mythology
Metamorphoses, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse review - punchy, cleverly reworked classicThursday, 07 October 2021
Ovid was exiled – or to put it in twenty-first century terms, "no-platformed" – by an indignant Emperor Augustus for the scandal caused by his three-book elegy on love, Ars Amatoria. Most scholars believe the intrigue behind his banishment to be... Read more... |
Paradise, National Theatre review - war, woe, and a glimmer of hopeFriday, 13 August 2021
Philoctetes, Odysseus, Neoptolemus: the men’s names in Sophocles’ Philoctetes are all unnecessarily long and weighed down by expectations. Poet Kae Tempest’s lyrical new adaptation for the National Theatre focuses on the chorus, spinning out the... Read more... |
Changing Destiny, Young Vic review – an epic literary discoveryMonday, 02 August 2021
The Young Vic, led by the inspiring figure of Kwame Kwei-Armah, is back. After a prolonged closure, during which this venue has passionately continued to work with young directors, the local community (including both delivering food and creative... Read more... |
Die Walküre, Longborough Festival Opera review - heroic defiance of farcical constraintsFriday, 04 June 2021
Whatever might be said about Longborough Festival’s first live opera since 2019, the first and most important thing is to praise the company without reservation for putting on a show of anything like this quality in the face of obstacles of the sort... Read more... |
Der Rosenkavalier, Bavarian State Opera online review - myth-making magicMonday, 22 March 2021
Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time stalk this haunting dream of a Rosenkavalier. The love games of teenager Octavian and his experienced mistress the Marschallin are sexy and plausible; the comedy of ridiculous Baron Ochs keeps a low profile, but stays... Read more... |
15 Heroines, Jermyn Street Theatre online review - putting the women back into Greek mythWednesday, 11 November 2020
Women have an awful time of it in the Greek myths. Raped, abandoned, blamed for murdering people, blamed for not murdering people – you name it, it’s happened to an Ancient Greek woman, and they didn’t even get to talk about it themselves. Ovid... Read more... |
Book extract: Snake by Erica WrightThursday, 08 October 2020
Ophidiophobia is one of our most common fears, from the Greek for serpent ('Ophidia'). Writer and editor Erica Wright grew up in Tennessee with periodic interruptions from rattlesnakes, cottonmouths and copperheads, who were spotted slinking around... Read more... |
Sāvitri, Lauderdale House review - death and life in a Highgate gardenMonday, 24 August 2020
In seach of Orpheus, and following a route from the Hades of (thankfully) masked beings on the underground to Archway, then up to a windy, grassy plateau just below Highgate village, this wandering critic encountered another myth about the power of... Read more... |
Artemis Fowl review - flash bang nothingSaturday, 13 June 2020
It’s taken over 18 years for Artemis Fowl to reach the big screen, with Miramax originally buying the rights in 2001. Finally, Disney have brought the world’s youngest criminal mastermind to life, but was it worth the wait? Well, the fact it’s... Read more... |
The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh, Dutch National Opera, OperaVision review - fairy-tale good and evil made realThursday, 21 May 2020
How do you render pure goodness interesting? Unorthodox director Dmitri Tcherniakov and radiant young soprano Svetlana Ignatovich make us smile and break our hearts with their take on the maiden Fevroniya: living at one with nature, seeing God in... Read more... |
The Whalebone Box review - documentary through unreliable surrealismWednesday, 01 April 2020
The UK-wide lockdown has thrown the cinematic release schedule into chaos. Some films are postponed indefinitely, while others have opted for direct digital releases. It’s not ideal for anyone, but in a strange way it may play to The Whalebone Box’s... Read more... |
Siegfried, LPO, Jurowski, RFH review - an incandescent journey to the mountain topSunday, 02 February 2020
Of Wagner's four Ring operas, Siegfried poses the biggest casting problem. Most heroic tenors with the lungs to last the evening are not going to be ideal incarnations of the stroppy adolescent who learns and fights his way through an often... Read more... |
