One of the main reasons to stay in London in the summer is the Proms. I admit that I am in love with the Royal Albert Hall. There is something about sitting in this circular, wedding cake structure that has an effect on the psyche.
theatre
Marcus Brigstocke makes his play-writing and directorial debut as actors Bruce and Sam Alexander, father and son in real life, give drama and poignancy to a story that begins with the funeral of the father.
Opera and cabaret singer Melinda Hughes lost her mother in June. Two months on, she has immortalised her in a song and is finding catharsis in a satirical take on the world.
Don Carlo – or Don Carlos – in history was the mentally unstable son of Philip II of Spain whose brief betrothal to the woman his father later married and contacts with Protestant rebels in the Low Countries provided ammunition for the “black legend” propaganda whipped up by the opponents of his father’s rule.
Chilean singer-songwriter, poet, cult figure Violeta Parra’s most famous work “Gracias a la vida” can be viewed as an outpouring of gratitude – or as a suicide note.
Joy Wilkinson’s latest play tells the story of a troupe of fictional women fighters scrabbling to earn a living in the real-life world of lady’s boxing in Victorian London and become world champion.
The idea of this drama came from an interview with a Kurdish soldier who had fled to England seeking asylum.
Almost exactly 100 years ago on April 13, in Amritsar, the British Indian Army fired into a crowd of unarmed Punjabis, killing and harming hundreds. Director Phil Wilmott marks this appalling example of man’s inhumanity to man by transporting Othello from Venice and Cyprus to the India of the British Raj.
This was the first time I had seen this operetta and the idea of Viennese kitsch did not excite me. Director Max Webster clearly shares my antipathy for schlock. His production is a wonderful reframing of the story from a post #MeToo perspective.
Medea is perhaps the most potent myth for the #MeToo generations. First-performed in 431 BC, Euripides’ drama has had countless interpreters.
Five hundred years ago, Peckham was green and pleasant. By the 1980s and 1990s, when two of its most famous fictional characters Del Boy and Rodney Trotter were plying their dodgy wares, even the pigeons wanted to be elsewhere, or so Rodney tells us.
Wendy Klein enjoys Keith Hutson’s artful recapturing of the atmosphere of Music Hall
By Michael Bartholomew-Biggs • books, comedy, poetry reviews • Tags: books, poetry, Wendy Klein