Culture

Wicked is a musical based on the early life of the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz. So what’s wrong with it, apart from the subject obviously? Well, if you go to a musical you don’t expect to spend three hours denied the pleasure of a hummable tune, a decent gag, an engaging storyline or any attempt at an ensemble dance routine. The bald, belt-’em-out singing style doesn’t help, nor does the gaudy declarative acting. On the plus side, the scenery is spectacular, and there’s a massive articulated dragon’s head over the stage which flexes its iron neck and creaks its metal jaws while racking out groans of pain. It’s very impressive until you spot a puffing stage-hand in the wings yanking on a rope-and-pulley system.

Donizetti’s La fille du régiment is one of his three comedies that retain a place in the repertoire. It is mainly celebrated for its hero Tonio’s aria ‘Pour mon âme’, which has a succession of nine top Cs, a great stunt for a tenor who can pull it, or them, off, but without artistic interest. But the opera is usually revived for the benefit of a prima donna who wants to demonstrate her comic prowess, as expressed largely in reams of coloratura. The famous Covent Garden revival of 1966 was a vehicle for Joan Sutherland to demonstrate a side which she found more congenial than the droopings or rages which she normally had to deliver, though for many of us it was the enchanting singing of the young Pavarotti which provided the main pleasure.

Attentive readers will recall that, in recent years, I have worried and wittered and wrung my hands in these pages about the increasing incidents of unusual weather episodes (OK, have it your own way, climate change) and, in particular, whether these ‘abnormal’ conditions are simply temporary blips or represent a definite trend. No longer. I don’t mean that I have stopped worrying, simply that I no longer believe that they are a temporary blip. Just at the moment it is winter temperatures which particularly concern me.

Born in Gujarat, western India, in 1951, Shanti Panchal studied art in Bombay before coming to London on a British Council scholarship in 1978. He has made his home in this country ever since, with regular trips back to India, and enjoys a justly high reputation for the distinctive large-scale watercolours he specialises in. However, he produces only a few paintings a year (a large picture may take six to 12 months to complete), and has no commercial dealer to represent his work, so it is hard to see it unless on view in a museum.

Until last week I was the only person on the planet not to have seen The History Boys. I now rejoin the human race in a state of wonder. Such a whopping hit, such flimsy materials. The setting happens to be familiar to me, a state school in the 1980s where a group of smart alecs are preparing to take Oxbridge. All Alan Bennett’s failings and strengths are on view here. The perfunctory storyline is made up of a few broad gestures culminating in a not-terribly-surprising surprise ending. The cast consists of straight characters who are stereotypes and gay characters who are stereotypes with knobs on. The rest is rhetoric, atmosphere and the occasional excellent joke. ‘Archaeology is popular because it’s the nearest history gets to shopping.

If Sean Langan isn’t the bravest, best and most likeable foreign correspondent on TV, I don’t know who is. And what a bumper week this has been for his admirers. On Monday, a Dispatches documentary (Fighting the Taleban, Channel 4) about the six-day battle he witnessed in Garmser, Helmand, when a half-platoon of British infantrymen and a couple of hundred Afghanis held out against several thousand Taleban. Then, on Thursday, another one (Meeting the Taleban, Channel 4) in which he gingerly approached a Taleban/al-Q’aeda mountain stronghold and amazingly came away with testicles intact and a halfway cogent interview.