Arts
Why does the English National Ballet bother taking Manon to the provinces?
Like it or not, provincial ballet audiences love a story they can hum and any director planning to tour a…
How did mild-mannered eye doctor Bashar al-Assad end up a mass murderer?
‘How did this mild-mannered eye doctor end up killing hundreds of thousands of people?’ someone wondered about Bashar al-Assad in…
A succession of predigested clichés: Bohemian Rhapsody reviewed
There is a moment in Bohemian Rhapsody when the screen swims with print. The reviews for Queen’s epic new single…
Paul Cézanne Fruit 1879/80
This year both Melbourne and Sydney have major exhibitions of ‘modern masters’. The big Winter show from New York, MoMA…
Strawberry Hill revived
We can’t know what Horace Walpole would make of the continuing popularity of serendipity, a word he coined in 1754…
Wonderful, overwhelming, once-in-a-lifetime display of Bruegels – get on a plane now
‘About suffering’, W.H. Auden memorably argued in his poem ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’, the old masters ‘were never wrong’. Great…
Bleak, unflinching, oppressive, violent – and magical: Dogman reviewed
Matteo Garrone’s Dogman, which is Italy’s entry for the foreign language Oscar next year, is bleak, unflinching, oppressive, masculine (very),…
Women should boycott David Hare’s slanderous new play: I’m Not Running reviewed
Sir David Hare’s weird new play sets out to chronicle the history of the Labour movement from 1996 to the…
When haddocks flirt, they sound like a motorbike revving up
Flies buzzing, strange rustling, crunching sounds, and then the most chilling screech you’ll have heard all week. Vultures were feeding…
Women’s toplessness caused less offence to Victorians than their trousers
‘They did not look like women, or at least a stranger new to the district might easily have been misled…
An enjoyably gossipy whisk through half a century of fierce rivalries and bruised egos
At the beginning of Barneys, Books and Bust Ups: 50 Years of the Booker Prize (BBC4), Kirsty Wark’s voiceover promised…
Lautrec often made the stars in his posters look appalling – but they kept coming back
You don’t need to be much of a psychologist to understand the trajectory of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Born to aristocratic…
Thrilling, heartbreaking music drama – you need to see it: ENO’s Porgy and Bess reviewed
Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess springs to life fully formed, and pulls you in before a word has been sung. A…
The truth about Wilhelm Furtwängler
The morning after the first night of Ronald Harwood’s Taking Sides in May 1995, I received a call from Otto…
Laudably perverse – maybe album of the year: Cypress Hill’s Elephants on Acid reviewed
Grade: A+ Easily album title of the year, maybe album of the year. A true bravura offering from these supposedly…
‘I should just shut up’: Dominic West on #MeToo and the perils of talking politics
Lounging confidently on the sofa of a Soho hotel suite, Dominic West has been beaming at me, but now his…
Mitchell Galleries
One of the loveliest and best-loved buildings in Sydney, the Mitchell Building of the State Library of NSW is enjoying…
Is modernist architecture unhealthy?
Architects and politicians have a lot in common. Each seeks to influence the way we live, and on account of…
Full of fabulous, but baffling, things: Oceania reviewed
At six in the morning of 20 July 1888, Robert Louis Stevenson first set eyes on a Pacific Island. As…
Radio 4 treats its radio listeners as second-best in favour of those who listen to podcasts
How very odd of Radio 4 not only to release The Ratline as a podcast before broadcasting it on the…
What was Neil Armstrong like? A complete bore if First Man is anything to go by
Damien Chazelle’s First Man is a biographical drama that follows Neil Armstrong in the decade leading up to the Apollo…
Pinter comes across as an eccentric lightweight scribbler: Pinter Two reviewed
Pinter Two, the second leg of the Pinter season, offers us a pair of one-act comedies. The Lover is a…
The new Doctor Who Jodie Whittaker is a delight – but the script isn’t
You won’t be aware of this because the BBC has been keeping it very quiet. But the new Doctor Who…
Why Mayerling is a #MeToo minefield
Kenneth MacMillan’s Mayerling is a #MeToo minefield. Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary is a serial seducer, a man of many…
I genuinely liked Siegfried – which almost never happens: Royal Opera’s Ring cycle reviewed
‘On Brünnhilde’s rock I drew the breath that called your name; so swift was my journey here.’ It’s Act Two…
