WORDS & PICTURES: Thomas Ovans views some intriguing video poems created by Rosemary Norman and Stuart Pound
Annie Get Your Gun. Review by Barbara Lewis. Irving Berlin’s “There’s No Business Like Show Business” is the perfect opening for a show and especially for the inaugural show at the Lavender Theatre on Epsom Downs.
Paula Rego: Crivelli’s Garden. Review by Graham Buchan. Two years ago Tate Britain mounted a major retrospective of Paula Rego’s work and it was a great exhibition. Now the National Gallery shows a single piece of Rego’s work, albeit a big one: Crivelli’s Garden is nearly ten metres wide and two metres high.
Poetry review – NIGHT LOGIC: Charles Rammelkamp reviews Matthew Gellman’s poems exploring personal and family memories
Poetry review – BY THE WAY: Michael Paul Hogan considers a collection of haiku by Kevin Bailey
Poetry review – TAKE CARE OF YOUR HOOVES DARLING: Pat Edwards is struck by the originality of this new pamphlet by Laura McKee
The Wind and The Rain. Finborough Theatre. Review by Barbara Lewis. A wistful story of Edinburgh medical students tussling with exams and affairs of the heart was one of the biggest international hits of the 1930s and a staple of British repertory theatre for decades after.
Candide, WNO. Review by Barbara Lewis. Too messy, too long, too anti-Semitic, too misogynistic: there are many reasons to avoid Bernstein’s Candide. And yet, director James Bonas and the Welsh National Opera bravely make a powerful case for staging this attack on the depravity of those in power and the futility of war.
Poetry review – IN ORBIT: D A Prince is intrigued and even unsettled by the way Glyn Edwards deals with themes of grief and love
As You Like It. Review by Barbara Lewis. The line “ripeness is all” from Shakespeare’s tragedy of old age Lear could easily be the motto of the RSC’s latest joyful version of one of his most youthful comedies of love.
Poetry review – IMPERFECT BEGINNINGS: Anne Ryland is touched by the powerful and painful poetry in this collection by Viv Fogel
Poetry review – LOCAL INTEREST: Pamela Johnson examines a collection in which Emily Hasler immerses herself and the reader in a landscape and its history
By Michael Bartholomew-Biggs • books, poetry reviews, year 2023 • Tags: books, Pamela Johnson, poetry