Category: London
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Mantegna and Bellini at the National Gallery review *****
Mantegna and Bellini National Gallery, 11th November 2018 11th November was turning into a very busy day for the Tourist. Fresh from the heady Edward Burne-Jones phantasmagoria at Tate Britain and a proper Sunday lunch, it was off to the National, now solo, for these Old Masters, before rounding off…
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Edward Burne-Jones at Tate Britain review ****
Edward Burne Jones Tate Britain, 11th November 2018 Turns out Burne-Jones isn’t quite as awful as I had previously thought. Don’t get me wrong. All that hippy-dippy, fey, dreamy. dusky-toned, doe-eyed, ginger-permed, long-bodied, nymph-y, mannequin-esque, briar-strewn, Arthurian, industrialisation-denying, fake-Medieval, cod-Renaissance daubing is still guaranteed to do my head in. But…
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Forgotten at the Arcola Theatre review ****
Forgotten Arcola Theatre, 10th November 2018 I was much taken, if not entirely convinced, by the British East Asian Yellow Earth Theatre company’s version of Tamburlaine at the Arcola 18 months ago. And this co-production, with Moongate, of a new play, Forgotten, by Daniel York Loh, which kicked off at…
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Don Carlos at the Rose Kingston review ****
Don Carlos Rose Theatre Kingston, 9th November 2018 No one could accuse Friedrich Schiller of holding back in Don Carlos. Goethe inspired Sturm und Drang Romanticism, a Kantian paean to the centrality of personal freedom and democracy, the clash of liberty and tyranny, a stab at the sublime, a (loose)…
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The Funeral Director at the Southwark Playhouse review ****
The Funeral Director Southwark Playhouse, 6th November 2018 The Papatango New Writing Prize, which kicked off in 2009, is the first and only playwriting award which guarantees the winner a full scale professional production, a share of the takings and a commission for a follow up. Whilst I missed last…
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Chekhov’s First Play at the Battersea Arts Centre review ***
Chekhov’s First Play Battersea Arts Centre, 5th November 2018 Some venerable theatre grandees have had a crack a knocking Anton Chekhov’s first play into shape. The venerable Lev Dodin and The Maly Theatre presented a version based on Chekhov’s own text, albeit with nine characters chopped out and a jazz…