Greece
The Minotaur, Royal OperaFriday, 18 January 2013
Flesh-tearing, woman-raping, body-goring brute he may be, but he's misunderstood, that Minotaur. It's a bold argument to make, but this is the contention of Harrison Birtwistle and David Harsent's 2008 opera. They are aided by a surprisingly... Read more... |
Dead EuropeThursday, 13 December 2012
“Why do you want to go to Greece?” After watching the numbing Dead Europe and the journey of its protagonist Isaac the question asked might, more pertinently, have been “do you know the Greece you’re going to visit?” This relentlessly dark film... Read more... |
The Trojan Women, Gate TheatreTuesday, 13 November 2012
Not even a cameo by Tamsin Greig can redeem this painful adaptation of Euripides' The Trojan Women. For an hour and a half it screams with anguish, verging at times on the parodic. The production is a puzzle. Caroline Bird has updated the... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Thessaloniki: Moving Pictures in the Cradle of AusteritySunday, 11 November 2012
Greece is in economic meltdown. Austerity is hitting most of the population very hard. Businesses are closing down. The amount of homeless has increased. There are strikes and huge anti-government demonstrations throughout the country. What better... Read more... |
LFF 2012: Dead EuropeFriday, 12 October 2012
The title couldn’t be more resonant, as the economic crisis makes the one-time First World visibly slip another notch. But in Tony Krawitz’s adaptation of Christos Tsolkias’s novel, the meaning is also literal: this is a bloody continent of unquiet... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: A.R. Kane, Crime and the City Solution, ABBA, Demis RoussosSunday, 30 September 2012
A.R. Kane: Complete Singles CollectionJoe MuggsIn my early teens, circa 1988, certain records would appear on The Chart Show indie chart countdown on a Saturday morning, records that hinted disquietingly at something far beyond the standard... Read more... |
Antigone, National TheatreThursday, 31 May 2012
Although some contemporary plays — notably Posh and 13 — have accurately taken the temperature of the times, what about the timeless classics? Does Sophocles’s Antigone (dated about 441BC) have anything to say to us today? How can it be of our time... Read more... |
CD: Marina and the Diamonds - Electra HeartWednesday, 25 April 2012
Kooky ladies are very much of the moment, an ongoing moment, actually - the last couple of years, to be precise - but they seem to be with us to stay which is surely a good thing, especially in the playground. Better them than unreconstructed pole-... Read more... |
DVD: The Theo Angelopoulos Collection Volume 3Tuesday, 27 March 2012
Theo Angelopoulos (pictured below) was hit and killed by a motorcyclist on 24 January, as this now final collection of his work was readied. The films of this 76-year-old Palme d’Or-winner (for 1998’s Eternity and a Day, included) wrestled with the... Read more... |
DVD: AttenbergTuesday, 03 January 2012
Although 2010 was undeniably a bad year for Greece, the arrival of Attenberg was a timely reminder that despite the country’s financial bankruptcy, it wasn’t culturally bankrupt. Suffused in melancholy, Attenberg nonetheless recognises that courage... Read more... |
DVD: The Theo Angelopoulos Collection Volume 1Friday, 25 November 2011
There’s a scene in Theo Angelopoulos’s The Travelling Players where those gathered in a square hear “the wind of freedom is blowing” being sung. The wartime Nazi occupation is over. Greek, Russian and American flags are aloft. A bomb goes off. In... Read more... |
Greece showers Soviet art riches on LondonFriday, 28 October 2011
There’s a lot of Soviet art about at the moment – the excellent show that opens this Saturday at the Royal Academy has Constructivist and Suprematist paintings and drawings loaned by the George Costakis Collection in Thessaloniki. Now, at Annely... Read more... |
