“I can see they’re acting, but I’m not sure why.” This was the initial reaction to Ballyturk of one of my theatregoing companions, but it essentially sums up most of the reviews I’ve read of Enda Walsh’s play recently staged at the National, having debuted at the Galway International Arts Festival earlier this year. I […]
Ok, I almost need to draw you a diagram for this one. You know Shakespeare, right? Macbeth, with the witches etc? Well Verdi wrote an opera of it in 1847. And then it was staged by a South African company at the Barbican. But they staged it as if they were a group of Congolese […]
At what point is it ok to call an exhibition out on being mainly an advertisement? This is how I felt about this one room exhibition on the John Lewis brand of department stores, which I briefly visited while at the Design Museum recently. The stated aims of the exhibitions are to mark 150 years […]
A lot of the reviews of this exhibition talk about how by trying to make a point of difference it positions itself firmly for those already familiar with Kahn’s work, but, coming with no preconceptions, I found it both interesting and educational. Louis Kahn was born in 1901 in what was then Russia but is […]
There is always a danger in reviving a play about youth in which the setting plays such an important role that it will lose its relevance, but this does not seem to have happened at all to Kenneth Lonergan’s play, which premiered in 1996. Granted, its 1982 setting was already over a decade old when […]
Toulouse-Lautrec’s prints and posters are almost one and the same with what we imagine of fin-de-siècle Paris, and I don’t think it would be overstating it to say that some of his images have been reproduced ad nauseum. I thought that this exhibition did a good job of acknowledging our collective image of the Paris […]
Despite the ever-present threat of weary legs and museum fatigue, one thing that is very nice about large museums is the ability to compare the different exhibitions and displays they deem worthy of presenting, and see what similarities and differences there are between them. This was especially the case when I was at the Museum […]
As most critics who have reviewed this exhibition have remarked, the Jeff Koons retrospective is a pretty good farewell to the Whitney’s current building on Madison Avenue. This is the largest survey of one artist’s work staged by the museum, with works over five of six floors, and I would imagine also the most expensive […]
What is with all the romantic comedies about abortion at the moment? I really came away from this plat with the same feeling I would about a film rom com: the complicated female character who has some things to deal with, the slightly flatter characterisation of the male character, who is supportive and nice and […]
Having read through a few reviews of the play, I don’t think I was the only one who disliked the 1970s setting of this staging of Richard III, currently on at Trafalgar Studios with Martin Freeman in the title role. In fact, not having purchased a programme on this occasion, I didn’t really understand the […]
