News
Karen Krizanovich
LOCO London’s "four days of the world’s best funny films" is one of those about-time ideas, because London needs a great comedy film festival. As a warmup, this Saturday 1 December at 6pm, LOCO London and the Hackney Picturehouse are holding Woodystock, celebrating Woody Allen’s birthday with a big screen blow-out of Manhattan – one of Woody’s best. In this fest of all things Woody, there will be readings of Allen’s short stories, standup, jazz and Woody-inspired cocktails - although no one really knows what a Woody-inspired cocktail is, you'll be chasing lobsters in the kitchen by the time Read more ...
Ismene Brown
So Tony Hall moves from heading the Royal Opera House to taking over the BBC as its new Director-General. I can't for a moment imagine a rerun of that crucial mini-conversation between Helen Boaden and George Entwistle over the Jimmy Savile programming (if you can remember all the way back to mid-October through the cannonfire since) taking anything like a similar course had it been Tony Hall rather than Entwistle.Entwistle prided himself, even congratulated himself on not asking a single question about why Newsnight's investigation into Savile should have any relevance to his programming of Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The virtuoso Russian ballerina Natalia Osipova will guest with the Royal Ballet this autumn with Carlos Acosta in the opening run of Swan Lake. Osipova, whose partnership with the phenomenal Ivan Vasiliev has become the most talked-about in world ballet, will dance the double role of Odette/Odile (the White Swan and Black Swan) on 10, 13 and 25 October with the RB's Cuban star Carlos Acosta, in place of Tamara Rojo, the ballerina who becomes English National Ballet's artistic director from September.Osipova and Vasiliev caused a sensation off-stage last winter when they quit the Bolshoi to Read more ...
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 ...