Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War. Review by Barbara Lewis.
Domesday Book, William the Conqueror’s 1085 survey of his recently-won kingdom, merits an exhibition in its own right.
Barbara Lewis
Company, Stephen Sondheim and George Furth. Review by Barbara Lewis.
Any story-line involving a single woman is inherently more dramatic than a narrative of a single man because of biology’s cruel deadlines.
Night and Day: 1930s Fashion & Photographs. Review by Barbara Lewis.
In 1933, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. In the world of fashion, shoulders broadened and the iconic 1930s shape became established.
Mantegna and Bellini, National Gallery. Review by Barbara Lewis.
Andrea Mantegna was a self-made man from Padua. In 1453, he married into the greatest artistic family of nearby Venice and became the brother-in-law of Giovanni Bellini.
Peer Gynt, Henrik Ibsen, Arcola Theatre. Review by Barbara Lewis.
Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt defied theatre’s limitations with a vast cast, sprawling action and special effects.
The End of Eddy, Unicorn Theatre. Review by Barbara Lewis.
Under Stewart Laing’s inspired direction, four permanently-glowing screens help to convey the bigoted characters of a charmless northern French village, where violence, shame, pride, racism and homophobia form the fabric of society.
Wasted, Southwark Playhouse. Review by Barbara Lewis.
In our blasé age, we may take for granted that a remote Yorkshire parsonage managed to produce three sisters who defied rigid Victorian convention to give voice to raw passions and sexual frustration no respectable woman was meant to feel.
Virgin, theSpace. Review by Barbara Lewis,
A show that leaves the line “Are you fucking kidding me?” ringing in your ears and delivers a series of morals that include “don’t pressure other people into sex because it doesn’t work” and “don’t judge people by appearances, unless they’re really hot” could cause offence.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses Pleasance King Dome, Edinburgh. Review by Barbara Lewis.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses comprise nearly 12,000 lines and over 250 myths that have inspired more modern writers as great as Shakespeare and Dante.
Elf Lyons, ChiffChaff. Review by Barbara Lewis.
What do you do when life gives you lemons? Make lemonade is the wrong answer, says Elf Lyons, who is the product – and that’s not too economic a term – of father Gerard Lyons, former economic advisor to Boris Johnson, artist mother Annette Lyons and the Philippe Gaulier clown school on the outskirts of Paris.
Charles Dickens Museum. Review by Barbara Lewis.
The museum in Doughty Street, London, has a temporary exhibition to revisit the established view that Dickens had no truck with science, presenting the discipline not so surprisingly as an extension of his concern with social justice and reform rather than abstract theory.
War and Peace, WNO. Review by Barbara Lewis.
Tolstoy’s great, complex, genre-busting sprawl “War and Peace” is about many things, including Russian nationalism to the extent that when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, Stalin reached for the work to promote a patriotic defence of the Motherland.