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.
Barbara Lewis
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.
By Barbara Lewis • comedy, plays, playwrights, theatre, year 2023 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, comedy, plays, playwrights, theatre
The Mikado, Wilton’s Music Hall. Review by Barbara Lewis. In 1885, when the Mikado began delighting audiences, it was expedient to set the splendidly silly light opera in Japan to give it maximum freedom to satirise British institutions. Director Sasha Regan travels in time not space to send up a 1950s public school camping trip, in its way as exotic as imperial Japan.
By Barbara Lewis • comedy, music, musicals, theatre, year 2023 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, comedy, music, musicals, theatre
Gypsy, The Mill at Sonning. Review by Barbara Lewis. “Mothers out!” roars the vaudeville maestro Uncle Jocky at the start of what has been fondly dubbed “the mother of all musicals”. But Gypsy Rose Lee is one mother who is staying right beside the daughters she is determined to thrust on the stage for the career she might have had had she not been born too soon or started too late.
By Barbara Lewis • music, musicals, theatre, year 2023 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, music, musicals, theatre
Archaeological Museum of Heraklion and Palace of Knossos. By Barbara Lewis. Regarded as the first advanced civilisation in Europe, Minoan Crete dated from around 3000 BC until around 1100 BC, preceding ancient Greece.
By Barbara Lewis • exhibitions, history, year 2023 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, exhibitions, history
Pussycat in Memory of Darkness. Review by Barbara Lewis. Kristin Milward’s performance of Pussycat in Memory of Darkness in Kyiv in December was the first visiting foreign production in the capital since the Russian invasion began in February last year.
By Barbara Lewis • plays, playwrights, theatre, year 2023 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, plays, playwrights, theatre
Peter Doig, The Courtauld Gallery. Review by Barbara Lewis. Peter Doig never tries to create real spaces, only painted spaces, we learn at the beginning of the Courtauld’s exhibition of some of his most recent work, including paintings created since his move from Trinidad to London in 2021.
By Barbara Lewis • art, drawing, exhibitions, painting, year 2023 • Tags: art, Barbara Lewis, drawing, exhibitions
Why We Sing, by Julia Hollander. Review by Barbara Lewis. Sometimes we sing because we are happy. More importantly, we sing to make ourselves happy – and not just in a good mood, but healthier, saner and part of a more cohesive community.
By Barbara Lewis • books, psychology, society, year 2023 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, books, psychology, society
Bright and Deadly Things. Review by Barbara Lewis. Lexie Elliott is far from the first to make the point that conventional logic has its limitations. But she stands apart from all the literature majors that have defended their visceral thinking in that she earned authority as an Oxford theoretical physicist and then a City banker before reinventing herself as a best-selling writer.
By Barbara Lewis • books, fiction, year 2023 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, books, fiction
Museum of New Zealand/Te Papa Tongarewa. Review by Barbara Lewis. In their desperation to get New Zealand’s founding document signed, the British in undue haste drew up a Maori version of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi that is disputed to this day.
By Barbara Lewis • art, exhibitions, history, installations, painting, politics, society, textiles, travel, year 2023 • Tags: art, Barbara Lewis, exhibitions, history, installations, painting, textiles
The Human Voice, Charing Cross Theatre. Review by Barbara Lewis. It’s surely a temptation for today’s directors of Poulenc and Cocteau’s La Voix Humaine, or The Human Voice in this English version, to transpose it to the world of mobile phones. It’s one director Alejandro Bonatto wisely resists.
By Barbara Lewis • music, plays, theatre, year 2022 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, music, plays, theatre
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.
By Barbara Lewis • plays, theatre, year 2023 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, plays, theatre