fri 29/03/2024

East Germany

Deutschland 89, Channel 4 review - the Wall comes down, what next?

Joerg and Anna Winger’s gripping drama of East Germany, a loose portrait set over the final decade of that country’s existence, has reached its culmination, and this first episode of Deutschland 89 landed us right in the unpredictable maelstrom of...

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Mrs Puntila and Her Man Matti, Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh review - a drink-sodden slog

If there’s one certainty about the Edinburgh Lyceum’s production of Mrs Puntila And Her Man Matti  – and there aren't many in this unsatisfying, overlong revival – it’s that Elaine C Smith makes a terrific drunkard. The Scottish sitcom star,...

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ANNA, National Theatre review - great thriller, shame about the tone

Stasiland is a fascinating mental space. As a historical location, the former East Germany, or GDR, is the archetypal surveillance state, in which each citizen spies on each other citizen, even if they are intellectual dissidents. The Communist...

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Hardenberger, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Nelsons, RFH review - new songs for an old glory

During his quarter-century in charge of the Gewandhausorchester in Leipzig, the late Kurt Masur nobly held out a musical hand of friendship and collaboration from the other side of the Iron Curtain. So how heartening to hear that the Southbank...

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John le Carré: A Legacy of Spies review - the master in twilight mood

Over his long career – 23 novels, memoirs, his painfully believable narratives adapted into extraordinary films (10 for the big screen) and for television – John le Carré has created a world that has gripped readers and viewers alike. He has...

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Deutschland 83, Series Finale, Channel 4

Martin Rauch-stroke-Moritz Stamm, the reluctant spy who by the end of the final, double episode of this eight-parter had achieved more than most in that profession, managed the ultimate last night: he came in from the cold. In a series whose refrain...

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West

As its title might suggest, Christian Schwochow’s West (Westen) takes us back to the time of Germany divided. It's almost a chamber piece, catching the very particular experiences of a woman and her young son who leave East Berlin and end up in a...

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10 Questions for Actor Simon Russell Beale

It’s difficult to give Simon Russell Beale a brief introduction, so encyclopedic is his list of stage and screen acting credits. He has cruised masterfully through Shakespeare, Ibsen, Chekhov, the Restoration playwrights, Shaw and Pinter, and...

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Ghosts, English Touring Theatre

A young man eaten up by fears of inherited disease, a mother who hid the facts of her awful marriage from her son to spare him, but is rewarded with even worse pain: the emotional plotlines of Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts are huge. While the plot ticks off...

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Barbara

For a remarkable BBC Radio Four half-hour programme broadcast on 14 September, The Stasi Jigsaw Puzzle, Chris Bowlby pieced together tales of treachery in the former German Democratic Republic. At one point a 1950s recording of a trial of a woman...

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Bauhaus: Art as Life, Barbican

As an art school the Bauhaus has a reputation for being the cradle of modernism, famous for establishing an alliance between art and industry which produced enduring design classics such as Marcel Breuer’s tubular steel chairs, Josef Albers’ silver...

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Reissue CDs Weekly: The Human League, The Leopard Lounge, Eastern Bloc Funk Experience

 The Human League: Dare (Deluxe Edition)Thomas H GreenLast year, when I interviewed The Human League for theartsdesk, singer Susan Sulley said of Leonard Cohen, “He’s got a personality voice. It’s not a voice that’s going to pass the auditions...

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