Culture

In the theatre programme notes for the new play based on Pedro Almodóvar’s film, All About My Mother, the playwright Samuel Adamson observes that the play’s protagonist, Manuela, is drawn towards the world of theatre by an unexpected event. Back in 1999, although I didn’t know it at the time, my own life was about to imitate Almodóvar’s art. Perhaps calling a simple trip to the cinema ‘an unexpected event’ might itself seem a touch theatrical, but little did I expect that catching a flick on a Friday night in Sydney would spark the beginning of a journey that (not unlike Manuela’s) would draw me to the world of theatre, in the guise of a West End theatre producer.

Exhibition; Hélio Oiticica: The Body of Colour How diminished our lives would be if suddenly we could only see in black and white. ‘Colour is the first revelation of the world,’ exclaimed Hélio Oiticica (1937–80), a Brazilian artist with a mission to liberate colour and help it to embody itself in other guises. He thought of colour as a dimension, like space or time. How far would he have travelled if his tragic early death had not stopped short his career? He had already gone beyond helping colour to escape from the imprisoning rectangle of the picture frame and move into three-dimensions; he had even given it human locomotion and brought it into the arena of performance. Where would he have taken it next?

The most egregious example of cheating in wildlife photography was the 1958 Disney film Wild Wilderness. They wanted footage of lemmings throwing themselves off cliffs into the sea — heaven knows why, since lemmings do no such thing. Since the crew were in Alberta, where neither sea nor lemmings can be found, they bought the little creatures in from Manitoba, and filmed them on a giant turntable, so it looked as if there were thousands instead of dozens. Then they chucked them into a river, which slightly resembled the sea, and there they drowned. The makers of wildlife programmes had a more robust attitude to their subjects then.

‘I’m sure I’ve read this before,’ said the Fawn, skimming through my review of Heroes in the week-before-last’s Speccie. ‘I’m sure I’ve read this before,’ said the Fawn, skimming through my review of Heroes in the week-before-last’s Speccie. ‘You can’t have done, we were away when it came out,’ I said. ‘Well, it seems very familiar,’ she said. ‘That’ll be because all my pieces start to resemble one another after a time. Same style. Same jokes. Maybe I should just give up now, before anyone else notices.’ But I can’t, obviously.