After studying literature and painting, Robert B. Sherman, the elder half of one of the world’s most prolific song-writing duos, set about writing the great American novel, while his younger brother Richard, who had studied music, was working on the great American symphony.
About Barbara Lewis
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by Barbara Lewis • musicals, plays, theatre, year 2017 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, musicals, plays, theatre •
In a capitalist society, we’re nearly all hired hands, but the extent of the exploitation is more or less pernicious. Melvyn Bragg’s gritty, Northern, sweeping tale ultimately finds the best option for the ordinary man is to accept a pittance to work above ground rather than to toil in a futile World War I trench or in a narrow coal seam beneath the sea.
by Barbara Lewis • plays, theatre, year 2017 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, plays, theatre •
Art is at its most powerfully dramatic when it gives voice to the oppressed. By using the device of a play within a play to utmost effect, The Island communicates the oppression of a recent generation by drawing on tragic defiance from classical times.
by Barbara Lewis • plays, theatre, year 2017 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, plays, theatre •
Richard III manages to be at once resounding royal propaganda and an unsettling reminder of the fragility of the status quo given Elizabeth I’s lack of an heir: the Tudors had rescued the kingdom from the murderous House of York, but they hadn’t secured the future for long.
by Barbara Lewis • books, psychotherapy, year 2017 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, books, poetry, psychotherapy •
Sarah Leavesley’s imaginary Claire is advised to write by a psychiatrist, as doctor and patient try to piece together a life as shattered as the glass in a kaleidoscope.
by Barbara Lewis • exhibitions, history, year 2017 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, exhibitions, history •
Posterity remembers Emma Hamilton as the mistress of Nelson. The reality is her achievements in the society salon were in their way as brave and out of the ordinary as his naval exploits.
by Barbara Lewis • art, books, year 2017 • Tags: art, art history, Barbara Lewis, books, painting •
The cliché is that first novels are always autobiographical. Dutch writer Jeroen Blokhuis instead hides behind the biographical in his verbal portrait of one of the greatest painters his nation has produced.
by Barbara Lewis • history, society, year 2017 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, history, society •
Le Corbusier has mostly gone down in history as a visionary Swiss urban planner. For the thousands forcibly evicted from District Six in Cape Town, he has a more sinister resonance as the proponent of “the surgical method” – as mentioned in the notorious apartheid-era Group Areas Act – of sweeping away what he saw as chaos and disorder.
by Barbara Lewis • art, drawing, exhibitions, installations, painting, year 2016 • Tags: art, Barbara Lewis, drawing, exhibitions, installations •
From stylised art nouveau temptresses to giant Tintin cartoons, Brussels has an established tradition of putting art on the outside of its buildings as well as inside. The capital’s newest gallery in a former brewery in Molenbeek – the neighbourhood notorious as a breeding ground of the Paris and Brussels terror attacks – captures that spirit.
by Barbara Lewis • art, drawing, exhibitions, painting, year 2016 • Tags: art, art history, Barbara Lewis, drawing, exhibitions •
As if an extraordinary imagination for fantastic, unsettling monsters and a genius ahead of his time for sensitive, naturalistic depictions of ordinary people weren’t enough, Hieronymous Bosch also had a modern knack for successful branding.
by Barbara Lewis • jazz, music, performance, society, theatre, year 2016 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, jazz, music, performance, society •
Northern Ireland’s permanent representation in Brussels periodically brings to the capital of Europe a sample of Northern Irish culture in a spirit of cross-cultural exchange that risks being disrupted in the event of a Brexit.
by Barbara Lewis • bands, music, performance, theatre, year 2017 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, music, performance, theatre •
Four women and five men from Aberdeen University’s A Cappella Society Aberpella tell us they thought they were being terribly witty in choosing the title “50 Tones of Grey” as a reference to the shades of the sky and stone of their university city.