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theartsdesk
Even in this year of years, it has to be accepted that not everyone has a soft spot for sport. Anyone answering to that description may well attempt to sprint, jump or pedal away from the coming onslaught, but if you are anywhere near a television, radio or computer, the five-ring circus is going to be hard to avoid for the next few weeks. Though an arts site devoted to noting, admiring and every so often deploring fresh developments on the cultural map, we felt we couldn’t entirely allow the biggest sporting event ever to visit the shores to pass entirely unnoted. So as of tomorrow, Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Producers did warn it was going to be a bad summer for West End theatre, but the announcement of the closure of Chicago is still a curveball. For 15 years the musical - those credits one more time: music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, a book adapted by Ebb and Bob Fosse from the play by journalist Maurine Dallas Watkins and choreography by Ann Reinking “in the style of Fosse” - has been keeping audiences entertained at the Adelphi, then the Cambridge and, as of last November, the Garrick. In that time it has grossed over £120 million. But as of 1 September one of the pillars of the West Read more ...
Jasper Rees
“One never consciously observes. The only people who consciously observe are policemen and undercover agents.” Eric Sykes, who has died at the age of 89, was the last of the great vaudevilleans. When I met him in the late 1990s, he was already totally deaf and largely blind, and somehow continued to work and remain remarkably chipper with it. He had his first ear operation in 1952, another a decade later, whereafter he wore a hearing aid camouflaged as a pair of thick-rimmed glasses. He would sometimes rub his eyes through the plane where the lenses ought to be: a sight gag if ever there was Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Shooting is underway on Diana the movie and, as the producers did with Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady, a snap of the star in full fig and wig has been launched upon the world. Naomi Watts, whose previous love interests have included Laura Harring in Mulholland Drive and a sizeable ape in King Kong, plays the spurned wife of the heir to the throne and lover of the son of the owner of Harrod's in a film to be directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel.That name may ring a bell: he’s the genius who gave us Downfall. From Hitler’s bunker to Buckingham Palace may be thought to be possibly more than a step, Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
With Euro 2012 about to end and the Olympics looming, we'll be hearing an awful lot of national anthems over the next couple of months. Don't we all agree that the majority of them are inadequate - often being turgid tunes with no reference to the culture of the countries involved? Isn't it about time we had some alternatives? Here are a few suggestions.United KingdomAnthem: God Save the QueenThe obvious alternative for Team GB would be "Jerusalem". Athletes could also sing along to the stirring strains of "Anarchy in the UK" by the Sex Pistols. Another possibility was suggested by Read more ...
Jasper Rees
This Friday afternoon at five o’clock, the National Poet of Wales Gillian Clarke will recite a new poem and initiate a seismic week of Welsh cultural exploration. The inaugural Dinefwr Literary Festival will bring writers and musicians from Wales and beyond to a National Trust house and park in Carmarthenshire. Unlike other literary festivals in Wales – notably Hay and Laugharne – this one will straddle the border between English and Welsh. Joining Clarke on the list of performers is not only the former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion but his Welsh-language equivalent, the current Archdruid of Read more ...
Ismene Brown
John Percival, one of the heavyweight group of dance critics of the past 60 years, died last Wednesday, aged 85. He had watched and reported on ballet and dance from their infancy in the Forties right up to recent years, offering a powerful perspective on one of the most vivid and energetic movements in British culture in the 20th century.The first biographer of Rudolf Nureyev and choreographer John Cranko, Percival was for 30 years the dance critic of The Times and also the editor of Dance and Dancers, the now defunct but eminent monthly magazine that charted the growing maturity of the Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Twenty young conductors have been shortlisted to compete in the Donatella Flick/London Symphony Orchestra Conducting Competition in late September. The top prize is a cash award of £15,000 and an attachment to the LSO as Assistant Conductor.The 20 comprise four from the UK - Joolz Gale, Ben Gernon, Jonathan Lo and Gemma New - Irishmen Daniel Stewart and Robert Tuohy, three from Spain, two each from Italy, France, Greece and Germany, a Hungarian, an Austrian and a Portuguese.They were chosen from 187 applicants from EU countries via videos they submitted. They will be whittled down to 10, and Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Zaha Hadid, visionary architect of the London Olympics Aquatic Centre, becomes a Dame and three new knights of the arts are created in the Queen's Jubilee Birthday Honours announced this morning. Actor Kenneth Branagh, long touted as Sir Laurence Olivier's heir in the classical tradition, becomes a Sir, as do Michael Boyd, artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and opera director David McVicar.Kate Winslet becomes CBE, as do Sadler's Wells chief Alistair Spalding and composer Michael Berkeley and Harry Christophers, founder of the baroque vocal ensemble The Sixteen.Among the new Read more ...
Matt Wolf
James Corden (One Man, Two Guvnors) made it past the finish line, Tracie Bennett (End of the Rainbow) did not, and the art-house musical Once trumped Disney’s latest Broadway entry, Newsies, at the 66th annual Tony Awards in New York last night. The ceremony, honoring the best of the Broadway season just gone, was available in real time to nocturnally minded London theatre folk, who could watch the CBS gala streamed live on the web.So it was round 3.30 am in Britain when this country’s best hope for a 2012 Tony emerged victorious, Corden nabbing the top prize that had eluded him at the UK’s Read more ...
Jasper Rees
There’s a lot of art currently happening under the wing of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. The common denominator, if there is one, is showstopping ambition and the concept of the inclusive spectacle. What there isn’t much of, whisper it softly, is art inspired by sport.Agreed, they tend not to mix (especially when it comes to football). A stage version of Chariots of Fire plus a couple of films about running (Personal Best, Fast Girls) have track and field covered. Visual art in particular lags behind the mobile art forms. There’s a new show about horses at the British Museum, and the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It wouldn't have been theartsdesk's pick of the pops, but ITV1's Fred West drama Appropriate Adult had a great night at the BAFTA Television Awards. Dominic West took Leading Actor, Emily Watson was Leading Actress, and Monica Dolan completed the hat-trick by taking Supporting Actress. This spelt disappointment for Benedict Cumberbatch's portrayal of Sherlock, but all was not lost since Andrew Scott (who played Moriarty) took Supporting Actor, while Sherlock's co-creator Steven Moffat was delighted to win the Special Award. It was handed to him by Cumberbatch and Matt Smith, star of Doctor Read more ...