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David Nice
To both paraphrase and contradict one of the many French critics who savaged young Bizet, his first stage work of genius mentions no fishers in its gawky libretto but offers strings of pearls in the music. That's to say, much more than the famous duet, the least moving number on offer last night. I’ve come to love this fitfully ravishing score’s gentle, intimate side but had given up on seeing a less than tawdry staging to solve the opera’s gimcrack orientalia. Yet here, with director Penny Woolcock steering a sensitive course between the devil of pure kitsch and the deep blue sea of over- Read more ...
ash.smyth
Thursday Never been to the Galle Literary Festival before. Very excited. A long weekend of bona fide book-nerdishness is just what I need – if only to stop me lying on the roof for three days with a book. Also I have one-on-one time lined up with Wendy Cope and Rana Dasgupta. Wendy Cope is my heroin(e), the woman who showed me that poetry could be funny. Dasgupta is Delhi’s enfant génial, or so says Sir Salman Rushdie. I’ll take his word for it.Also, a splendid opportunity to get out of Colombo and mooch around, boozing and breakfasting with Sri Lanka’s great and good, in the intensely Read more ...
ash.smyth
The Regal Cinema is a charming old place. At 300 rupees for a box seat (£1.50 on a good day for the SLR), you can put your feet up, sip your Fanta in style and, peeping through the plush velour curtains that separate you from both hoi polloi and screen (if not from the nouveaux in box 9), get a disconcertingly exact idea of how the place must have felt when the young Queen Elizabeth II sat in this very seat, shortly after the place was built for her.There’s a new anthem now, of course, but you still have to stand up. Then you get the trailers for "Coming" movies (no rash promises as to when, Read more ...
ash.smyth
It is a stinking hot afternoon. In an unventilated shed seemingly purpose-built for breeding mosquitoes, I am walking round and round a stone spiral. A benign-looking woman has assured me it is the way to peace. Despite my scepticism, I follow her instructions, pausing every few feet to read the peace-themed quotations carved on each of the rocks. Some are moving, some purely poetic. Most tread Oprahishly along that that very fine line between simple brilliance and childish naïvety.As an artwork, it is uncomplicated stuff, but it gives one pause – not least because several of the inscriptions Read more ...