Archive: 28 June – 4 July 2010
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Friday 2 July 2010
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Free for all ... The Greenwich and Docklands International festival
The weather looks fair, and if you want a day out on Saturday let me recommend Hat Fair. It's a terrific street arts festival which takes over the entire town, and I've never been and not felt all the better for it. As good as a tonic, and it's all free. As are all the events in the Greenwich and Docklands International festival, which offers a cornucopia of choice over the weekend, including the fantastic annual Dancing City at Canary Wharf; less dancing, more about the occupation of the commercial sector by art. Continue reading...
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Thursday 1 July 2010
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Stage fright ... Virginia Woolf never intended her play Freshwater for performance. Photograph: AP
Over the past few weeks, masochists have been able to gawp at the much-delayed New York debut of Ayn Rand's 1934 drama Ideal. This endless array of stilted dialogue and pointless pageantry centres on Kay Gonda, a movie star on the run for murder. She calls on six of her greatest fans, seeking someone who adores her enough to offer shelter. Instead of bringing a sensible hostess gift such as flowers or a nice Chilean red, however, she arrives at each door with lectures on the supremacy of art. Even 10 minutes in, my rational self-interest told me to flee. Continue reading...
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Wednesday 30 June 2010
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I talked last week about how critics and performers can develop a dialogue with each other. Clearly not everyone was paying attention.
According to the Time Out New York blog, the city's venue PS122 is having a spot of bother with its show Octoroon. After some apparent difficulties in rehearsals, one of the performers in the show sent a somewhat indelicately worded email to his friends about the process. Somehow, this message found its way to Village Voice, which promptly posted it on its blog in all its incendiary glory. Continue reading...
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Christopher Webster in Buffini's Silence at Theatre by the Lake. Photograph: Keith Pattison
Two coincidences take my mind soaring up the M6 to Cumbria. What a pity the rest of me has not got there yet to see the latest shows at one of the most memorably positioned theatrical venues in Britain, Keswick's Theatre by the Lake.
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Tuesday 29 June 2010
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Overexposure? ... Dries Verhoeven's Life Streaming, part of the London International Festival of Theatre
At BAC's One-On-One festival, which begins next week, anyone wishing to will be able to get completely naked and be bathed, fed and held by artist Adrian Howells in a show called The Pleasure of Being. I've had a number of intimate theatrical encounters with Howells over the years; he has handled both my dirty washing and my dirty feet. We have lain together on a bed in the name of art. Continue reading...
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The road less travelled ... UK theatre companies produced 13,400 tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2009. Photograph: Luke Macgregor/Reuters
As the financial climate gets ever chillier, much has been said about the need for theatre companies to band together if they are to survive the coming cuts. So it is good to see that a new spirit of cooperation is now developing across the industry – albeit in response to an entirely different climate. The curiously named Julie's Bicycle – an organisation that exists to help the creative industries lower their greenhouse gas emissions – has recently announced the launch of a "UK-wide theatre programme" aimed at helping theatres play their part in the fight against climate change. Continue reading...
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Monday 28 June 2010
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Reality bites ... Lee Mead won his West End role as Joseph on a TV talent show. Photograph: Getty
Apparently we are now living in a new theatrical golden age. The West End is booming. New classless audiences are flocking to the National, courtesy of the Travelex £10 ticket scheme. There are more new plays being performed than ever before, with thrusting new writers appearing and being celebrated daily. Exciting performance and site-specific groups are springing up in catacombs and abandoned glue factories everywhere. The theatre god is in her heaven and all is right with the world.
An alternative version might be that the whole thing is a cosy conspiracy of mediocrity perpetrated by Oxbridge directors, venal producers and supine critics foisting their suspect taste on the culturally browbeaten theatre-going public. Continue reading...