I usually find middle-brow fiction quite consoling. So, I turned to my bookshelves in search of something not too literary in the hope of distraction from these troubled times. Colin, a supernatural tale, published in two parts by E.F. Benson in 1923, seemed to fit the bill.
year 2017
Ruth Valentine admires the subtlety of Jane Draycott’s poetic effects.
Emma Lee wonders whether the poems in Clare Brant’s new collection do full justice to the ideas she wants to explore
D A Prince reviews a debut collection by Julie Hogg in which the poems have potential for performance as well as being successful on the page.
Playing with ‘The Rules’: Brian Docherty considers an anthology whose poems could be viewed as case studies in ekphrasis – but also as much more than that.
The Welsh National Opera version of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, established in the 70s by director Joachim Herz, on the basis of meticulous research, and now directed by Sarah Crisp, delivers pure emotion with devastating directness.
James Roderick Burns notes that Michael Crowley has taken some risks in order to negotiate a way through conflicting themes and historical viewpoints in his new collection
Either ultra-topical or else historic with contemporary resonance are the smart choices of subject matter for any playwright seeking to thrill an audience. The building of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world’s tallest structure, falls somewhere in between, given that it opened in 2010 and the maltreatment and suicides of its construction workers are old news.
Kate Bingham praises Joan Michelson’s eye for the details of life in a retirement home.
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.
London has become home to more members of the global super-rich than any other city in the world. Londoners might catch occasional glimpses of their presence when a super yacht moors by HMS Belfast on the Thames or another planning dispute over a basement excavation breaks out in the news.
From big budget to fringe to retro to quirky and ironic, musicals have swept the London stage as a feel-good formula destined to pack houses. A gothic rock musical that requires a team of cleaners to de-gore the stage after the first half and should include earplugs in the programme just could become a cult.
By Barbara Lewis • music, musicals, theatre, year 2017 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, musicals, theatre