Are you green with envy at James Lasdun’s long account of chasing and experiencing the Northern Lights in Norway and Finland in the 29 April 2019 New Yorker? I could certainly have done with the commission –thirty-five years ago. But I have to allow that it was purely by chance that I saw the Aurora Borealis on the 23rd or 24th of June 1984. I might even then have been a bit … [Read more...]
John Cornford, the tragedy of a faithful communist
Understand the Weapon, Understand the Wound: Collected Writings Edited by Jonathan Galassi Fyfield Books, Carcanet, 238pp., $14.99 The Spanish parliament voted in September 2018 to exhume the remains of Francisco Franco, and to remove the remains of the fascist dictator from the site of the giant mausoleum at the Valley of the Fallen, near Madrid, which also contains the bodies of tens of … [Read more...]
Close Cousins to Sculpture? Stephen Buckley’s Work Needs All Three Dimensions
Étaples (1995) 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 … [Read more...]
The Tell-Tale Horror of Christmas
David Carlyle and Tamara Lawrence (photo Manuel Harlan) 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, … [Read more...]
Six Characters in Search of a Babymother
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...]
Axel, Lutz, Salchow — whodunnit at Garsington Opera?
It’s not very often that you hear and seen an opera in which you worry about (or care) whodunnit. Even Nicol Muhly’s (I thought splendid) Marnie, which had its world première in London last year, and was derived from the suspenseful Hitchcock film, we didn’t so much worry about who did what, as about Marnie’s weird character. But David Sawer and Rory Mullarkey’s The Skating Rink, … [Read more...]
Verdi v Shakespeare? Falstaff’s no contest
Garsington Opera, Bucks. Verdi’s Falstaff seems a modern piece to me; despite its première being 1893, it feels as musically up-to-date as say, Puccini’s 1926 Turandot. Verdi knew what was up in music. Before 1887, when Otello was first heard, Verdi had been in virtual retirement since Aida in 1871, and clearly noted what Wagner and his ilk were writing. At Garsington, director Bruno … [Read more...]
The Shock of the Not Quite New: La Pittura dopo il Postmodernismo alla Reggia Caserta
Barbara Rose, "the high priestess of art," at Caserta I’ve just come back from Naples, following a few days at Caserta, to see a variant of an exhibition we saw in Brussels in September, 2016, under the title “Painting After Post-Modernism” sponsored by Roberto Polo, and curated by Barbara Rose. But it wasn’t so much an alternative version of the earlier show (which was also seen in Málaga), as a … [Read more...]
Beware the Eve of the Ides of March
Today is the Ides of March, so I should have known better than to go to a performance yesterday of Julius Caesar at London’s new theatre, The Bridge. Remember, it was on the eve of the Ides that Brutus, Casca, Cinna and the others formed their conspiracy to assassinate Caesar. I knew that Nicholas Hytner’s production, in the theatre he co-founded with Nick Starr, was to be a … [Read more...]
Some Home Thoughts from Abroad as Hurricane Hamilton Hits Britain
The hoop-la surrounding the London staging of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton is almost as interesting as the musical itself. The ticket-tout-defeating instructions for admission to the Victoria Palace Theatre that came with my pair of house seats were more elaborate and demanding than those for our recent night out at Buckingham Palace. In the event, though, we were whisked past the velvet rope … [Read more...]