Catherine Bennett resumes the weekly look at the performing arts world, with the sad end of Jerusalem, the luck of a cabbie, and French revolt. Do you hear the people sing?
Adam Alcock reviews Nigel Kennedy playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons and his own Four Elements at York Opera House.
Catherine Bennett highlights the trends in the performing arts world today.
Jonathan Cridford reviews 'Ghosts', one of the Freshers' plays for this year.
The Pantomime season is busier and more lucrative than ever. Unfortunately for the cultural snobs amongst us, the craze for ‘posh panto’ is definitely over, with eminent wits and talents of our time such as Stephen Fry as playwright and Sir Ian McKellen as Widow Twankey (in the Old Vic’s production of Aladdin in 2004) taking a step back to make way for other illustrious wits and talents, such as Steve McFadden from EastEnders. McFadden will be taking away the tidy sum of £200,000 for his run as Captain Hook at the New Victoria Theatre in Woking, considerably more than ex-Baywatch star Pamela Anderson and the iconic David Hasselhoff in their own dabbles into pantomime. The ridiculously-quiffed twins Jedward have created their own bespoke panto, entitled, originally, Jedward and the Beanstalk. They auditioned 800 children to be cast in the run at Dublin’s Olympia Theatre.
Cho Chang and Lavender Brown from the Harry Potter films (let’s be fair to them and give them their real names: Katie Leung and Jessie Cave) have been cast in things less blockbuster and more bodice-buster. Leung is to be the lead in Wild Swans at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, before transferring to the Young Vic in April. Cave has been cast as Biddy in the new film adaptation of Great Expectations, alongside Potter co-stars Helena Bonham-Carter, Ralph Fiennes and Robbie Coltrane. Will they go on to reach such giddy heights as to earn abbreviations from their adoring fans, à la RPattz?
A Guinness world record for the most number of people in a Nativity has possible been broken by a small church in Somerset. 788 local residents trod the boards as a huge array of shepherds, angels and wise men – unfortunately there wasn’t anyone left to actually watch the show.
Mark Ravenhill has controversially been named as the new playwright-in-residence at the RSC, Stratford. Have you ever heard of Mark Ravenhill? Read (or see) Mother Clap’s Molly House, set both in an eighteenth century brothel and modern day London in the midst of the new gay subculture. Three words: dildos, bum-sex, orgies. Even those three words don’t do justice to just how staggeringly rude the play is, and just how flabbergasted audiences were when they came out of the National Theatre’s Nicholas Hytner-directed production. Ravenhill burst onto the theatrical scene with Shopping and Fucking (gay gang-rape of a minor, oral sex, prostitution, lots of drugs – it’s not controversial without crack – and stealing – cue cries of ‘the glamorization of thievery’), and has succeeded in shocking the public pretty much continuously ever since. I, for one, am hugely interested as to how Ravenhill will deal with some of the bawdy bard’s work.
Chris Goode’s blog, Thompson’s Bank of Communicable Desire, is set to stop after five and a half years of insight into British theatre. Chris Goode announced that he would no longer write the blog last Wednesday, which although it signals a great loss in terms of online reading for theatre buffs, it also means that Goode shall perhaps spend a little less time writing and a little more time creating work as inventive and exciting as Keep Breathing at the Drum in Plymouth.
Long-standing theatre critic for the Guardian, Michael Billington, is celebrating forty years at the national newspaper. He’ll be on live webchat on the Guardian website in the afternoon of the 15th December – log on to the theatre section now to ask him your questions.
You must log in to submit a comment.
