Features
Philip Hoare
A dark star explodes. I cannot remember the future. A figure appears on the beach. We're always reaching out. It's always just over there. We're always dreaming. The grey rocks, the red sand, the blue sea. Everywhere, the sea. Everything you ever wanted to be. Torbay arches around the south Devon coast like a proscenium arch, a natural arena echoing with the past, present and future. From Torquay's white villas to Paignton's promenade and Brixham's fishing village, these holiday destinations, known as the English Riviera, conceal countless stories behind the resort's veneer: the real lives of Read more ...
Maggie Bain
When director Bruce Guthrie first gave me the script for Man to Man by Manfred Karge, I was immediately mesmerised by the language, each of the 27 scenes leapt off the page. Some are a few short sentences, other pages long; every one a perfectly formed fragment from a unique and potentially broken mind, flipping from prose to poetry. There are no stage directions, no character description.The script Bruce handed me was a photocopy of a typewriter copy he had been emailed by the National Theatre Literary Department; faded, smudged and with some of the bottom lines cut off, I had to Read more ...
Florence Hallett
Art, design and craft is such a broad category that it is no surprise – even less a criticism – that most of the nominees comfortably inhabit just one of these areas of endeavour. Nominated principally in recognition of The Caged Bird’s Song, made in collaboration with Chris Ofili over a period of two and a half years and the star of a recent exhibition at the National Gallery, Dovecot Tapestry Studio is unique in answering happily to art, design and craft and can genuinely claim its place as a leading light in each.Designed by one of our most celebrated contemporary artists, The Caged Bird’s Read more ...
Howard Brenton
I wrote The Blinding Light to try to understand the mental and spiritual crisis that August Strindberg suffered in February 1896. Deeply disturbed, plagued by hallucinations, he holed up in various hotel rooms in Paris, most famously in the Hotel Orfila in the Rue d’Assas.He’d had great success in Paris. A revival of Miss Julie in 1893 created a sensation and, in 1895, The Father had been rapturously received. But now he abandoned playwrighting. He announced he was not a writer but a true “natural scientist”, an alchemist. His hands burnt by chemicals, he attempted to make gold.It would be an Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The second decade of the 21st century will undoubtedly be remembered for huge innovations in accessing music, just as much as for the music itself. As well as acknowledging upfront talent, then, the Hospital Club’s h.Club 100 Music shortlist for 2017 makes it clear what’s going on behind the scenes is currently as important as what’s out front. It’s an era of fast and vast change in the music industry, and, over the last year, a select few have stood out at the forefront, demonstrating shrewd, even visionary awareness of where things are headed.Richard Davies, for instance, and his ticket Read more ...
theartsdesk
Sue Steward, who died suddenly last week from a brain haemorrhage, was one of theartsdesk’s most loved members, her free spirit and her double specialism in world music and photography making her an intrinsic asset to this pioneering critics’ site in 2009. Her unfussy eye for colour and composition also influenced the early design of The Arts Desk and traces remain today.With her talent for friendship she naturally drew other new music explorers into her circle of enthusiasm, as well as the photographers whose work she wrote about and curated with lilting sympathy. She made friends wherever Read more ...
Phoebe Michaelides
After the gruelling five-hour coach journey to Powys, Wales, we strolled over a bridge into Glanusk Park, through two security guards, and into Green Man with only so much as a sing-song “Bore da”. Satisfied, we picked a spot and set up camp in the intense heat. Young Welsh scholars waved their A-level results in the air and cracked open that first bottle of cider, quaint middle-class families eagerly discussing the multitude of vegan opportunities.On Thursday nothing played on the main Mountain Stage, an impressively large set-up in the dead-centre of Green Man, and the camping fields were Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Nitin Sawhney is one of Britain’s most diverse and original creative talents. Having trained as a classical pianist, jazz musician and flamenco guitarist, as well as a tabla and sitar player, his highly distinctive pieces blend European and Indian classical music with soul, jazz, funk, hip hop, flamenco and dance music. As well as 11 albums, he has composed dozens of film, TV and video-game scores, been adapted for dance shows, worked prolifically as a DJ and an educator. He has collaborated with a glittering roster of stars, from Paul McCartney Read more ...
Tom Birchenough and Nick Hasted
It’s fitting that the first name on The Hospital Club's h.Club 100 film list for 2017 is that of Ken Loach. But though the director has a cinema career of more than half a century behind him – and had even officially retired before he came back to make I, Daniel Blake – his presence here is in no sense a Lifetime Achievement award. If you follow the adage, “You’re only as good as your last film”, this was Loach at his urgent best. Worldwide critical acclaim was matched, encouragingly, by box office success, not least in the UK where I, Daniel Blake touched a nerve in society.Loach certainly Read more ...
Christopher Shinn
Plays do not usually come into being in isolation. When I search my gmail archive I see that my first communication with Robert Icke about a commission came in April 2012. Rupert Goold and Rob were still at Headlong then. I was busy so asked that we keep the conversation going but not commit to anything.In October 2013 Rob wrote that he and Rupert were now at the Almeida and would still love for me to write something, he was coming to New York and could we meet up to discuss. What Rob didn’t know then was that 11 months before, in November, I had been diagnosed with a rare and aggressive Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Could we be inhabiting a new golden age of theatre? It sometimes seems that way, not least in the blurring of boundaries that increasingly is the norm. Few might have guessed, for instance, that the author of the hottest play in years – Jack Thorne, who wrote Harry Potter and the Cursed Child – would be a by-product of the Royal Court. Or that the brilliant Sharon D Clarke, recognised by The Hospital Club's h.Club 100 Awards this year for her scorching star turns in Caroline, or Change at Chichester and The Life at Southwark Playhouse, would have done West End stints in We Will Rock You and Read more ...
Michael Volpe
On the morning of the Grenfell Tower disaster, as the news of the fire gathered pace and gravity, our phones were abuzz with concern for our front of house colleague, Debbie Lamprell, who we knew lived in the tower. We all called her number time and again, sought to reassure one another with optimistic scenarios whereby her telephone may have been left at home as she escaped. My telephone rang again. This time it was James Clutton, our Director of Opera, calling from the base of the tower itself; he’d rushed across London, frustrated at the lack of news of our colleague, and was searching Read more ...