adaptation
Interview: Grant Hart on Science, the Devil and DeathTuesday, 23 July 2013
In both a personal and literary sense, Grant Hart has been to hell and back. While the 52-year-old Minnesotan is still best known as the drummer and songwriting contributor behind legendary US punk band Hüsker Dü, his fourth solo album, The... Read more... |
Pride and Prejudice, Open Air Theatre, Regent's ParkWednesday, 26 June 2013
It is a truth universally acknowledged that it is essential to quote the famous opening line in any reference to Jane Austen's best-loved work. Pride and Prejudice is 200 years old and being celebrated with balls, literary walks, readathons,... Read more... |
Raven Girl, Royal Ballet/ Witch-Hunt, Bern Ballett/ The Great Gatsby, Northern BalletSaturday, 25 May 2013
Ballet is telling stories again. Last night Wayne McGregor’s debut as a narrator followed hot on the heels of Cathy Marston’s Witch-Hunt for Bern Ballett, both in the Royal Opera House complex, and Northern Ballet’s visit to London with David Nixon’... Read more... |
The Kite Runner, Theatre Royal BrightonWednesday, 22 May 2013
The absolute loyalty of a little boy to his under-deserving friend is what swells The Kite Runner’s heart and fuels its tragedy. So you can’t really blame Matthew Spangler’s stage adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s 2003 bestseller for sticking... Read more... |
Midnight Express, Peter Schaufuss Ballet, London ColiseumThursday, 11 April 2013
Yok is a fine Turkish word meaning “there isn’t any”. You use it for “no”, as in, say - is Midnight Express any good? Yok.The hot news surrounding this production was all in the scarpering of its two stars a week before opening, both exceptional... Read more... |
DVD: TessFriday, 22 March 2013
When Tess was released in 1979 much was made of the fact that Hardy’s western England had become Polanski’s northern France. Also, that he had cast a German actress in the title role with a wobbly Wessex burr. All these years on, Nastassja Kinksi’s... Read more... |
Mies Julie, Riverside StudiosTuesday, 12 March 2013
Snow flurries outside, steam heat within. Writer-director Yael Farber’s transposition of Strindberg from a 19th-century Swedish estate to a contemporary farm in South Africa’s Karoo region on the eve of a storm is so painstakingly evocative that all... Read more... |
Cloud AtlasThursday, 21 February 2013
Skipping across time and place – South Pacific 1849 to Cambridge/Edinburgh 1936 to San Francisco 1973 to UK (looks like England) 2012 to Neo Seoul 2144 to Earth’s post-apocalyptic Hawaii 2321 – Cloud Atlas is like a scary old punk who's actually... Read more... |
World Without End, Channel 4/Blandings, BBC OneMonday, 14 January 2013
Recipe for Follett Without Finish, a popular broth. Ingredients as follows. One History of Medieval England. One crown, preferably tarnished. Axes, in abundance. Similar quantities of sword. Drawerful of knives. Much rope. A couple of dozen... Read more... |
Spies of Warsaw, BBC FourThursday, 10 January 2013
It’s rare for a wartime drama not to hide behind an elliptic or poetic title. Spies of Warsaw - a two-part adaptation of Alan Furst’s 2008 novel of the same name - misses out on a place in the canon by a couple of years, but the looming Second World... Read more... |
QuartetTuesday, 01 January 2013
Assured, warm and comfy, Dustin Hoffman’s directorial debut Quartet is a tasteful farce of froths and strops. Hoffman’s always wanted to direct and it’s not like he hasn’t tried. Dead Poets Society slipped from his hands, both starring and directing... Read more... |
Restless, BBC OneSaturday, 29 December 2012
William Boyd wrote the screenplay for this adaptation of his 2006 espionage novel, and since it’s integral to the whole he retained its two-part structure. The first concerns the World War II activities of former British intelligence spy Eva... Read more... |
