Tom Stoppard
Arena: The National Theatre, Part One - The Dream, BBC FourFriday, 25 October 2013
How irksome in some ways for the National Theatre that both the glamour and the accessibility of cinema have bookended its first 50 years, when the company and, latterly, its Southbank home, are essentially driven by and dedicated to live... Read more... |
DVD: Anna KareninaFriday, 01 February 2013
Joe Wright’s screen adaptation of Tolstoy’s giant of a masterpiece, scripted by Tom Stoppard, takes a big risk that pays off: the many-layered late 19th-century novel is stripped to its bare bones with astonishing brio. He sets most of the story in... Read more... |
Parade's End, Series Finale, BBC TwoSaturday, 22 September 2012
"There used to be among families...a position, a certain...call it 'parade'." So stammered Benedict Cumberbatch's rigidly principled, increasingly broken Christopher Tietjens at the climax of last week's penultimate Parade's End, echoing his own... Read more... |
Anna Karenina: The RaveThursday, 06 September 2012
A curtain rises at the start of Joe Wright’s thrilling film version of Anna Karenina only for the finish several hours later to be accompanied in time-honoured fashion by the words “the end”. But for all the deliberate theatrical artifice of a movie... Read more... |
Anna Karenina: The PanThursday, 06 September 2012
“You can’t ask why about love,” Aaron Johnson’s Count Vronsky croons tenderly to his beloved, pink lips peeking indecently out through his flasher’s mac of a moustache. Maybe you can’t, but you certainly can ask why you’d take a thousand-page... Read more... |
Who On Earth Was Ford Madox Ford?, BBC TwoSunday, 02 September 2012
The verdict may still be out on the BBC’s lavish unfolding drama, Parade’s End, but it’s already done one thing: to bring the name of its writer, Ford Madox Ford, back from the (relative) oblivion where it has been since his death in 1939 (not least... Read more... |
Parade's End, BBC TwoSaturday, 25 August 2012
Television schedules seem not to matter much any more, since we can now watch on repeat more or less any time we choose. But it still seems strange that the BBC are airing their new five-part period drama, which is part-funded by the HBO network to... Read more... |
Václav Havel, 1936-2011Sunday, 18 December 2011
In Rock’n’Roll, the play by Tom Stoppard, two characters haunt the stage without actually appearing on it. One of them, Syd Barrett, absconded from Pink Floyd to lead the life of a hermit. The other, Václav Havel, gave up the life of an... Read more... |
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Theatre Royal HaymarketTuesday, 21 June 2011
Lightning hasn't quite struck twice at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, where Trevor Nunn's dazzling reclamation of early Terence Rattigan (Flare Path) has been followed by the same director's transfer from Chichester of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are... Read more... |
The Real Thing, Old VicThursday, 22 April 2010
By general consent, The Real Thing expresses an almost perfect balance between the brilliance of its dialogue and the ideas examined on one hand, and the depth and range of human feelings on the other. Anna Mackmin’s brisk and dynamic take on... Read more... |
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