Category: Culture
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The Twilight Zone at the Almeida Theatre review ***
The Twilight Zone Almeida Theatre, 13th January 2018 Based on my entirely objective reviews, (of which more to follow when I get round to it), I see that the Almeida has, over the last three years or so, consistently offered the best theatrical experience in London. No great surprise really…
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Julius Caesar at the Barbican Theatre review ****
Julius Caesar Royal Shakespeare Company, Barbican Theatre, 11th January 2018 The third instalment, (for me), of the RSC “Rome” season at the Barbican which originally aired at Stratford. And, as is so often the case with this idiotic blog, it is about to end and is sold out anyway. Et…
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Cell Mates at the Hampstead Theatre review ***
Cell Mates Hampstead Theatre, 10th January 2018 This was my first experience of the work of prolific playwright/novelist/diarist/academic Simon Gray whose stage texts were so adored by luminaries such as Peter Hall, Harold Pinter, (who directed many of his premieres), and Alan Bates, (who starred in them). Cell Mates, of…
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The Here and This and Now at the Southwark Playhouse review ****
The Here and This and Now Southwark Playhouse, 10th January 2017 OK homo sapiens. Enough with the exceptionalism. There is nothing special about you. Maybe you are more “intelligent” than any species that has inhabited the earth so far but you have only been around for a couple of hundred…
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Bomberg at Pallant House Gallery review *****
Bomberg Pallant House Gallery, 9th January 2017 Best British painter of the twentieth century? The mighty triumvirate of Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and David Hockney from the second half of the century certainly would be in with a shout, though Bacon is easy to admire though sometimes hard to like, and Hockney…
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Cezanne Portraits exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery review *****
Cezanne Portraits National Portrait Gallery, 14th December 2017 Frankly they could have hung the 50 or so paintings here upside down and turned the lights off. I would still have given it 5 stars. It’s Cezanne. The painter who showed all the other painters who have come since how to…
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Dali/Duchamp at the Royal Academy review ***
Dali/Duchamp Royal Academy, 29th December 2017 I don’t really get Salvador Dali. Maybe it is the over-familiarity with images of his work. Maybe it is the obviousness of the in-yer-face Freudian, symbolism. Maybe it is the flat, lifeless effect of his paintings. Maybe it is the fact that once he…
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Daisy Pulls It Off at the Park Theatre review ***
Daisy Pulls It Off Park Theatre 200, 16th December 2017 Funny thing the memory. Even more curious is consciousness itself. It used to be that clever folk conceptualised consciousness as a kind of “theatre of the mind”. Apparently now the cutting edge of neuroscience, psychology and philosophy says this dualism…
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Happy End film review ****
Happy End, 7th December 2017 Michael Haneke is a light-hearted fellow. At least that is what he claimed in a recent interview I read. I still have my doubts. Mind you he clearly has a sense of humour. Albeit of the dark variety. As his films reveal. It is a…
