FILM
Vincente Minnelli season
BFI Southbank from 3rd April, Tel: 020 7928 3232
When he was good he was very, very good and when he was bad he was torrid. That pretty much covers the career of Vincente Minnelli, who directed An American in Paris (six Oscars) and Gigi (nine Oscars) but also The Sandpiper (er… ). His career was as strong as it was busy—34 films in 33 years—and every one is showing in a BFI retrospective in April and May.
Although he’s largely remembered for musicals, including the masterly evocation of Americana that is Meet Me In St Louis, many of Minnelli’s non-singing pictures are even more powerful. His anatomisation of postwar male behaviour towards women in Some Came Running, in which Frank Sinatra returns to smalltown America with good-time gal Shirley MacLaine in tow, has rarely been bettered. Better yet is The Bad and the Beautiful, the gleaming, warts and all, insider job on the movies which beats even Sunset Boulevard to the top of the list of Hollywood bites-the-hand-that-feeds-it pictures. Look out also for a very rare screening of the visually audacious Yolanda and The Thief, featuring Fred Astaire dancing on a floor that looks for all the world as if it were painted by Bridget Riley.
David Benedict
PODCASTS
The New Yorker’s Political Scene/ Slate’s Political Gabfest
Available on iTunes
As the presidential election draws nearer, US politics junkies looking to up their fix should head over to iTunes. Two essential podcasts by American magazines await.
The New Yorker’s Political Scene podcast comes in weekly 15-minute episodes, with the magazine’s senior political writers expertly translating campaign trail wonkery into engaging discussion. There isn’t much heated debate here (all the contributors basically agree with each other on the issues), but for professionally produced, up-to-date analysis it is hard to beat.
For those who prefer their podcasts fun, argumentative and rambling, Slate’s Political Gabfest is the one to go for. The tone is less Radio 4 and more chatter between friends. Alongside debate about third-party presidential candidates and reforms to the Supreme Court come discussions on why Mormons are so good looking and whether it would be better to be a fish or a tree. (Two out of the three presenters said tree.) But whether gabbing about matters serious or not-so-serious, the presenters are always entertaining and incisive.
David Wolf
OPERA
The Flying Dutchman
English National Opera, 28th April-23rd May, Tel: 0871 911 0200
If ever there were an opera made for the London Coliseum it is Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman. This spring, London’s widest proscenium arch will frame the composer’s “complete unbroken web” of music and drama with the scale it deserves. The prototype for what would become Wagner’s mature philosophy of Gesamtkunstwerk—a total artistic experience—this is The Flying Dutchman’s first appearance at English National Opera in over a decade. It offers a compact (no Ring Cycle epics here) introduction to the great German composer, full of melody and orchestral atmospherics.
Wagner transforms Heinrich Heine’s satirical tale of a blasphemous sea captain—condemned to wander the seas unless redeemed by the love of a faithful woman—into a tragedy, turning the emotional screws of the story until they tremble. It’s a work of big arias and even bigger symbols, and a natural fit for director Jonathan Kent, master of bold stage imagery.
A real singing actress, Orla Boylan promises much as the Dutchman’s beloved Senta, and she is supported by a strong cast—one with the technique to satisfy Wagner regulars as well as the dramatic skills to woo newcomers to this unjustly neglected opera.
Alexandra Coghlan
ALBUM
Boys & Girls
by Alabama Shakes (Ato, 10th April)
A hat tip from the singer Adele gets you a long way. In November she blogged about this oddball backwoods blues outfit from Alabama. The same month they were signed to respected indie label Rough Trade and shot from obscurity to the much-watched American talkshow Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Now all their London gigs have sold out.
Internet chatter tends to centre on whether this “buzz band” is the real deal. Are they really from Alabama? (Yes). Are they properly “backwoods”? (They met in a high school psychology class). Do they sound authentic? (Yes). Their debut album Boys & Girls features none of the retro production tricks you hear with bands like The Black Keys—those lo-fi effects added to make the music sound like it was recorded in the band’s garage. The only thing “old sounding” about lead singer Brittany Howard is her mid-1960s R&B inflection, all tearful little flips and screams, like an Aretha up to her elbows in dirt. It’s not the packaging but the raw materials that make them sound like something from 1966—like the guitar, which opens songs with a cheeky little groove into which the rest of the band effortlessly fall.
Kate Mossman
FESTIVAL
Sleuths! The English Riviera Festival of Crime and Thriller Writing
Various venues in Torbay, 18th-21st April, Tel: 01803 665 800
Although most fictional detectives are eccentric loners, crime fans are an ever-expanding mass. Witness the cult following of Danish TV thriller The Killing or the popularity of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, which has spawned a film franchise and inspired a clothing line by H&M. But the Queen of Crime is still Agatha Christie, whose books have been translated into over 100 languages (a world record) and whose play The Mousetrap is the longest running (from 1952 to the present) in the West End.
The fourth annual Sleuths! crime-writing festival takes place over a long weekend in Christie’s hometown, Torbay. On the Sunday her grandson Mathew Prichard will present a talk about the letters she wrote while on a round-the-world trip in 1922.
This year’s headline act, however, is Colin Dexter, who created one of the best-known sleuths of his generation: Inspector Morse. Having killed off Morse in 2000, Dexter recently revisited the inspector’s youth in the prequel Endeavour, and he will talk about the crime-ridden Oxford of his books at the festival. Alongside the talks, there will be writing workshops, a mystery trail and a psychological thriller play performed by the Bijou Theatre Company.
Laura Marsh
BALLET
A Streetcar Named Desire
On tour nationwide from 11th April, Tel: 0844 412 4300
In the perpetual quest for inspiration for new ballets, Tennessee Williams’s play A Streetcar Named Desire has proved fertile ground. The tale of the colliding temperaments of brutish Stanley Kowalski and the fragile Blanche DuBois is a natural subject for dance, given the high levels of sexual tension, hothouse physicality and narrative momentum in which the play is steeped.
Scottish Ballet are the latest to take on this American classic, but it is John Neumeier’s potent version for Hamburg Ballet in 1983 against which all dance adaptations must be measured. While Neumeier used existing music from Prokoviev and Alfred Schnittke, the Scottish Ballet production features a specially commissioned jazz score by prolific television and theatre composer Peter Salem. At the helm are the American film and theatre director Nancy Meckler and Colombian-Belgian choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa.
This marks the final major commission from Ashley Page, outgoing artistic director of Scottish Ballet. I suspect he is going out not with a whimper but a bloody big bang.
Neil Norman
Vincente Minnelli season
BFI Southbank from 3rd April, Tel: 020 7928 3232
When he was good he was very, very good and when he was bad he was torrid. That pretty much covers the career of Vincente Minnelli, who directed An American in Paris (six Oscars) and Gigi (nine Oscars) but also The Sandpiper (er… ). His career was as strong as it was busy—34 films in 33 years—and every one is showing in a BFI retrospective in April and May.
Although he’s largely remembered for musicals, including the masterly evocation of Americana that is Meet Me In St Louis, many of Minnelli’s non-singing pictures are even more powerful. His anatomisation of postwar male behaviour towards women in Some Came Running, in which Frank Sinatra returns to smalltown America with good-time gal Shirley MacLaine in tow, has rarely been bettered. Better yet is The Bad and the Beautiful, the gleaming, warts and all, insider job on the movies which beats even Sunset Boulevard to the top of the list of Hollywood bites-the-hand-that-feeds-it pictures. Look out also for a very rare screening of the visually audacious Yolanda and The Thief, featuring Fred Astaire dancing on a floor that looks for all the world as if it were painted by Bridget Riley.
David Benedict
PODCASTS
The New Yorker’s Political Scene/ Slate’s Political Gabfest
Available on iTunes
As the presidential election draws nearer, US politics junkies looking to up their fix should head over to iTunes. Two essential podcasts by American magazines await.
The New Yorker’s Political Scene podcast comes in weekly 15-minute episodes, with the magazine’s senior political writers expertly translating campaign trail wonkery into engaging discussion. There isn’t much heated debate here (all the contributors basically agree with each other on the issues), but for professionally produced, up-to-date analysis it is hard to beat.
For those who prefer their podcasts fun, argumentative and rambling, Slate’s Political Gabfest is the one to go for. The tone is less Radio 4 and more chatter between friends. Alongside debate about third-party presidential candidates and reforms to the Supreme Court come discussions on why Mormons are so good looking and whether it would be better to be a fish or a tree. (Two out of the three presenters said tree.) But whether gabbing about matters serious or not-so-serious, the presenters are always entertaining and incisive.
David Wolf
OPERA
The Flying Dutchman
English National Opera, 28th April-23rd May, Tel: 0871 911 0200
If ever there were an opera made for the London Coliseum it is Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman. This spring, London’s widest proscenium arch will frame the composer’s “complete unbroken web” of music and drama with the scale it deserves. The prototype for what would become Wagner’s mature philosophy of Gesamtkunstwerk—a total artistic experience—this is The Flying Dutchman’s first appearance at English National Opera in over a decade. It offers a compact (no Ring Cycle epics here) introduction to the great German composer, full of melody and orchestral atmospherics.
Wagner transforms Heinrich Heine’s satirical tale of a blasphemous sea captain—condemned to wander the seas unless redeemed by the love of a faithful woman—into a tragedy, turning the emotional screws of the story until they tremble. It’s a work of big arias and even bigger symbols, and a natural fit for director Jonathan Kent, master of bold stage imagery.
A real singing actress, Orla Boylan promises much as the Dutchman’s beloved Senta, and she is supported by a strong cast—one with the technique to satisfy Wagner regulars as well as the dramatic skills to woo newcomers to this unjustly neglected opera.
Alexandra Coghlan
ALBUM
Boys & Girls
by Alabama Shakes (Ato, 10th April)
A hat tip from the singer Adele gets you a long way. In November she blogged about this oddball backwoods blues outfit from Alabama. The same month they were signed to respected indie label Rough Trade and shot from obscurity to the much-watched American talkshow Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Now all their London gigs have sold out.
Internet chatter tends to centre on whether this “buzz band” is the real deal. Are they really from Alabama? (Yes). Are they properly “backwoods”? (They met in a high school psychology class). Do they sound authentic? (Yes). Their debut album Boys & Girls features none of the retro production tricks you hear with bands like The Black Keys—those lo-fi effects added to make the music sound like it was recorded in the band’s garage. The only thing “old sounding” about lead singer Brittany Howard is her mid-1960s R&B inflection, all tearful little flips and screams, like an Aretha up to her elbows in dirt. It’s not the packaging but the raw materials that make them sound like something from 1966—like the guitar, which opens songs with a cheeky little groove into which the rest of the band effortlessly fall.
Kate Mossman
FESTIVAL
Sleuths! The English Riviera Festival of Crime and Thriller Writing
Various venues in Torbay, 18th-21st April, Tel: 01803 665 800
Although most fictional detectives are eccentric loners, crime fans are an ever-expanding mass. Witness the cult following of Danish TV thriller The Killing or the popularity of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, which has spawned a film franchise and inspired a clothing line by H&M. But the Queen of Crime is still Agatha Christie, whose books have been translated into over 100 languages (a world record) and whose play The Mousetrap is the longest running (from 1952 to the present) in the West End.
The fourth annual Sleuths! crime-writing festival takes place over a long weekend in Christie’s hometown, Torbay. On the Sunday her grandson Mathew Prichard will present a talk about the letters she wrote while on a round-the-world trip in 1922.
This year’s headline act, however, is Colin Dexter, who created one of the best-known sleuths of his generation: Inspector Morse. Having killed off Morse in 2000, Dexter recently revisited the inspector’s youth in the prequel Endeavour, and he will talk about the crime-ridden Oxford of his books at the festival. Alongside the talks, there will be writing workshops, a mystery trail and a psychological thriller play performed by the Bijou Theatre Company.
Laura Marsh
BALLET
A Streetcar Named Desire
On tour nationwide from 11th April, Tel: 0844 412 4300
In the perpetual quest for inspiration for new ballets, Tennessee Williams’s play A Streetcar Named Desire has proved fertile ground. The tale of the colliding temperaments of brutish Stanley Kowalski and the fragile Blanche DuBois is a natural subject for dance, given the high levels of sexual tension, hothouse physicality and narrative momentum in which the play is steeped.
Scottish Ballet are the latest to take on this American classic, but it is John Neumeier’s potent version for Hamburg Ballet in 1983 against which all dance adaptations must be measured. While Neumeier used existing music from Prokoviev and Alfred Schnittke, the Scottish Ballet production features a specially commissioned jazz score by prolific television and theatre composer Peter Salem. At the helm are the American film and theatre director Nancy Meckler and Colombian-Belgian choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa.
This marks the final major commission from Ashley Page, outgoing artistic director of Scottish Ballet. I suspect he is going out not with a whimper but a bloody big bang.
Neil Norman
