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button. Financial Times | Arts & Weekend
Film releases: November 20Leo Robson reviews Joseph Strick's reissued 'Ulysees', the Coen brothers' 'A Serious Man', Steven Soderbergh's 'The Informant!', Stephen Poliakoff's 'Glorious 39', and Chris Weitz's 'The Twilight Saga: New Moon' - 2 days ago
Rihanna, Brixton Academy, London
The mood at this promo concert for new album 'Rated R' was dark and aggressive, writes Ludovic Hunter-Tilney - 3 days ago
Akram Khan, Sadler's Wells, London
Watching this Indian bharatanatyam dancer, Clement Crisp is reminded how hypnotic and intoxicating great exponents of the style can be - 3 days ago
A day for savouring the sound of silence
The cultural provocateur and former KLF frontman Bill Drummond talks to Laura Battle about his annual campaign for soundtrack-free living, hosted this year by Linz in Austria - 4 days ago
Lunch with the FT: Andrew Strauss
England's cricket captain talks to FT Editor Lionel Barber about managing maverick talents, how money is changing the game and his reverence for the Aussie fighting spirit - 3 days ago
Style bloggers take centre stage
Like the cool kids in school, fashion bloggers have become a kind of elite band. How far should luxury houses and consumers of high-end fashion embrace, or not embrace, them? - 7 days ago
Travel special: India
Wander around the holy city of the Sikhs and cross the Kashmir Valley - 71 days ago
The challenges faced by stage designers
Bob Crowley, Anthony Ward, Rae Smith and Ultz talk to Sarah Hemming about their chosen métier as leading 'sculptors in space' - 7 days ago
David Hockney at Nottingham Contemporary
The new kid on the block of public art galleries launches with what Jackie Wullschlager calls a sexy, funny, scholarly and extremely relevant show by the illustrator of genius - 6 days ago
The final meltdown
Four weighty books lament the impending death of the old Arctic and fearfully welcome the taming of this icy wasteland, writes Simon Kuper After the Ice Final Voyage The Magnetic North Arctic Labyrinth - 7 days ago
Daily Telegraph | Arts
Why Yes Minister is as true as everYes Minister the classic BBC comedy series has just been sold to the Ukraine. Proof says its cocreator Antony Jay that incompetent politicians are something the whole world can relate to. - 3 hours ago
Today's TV highlights
The day's best TV programmes on BBC ITV Channel 4 Five Freeview Freesat Sky and cable as chosen by the Telegraph's critics. - 147 days ago
Opera North's Swanhunter Jonathan Dove interview
Composer Jonathan Dove explains why a womanising folkloric Finn makes the perfect hero for his latest family opera - 5 hours ago
Machan review
Uberto Pasolini Dharmapriya Dias Gihan De Chickera - 5 hours ago
100 TV shows that defined the decade
The West Wing Planet Earth the Doctor and The Office - plus a big dose of reality. - 6 hours ago
Rihanna: Rated R CD review
Rihanna's 'Rated R' is a sleek and dynamic hard pop record. Rating: - 6 hours ago
Mrs Warren's Profession review
Michael Rudman's 'Mrs Warren's Profession' is a witty and moving production. Rating: - 6 hours ago
Horoscopes: the week ahead from Saturday November 21
Telegraph weekly horoscope for Saturday November 21 to Friday November 27 from astrologer Catherine Tennant. - 7 hours ago
Public Property at Trafalgar Studios review
Public Property at Trafalgar Studios which features a videorecorded cameo from Stephen Fry is a cautionary tale for our celebobsessed age. Rating: - 9 hours ago
Funny how cartoons still have bite
A visit to the Cartoon Museum proves that the British satirical spirit is as vital as ever. - 9 hours ago
Guardian | Theatre
How I fluffed my exit lines | Mark Lawson<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.3/23273?ns=guardian&pageName=How+I+fluffed+my+exit+lines+%7C+Mark+Lawson%3AArticle%3A1308211&ch=Comment+is+free&c3=Guardian&c4=UK+news%2CTheatre%2CStage%2CMichael+Frayn+%28Playwright%29%2CAlan+Bennett+%28Playwright%29%2CCulture+section&c6=Mark+Lawson&c7=09-Nov-20&c8=1308211&c9=Article&c10=Comment&c11=Comment+is+free&c13=&c25=Comment+is+free&c30=content&h2=GU%2FComment+is+free%2Fblog%2FComment+is+free" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">It was not boredom but anger that tempted me to leave a play in mid-show – but I lacked the courage</p><p>In the middle decades of the 20th century, when theatre was testing the limits of taste, an off-stage sound-effect was regularly heard in the auditorium: the rat-a-tat of seat-backs clacking as scandalised theatregoers walked out. Because of a liberalisation of opinion – or, possibly, softer chair coverings – this noise has become a much less common occurrence.</p><p>But last week, for the first time ever, I was tempted to leave a theatre in mid-performance, not through tedium or sciatica – common enough feelings for anyone who sees a lot of plays – but from moral anger.</p><p>The play is <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/sep/24/our-class-michael-billington-review" title="Our Class">Our Class</a>, a world premiere at the Cottesloe auditorium of the National Theatre in London of a drama by the Polish writer Tadeusz Slobodzianek. It's a fiercely impressive piece, inventively staged, which follows a group of Catholic and Jewish school-mates during a period in which a terrible antisemitic massacre takes place.</p><p>It's a rightly angry play and I shared the writer's rage, until a moment when it turned against him. A young woman, Dora, is raped by three of her classmates in turn. The characters look back on the action of the past – from either old age or the afterlife, depending on their luck – and Dora's reflections on this violation are: "I screamed, but I could feel myself getting wet … I felt a pleasure I'd never known … I'd been raped by that pack of savages and I'd actually felt pleasure."</p><p>My first reaction was to hope for a mishearing caused by the actress's mumbling or my ageing ears. But the published text was on my knee and the lines had been crisply delivered as written. I have never believed in censorship, but it struck me that these words, though possibly tolerable if spoken as personal testimony in a documentary, have no justification when given by a male writer to a female fictional character because they appear to validate one of the nastiest and most discredited of male fantasies. Even more queasily, the speech is an incidental detail, irrelevant to the main business of the play.</p><p>What is the etiquette of protesting in the theatre? I once saw – during a performance of Michael Frayn's <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/apr/27/copenhagen-royal-lyceum-edinburgh" title="Copenhagen">Copenhagen</a> at the National – a man shout "I object" (presumably on some point of historical interpretation) and leave the theatre, while the startled actors carried on. I lacked the nerve for that, and leaving during the scene would have involved clambering over a row of eight. Also, a walk-out seems both attention-seeking and actor-distracting, two outcomes to be avoided.</p><p>So the next opportunity to make a point was that discreet form of walk-out: not coming back after the interval. John Mortimer (whose <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/nov/17/sir-john-mortimer-memorial-service" title="memorial service ">memorial service</a> was this week) and his first wife were apparently known as the "half-time Mortimers" in the 50s and 60s because they so rarely made it to the final curtain. At the theatre I was in, there's something called the "Cottesloe shuffle", in which polite but bored audience members edge ever further along the wall outside during the interval before disappearing round the corner and never coming back.</p><p></p><p>But it seems to me that professional critics have an obligation to stick it out to the bitterest ends; so, apart from work and family emergencies, they have always tried to stay until the applause, even if reluctant to add to it. Admittedly, on one bizarre occasion, inconvenient schedules led to my seeing the first act of a new play on a Monday and the second on a Tuesday – giving one audience the impression of a half-time walk-out and the other one the surely peculiar impression of a walk-in.</p><p>There's a strange payoff to this story. During the interval of Our Class, while wondering whether my anger was enough to justify missing the second half, I walked across to the main National Theatre building because the coffee bar there is bigger and the service quicker. Returning to the Cottesloe – having decided to stay with the play – my route took me through the interval crowd from Alan Bennett's <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/nov/18/alan-bennett-the-habit-of-art" title="The Habit of Art">The Habit of Art</a>. Last week the BBC was contacted by a theatregoer who claimed to have seen me leaving that production at the interval, presumably because I was spotted walking away from that audience.</p><p>So deciding not to do the play I was watching the discourtesy of early departure inadvertently brought the accusation of giving the insult to one for which I had no ticket. (I saw The Habit of Art on another night and didn't want to leave even at the end.) But this is an example of how sensitive people can be to early leavers from a play.</p><p>Back at Our Class, the second half passed with my attention sapped by anger at that speech. Back home an internet search revealed that no review seemed to have raised this issue, and the National says that there have been no complaints to the theatre, although there was angry discussion among women in the audience the night I went.</p><p>Perhaps we are all too polite. I still feel I should have had the courage to leave an empty seat. There are still moments that merit that rat-a-tat sound from the past.</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatre">Theatre</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/frayn">Michael Frayn</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/alanbennett">Alan Bennett</a></li></ul></div><div class="guRssAdvert"><a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Commentisfree&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12587524925167223166345027400284"><img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Commentisfree&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12587524925167223166345027400284" border="0" /></a></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/marklawson">Mark Lawson</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> - 4 hours ago
Surrealist artwork from The Red Shoes to go on display
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.3/19927?ns=guardian&pageName=Surrealist+artwork+from+The+Red+Shoes+to+go+on+display%3AArticle%3A1308092&ch=Art+and+design&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Exhibitions%2CArt+and+design%2CBallet%2CMartin+Scorsese+%28Film%29%2CFilm%2CUK+news%2CCulture+section&c6=Charlotte+Higgins&c7=09-Nov-20&c8=1308092&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=Art+and+design&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FArt+and+design%2FExhibitions" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">BFI Southbank to exhibit paintings and sketches of 'Freudian ballet' created for the film by Hein Heckroth</p><p>The Red Shoes, Powell and Pressburger's 1948 masterpiece, is one of the most visually spectacular movies in British history, and an abiding inspiration for artists such as Martin Scorsese, who counts it among his favourite films.</p><p>Now, ahead of its re-release in a newly restored version, its colours returned to their original Technicolor vividness, visitors to BFI Southbank in London will have the chance to see some of the original artwork for the film, created by surrealist painter Hein Heckroth.</p><p>The Red Shoes, the story of a dancer's struggle to achieve greatness against the demands of "normal" life, has entranced balletomanes and cineastes in the 61 years since it was made.</p><p>The most ambitious aspect of the film is the extended ballet sequence at the heart of the story, in which The Red Shoes ballet is danced in full by a company created especially for the film and with Moira Shearer, Robert Helpmann and Léonid Massine in the lead roles.</p><p>The 17-minute long Red Shoes sequence may begin as a conventional scene of dancers on a stage set, but it almost instantly departs from realism. As Michael Powell put it in his autobiography, A Life in Movies, "once the curtain had gone up for the performance, we would no longer be in a theatre, but inside the heads of two young people who were falling in love." Those two people are the ballerina, Vicky Page (Shearer) and the conductor/composer, Julian Craster, played by Marius Goring.</p><p>Drawing on the surrealist tradition, Heckroth created an astonishing visual world for this "Freudian ballet" as Powell called it. After the first seconds, we are no longer watching a stage, but we experience the piece through the fantasy and subconscious of its lead ballerina, Vicky.</p><p>The idea was to create as near a Wagnerian complete artwork as could be done through film. Choreography, music, art, dance, storytelling: all would be combined to create an artistic masterpiece that ran entirely contrary to the then current British fashion in film for documentary-style realism.</p><p>Heckroth, a Hessian who had trained at the Bauhaus, moved to Britain the 1930s with his Jewish wife. His "straight" painting career was championed by critics such as Herbert Read, but he had also created avant garde designs for Ballet Jooss, and had worked on Powell and Pressburger's previous film The Black Narcissus.</p><p>To create the world for the ballet sequence, he made 130 beautifully worked oil paintings – several of which are to be shown at the BFI. The works were turned into an animated film, which can also be seen in the exhibition. Then, using the animation as the basis for the work, the choreography, by Helpmann, and the score, by Brian Easdale, were created.</p><p>In fact, according to BFI curator Nathalie Morris, Heckroth and his collaborator Ivor Beddoes created around 2,000 storyboard sketches, drawings and paintings for the film as a whole. But the work put into the design of the ballet sequence was something special. "Something on this scale was unprecedented," said Morris. "These are beautiful works of art in themselves."</p><p>It is the artistry of the ballet sequence – as well as its setting in a ballet company, headed by the extraordinarily charismatic Lermontov (Anton Walbrook) – that accounts for its hold on artists such as Scorsese, who knew Powell and Pressburger in their later years.<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/video/2009/may/19/cannes-film-festival-the-red-shoes" title=" Speaking about The Red Shoes at this years Cannes festival"> Speaking about The Red Shoes at this year's Cannes festival</a>, he spoke of "the spell that this film casts" and its concentration on "the mystery of the obsession of creativity and the creative drive". It is a film about the compulsion to make art. At the start of the film, Lermontov asks Vicky, "Why do you want to dance?" She flashes back, "Why do you want to live?"</p><p>According to Thelma Schoonmaker, Scorsese's editor for 30 years and Powell's widow: "It's such a beautiful portrayal of artistic collaboration. It's stunning for us who work that way all the time. It is also about committing yourself to art and what that does to your life. For anyone who has a strong pull towards art, it's a seminal film."</p><p>Scorsese has lent various items to the exhibition, including a script of the film inscribed from Pressburger to "My dear Martin – giving you the last copy of my Red Shoes script has made me not poorer, it made me richer." Other items in the show include letters between Powell and Pressburger, early versions of the script, and a portion of the ballet score manuscript.</p><p>In The Red Shoes, art begins to bleed into reality as the Red Shoes ballet seeps into Vicky's life. A similar blurring of art and life occurred during the making of The Red Shoes. Easdale took on the score at short notice – recounted in Powell's autobiography in such a way as to uncannily recall the passage from the film in which Julian Craster is commissioned to write the ballet music. Meanwhile, the character of Lermontov was, according to Pressburger a mixture of "something of Diaghilev, something of [Alexander] Korda, something of Michael [Powell] and quite a little bit of me".</p><p>The Red Shoes exhibition opens at the BFI Southbank in London on 26 November. The restored version of The Red Shoes is released on 11 December.</p><p></p><p><h2>Martin Scorsese and the trail of The Red Shoes<br /></h2>Scorsese has made no secret of his love of The Red Shoes. According to his editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, who is also Powell's widow, it is "a huge influence" on Scorsese. "You can probably see touches of it in every film." In their forthcoming movie Shutter Island, look out for a shot of a spiral staircase. It is, says Schoonmaker, a quote from the famous passage of The Red Shoes when Vicky rushes down a spiral staircase to her death.</p><p></p><p>Ballet and boxing may not appear to be natural bedfellows, but the film theorist Lesley Stern argues in her book The Scorsese Connection that his Raging Bull (1980) is essentially a reworking of The Red Shoes. Both films depict characters in the grip of a powerful obsession that threatens to escape the confines of the stage (or ring) and destroy them; both are interested in the nature of performance – whether in a theatre or a boxing ring; and both are powerfully concerned with totemic objects – the red shoes for Vicky and the boxing gloves for Jake La Motta.</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/exhibition">Exhibitions</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/ballet">Ballet</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/martinscorsese">Martin Scorsese</a></li></ul></div><div class="guRssAdvert"><a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Arts&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12587524925198194243329432416726"><img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Arts&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12587524925198194243329432416726" border="0" /></a></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/charlottehiggins">Charlotte Higgins</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> - 6 hours ago
Michael McIntyre: a comedian for the Cameron age
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.3/28550?ns=guardian&pageName=Michael+McIntyre%3A+a+comedian+for+the+Cameron+age%3AArticle%3A1308059&ch=Stage&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Comedy+live+%28Stage%29%2CStage%2CCulture+section&c6=Paul+MacInnes&c7=09-Nov-20&c8=1308059&c9=Article&c10=Comment&c11=Stage&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FStage%2FComedy" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">Loved by the masses, but loathed by his peers – does Michael McIntyre's conservative humour explain his meteoric rise?</p><p>Love him, loathe him, have genuinely violent feelings towards him, you just can't ignore <a href="http://www.michaelmcintyre.co.uk/" title="Michael McIntyre">Michael McIntyre</a>. Currently touring the sold-out arenas of the UK, and with standup's <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/dvd-michael-mcintyre-hello-wembley-universal-1820780.html" title="fastest-selling debut DVD ever">fastest-selling DVD ever</a>, modestly titled Hello Wembley, 2009 looks set to be remembered by historians as a year dominated by a rubber-faced unusually-tanned comic who <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grRI-m-Nr2U" title="invented the concept of the man drawer">invented the concept of the "man drawer"</a>.</p><p>McIntyre is big. Big in a way few standups ever manage and <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2008/oct/13/realitytv-channel4" title="perhaps only Peter Kay">perhaps only Peter Kay</a> has achieved in this decade. He only made his television debut in 2006, admittedly on the Royal Variety Show, but three years later he is the face of live comedy in the UK as host of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00l6fzv" title="Michael McIntyres Comedy Roadshow">Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow</a>. In a similar space of time, he's gone from playing attic rooms at the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/edinburghfestival" title="Edinburgh festival">Edinburgh festival</a> to performing nightly to 16,000 people. And what's now being asked by her majesty's press is quite why – and how – that has happened.</p><p>The question wouldn't be raised if it weren't controversial. McIntyre, you see, is not much loved by his fellow comics. Among a generation of comedians obsessed with breaking taboos, McIntyre is derided for being safe, his material too centred on familiar observation, too "a funny thing happened on the way to the M40".</p><p>For some, this itself is political. In an <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/dominic-lawson/dominic-lawson-can-we-please-stand-up--for-michael-mcintyre-1821757.html" title="article in the Independent this week">article in the Independent this week</a>, Dominic Lawson (son of Nigel and former editor of the Sunday Telegraph – and therefore well-placed to assess a man of the people) declared McIntyre a riposte to alternative comedy, something that is to his mind "merely a kind of commercialised Tourette syndrome". He writes: "Suddenly, here was a man who managed to be extremely funny without being cruel to anyone – not even politicians. The subject of his wit was nothing more than the everyday domestic engagements of bourgeois life. To find original humour in the most ordinary of circumstances, this is a rare and valuable gift. "</p><p>I'll spare you the rest, mainly because it veers off into bonkers rightwingery, painting McIntyre as a martyr whose success came only latterly because pinko-lefty "Luvvie-land" had disdain for his sort, "seeing Margaret Thatcher, for example, as the epitome of evil". (It might not surprise you to find that the Daily Mail bought the article and republished it yesterday.)</p><p>Sadly for his critics, Lawson does have a point; McIntyre is a genuinely funny performer. Technically proficient, he knows how to build a routine and squeeze it for maximum effect. He also brings an unbridled effervescence to the stage. McIntyre's energy contrasts starkly with most standups and it never dips; he skips and dances and jiggles and prances, just camp enough for British audiences to warm to. There's also the feeling that he's really enjoying himself. Which helps.</p><p>I'd also go so far as to claim that many of his observations are genuinely sharp. At least those he made his name with: "Who phones radio stations with travel updates?", the uncertain quality of the week between Christmas and New Year, uniform embarrassment at passport photos. The Guardian's comedy critic Brian Logan, in <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/oct/05/michael-mcintyre-review" title="reviewing McIntyres latest show">reviewing McIntyre's latest show</a>, says the material isn't too hot, and in his recent TV run there has been a tendency to rely on his physical qualities to beef up a joke. But plenty of comics struggle to come up with new material, particularly when they're constantly performing.</p><p>Still, I'm not sure it's just his ability to spot comic potential in the term "HD ready" that has led Lawson and the Mail to clasp McIntyre to their bosoms. I do think Lawson is wrong about the class thing; the crowds that pack out the Birmingham NEC aren't all public-school-educated oenophiles, they're middle class of the broadest stripe. But McIntyre's humour is more conservative than most comics you'll see on the circuit. He's not offensive – not in a <a href="http://www.frankieboyle.com/" title="Frankie Boyle">Frankie Boyle</a> or <a href="http://www.bernardmanning.com/" title="Bernard Manning">Bernard Manning</a> sense – but he observes that Man United sounds like a gay club, before mincing around the stage. He's not sexist - but men and women always assume traditional roles (and he's never shy of reminding the audience he's married). He's not racist, but he wonders why Scottish Asians have Scottish accents. He's not a southern snob, but he can milk a good two minutes out of the way Geordies (don't really) pronounce their vowels.</p><p>In the end, if I had to point at just one thing that might explain his huge success right now, I would suggest it's his conservatism. Michael McIntyre, you see, is a comic for the Cameron age.</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/comedy">Comedy</a></li></ul></div><div class="guRssAdvert"><a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Theatre&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12587524925208354362825884199325"><img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Theatre&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12587524925208354362825884199325" border="0" /></a></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/paulmacinnes">Paul MacInnes</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> - 8 hours ago
What to say about ... Cock
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.3/55922?ns=guardian&pageName=What+to+say+about+...+Cock%3AArticle%3A1308011&ch=Culture&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Theatre%2CStage%2CCulture+section&c6=Leo+Benedictus&c7=09-Nov-20&c8=1308011&c9=Article&c10=Feature&c11=Culture&c13=What+to+say+about+%28series%29&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FCulture%2FTheatre" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">For all its sexual confusion and lack of private parts, critics are finding Mike Bartlett's provocatively titled play an impressive package</p><p>Right then, shall we just get the sniggering over with? It's Mike Bartlett's new play, and it's called Cock. As in the male of the domestic fowl, the hammer of a firearm, "a small cone-shaped heap of hay" (Collins dictionary), and yes, all right, the more outgoing of the private parts. This may seem funny to you, of course. But pity the poor critics or whoever books their seats, because, as the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/6604329/Cock-at-the-Royal-Court-review.html" title="Telegraphs Charles Spencer">Telegraph's Charles Spencer</a> points out, "I defy anyone not to feel embarrassed, if not downright sleazy, phoning up a ticket agency and asking for two tickets for Cock, please".</p><p>Yet in fact, there is nothing double about this entendre. (Unless one is childish enough to say something like "Quentin Letts likes Cock", which today's Mail shows us that he mostly does, though there is no proof of it on the internet.) In a play about sexuality and choice, it is emphatically not his cone-shaped heap of hay that has Ben Whishaw dithering between the competing attractions of grumpy boyfriend Andrew Scott and impulse shag Katherine Parkinson. Yet despite its adult theme, as Spencer remarks, "by the Royal Court's punishing standards, this is tame stuff. The characters keep their clothes on, sex is talked about but not shown, and there is no gut-wrenching violence. At heart, it's a rather old-fashioned play."</p><p>Which perhaps accounts for why the other critics broadly liked it, though they found its modern mannerisms irritating too. "Plays whose characters are generically named F, M and W have a way of making yours truly go ZZZ," quips <a href="http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/theatre/article6922623.ece" title="Benedict Nightingale in the Times">Benedict Nightingale in the Times</a>, "but, for all its limitations, … Bartlett writes sharp, incisive dialogue. He has an ear for human battle. He can be funny – and sometimes more."</p><p><a href="http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/theatre/review-23771696-cock-is-a-prickly-tale-of-sexual-confusion.do" title="Henry Hitchings">The Standard's Henry Hitchings</a> agrees. In his opinion, the writing "has a wounding authenticity. We laugh nervously, aware of its precision." And as a result: "Bartlett's play is excruciating – not in the sense that it's bad, but in its relentless probing of raw emotions. In the final stages, I found myself wanting to bellow at the characters. I didn't, of course," he adds, somewhat disappointingly.</p><p>Though at least his misery had <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/nov/18/michael-billington-review" title="the Guardians Michael Billington">the Guardian's Michael Billington</a> for company. "At certain points you feel [Whishaw's character] is simply a selfish twerp who uses his personality defect as an excuse for inflicting pain," he muttered to himself in the stalls. "But irritation is forestalled by the acuity of the writing and by [Whishaw's] wiry charisma," he brightened, before being asked to leave by an usher. "And it seems wholly apt", he carried on into the foyer, "that Miriam Buether's set turns the Royal Court's Theatre Upstairs into what looks like a circular dissecting chamber since Bartlett's play examines, with clinical precision, what Schopenhauer once called 'the tyranny of the weak'."</p><p>No philosophy allusions will convince Spencer, however, who admires the talent on offer, but finds that Whishaw's indecision makes him "feel like kicking the blighter". And his distaste for Cock's spare staging and "ridiculous electronic pinging noise" on scene changes can never be appeased. "It is as if those involved are vaguely ashamed that the play is so conventional and are determined to disguise the fact with modish minimalism," he snipes. "The fact remains that this piece is more like Noël Coward than Mark Ravenhill." Though whether this is an insult, of course, remains open to dispute.</p><p><strong>Do say:</strong> Shall we go and see Cock tonight, dear?</p><p><strong>Don't say:</strong> Fnarr! Fnarr!</p><p><strong>The reviews reviewed:</strong> For the most part, we really quite like Cock</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatre">Theatre</a></li></ul></div><div class="guRssAdvert"><a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Culture&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12587524925226553921691873270986"><img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Culture&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12587524925226553921691873270986" border="0" /></a></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/leobenedictus">Leo Benedictus</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> - 9 hours ago
Epilepsy as live art isn't controversial | Allan Sutherland
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.3/36998?ns=guardian&pageName=Epilepsy+as+live+art+isn%27t+controversial+%7C+Allan+Sutherland%3AArticle%3A1308183&ch=Stage&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Dance%2CTheatre%2CEpilepsy%2CStage%2CCulture+section&c6=Allan+Sutherland&c7=09-Nov-20&c8=1308183&c9=Article&c10=Blogpost&c11=Stage&c13=&c25=Theatre+blog&c30=content&h2=GU%2FStage%2Fblog%2FTheatre+blog" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">Rita Marcalo's plan to induce a seizure on stage challenges people's fears of the condition – and makes for witty art</p><p>Thirty years ago I tried to fundraise for Fall Down and Be Counted, a documentary about living with epilepsy, in which I went without sleep and medication in order to induce a fit for the cameras. This puts me in no position to disapprove of performance artist <a href="http://www.instantdissidence.co.uk/">Rita Marcalo</a>, who plans to induce an epileptic seizure as part of <a href="http://www.interact.mmu.ac.uk/placements/blog.php?id=15">Involuntary Dances</a>, a 24-hour event that presents "epilepsy as performance".</p><p>Not that I do disapprove. I think what she's doing is terrific – well-conceived, witty and thought-provoking. I love, for example, the idea that if she has a fit during the night the audience will be woken by a siren, so that they can film it on their mobile phones. Marcalo is drawing attention to the fact that on YouTube (and elsewhere) it's easy to find mobile-phone footage of people having fits – mostly taken without their consent. Curious, isn't it, that controversy should arise when a person with epilepsy consents to being filmed?</p><p>Rita Marcalo is an artist doing what artists are supposed to do: creating work that is surprising, challenging, transgressive and exciting. The point she is making, and her manner of making it, is unfamiliar; she is breaking all the rules: drinking alcohol and coffee, eating dark chocolate, smoking cigarettes, coming off her medication and going without sleep. Things that we epileptics are not supposed to do.</p><p>Unsurprisingly, this has epilepsy charities harrumphing into their collecting cans. The suggestion from Philip Lee, <a href="http://www.epilepsy.org.uk/">chief executive of Epilepsy Action</a>, that the performance "should carry a health warning advising people that they should not attempt this themselves" had me clutching my sides.</p><p>Part of the controversy has been about whether the performance is a good way to raise awareness about epilepsy. For disability charities, raising awareness is pretty much synonymous with raising funds. What Marcalo's piece highlights is that adults with epilepsy own their own bodies and have a right to choose what to do with them. It illustrates that we are able to speak for ourselves, and don't need charitable organisations to step in on our behalf. (It's extraordinary that this is still an issue.)</p><p>She is also saying that there are worse things than having an epileptic fit. Several hundreds of thousands of us in this country live with epilepsy in one form or another, and our lives are not blighted. But it is nevertheless a feared condition. The ancient idea of possession by demons still lurks beneath the surface of people's awareness. But those who are most afraid of epilepsy are those who don't have it. I've lived with the condition for half a century, and I've lost count of the number of times I've had to calm some gibbering bystander who was distraught at what they saw. Marcalo's performance will implicitly say: "It's just a fit. Get over it." She speaks for us all.</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/dance">Dance</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatre">Theatre</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/epilepsy">Epilepsy</a></li></ul></div><div class="guRssAdvert"><a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Theatre&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12587524925246360980684590604157"><img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Theatre&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12587524925246360980684590604157" border="0" /></a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> - 5 hours ago
Epilepsy charity alarmed by dancer's plans for onstage seizure
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.3/62878?ns=guardian&pageName=Epilepsy+charity+alarmed+by+dancer%27s+plans+for+onstage+seizure%3AArticle%3A1307845&ch=Life+and+style&c3=Guardian&c4=Epilepsy%2CLife+and+style%2CDance%2CStage%2CCulture+section%2CUK+news&c6=&c7=09-Nov-19&c8=1307845&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=Life+and+style&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FLife+and+style%2FEpilepsy" width="1" height="1" /></div><p>An epilepsy charity says it is "very concerned" about a dance artist who is planning to induce a seizure on stage. Rita Marcalo has stopped taking her epilepsy medication before her show in Bradford next month. Marcalo, who is the artistic director of the Instant Dissidence dance theatre in Leeds, said: "Epilepsy is an invisible disability. I want to raise awareness of it." The audience will watch as she attempts to trigger a seizure using a range of stimuli. The charity Epilepsy Action called Marcalo's plans potentially very dangerous: "This is something we would strongly urge this person not to do."</p><p><strong>Press Association</strong></p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/epilepsy">Epilepsy</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/dance">Dance</a></li></ul></div><div class="guRssAdvert"><a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Lifeandstyle&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12587524925262656988491316892978"><img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Lifeandstyle&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12587524925262656988491316892978" border="0" /></a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> - 22 hours ago
Salad Days – the other longest running West End musical
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.3/3786?ns=guardian&pageName=Salad+Days+%E2%80%93+the+other+longest+running+West+End+musical%3AArticle%3A1307520&ch=Stage&c3=Guardian&c4=Musicals+%28Stage%29%2CTheatre%2CStage%2CMusic%2CCulture+section&c6=Brian+Logan&c7=09-Nov-20&c8=1307520&c9=Article&c10=Feature&c11=Stage&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FStage%2FMusicals" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">It's been labelled derisory and unperformable, Monty Python lampooned it, even its fans admit it's ridiculous. But the neglected 1950s musical Salad Days isn't mere escapism</p><p>Outside, it's overcast and autumn and engineering works on the tube. Inside, it's "sunshine and summer and falling in love". Outside, it's youth unemployment and political alienation – while inside, two young graduates and a cabinet minister frolic to the tunes of a magic piano. And whereas, in the real, grey world, the longest-running musical in West End history is about social strife in 19th-century France, here in an Islington rehearsal room, another longest-running West End musical evokes an altogether gayer age. "The important thing in here," says director Bill Bankes-Jones, "is that you get swept up in the joy of Salad Days and come out humming the tunes."</p><p>If you distilled the escapist spirit that characterises the best (some would say, most trivial) musicals, you'd be left with Minnie the magic piano, unlikely four-wheeled star of Julian Slade's 1954 show. Slade (then only 24) and lyricist Dorothy Reynolds's paean to carefree youth was knocked up in a matter of weeks to plug an end-of-season gap at the Bristol Old Vic. In 1960, this "musical entertainment" became the West End's most durable resident, eclipsing a record held since 1921 by the Orientalist pantomime Chu Chin Chow. It inspired "a quite intelligent seven-year-old" (his words) called Cameron Mackintosh to pursue a musical theatre career, and provoked a notoriously violent Monty Python sketch. And all this despite possessing "the most poorly edited score I have ever seen," says Bankes-Jones. "Exactly as scored, Salad Days is unperformable."</p><p>So how did this giddy concoction carve its niche in theatre history? Many would prefer that it hadn't. To some, this portrait of high society at play ("I'm gay and I'm breathless and I'm jubilant and I'm dancing!") represents all that's posh and frivolous about British theatre. It's backward-looking, with tunes that recall Gilbert and Sullivan and the Roaring 20s, and it more closely resembles that forgotten artform, revue, than the modern musical. With its dotty wordplay and tenuous skits about flying saucers, dancing dons and comedy coppers, "It's as I imagine the music hall might have been," says Bankes-Jones. "I told everyone to take it seriously and do exactly what it says in the script," he says, "but it is still very camp." We Said We Wouldn't Look Back, trill the show's patrician lovers Timothy and Jane – but two years later, John Osborne did just that, in anger, at this brand of complacent frippery.</p><p>The Cambridge Companion to the Musical is palpably ashamed to report that "in the 1950s, the most enduring image of the British musical was of something with the parochial virtues of the village hall in Salad Days or the nostalgic atmosphere of a glamorised 1920s in [Sandy Wilson's] The Boy Friend." In 1957, US director Jerome Robbins brought to Britain his hard-hitting new musical West Side Story. When Robbins heard the plot of its main UK rival, and some of its lyrics (""Aren't I clever, nobody ever / Saw such a saucy saucer"), he reportedly snorted in derision: "You're kidding?" It wasn't far from Robbins's scorn to Monty Python's ruthless lampoon, in which a party of tennis-playing toffs are slaughtered in a Sam Peckinpah bloodbath.</p><p>"But Monty Python made that sketch after 20 years of tawdry revivals," says Bankes-Jones, whose Tête à Tête company is now staging the show at London's Riverside Studios. "Only now is Salad Days ready for a good service and a respray, so we can see it shine." Tête à Tête usually stages operas; Bankes-Jones turned to Slade's musical, a childhood favourite, only when a planned opera production fell through. But now, he can barely restrain his enthusiasm for Salad Days. "There's a surprising degree of truth," he says, "in this ostensibly ridiculous show.</p><p>"The bald fact about Salad Days is that you've got young people trying to make a future in a world that's been messed up by the grown-ups. That is very now." There's also a daft number sung by a Foreign Office spy ("Don't ever ask who won the war / Don't ever ask what the war was for / It's hush-hush"), which is, says Bankes-Jones, "exactly the same as all this bollocks about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." He exaggerates: those seeking insights into the state of the modern world should probably steer clear. But Salad Days's dizzy sense of fun is more radical than it might seem. In a 1950s Britain of rationing and austerity, darkening under the cloud of a new cold war, 10 years before the invention of sex (if Larkin is to be believed), for two youngsters to surrender themselves to song, dance and the whims of an enchanted piano was practically a revolutionary act.</p><p>In other words, Salad Days isn't just an escapist musical, it's a musical that dramatises escapism. "I've been transplanted to a world that's exciting and new," croons our heroine Jane – which is just what the young Cameron Mackintosh felt. "This was a wonderful, whimsical fantasy," he says. "The fact that a magical piano could make people sing and dance – that awakened something inside me." The seven-year-old was taken backstage by Slade, a trip that "made me understand for the first time that someone actually had to make the magic happen." Slade (who died in 2006) was Mackintosh's mentor. The producer now returns the favour by arguing that "Julian was overlooked as a composer. I wouldn't call Salad Days a great musical, but it's a great musical entertainment. These tunes are still full of life. They have a freshness that doesn't sound like anyone else's music."</p><p>Bankes-Jones's revival aims closely to replicate Salad Days's original instrumentation. Which isn't straightforward, given that, he says, "The editing of the original score is a complete mess. When we decided to put it on, our musical director [Anthony Ingle], a very accomplished technical deliverer of modern music, said, 'You can't do this score. It would sound absolutely crap.'" The score, it became clear, is just a prompt, and thereafter "the band make it up," says Bankes-Jones. "You can hear that on the original recording, which is incredibly playful and happy. There's a revival recording from the 1970s that is ghastly, because they're playing the notes that are written down. On the original, it's clear that at every performance, Julian Slade would go bonkers on the piano and it would be different every night."</p><p>Which is, of course, entirely attuned to the spirit of the show. "This is a musical that was slapped onstage in about three weeks," says Bankes-Jones. "The lack of thought and care are in a way what makes it special. The genius of it is the chaos of the music – that's what makes the story and makes the magic piano possible. Salad Days is all about freeing your spirit, losing your inhibitions and doing whatever you feel like doing. And that's exactly what the music does. It's just joyous."</p><p><strong>Salad Days is at the Riverside Studios, London (020-8237 1111) until Sunday</strong></p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/musicals">Musicals</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatre">Theatre</a></li></ul></div><div class="guRssAdvert"><a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Theatre&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12587524925273640933461404350444"><img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Theatre&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12587524925273640933461404350444" border="0" /></a></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/brianlogan">Brian Logan</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> - 24 hours ago
John Craxton obituary
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.3/21322?ns=guardian&pageName=John+Craxton+obituary%3AArticle%3A1307760&ch=Art+and+design&c3=Guardian&c4=Art+%28visual+arts+only%29%2CCulture+section%2CGreece+%28News%29%2CLucian+Freud%2CWinston+Churchill+%28News%29%2CWhitechapel+Gallery%2CCrete+%28travel%29%2CRoyal+Ballet&c6=Ian+Collins&c7=09-Nov-20&c8=1307760&c9=Article&c10=Obituary&c11=Art+and+design&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FArt+and+design%2FArt" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">A talented and well-connected artist with a passion for the Greek landscape</p><p>In 1946 the painter John Craxton, who has died aged 87, had a show of haunted landscapes in Zurich. He sent a postcard home, saying that he might go on to Italy, but by the time it arrived he had landed in his eventual homeland of Greece. He had been spirited away by Lady Norton, wife of the British ambassador in Athens, who was seeking provisions abroad in those straitened times in a borrowed bomber. John got the pilot to divert over Venice, where the plane dipped so low that pigeons scattered in St Mark's Square.</p><p>John had the wit to grab life as it passed. He painted pleasure – poets and shepherds in Arcadia, sailors in bars, cats at play – and lived it, too. At 14, he had been taken by a friend's father from a Scout camp in France to the Paris World Exposition. They went only to the Spanish pavilion – for Picasso's Guernica. He had an amazing memory to the last but blotted out the exhibited photographs of civil war atrocities, recalling only the power of the paint. Picasso, whom he met after the war, would have a big impact on his later, semi-cubist pictures.</p><p>John's father, Harold Craxton, was a pianist, musicologist and professor at the Royal Academy of Music. The family home in St John's Wood, north-west London, was a chaotic haven with five boys and, finally, a longed-for daughter (the oboist Janet Craxton). Famous musicians visited, impoverished students were virtually adopted, meals were massed assemblies. The novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, who shared a governess with John at one point, fell for the glamour of such bohemian disorder and wrote of his parents: "They were <em>happy</em> and, like pollen, some of this rubbed off on anyone who came in contact with them."</p><p>While waifs were welcomed, sons were readily sent away. John, at six, was taught on a farm in Sussex. Successive boarding schools followed, unhappily, though he thrived at Betteshanger in Kent under the art tuition of Elsie Barling, a friend of the painter Frances Hodgkins. At 10, he and fellow pupils exhibited at the Bloomsbury Gallery, London, thanks to Barling.</p><p>He was always to be the painter in a family of musicians. Aged 16, he returned to Paris to study life drawing at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière (living, had he but known it, in the same street as Georges Braque – for once an opportunity missed). He enrolled at Westminster Art School and Central School of Art in London in 1940, but was rejected for military service the following year due to pleurisy. Retreating to celebrate in the National Gallery, he bumped into the sculptor Eric Kennington, father of a school friend, who urged him to get to grips with drawing.</p><p>John's key patron was Peter Watson, co-founder of the arts magazine Horizon and the Institute of Contemporary Art. When first visiting Watson's flat, he was welcomed by the painters Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde, who were lodging there and soon introduced him to Soho. Through "PW", he met Joan Rayner, later to marry the writer and fellow lover of Greece Patrick Leigh Fermor, whose book jackets John would decorate most brilliantly. Late in 1941 he met Lucian Freud, and for a time the two were inseparable, both taking drawing lessons at Goldsmiths College.</p><p>Early in 1942 Watson offered to fund a studio for his protege, and John found a maisonette around the corner – convincing the benefactor that Freud could take the top floor and they would both still focus on work. A neighbour railed against the mice that consumed John's still-life studies of croissants and the girls ringing his doorbell after midnight and asking for Lucian. Mercifully, he missed the dead animals brought in for Lucian to draw (one putrid monkey corpse was hidden in the oven when Sir Kenneth and Lady Clark came to tea).</p><p>Finally, in 1944, they were evicted. John secured a solo show at the Leicester Galleries and also a commission for WJ Turner and Sheila Shannon's innovative New Excursions into English Poetry series. He produced 16 lithographs for the anthology The Poet's Eye, selected by Geoffrey Grigson, plus a giant-eyed cuttlefish for the cover. These magnificent images drew on the pastoralism of Samuel Palmer, the anthropomorphic trees of surrealism and the pared-down landscapes of his mentor Graham Sutherland, with whom he sketched in Wales. They announced John as a major new talent.</p><p>His wartime paintings and drawings, with their yearning for escape, were soon given a "neo-romantic" label that he hated. He had worked from Dorset to Pembrokeshire to the Isles of Scilly before Watson brokered a postwar trip to Paris, and then to Zurich.</p><p>From late 1946 to early 1947, he and Freud painted on Poros. John, travelling widely across Greece, then paid his first visit to Crete, where his future lay. He said: "I have little sense of being 'British'. In Greece I found human identities, people within their own environment. This new world fitted me artistically, and suited me socially and financially."</p><p>In 1951 Frederick Ashton telegrammed to request sets and costumes for his Festival of Britain production of Daphnis and Chloë at Covent Garden, starring Margot Fonteyn and Michael Somes. The resulting hand-painted scenes showed dazzlingly-lit, sea-lapped Greek landscapes of rocks, vines, fig and olive trees. In 2004 John recreated his designs, largely from memory, for the Royal Ballet's celebration of Ashton's centenary. It was as if his paintings had come to life.</p><p>After a joint 1947 show with Freud at ELT Mesens' London Gallery, solo shows followed regularly and then sporadically. The list included six Leicester Galleries exhibitions to 1966, a 1967 Whitechapel Gallery retrospective, four shows with Christopher Hull (1982-1993) and a final display with Art First in 2001. By then he had accepted election to the Royal Academy, after nomination by his friends Eduardo Paolozzi and Mary Fedden, but he exhibited rarely.</p><p>He had moved to Crete in 1960, rescuing a Venetian harbour-side house at Hania. (Typically, on his first night he was invited to dinner with Winston Churchill. They talked painting.) He split his time between Crete and Hampstead, the family having relocated in 1945 to a large house where BBC musicians rehearse to this day.</p><p>Lifting a 60-year veto on a monograph shortly before his death, he wanted little of his fascinating life to infiltrate the text. But he had lived his pictures, looking latterly like an old Cretan chieftain heading a band of friends and admirers. Recently I went to see him, aware that his latest physical travail was a bedsore. As musicians practised downstairs, I found him in tears. "Is it the bedsore?" I asked. "No," he replied. "It's the Shostakovich."</p><p>He is survived by his partner Richard Riley and two brothers.</p><p>• John Leith Craxton, artist, born 3 October 1922; died 17 November 2009</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/art">Art</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/greece">Greece</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/freud">Lucian Freud</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/winston-churchill">Winston Churchill</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/whitechapel-gallery">Whitechapel Gallery</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/crete">Crete</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/royal-ballet">Royal Ballet</a></li></ul></div><div class="guRssAdvert"><a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Arts&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12587524925362766332742857908885"><img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Arts&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12587524925362766332742857908885" border="0" /></a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> - 1 day ago
Letter: Timothy Bateson obituary
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.3/6565?ns=guardian&pageName=Letter%3A+Timothy+Bateson+obituary%3AArticle%3A1307754&ch=Television+%26amp%3B+radio&c3=Guardian&c4=Comedy+%28TV+genre%29%2CTelevision+%28Culture%29%2CJohn+Cleese%2CStage%2CFilm%2CCulture+section&c6=&c7=09-Nov-19&c8=1307754&c9=Article&c10=Obituary%2CLetter&c11=Television+%26amp%3B+radio&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FTelevision+%26amp%3B+radio%2FComedy" width="1" height="1" /></div><p><strong>Gavin Gaughan writes:</strong> Michael Coveney's account of Timothy Bateson (obituary, 8 November) omitted a minor but noteworthy event in television comedy. The first person to give life on screen to Basil Fawlty was not John Cleese, but the diminutive, inoffensive-looking Bateson. Cleese took the inspiration from the real-life hotel proprietor Donald Sinclair, and before Fawlty Towers used Sinclair as the basis for a character, played by Bateson, in an episode of the LWT series Doctor at Large in 1971. Although here named Clifford, he was already snapping at anyone who had the temerity to ask for a room, and was not slow to display exasperation to guests. Bateson was physically more similar to Sinclair than Cleese, and was equipped on screen with a towering wife. When casting himself and Prunella Scales, Cleese simply reversed the couple's sizes.</p><p></p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/comedy">Comedy</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/television">Television</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/john-cleese">John Cleese</a></li></ul></div><div class="guRssAdvert"><a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Tvandradio&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12587524925395533509735126820211"><img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Tvandradio&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12587524925395533509735126820211" border="0" /></a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> - 1 day ago
Jimmy Clark obituary
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.3/2880?ns=guardian&pageName=Jimmy+Clark+obituary%3AArticle%3A1307742&ch=Stage&c3=Guardian&c4=Dance%2CCulture+section&c6=Terry+Monaghan&c7=09-Nov-19&c8=1307742&c9=Article&c10=Obituary&c11=Stage&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FStage%2FDance" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">Half of a key American duo from the golden age of tap-dancing</p><p>Jimmy Clark, who has died aged 87, was the "straight-man" of the renowned tap-dancing Clark Brothers. As the last "brother" tap act from the golden era of swing, Jimmy and his brother, Steve, had an extraordinary career. They negotiated mob-run venues in the US and mixed with royalty in the UK, but seldom put a foot wrong. After one command performance, the Queen Mother came along the line and shook Steve's hand. Lord Delfont asked if she remembered the Clark Brothers. She replied: "Yes, but I can't understand how they keep dancing so fast for so long." Steve, the "funny" half of the act, responded: "You're not doing so bad yourself!"</p><p>Along with their older brother, Cornelius, and four sisters, Jimmy and Steve were brought up in Philadelphia by a hard-working father and deeply religious mother. She taught them 125 hymns at an early age, and four of them, including Jimmy and Steve, formed the Clark Singers. Realising that they could earn more money from dancing, Jimmy and Steve began to teach each other tap, and soon split away. Having produced Honi Coles, the Condos Brothers and eventually the Hines Kids – or, as they became better known, Gregory and Maurice Hines – Philadelphia had a rich tradition in this respect.</p><p>Jimmy and Steve moved to the Bronx, New York. Making a successful, high-level entry in 1941, when Bill Robinson recruited them for the Hot Mikado in Harlem's Apollo, they took Bojangles's advice that "you can't make rhythm in the air", which meant that they ignored the vogue for including acrobatics in their act.</p><p>Instead they developed a distinctive, suave style that put them alongside artists such as Billie Holiday, Fats Waller, Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington. Their growing reputation took them into the Catskill mountains "Borscht belt" hotels such as Grossinger's Catskill Resort hotel (the real "Dirty Dancing" venue), where they worked with existing and future stars including Patti Page, Frankie Laine, Tallulah Bankhead, Sophie Tucker, Howard Keel and Frank Sinatra.</p><p>A 1948 booking for Olson and Johnson's Hellzapoppin' in the London Casino brought them across the Atlantic. Despite press criticism, the show's innovative humour, which included throwing unobtainable types of American food at the still-rationed UK audiences, proved popular. Having marked the UK out as a new stamping ground, the brothers returned to New York to appear in the film Killer Diller (1948), then later back to the UK to perform with Gracie Fields at Windsor Castle for George VI.</p><p>Repeating that transatlantic pattern during the next 10 years enabled them to manoeuvre between the slowly shrinking centres of the once-global cabaret circuit. In New York, they worked at the Latin Quarter and were then directed to the newly mob-acquired Sands hotel, in Las Vegas. The Grade Organisation lured the Clark Brothers back to the UK in 1952, and introduced them to the London Palladium and the booming northern working men's club scene.</p><p>In New York in 1954, as leading cabaret artists for the city's ballroom dance contest, the Harvest Moon Ball, they met up with Sinatra, and returned to the Sands in Vegas. Among other duties, they introduced a new hopeful, Elvis Presley. In 1959 in the UK, various royal command performances and Sunday Nights at the London Palladium bookings followed. Dancing late night at the Churchill Club led to an introduction to Princess Margaret, who cut the opening ribbon for their new dance school in London. Pop stars and actors who needed to dance on television attended, and the Clarks taught Cliff Richard and the Shadows, Freddie and the Dreamers, Bonnie Langford and many more.</p><p>By the 1960s, drastic changes were being wrought on the music scene, matched by a similar transformation of US entertainment, especially its nightclub scene. As the Atlantic liners became cruise ships, the Clark Brothers worked on such vessels for eight years in an environment where older entertainment styles prevailed. Their talents as all-round entertainers, with Jimmy on drums and Steve on piano, or as impersonators, with Jimmy as Nat King Cole and Steve as Louis Armstrong, came into their own. Opting eventually for dry land, they worked in Tito's Inn, Majorca, until the late 1970s.</p><p>A two-year attempt to run their own piano bar next door, modelled on London's Ronnie Scott's, had its moments, but they eventually returned to the UK to work with visiting orchestras such as Lionel Hampton and Cab Calloway, and settled in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. In 2002, I featured them in a two-night sell-out tap show at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, where their "old-school" professionalism contrasted with the new wave of enthusiasts. More engagements followed before Jimmy's declining health finally brought the Clark Brothers' stage career to an end.</p><p>Jimmy is survived by Steve, five children and four grandchildren.</p><p>• James Maddison Clark, tap-dancer and entertainer, born 23 July 1922; died 30 October 2009</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/dance">Dance</a></li></ul></div><div class="guRssAdvert"><a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Theatre&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12587524925404399667565514638510"><img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Theatre&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12587524925404399667565514638510" border="0" /></a></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/terry-monaghan">Terry Monaghan</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /> - 1 day ago
Daily Mail | Baz Bamigboye
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