London
Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, Gardiner, Queen Elizabeth HallThursday, 10 November 2011![]() We all know the question at issue last night at the Young Vic where Hamlet was opening, but down the road in the Queen Elizabeth Hall it was one of applause. Clapping between movements is a well-worn topic; we’ve had editorial, essays, even an RPS... Read more... |
The British Guide to Showing OffTuesday, 08 November 2011![]() A glittering egg cracks open and, waving a magic wand, Andrew Logan emerges riding his sculpture of Pegasus, the winged horse. He flies across London to waiting friends and relatives and, with one touch of his miraculous wand, transforms them into... Read more... |
2012 Cultural Olympiad events announcedFriday, 04 November 2011![]() The 2012 Cultural Olympiad has been announced and events will take place throughout the UK from 21 June until the last day of the Paralympics, 9 September. Ruth Mackenzie, director of the Cultural Olympiad, said that many events would be free, and... Read more... |
JunkheartsThursday, 03 November 2011![]() British film-makers tend towards bipolarity. Where French cinema is broadly speaking about the middle classes, we tend to get films about one thing or the other. The national fixation with the past supplies stories about how the nabobs of yore lived... Read more... |
Greece showers Soviet art riches on LondonFriday, 28 October 2011![]() There’s a lot of Soviet art about at the moment – the excellent show that opens this Saturday at the Royal Academy has Constructivist and Suprematist paintings and drawings loaned by the George Costakis Collection in Thessaloniki. Now, at Annely... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the 2011 London Film FestivalThursday, 27 October 2011![]() It may not have quite the glam tackiness of Cannes in May, nor the pizzazz of Venice in September, nor the chin-stroking seriousness of the Berlinale in February, but each October the BFI London Film Festival takes its own place on the European film... Read more... |
George Michael, Royal Albert HallWednesday, 26 October 2011With the scheduled start time of last night's gig long gone and George Michael nowhere in sight, scurrilous jokes, gossip and unfounded rumours were floating around the Royal Albert Hall. We won't reprint them here but, needless to say, funny... Read more... |
BIBLE story: artist inserts himself into the New TestamentFriday, 21 October 2011It’s a shame that Joseph Steele’s BIBLE didn’t come a week later. Halloween would have been a far better backdrop to the haphazard heathenism that the evening entailed.Presentation, exhibition – it is difficult to define the events which Steele... Read more... |
La Fille Mal Gardée, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Sadler's WellsFriday, 21 October 2011![]() It may be that there is no sunnier place than Ashton’s La fille mal gardée. Certainly there is no sunnier ballet. It speaks not of great drama, nor ecstasy, but instead of gentle happiness, of quiet content and loving kindness. Not, one might think... Read more... |
Der Fliegende Holländer, Royal OperaWednesday, 19 October 2011![]() Whether or not we believe Wagner’s retrospective rebranding of the opera as a prototype music-drama, “a complete, unbroken web”, Der Fliegende Holländer reliably makes for a vivid evening’s entertainment. Which makes it all the more strange that... Read more... |
Sixty-Six Books, Bush TheatreMonday, 17 October 2011![]() Sometimes theatre people do mad things. Like stay up all night and the following day to “celebrate” the King James Bible and a theatre’s house-move to new premises. Its 400th year has been a good year for that collection of stories currently being... Read more... |
Artist-run spaces enjoy the fun of the fairFriday, 14 October 2011![]() Whilst acknowledging the huge impact the Frieze Art Fair has made on the cultural landscape of the capital since its inception in 2003, the frenzied annual event definitely doesn’t float every art lover’s boat. With about 170 – mainly blue-chip... Read more... |
