politics
Ismene Brown
The leaders of Britain’s leading arts establishments, from the Royal Opera House, Royal Shakespeare Company and Philharmonia Orchestra to choreographers Akram Khan and Siobhan Davies, have written to the Prime Minister asking him to come clean about his longterm plan for arts subsidies. The letter was released at a crisis meeting this morning at the Young Vic, attended by some 500 arts figures.The signatories, who include Sir Richard Eyre, Michael Boyd (RSC Artistic Director), Tony Hall (ROH chief executive), Alastair Spalding (Sadler’s Wells chief executive), Charles Saumarez-Smith ( Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Yesterday’s Budget, as expected, tilted future presumptions for arts funding firmly towards a higher proportion of private philanthropy with a series of measures to encourage wealthy individuals through tax quid pro quos to donate to arts either in financial support or in actual works of art.But with a heavy reduction in Arts Council revenue funding due to be unveiled next week, there is not likely to be much benefit for arts activity and organisations facing an average of 10 per cent annual real terms cuts over the next four years.The Chancellor made the donation of works of art to the Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The political background is vital to the play, so pay attention: during the Second World War, the small Baltic state of Latvia was threatened by its two big neighbours, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. In fact, when these countries signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939, this document included a secret clause which put Latvia in Russia’s “sphere of influence”. Soon after, Soviet troops occupied the country, only to be chucked out when the Nazis invaded in 1941. Then the Soviets returned at the end of the war, and some Latvians joined the Germans in fighting to keep them out. After the war Read more ...
carole.woddis
Feminism is a dirty word. Ask anybody. Do they want to be tarred with the label? Do they, hell. The word still carries connotations of man-haters. Even today’s young women fighting against harassment in tube carriages, horrified by the easy access and the violence of pornography, even they complain that fessing up to being “feminist” lays them open to ostracisation and isolation. Yet with rates of violence against women, unequal pay, the lack of women on boards, pregnancy as a cause of job dismissal, sex trafficking - rightly or wrongly, feminism is on the march again.I know, I’ve seen Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
This debut feature by writer/director Thomas Ikimi was shot in 22 days on an infinitesimal budget, and while it's easy to point out some obvious flaws, it's far more constructive to look at what Ikimi has achieved. Chiefly, he wrote a script intriguing enough to lure Idris Elba on board, and he not only agreed to play the central role of Malcolm Gray, but additionally gave the project a hefty professional shove.Consequently Ikimi also found himself directing another Wire alumnus, Clarke Peters, as well as Julian Wadham as the enigmatic arms dealer Gregor Salenko and Monique Gabriela Curnen, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
News junkies and connoisseurs of Iraq war conspiracies may be familiar with the true story of CIA agent Valerie Plame, which is earnestly converted to celluloid here by director Doug Liman. Part of Plame's work was infiltrating Saddam Hussein's weapons programme before the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was taken. Her husband Joe Wilson, a career diplomat who had served a stint in Niger, was sent back there by the State Department to investigate rumours of the sale of enriched uranium to Iraq for use in nuclear weapons.Wilson reported that he could find no evidence of any such Read more ...
fisun.guner
You might justifiably argue that Jamie Oliver’s lack of academic prowess (he left school with just two GCSEs – we’re not told what in) did him no harm whatsoever. Yet he’s keen that youngsters today should be switched on to education in a way that he clearly wasn’t. So he’s recruited 20 kids to take part in Dream School – kids who, like him, all failed to attain the requisite five GCSEs at grade C and above. And he’s recruited some pretty impressive names to teach them.Who wouldn’t put their hand up for an anatomy lesson with Robert Winston? Or to polish up their Shakespeare with Simon Read more ...
bruce.dessau
Since breaking through with her 1992 debut album Dry, PJ Harvey has constantly been on the move, changing and evolving, both musically and sartorially. Last night at the Troxy in East London was no exception. As she walked onstage dressed in a long black frock with a riot of matching feathers exploding from her head, she resembled Lady Gaga's bonkers West Country Edwardian ancestor.The music, on the other hand, was less harebrained, but frequently breathtaking, as Harvey worked her way through her new album. Let England Shake explores the nature of war, concluding that we do not seem capable Read more ...
David Nice
Hot on the heels of our feature celebrating 25 years of Jonathan Miller's Mikado at English National Opera, the latest revival of which opens tonight, veteran Savoyard Richard Suart sent through the most recent candidates for the Lord High Executioner's chop as he will be delivering them onstage (with no doubt a twist or two as the run proceeds).Understandably he didn't want me to spill all the beans, but gave his gracious consent to the preview of a few victims in the latest of his now celebrated spins on Gilbert's lyrics. They include - no prizes for having guessed this one -
The Prime Read more ...
josh.spero
Aptly for a programme whose title invokes a show which is all style, no substance, the subject of Ronald Reagan: American Idol is image. What was Reagan really like? How much of his career as a Hollywood star did he carry into office? And why have certain images of Reagan endured? The first question, alas, is the one neither the film nor his biographers nor his family and friends have come close to answering.The film, directed by Eugene Jarecki and shown to coincide with Reagan's centenary, opens with an ancient clip of Reagan talking about the fictionality of what follows. This tactic Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
If the jewel in Sky Atlantic's crown is the award-guzzling Boardwalk Empire, great things are also expected of its new cop-opera Blue Bloods, judging by the number of trailers spattering the Sky networks. It's the Dynasty of law enforcement, chronicling the relationships and travails of the Reagan family of New York.Whether the family name was intended to convey any kind of political resonance is a matter for conjecture, though it serves well enough for a multi-generational family of Big Apple police officers of Irish descent. Actually, they're not quite all police officers – the various Read more ...
aleks.sierz
British theatre prides itself on being contemporary, up to date - in a word, hot. So it’s odd that, over the past decade, there have been so few plays about climate change. While everybody, and I mean everybody, has been talking about global warming, while climate-change deniers have been branded the new fascists, and while well-publicised protesters have tried to stop electricity stations from functioning, British playwrights have - with only a couple of exceptions - blithely ignored the subject. So at first sight this new play, which opened last night at the flagship National Theatre in Read more ...