1960s
Travels with My Aunt, Chichester Festival TheatreWednesday, 27 April 2016
Smoking weed on the Orient Express. Drinking at a brothel in Paris. Tricking the military police in Istanbul. Smuggling a Da Vinci into Paraguay. As travel itineraries go, it’s certainly no Saga break. But then Graham Greene’s Augusta is no ordinary... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Sandy DennySunday, 17 April 2016
Is there anything left to say about Sandy Denny? Sadly, she cannot say anything herself, as she died in 1978. So it’s left to what she released during her lifetime, posthumous appraisals and reappraisals, and packages and repackages to do the... Read more... |
In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, Charing Cross TheatreThursday, 14 April 2016
Was Tennessee Williams breaking rules, or breaking apart when he wrote this 1969 play? A bit of both, probably, and the two main characters of the rarely performed In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel face the same choices.It emerged from what the writer... Read more... |
How the Other Half Loves, Theatre Royal HaymarketMonday, 04 April 2016
Alan Ayckbourn's How the Other Half Loves – first performed in 1969, in the round at the Library Theatre in Scarborough – was only his second play. Already, though, it has a few Ayckbourn tropes – warring couples and interconnecting sets – and... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Fela Ransome-Kuti and His Koola LobitosSunday, 03 April 2016
Is greatness there from day one, does it evolve or suddenly strike? Do artists – in any discipline – develop in steps or arrive fully-formed? How does the quotidian become exceptional? With the new triple-CD set Highlife-Jazz and Afro-Soul (1963-... Read more... |
Les Blancs, National TheatreFriday, 01 April 2016
Lorraine Hansberry’s career as a playwright proved tragically short. A Raisin in the Sun is by some distance her best-known work, a key piece about the African American post-war experience. But she thought Les Blancs (The Whites) was potentially her... Read more... |
Brighton Festival: 1967 and All ThatFriday, 01 April 2016
With the 50th Brighton Festival taking place this year, Festival CEO Andrew Comben meets theartsdesk for a chat about the original 1967 event, and its relationship with this year’s Festival. Comben has been the Brighton Festival's overall manager... Read more... |
DVD: Ken Russell - The Great PassionsTuesday, 29 March 2016
The trio of Sixties television documentaries assembled here are prototypical examples of Ken Russell’s oeuvre: hyper-real, and often frenzied, depictions of the lives of their subjects. Each not-quite or more-than documentary was made for the BBC in... Read more... |
ExperimenterWednesday, 23 March 2016
If an authority figure ordered you to inflict pain on another person, to what extent would you comply? That is the subject of Experimenter, which focuses on Stanley Milgram's controversial obedience experiment. Unable to secure a theatrical run in... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: The KinksSunday, 20 March 2016
Although The Kinks’ world was turned upside down from the moment “You Really Got Me” hit the charts in August 1964, the band’s main songwriter Ray Davies still had songs to spare. Some of his compositions ended up with singers like Dave Berry, Leapy... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: The CharlatansSunday, 06 March 2016
Music is no exception to the rule that history is littered with winners and losers. In commercial terms, however they are looked at, San Francisco’s Charlatans were losers. They issued just one single in 1966 and a belated album in 1969. While the... Read more... |
DVD: Something Different/A Bagful of FleasSaturday, 05 March 2016
The expectation that late means great is one embedded deeply in our culture: that the consummation of creative endeavour finds its peak towards life’s conclusion, with experience assimilated into a rich finale. These two films from the very start of... Read more... |
