history
Blood and Gifts, National TheatreTuesday, 14 September 2010
What is with the National and history plays? On the large stages of this theatre, the main fare is historical accounts of contemporary problems. Maybe the programmers here imagine that their audiences, like T S Eliot’s humankind, “can’t bear very... Read more... |
Who Do You Think You Were? Channel 4Friday, 03 September 2010
“Do you realise what you’re letting yourself in for?” is surely the worst thing to say to someone in order to put them at their ease, especially when they are about to step into the subconscious unknown. But down-to-earth fireman Neil Clarke took... Read more... |
Clybourne Park, Royal Court TheatreThursday, 02 September 2010
The American Dream is a great subject for theatre. Not only is it a powerful myth that animates millions, but it is also vulnerable to being subverted by generations of playwrights. Like an aged boxer, it is liable to being floored by a well-aimed... Read more... |
Bombing of Germany, National GeographicTuesday, 17 August 2010
By complete coincidence, this afternoon I tuned in to Air Force, Howard Hawks's 1943 propaganda picture: chiselled young airmen fill a B-17 "flying fortress", dropping their payloads over Japan, both a news service and wish fulfilment for... Read more... |
The Heroes of Biggin Hill, YesterdayThursday, 12 August 2010
The Yesterday channel’s ongoing “Spirit of 1940” season has provoked a giant surge in its viewing figures, another reminder of the grip World War Two still exerts on large chunks of the British public. The Battle of Britain in particular has become... Read more... |
Cinderella, English National Ballet, London ColiseumWednesday, 11 August 2010
English National Ballet turns 60 next week, and nowadays just enduring has to be enough. Smelling of greasepaint and tour buses from the very first, it also smelled of stars - Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin who began it, Rudolf Nureyev and Natalia... Read more... |
Domesday, BBC Two/ Treasures of the Anglo-Saxons, BBC FourTuesday, 10 August 2010
What was originally a coincidence of reviewing – two dispatches from the Dark Ages, Treasures of the Anglo-Saxons on BBC Four and Domesday on BBC Two – in fact turned into a remarkably instructive diptych of how and how not to make history... Read more... |
After A Dancemaker Dies, BBC Radio 3Sunday, 08 August 2010
Two giants of dance died last year: Pina Bausch and Merce Cunningham. Right now audiences aren’t being deprived of seeing why their names are written permanently in lights in dance history (Bausch’s company performs in Edinburgh and London later... Read more... |
The Normans, BBC TwoThursday, 05 August 2010
My surname came to Britain with the Normans, and I must say that my forebears have had a bad press in their adopted homeland. From Hereward the Wake to Robin Hood, Anglo-Saxon legends have depicted us as despotic and cruel, whereas we were great... Read more... |
Alan Moore's Unearthing, Old Vic TunnelsFriday, 30 July 2010
It's very hard to ever know what to expect from Alan Moore, the Mage of Northampton. The author of era-defining comics like Watchmen, V For Vendetta and From Hell has long maintained that art and magic are one and the same, and since the mid-1990s... Read more... |
The Prince of Homburg, Donmar WarehouseTuesday, 27 July 2010
This, Heinrich von Kleist’s last play, was completed not long before he committed suicide, aged 34, in 1811, when the map of Europe - and indeed that of his native Prussia - was changing with indecent frequency. It is loosely (very loosely) based on... Read more... |
Who Do You Think You Are? - Rupert Everett, BBC OneTuesday, 27 July 2010
Rupert Everett knows who he is: he is English, he’s a toff and he’s a poof, thank you very much. And that’s just about all you need to know to tell you that, as a breed, they’re pretty damned sure of themselves, these English toffs, poofs or not.... Read more... |
