At Home He Feels Like A Tourist

  • All Too Human at Tate Britain review *****

    All Too Human: Bacon. Freud and a Century of Painting Life Tate Britain, 15th March 2018 I love paint. I love painting. I love paintings of people. I love Britain (though I appreciate that is a loaded statement). I love London. I love paintings of London. So, surprise, surprise, I…

  • A (flawed) guide to London theatres

    When I was a young teenager I took to making up some very odd games. I wasn’t lonely, with a handful of very good friends as I remember, and my very earliest encounters with the ladies were amongst my most successful, since my true nature, an awkward mix of the…

  • Summer and Smoke at the Almeida Theatre review ****

    Summer and Smoke Almeida Theatre, 14th March 2018 I don’t always find it easy to get into the “Tennessee Williams zone”. My head takes a little bit of time to adjust to all that dreamy lyricism and I find it easier to stomach if there is something to cling on…

  • Girls and Boys at the Royal Court review *****

    Girls and Boys The Royal Court Theatre, 12th March 2018 Flippin’eck. That Carey Mulligan can act. I had a fair idea from her turns on the telly and in films. She has an unerring knack of choosing roles in dramas that appeal to myself, the SO, and often both of…

  • Network at the National Theatre review *****

    Network National Theatre Lyttleton, 9th March 2018 Right then. Finally got to see Network. Booked early but this was the first date that BUD, KCK and the Blonde Bombshells could collectively make. A bit nervous because the last time we wheeled the Bombshells out to an Ivo van Hove entertainment…

  • Frozen at the Theatre Royal Haymarket review ****

    Frozen Theatre Royal Haymarket, 8th March 2018 I see the Theatre Royal Haymarket is up for sale. Or rather a 70 year odd lease from the Crown Estate, a pernickety landlord, but one who has preserved the beautiful Nash terraces around Regents Park, and is slowing upgrading the built environment…

  • Napoleon Disrobed at the Arcola Theatre review ****

    Napoleon Disrobed Arcola Theatre, 7th March 2018 Here is JL David’s preposterously heroic painting of Napoleon Bonaparte Crossing the Alps. The Napoleon of Simon Ley’s alternative history The Death of Napoleon, is of a somewhat different hue. Ley’s novella, his real name was Pierre Ryckmans and he was a Belgian…

  • Black Panther film review ****

    Black Panther, 6th March 2018 The Tourist fancies himself as some kind of high culture dandy so he is normally dubious about fantasy, superhero, action genre films and the like. No plot. no characterisation, lazy, frequently daft, stultifyingly dull effects. There are exceptions if the ideas and treatments warrant it,…

  • Modigliani at Tate Modern review ***

    Modigliani Tate Modern, 5th March 2018 One Modigliani nude or one Modigliani portrait is a thing of not inconsiderable beauty. Less so, one hundred, or what feels like hundreds. The elongated bodies, the mask-like faces, the blank, almond-shaped eyes. Look beyond the USP’s though and the influences, from which Modigliani…

  • A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the ENO review *****

    A Midsummer Night’s Dream English National Opera, 4th March 2018 Out of a long list of wildly inappropriate events that I dragged BD along to when she was younger perhaps provocateur Christopher Alden’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in this very house was the most egregious. Not because the…