Cultural Life: Sheila Hancock, Actress

Friday, 2 May 2008

Dominic Dromgoole: Shakespeare's rule-breaker

Thursday, 1 May 2008

"Excuse the mess," says Dominic Dromgoole. His apology for disorder – an office strewn with the detritus of his activity as artistic director of the Globe – is uncharacteristic. Dromgoole, more typically, celebrates mess – or, as he also calls it, chaos, diversity, ragbaggery. His penchant for the loose and wild is partly philosophical, partly genetic. "There have been naughty and renegade Dromgooles throughout history – we even have a pirate in the family."

The ice breakers: B-boys are taking their craft into top theatres

Monday, 28 April 2008

You might be popping, flaring, waving or freezing. Or maybe you're locking or windmilling, head-spinning or top rocking. All the same, you'd be hip-hop dancing, or b-boying. It's more than a quarter of a century since hip-hop was spawned in New York and the rap music that is its signature in the 21st century is now a multi-million dollar industry, represented by rhyming global superstars who slurp Cristal and drip with jewellery.

Why British Asians don't get the arts and don't want to either

Monday, 21 April 2008

What Good Are the Arts? was the title of a book by John Carey, whose iconoclastic lectures captivated me long ago when I was struggling to adapt to the peculiarly musky atmosphere of Oxford. Grandiloquent claims that the arts fill a God-shaped hole, rouse rapture, or set down ultimate moral templates are, Carey writes, assumptions or exaggerations: "The notion of artworks as sacred implies that their value is absolute and universal. Value, it seems evident, is not intrinsic in objects, but attributed to them by whoever is doing the valuing."

Katie Mitchell: 'I'd hate to hang around making theatre when they're tired of it'

Thursday, 17 April 2008

Katie Mitchell is sitting in a draughty church hall in south London rhapsodising about a surprisingly glamorous formative influence. "I used to love watching Come Dancing," she says, starry-eyed, her half-eaten sandwich poised in mid-air. "All those women in amazing frocks with fluffy yellow frills. At its heart, it's such a beautiful metaphor for men and women together." By the time these frills and footwork have undergone the Mitchell treatment, of course, they are largely unrecognisable: think of her coquettish foxtrotting chorus in Iphigenia at Aulis, her mismatched, passionless couples doing the tango in The Seagull and, most recently, her bereft women of Troy dancing a frenetic, desperate quickstep with only the ghost of their partner to guide them.

British choreographers are now sought after the world over – so what's their secret?

Thursday, 10 April 2008

Over the next few months, some of Britain's most successful choreographers will be unveiling new work. Matthew Bourne, Wayne McGregor, Christopher Wheeldon and Akram Khan have international reach: many of these works will be seen across the globe. All four have an interest in crossing styles: from ballet or Indian classical to modern dance. At the same time, they've looked for a public beyond the traditional dance audience. And they're all in demand, worldwide.

Edna O'Brien's latest offering has made it to the stage in full, flaming glory

Thursday, 10 April 2008

When Edna O'Brien's first novel, The Country Girls, was published in 1960, her parish priest ordered his congregation to hand over their copies to be burned publicly in the chapel grounds. When its sequel, The Lonely Girl, appeared, her mother went through it, assiduously inking out any offending words. It doesn't really bear thinking about what they would have made of Triptych, O'Brien's latest play about a vampiric wife, her off-the-rails teenage daughter and her husband's sultry mistress, with its lashings of adulterous and underage sex and liberal sprinkling of the worst swear words in the book.

The tall guy: Jeff Goldblum gets personal

Tuesday, 8 April 2008

Film stars are supposed to be smaller in real life than you think they'll be, but Jeff Goldblum measures fully 6ft 4.5in tall. That doesn't mean an awful lot until you actually stand near him: then he towers above you, looming giraffe-like in doorways, with angular knees and elbows poking out of all corners of the sofa, like a large spider trying to fit into a matchbox.

Behind the scenes: Bob Crowley's set designs have wowed audiences the world over

Thursday, 3 April 2008

From the African jungle where Tarzan swings through the trees to the pea-souper skies of London where Mary Poppins floats on high, Bob Crowley's set designs have been the backdrop for some of the biggest theatrical hits to grace the West End and Broadway.

First Impression: 'Art', Wyndham's Theatre, London, November 1996

Friday, 28 March 2008

A close friend marries someone whose virtues are entirely invisible to you. It's the artful stroke of 'Art' to re-imagine that situation, replacing the woman who comes between male friends with a modern painting.