http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/?service=Rss http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/la-clique-roundhouse-london-1830917.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/la-clique-roundhouse-london-1830917.html ]]> <p> I first saw this wonderfully funny comic-cabaret extravaganza when it had its "first" London premiere at the Hippodrome in 2008. </p> Reviews Mon, 30 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/nation-national-theatre-londonbrthe-line-arcola-londonbrthe-priory-royal-court-london-1830348.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/nation-national-theatre-londonbrthe-line-arcola-londonbrthe-priory-royal-court-london-1830348.html <p>The National Theatre is faced with a mission impossible: trying to match its own track record. War Horse, its previous family show, featured some of the most breathtaking puppetry I've seen, and the production's West End transfer remains a phenomenal hit more than two years later.</p> Reviews Sun, 29 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/sidi-larbi-cherkaouishantala-shivalingappa-lilian-baylis-studio-londonbrakram-khannitin-sawhney-sadlers-wells-london-1830353.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/sidi-larbi-cherkaouishantala-shivalingappa-lilian-baylis-studio-londonbrakram-khannitin-sawhney-sadlers-wells-london-1830353.html <p>What we need, said the song, is "a great big melting pot". At the time Blue Mink's record was in the charts, it came across as well-intentioned, hopeless optimism. </p> Reviews Sun, 29 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/party-of-the-week-legends-in-their-own-lunchtime-1828426.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/party-of-the-week-legends-in-their-own-lunchtime-1828426.html ]]> <p>Lenny Henry was accompanied by his wife Dawn French to the London Evening Standard Theatre Awards at the Royal Opera House, where he won the Best Newcomer prize for his lead role in Othello. </p> Features Fri, 27 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/first-impressions-annie-get-your-gun-imperial-theatre-new-york-1946-1828428.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/first-impressions-annie-get-your-gun-imperial-theatre-new-york-1946-1828428.html ]]> <p>A good professional Broadway musical. Annie Get Your Gun has a pleasant score by Irving Berlin and it has Ethel Merman to roll her eyes and to shout down the rafters. The colours are pretty, the dancing is amiable and unaffected, and Broadway by this time is well used to a book which doesn't get anywhere in particular. Annie, in short, is an agreeable evening on the town.</p> Features Fri, 27 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/curtain-rises-on-new-dawn-for-iraqi-theatre-1828778.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/curtain-rises-on-new-dawn-for-iraqi-theatre-1828778.html ]]> <p>As the clock strikes eight, the curtain is raised at the Iraqi National Theatre in what actors hope is a return to regular night-time performances, six and a half years after the US invasion.</p> Middle East Fri, 27 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/how-peter-pan-grew-up-1827502.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/how-peter-pan-grew-up-1827502.html ]]> <p> When Michael Jackson died earlier this year, the theatre director Trevor Nunn leapt into print with a brilliant article about his bizarre encounter in Sydney in 1987 with the troubled King of Pop. </p> Features Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:00:53 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/nation-national-theatre-london-1827505.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/nation-national-theatre-london-1827505.html <p>With a good deal of theatrical fare designed for family consumption at Christmas, you can confidently check your brains in at the cloakroom and sit back expecting a certain end-of-term laxity on the artistic front. But not at the National Theatre where, if anything, the creative excellence has tended to be intensified in Yuletide-born shows such as War Horse, Coram Boy, and pre-eminently the adaptation of Philip Pullman's masterpiece, His Dark Materials.</p> Reviews Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/news/dont-believe-the-hype-theatre-in-trouble-over-misleading-billboard-1827622.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/news/dont-believe-the-hype-theatre-in-trouble-over-misleading-billboard-1827622.html ]]> <p>A West End theatre could be the first to come a cropper over the practice of taking selective quotations from reviews to give the misleading impression that critics have been raving about the production.</p> News Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/rumpelstiltskin--bcmg-bates-mill-huddersfield-1827507.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/rumpelstiltskin--bcmg-bates-mill-huddersfield-1827507.html ]]> <p>Much more than just music describing a story, and a far cry from Disney's Fantasia, David Sawer's enthralling new music-mime piece, Rumpelstiltskin, is a cross between a short narrative ballet and a silent movie with a striking live soundtrack. In choosing to illustrate this particular Grimm Brothers' fable, in which a miller's idle boast that his daughter can spin straw into gold sets in motion a thread of catastrophic consequences, Sawer has himself struck gold.</p> Reviews Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/the-fahrenheit-twins-pit-barbican-london-1826781.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/the-fahrenheit-twins-pit-barbican-london-1826781.html ]]> <p>I was once in Los Angeles in mid-December, reporting (for this paper) on Andrew Lloyd Webber's very imaginatively revamped version of Sunset Boulevard starring Glenn Close. The surprising thing about LA at such a season is the contrast between the mellow clemency of the climate and the fact that the vast majority of the private homes in their own large grounds are covered with artificial "Holiday Season" snow like some transatlantic Narnia in which Aslan has been toppled as deity by Perry Como. </p> Reviews Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/the-line-arcola-theatre-london-1826783.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/the-line-arcola-theatre-london-1826783.html <p>The most recent play in which Timberlake Wertenbaker regards art from a feminist perspective, The Line, deals with the relationship of Degas and his protégée, Suzanne Valadon. Despite its claim to a new look at the past, however, dramatically the play is stiff and stuffy. If an earnest, provincial art school decided to put on an end-of-term entertainment, this would be just the ticket.</p> Reviews Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/first-night-nation-olivier-nt-1827029.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/first-night-nation-olivier-nt-1827029.html <p>With a good deal of theatrical fare designed for family consumption at Christmas, you can confidently check your brains in at the cloakroom and sit back expecting a certain end-of-term laxity on the artistic front. But not at the National Theatre where, if anything, the creative excellence has tended to be intensified and the intellectual and emotional challenge turned even more bracing in Yuletide shows such as War Horse, Coram Boy, and pre-eminently the adaptation of Philip Pullman's masterpiece His Dark Materials.</p> Reviews Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/vampires-from-freak-to-chic-1826736.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/vampires-from-freak-to-chic-1826736.html ]]> <p> In literature vampires are terrifying, shadowy figures who "vant to suck your blood", and whose heads need to be cut off and stuffed with garlic to prevent them returning from the dead. But in cinema vamps appear to be, well vampish. </p> Features Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:12:45 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/roman-tragedies-barbican-centre-london-1826413.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/roman-tragedies-barbican-centre-london-1826413.html ]]> <p>The Barbican stage was turned into a conference centre for three six-hour sessions over the weekend as the Toneelgroep of Amsterdam brought their astonishing and brilliantly staged modern-dress Shakespeare show to London. I'm sorry if you missed it. Here's why.</p> Reviews Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/news/henry-age-51-wins-award-for-best-newcomer-1826447.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/news/henry-age-51-wins-award-for-best-newcomer-1826447.html ]]> <p>It is a success story rich with showbusiness ironies: a 51-year-old entertainer with a keen aversion to Shakespeare wins a "newcomer" award after 32 years in the business, for his first serious acting role in a Shakespearean tragedy.</p> News Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/cock-theatre-upstairs-royal-court-london-1825738.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/cock-theatre-upstairs-royal-court-london-1825738.html <p>It's been a big week for the male member on the London stage. The penis is a wayward minx and, as Alan Bennett's Auden puts it in The Habit of Art, it's a shocking little shape-shifter, often shrivelling up so small as to make the distinction between circumcised and uncircumcised a matter of absolute speculation, while constituting a key instance of "the propensity of the flesh to creep".</p> Reviews Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/the-habit-of-art-nt-lyttelton-londonbrcock-royal-court-upstairs-londonbrpublic-property-trafalgar-studio-2-london-1825233.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/the-habit-of-art-nt-lyttelton-londonbrcock-royal-court-upstairs-londonbrpublic-property-trafalgar-studio-2-london-1825233.html <p>The closer you steer to yourself, in your writing, the better you will be. So says W H Auden. No, let’s be accurate. So says the (real-life) actor Richard Griffiths portraying a rumpled (fictional) thespian named Fitz, who has been cast as the great poet in Caliban’s Day – the biodrama being rehearsed in Alan Bennett’s new play, The Habit of Art.</p> Reviews Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/akram-khan-sadlers-wells-london-1825239.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/akram-khan-sadlers-wells-london-1825239.html <p> Even the best-laid plans ... Svapnagata, Sadler's Wells's season of Indian music and dance curated by Akram Khan and the composer Nitin Sawhney, was to have been topped and tailed by ambitious new works choreographed by Khan. </p> Reviews Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/news/burnley-riots-play-banned--in-burnley-1824930.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/news/burnley-riots-play-banned--in-burnley-1824930.html ]]> <p>It is based on the true stories of white and Asian teenagers from Burnley attempting to rebuild their lives in the aftermath of the 2001 riots, and has received widespread acclaim for its portrayal of the town's racial tensions.</p> News Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/first-impressions-porgy-and-bess-alvin-theatre-new-york-1935-1823811.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/first-impressions-porgy-and-bess-alvin-theatre-new-york-1935-1823811.html <p> Porgy and Bess represents George Gershwin's longing to compose an American folk opera on a suitable theme. Although Mr Heyward is the author of the libretto and shares with Ira Gershwin the credit for the lyrics, and although Mr Mamoulian has mounted the director's box, the evening is unmistakably George Gershwin's personal holiday. </p> Features Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/the-habit-of-art-lyttelton-national-theatre-london-1822255.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/the-habit-of-art-lyttelton-national-theatre-london-1822255.html ]]> <p> For many years, Alan Bennett was accustomed to stand on the threshold of the closet, pointing a Hush Puppy first one way, then another. But with the advent of love in the shape of Rupert (World of Interiors) Thomas, the partner who offered him vital support during his fight with cancer in the mid-1990s, Bennett has been prepared latterly to nail his colours to the fence. </p> Reviews Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:51 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/akram-khan-sadlers-wells-london-1822281.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/akram-khan-sadlers-wells-london-1822281.html ]]> <p>Even recovering from injury, Akram Khan is a virtuoso dancer. His arms open in a fluid ripple, a dazzling pattern of curves and angles as he unbends at shoulder, elbow, wrist and fingers. He's both sinuous and geometrically precise. Gnosis starts with a display of the Indian classical form Kathak, and ends with an amazing fragment in contemporary style. Twisting in the spotlight, Khan becomes a glowing, trembling blur.</p> Reviews Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/ghosts-octagon-theatre-bolton-1821718.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/ghosts-octagon-theatre-bolton-1821718.html ]]> <p>For his second production at Bolton Octagon, David Thacker has returned to Ghosts, Ibsen's scathing commentary on 19th-century morality. His earlier production, in the 1980s, starring Vanessa Redgrave and Tom Wilkinson, won an Olivier. This latest revival – sometimes fascinatingly watchable yet also frustratingly mediocre – is unlikely to win it many new admirers, far less awards.</p> Reviews Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/mixed-up-north-wiltons-music-hall-london-1821234.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/mixed-up-north-wiltons-music-hall-london-1821234.html ]]> <p> Lamda, arguably the most enlightened and inclusive of all London's drama schools, has a highly creative component in its third-year acting course. </p> Reviews Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:11 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/fabulous-beast-dance-theatre-coliseum-londonbrbirmingham-royal-ballet-sadlers-wells-london-1820745.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/fabulous-beast-dance-theatre-coliseum-londonbrbirmingham-royal-ballet-sadlers-wells-london-1820745.html <p> No one ever put it more succinctly than Leonard Bernstein who, faced with conducting Stravinsky's juggernaut masterpiece, The Rite of Spring, said: "It's got the best dissonances anyone ever thought up." A half-century later, its brutalism undimmed, the work's polyrhythms remain a challenge to conductors and orchestras. To choreographers, though, the test is imaginative. Of the many danced Rites I have seen, few remain vivid in memory: Kenneth MacMillan's teeming vision of tribal sacrifice in a scorched desert of red earth, Pina Bausch's post-apocalyptic gender face-off, and Michael Clark's, but possibly only because of the Hitler moustaches. </p> Reviews Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:00:36 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/mixed-up-north-wiltons-music-hall-londonbrthe-kreutzer-sonata-gate-notting-hill-london-1820741.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/mixed-up-north-wiltons-music-hall-londonbrthe-kreutzer-sonata-gate-notting-hill-london-1820741.html <p> Uniting communities – healing wounds, harnessing the energy reclaimed from violence – is something the performing arts do well. In classical music, it's almost obligatory. Think of the artistic and political triumphs of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and its Palestinian and Israeli players, or the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra, its disadvantaged members liberated by Rachmaninov and the rumba. What better outlet, then, for rowdy, angry or terrified kids than a play – licence to be someone else, or your often unacceptable self? </p> Reviews Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:00:22 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/news/hardhitting-take-on-military-life-draws-blood-1820549.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/news/hardhitting-take-on-military-life-draws-blood-1820549.html ]]> <p>When the young British actors George Rainsford and Luke Norris were handed leading roles in the Royal Shakespeare Company production Days of Significance, they knew it was a hard-hitting drama about a group of young soldiers about to be deployed to Iraq.</p> News Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/the-kreutzer-sonata-gate-theatre-london-1818832.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/the-kreutzer-sonata-gate-theatre-london-1818832.html ]]> <p>The motion of a train loosens the tongue, confides Pozdnyshev, our companion in a railway carriage for the 85 minutes of this extraordinarily compelling stage adaptation of Tolstoy's great, warped novella The Kreutzer Sonata. In Natalie Abrahami's pitch-perfect production at the tiny Gate Theatre, this figure is a kind of bourgeois Russian Ancient Mariner, compelled to re-tell the story of how he murdered his arguably adulterous wife. She may have been playing more than piano with a newly arrived violinist, who had been a childhood friend of Pozdnyshev. Emphasising the subjective nature of the protagonist's testimony, this couple are seen here fitfully illuminated behind a scrim either making music or love in candle-lit flashes that are like the lingering neuralgic throb of an obsession that has survived Pozdnyshev's acquittal for homicide.</p> Reviews Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/architecting-the-pit-barbican-london-1818103.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/architecting-the-pit-barbican-london-1818103.html ]]> <p>I correctly reckoned that I was going to love Architecting from the second I saw the name of the US troupe that has devised this piece (developed under the aegis of the National Theatre of Scotland). They call themselves the Theatre of the Emerging American Moment (TEAM). It was the word "emerging" that made me fall for them. We are constantly told that theatre is the medium of the present tense, but this company refines that notion with terrific insight and flair. They know that the present never really arrives and that all we can do is travel hopefully within our consciousness, which is a constantly shifting mix of retrospection, hopes for – and anxieties and fantasies about – the future and a kind of squinting look at the liminal overlap between the two. What emerges in this marvellous (sometimes messy, but always stimulating) collaborative show underlines how sharply TEAM understand that theatre is like a magnified version of the eye of the needle through which this complex weave of consciousness is threaded. And they demonstrate this wisdom in the wit, verve and pained insight with which they bring past, present and future in a glorious mélange of jumble and judicious ordering onto the stage at the same time.</p> Reviews Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/first-night-staff-benda-bilili-barbican-london-1818330.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/first-night-staff-benda-bilili-barbican-london-1818330.html <p>When the stars of the most anticipated African tour of the year spin wheelchairs, dance on their legs' stumps and pluck instruments created from abandoned debris, they are embodying their nation's contradictions. </p> Reviews Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/uncle-vanya-old-vic-bristol-1817677.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/uncle-vanya-old-vic-bristol-1817677.html <p>The best news is that the Bristol Old Vic is up and running. The artistic director, Tom Morris, will announce his plans on Friday and the stage of the great Georgian theatre has been extended beyond the proscenium, making more sense of the exquisite architecture.</p> Reviews Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/online/turing-play-stays-on-website-indefinitely-1817724.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/online/turing-play-stays-on-website-indefinitely-1817724.html <p>The pioneering internet audio drama about the death of the Enigma code-breaker Alan Turing, is to remain available indefinitely on The Independent website. </p> Online Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/royal-ballet-triple-bill-mark-morris-dance-group-royal-opera-housesadlers-wells-london-1817180.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/royal-ballet-triple-bill-mark-morris-dance-group-royal-opera-housesadlers-wells-london-1817180.html <p> The Royal Ballet's latest triple bill keeps falling short of its ambitions. </p> Reviews Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:33 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/on-the-agenda-harry-brown-radley-manchesters-royal-exchange-theatre-masterchef-ctrlaltshift-1814730.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/on-the-agenda-harry-brown-radley-manchesters-royal-exchange-theatre-masterchef-ctrlaltshift-1814730.html ]]> Features Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/seize-the-day-tricycle-theatre-londonbrcategory-b-tricycle-theatre-london-1816766.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/seize-the-day-tricycle-theatre-londonbrcategory-b-tricycle-theatre-london-1816766.html <p>Obama is in the White House, why not a black mayor of London in City Hall, argues Kwame Kwei-Armah in Seize the Day. And it is the squeaky clean, council-estate raised, insurance broker turned personable television presenter Jeremy Charles who is hand-picked by the head of an equalities commission to run for office, having broken up a street fight on camera. </p> Reviews Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/rambert-triple-bill-sadlers-wells-londonbrroyal-ballet-triple-bill-royal-opera-house-london-1816768.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/rambert-triple-bill-sadlers-wells-londonbrroyal-ballet-triple-bill-royal-opera-house-london-1816768.html ]]> <p>Somewhere in Kansas lives a housewife who spends her life hunting down recipes that use only three ingredients. Twelve cookbooks are the result. The task of a ballet director is not dissimilar, in the search for the triple bill that ticks all the boxes – something piquant, something nourishing and something comforting in one sitting. Both Rambert and the Royal Ballet unveiled mixed programmes in London last week, and both showed – are we surprised? – how hard it is to strike the perfect balance.</p> Reviews Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/news/phillips-gets-job-on-sadlers-wells-board-1816571.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/news/phillips-gets-job-on-sadlers-wells-board-1816571.html ]]> <p>Doubters might have predicted an early retirement for Arlene Phillips after she was ungraciously dropped as a judge on the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing. But yesterday she cemented what can only be described as an extraordinary career comeback when Sadler's Wells Theatre announced her appointment to its board of directors. The position will become effective with her first board meeting on 25 November.</p> News Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/a-very-english-playwright-the-return-of-alan-bennett-1815302.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/a-very-english-playwright-the-return-of-alan-bennett-1815302.html ]]> <p>In one of his less felicitously phrased essays, the youthful Clive James once described the poet WH Auden, who had succumbed to premature old age in his ill-judged Oxford retirement, as a "fag at bay". Alan Bennett's eagerly anticipated new play, The Habit of Art (which opens on November 17 at the National Theatre), confronts Auden and the audience with a second "fag at bay", the composer Benjamin Britten. Back in the Thirties, the pair had been collaborators and emotional intimates, with Auden laying down the law on the inner protocols of getting laid and the need to unbutton, psychologically as well as sartorially, in order to do so.</p> Features Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/interviews/akram-khan-you-have-to-become-a-warrior-1815314.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/interviews/akram-khan-you-have-to-become-a-warrior-1815314.html ]]> <p>"In Asian culture," says Akram Khan, "you don't have a voice. You just accept what everybody says." It is, I have to say, rather hard to believe now. The darling of the dance world has a reputation for pushing the boundaries of his form, tossing in a visual artist here, a musician there, a writer there, and then maybe adding, just for fun, an actress who's never danced in her life. Hailed as "the great new hope" and "wunderkind" of contemporary dance, "a phenomenon" and "a marvel", he's an (extremely muscular) human whirlwind, leaping from project to project, and travelling the world on an endless, exhaustive, exhausting quest for new ideas, new creative partnerships, new marriages of story and feeling and form. For a man obsessed with the idea of stillness, he's remarkably bad at it. Brilliant on stage, but not so good in life.</p> Interviews Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/the-diary-paul-auster-jerry-moffat-punch-magazine-penny-woolcock-1815308.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/the-diary-paul-auster-jerry-moffat-punch-magazine-penny-woolcock-1815308.html ]]> Features Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/news/outrage-as-jesus-portrayed-as-transsexual-woman-1815479.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/news/outrage-as-jesus-portrayed-as-transsexual-woman-1815479.html <p> The creator of a controversial play which depicts Christ returned to earth as a female transsexual has accused critics of misinterpreting her work. Nearly 300 people picketed the opening night of Jesus, Queen of Heaven at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow this week, part of the city’s publicly funded annual Glasgay! arts festival. </p> News Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:02:09 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/spring-storm-royal--derngate-theatre-northampton-1814768.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/spring-storm-royal--derngate-theatre-northampton-1814768.html ]]> <p>It's a troubling April down on the Delta, where the river is rising, and the blood too. "The crape myrtle's been out a week," says the genteel Mrs. Critchfeld. "I always start to wear white when the crape myrtle's out." Her daughter, however, worries she may never wear get to wear white and toss a bouquet. One of Tennessee Williams's high-strung beauties who are half spinster, half sexpot, Heavenly Critchfield is sleeping with the virile, shiftless Dick but tempted by the rich, repressed Arthur (a nice reversal of the traditional dilemma). The quartet of restive youth is completed by the librarian Hertha Neilson, "the most sensitive and intelligent person in Port Arthur, Mississippi", where teenagers she catches necking in the stacks laugh at her and call her an old maid.</p> Reviews Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/michael-clark-company-barbican-london-1814136.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/michael-clark-company-barbican-london-1814136.html ]]> <p>Rock music is good for Michael Clark. His latest work, Come, Been and Gone, shown as part of bite and Dance Umbrella, returns to the music of his teens: Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, David Bowie. Even the programme is designed to look like a 7-inch record sleeve. With this soundtrack, Clark and his company gleam with purpose. It's the best thing he's done in years. </p> Reviews Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/seize-the-day-tricycle-theatre-london-1814137.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/seize-the-day-tricycle-theatre-london-1814137.html ]]> <p>If I were the Labour MP and former Culture Minister David Lammy, I'd be disappointed not to be namechecked in Kwame Kwei-Armah's entertaining new play about the real possibility of a new black mayor for London. </p> Reviews Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/if-there-is-i-havent-found-it-yet-bush-theatre-london-1814139.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/if-there-is-i-havent-found-it-yet-bush-theatre-london-1814139.html <p>David Hare published a very penetrating article recently in which he characterised the Noughties as the decade of Looking Away, technologically, politically and morally. By a somewhat delicious irony, I found myself reading this on a train late at night while being steadily eyeballed by the young man opposite, who was giving his girlfriend the most thorough of snogs. They had moved on to heavy petting by the time we hit Didcot, his glances to check on me now fitful.</p> Reviews Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/the-ten-biggest-broadway-turkeys-1814033.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/the-ten-biggest-broadway-turkeys-1814033.html ]]> <p> Following the shock closure of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs and the cancellation of its companion piece Broadway Bound, we look at ten of the biggest flops to grace Broadway. </p> Features Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:59:50 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/news/neil-simon-dumbfounded-after-play-flops-1813639.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/news/neil-simon-dumbfounded-after-play-flops-1813639.html ]]> <p>It was meant to be a flattering season for Neil Simon, the 82-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning father of situation comedy on the American stage and screen. His semi-autobiographical play Brighton Beach Memoirs opened to fine reviews in New York 10 days ago and next up, in the same theatre, was its companion piece, Broadway Bound.</p> News Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/news/a-frightening-24-hours-for-thespians-1813434.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/news/a-frightening-24-hours-for-thespians-1813434.html <p> On Halloween night an eclectic bunch of actors and writers gathered in the auditorium of London’s Old Vic theatre preparing to write, rehearse and perform six plays in 24 hours to raise cash for charity. </p> News Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:32:11 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/mrs-klein-almeida-theatre-london-1813067.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/mrs-klein-almeida-theatre-london-1813067.html <p> You think you've got a difficult mother! Melanie Klein's daughter didn't stand a chance, from the moment she put her head out. Klein gave the girl a name that was a diminutive of her own, then psychoanalysed and wrote about Melitta for her brilliant theories in child development. </p> Reviews Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/pains-of-youth-nt-cottesloe-londonbrif-there-is-i-havent-found-it-yet-bush-londonbrmrs-klein-almeida-london-1812611.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/pains-of-youth-nt-cottesloe-londonbrif-there-is-i-havent-found-it-yet-bush-londonbrmrs-klein-almeida-london-1812611.html <p>Everyone should shoot themselves at 17. So says the wild child Desiree in Pains of Youth. Penned in the 1920s and now revived by director Katie Mitchell – in period costume – this is Ferdinand Bruckner's morbid depiction of screwed-up Viennese students in Freud's era. It might well strike a chord with today's suicidal teenagers and twentysomethings, but little comfort is offered.</p> Reviews Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/mark-morris-dance-group-sadlers-wells-londonbrthe-sleeping-beauty-royal-opera-house-london-1812612.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/mark-morris-dance-group-sadlers-wells-londonbrthe-sleeping-beauty-royal-opera-house-london-1812612.html <p>For those convinced that contemporary dance is a mystery designed to keep them out, the work of the American Mark Morris offers a riposte. "I make it up; you watch it", is the beginning and end of his philosophy, though he might have added " ... and listen, too": in a world where good, live music seems to matter less and less, his dance shows are also a very smart concert ticket.</p> Reviews Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000