18th century
alexandra.coghlan
The political wheel has turned full-circle. When Our Country’s Good was premiered in 1988, it was a barely-veiled protest against Thatcher’s slash-and-burn approach to the arts in general and arts funding in particular. It couldn’t have returned at a more apt moment. Once again the arts are being forced to make a commercial case for their existence, to claw and squabble over scraps of government money, while the newspapers are filled with photos from Syria, of the apparent destruction of Palmyra. If the arts really are “an expression of civilisation” then we’ve rarely been in more trouble.A Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
What exactly do we expect when a drama opens with the declaration, “This is a true story”? The Scandalous Lady W, based on Hallie Rubenhold’s biography Lady Worsley’s Whim, brought us some unusual 18th century marriage shenanigans that ended in one of the most scandalous court cases of the era. But, despite its central legal scenes, “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” wasn’t the order of the day.David Eldridge’s screenplay instead adjusted details to strengthen what would have anyway been a very acute commentary on the status of women in society, and particularly within Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
I can’t remember a time I felt so profoundly disquieted by a Handel staging. It’s partly that, as an oratorio, Saul breaks so many dramatic rules that lend the operas their reassuring structural certainty, but there’s also something – a tenderness certainly, but also a violence – to Barrie Kosky’s production that uncouples the music from any residual cosiness England’s favourite adopted composer still inspires in British audiences. It’s unsettling and exhilarating in about equal measure, a startlingly sensitive and telling statement from a director better known for his dramatic shock-and-awe. Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
If Britain has created a national myth about slavery, it’s surely been centred on the pioneering abolitionists whose actions in the early 19th century led first to the ending of the slave trade across the British Empire in 1807, later to the abolition of the institution in 1834. It’s a record of which, compared to the approach of other nations to the same issue (and the speed of their actions), we may even feel a hint of pride.It’s a myth that BBC Two’s Britain's Forgotten Slave Owners put deservedly to rest, confronting us with harsh facts of history that have been conveniently forgotten. Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Since his debut Honour of the Knights back in 2006 Catalan director Albert Serra has carved out a niche for himself, creating cinema that is frequently oblique and visually engrossing. Story of My Death (Història de la meva mort), which won the director the Golden Leopard at the Locarno festival two years ago, looks like his most approachable film to date – it includes considerably more language than his previous works, as well as a touch more narrative – but still reveals itself slowly.There’s no direct revelation until well in as to the identity of its main character, the inimitable 18th- Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The young casualty of genius fires imaginations and fills coffers. Last year Dylan Thomas’s centenary was vastly celebrated. The Amy Winehouse industry is still shifting units. The spell cast by Sylvia Plath seems not to diminish. A Janis Joplin biopic project is staggering through the law courts. And then there are Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, old Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all the sundry other singers and poets who, by accident or design, cut themselves down in their prime. But in the beginning, the first to die in a lonely garret of a drug overdose, was 17-year-old poet-forger Read more ...
Florence Hallett
For all the wrong reasons, the work of Dexter Dalwood serves as a useful metaphor for this exhibition. Trite, tokenistic and desperate to look clever, Dalwood’s paintings are as tiresomely inward-looking as the show itself, which is a dismal example of curatorial self-indulgence at the expense of public engagement. It’s not always a bad thing to give free rein to theorising curators, but this show compares unfavourably with exhibitions at, notably, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Courtauld Gallery that have successfully introduced the public to sound, but arguably arcane academic Read more ...
David Nice
What a difference seven years can make to a budding genius. Mozart’s La finta giardiniera (1775) has only patches of brilliance, and last year’s Glyndebourne production, despite musical excellence, failed them all. This time an experienced director on best form, David McVicar, finds more nuanced humanity in the composer’s first mature German drama, Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio, 1782) than I’d have believed possible, mirrored in the light and fire of Glyndebourne Music Director Robin Ticciati and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. If you think Mozart’s Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
It is irresistible to watch Andrew Roberts, the ambitious historian of one of history's most ambitious figures, narrating a three-part account of his hero’s life and times. He is giving us a superb analysis of Napoleon Bonaparte’s gifts, flaws, insecurities and achievements. The first instalment opened with a glorious sunset over the South Atlantic, and several views of the dramatic scenery of the volcanic island of St Helena where the exiled Napoleon was held for six years, 4,000 miles from home, as the prisoner of the British, until his death in 1821 at the age of 51. We saw pivotal Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Between Light Shining in Buckinghamshire and Everyman it was beginning to look like we were never going to get a proper, uncomplicated laugh in Rufus Norris’s National Theatre. Thank goodness for Restoration comedy, stepping into the breach as reliably as it did with The Man of Mode in 2007 (who could forget Rory Kinnear’s Sir Fopling Flutter?). Throwing everything and the ancestral silver at the play, director Simon Godwin delivers an evening generous with wit, joy and affection. There are no big concepts here, just energy and irreverence, and it works a treat.Farquhar’s The Beaux' Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
This penultimate night of the London (formally Lufthansa) Festival of Baroque Music brought beautiful, intelligent, superbly musical singing from two sopranos Julia Doyle and Grace Davidson, who sang early 18th century works by François Couperin: two exultatory motets, a Magnificat and the Leçons de Ténèbres.Their voices were ideally suited to these works, and particularly to the Leçons which filled the second half as an uninterrupted sequence. The three “Lessons” which have survived and were published – and only three out of what should be a complete sequence for Holy Week, of nine – Read more ...
Marianka Swain
At just 26, Pippa Bennett-Warner has already achieved many actors’ goals, from treading the boards at the National and having a part written specially for her to sharing scenes with luminaries like Derek Jacobi and Eddie Redmayne. She debuted aged 11 as one of the young Nalas in The Lion King, but since graduating from RADA, she has focussed on “straight acting”. Her projects are nevertheless diverse, from classical (Grandage’s King Lear and Richard II) and contemporary (The Witness at the Royal Court, D C Moore’s The Swan) stage plays to popular screen dramas, including The Smoke, Read more ...