Arts
Superheroic failure
Avengers: Age of Ultron is the second film in the Avengers franchise, as written and directed by Joss Whedon, and…
Lethal weapon
The current talking-point at the Royal Ballet is the Russians milling around. One can sound unfortunately as if one’s starting…
Curators
As a purveyor of lairy souvenirs Venice outdoes even Lourdes. The scores of shops and booths that peddle this lagoonal…
Curators
As a purveyor of lairy souvenirs Venice outdoes even Lourdes. The scores of shops and booths that peddle this lagoonal…
Cars are our cathedrals
Stephen Bayley hails the automobile – a miracle of technical and artistic collaboration – and mourns its demise
Better than Robert? Sonia Delaunay at Tate Modern reviewed
In 1978, shortly before she died, the artist Sonia Delaunay was asked in an interview whether she considered herself a…
Why Daniel Barenboim should be the next head of the Berlin Phil
Daniel Barenboim is back in town: the South Bank is mounting a ‘Barenboim Project 2015’ in which he’s playing the…
ENO's Between Worlds at the Barbican reviewed: too respectful
This week, some 200 years since Goya’s ‘The Disasters of War’, almost 80 years after Picasso’s ‘Guernica’, and over 50…
Even those who reviled Thatcher will be moved, appalled and astonished: Dead Sheep at the Park reviewed
Dead Sheep is a curious dramatic half-breed that examines Geoffrey Howe’s troubled relationship with Margaret Thatcher. Structurally it’s a Mexican…
A Little Chaos review: Kate Winslet emotes her little socks off
A Little Chaos is a period drama directed by Alan Rickman and starring Kate Winslet as a woman charged to…
I wish Daenerys Targaryen would free the nipple: Game of Thrones series five reviewed
Blimey, there has been so much good stuff to watch on telly of late: the Grand National, the Boat Race…
Why Bette Davis loathed theatre
It was called Frankly Speaking and by golly it was. The great screen actress Bette Davis was being interviewed by…
Boris Johnson on his plans for the Olympic Park: inspired or whimsical?
Jack Wakefield on the Mayor’s ambitious, not to say whimsical, vision for the Olympic Park
Culture buff
A baroque music festival in Hobart sounded right with particularly appropriate settings such as the Theatre Royal and the pretty…
The legend returns
Daniel Barenboim is back in town: the South Bank is mounting a ‘Barenboim Project 2015’ in which he’s playing the…
The legend returns
Daniel Barenboim is back in town: the South Bank is mounting a ‘Barenboim Project 2015’ in which he’s playing the…
How Fellini made his modernist masterpiece
Ian Thomson on the creative limbo that spawned Fellini’s modernist masterpiece, 8½
Irresistible: Ravilious at the Dulwich Picture Gallery reviewed
The most unusual picture in the exhibition of work by Eric Ravilious at Dulwich Picture Gallery, in terms of subject-matter…
The golden age of pop has been replaced by the golden age of pop obituaries
The golden age of pop music may be long gone, but the golden age of pop musicians’ obituaries is definitely…
Tippett’s triumphant failure: Birmingham Opera Company’s The Ice Break reviewed
The Ice Break is Michael Tippett’s fourth opera, first produced at Covent Garden in 1977 and rarely produced anywhere since,…
An Indian Bayadère that meets a sludgy end
For an Indian woman to make a dancework about La Bayadère is a promising prospect. This classical ballet of 1877…
Nicholas Hytner’s sod-you farewell: Rules for Living at the Dorfman reviewed
Experts are concerned that Alan Ayckbourn’s plays may soon face extinction. Fewer than 80 of these precious beasts still exist…
Woman in Gold review: even Helen Mirren is weighed down by the script’s banalities
Woman in Gold feels rather like a Jewish version of Philomena as this too is about an older woman seeking…
A review of three reassuringly unoriginal new travel programmes fronted by comedians
Who says British television lacks imagination? You might have thought, for example, that every possible combination of comedian and travel…
Why wasn’t there more about the other faiths over Easter on the BBC?
There was no shortage of Easter music and talks across the BBC networks with a sunrise service on Radio 4…
