fiction
Matt Wolf
Alfred Uhry, now 74, may boast the greatest ratio of accolades to output of just about any American playwright, having copped two Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize across merely a handful of works and an Academy Award for the film version of his best-known play, Driving Miss Daisy; the movie itself won the Best Picture Oscar in 1989 and a further trophy for its beloved star, Jessica Tandy. This autumn, the era-spanning comedy-drama arrives back on the West End in the same starry version, headlined by Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones, seen last year on Broadway. Immediately before that Read more ...
hilary.whitney
Third in line to share their summer reading selection with theartsdesk is Colin Currie (b 1976), the leading percussionist of his generation. A driving force behind new percussion repertoire for more than a decade, in 2000 Currie was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society Young Artist Award for his inspirational role in contemporary music and is in the unique position of being the only instrumentalist to enjoy close collaborative relationships with many of the leading composers of today, notably Rautavaara, Steve Reich and Elliott Carter. His latest CD release, which features Jennifer Read more ...
fisun.guner
This warm-hearted production of E Nesbit’s most famous novel premiered to glowing reviews at its site-specific venue last summer. I didn‘t catch it last year, but I doubt this swift revival is any less captivating, nor the new cast any less sure-footed or engaging. Marcus Brigstocke has taken on the role of the gruff but loveable station master Mr Perks, whilst the three adult actors playing the children - Amy Noble as the sensible Bobby, Tim Lewis as the ever so mildly rebellious Peter and Grace Rowe as the charmingly ditzy Phyllis - bring just the right balance of earnestness and Read more ...
hilary.whitney
Next in theartsdesk’s series of recommended summer reads is musician Gary Kemp, guitarist with Spandau Ballet, five working-class boys from north London who emerged from a surfeit of floppy fringes and pantaloons to become one of the most successful pop acts of the swaggering, vainglorious Eighties. Kemp wrote 23 singles for the band including massive hits such as "Gold", "True" and "Only When You Leave", which still crop up repeatedly on TV and film tracks.However, this was not Kemp’s first foray into the spotlight. Aged 11 he appeared alongside Roy Dotrice in the film Hide and Seek (1971) Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Sarah Waters’s highly praised novels have marched from the page to the screen with regimental regularity and no apparent sacrifice in quality. Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith, with their big Victorian brushstrokes, were built for television no less than Dickens is. With The Night Watch, adapted last night, her subject was still the love that dare not speak its name. But two things were different. This time Waters’s sweeping saga was compressed into a single film. And it was brought forward in time to the Blitz, when a modern lady’s drawers could be whipped off in a flash.As usual with Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Thanks to her evergreen bestseller Behind the Scenes at the Museum, Kate Atkinson can call on an army of fans to buy her work whenever it appears in print. Its debut on screen is, perhaps, another matter. Will they buy the BBC’s rendition of Case Histories? Those who have not had the pleasure of reading it are less advantageously placed to grumble about hideous revisions, outrageous changes and all manner of infidelities. But even an Atkinson newbie might find it a bit rum that Scotland seems to be entirely populated by people with English accents.Welcome to the BBC casting department's Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Watching bookaholic punters tramping down windswept country lanes in hiking boots, anoraks and rucksacks instantly alerts you to the singular quality of the Hay Festival, though it's surprising that nobody has grasped the glaring opportunity to set up a tent selling Alfred Wainwright's fell-walking guides and Kendal Mint Cake. But where else can you find such a high density of starry names and media taste-makers in a soggy field on the Welsh border?Even more remarkable is that you can't get a signal on an O2 mobile phone for miles, and the sense of entering a mysterious dimension where Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Anyone turning on BBC Four last night expecting to watch the first episode of Room at the Top will, at least in part, have got what they were expecting: lashings of sex. Only one problem. It wasn't in Room at the Top. Owing to a late-blooming rights dispute, the BBC decided on the day of broadcast not to go ahead with their new adaptation of John Braine's 1957 novel. On the principle that if you would have liked that, then you'll like this, they had a rummage in the archives and produced a rabbit: their version of Fanny Hill, first broadcast in 2008.It's a shame the BBC didn't get their legal Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Another week, another northern novel about working-class libidos adapted for BBC Four. One is still catching one’s breath from the festival of copulation that was Women in Love. Spool forward a few decades - or a week in television scheduling terms - and roughly the same set of characters have reconvened for the next instalment of how's your father in Room at the Top. They’ve got the same accents, the same set of preoccupations about class, and the same tendency to rummage around among one another’s nethers. For a certain cadre of English novelist, sexual intercourse most definitely Read more ...
Jasper Rees
As preparation for this new account of Women in Love, I conscientiously picked up a copy of the novel for the first time since studying it at university. Big mistake. By half an hour into the drama I was in a state of some discombobulation. His adaptation may be called Women in Love but William Ivory has dipped back into The Rainbow, the novel’s preceding companion volume. At some point he seems to have lobbed both books into a cement mixer.The question is - why can’t he? After all, once upon a time they were both meant to be part of the same volume called The Sisters. You can’t muck about Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
A chorus of "Hooray! No CGI!" has greeted Kevin Macdonald's new film version of Rosemary Sutcliff's popular novel, The Eagle of the Ninth. Not for him a Gladiator-style digital Rome, or Troy-like computer-generated navies stretching away into infinity.Laying off the gadgetry is lighter on the budget too, but Macdonald claims it was part of his plan to stick to the human scale and traditional virtues of courage and honour that drove Sutcliff's book. In fact, it's hard to see how else he could have done it, since the story boils down to two men, Roman officer Marcus Aquila (Channing Tatum) and Read more ...
theartsdesk
Whether it’s consolation, stimulation, or just some old-fashioned romance you’re after this Valentine’s Day, theartsdesk’s team of writers (with a little help from a certain Bard from Stratford) have got it covered. Exhibitions to stir the heart, music to swell the soul, and comedy to help recover from both – we offer our pick of the most romantic of the arts. So from Giselle to Joe Versus the Volcano, from Barthes to the Bard, theartsdesk celebrates the many-splendoured thing that is love. Judith FlandersValentine’s Day might not seem the ideal day to give your loved one a break-up Read more ...