Leon Spilliaert. Review by Barbara Lewis. Insomniac and largely self-taught artist Leon Spilliaert is the master of absence, silence and solitude. His best-known evocations of emptiness are coastal scenes in his native Ostend informed by nocturnal wandering through the deserted port.
Allegra. Review by Julia Pascal. This seemingly frothy play with music is a vehicle for Dame Maureen Lipman. She plays Allegra, a woman with a pathological desire to burst into song. Allegra is motivated to brighten the mood of those around her, even at the most inappropriate moments.
Romeo and Juliet. Review by Barbara Lewis. Even in times when women are cast as Shakespeare’s Lear and Prospero, it’s a bold move to do the same with Romeo – the byword for the romantic male lover. It’s the tactic of Greenwich Theatre’s artistic director James Haddrell, who has also dared to compete for audience attention with the World Cup and heatwave weather in what is billed as fresh, summer Shakespeare.
The Nova Exhibition. Review by Graham Buchan. On entering this exhibition visitors are invited to sit on a wooden bench and watch a 5-minute video of revellers at the Nova Music Festival. On the screen are dancers, quite possibly off their heads, arms in the air and smiling from ear to ear.
Poetry review – INTIMATE ARCHITECTURE: Jennifer Johnson admires Tess Jolly’s adroit use of language in poems that explore memory and imagination
Poetry review – DEAD LETTERS: Rosie Johnston admires a collection of elegant and generous poems by Carole Coates
Poetry review – SUBLIME LUNGS: Paul McDonald is impressed by the powerful imagery and inventive language in this collection by Kate Noakes, which deals honestly with chronc illness
Poetry review – THE BAY: Charles Rammelkamp discovers perceptive insights and observations in David Dodd Lee’s new collection
Refik Anadol. Review by Barbara Lewis. Bruges has no need of more tourists and its art hall BRUSK, which opened in May, does not share the ambition of Bilbao’s Guggenheim to put a city on the map.
Poetry review – THE 50, VOLUME 2: Charles Rammelkamp relishes some broad and pretty unsubtle humor in an anthology edited by J.T. Whitehead
Poetry review – THE CHEMISTRY OF EMOTION: Madeleine O’Beirne responds to a joint collection by Fiona Perry & Stephen Paul Wren
Macbeth. Review by Barbara Lewis. The vocation of the HandleBards touring theatre company is to share a love of Shakespeare through sheer entertainment in settings that range from the classroom to country estates on summer’s evenings. That means comic relief prevails over tragic significance even when the chosen drama is The Scottish Play.
By Stephen McGrath • added recently on London Grip, performance, plays, theatre • Tags: Barbara Lewis, performance, plays, theatre