A scene from Luisa Miller by Giuseppe Verdi @ London Coliseum. An English National Opera production. Directed by Barbora Horakova. Conductor, Alexander Joel.©Tristram Kenton The English National Opera company is having a tough old time. Its personnel keep changing, its huge building, the London Coliseum is a headache to maintain and fill, and its audience is too old. It has resorted to cast … [Read more...]
From caftan to opera hat: the greatest living playwright takes on the Jewish bourgeoisie and its destruction
There’s something a bit ho-hum, mean and pinched about the reception of Sir Tom Stoppard’s new (and, he says, perhaps final play), Leopoldstadt. A minority has treated its opening this February in the 1899 Wyndham’s Theatre as a perfectly ordinary event, nothing special in the long history of the British theatre or, indeed, in the chronicles of theatre. This misses the significance, not of the … [Read more...]
Beckett: A bit of Rough at the Old Vic
Alan Cumming and Daniel Radcliffe in Rough for Theatre II (Photo Manuel Hardan) For one reason or another, we hadn’t been to the Old Vic since the daft unisex loos were installed, and, said my wife, “Something else has changed.” It was very noticeable that the press night audience for the Samuel Beckett double-bill was much younger than when I last reviewed a production here: it is, of course, … [Read more...]
The Mystery/History of the Bottle in the Box
THE BOTTLE On Thursday, 23rd January, we had a small party at Millwood Farm. Though as it happened all our guests had our recovered good health to celebrate, that was not the reason for the gathering. Our excuse to dine on foie gras, tomato salad and burrata, and long-cooked shoulder of salt marsh lamb with borlotti beans from the garden, was to drink a special bottle, one that had been … [Read more...]
How Brilliant Are My Friends, After All?
A scene from My Brilliant Friend Part 1, image by Marc Brenner As I’ve relished all four volumes of the identity-mysterious Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, I was more than willing to sit through the four/five hour double-bill of the National Theatre’s production of My Brilliant Friend Parts One and Two – and today I’ve got the sore bum to prove I finished the drama marathon. I love … [Read more...]
La guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu, Or did it ever do anyway?
Jean Giraudoux’ 1935 play’s title in English claims “The Trojan War Will Not Take Place,” but his tragedy’s use of the future tense is actually a denial of Cassandra’s prophecy – in the face of all the evidence that an even worse war was to begin shortly. For the sharp-witted French playwright the Homeric/Virgilian parallels were with the foibles, follies and bad faith of the intellectuals and … [Read more...]
Not Such A Little List
ENO revives Jonathan Miller's 1986 Mikado Sir John Tomlinson as the Mikado photo by Genivieve Girling Despite some newsworthy casting, there don’t seem to have been many reviews of the current revival of Sir Jonathan Miller’s bankable production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado at the English National Opera. Which is a little odd, because the title part of the emperor of Japan is … [Read more...]
Come to the cabaret aux Crazy Coqs
Anita Gillette photograph: Brasserie Zédel How often do we go to cabaret or a jazz club in London? In truth, not often, as the schlepp is the same as going to the theatre or opera. But I’ve been twice in the last year, to catch an autobiographical musical gig by the veteran movie, tv and stage star, Anita Gillette. The first occasion was her Irving Berlin tribute, and the second was called … [Read more...]
Mommie Dearest
Agrippina, Royal Opera House Joyce DiDonato as Agrippina and Franco Fagioli as Nerone - (C) ROH 2019. Photo by Bill Cooper By Paul Levy Among my regrets is that I am old enough to have seen and heard Maria Callas perform at Covent Garden, but young enough at the time to feel I could not afford the tickets. It goes some way to make up for this lapse that I have … [Read more...]
Iris would have been 100 last month
Photograph of John Bayley and Iris Murdoch by Derry Moore, 29 September 1992 It’s difficult to remember when I first met Iris and John – in my experience, they were inseparable. I am certain we met in the late summer of 1968 at the Oxford house in Charlbury Road of Lord and Lady David Cecil– though it’s just possible that we had met earlier, in 1963, with a gaggle of Oxford philosophers at a … [Read more...]