school
David Nice
Just think, said a veteran enthusiast of Britten's operas when I showed him the earliest publicity designs for Christopher Alden's production, you could set them all in a school, even Gloriana - what about headmistress Bess and head prefect Essex? But could you squidge everything into the one shape, I wondered? At ENO, it makes instant sense in the composer's near-perfect musical translation of Shakespearean wood magic that Oberon is the schoolmaster who prefers changeling pre-pubescents to now-adolescent, discarded Pucks. That's the strongest of starting points. But can the basic premise Read more ...
David Nice
With regional youth orchestras dropping from a thousand short-sighted, wholesale cuts - flagship Leicestershire the latest under threat - it should be enough just to celebrate 60 seasons of the LSSO, safe for now under the City of London's munificent wing. But last night was more than just another fun concert. No one ought to miss any appearance of the, ahem, enormously charismatic Leif Segerstam, composer of 244 symphonies to date and master orchestral trainer, who always goes for depth of sound rather than surface glitter. Nor is it every year you get to hear the Britten Cello Symphony, one Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Recently, some British playwrights have gone back to school, and found that it feels very much like a war zone. All the old tensions between teachers and pupils have escalated into open conflict: knives are drawn, punches thrown and arguments are settled by fights. Likewise, the language is disrespectful at best, and always expletive-heavy. Vivienne Franzmann’s new play, which visits London after opening in Manchester last month, frankly refers to a war zone in its title, and its action is scarcely less antagonistic.Like John Donnelly’s The Knowledge and Steve Waters’s Little Platoons, Read more ...
fisun.guner
You might justifiably argue that Jamie Oliver’s lack of academic prowess (he left school with just two GCSEs – we’re not told what in) did him no harm whatsoever. Yet he’s keen that youngsters today should be switched on to education in a way that he clearly wasn’t. So he’s recruited 20 kids to take part in Dream School – kids who, like him, all failed to attain the requisite five GCSEs at grade C and above. And he’s recruited some pretty impressive names to teach them.Who wouldn’t put their hand up for an anatomy lesson with Robert Winston? Or to polish up their Shakespeare with Simon Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Who needs America for the American theatre? Barely six weeks into this year, and already we've had the bracing and bilious Becky Shaw, the West End transfer of Bruce Norris's perpetually award-scooping Clybourne Park and Woody Guthrie taking up residence at the Arts Theatre courtesy of Woody Sez. What's been lacking has been the sort of defining revival on the order of last season's All My Sons that shakes down an extant text, inducing in sometimes unruly West End audiences a wondrous hush. Well, the wait is over: The Children's Hour has reached town anew in a production so powerful that Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The second play in this venue’s ambitious Schools mini-season is the first drama to tackle the currently contentious subject of Free Schools. While the earlier play, John Donnelly’s The Knowledge, was a powerful account of how a young teacher is blooded in her encounters with a group of unruly kids, the second, by Steve Waters, focuses more on parents, and shows how a fortysomething teacher, Rachel, joins a group of middle-class west Londoners in order to set up a Free School.Rachel is under stress. Martin, her ex, has a new lover, and so he wants to leave London and move into the countryside Read more ...
aleks.sierz
At a failing secondary school in Tilbury, Essex, Zoe arrives as an ambitious, newly qualified teacher who hopes to make a difference to her unruly pupils. But although she impresses her learning mentor, Maz, and Harry, the soon-to-retire acting head, she gradually gets into an emotional tangle. Neither her attractive manner, nor her will to succeed, nor her teaching skills are able to prevent her from making some bad mistakes: she wants to be friends with her pupils; she sleeps with Maz; she overplays her hand, in both classroom and staffroom.As the impeccably plotted story — which spans one Read more ...
Matt Wolf
A lot of ink gets spilled about the quest for the next great new British musical, which results in pedestrian endeavours - you know who you are - being elevated beyond all common sense. And now, along comes Matilda, a holiday entertainment about a surpassingly smart young girl who is capable of magic, and guess what? The show itself is as smart and magical as its pint-sized, eponymous heroine, and something more than that, as well. Indeed, watching as playgoers left last night's Royal Shakespeare Company premiere on a bitingly cold Warwickshire night, I was struck by the sight of many a child Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Middle-class family angst continues to be this season’s theme at the Royal Court Theatre, but this time it is seen through the eyes of 10-year-old girls at a 1990s boarding school. But don’t expect this to be an episode of Malory Towers or even the rather good-natured naughtiness of St Trinian’s. No, this is a bleak institution where the girls are foulmouthed and vicious in their rivalry. As Mrs B, who supervises the dorms, says to the headmistress: “They are small dogs doing what small dogs do.”Certainly, E V Crowe paints a vivid and atmospheric picture of this boarding school, with its Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Greg Davies is a comedian who laughs along to his own material. A conspiratorial look glints in his eye, a hint of fruity mischief plays on his lips. The adage that you should never be amused by your own punchlines is, of course, a tall tower of rubbish – different jokes for different blokes – but Davies’s enjoyment of his own routine begs a couple of questions. Is it as funny as he thinks it is? Or is it funny because he thinks it is? And then there is the greatest existential quandary of all, which has knitted the brows of philosophers since time immemorial. Exactly how hilarious is Read more ...
fisun.guner
There’s an equality gap in our education system. Poor kids come bottom of the class, while rich kids are destined for the elite universities. In the eloquent words of education minister Michael Gove: “Rich thick kids do better than poor clever kids.” And we’ve got loads of stats to back this up. The stats were duly trotted out by John Humphrys, the genial BBC broadcaster with the savage bite. By the age of three, children from socially deprived backgrounds are already a year behind their better-off peers; by 14 it’s two years, and by 16 they’re half as likely to get five good GCSEs. When Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Middle-class family angst is this season’s theme at the Royal Court Theatre. And, in his new play about sex and intimacy, which opened last night, playwright Nick Payne puts the lust in Wanderlust and creates a contemporary tale of wandering hands and wandering affections. We are in a nice suburban part of England, and the mix of pain and pleasure will be all too familiar to most audiences, whether they are teenagers who can squirm at the antics of the youngsters, or middle-aged couples who might find the more mature characters shockingly recognisable.Alan and Joy are a professional couple Read more ...