Archives for 2008

In the spirit of these slimmed-down times, let's keep the new year's resolutions simple this year. Mine is short and relatively unambitious: at long last, to see a ventriloquist's act. It's amazing that I've got so far through my performance-haunting career without seeing someone throwing their voice or appearing to talk through the dummy on their knee. Ventriloquists were a staple of children's … [Read more...]

Harold Pinter, who died on Christmas Eve, was essentially a London writer. It's not just that he was born and bred here - my mother remembers seeing him play Macbeth at school in Hackney. But he also drew on an intimate sense of the city in a way that gave his plays an apparent fixity and also released them into a daring poetic space. In one sense, Pinter's London is a map of social aspiration, … [Read more...]

The Trocks are back in New York - and with any luck will stay there for some time. Certainly their London season was a notable low point of my autumn dance-going. Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, the all-male ballet travesty troupe, are critically adored and loved by spectators, I know, but they're a joke that leaves my funny bone relentlessly untickled. The party line is that the trannies … [Read more...]

Well, that would be a tall order... but this is just a thank you to the kind people who have nominated the blog in the end-of-year survey initiated by our immensely sparky neighbour at Life's a Pitch. I'm very chuffed indeed. Not sure if, although we do discuss lyric art forms here, that this is exactly a music blog, but it would be wrong to quibble. Anyone who wants to cast a vote can do so here, … [Read more...]

Criticism about popular comedy is tricky. Either you laugh or you don't: what else to say? Yesterday I saw plays by Britain's most frequently performed playwrights, Alan Ackybourn - two slices of his 1974 trilogy The Norman Conquests, revived with wonderfully shaggy panache by Matthew Warchus at the Old Vic. Ackybourn's faultless technique and deceptive suburban territory often declaw criticism … [Read more...]

I'd been to the box office, I'd phoned and dogged the theatre's website like a shadow. When a couple of tickets to the RSC's sold-out Hamlet came up, I pounced, and rejoiced in my luck. The next day came news of lead actor David Tennant's injury and I took it badly. Like everyone else who will see the first few weeks of the production's London run, I caught Edward Bennett, bumped up from Laertes … [Read more...]

The Pride, a debut play by Alexei Kaye Campbell at London's Royal Court Theatre, begins with a pepper of clipped 1950s vowels, and the audience can't help but giggle: 'I lived in a tiny little house at the foot of the Acropolis. Infested with mice, but absolutely charming.' Three well-bred people, chatting awkwardly over pre-dinner drinks and failing to talk about anything important to them: we … [Read more...]

Is it possible to love productions you've never seen? Oh baby baby, it is. I'm not just talking about Garrick's Shakespeares, or brightly coloured 19th-century extravaganzas, or the Moscow Arts doing Chekhov for the first time and minting a new voice and a transforming style of acting. Though I do love these too. But closer to home I adore the productions by Philip Prowse, Giles Havergal and … [Read more...]

A report published in Britain today suggests that maltreatment of children here is far more widespread than previously thought. It pools research into the continuum of damage, from the most grievous sexual and violent abuse to longterm neglect. We are also still digesting the facts of the death of a London child known only as Baby P. He was progressively abused by his mother and her boyfriend … [Read more...]

The director Michael Grandage has just won an Evening Standard award for his production of Chekhov's early play Ivanov in London, and Kenneth Branagh was nominated as best actor for his performance in the title role. Not sure I would have gone that far, but I had a fine time at the show, watching the characters' collective very bad behaviour and extraordinarily poor choices with enjoyable … [Read more...]