mythology
Conan the BarbarianTuesday, 23 August 2011
The Conan yarns are familiar from novels, comics and TV series, but most of all from the early-Eighties Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer. In this new remake, the title role is stretched around the pneumatic... Read more... |
Camelot, Series Finale, Channel 4Saturday, 06 August 2011
This wasn't only the series finale, but the last ever episode of Camelot, since the American Starz network has decided to scrap plans for further seasons. It's not hard to see why. After a fairly promising start, Camelot spent several instalments... Read more... |
Twombly and Poussin: Arcadian Painters, Dulwich Picture GalleryFriday, 01 July 2011
Some years ago the Dulwich Picture Gallery invited Howard Hodgkin to exhibit alongside the Old Masters in their collection. I am not a fan of this vastly overrated artist, but even a diehard enthusiast must have found the juxtaposition cruel. How... Read more... |
Idomeneo, Barbican HallSunday, 12 June 2011
Mozart's Idomeneo is subjected to a famous bit of abuse in Milos Forman's Amadeus. "A most tiresome piece," a courtier critic sniffs. "Too much spice. Too many notes." As it happens, not a wholly inaccurate statement. The work is quite an exotic... Read more... |
Camelot, Channel 4Saturday, 11 June 2011
With The Tudors recently departed from BBC Two, the kindly Channel 4 has stepped in to fill the gap with this new cod-mythological romp through a Middle Ages that never existed. Funnily enough, it comes from the same Irish-Canadian production... Read more... |
Cleopatra, Northern Ballet, Sadler's WellsTuesday, 17 May 2011
David Nixon has been artistic director of Northern Ballet for a decade, and it’s probably safe to say he is the king of the story ballet: Wuthering Heights, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Madame Butterfly, Dracula – if it’s got a story, he is, seemingly... Read more... |
ThorThursday, 28 April 2011
As genres go, it’s a broad church: the tale of the alien who visits our world (our world obviously being contemporary America) encompasses everything from The Man Who Fell to Earth to Galaxy Quest. The story tends to riff on the same tension: how... Read more... |
Electra, Gate TheatreMonday, 18 April 2011
Certain big dramas can work really well in small places. Sophocles’s revenge play Electra (end of the fifth century BC) is as consequential, and influential, as they come; the Gate Theatre one of the smallest spaces in London. It continually... Read more... |
Anselm Kiefer, White Cube HoxtonMonday, 21 March 2011
The sea: the depths from which all life emerged, and a force of destruction. Anselm Kiefer contemplates its sublime beauty and terror in a new exhibition of 24 panoramic photographs, ranged three-deep on two facing walls. Each grey and grainy ... Read more... |
Cleopatra, Northern Ballet, Leeds Grand TheatreSunday, 06 March 2011
Northern Ballet’s genes are rooted in the Royal Ballet’s narrative golden age of the Sixties, its most significant leader Christopher Gable having been the originally intended Romeo of Kenneth MacMillan’s iconic 1965 Romeo and Juliet. While the... Read more... |
Rameau's Castor et Pollux, Theater an der WienMonday, 24 January 2011
For us Ramistes the brilliance came as no surprise. But did the genius come across to the uninitiated? This new production of Castor et Pollux, one of Rameau's finest tragédie en musique, was the Baroque composer's Austrian stage premiere.... Read more... |
Bellérophon in Concert, Les Talens Lyriques, Rousset, VersaillesSunday, 19 December 2010
In fact it was the Namur Chamber Choir which had the lion's share of the most striking music, transcending pretty hymns of celebration to conjure up for us the dark magicians who create the tripartite chimera, striking haut-contre tenors crowning... Read more... |
