At Home He Feels Like A Tourist

  • Twentieth Century Masters: LSO at the Barbican review ****

    London Symphony Orchestra, Simon Rattle, Isabelle Faust Barbican Hall, 14th January 2018 Janacek – Overture: From the House of the Dead Elliott Carter – Instances Berg – Violin Concerto Bartok – Concerto for Orchestra Back to the Barbican for another round with Sir Simon Rattle and the LSO, though this…

  • 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…

  • Rameau to Mahler: LSO at the Barbican review ***

    London Symphony Orchestra, Simon Rattle, Magdalena Kozena Barbican Hall, 11th January 2017 Schubert – Symphony No 8 Unfinished Mahler – Ruckert Lieder Handel – Three Arias Rameau – Les Boreades Suite Now I admit I hummed and harred about this particular gig. I am as excited as the next person…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • My top 10 plays of 2017

    Message to self. Do not drone on. Nobody will read this. You are seemingly dispossessed of any edit function. And there are literally millions of other lists of best plays/theatre of 2017 produced by people who know what they are talking about. This may be your blog, intended to consolidate…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…