16th century
Henry IV, Parts One and Two, RSC, BarbicanSunday, 14 December 2014
Heritage Shakespeare for the home counties and the tourists is just about alive but not very well at the Royal Shakespeare Company. If that sounds condescending, both audiences deserve better, and get it at Shakespeare’s Globe, where the verse-... Read more... |
Wolf Hall comes to BBC TwoFriday, 12 December 2014
You read the book, you saw the play, and in January you can see the BBC's new six-part dramatisation of Wolf Hall. Cunningly adapted by screenwriter Peter Straughan and directed by Peter Kosminsky, the series promises to be both a faithful... Read more... |
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, The Rose PlayhouseSaturday, 08 November 2014
Is the Rose Playhouse London theatre’s best-kept secret? Or simply its worst-publicised? Either way, this gem of a space, tucked away behind the Globe in Bankside, needs and deserves a greater following. If it continues to stage shows like the... Read more... |
Giovanni Battista Moroni, Royal AcademyWednesday, 29 October 2014
Written in the 16th century, Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists continues to underpin our understanding of the Renaissance, and its author is blamed, often with some justification, for a multitude of art historical anomalies. But there can be... Read more... |
'Tis Pity She's a Whore, Sam Wanamaker PlayhouseWednesday, 29 October 2014
So TFL have banned the Globe’s posters for ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore for being too racy. What a gift. They couldn’t have given the production a better advertising boost if they’d covered every single one of their thousands of billboards with the... Read more... |
Witches and Wicked Bodies, British MuseumTuesday, 21 October 2014
Wicked women have always sold well, but more than that, they have fired the artistic imagination in a quite exceptional way. Exploring the depiction of the witch from the 15th to the 19th century, this exhibition is packed with images that must... Read more... |
Henry IV, Donmar WarehouseFriday, 10 October 2014
It’s hard to believe that almost two years have passed since Phyllida Lloyd’s Julius Caesar at the Donmar Warehouse. Harriet Walter’s stricken face as the play ended is still burningly fresh in the memory as we return to the theatre for Henry IV –... Read more... |
The Real Tudors, National Portrait GalleryFriday, 19 September 2014
For all the political hurly burly, social change and religious upheaval of the Tudor period and the intriguing personal histories of its monarchs, it is surely the portraits of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I that have done most to secure the Tudors in... Read more... |
Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare's GlobeFriday, 02 May 2014
Lucy Bailey’s Titus Andronicus doesn’t pull any punches (or stabbings, smotherings and throat-slittings, for that matter). Bursting into a Globe smoky with incense, with shouts and drums, forcing itself at us and on us, this is a production whose... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: The Hilliard EnsembleSaturday, 19 April 2014
The sophisticated and exquisitely crafted sound of The Hilliard Ensemble has, over the past four decades, become one of the most distinctive pleasures on the choral scene. One of the several pioneers of the medieval and Renaissance repertoire to... Read more... |
Choral Pilgrimage 2014, The Sixteen, St John's College Chapel, CambridgeSaturday, 22 March 2014
The core pulse of Tudor polyphony is often deliciously slow. It gets down to a mesmeric pace of about 30 beats per minute. The listener just has to succumb to it, and the experience, even in the virtually unheated Cambridge College chapel where The... Read more... |
Veronese: Magnificence in Renaissance Venice, National GalleryThursday, 20 March 2014
The National Gallery has produced a revelatory and unprecedented exhibition which shows us an array of paintings from cabinet size to mammoth by a long acknowledged star: Veronese, probably the most flamboyantly exciting artist at the heart of... Read more... |
