class system
aleks.sierz
The trouble with the general election is that while everybody talks about money, nobody talks about ideas. We know the price of everything, but the value of nothing. This might seem to be a triumphant demonstration of the essential pragmatism of the nation, yet there was a time in English history when ideas mattered. And when they were passionately discussed, and bitterly fought over. I’m referring to the English Civil War of the 1640s, and its aftermath when king Charles I was beheaded, an era explored by Caryl Churchill in her 1976 docudrama.Now revived in a large-scale production by Read more ...
fisun.guner
It won’t come as much of a surprise to find that the staff at Tatler are a bit on the posh side – who’d have thought? – but I honestly doubt they’re that much posher than, say, those at The Times, or The Guardian, or that other esteemed people’s champion, the New Statesman. As for the “posh to common” ratio on theartsdesk – without doing an exact head count, I’m not sure we radically break the mould, either. Such is the way the world rock ’n’ rolls in class-ridden Britain. I have no doubt that the posh will always be with us. But, really, has their presence ever been more forcefully felt Read more ...
fisun.guner
Baudelaire called him a “pictorial Balzac” and said he was the most important man “in the whole of modern art”, while Degas was only a little less effusive, claiming him as one of the three greatest draughtsman of the 19th century, alongside Ingres and Delacroix.Honoré Daumier has always been held in the highest esteem by fellow artists, both in his own time and today, with contemporary artists such as Peter Doig and Paula Rego keen admirers. But beside his technical skills, Daumier was also among the most socially alert and politically engaged artists of the 19th century. A socialist and Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The disappearance of Lord “Lucky” Lucan in 1974 remains one of the most teasing enigmas of recent-ish history. Following the collapse of his marriage and a bitter battle with his wife Veronica for custody of their three children, the gambling addict Lucan is presumed to have battered the children’s nanny to death, attacked his wife, then fled the country by boat from Newhaven. Elvis-like sightings of the disgraced peer have poured in from around the world ever since.This TV version of the story (it concludes next week), adapted by Jeff Pope from John Pearson’s book The Gamblers, uses the Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The comedy of manners is not dead. It’s alive and kicking, often literally, at this north London venue in actor Simon Paisley Day’s new play. Although the title suggests a group of teenagers dancing in a warehouse, the actual subject of the play is a handful of couples who have left their children behind in order to spend three days relaxing in a remote countryside location. Throw in one or two wild cards and this laughter machine is soon turning over.We are in a holiday cottage in deepest Wales. Keith and Briony are a teacher couple from London who have a three-year-old son, Fin. At first Read more ...
aleks.sierz
British theatre is obsessed with the new, with novelty. And one of the obvious casualties of this is old plays that are not by Ibsen or Chekhov. Plays that feature in every history of British theatre, such as Arnold Wesker’s 1959 classic, Roots, about the political and sentimental education of Beatie Bryant, with its uplifting final scene of her self-awakening. At last, this revival gives us all the chance to watch a legendary piece of our cultural history.The second in Wesker’s trilogy about 20th-century society, this version of Roots follows nicely on from the Royal Court’s revival of the Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Arnold Wesker has a theory that plays require a certain DNA to endure. When thoughts turn to the 1950s and the revolution in British theatre which allowed ordinary working-class life up onto the stage, the name which always comes up is John Osborne. And yet the game-changing Look Back in Anger now looks like a bloated and tiresome rant. Wesker’s work has stood the test of time far more robustly.Wesker’s plays from the late Fifties continue to be revived – most recently in 2011 The Kitchen at the National and Chicken Soup with Barley at the Royal Court. Those plays were first performed in 1957 Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Knock knock. Who's there? Eamonn. Eamonn who? Eamonn Etonian. There's an Eamonn at No 10, an Eamonn is Mayor of London, an Eamonn is even Archbishop of Canterbury. Oh, and Eamonns are third and - for three more months - fourth in line to the throne. Recently Eton has started to dominate British film, television and theatre. In 2012 one Eamonn won an Emmy, another was given a Bafta and a third played a Shakespearean king on the BBC. It’s true that a remarkably talented group of actors from Eton have risen like the richest cream to the top in recent years. They are led by Damian Lewis, Read more ...
Gary Raymond
The play is the thing, to quote one famous bereaved theatrical son, and in this new collaboration between Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru, artist Marc Rees and playwright Roger Williams, it is most definitely the thing. A Welsh-language multi-media promenade production that takes as its themes the erosion of the traditions of agricultural communities, Tir Sir Gâr is a complex balancing act between fact and fiction, and between emotional, involving drama and cold introspective installation art. The balance is delicate, sometimes successful and sometimes not.Granted, the story would not be enough on Read more ...
David Benedict
Faced with an unfamiliar play, it’s usually hard to spot exactly where the writer stopped and the director started. Not here. This is one of those occasions where a director’s voice is considerably and almost constantly louder than the playwright’s. You might think you’re seeing Rodney Ackland’s Before The Party but what you’re getting is Matthew Dunster’s assault upon it.Ackland’s 1949 adaptation of Somerset Maugham’s short story is a subtle evisceration of upper-middle-class manners. Living in post-war comfort, the highly respectable Skinner family are dressing for a local garden Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Most of us would love to live in a happy family, but it’s the unhappy ones that make the most compelling drama. And few playwrights do familial tensions as instinctively as Polly Stenham, whose highly successful 2007 debut That Face and 2009 follow-up Tusk Tusk both explored the tensions between parents and children. In her new play, she revisits the mother-son relationship, and adds some thrilling twists to the bubbling brew.In the Royal Court’s dark and claustrophobic Theatre Upstairs the set makes an immediate statement. We are in the living room of a ramshackle manor house which is Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The word “people” of the title of Alan Bennett’s new play is to be spat out, like a lemon pip. People, who invade your space, boss your values, make you be what they want. So does the beleaguered Lady Dorothy Stacpoole feel about the stark options facing her as her fantastically grand mansion leaks and crumbles over her smelly, freezing feet, while under it groans ancient mine workings like a whale with toothache. The options are to auction off the contents and house to who-knows-who, to sell via a slimy salesman to “The Concern” (a bunch of invisible super-rich who buy top works of art and Read more ...