Archives for 2009

For those interested in the arts, the metaphor for being in London this summer  is what? - a kid in a toy shop or sweet shop? Or maybe a religious trope is more appropriate - a believer finding himself in heaven or paradise (and with no shortage of virgins at the British Museum's newly opened exhibition, Garden & Cosmos)? … [Read more...]

Such excitement here in Oxford. About twenty-four hours ago the first female Professor of Poetry at Oxford University resigned the post she'd held for 8 or 9 days. Our Brit-land is a small world, and though I was not eligible to vote (I spent two post-graduate years at my Oxford college, but never took an Oxford degree), I seem, more or less, to know everyone involved in the fracas. … [Read more...]

Until I saw Britten's Peter Grimes last week at the English National Opera with surtitles, I hadn't realised how clunky and often silly Montagu Slater's libretto is. Or maybe I should say (by contrast), that I hadn't realised how fine is my late friend Myfanwy Piper's libretto for Turn of the Screw, or Britten and Peter Pears' redaction of Shakespeare for that of  Midsummer Night's Dream. The … [Read more...]

As a philosophy undergraduate at the University of Chicago in the early 1960s, I had relatively little instruction from members of the English department. But I was taught Shakespeare by Norman Maclean, whom I had no idea would write "A River Runs Through It." Indeed, I had no idea he wrote fiction. But I should have guessed, for Norman (as I was allowed to call him when I later became a graduate … [Read more...]

Katie Mitchell's latest film and theatre piece is called After Dido. As the title was meant to signal its being inspired by Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, it should probably have been baptised "Long After Dido."  (Part of) what the audience heard at the Young Vic (where this collaboration with the English National Opera was staged) was a live performance of the Purcell Opera, with Susan Bickley … [Read more...]

A not very significant British politician is supposed to have said "A week's a long time in politics." I've been thinking about my last week in "culture," which didn't seem very long at all; indeed, it passed in a flash, though there was a fair bit of commuting between Oxfordshire and London involved.  The third revival of Elijah Moshinsky's 2002 production of Il Trovatore at the Royal Opera … [Read more...]

In October, 2007 when the National Theatre premiered War Horse, based on a novel by children's writer Michael Morpurgo, adapted by Nick Stafford and performed in association with Handspring Puppet Company, you can perhaps understand why, thinking it was intended as a Christmas offering for kids, I gave it a miss. Not the first mistake I ever made; but, now that I've seen its transfer to the West … [Read more...]

On Monday 30th March 2009, I attended a ceremony to rededicate the monument the chef, Soyer, erected to his wife, Emma, at Kensal Green Cemetery in West London, and where he is buried as well. It was a glorious day, and about 50-75 people, including the French Ambassador, were there to hear a contemporary Franco/British chef, Raymond Blanc, give a moving, sometimes funny account of Soyer's … [Read more...]

  Cheek by Jowl's Andromaque is a co-production with the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, and I managed to catch up with it while on tour at Oxford Playhouse. Director Declan Donnellan and his designer/partner Nick Ormerod have devised the most spare production imaginable - a bare stage with only a few chairs, and costumes that amount to Ruritanian uniforms for the men and sexy 1930s/40s French … [Read more...]

  Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d'Éon de Beaumont (1728-1810),  le Chevalier d'Éon, was a career diplomat, in addition to being a part-time soldier and an amateur spy. But it was only the last of these that attracted the difficult-to-categorise Canadian art/performance producer Robert Lepage. For d'Éon, says the programme for the performance called "Eonnagata" (at … [Read more...]