mon 09/06/2025

surrealism

theartsdesk in Monte Carlo: Nouveau Musée Nationale de Monaco

Famous for its fast cars, casino, and stashing away Sir Philip Green’s gazillions, the principality of Monaco certainly isn’t a destination short on bling, nor a sense of faded, somewhat seedy glamour. So it probably isn’t high on anyone’s list for...

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If So, Then Yes, Jermyn Street Theatre

N F Simpson is a legendary absurdist playwright of 1950s and 1960s vintage. But while his 1957 debut, A Resounding Tinkle, got a revival some three years ago at the Donmar, he was widely believed to have given up writing more than 30 years ago....

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Tête à Tête Opera Festival previews Martinů rarity

The anything-goes context of Tête à Tête's enterprising opera festival at the Riverside Studios, now in its fourth year, seemed like a good place to try it out before a packed and intrigued audience (a full production is on the way, and will feature...

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Nevermore, Barbican Theatre

Bretta Gerecke's costumes are Edward Gorey by way of Tim Burton

If there was an opposite to the limitless “ever after” of fairytales, the relentlessly nullifying "nevermore" of Edgar Allan Poe’s raven would come pretty close. A deformed, sickly smiling "musical fable for adults", the ominously named Nevermore is...

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The IT Crowd, Channel 4

Aeons ago, and in another place, I had a sense-of-humour malfunction. A sitcom about three priests marooned on a remote Irish island took its bow. I didn’t crack a single smile, and said so firmly. Turned out I was in a tiny minority, and just...

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The Surreal House, Barbican Art Gallery

Surrealism, it occurred to me while looking round this fine exhibition, is like pornography: it is hard to define, but everyone knows it when they see it. The Surreal House examines what precisely is conjured up in our collective minds by the word “...

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Mercury Fur, 3-4 Picton Place, W1

Imagine a future, a near future, in which gangs of teenage boys roam the deserted streets of the metropolis, selling hallucinatory butterflies and organising parties in squats for rich clients who have extreme tastes in sexual abuse. Imagine. This...

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Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective, Tate Modern

Arshile Gorky found it almost impossible to finish a painting. Something would always call him back. So he would go back and would add and retouch and tinker around over several years - sometimes over the course of a decade or two. “When something...

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Front Row Confidential

George Clooney and Frances McDormand in Burn After Reading

Your friends never learn. No matter how many times you tell them you don't look on going to the cinema as a social activity, they still insist on dragging you along with them. And even though you've told them a hundred times that, after a hard day's...

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