Bible
The York Mystery Plays, Museum Gardens, YorkMonday, 13 August 2012
Is it the greatest story ever told, or the most indulgent nativity ever staged? The return of the York Mystery Plays – this summer’s blue-ribbon theatrical spectacular in the North – begins by beguiling, ends up bemusing, while in between is a... Read more... |
Salome, Royal Opera HouseFriday, 01 June 2012
According to Oscar Wilde’s Salome (and faithfully preserved in Hedwig Lachmann’s libretto), the mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death. That may be so, but neither comes close to equalling the baffling mystery that is still David... Read more... |
How God Made the English, BBC TwoSunday, 18 March 2012
This programme wants to challenge certain stereotypes around English identity. It wants to challenge the notion that to be English is to be “tolerant, white and Anglo-Saxon”. But before it does any of that, it wants to address just one question, and... Read more... |
BIBLE story: artist inserts himself into the New TestamentFriday, 21 October 2011
It’s a shame that Joseph Steele’s BIBLE didn’t come a week later. Halloween would have been a far better backdrop to the haphazard heathenism that the evening entailed.Presentation, exhibition – it is difficult to define the events which Steele... Read more... |
CD: Pavel Novák - 24 Preludes and FuguesSunday, 11 September 2011
Pavel Novák is a composer I know something about because he has been much played by the Schubert Ensemble, who were for a time resident at Cardiff University, where I teach. But broadly speaking his music is virtually unknown in the UK. When William... Read more... |
Friends with BenefitsFriday, 09 September 2011
A time-tested formula gets tantalisingly tweaked in Friends with Benefits, in which Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis attempt to confine their relationship to the purely sexual without the ick factor of emotions getting in the way. Here's a Hollywood... Read more... |
Stanley Spencer and The English Garden, Compton VerneyThursday, 18 August 2011
In his later years, Stanley Spencer cut quite a figure in his native village of Cookham in Berkshire: he would often be seen pushing his rickety pram, with its battered umbrella, paints and canvas, and a hand-painted sign requesting all curious... Read more... |
The Globe Mysteries, Shakespeare's GlobeThursday, 11 August 2011
From 69 hours of King James Bible reading over Easter Week to this racy evening of adapted medieval pith as we head towards Assumption Day, the word they tell us is God moves in fluid if not necessarily mysterious ways around the Globe. “Mysteries”... Read more... |
The Globe Mysteries at Shakespeare’s GlobeMonday, 01 August 2011
{rtmp width="510" height="310" img="http://www.theartsdesk.com/media/k2/items/cache/dc0900c4858a2f0dce82ed38..."}Mysteries{/rtmp} If you thought Bible stories were just for Sunday school, think again. Shakespeare’s Globe - the open-air reproduction... Read more... |
theartsdesk MOT: Anne Boleyn, Globe TheatreMonday, 25 July 2011
In the spirit in which these reviews are intended, I can report that all the bits of Anne Boleyn are working. The chrome is gleaming; all cylinders are firing. It’ll be good – roadworthy, Globe-worthy – for another year at least. Tudormania, as... Read more... |
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's Apocrifu/ Gardenia, Brighton FestivalFriday, 20 May 2011
Apocrypha is a word that has acquired a dubious meaning, for books of questioned value and authenticity, texts in various religions that may not necessarily be held divine. The Belgian-Moroccan dancemaker Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's dance work Apocrifu... Read more... |
In the Beginning Was the Word: The King James Bible 400thSunday, 17 April 2011
The King James Bible, that great monument in the biography of the English language, is 400 years old this year. To use its own wording, it is as old as the hills, as old as Methuselah. Contemporaneous with Shakespeare, it has given us as many of the... Read more... |
