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
Here’s a quick round-up of some things that have been happening this month. Culture-wise this is promising to be a good year – I have tickets booked to hear the OAE play some Beethoven with Marin Alsop, Stephen Beresford’s adaptation of Fanny and Alexander starring Penelope Wilton opens for previews in February, later in the … More New Year’s things
It’s been a while. In fact, it’s been a whole month since I even looked at this blog. I haven’t gone away though – it just so happens that December is always rather busy. And I’m good at wasting time – for example, I spent one whole weekend painting Nutcracker illustrations, with results that I … More This year
When the Almeida Theatre’s Hamlet, directed by Robert Icke, opened in February I didn’t really register it. By the summer I had a vague idea that it was a hit and had had great reviews, but that’s about it. One of my job perks is that there is, couple times a year, the odd free … More Hamlet in Harold Pinter Theatre
I saw Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, directed by James Macdonald at the Harold Pinter Theatre, during the last week of previews, and have a ticket to see it again in April; I’d like to say that I’m sophisticated enough to pick such dates so that I can compare the performances etc. but … More Lately, or Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf
There haven’t been many weeks like this. Over the space of just seven days, I have seen Renee Fleming’s farewell performance at the Royal Opera, watched Simon Russell Beale play Prospero in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s The Tempest, and finally listened to Martha Argerich play Prokofiev in the Sheldonian. I have been trying to write … More Lately
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 