Will Gore

Saturday

Will Gore

Viewpoint: Screen test

From our UK edition

Before 2006, the idea of watching a play or an opera from the discomfort of a cinema seat, with the scent of popcorn, nachos and hotdogs wafting through the air, would have been ludicrous. But New York’s Met Opera’s broadcast of a live performance of The Magic Flute to cinemas changed that. Arts institutions the world over, from Glyndebourne to the Bolshoi Ballet, started to copy the Met and soon cinemagoers were pouring out of multiplexes, amazed at the intimacy and immediacy of these screenings.  The amalgamation of live performance and cinema sounded, to my ears at least, to be a terrible idea.

Saturday

Will Gore

Poirot power

From our UK edition

Will Gore talks to David Suchet about his forthcoming West End role and his debt to the Belgian detective The first thing I notice about David Suchet is his facial hair. It isn’t a stick-on Poirot tash, unfortunately, but a grey beard that he has grown for his latest role, James Tyrone, in the West End revival of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night. The second thing is his smile. He greets me with a broad grin, and beams amiably throughout our time together. He has rehearsals to be getting on with, but is happy to let our scheduled 30 minutes stretch to an hour. Suchet is the most cheerful interviewee I’ve ever encountered. He’s unpretentious, too. Some actors, mentioning no names except Richard E.

Saturday

Will Gore

Oedipus wrecked

From our UK edition

Structural worries have put a stop to Bradfield College’s tradition of outdoor Greek theatre. Will Gore implores the gods (and benefactors) to be kind  Bradfield College is one of the most attractive boarding schools in the country, and the jewel in its crown is — or was — its open-air Greek theatre. Greeker, as it is known, was built in 1890. For more than a hundred years, pupils performed plays on its stage. The most admired of these productions were the Greek plays, latterly presented every three years in the original texts of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. These performances have given the school an identity and a good reputation among scholarly types. Today, if people have heard of Bradfield, chances are that it is because of the Greek play.