Category: Renaissance
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Cymbeline: Shakespeare and the Search for National Identity
A diversion in which we examine Shakespeare’s Cymbeline and its commentary on the conception of British nationhood.
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Botticelli in the Fire at Hampstead Theatre review **
Botticelli in the Fire Hampstead Theatre, 20th November 2019 Us pensioners, well nearly in the case of the Tourist, as well as the real-dealers who haunt the matinees at which he largely frequents, are getting our eyes opened in Roxana Silbert’s first season as AD at the HT. Nothing fusty…
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Time Stands Still: Aurora Orchestra at Kings Place review ****
Aurora Principal Players, Iestyn Davies (countertenor), Sally Pryce (harp), John Reid (piano), Nico Muhly Kings Place, 23rd November 2018 Satie – Gymnopédie No. 3 Thomas Adès – The Lover in Winter Nico Muhly – Clear Music Debussy – Danse Sacrée et Danse profane Brahms – Gestillte Sehnsucht Nico Muhly –…
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Tamburlaine at the RSC Swan Theatre review ****
Tamburlaine Swan Theatre, RSC Stratford, 17th November 2018 If you scroll down you will see a so-called review of the play Switzerland. Though focussed on the author Patricia Highsmith it referenced her most famous character Tom Ripley. One of the most beguiling bad boys in fictional history. However he was…
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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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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)…