Arts

Garsington makes as good a case as you can for Strauss’s frothy Capriccio

9 June 2018 9:00 am

‘Is there an end [to this opera] that is not trivial?’ asks the Countess in her final bars of Richard…

Coloured proof from ‘English as She is Spoke’ by Pedro Carolino, 1960, by Edward Bawden

Edward Bawden is deservedly one of Britain’s most popular 20th century artists

9 June 2018 9:00 am

‘When I’m on good form,’ Edward Bawden told me, ‘I get to some point in the design and I laugh…

A betrayal – despite moments of spectacle that would have made John Martin gasp

Cynical, one-dimensional and oddly colourless: Jurassic World – Fallen Kingdom reviewed

9 June 2018 9:00 am

Back in the mists of prehistory, when I was eight, dinosaur films followed a set pattern. The dinosaurs themselves would…

Why is this Israeli drama such a hit with Palestinians? Because it tells the truth

9 June 2018 9:00 am

‘The rule in our household is: if a TV series hasn’t got subtitles, it’s not worth watching,’ a friend told…

Why is Today losing its audience? Because it doesn’t care about its listeners

9 June 2018 9:00 am

Headlines announcing that Radio 4’s flagship Today programme is losing its audience while Radio 3’s Breakfast has put on numbers…

Cold and confusing: Garsington’s Die Zauberflöte reviewed

9 June 2018 9:00 am

The picnic hamper’s open, the bubbly is chilled, and country house opera is starting to eat itself. When you arrive…

Akram Khan in Mirella Weingarten’s starkly stupendous set

A smidge of self-indulgence amid the power and grace: Akram Khan’s Xenos reviewed

9 June 2018 9:00 am

‘Comedy Sunil Lanba, Salman Quaraishi, Omar Syed…’ Names play from a crackling gramophone. We hear what they were before the…

Kororadika Beach by Augustus Earle

9 June 2018 9:00 am

Antiquarians can seem an exotic group to many of us and yet there are several successful dealers in this country,…

Remembrance of things past: interior of the Pantheon, Oxford Street, 18th century, by William Hodges, demolished in 1937

The buildings we knocked down in the name of ‘progress’

2 June 2018 9:00 am

When the German novelist Sophie von La Roche visited Oxford Street in the 1780s she saw watchmakers and fan shops,…

Rachel Willis-Sorensen as the Marschallin and Kate Lindsey as Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier at Glyndebourne Festival

Glyndebourne’s Der Rosenkavalier never forgets to be funny

2 June 2018 9:00 am

‘Comedy for music by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Music by Richard Strauss.’ That’s what the creators of Der Rosenkavalier wrote on…

The terrific cast of BBC2's King Lear (BBC/Playground Entertainment/Ed Miller)

Understated and heartbreaking: BBC2’s King Lear reviewed

2 June 2018 9:00 am

I recently came across a theory of the American poet Delmore Schwartz’s that Hamlet only makes sense if you assume…

Michelle Terry as Hamlet and Catrin Aaron as Horatio at Shakespeare's Globe. (Photo: Tristram Kenton)

No one but Michelle Terry would have hired Michelle Terry to play Hamlet

2 June 2018 9:00 am

Regime change at the Globe. The new boss, Michelle Terry, wants a 50/50 ratio of males to females in each…

Astonishing splashes of colour: ‘Square Green with Orange, Violet and Lemon’, 1969, by Patrick Heron

Patrick Heron’s paintings are exhilarating – his colours dance, pulse & boff you on the nose

2 June 2018 9:00 am

Patrick Heron’s paintings of the 1950s melt like ice creams. You want to run your tongue along the canvas and…

One of the last remaining all-boys' choirs in Britain, St George's Chapel Choir, which sang in the recent royal wedding in Windsor

I dread the extinction of boys’ choirs

2 June 2018 9:00 am

One by one, cathedrals have succumbed to the inevitable. In blazes of publicity, with front-page photographs of girls in cassocks…

More immediate and even more vacuous than before: Chvrches’ Love Is Dead reviewed

2 June 2018 9:00 am

Grade: B Another load of SJW moppets keening over 1980s synths. ‘It only takes two seconds to say: I don’t…

Louise Brooks is sensational in Pabst's silent classic Pandora's Box (Credit: BFI)

Ninety years old and still feels as fresh as a daisy: G.W. Pabst’s Pandora’s Box reviewed

2 June 2018 9:00 am

Two films this week, one that has stood the test of time, dazzlingly — it still feels as fresh as…

Joanna Lumley plays Mrs God in BBC Radio 4's new play Michael Frayn's Pocket Playhouse (Credit: ITV/ Rex/ Shutterstock)

Only Radio 4 would allow Ian McKellan and Joanna Lumley to play Mr and Mrs God

2 June 2018 9:00 am

One sphere that podcasts have so far not much penetrated is drama. Audible.co.uk is itching to develop its own brand…

Sarah Snook

Culture buff

2 June 2018 9:00 am

George Bernard Shaw called it ‘a chronicle play’, I suppose a sort of docudrama if a superior one. Saint Joan…

Roger Allam as John Christie in David Hare’s The Moderate Soprano

A champion actor and fully paid-up member of the human race: Roger Allam interviewed

26 May 2018 9:00 am

A most excellent fellow, Roger Allam. On the stage he brings dignity to all he does, in the noblest traditions…

Extension of credit: the vaults, part of David Chipperfield’s redevelopment of the Royal Academy

How lucky we are to have the Royal Academy

26 May 2018 9:00 am

What is the Royal Academy? This question set me thinking as I wandered through the crowds that celebrated the opening…

What a wasted opportunity: Jonas Kaufmann’s Four Last Songs reviewed

26 May 2018 9:00 am

No wonder we have a problem with classical music in this country. The week started in celebration. The stats are…

Podcasts often have no real interest in those who might be listening

26 May 2018 9:00 am

‘Do you ever imagine your audience?’ was a question thrown at James Ward, creator and presenter of The Boring Talks…

Magisterial: BBC1’s A Very English Scandal reviewed

26 May 2018 9:00 am

Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little, so you can imagine how sickened I was by the magisterial…

Large chunks felt lifted from The Archers: Nightfall reviewed

26 May 2018 9:00 am

The Bridge’s big summer show is Nightfall by prize-winning newcomer Barney Norris. Widowed Jenny wants her grown-up kids, Lou and…

Artists of the Royal Ballet against the easel-worthy backcloths of John Macfarlane’s ravishing designs for Swan Lake

Proper tutus, gorgeous designs, first-rate dancing: Royal Ballet’s new Swan Lake reviewed

26 May 2018 9:00 am

The Royal Ballet’s 2016 Frankenstein was a masterclass in how not to make narrative dance and the news that Liam…