The touring National Theatre production of The Habit of Art (2009) by Alan Bennett was a massive disappointment. The play takes as its subject a meeting between Auden and Britten at the former's Oxford residence in 1972. This is a subject which fascinates me, partly for the personal reason that I went to the same school …
Category: theatre
The Sound of Music 2010
A wonderful evening out to see the stage version of The Sound of Music. This was a much better production than the last one we saw some years ago. In part this was due to the presence of Connie Fisher as Maria. Fisher was the winner of the 2006 BBC show How Do You Solve a …
Musical Notes
In terms of events attended over the past few months which I need to catch up with I find that music massively predominates. My own liking for particular composers, and above all Mahler, increases all the time: I am fortunate then that this year is the 150th Anniversary, and from September of this year to …
February 2010 Miscellany
Two more short Turgenev novels, included in one volume, both very good indeed. Rudin is the tale of an idealist young talker who inspires love in the young Natasha, but when it comes to a question of action (eloping with her in the face of her mother's disapproval) fails both Natasha and herself. The intensely moving, …
Cranford and Other Events
18th December 2007 There have now been two superb television series this year - Rome Part 2 (and I have written extensively of Rome) and now Cranford. It is hard to imagine two more superficially different series -Rome is blood and thunder, exploitation, over-the-top drama; Cranford quiet, understated. David (as in the painter) against Vermeer …
Three Courtesans
By one of those strange co-incidences in the course of six days we saw three very different productions, in three different art forms (theatre, cinema and opera), in all of which courtesans were the central characters. This was certainly completely unplanned, but provides the chance for a blog which includes some reflections on the whole …
Very Very Late August Miscellany
I have not written about the big D., my mood or what has been happening in my life for some months now. I was just preparing to do so at the very end of August and was ready to comment on how excellent July and August had been - the best August since my 'mood records' began …
July Miscellany (2009)
I re-read, with more concentration, Caryl Churchill's Fen (1983). It is a remarkable piece of work mainly concerned with the lives of a number of women in a Fen village. There are a couple of male characters - Mr Tewson, the landowner, and Frank, for whom one of the women, Val, is leaving her husband and …
June Miscellany (2009)
A scanty month dominated by another bout of Depression. In fact a week of recovery at the beginning June has only punctuated an episode which began in May and from which I am far from recovered. The problem in writing about Depression is that it is miserably re-iterative, solipsistic and impossible to make interesting. Depression …
May Miscellany
Let's start with the best. May was a remarkable month for original television films featuring two absolute gems, and what is more gems of completely different kinds. I have already written about Compulsion (see blog of 14th May); here I turn my attention to The Unloved co-written and directed by Samantha Morton and screened on Channel …
Moving Toyshop 