Love Goddess. Review by Barbara Lewis. Rita Hayworth was considered one of the most beautiful women of her day, was Fred Astaire’s favourite dance partner, and was married five times, including to Orson Welles, the man she is believed to have truly loved. She also suffered from Alzheimer’s for two decades before being diagnosed.
theatre
An Anatomy of Melancholy. Review by Julia Pascal. This is one of the most extraordinary pieces of theatre that I have ever seen. The Pit is transformed into a laboratory with audience sitting in a circle watching the interplay between science, art, music, psychiatry and clinical analysis, in a concept that links the writings of Shakespeare’s contemporary, John Burton, with Freud and 2022 explorations into the mind.
The Coral by Georg Kaiser. Review by Julia Pascal. The work explores the concept of the doppelganger and the fascination for the new science of psychiatry as well as interrogating capitalism itself.
Love’s Labour’s Lost. Review by Barbara Lewis. In our angst-ridden age, the thirst for the tonic of musical theatre seems almost unquenchable. In a production that acknowledges so vividly the follies of the supposedly scholarly elite, the rustics dazzle.
Prom 41 Wednesday 17 August 2022. Review by Julia Pascal. The star of the evening was Behzod Abduraimov in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1. If you shut your eyes you might think that four hands were playing the piano not two.
Poetry review – PERFORMANCE RITES: James Roderick Burns admires Barry Smith’s exploration of the overlap between art and nature
Prom 20. Review by Julia Pascal. The night of the male Modernists opened with a tribute to Harrison Birtwistle’s Sonance Severance 2000, a three minute composition which is as huge in its effect as it is brief in its length.
My Fair Lady. English National Opera. Review by Julia Pascal. My Fair Lady, the musical version of George Bernard Shaw’s 1912 play Pygmalion is staged at the English National Opera this summer.
The Excursions of Mr Broucek. Review by Barbara Lewis. The Excursions of Mr Broucek is an opera like no other – or as Wasfi Kani, the founder and power behind the bold, brave and never daunted Grange Park Opera, puts it: “Cosi fan Tutti it isn’t.”
As You Like It. Review by Barbara Lewis. Shakespeare famously was for all time, and yet this version of As You Like It feels uniquely relevant to our age.
Lillias White Sings Broadway. Review by Barbara Lewis. The pan-damn-demic, as Broadway singer Lillias White puts it, has abated sufficiently for her to bring her considerable presence to cosy, atmospheric venues, including London’s Crazy Coqs.
Poetry review – TITS ON THE MOON: Charles Rammelkamp reviews a selection of diverting poems by Dessa
By Michael Bartholomew-Biggs • books, performance, poetry reviews, year 2022 • Tags: books, Charles Rammelkamp, performance, poetry