Jewish culture
A Dark Night in Dalston, Park TheatreTuesday, 14 March 2017
Michelle Collins, actor and TV presenter, is so strongly associated with her roles in EastEnders and Coronation Street that it is something of a shock to see her live on stage at the Park Theatre, and not behind a bar or in a snug. And although she... Read more... |
DVD: Marc Isaacs - Two FilmsTuesday, 14 February 2017
There’s a nice pairing to these two character-led documentary films, as reflections on concepts of partnership presented from different ends of the spectrum of innocence and experience. Treating innocence, Someday My Prince Will Come (2005) is the... Read more... |
The Mighty Walzer: ping-pong in the roundWednesday, 22 June 2016
It’s a little over two years since I was approached to adapt The Mighty Walzer by Howard Jacobson for Manchester Royal Exchange. I was living in Liverpool at the time and had recently seen That Day We Sang by Victoria Wood at the Exchange. It was... Read more... |
Blood and Gold: The Making of Spain - Reconquest, BBC FourWednesday, 16 December 2015
The second instalment of this three-part series on the history of Spain (from the BBC in collaboration with the Open University) told a tale that is probably still relatively unfamiliar in the Anglophone world. That’s despite the fact that one of... Read more... |
Prom 11: Fiddler on the Roof, Grange Park OperaSunday, 26 July 2015
Stop miking Bryn Terfel. Stop over-miking musicals; the show voices in a hybrid cast don’t need much. Too much ruined English National Opera’s recent Sweeney Todd, and in this Proms adaptation of Grange Park Opera’s summer crowd-pleaser it sent the... Read more... |
Out of Chaos: Ben Uri - 100 Years in London, Somerset HouseThursday, 16 July 2015
The exhibition Out of Chaos is a powerful dose of specific human experience, here presented almost exclusively in the form of portraits and group scenes. The selection comes almost entirely from the more than 1,300 works of art owned by Ben Uri... Read more... |
Now This Is Not the End, Arcola TheatreSaturday, 06 June 2015
Few cities have been so central to the European imagination as Berlin in the 20th century. At the centre of imperial power, then of Weimar, next the hub of Nazi Germany, then for some 50 years a symbol of a divided Cold War world. In Rose Lewenstein... Read more... |
Fiddler on the Roof, Grange Park OperaFriday, 05 June 2015
Many matches are made in Fiddler on the Roof but the matchmaking prize goes to Grange Park Opera for getting Bryn Terfel to take on the role of Tevye. Having only recently played Sweeney Todd, and indeed throughout a varied... Read more... |
Bad Jews, Arts TheatreThursday, 26 March 2015
Joshua Harmon’s provocative 2012 piece is the Rocky of comedies. His evenly matched sparring partners, a pair of viscerally antagonistic cousins confined in close quarters after a familial loss, bruise, bludgeon and literally draw blood. The bonds... Read more... |
The 2,000 Year Old Man, JW3Monday, 16 March 2015
Well, here’s an interesting endeavour. The 2,000 Year Old Man was a series of improvised sketches performed in the 1960s by Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner. Brooks played the old guy, talking about all the great names in history – Jesus, Joan of Arc... Read more... |
DVD: IdaFriday, 21 November 2014Pawel Pawlikowski took a leap into the unknown with Ida. The reasons for advance box office scepticism were clear: the film was black and white, made in an old-fashioned ratio, in Polish (until then the director had only worked in English), and more... Read more... |
Imagine... Anselm Kiefer, BBC OneTuesday, 18 November 2014
Anselm Kiefer reminds me a bit of someone I once worked for. Totally unpredictable, and possessed of a formidable intelligence and creativity, his mental leaps can be bewilderingly hard to follow, leading occasionally to truly breathtaking results,... Read more... |
