Hitler
The Damnation of Faust, English National OperaFriday, 06 May 2011
Anything goes in the wacky world of Berlioz’s Faust story. It’s a heaven and hell of a lot better than Gounod’s, but it isn’t an opera, it isn’t an oratorio and it certainly isn’t the gospel according to Goethe. So Terry Gilliam, ENO’s latest wild-... Read more... |
DVD: The King's SpeechThursday, 05 May 2011
It just worked. The rave reactions from critics and audiences, and the hail of Baftas, Oscars and Golden Globes which showered down on it, made it clear that The King's Speech wasn't just any old movie, but a rare moment in cinema history. It cost... Read more... |
Upstairs Downstairs, BBC OneMonday, 27 December 2010
Thirty-five years after Rose Buck took what she thought was her final nostalgic stroll through the empty rooms of 165 Eaton Place in Belgravia, where she had served the Bellamy family for four decades, Jean Marsh has brought Rose back home in the... Read more... |
Bah Humbug: Richard Wagner - banish him from the stageWednesday, 22 December 2010
Now that The X Factor's finally over, can we please get back to heaping opprobrium on the only Wagner that really deserves it? In the coming year opera houses around the world will be deciding whether to temporarily bankrupt themselves in 2013 to... Read more... |
Q&A Special: Actor Derek JacobiTuesday, 07 December 2010
Derek Jacobi (b 1938) grew up in Leytonstone. His father was a tobacconist, his mother worked in a department store. Although he entered the profession in the great age of social mobility in the early 1960s, no one could have predicted that he would... Read more... |
Operation Mincemeat, BBC TwoSunday, 05 December 2010
They have period names in the foreign country we call the past. In last night’s documentary about a brilliant wartime trick practised upon Hitler, we came across a coroner called Sir Bentley Purchase, a love interest called Peternel Hankins and a... Read more... |
My Summer Reading: Musician Mike ScottMonday, 30 August 2010
Born in Edinburgh in 1958, musician, singer and songwriter Mike Scott has been the leader of the rock band The Waterboys for almost three decades. Perhaps best known for the sky-scraping hit single “The Whole of the Moon”, on albums such as... Read more... |
The Prince of Homburg, Donmar WarehouseTuesday, 27 July 2010
This, Heinrich von Kleist’s last play, was completed not long before he committed suicide, aged 34, in 1811, when the map of Europe - and indeed that of his native Prussia - was changing with indecent frequency. It is loosely (very loosely) based on... Read more... |
Bloody Foreigners: The Untold Battle of Britain, Channel 4Tuesday, 29 June 2010
The part played by Polish fighter pilots during the Battle of Britain has hardly gone undocumented, and the Hun-zapping exploits of the Polish 303 Squadron will be familiar to anyone with a historical interest in the subject, so you’d have to say... Read more... |
DVD: The Kid/ The Great DictatorSaturday, 15 May 2010
There was a celebrated two-word come-on to 1930s movie-goers. “Garbo Laughs!” was a poster strapline calculated to seduce fans of the mournful Swedish star to Ninotchka, in which her character had an unwonted fit of the giggles. Audiences were... Read more... |
Richard Herring, Leicester Square TheatreWednesday, 03 February 2010
Is it legit to joke about races and creeds and the parents of infamously abducted children? What’s the difference between Carol Thatcher using the term “golliwog” and Richard Herring doing a routine about having his iPhone stolen by a kid on a bike... Read more... |
Our Class, Cottesloe, National TheatreThursday, 24 September 2009Nine years ago, historian Jan T Gross published a book called Neighbours. It chronicled, and tried to analyse the reasons for, the massacre of 1,600 Jews in a north-eastern Polish village, Jedwabne, in July 1941. That was a month after Hitler’s... Read more... |
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