At Home He Feels Like A Tourist

  • Loot at the Park Theatre review ****

    Loot Park Theatre, 14th September 2017 There has been a lot of progress in the last 50 years in this country. Good people are more tolerant and accepting of the identity of others (though there are still plenty of bigoted d*ckheads to be found polluting the discourse), The fairy tales…

  • Encounter drawings at the National Portrait Gallery review ***

    The Encounter: Drawings from Leonardo to Rembrandt National Portrait Gallery, 7th September 2017 Short, sweet and eclectic. The exhibition of 50 or so portrait drawings at the NPG contains works by some of the greatest draughtsmen revered by art history from the Renaissance and Baroque, but blink and you might…

  • Cat On a Hit Tin Roof at the Apollo Theatre review ***

    Cat On a Hot Tin Roof Apollo Theatre, 13th September 2017 Hmm. I was expecting so much more of this production. It’s Tennessee Williams. An all star cast. The imprimatur of the Young Vic. And Benedict Andrews, who was responsible for the, by all accounts, revelatory A Streetcar Named Desire…

  • Judith at the Arcola Theatre review ***

    Judith: A Parting from the Body Arcola Theatre, 7th September 2017 I am guessing they don’t watch Bake-Off in the Barker household. Howard Barker does not write easy plays. By his own admission he wants each of us to experience his plays as an individual: none of that namby-pamby rush…

  • Prism at the Hampstead Theatre review ****

    Prism Hampstead Theatre, 14th September 2017 Full disclosure. I love Terry Johnson’s plays. The marrying of “high” and “popular” culture themes and structures, the mix of humour and, as he calls it “brainy stuff, the abrupt lurches in tone: all this works for me. I have many more plays to…

  • Against at the Almeida Theatre review ****

    Against Almeida Theatre, 9th September 2017 The more plays I see the more I realise there are many ways to build a work of theatrical drama. You can build the foundations on language and the space around it, You can create powerful, memorable, immediate characters. You can construct a plot…

  • London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall review ****

    London Philharmonic Orchestra, Vladimir Jurowski, Alina Ibragimova (violin) Prom 71, Royal Albert Hall, 6th September 2017 Igor Stravinsky – Funeral Song, Igor Stravinsky – Song of the Volga Boatmen, Sergei Prokofiev – Violin Concert No 1 in D Major Benjamin Britten – Russian Funeral Dmitri Shostakovich – Symphony No 11…

  • road at the Royal Court Theatre review ****

    road Royal Court Theatre, 7th September 2017 Another useless review as this revival of Jim Cartwright’s seminal debut play is about to end its run. But I would be pretty confident it will pop up again somewhere in the next few years. And that is because, as this production shows,…

  • Sargent Watercolours at Dulwich Picture Gallery review *****

    Sargent: The Watercolours Dulwich Picture Gallery, 5th September 2017 There have been some top drawer exhibitions already this year. The comprehensive survey of American painting in the 1930s at the Orangerie and Royal Academy, the joyous Rauschenberg retrospective at Tate Modern, the astonishing survey of Michael Andrews’s spray painted landscapes…

  • Logan Lucky film review ****

    Logan Lucky, 30th August Every so often BD and myself settle down to take in one, two, or sometimes all three, of the Ocean’s films (not sure if that is grammatically correct). The pleasure lies in knowing exactly what is going to happen and in the happy feeling it brings…