Category: London
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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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The Hound of the Baskervilles at Jermyn Street Theatre review ****
The Hound of the Baskervilles Jermyn Street Theatre, 10th December 2017 Everyone likes Sherlock Holmes right. And everyone can see that the stories are ripe for comic treatment. Indeed you have probably seen this done on numerous occasions. Even the amazing Cumberbatch/Freeman/Moffat/Gatiss Sherlock, which is regarded with reverence in the…
At Home He Feels Like A Tourist 