Arts
Fantastic Mr Fox
Sand in the Sandwiches is the perfect show for those who feel the West End should be an intellectual funfair.…
Building block
Liverpool is the New York of Europe. The business district looks like old Wall Street: a miniature Lower Manhattan on…
The rise of toytown pop
Pop’s counterfactuals tend to be built on questioning mortality: what if Jimi Hendrix had lived? Or Buddy Holly? Rarely does…
Music matters
The ancient Greeks had a word for it —katabasis, descending into the depths, to the underworld itself, in search of…
Army surplus
Georg Büchner, a justly neglected German playwright, died at the age of 23 leaving a half-finished script about a mad…
Jun Chen Grey Red 2017
At the age of 30, Jun Chen arrived in Australia post Tianamen Square. He settled in Brisbane where his first…
Scarlet women
A Covent Garden barfly was scanning her programme during the first interval: ‘Oh yes, the one about the gynaecologist.’ She…
Woman to woman
Bump to bump they stand: Mary and her cousin Elizabeth, both pregnant, both apple-cheeked and glowing as expectant mothers should…
Dealer’s choice
One evening a few weeks ago I was on my way to the opening of an exhibition at the Venice…
Comic relief
In such times as these, enough to try a man’s soul, a dose of John Finnemore is advisable. His brand…
Heaven knows they’re miserable now
On the face of it, the two new big drama series of the week don’t have a great deal in…
National Army Museum
I used to love the National Army Museum in Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea, which was crammed with the memorabilia of…
Vanessa Downing and Geoff Morrell in Black is the New White
I should have written about this play earlier; it is on now at the Sydney Theatre Company Wharf 1. Black…
When will I ever learn?
Oh, Pirates of the Caribbean, I have given you every chance down the years. Every chance. I am always hopeful.…
Being and nothingness
Size, of course, matters a great deal in art; so does scale — which is a different matter. The art…
Around the horn
The concert began with a flourish and a honk. Well, of course it did. Telemann wrote his last Ouverture-Suite in…
Crime and punishment
‘Hell is better than what I personally witnessed,’ says Ben Ferencz, who was one of the American troops sent in…
The great rock’n’roll swindles
Birds have been giving me a lot of grief of late. There’s Tappy — the blue tit who has built…
PWR BTTM: Pageant
How about some queercore garage punk? PWR BTTM — the name means something empowering to do with buggery — are…
Period drama
Harpsichordists are supposed to make love, not war: Sir Thomas Beecham famously compared the sound they make to ‘two skeletons…
Death wish
Anyone who thinks they have experienced absolute boredom, or even doubts that such a state can exist, should go to…
Sado-erotic review
The Olivier describes Salomé by Yaël Farber as a ‘new’ play. Not quite. It premièred in Washington a couple of…
Making waves
Hokusai wanted to paint everything, says Laura Freeman, and at 70 he was only just beginning
Making waves
The end, whenever it came, was always going to be too soon for Katsushika Hokusai. There was still so much…
Taryn Fiebig for Pinchgut Opera
Baroque opera is increasingly popular in Australia, particularly in recent years through the work of Pinchgut Opera. This administratively tiny…
