moaning round the barnScribbling in the dirt the message, Shambo Is Dead,Put mournful garlands round the white necks of the temple monks,Let the government veterinarians wear black rubber gloves...

25 July 2007

21 July 2007

Simon Hoggart

The good and the bad

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These are difficult times for the BBC. The fine for the Blue Peter phone-in fraud was, in its way, as big a shock as the famous vandalising of its garden. The silly Crowngate affair in which what they claimed was the Queen staging an angry walk-out turned out to be her staging an angry walk-in. And some ratings have been very poor. The drama True, Dare, Kiss broadcast last week got a miserable 3.2 million viewers, one of the smallest ever Thursday peak-time audiences on BBC1. Over on BBC2, Alastair Campbell’s diaries rose from 1.3 million viewers on Wednesday to a hardly impressive 1.5.

Kate Chisholm

A life examined

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Back in the US in the Fifties, just as atomic fear was gripping the American nation and the McCarthyite witch hunts were at their most vicious, a rather extraordinary radio programme was created by the journalist Edward R. Murrow and his production team at CBS radio. This I Believe presented ‘The living philosophies of thoughtful men and women in the hope that they may strengthen your beliefs so that your life may be richer, fuller, happier.’ With a title taken from Murrow’s Quaker upbringing, the idea that sustained the programme was that by examining and revealing the things which make us tick, the beliefs by which we operate our daily lives, we might help others to find their way through this chaotic world.

Lloyd Evans

Water torture

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Glass Eels / Love’s Labour’s Lost / Saint Joan Squelchy trotters up in Hampstead. Nell Leyshon’s new play is set on a Somerset flood plain where a family of bumpkin farmers are coping with a suicide. Before the action commences Mum has done a Virginia Woolf in the nearby river and her premature submersion furnishes the play with its central motif. During the action, the stage gradually fills with water. OK, fills. What happens is that a super-slow trickle very nearly covers the actors’ ankles. It doesn’t help that this liquid is the pure and pristine variety piped in by Thames Water (see website for details) while the script refers constantly to festering, murky, algae-ridden bilge in which the eels of the title wriggle and gleam.

Deborah Ross

Super-size fun

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This film is fun. It is fun, fun, fun, fun, fun. It might be the most fun you can have with your clothes on or, if you have been married a good while, then with them off. John Travolta as Mrs Edna Turnblad is fun. Christopher Walken as Mr Wilbur Turnblad is riotous fun. Newcomer Nikki Blonsky as Tracy Turnblad, the big girl with the big hair and the big heart, is fun and she’s a terrific dancer. From its opening number — the pounding showtune ‘Good Morning Baltimore’ — this film leaps at you with such joy and vigour and generosity you cannot reject it. It pins you down and has its way with you, clothes on or off. It doesn’t care. It is quite ruthless in this way. OK, some have been sniffy about this version of Hairspray already.

Michael Tanner

Bach wins through

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Bach’s St Matthew Passion doesn’t seem an obvious ‘Glyndebourne opera’, except from the point of view of the non-Londoner having to use public transport to get there, who might well regard the whole outing as a penitential pilgrimage. At the third performance the atmosphere did seem unusually hushed. What we were offered was an almost entirely silent play within which a performance of Bach’s masterpiece took place. The idea, a notably bad one of the producer Katie Mitchell’s, is that in a school somewhere in Europe there has been a shooting, with many children, whose photographs we are shown, killed.