Arts
Barry Humphries on Trump, transgender ‘rat-baggery’ and causing maximum offence
‘I’m an amateur,’ Barry Humphries tells me. The Australian polymath uses the word in its older sense of ‘enthusiast’ rather…
An embarrassing and misshapen dud: Opera Holland Park’s Isabeau reviewed
I’ve been trying to pinpoint the exact moment when it became impossible to take Mascagni’s Isabeau seriously. It wasn’t when…
Channel 4 doesn’t do ‘news’ in any meaningful sense of the word – it’s pure propaganda
When President Trump refused to take a question from a CNN reporter at the Chequers press conference last week, I…
If you like monstrosities, head to the Hayward Gallery
One area of life in which globalism certainly rules is that of contemporary art. Installation, performance, the doctrine of Marcel…
The marketisation of BBC radio is a recipe for creative disaster
There’s been a lot of fuss and many column inches written about levels of pay at the BBC, as revealed…
Extraordinary power and simplicity: Lehman Trilogy reviewed
Stefano Massini’s play opens with a man in a frock-coat reaching New York after six weeks at sea. The year…
Paul Simon says farewell with a daring and inventive show that left some restless
Early in 1987, a middle-aged woman approached me on the record counter of the Slough branch of Boots. ‘What do…
Dreary, familiar, empty watch – until Streep appears: Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again reviewed
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again aims to do what it says on the can. That is, be Mamma Mia,…
Cast members of An Ideal Husband
He was already skating on thin ice when Oscar Wilde opened his newest play at the Haymarket Theatre on 3…
Aida
Aida was commissioned from Giuseppe Verdi to celebrate the opening of the Opera House in Cairo in early 1871, the…
The ‘idiot’ artists whose surreal visions flourished in Victorian asylums
In G.F. Watts’s former sculpture studio in the Surrey village of Compton, a monstrous presence has interposed itself between the…
Appealingly meaningless and improbable: Christo at the Serpentine Lake reviewed Plus: memorably pointless paintings at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery
It’s not a wrap. This is the first thing to note about the huge trapezoid thing that has appeared, apparently…
Classical music is awash with virtue-signalling
All my life I’ve wanted to compose music, and now I’ve done it. I’ve written a sonata for solo flute…
Shamelessly derivative and, worse, asks us to root for asshats: Swimming with Men reviewed
Swimming with Men is a British drama-comedy starring Rob Brydon as a disaffected middle-aged accountant who joins his local male…
Contains at least 15 laugh-out-loud moments: Genesis Inc. reviewed
Listen to the crowd. I often delay passing judgment on a show until the audience delivers its verdict. This is…
A new exhibition gives us the real Tolkien – not his awful legacy
To no one’s surprise, the Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth exhibition at the Bodleian in Oxford, where J.R.R. spent so much…
The great thing about the World Cup is you don’t even have to watch it to enjoy it
Even though I don’t watch much football I love the World Cup because it’s my passport to total freedom. I…
Vexing reading of a perplexing opera: Glyndebourne’s Pelléas et Mélisande reviewed
The femme fatale was invented in France. A giddy, greedy child in her first incarnation, as the antiheroine of Abbé…
A warning to those who argue that we live in a visual society
‘Can one person really grasp the significance of what another person has been through?’ asks Dr Rita Charon in this…
Ignore Lily Allen’s sub-adolescent politics – her new album is brilliant
Grade: B+ Here we go again, then, I thought — another gobbet of self-referential, breast-beating respec’ me bro sputum against…
Ben Jacks
A concert in the schedule of the Sydney Symphony recently caught my eye: Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 3 and his…
The problem with British mosques
My earliest memory of a mosque is being with my father in London’s Brick Lane Mosque. He was a member…
How good a painter was Frida Kahlo?
In 2004 Mexican art historians made a sensational discovery in Frida Kahlo’s bathroom. Inside this space, sealed since the 1950s,…
Sexy hints of affluence with top notes of fascism: Grange Park’s Roméo et Juliette reviewed
Patrick Mason’s new production of Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette reminded me of something, but it took a while to work…
The dumbing down of the Reith Lectures
It’s been a heavyweight week on Radio 4 with the start of the annual series of Reith Lectures and a…
