prostitution
Manon, Royal BalletWednesday, 09 November 2011Manon is the planet around which a series of moons orbit, locked in place by her gravitational pull. There is Des Grieux, who gives up his seminary studies for nights of pleasure; there is her brother Lescaut, who translates her into cash; and there... Read more... |
Anna Christie, Donmar WarehouseWednesday, 10 August 2011The talented Mr Jude Law is back on stage in what must be the hottest ticket in the West End. Although not everyone warmed to his 2009 Hamlet, the mere presence in central London of one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars is enough to bring a touch... Read more... |
Blue Surge, Finborough TheatreThursday, 04 August 2011Rebecca Gilman is an American playwright who once made a big splash in London. After having work such as The Glory of Living, Spinning into Butter, Boy Gets Girl and The Sweetest Swing in Baseball staged at the Royal Court Theatre in the first five... Read more... |
Toulouse-Lautrec and Jane Avril: Beyond the Moulin Rouge, Courtauld GalleryThursday, 23 June 2011As one of the stars of the Moulin Rouge, she was variously known by the nicknames "La Mélinite", "Jane la Folle", and "L’Etrange". The first was after a brand of explosive, the other two attesting to a little craziness. Jane Avril’s eccentric dance... Read more... |
American Trade, Hampstead TheatreWednesday, 08 June 2011Some theatre genres seem indestructible. One of these is the satirical city comedy, for which playwrights dip their pens in poison and spray their venom over the teeming mass of the shallow, the stupid and the successful. When they do this today,... Read more... |
DVD: ProstituteTuesday, 03 May 2011The most socially committed BBC drama producer of the Sixties and Seventies, best known for his exemplary partnership with Ken Loach, Tony Garnett has twice opted to direct. If Handgun (1984), his critique of American gun control, is largely... Read more... |
Manon, Royal BalletThursday, 21 April 2011Manon, Manon, the little minx. Here she comes again - for the 223rd time, last night - and like the legendary ladies of her trade, scrubs up fresh and newly captivating, as if she’d only just skipped off the carriage from the convent. MacMillan’s... Read more... |
London Road, National TheatreThursday, 14 April 2011The murders of five prostitutes in Ipswich: it’s hard to imagine a less likely subject for a musical, not least because the memory of the crimes of forklift-truck driver Steve Wright, committed in late 2006, is still so horribly fresh. But there is... Read more... |
The Crimson Petal and the White, BBC TwoWednesday, 06 April 2011Playing a prostitute on film has been big career business for some very famous actresses, not least Jane Fonda, Elizabeth Taylor and Julia Roberts, but it hasn't worked quite the same way on TV. Unless you count Secret Diary of a Call Girl. Or Moll... Read more... |
Martina Cole's The Runaway, Sky 1Thursday, 31 March 2011According to her website, Martina Cole is "the person who tells it like it really is". If it's really like this dramatisation of her 1997 novel The Runaway, it's unrelentingly brutal, squalid and frightening, a televisual blow to the head from a... Read more... |
Ballet's Bad Girl Has a New SoundSaturday, 19 March 2011Kenneth MacMillan’s dramatic ballet Manon was premiered in 1974 to a chorus of attacks on its tale of a “nasty little diamond-digger”, as one critic had it. Since then the slut who can’t help herself has risen to become one of the most coveted roles... Read more... |
Ross Kemp: Extreme World, Sky 1Tuesday, 22 February 2011Ross Kemp won a Bafta for his documentary about being on the frontline in Afghanistan, so perhaps I should begin by saying all due respect, and all that, but how much can you ratchet up the hardman image before it threatens to dissolve into self-... Read more... |