class system
Matt Wolf
Foot fetishists will have a field day at Betty Blue Eyes, given that the producer Cameron Mackintosh's latest venture is also the first in my experience to sing of bunions, calluses and corns, the last encompassing a passing reference to a lyric from Oklahoma!: another show on Sir Cameron's CV. But the happy news is that musical enthusiasts will themselves find reason to cheer a defiantly homegrown entry that turns a comparatively little-known film (A Private Function) into a generous-hearted, eminently tuneful tribute to British decency and pluck. The duck à l'orange may within the Read more ...
fisun.guner
I prefer "living room", but I have a friend who insists on "lounge". For some reason that probably goes deep into the psyche, I cringe at "sitting room". Same goes for "front room". As for "reception room", I’ve only ever seen that in the windows of estate agents. "Parlour", too, is a rarity, confined now to TV period dramas, which is exactly where "drawing room" seems to be heading (or perhaps I’m not mixing in the right circles). And anyone who calls it a "dining room" should surely be consigned to lonely TV dinners in perpetuity.If Walls Could Talk: The History of the Home, the first of a Read more ...
fisun.guner
It’s been 17 years since apartheid came to an end in South Africa, and the transition to democracy has not been an easy one, for while political systems may change, social attitudes may prove yet more difficult to shift. The Victoria and Albert Museum brings together 17 South African photographers whose work responds to the cultural and social changes their country has undergone. This major survey looks at photography from the last decade: exploring issues of identity across race, gender, class and politics, it provides a vivid snapshot of what it means to be a South African today.For her Read more ...
Matt Wolf
The Knot of the Heart takes its title from a Sanskrit phrase, but David Eldridge's new play for the Almeida Theatre is likely to speak forcibly to anyone who has witnessed, not to mention experienced, the addiction unsparingly charted across two hefty acts. That the play may hit some too close to home was strongly evidenced on press night by responses ranging from audible sobs to walk-outs and a woman who fainted early on. Whatever one's reaction to the whole, expect kudos aplenty for Lisa Dillon's supreme lead performance in a role written expressly for her: as gift-giving goes, the part of Read more ...
james.woodall
Andrea Dunbar’s story was extremely grim when first told in her 1980 play The Arbor (I’m unable to explain why, for a leafy retreat in so English a context - however decimated - the American spelling is used) and it remains so: a medieval catalogue of domestic abuse, alcoholism, racism, stupidity and misery bordering on caricature. Was it really so bad in Bradford in the 1970s? Apparently so. Is it still? I’ve no idea.For that species of ignorance, I’d be accused in many quarters of wilful, southern, middle-class self-protectionism. Yet I’m not so sure. We all have our crosses to bear. Most Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Dave is a bomb, waiting to go off. He’s dangerous because he seems so ordinary. Late-twenties, he’s nothing much to look at. He wears a suit. Works as a civil servant in some absurdly obscure government department. No girlfriend. If truth be told, a bit of a piss-head really. But the thing that makes him dangerous is that - as the title of DC Moore’s 2010 play makes clear - he fancies himself as a truth-teller. He’s painfully honest, and, worse, he uses honesty as a weapon. So when you meet him in a pub, watch out.But first you have to find the pub (it's a site-specific show, after all). The Read more ...
emma.simmonds
Upper-middle-class familial relations are placed under an unflattering spotlight in Joanna Hogg’s rich, resonant and often scathingly comic drama, which triumphantly harnesses the power of the unsaid and the unseen. Like its predecessor Unrelated, Archipelago is a superior, stylistically distinct work that is utterly, almost cringingly credible.Coming together for a family holiday on a remote, unnamed island (actually Tresco, the second largest of the Isles of Scilly) are Patricia (Kate Fahy) and her adult offspring, Edward (Tom Hiddleston) and Cynthia (Lydia Leonard). Her husband William’s Read more ...
Jasper Rees
When it was broadcast over Christmas the jury was split on Upstairs Downstairs. Some were spitting with rage at the temerity inherent in the idea of revisiting 165 Eaton Place (though the street exteriors, it's revealed on the DVD documentary, were actually shot in Leamington Spa). Never mind that Jean Marsh and Eileen Atkins owned the rights and could do as they pleased with their property. Others seemed to forgive them their trespasses.Its appearance while the nation was still recovering from a massive fix of genuflection porn in Downton Abbey gave Heidi Thomas’s fresh cast of characters – Read more ...
fisun.guner
Say what you like about the posh – they know their place. Equipped from an early age with a sense of entitlement, they also have access to the oldest and most powerful social network there is: call it what you will, but the old boys' network remains, and you’d be hopelessly naïve to think otherwise. Where would our current prime minister be without it? Tony Parsons, who, as a working-class boy made good, is among a pitifully declining breed, thought he knew: “If David Cameron had gone to a comprehensive school he’d be lucky to be digging ditches,” he spat. That seemed unduly harsh, but after Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Eileen Atkins (b 1934) acquired long-overdue fame with her performance in the BBC adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford. Her desiccated spinster was the indisputed star turn until death did us part. It’s taken a while. Aside from half a century’s commitment to the classics and new plays, unlike the other more celebrated DBEs she has had a parallel career as a writer. There have been two plays about Virginia Woolf, as well as a screenplay of Mrs Dalloway. With Jean Marsh she also created Upstairs, Downstairs which is returning to British television in an updated revival. This time round Read more ...
theartsdesk
Defying predictions that there would be no audience for a period costume drama set in an Edwardian country house, Downton Abbey has become the TV event of 2010. Episode one notched 11.6 million viewers (including repeats and ITV Player viewings), while episode two edged up to 11.8 million. The concluding episode seven threw all the cards in the air, blowing apart Mary and Matthew's romance, leaving Anna and Mr Bates dangling in limbo, and ending with the shattering news of Britain's declaration of war on Germany. There was even, briefly, a pregnancy for the fortysomething Countess of Grantham Read more ...
theartsdesk
Maggie Smith Violet, Dowager Countress of GranthamHugh Bonneville Robert, Earl of GranthamPenelope Wilton Mrs Isobel CrawleyDan Stevens Matthew CrawleyMichelle Dockery Lady Mary CrawleyTheo James Kemal PamukJim Carter Mr CarsonBrendan Coyle Mr BatesRob James-Collier ThomasThomas Howes WilliamJoanne Froggatt AnnaRose Leslie Gwen[bg|/TV/Downton_Gallery/]Four writers on theartsdesk review the whole series of Downton AbbeyWatch Downton Abbey on ITV PlayerFind Downton Abbey on Amazon