Plain English: January 2010 Archives

Enron has transferred to the Noel Coward Theatre after its beginnings at the Chichester Festival (where I saw it early last year) and then its run at the Royal Court. At the time I thought it was the best new play I'd seen that year and, indeed, yesterday its director, Rupert Goold, won the Critic's Circle award for best director for it. This was one of the few winners I managed to vote for in this year's awards, the others being the best musical, Spring Awakening and best designer, Christopher Oram, who won it for Red (though I'm not altogether sure I didn't vote for him, but as designer of a different production).

 n: markets and multi-million dollar debt are surprisingly entertaining. Photo by Helen Maybanks

Late last year I had the good luck to be shown around the exhibition of Van Gogh's letters at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam by Ann Dumas, who is the curator of "The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters," which has just opened at the Royal Academy in London (and continues until 18 April).  So I am in the happy position of being able to tell you what almost no one has noticed - that the Amsterdam show and the London show are almost totally different.  The Amsterdam show was actually a rehanging of its own collection, so as to show the letters in the appropriate places in the gallery. Save for the letters, there is an overlap of only the 12 paintings loaned by the Van Gogh Museum in the RA exhibition, out of a total of 65 major paintings. There are also 30 drawings, plus 35 original letters - and this may well be the last time the letters are shown in a public exhibition, as each exposure to light increases the fading of the ink and its reactivity with the paper.  Amsterdam just does not lend its most iconic pictures (the ones the tourists come to see, after all), such as "Irises," "Starry Night" and "The Potato Eaters."