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The Young Rembrandt: not a prodigy

March 5, 2020 by Paul Levy 2 Comments

When you walk down one corridor in the current Ashmolean Museum’s exhibition of Young Rembrandt you see half a dozen tiny-to-small, though not quite postage stamp-size etchings, which are self-portraits of the twenty-something artist. My favourite of these is a posturing 1630 “Self-portrait in a cap, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.” You can just imagine how many hours it took of him looking in a … [Read more...]

She was just a Miller’s daughter: ENO revives a middle-period Verdi

February 22, 2020 by Paul Levy 1 Comment

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 list handouts whose reverse patronises newcomers by telling them how to behave at the opera. And its big problem is its bone-head commitment to singing in English. With the … [Read more...]

From caftan to opera hat: the greatest living playwright takes on the Jewish bourgeoisie and its destruction

February 21, 2020 by Paul Levy 3 Comments

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

February 5, 2020 by Paul Levy Leave a Comment

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, the “Harry Potter” effect. I am a Harry Potter virgin; but I can understand why the … [Read more...]

The Mystery/History of the Bottle in the Box

February 3, 2020 by Paul Levy 1 Comment

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 in my cellar for a … [Read more...]

How Brilliant Are My Friends, After All?

November 27, 2019 by Paul Levy Leave a Comment

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 Naples, from discovering its hardware-shop-front restaurants, to walking … [Read more...]

La guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu, Or did it ever do anyway?

November 22, 2019 by Paul Levy Leave a Comment

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...]

Close Cousins to Sculpture? Stephen Buckley’s Work Needs All Three Dimensions

January 10, 2019 by Paul Levy Leave a Comment

   A couple of the essays in the gorgeous book (published by Neuendorf) that accompanies Close Cousins, an exhibition of Stephen Buckley paintings at the smart Mayor Gallery (Cork Street, London, until 8 February), make the point that Buckley is not a household name. Well, he is in our household, where we have whole walls of works on paper by the painter, who now lives in St … [Read more...]

The Tell-Tale Horror of Christmas

December 21, 2018 by Paul Levy 3 Comments

Non-Brits find it hard to believe, but in addition to the tree, holly, mistletoe, turkey, plum pudding, watching the Queen’s speech and drinking far too much, ghost stories are a part of (at least) English Christmas traditions, as much as the pantomime. If this startles you, just think of the spectres in Dickens’ 1843 A Christmas Carol, which had plenty of antecedents in Gothic literature.  … [Read more...]

Six Characters in Search of a Babymother

October 23, 2018 by Paul Levy Leave a Comment

  Of course, it’s pure coincidence that the royal pregnancy of the Duchess of Sussex was announced only a little before the curtain went up on Nina Raine’s new play, Stories, at the Dorfman auditorium of the National Theatre. But the news couldn’t be more apt, as the 37-year-old American former actress has much in common with Anna (Claudie Blakley), the heroine of  the play –except the … [Read more...]

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Paul Levy

is almost a citizen of the world, carrying the passports of the USA and the UK/EU. He wrote about the arts in general for the now-defunct Wall Street Journal Europe. [Read More]

Plain English

An Anglo-American look at what's happening here and there, where English is spoken and more or less understood -- in letters, the visual and performing arts, and, occasionally, in the kitchen or dining room. … [Read More...]

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Recent Posts

  • Obituary Hugh Cecil
  • A Slice of Life in Lockdown
  • The Young Rembrandt: not a prodigy
  • She was just a Miller’s daughter: ENO revives a middle-period Verdi
  • From caftan to opera hat: the greatest living playwright takes on the Jewish bourgeoisie and its destruction

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