The Master Builder. Review by Barbara Lewis. On one of its many levels, Henrik Ibsen’s “The Master Builder” is an exploration of whether human beings can make things happen, good or bad, by sheer force of will. The alternative possibilities are that they are manipulated by dark, troll-like forces or that God is the supreme architect to whose designs a pious bourgeoisie must dutifully submit.
Barbara Lewis
About Barbara Lewis
Posts by Barbara Lewis:
The Banality of Evil. Review by Barbara Lewis. “The banality of evil” is a concept expounded by Hannah Arendt in her 1963 book on Adolf Eichmann, one of the organisers of the Nazi Holocaust. It refers to the theory that evil is committed not out of malice but out of thoughtlessness and it is highly relevant to our polarised times when people blindly follow trending ideas and theatre security has to be elevated around the staging of a Jewish play.
Fatal Monsters. Review by Barbara Lewis. Cleopatra VII was not just the Egyptian queen and legendary lover of Mark Antony, immortalised by Shakespeare, she represented the end of the Ptolemaic dynasty that endured from 305 BCE to around 40 BCE.
Ai Weiwei. Review by Barbara Lewis. This book accompanies the exhibitions Ai Weiwei: The Art of Defiance at Patrick Derom Gallery, Brussels, Belgium (September 19 – November 14) and Ai Weiwei: Life – Revolt – Poetry at the Emile Verhaeren Museum, Sint-Amands, Belgium (September 21– December 13)
2 White Guys Rapping. Review by Barbara Lewis. Simon Cowell declared Australians Macshane & Delby “the fastest free style rap” he’d ever seen when they reached the finals of Britain’s Got Talent 2026.
Still Life. Review by Barbara Lewis. One of the most romantic films ever made “Brief Encounter” was based on the 1936 play “Still Life” by Noel Coward, who, as a homosexual long before it was legal, knew all about the intense agony of forbidden love.
Giulio Cesare in Egitto. Review by Barbara Lewis. Baroque opera is about repeating things again and again, which means time stands still, bass-baritone, stage director/lighting designer – and master of ceremonies – Marcio da Silva tells the audience.
British Landscapes. Review by Barbara Lewis. In the depths of World War Two, the British government funded a project called “Recording Britain” that commissioned artists to capture landscapes and buildings at risk of disappearing.
Rinaldo. Review by Barbara Lewis. Handel’s Rinaldo, the first Italian-language opera created for a London audience, was an 18th-century hit about love, war and redemption. It was written at speed and performed with lavish special effects at a time when tales of crusading knights filled the popular imagination.
Dido and Aeneas. Review by Barbara Lewis. Singer and director Marcio da Silva opens his version of Purcell’s only fully sung opera with a request that the audience vote on who takes the role of Dido. It felt at first like a gimmick, at odds with high tragedy, and yet it takes on a serious purpose: we, like the gods, or the fates, or Purcell’s witches, are the arbitrary deciders of one human’s destiny.
Truth to Power Café. Review by Barbara Lewis. Jeremy Goldstein is celebrating the 20th anniversary of his company London Artists Projects, whose missions include taking his “Truth to Power Café” across the world.
Richard Dadd. Review by Barbara Lewis. A friend of the young Richard Dadd when he was one of the stars of the Royal Academy of Arts referred to his “rich voice as full of music as a joy-bell” and his “sportive humour, exciting innocent mirth”. A few years later, Dadd had stabbed his father to death during a psychotic episode. Dadd avoided hanging but spent the rest of his life locked away – first in the Bethlem Royal Hospital and then in Broadmoor.
By Barbara Lewis • added recently on London Grip, art, exhibitions, painting • Tags: art, Barbara Lewis, exhibitions, painting