Category Archives: Arts

Theatre

You could hear a mobile phone ring…

September 2, 2006 – 7:20 am

Over on My London Your London I’ve a review of In Extremis, the new play at the Globe about Aberlard and Heloise. The philosophy is brilliantly represented, ditto the conflict between Bernard and Aberlard, but it does fall down on the love story. Still, well worth seeing should you get the chance.

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Blogging/IT Books

Google Books for your pleasure

August 31, 2006 – 9:34 pm

Over on Blogcritics I’ve posted a little musing on the decision by Google Books to start posting complete books for download. It’s early days yet – they’re only doing books from the early 19th-century or before, but it is a potentially enormous step towards, as I say on BC – ending the “information drought” in which the human race has lived up to now.

At present, however, I don’t think there’s any listing of the books available – if you hear of one I’d like to know about it.

Here’s the Google release about the project, which does list a few – but if you find other listings please tell me about them.

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Theatre

A breath of air

August 24, 2006 – 8:15 am

Over on My London Your London I’ve a review of Techniques of Breathing in an Airlocked Space. If you know anything about Belarus politics you’ll know that there’s precious little free air for a theatre company there, but this is no heavy political piece, but a really delightful play in which the politics is beneath very human stories. Highly recommended.

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Miscellaneous Theatre

Titus Andronicus revived

August 17, 2006 – 10:21 am

The Guardian’s “history” piece today is the review from 1957 of Titus Andronicus, “given performance tonight for the first time in Stratford-on-Avon’s history”.

Peter Brook, who is responsible for sound, for stage pictures and for direction, has produced the play with dazzling simplicity out of a terrifying tawny darkness. The horrors were not laid on crudely. There was little running gore, and only the lopping of Titus’s hand is really sickening.
But the murderous spirit of the piece is marvellously caught with the shadows and the harsh shapes. Sir Laurence Olivier begins the much-wronged Titus on an almost jovial note, then rising like an Elizabethan Oedipus to the scene where, confronted with his lopped and ravished daughter Lavinia, he has his own hand amputated, and going on superbly through the scenes of feigned madness to the final Feast.

I struggle to see Olivier as Titus, but perhaps that is a failure of my imagination.

(My review of the recent Globe show.)

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Theatre

Sugar Mummies

August 14, 2006 – 7:26 am

Over on My London Your London I have up a review of Sugar Mummies, the Royal Court’s new play about female sex tourism. It has provoked vast numbers of column inches, little of it great informative value, on the issue, as Kate on Cruella has discussed.

Unfortunately the play is about the same standard as the discussion.I’m thinking about writing up something for CommentisFree – not quite sure if I’m ready for the storm however…

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Books

The new Phyrne Fisher is out!

August 10, 2006 – 9:59 pm

OK, I admit it, I’m a bit of a Kerry Greenwood nut. We’re not talking fine literature here, but just fun characters and fast-paced writing. A query on the old post led me to check Angus and Robertson (Australian bookstore) today, and although Greenwood’s website says Murder in the Dark won’t be out until next month, it appears to be available now. (And I picked up the new Corinne while I was at it…)

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