WordPress tells me that the first draft of this post is from January; I have started and stopped editing the same post again and again, every time feeling just as uninspired. It wasn’t that I wasn’t doing things – I was – it just was that I had little to say about them, no words … More Lately
It’s been raining endlessly, the Easter holidays a complete washout of miserably cold, dark, wet days, and delayed spring. I saw the Old Vic production of Fanny and Alexander again at the end of March, somewhat late into the run. As said before, I like seeing plays both during the previews and after the first … More Lately
This is the look of disappointment – a blizzard in March. On a Friday, when big, exciting plans involving traveling to London were in place, but had to be abandoned because of the five days of back winter carnage. Still, in Oxford we were lucky; in some parts of the country people are still without … More Lately
It’s been one of those mad glorious weeks that tend to roll around once or twice a year, filled with goodies of every kind. Thursday week ago I saw a fab concert performance of Rameau’s Dardanus by the English Touring Opera at the Sheldonian. As it happens, this is my only opera this autumn – … More Lately
I made several attempts at getting everything I saw in one mosaic. Turns out that I don’t have an pictures from the Ariadne auf Naxos I saw in the spring, and only a curtain photo of Boris Godunov. And quite possibly nothing at all from Nabucco (either that, or I’m blind). The two recitals that … More It was a very good year. In some respects.
On Friday evening, the Cabinet Office released the list of the Queen’s Birthday Honours, and we fans of Penelope Wilton finally had something to celebrate – she had been made a Dame, at long last. It was an honour well deserved, and much overdue. Wilton is one of those actresses who never seem to attract … More In praise of… Penelope Wilton
I read fom somewhere that two years ago, when the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse was opened, Eileen Atkins in character as Ellen Terry spoke the first words of Shakespeare on its stage. She did another run of this play, written by herself and based on the Shakespeare lectures Terry started giving after her acting career has … More On theatregoing
Shakespeare for absolute beginners 