adaptation
The Trial, Young VicSaturday, 27 June 2015
Kafka and Jones, the names above this little shop of horrors, would be a marriage made in off-kilter theatreland had the Czech genius written any plays. He didn’t, so Nick Gill has made a well-shaped drama out of the assembled fragments of which The... Read more... |
London RoadFriday, 12 June 2015
So many plays and musicals are adapted from films (Bend it Like Beckham is up next) that it comes as something of a throwback to find a film that takes as its source an acclaimed musical play. The sheer fact that there is a movie of London Road is... Read more... |
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, BBC OneMonday, 18 May 2015
If it’s about magic, and features sanitised cobbled streets and dark gothic interiors, then Harry Potter comparisons will no doubt be inevitable.And so it has been with this seven-part adaptation of Susanna Clarke’s hefty 2004 novel, Jonathan... Read more... |
Woolf Works, Wayne McGregor, Royal BalletTuesday, 12 May 2015
On my way to the Woolf Works opening last night, I made the mistake of reading The Waves, Virginia Woolf’s most experimental novel. It was a mistake because even the briefest immersion in Woolf’s prose was a thousand times more exhilarating than the... Read more... |
Avengers: Age of UltronFriday, 24 April 2015
Joss Whedon’s Avengers sequel loses much of the original’s exhilarating freshness. It begins in the middle, doesn’t really end, and regularly makes you wonder just how long the Marvel box-office bonanza can continue. The moment when its Cinema... Read more... |
Carmen Disruption, Almeida TheatreSaturday, 18 April 2015
Playwright Simon Stephens has made a long journey. Starting off as a young in-yer-face writer, then pausing to mellow over slices of life, then winning awards with state-of-the-nation family dramas and teen plays, he has ended up by brilliantly... Read more... |
Alice's Adventures Underground, The VaultsSaturday, 18 April 2015
The 150th anniversary of Lewis Carroll’s seminal novel has inspired a raft of commemorative works, from Damon Albarn and Moira Buffini’s musical Wonder.land to Holland Park opera and Glastonbury’s surrealist haven; Disney’s film sequel arrives next... Read more... |
Arthur and George, ITVTuesday, 03 March 2015
“Something strident and stirring – play to us now, please!” demands Martin Clunes’ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to the piano-playing vicar’s wife, on apprehending that their conversation is being eavesdropped on. Sherlock Holmes himself could hardly have... Read more... |
Wolf Hall, Series Finale, BBC TwoThursday, 26 February 2015
Wolf Hall divided viewers from the off. It mesmerised many and left a vocal minority cold, for whom apparently - mystifyingly - it has all been a bit dull. The dialogue was too elliptical, the politics tricksy and convoluted (who is this Holy... Read more... |
The Casual Vacancy, BBC OneMonday, 16 February 2015
The broomsticks are back in the cupboard, wands are no longer at the ready, and no one is casting spells in cod Latin. JK Rowling’s first novel for adults has made its inevitable journey from page to screen. The first view of a picturesque Cotswolds... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Moscow: A Bewitching Eugene OneginSunday, 15 February 2015
As Shakespeare is to these native isles, so Pushkin is to Russia. And Eugene Onegin, Alexander Puskin’s enduring verse novel first published in serial form in 1825, is the most honoured and beloved of all Russian classics. Outside Russia, the story... Read more... |
Fifty Shades of GreySunday, 15 February 2015
Fifty Shades of Grey is upon us, more or less literally. It's a bit like the clamber-cam POV shot of Jamie Dornan materialising through Dakota Johnson’s spread legs. The teaser campaign has completed its titillating foreplay, and this weekend the... Read more... |
