Mainly Opera and Ballet
Timon is a tragic figure who fails utterly to understand himself, and therefore cannot come close to understanding others. His vast wealth is from lands he owns and mortgages, and he spends it eagerly on his acquaintances along with others come to him for help. When there is no more left he abandons the city, and then chances …
The story behind this play is that before he died, Oedipus cursed his sons, and they ended up killing one another in a battle for Thebes. The city is now ruled by Creon, brother to Oedipus’s mother/wife Jocasta. Creon has commanded that one of the two dead brothers — he who ruled the city and exiled his brother …
This powerful new play by Mike Leigh leaves a haunting sense of despair after the fine cast has brought to life characters who just don’t get it. It starts in 1957 when the Russians put up Sputnik, and the doctor’s son is working for Ferranti, designing computers, whatever they are. Exciting times, yet Lesley Manville’s Dorothy and …
On September 9th, 2001 Ahmed Shah Massoud (aka The Lion of Panjshir) was assassinated by two suicide bombers — Al Qaeda agents posing as journalists. Two days later more suicide bombers crashed planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The rest is history, as they say
This riveting play by Terence Rattigan had the misfortune to open in June 1939, shortly before war was declared, and when the country’s mood rapidly changed it was taken off. … It’s been somewhat ignored for that reason, but this production and cast do it full justice, and I recommend booking tickets before word gets out.
Stalin loved this play by Mikhail Bulgakov about the aftermath of the revolution in 1917. It’s set in Bulgakov’s home town of Kiev … He’d served as a doctor during the second half of the First World War, and writing later about the years between 1917 and 1920 he said
The powerful people who attract the most contempt are … Gordon Brown, and to a slightly lesser extent the previous Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan,
… in the end [this is] a play about Auden, Britten and indeed Bennett himself, and as usual his dialogue is wonderfully effective.
Nor indeed do we feel any sympathy with Mother Courage herself, who was brilliantly played by Fiona Shaw.
In this performance, Phèdre was played by Helen Mirren, portraying an insecure woman only too conscious of her own inadequacies.
Throughout the play there are sexual undertones.
