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button. Financial Times | Arts & Weekend
Lunch with the FT: Manolo BlahnikThe legendary shoe designer tells Vanessa Friedman how the economic crisis has left him worrying about the workers in the factories who make his products - 23 hours ago
Leading figures on their ideal holidays
Town or country, home or abroad, BlackBerry or blissfully out of touch? Writers, restaurateurs and politicians talk about their perfect summer - 23 hours ago
FT critics' hottest holiday reading
Browse through our comprehensive selection of literary highlights - 1 day ago
Catching the waves in Cornwall
A luxury surfing school run by a national champion and a head lifeguard offers novices one-on-one tutoring adapted to the learner's experience level - 23 hours ago
The art of Anselm Kiefer rises from the ruins
Ahead of a production at Opera Bastille, the German artist tells Jackie Wullschlager why visual imprints of his childhood are inescapable in his works - 23 hours ago
Bhutan's unique identity
The country's astonishing temples and monasteries, passion for archery and compulsory national dress set it apart, but John Julius Norwich wonders whether this Shangri-La can survive in the modern world - 23 hours ago
Downturn dining
Restaurant owners tell Nicholas Lander that customer numbers are still good, particularly between Thursday and Sunday, but average spend is down - 23 hours ago
All about Michelle Obama's wardrobe
Want to know what the First Lady is wearing for the July 4th celebrations or the upcoming G8 summit in Italy? The website mrs-o.org has all the answers - 23 hours ago
Daily Telegraph | Arts
Literary festivals: Like Glastonbury without the mud The literary festival has outgrown its eccentric roots to become a celebritypacked staple of the summer calendar. - 1 day ago
Teenage novels: review
Tom Payne relishes a batch of novels for teenagers including If I Stay by Gayle Forman - 2 days ago
Historical children's books: review
Toby Clements celebrates five historical novels for children - 2 days ago
Endpaper
Genevieve Fox reports from her book club on Kazuo Ishiguro's Nocturnes - 2 days ago
What would you do if they put you on a plinth?
An allstar cast lines up for Antony Gormley's empty plinth in Trafalgar Square as witnessed by Jim White. - 1 day ago
Let's face it the magic went out of Harry Potter many years ago
Emma Watson is already far more glamorous than her alter ego Hermione says Bryony Gordon - 1 day ago
Montserrat Caballé camps its up again
Opera diva Montserrat Caballé is to sing Freddie Mecury song for the first time since his death. - 1 day ago
Public art selloffs heading into troubled waters
Should museums and galleries be allowed to selloff their works? - 1 day ago
Wilton's music hall is a pleasure palace to revel in
Wilton's music hall is one of London's architectural gems but distinctly unTrustworthy. - 1 day ago
Public Enemies review
Michael Mann; Johnny Depp; Christian Bale; 15 147 mins Rating - 1 day ago
Guardian | Theatre
'She got the keys to your soul'div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/52995?ns=guardianpageName=Pina+Bausch+tributes+from+leading+figures+in+dance%2C+theatre%2C+films+and+v%3AArticle%3A1241837ch=Stagec4=Pina+Bausch%2CDance%2CTheatre%2CArt+and+design%2CArt+%28visual+arts+only%29%2CStage%2CCulture+sectionc6=Chris+Wiegandc8=1241837c9=Articlec10=Interviewc11=Stagec13=c25=c30=contenth2=GU%2FStage%2FPina+Bausch" width="1" height="1" //divpLeading figures from the dance world and beyond have paid tribute to the German choreographer Pina Bausch, who died this week at the age of 68/ph2Alain Platel, artistic director, Les Ballets C de la B/h2pFor me, Pina's work was a trigger when I saw it in the early 80s. She opened a lot of doors for many of us. She was the first one to ask questions of her dancers and use the answers to make performances. She had little lists of questions. They could go from the absurd, like "What did you eat for Christmas?" to "How do you feel about love?" There were a thousand other questions in between. It was quite revolutionary. Many of us use that method now./ppHer masterpiece is without doubt Café Müller. I was asked in 2001 to organise a dance festival, and I contacted Pina. Everyone told me that it would be impossible, that she never showed only Café Müller – and that she would never show it just for one evening. But she invited me to Wuppertal, and we talked, and she came! She came to the festival to show Café Müller in a theatre that was too small for the set to fit in./ppThe way she talked about her own and others' performances was very subtle and poetic. What I liked about her was that she would never talk about your work in terms of good and bad; she would always try to understand why somebody would do something./ppI probably will not be the only one who was extremely in love with her. She would give you a lot of attention in a very positive way. She would share you with the people she was with. She was extremely intelligent and sensitive – and, in that way, a mirror of her own performances./ph2Wayne McGregor, choreographer/h2pAn artist of true inspiration, Pina Bausch has changed the dance and theatre landscape forever. Always provocative, her amazing body of work stands testament to her enduring vision, innovation and creativity./ph2Lloyd Newson, DV8 Physical Theatre/h2pWhen Pina Bausch first came to London in 1982, I remember swathes of audience members walking out and many critics sullenly dismissing her work as "not dance", "structureless" or "self-indulgent", and some still do. But Bausch was not a person to kowtow to audiences' or critics' demands to change her work. The rewards of that singular, uncompromising vision mean that nowadays for every person leaving one of her shows, there are 20 others waiting for their seat./ppBausch understood that dance and linear narrative weren't always the best vehicles for discussing the human condition. Even if you were a disciple of her work from the outset, like I was, her work could delight you but just as easily frustrate and annoy you. That was her magnificence. Bausch made you feel. She had the courage to relentlessly pursue, on stage, her own fascinations and obsessions about time and human relations no matter how minuscule or epic those ideas might be; and that was her genius./ppIt is rare to find dance- or theatre-makers with such vision and courage. Her work truly allowed people to see the world from another perspective that, had she not been around, we would never have known. Her legacy is monumental./ph2Deborah Bull, creative director, Royal Opera House/h2pI first saw Pina Bausch's company in 1980, in what I now gather was an "unsuccessful" season at Sadler's Wells. In retrospect, that makes sense: as a graduate student at the Royal Ballet School, I certainly couldn't have afforded the seat I occupied at its face value. I don't remember much about the performance other than a line of black-clad women advancing towards the audience and answering, one by one, the question of a disembodied voice: "What are you afraid of?" "Death." "Is that all?" "Isn't that enough?"/ppI knew I had seen something huge, something groundbreaking, something which would change forever what I believe can be expressed through dance, and how. Watching Bausch's choreography is like watching life through a train window: unexpected peeks into private places, swathes of day-to-day drabness and life's flotsam and jetsam washed up at the side of the track. A living tapestry which, like life, doesn't always make sense. So some bits of Bausch wash past, leaving you unmoved, while there are moments which leave you wondering how she got the keys to your soul./ph2Siobhan Davies, choreographer/h2pI know that Pina's company is on tour at the moment and I send them heartfelt good wishes and strength as they continue. Pina must have triggered a continuous circle of enquiry and knowledge that rebounded around the artists that gathered to work with her and make years and years of outstanding performances. The loyalty that Pina and her company exchanged produced the power to make every minute of work count. An unconnected collection of felt images from performances ping into my mind as I write; many of then are of Dominique Mercy, whom I thank. Pina and her close associates must sometimes have taken each other to the edges of where performances can be made and sustained, but by the time they reached the stage, the wealth of energy and detail came from a whole company./ph2Pedro Almodóvar, film-maker/h2pWith a perennial cigarette in her hand, and her indescribable smile, Pina Bausch established a turning point in contemporary dance for the last quarter of the last century ... Our friendship was intense and forever. Pina was very feminine and very sensual … She sparked very diverse emotions in me and always inspired me./ph2Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, dancer and choreographer/h2pPina Bausch's work was the first "contemporary" choreography I felt I understood. She somehow found a way to reflect reality, or at least show in movements and metaphors, a view on real life, on real relationships. Compared to classical dance, where men and women were pushed in specific and limited archetypes, her work touched me deeply as I recognised the tensions, the issues she was handling in her pieces. It moved me to tears, every time I saw something of hers./ppShe inspired me to this day to do what I do as a choreographer. She made me, through her art, believe in asking questions, and dancing the answers away, forever searching for a moment of grace. I was blessed in meeting her a couple of times and was invited to dance at her festival in Germany. I will cherish those moments of seeing her think, seeing her energy, and how she tried to make everyone feel welcome and taken care of. She had so much clarity and kindness, such power and vision, so much mystery also./ppIt's a great loss to have her pass away, and a lot of tears have been shed since the sad news. I was struck by how extremely sad and empty I felt when I heard she left us. Death is not a new thing for me, yet I felt lost hearing of her passing away. In many ways, Pina was such a powerful inspiration, such a beacon, it's like we are all her children. Suddenly we have to wake up and realise we have to become grownups and handle reality on our own, it's a difficult shift to make for everyone staying behind./ppMy heart goes out to her family and to all her dancers and company members, to everyone in Wuppertal. I wish them a lot of courage in these difficult times. Pina leaves us with an incredible oeuvre, limitless inspiration and a vision of dance as a reflection of human lives, of human feelings, of human struggle. She will dance on forever in all our hearts, in our memories, in our bodies, in our movements. Let's all keep (or start!) dancing to honour her. I feel she would have liked that ... to see us all unite in dance./ph2Shobana Jeyasingh, choreographer/h2pWhen I started choreographing, Pina Bausch was already an icon. She was like a huge mountain we all admired but also wanted to run away from. We were slightly scared that we'd be so influenced by her we wouldn't find our own voice. In her work, there was an incredible theatricality of the body. You came out of the theatre gasping for breath. The Pina Bausch experience was like someone turning on a cold shower. It was an incredible assault on the senses. She's a nice contrast to someone like Merce Cunningham. Cunningham is incredibly cool; it's like looking at something from a very long distance but it still engages you. With Pina Bausch, it's like looking at something at completely close quarters; you don't get the freedom to have an emotional perspective. It's thrown at you with such vigour and drama and energy./ph2Jan Fabre, theatre-maker/h2pMy last beautiful encounter with Pina was a night in an Antwerp restaurant a year ago. They closed the restaurant especially for us in order that we could smoke. Pina was a great lady, a great artist, and a fantastic smoker! I imagine that she died with a cigarette in her mouth: you have to stay loyal to the things that kill you./ph2Ramin Gray, associate director, Royal Court theatre/h2pI saw Nelken in Venice in 1983. Half the audience had walked out in disgust by the end, but I was mesmerised. For years I had a poster of the girl with the accordion wandering through that endless field of carnations on my bedroom wall. The trouble with Pina is that her stuff is so distinctive you've got a real problem passing it off as your own without getting nabbed. Fortunately I did a youth theatre show in Ashford in 1990 where I offloaded most of it but she still haunts me after all these years./ph2Jasmin Vardimon, choreographer/h2pI was sorry to hear the news of the death of a great artist, the pioneer of the dance-theatre genre. My first introduction to dance was her piece 1980, which I saw as a young teenager. A year later I had the privilege of helping to set the stage for Nelken and of observing the dress rehearsal – an experience that had a great influence on my development as an artist and my creative life today. Her work had the kind of impact that stays for a long time after you've seen it, and I'm sure this impact will stay for generations to come./ph2Cornelia Parker, artist/h2pI first met Pina a few years ago, when Viktor was being performed at Sadler's Wells. I'd always assumed that she would be a larger-than-life character because of those incredible images that she created, but the reverse was true. With her shyness, modesty and wraith-like physique, she seemed like somebody from an Edvard Munch painting./ppThere was a lot of humour in her work. People think of her as this dark German expressionist but there was lots of wit as well as tragedy, she used the whole emotional register. Her works weren't about people having the perfect body. There were dancers of all ages – you might have 30 old age pensioners pirouetting on the stage, alongside sheep and dancers with impossibly long limbs. There's a hypnotic refrain that seems to consistently resurface, like a slowed-down, Hawaiian hula. What is great about experiencing her work is the generosity and the space it allows you for your own thoughts./ppA couple of years ago, I was asked to do a project in Wuppertal. There's a suspended monorail in the city that passes right by the windows of Pina's studio. I covered the windows of the trains with transparent gels, each carriage a different colour. I hoped that she might look out from her studio at night and see those mood trains go by. /ph2Alistair Spalding, artistic director, Sadler's Wells/h2pIt has been a great privilege to have been able to first present the work and then become a friend of Pina Bausch over the last eight years. Pina was first and last an artist who lived and breathed her work with the Tanztheater Wuppertal. She rarely took holidays but rather spent time travelling everywhere with her company, creating a new work every year and, most importantly and remarkably, keeping all of the works she ever made available in the repertoire. She had incredible stamina and there were regular, very late-night dinners after performances in Wuppertal and all around the world with a customary clinking of red wine glasses to start proceedings. Little did I know that the toast after her most recent premiere would be the last one I would have with her. Pina inspired absolute devotion from her company and collaborators, they all loved her deeply and so did I./ph2Monica Mason, director of the Royal Ballet/h2pI was shocked and very saddened to hear of the death of Pina Bausch. She was a genius and a giant in the field of modern dance theatre and I wish I'd had the chance to know her and to perform in a piece of her work. It was always so exciting and inspiring to spend an evening watching her company performing. Her death leaves dance devastated./ph2Michael Morris, co-director, Artangel/h2pPina was well known for not talking about her work to journalists. She very rarely talked about her work to anyone at all. Whenever I went to Wuppertal, everything under the sun would be discussed around the dinner table but not the work. It wasn't that she didn't want to; she didn't know how to talk about it. She was not an intellectual. She was motivated only by emotional truth and was not frightened to put difficult and paradoxical feelings on stage, almost as a way of evacuating aspects of humanity that she was fearful of. She made so many works, but they're all one piece really. And it's all about staging the full complexity of human emotion and impulse, however tough to look at. She celebrated humanity in all of its guises. Increasingly, she perhaps celebrated happiness more than pain. She always fused humour with horror, offsetting anxiety with compassion./ppTen days ago, I saw what has turned out to be her last piece. She would always show a new work without naming it; the title would come later. So this piece remains "ein stück von Pina Bausch". It felt particularly complete and had a real integration of the more experienced members of the company and some younger dancers, making their debut./ppPina's vision was second to none. I'd put her up there with Beckett and Bacon as one of the towering figures of the 20th century. All of the work is in repertoire and she kept it fresh so there can be a future for it. The company gave a performance in Poland the night that she died and they will perform over the weekend in Spoleto. The determination to keep her spirit alive through the work is fierce. The company were all asked if they wanted to perform on Tuesday, and they unanimously wanted to – and needed to./pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/pinabausch"Pina Bausch/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/dance"Dance/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatre"Theatre/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/art"Art/a/li/ul/divdiv class="guRssAdvert"a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Theatrespacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=12467462850125777404288020392386"img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Theatrespacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=12467462850125777404288020392386" border="0" //a/divdiv class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 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/divp style="clear:both" / - 1 day ago
In search of their feminine side
div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/32630?ns=guardianpageName=In+search++of+their+feminine+side%3AArticle%3A1241473ch=Life+and+stylec4=Women+and+women%27s+interests%2CLife+and+style%2CFeminism+%28World+news%29%2CTheatre%2CStage%2CGay+rights+%28News%29%2CCulture+section%2CWorld+newsc6=Maddy+Costac8=1241473c9=Articlec10=Interviewc11=Life+and+stylec13=c25=c30=contenth2=GU%2FLife+and+style%2FWomen" width="1" height="1" //divpCan a show put on by two gay men really reflect what it's like to be a woman? Maddy Costa finds out/ppBy his own admission, theatre producer and nightclub promoter Simon Casson is not the kind of person one would expect to be involved in a cabaret extravaganza glorifying femininity. "The idea of femininity is quite scary to me," he says. "In that way, I'm not unlike a lot of gay men, or men in general. I don't want to get in touch with my feminine side." Yet here he is, producing Gay Shame Goes Girly, at the Brixton Academy in London from tomorrow./ppSatire is at the heart of Gay Shame, an annual event that Casson started in the mid-90s as a counterpoint to the increasingly commercialised Gay Pride. It was certainly the driving force last year when Gay Shame went "macho", exploring masculinity and its mostly negative connotations. "It was all fighting, farting and football," says Casson cheerfully. Robin Whitmore, the director and designer of Gay Shame, describes that night as: "A response to the very macho culture that the gay world has become, with the emphasis on body building, rough and unprotected sex, drugs and alcohol. We wanted to show it as brutal and aggressive - to exaggerate masculinity the way that a cartoonist might do."/ppGay Shame Goes Girly, by contrast, aims to be less belligerent, with a more complex mood. The 30-odd performance artists and theatre groups involved contemplate what it is to give birth or nurture someone, and invite audience members to participate in gentle pursuits, such as watercolour painting (of vaginas), cake-decorating and crochet. But there will be raucous, even violent elements, too: a chance to undergo an ersatz breast augmentation, attend a hen party or submit to a controlling, cane-wielding mother figure. But Whitmore's overall aesthetic, inspired by Dior's postwar New Look fashions and the photographs of Cecil Beaton, is "quite high glamour, beautiful actually"./ppWhitmore accepts that the event is trading in a number of biological, domestic and even pre-feminist stereotypes. "But it's not about male-female," he argues, "it's about what society does to that. 'Femininity' means something different for straight women, for gay women, for straight men and for gay men, and for people of different ages." Casson thinks the audience will appreciate the chance to "play with all that archetypal feminine stuff. It's great when those things become fodder for a nightclub to use as props, instead of trapping us and defining our existence."/ppMore than that, says Whitmore, many people "want to celebrate something that maybe has been stifled in their life". A gay man born in the 50s, he long struggled with the received notion that boys should not be feminine. He recollects his childhood "sense of guilt about the fact that I had pink lacy curtains in my bedroom, and that I loved playing with dolls. /ppI would throw the doll across the room when my mum walked in, and pick up a car - even though she said: 'You don't have to do that.'"/ppEven now, says Casson, gay men who "show some feminine attributes get abused and objectified". In an overwhelmingly macho culture, there is no longer a place for figures like the bouffant-and-cravat-sporting Quentin Crisp. "Gay men rejecting their nellie side, is that progress?" asks Casson. "I don't think so."/ppThis interrogation of the relationship between femininity and homosexuality is br /fascinating. Yet isn't there something slightly odd about two gay men superintending an event dedicated to femininity? Amy Lameacute; thinks so. She is the compere for Gay Shame, but this year has demanded a more integral role. "I know gay men might like to think that they know what it's like to be a woman, but they don't," she says. /ppAppointing herself Casson and Whitmore's "femininity adviser", she will ensure "an authentic feminine, lesbian voice" is prominent on the night. Lameacute; feels that femininity is misunderstood. "It isn't about weakness. I think of femininity as a quiet strength that has been much under-appreciated. I see it as giving birth, as running small independent businesses, ie households." That still ties feminine experience to biology and domesticity - but Lame is also suspicious of what she describes as "the nostalgification of femininity that has been happening in the past few years. It's developed into this bizarre cult of cupcakes and crafts. I can't say I don't enjoy that, but I'm interested in feminist cupcakes, in radical knitting." That's why she is keen to expose the "gory side of an excessive idea of femininity, the primping and poking and physical monstrosities that women put themselves through"./ppThe element of the show Lame is most keenly anticipating is being put together by a (male) performance artist called Scottee, and is titled Abortive Tapestry. In one room, audience members will contribute stitches to a huge crocheted image - while in an adjacent room, backstreet abortions are enacted with knitting needles, as they were in the mid-20th century. "That's the kind of rubbing up against ideas that I'm interested in," says Lame. Yet this is the piece that Whitmore confesses makes him feel most nervous./ppLame also points out that, while effeminacy is outdated among gay men, overt femininity - the wearing of dresses and lipstick - is frequently rejected outright by gay women. She remembers how, on arriving in London from the US 15 years ago, she was turned away from lesbian clubs because: "I was wearing a skirt. I felt a real sense of rejection."/ppAnother Gay Shame performer, Karen Tom McLeod, similarly spent the 90s feeling as though "if you were a feminine-looking lesbian, you were second-rate. It was such a bizarre thing - it was almost misogynist." It was so important to Lame and McLeod that Gay Shame address this "femme-phobia", they arranged a private salon for Casson, Whitmore and a group of women to discuss femininity within the lesbian community. It proved so fruitful that Lame has set up two public debates on femininity (one each for men and women), to take place this month./ppWorking on the show has "really fired me up politically, and reignited my feminist spirit," Lame says. "One of the hardest things about this project for me has been having two men in charge." She has been rereading her feminist library and says: "Things haven't come as far as we think."/ppWhitmore is keen to incorporate a feminist agenda into Gay Shame: alongside Beaton, his other key reference point is the American feminist art group Guerrilla Girls. Yet, how different might Gay Shame Goes Girly look if women were in charge? "Cecil Beaton images are not my idea of femininity at all," says McLeod. "The women look great but they're in corsetry. It's a male view of femininity."/ppFor all that she thinks of femininity as an inner quality, Lame knows that it is most often defined by a woman's appearance. As such, she's thinking carefully about what she is going to wear for Gay Shame. "It would be easy to wear a polka-dotted apron and be that cupcake-perfect image of a woman," she says. "It's more difficult to be confrontational, to show feminine strength."/ppAs for Casson, he is going to keep on suppressing his feminine side. "I will be wearing a skirt - but it's very much a man's skirt: discreet, black. Then again," he ponders, "maybe it's more feminine to be discreet"./ppGay Shame Goes Girly starts tomorrow. Box office: 0844 477 2000. For more information, visit a href="http://www.duckie.co.uk"duckie.co.uk/a./pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/women"Women/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feminism"Feminism/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatre"Theatre/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gay-rights"Gay rights/a/li/ul/divdiv class="guRssAdvert"a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Lifeandstylespacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=12467462850186774139124860235891"img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Lifeandstylespacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=12467462850186774139124860235891" border="0" //a/divdiv class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 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/divp style="clear:both" / - 2 days ago
It Felt Like a Kiss
div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/41883?ns=guardianpageName=Amid+the+infantile+and+the+scary%2C+there+is+brilliance+here%3AArticle%3A1241611ch=Stagec4=Punchdrunk%2CTheatre%2CStage%2CManchester+international+festival%2CCulture+section%2CFilmc6=Michael+Billingtonc8=1241611c9=Articlec10=Reviewc11=Stagec13=c25=c30=contenth2=GU%2FStage%2FPunchdrunk" width="1" height="1" //divpHardman Square, Manchester/ppWhat do you get if you combine the talents of the theatre group Punchdrunk with documentary film-maker Adam Curtis and composer Damon Albarn? In the case of this piece, commissioned for the Manchester International Festival, a real dogs-dinner of a show: one that blends infantile scare tactics, serious politics and visual and aural mystery. When the show is good, it is very, very good: when it is bad, it is excruciating./ppHow to describe the experience? Well, like Caesar's Gaul, it is divided into three parts. First we assemble in small groups in the lobby of a derelict office building and are warned that what follows may not be suitable for pregnant women or the highly nervous. /ppNot fitting into either category, I join a party that ascends to the sixth floor. Stumbling through the dark we suddenly find ourselves in a meticulous recreation of period suburban America. This is Norman Rockwell country: manicured lawns, toys in the attic, bakelite radios pouring out pop music. But there is a hint of something more sinister as we edge into a television studio, find dressing rooms decorated with horror-movie posters and hear news of the assassination of JFK./ppSo far this is all very Punchdrunk: a mixture of art-installation and immersive theatre, on the lines of The Masque of the Red Death, except that here there are no actors. But we come to the main bill of fare, and the real justification for the evening, when we enter an air-conditioned room and watch a 35-minute Adam Curtis documentary. /ppIts subject is America and how 50 years ago it set out to remake the world. And what it does, with considerable brilliance, is offer a blitz of images in which politics, pop and movie culture combine to show how America came to dominate not only our collective dreams but, increasingly, large sections of the planet./ppCurtis records a whole series of CIA interventions in Cuba, the Congo and Iraq where Saddam Hussein was, for a time, an American agent. /ppSome of the material is familiar: not least the well-known bungled attempts to kill Fidel Castro with exploding cigars and spiked drinks. But much of it comes as a shock: I never knew, for instance, that Saddam had hired the James Bond director, Terence Young, to make a promotional Iraqi film. But Curtis's real point is the way America came to colonise our lives and our imaginations. /ppIt vied with the Russians to dominate space. Madison Avenue and Hollywood combined to create myths: lots of clips of Doris Day and the secretly gay Rock Hudson busily faking it in the rom coms of the time. /ppAmerican rock and pop also ruled the airwaves: the show's title comes from a Carole King song that describes how "he hit me and it felt like a kiss" and that was produced, ominously enough, by Phil Spector./ppCurtis's film may not be the whole truth about America and the editing is sometimes mischievous: official acceptance of the Warren Report, about the Kennedy assassination, is followed by a shot of a wide-eyed Doris Day. /ppBut the film, which I sat through twice, is jazzy, stimulating, nerve-pricking. I can only report, with dismay, that the last third of the evening is a total let-down. Coming out of the film, we find ourselves wandering through debris-filled rooms, entering desolate cells, even being pursued down darkened corridors by a masked man clutching a chain-saw. /ppI guess the aim is to show how the American dream turned into a nightmare. But to do it through these fairground shock-tactics is an insult to our intelligence. /ppThe cant critical word for this kind of thing is "scary". But what is the point of simply making people jump out of their skins?/ppThe real truth is that Curtis's film could easily stand alone. Albarn has assembled an eclectic score that ranges from Vertigo to Peter Grimes. /ppFelix Barrett and the Punchdrunk team have also created a visual surround that moves from the subliminal to the ridiculous. But, in the end, all this is so much flim-flam. /ppIn fact, watching this show is a bit like unwrapping a parcel in which you have to tear off superfluous mounds of brown paper in order to get to the choice present that you really wanted./pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/punchdrunk"Punchdrunk/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatre"Theatre/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/manchester-international-festival"Manchester international festival/a/li/ul/divdiv class="guRssAdvert"a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Theatrespacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=12467462850225016184494394250626"img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Theatrespacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=12467462850225016184494394250626" border="0" //a/divdiv class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 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/divp style="clear:both" / - 2 days ago
How to solve the arts funding crisis
div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/66824?ns=guardianpageName=Here%27s+how+to+solve+the+arts+funding+crisis+%7C+Lyn+Gardner%3AArticle%3A1241336ch=Stagec4=Theatre%2CStage%2CArts+funding%2CArts+policy%2CCulture+sectionc6=Lyn+Gardnerc8=1241336c9=Articlec10=Blogpostc11=Stagec13=c25=Theatre+blogc30=contenth2=GU%2FStage%2Fblog%2FTheatre+blog" width="1" height="1" //divpAs arts organisations brace themselves for funding cuts in 2011, why not take this chance to overhaul the whole system – and maybe introduce a radical change?/ppOnly the most wildly optimistic or hopelessly deluded could possibly believe that the future funding climate looks anything other than grim. But it is good to see the National Campaign for the Arts launching its a href="http://www.artscampaign.org.uk/news/artsmanifesto.html"Manifesto for the Arts/a, in anticipation of the election next year, and emphasising the contribution the arts make to the country. /ppWe will need every argument we can muster come 2011. Not only is the Department of Culture, Media and Sport likely to suffer in any future spending rounds, but any cuts in the public sector will almost certainly affect local authority support for the arts. Trusts and foundations have already been badly hit by the recession, so there is likely to be little solace there. /ppA few people may be burying their heads in the sand about funding prospects, but many are already looking to the future and their long-term survival. That's great – as long as fear and uncertainty doesn't make them risk-averse and inclined to play it safe. Moreover, rather than just assuming that the post-2011 funding system will remain much as it always has, this could be a good time to look more closely at the way money is allocated, and what it is allocated for./ppDuring one of the consultation meetings for a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jan/11/theatrenews.artsfunding"the McMaster report/a, I suggested that maybe the Arts Council should consider creating a fund to which theatres and companies could apply, which would offer low-cost loans rather than subsidy. I got the idea after reading that JK Rowling had been given a grant from the then Scottish Arts Council to write Harry Potter, long before the books became a mega-success. I have no problem with this: good on the Arts Council bods for recognising talent and supporting it; the money was a grant, not a loan, and there is no reason why Rowling should ever have paid it back. But, that's not to say it couldn't have been done./ppA theatre company may well need financial support at first, just like any other business. But if a company can be self-supporting, my feeling is that it should be./ppYes, of course there will be some work – indeed, a great deal – that by its very nature is risky and experimental, and will always require investment via subsidy. But there is some that is currently government-funded that could attract other funding partners. Why not offer these companies loans, rather than subsidy, with the proviso that when the company is successful, the loan will be repaid so that other companies can benefit?/ppWhen I suggested this, everybody in the room looked at me as if I was insane. Maybe I am; maybe it is completely unworkable. But I was interested to see Charlotte Jones of the Independent Theatre Council talking about the same idea in a href="http://www.artsprofessional.co.uk/ "Arts Professional/a recently. "Why is the L-word such a dirty word?" she asked. "Does no one ever consider the possibility that an imaginative arts organisation, supported in taking bold steps to provide a hungry audience with meaning and engagement at a time when they are gagging for it, might actually make money and pay it back? In the funding environment we face, maybe it's an idea worth pursuing." Maybe it is./pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatre"Theatre/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/arts-funding"Arts funding/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/arts-policy"Arts policy/a/li/ul/divdiv class="guRssAdvert"a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Theatrespacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=12467462850254293216555082879479"img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Theatrespacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=12467462850254293216555082879479" border="0" //a/divdiv class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 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/divp style="clear:both" / - 2 days ago
Minimum wage would kill the fringe
div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/41017?ns=guardianpageName=A+minimum+wage+would+kill+fringe+theatre+%7C+Michael+Simkins%3AArticle%3A1242015ch=Stagec4=Theatre%2CStage%2CCulture+sectionc6=Michael+Simkinsc8=1242015c9=Articlec10=Blogpostc11=Stagec13=c25=Theatre+blogc30=contenth2=GU%2FStage%2Fblog%2FTheatre+blog" width="1" height="1" //divpEquity's push for proper legislation is a nice idea, but it's simply unrealistic. The union should focus on the legit end of the market/ppYou'd think the news that Equity, the actors' trade union, is to press for a href="http://www.thestage.co.uk/news/newsstory.php/24897/equity-minimum-wage-proposal-will-destroy"proper minimum-wage legislation for all fringe theatre in Britain/a would have actors working in this poor relation of the business reaching for the champagne. Imagine! No more grubbing along on crisps and sandwiches because the producer – for whom you're working 18-hour days – can't even afford to pay your tube fare home. Fabulous! Minimum wage? Bring it on./ppBut, in reality, it's difficult for actors to know what to make of this latest initiative. Behind it is a genuine desire by a href="http://www.equity.org.uk/"Equity/a to prevent unscrupulous entrepreneurs using impoverishment as an excuse to get actors on the cheap. With times so tough and work so infrequent, it is more than ever a buyers market – and don't they know it. "Profit share", "workshop" and "showcase" are all terms bandied about freely by fringe venues to cover what they really mean: "no money"./ppAnd yet, a national minimum wage for the cast of the play in the room upstairs at the Dog and Duck in Hackney? How could such an initiative possibly be funded? Well, according to Equity, the government is to be asked to provide additional subsidy. While they're lobbying for the hopelessly unlikely, why not demand six weeks' paid holiday, a guaranteed audition for a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/eastenders/"EastEnders/a once a year, and free admission to the a href="http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/"National Theatre/a? /ppThe fact is, fringe is fringe. Actors know it's financially ruinous to take part in it for any length of time, with no pay, no facilities – and, often, no audience. But at least it gives actors a chance to do something with their creativity, rather than sit in the pub or, worse, become a human statue on Covent Garden piazza. (God knows that's one corner of the entertainment market we really don't need to encourage.)/ppJust now everyone's in the same boat, scrabbling for scraps on the fringe, workshop and profit-share circuit. What else can we do? I myself have just finished a three-day workshop of a new musical with a cast of some of the most celebrated actors in the country. We were paid expenses, palpably as much as the backers could afford, but even given their generosity, it wouldn't have kept a family of four going for very long. And yet the experience was great fun, challenging, and of course there's always that small chance that the project might just take off. That's the joy of the fringe: it's a triumph of optimism over experience./ppIf statutory levels of pay had been in force, I doubt if projects like this and many more – arguably the grassroots innovation behind the industry – would have occurred; not only depriving actors of work but also revenue for the venues in which these myriad projects are berthed. /ppEquity has my sympathy, it's doing its best in a tough old market; but for what it's worth, I reckon it needs to concentrate on buttressing its fragile influence on the legit end of the market. This is where things should be properly done, and increasingly are not./ppIn the last production I was involved in, nearly 70% of the cast hadn't bothered to join the union, preferring to save their subscriptions in the hope that the legislation so hard won by previous generations would continue to protect them for free. As it was, the management were tip-top and there was no need to worry. But with so little active union participation we would have been dangerously exposed if our employers had been less scrupulous./ppThis sort of opt-out rate is the real issue that needs addressing; unless Equity can persuade enough young (and old) actors to join up, the whole business will one day seem like fringe./pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatre"Theatre/a/li/ul/divdiv class="guRssAdvert"a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Theatrespacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1246746285027649117995326107456"img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Theatrespacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1246746285027649117995326107456" border="0" //a/divdiv class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 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/divp style="clear:both" / - 1 day ago
Avenue Q
div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/46641?ns=guardianpageName=Theatre+review%3A+Avenue+Q+%7C+Gielgud%2C+London%3AArticle%3A1241420ch=Stagec4=Musicals+%28Stage%29%2CTheatre%2CStage%2CCulture+sectionc6=Lyn+Gardnerc8=1241420c9=Articlec10=Reviewc11=Stagec13=c25=c30=contenth2=GU%2FStage%2FMusicals" width="1" height="1" //divpGielgud, London/ppThis musical is Sesame Street for grown-ups who find the idea of puppets talking dirty and having sex hilarious. There are some good ideas and a couple of great songs in Robert Lopez, Jeff Marx and Jeffy Whitty's all-American fantasy, which has just returned to the West End, including the neatly pointed Everyone's a Little Bit Racist./ppSet in a rundown multicultural neighbourhood, Avenue Q stars furry Kate Monster, who falls for newcomer Princeton; armed with his useless degree, Princeton is looking for a purpose in life. Meanwhile, Brian and his Asian-American wife are moving towards marriage, and gay Rod is looking to come out of the closet but has lost the key. Just like when you were five, everything turns out happily with pots of money and true love – and Lucy the Slut, who threatens to come between Kate and Princeton, gets the nasty end that bad girls deserve in this fairytale world./ppWithout the puppets, this would be unbearable. Even with them, it's teeth-grindingly cute, although I did enjoy the Bad Idea Bears, who sow discord and disaster. What's odd is that the puppetry is perfunctory: the puppets are manipulated in such a way that they remain separate entities rather than extensions of the actors. The result is no real emotion, just a battle to the death between human egos and their latex counterparts./pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/musicals"Musicals/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatre"Theatre/a/li/ul/divdiv class="guRssAdvert"a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Theatrespacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=12467462850306610880351287897603"img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Theatrespacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=12467462850306610880351287897603" border="0" //a/divdiv class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 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/divp style="clear:both" / - 2 days ago
The House of Special Purpose
div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/91970?ns=guardianpageName=Theatre+review%3A+House+of+Special+Purpose+%7C+Minerva%2C+Chichester%3AArticle%3A1240614ch=Stagec4=Theatre%2CStage%2CCulture+sectionc6=Michael+Billingtonc8=1240614c9=Articlec10=Reviewc11=Stagec13=c25=c30=contenth2=GU%2FStage%2FTheatre" width="1" height="1" //divpMinerva, Chichester/ppHeidi Thomas, the creator of TV's Cranford, returns to theatre after a long gap with this play about the last days of the Romanovs. The piece is beautifully directed by Howard Davies, but I am stillnbsp;puzzled as to its ultimate aim: it offers us a Romanovs'-eye-view of Russian history, but fails to put the familiar story of the family's execution in a wider political context./ppThomas focuses on the Romanovs' imprisonment at Ekaterinburg in 1918 and their adjustment to a new reality. Nicholas Romanov, unlike the more aloof Alexi, seeks to placate his captors. Both believe civil war may come to their rescue, and try to communicate with the outside world via a sympathetic guard. But the main interest lies in the way their four daughters and haemophiliac son adjust to the loss of prestige and power: even if Alexei remains an awkward little bleeder, the daughters eagerly discover such delights as washing and ironing their own clothes. One of them, Maria, even falls in love with the local laundry boy; but the irony is that the Romanovs only acquire a taste for everyday life on the eve of their extinction./ppLike all plays about dispossessed royalty, from Richard II onwards, this one emphasises the isolating nature of power. It is also full of oddly touching moments such as the sight of the family gathered round a piano to sing. But,nbsp;though Thomas seeks to humanise the captors as well as the captives, she omits much of the story's real drama. There is no hint of the turmoil that led to the tsar's abdication. Thomas also tells us nothing of the intense debates inside the local Soviet and the Moscow Central Committee about what to do with the Romanovs. She also signally ignores the fact that the ex-tsar's physician, cook, chambermaid and waiter were executed along with the family: a key point since it illustrates both Nicholas's inherited privilege and Bolshevik ruthlessness./ppYou can't properly tell the Romanov story without the politics. But there is one haunting moment in Davies's production: the image of the four daughters fanning themselves and quietly humming, as they lie draped over the furniture in the stifling summer heat. William Dudley's set, an adaptable wooden stockade, is also ingenious. And there are good performances all round: Adrian Rawlins and Clare Holman as the naive Nicholas and Alix; Lydia Wilson as the love-awakened Maria; and Kate O'Flynn as an Anastasia eager to experience a kiss before dying. Inbsp;was periodically moved, but I felt that, unlike the house itself, it was to no special purpose./pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatre"Theatre/a/li/ul/divdiv class="guRssAdvert"a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Theatrespacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=12467462850326010775633342699561"img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Theatrespacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=12467462850326010775633342699561" border="0" //a/divdiv class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 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/divp style="clear:both" / - 3 days ago
Damn Yankees
div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/73628?ns=guardianpageName=Theatre+review%3A+Damn+Yankees+%7C+Guildhall+School%2C+London%3AArticle%3A1241422ch=Stagec4=Musicals+%28Stage%29%2CStage%2CCulture+section%2CTheatrec6=Michael+Billingtonc8=1241422c9=Articlec10=Reviewc11=Stagec13=c25=c30=contenth2=GU%2FStage%2FMusicals" width="1" height="1" //divpGuildhall School, London/ppThis 1955 musical bynbsp;Richard Adler andnbsp;Jerry Ross gets one of its rare outings as the Guildhall School's summer show. Given that it is a Faustian musical aboutnbsp;baseball, it is always going to be an acquired British taste – but it's given a typically gutsy revival by Martin Connor and, with Steven Edis in the pit, the band plays as well as any you'll hear in the West End./ppTime has lent a patina of charm to thenbsp;basically absurd story. It hinges on a real-estate salesman selling his soul to the devil to become a big hitter for the Washington Senators, enabling them tonbsp;win baseball's World Series. In accordance with Eisenhower-era values, the hero finally sacrifices fame, fortune and sex to return to his loving wife – a decision that, in today's celebrity-crazednbsp;culture, would have him brandednbsp;insane. But the show survives throughnbsp;the sheer quality of its numbers. Best of all is Shoeless Joe fromnbsp;Hannibal Mo, which becomes, in Bill Deamer's choreography, a stomping tribute to smalltown virtues, with the male chorus wielding their baseball bats like clubs./ppRightly, Connor's revival emphasises the show's period flavour. Mark Desebrock conveys the basic decency ofnbsp;a hero who puts home and hearth before home runs; Terence Keeley is suitably dapper and oily as the double-dealing devil, and even does a very goodnbsp;hat-and-cane number; and Laurennbsp;O'Neil as the vampish Lola plausibly recalls the era of 1950s sweater-girls. But the strength of the show lies in the ensemble work and the much-expressed conviction that, whether in sport or life, You've Gotta Have Heart: a refreshing change from the modern musical's celebration of rampant individualism./pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/musicals"Musicals/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatre"Theatre/a/li/ul/divdiv class="guRssAdvert"a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Theatrespacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=12467462850345151072707411058989"img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Theatrespacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=12467462850345151072707411058989" border="0" //a/divdiv class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 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/divp style="clear:both" / - 2 days ago
The Hypochondriac
div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/35897?ns=guardianpageName=%5BNo+Headline+-+page+id%3A+3792886+article+id%3A+16359866%5D%3AArticle%3A1240011ch=Stagec4=Theatre%2CStage%2CCulture+sectionc6=Alfred+Hicklingc8=1240011c9=Articlec10=Reviewc11=Stagec13=c25=c30=contenth2=GU%2FStage%2FTheatre" width="1" height="1" //divpPlayhouse, Liverpool/ppRoger McGough's first attempt at turning Moliegrave;re into a Mersey wit led to a giddy adaptation of Tartuffe that became one of the highlights of Liverpool's year of culture. Now he and director Gemma Bodinetz have teamed up again to apply the common touch to the playwright's final masterpiece. /ppThere's no greater example of dramatic irony than the death of Moliegrave;re, who was struck down by a bout of tuberculosis while playing the part of a man with a bit of a cough, and McGough cannot resist having some extratextual fun with this. In a prologue, we see Moliegrave;re assuming the role of the psychosomatically afflicted Argan, while the flow of jaunty couplets includes a rumour picked up "from someone in the cast/ That tonight's performance could well be his last". McGough takes a variety of attitudes towards Moliegrave;re, though reverence is not among them. The obsession with very public enemas gives the action the look of a 17th-century costume romp that could easily be re-titled Carry On Up the Colon. /ppYet the pace and verve of Bodinetz's production never wavers, and is full of sharply realised performances. Clive Francis's crotchety Argan is an incorrigible martyr to his bowels, while Leanne Best is pleasing as the insubordinate maid Toinette. Conor Linehan's score contains some fol-de-rol themes you'll be humming for days. But that's the trouble with this hypochondria - it can be catching./pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatre"Theatre/a/li/ul/divdiv class="guRssAdvert"a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Theatrespacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=12467462850361206188093982026594"img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Theatrespacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=12467462850361206188093982026594" border="0" //a/divdiv class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 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/divp style="clear:both" / - 4 days ago
The Monster Under the Bed
div class="track"img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/1711?ns=guardianpageName=Theatre+review%3A+The+Monster+Under+the+Bed+%2F+Polka%2C+London%3AArticle%3A1239578ch=Stagec4=Theatre%2CStage%2CCulture+sectionc6=Lyn+Gardnerc8=1239578c9=Articlec10=Reviewc11=Stagec13=c25=c30=contenth2=GU%2FStage%2FTheatre" width="1" height="1" //divpPolka, London/ppWhen Ben's father goes off on a tour of duty, he gives his son a pair of binoculars, telling him he can see anything he wants through them. But when Ben's friend Vince "borrows" them, Ben's anxiety about his dad and fury at Vince combine to make his worst day ever at school./ppDrawing with delicacy and wit upon the childhood fantasy of the monster under the bed, writer Kevin Dyer proves why that endangered species, the original play for children, is worth saving. This is a terrifically entertaining story about fathers and sons and the monster inside all of us. What's more, it is positively postmodern in its literary references, with shades of The Borrowers, and a Father Underbed Monster who bears more than a passing resemblance to Roald Dahl's BFG. There's plenty of fun as the Little Underbed Monster takes Ben's place at school for the day, causing havoc in the classroom; and a lovely moment that is like a shadow-puppet version of King Kong, in Jonathan Lloyd's jolly, inventive production./ppThe show takes a while to fulfil its comic and emotional potential, and it could happily lose 15 minutes – but the over-sixes will just enjoy the romp. It'snbsp;a joyful examination of the benefits and snares of believing thenbsp;ridiculous./pdiv class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatre"Theatre/a/li/ul/divdiv class="guRssAdvert"a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Theatrespacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=12467462850374857059986830725764"img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Theatrespacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=12467462850374857059986830725764" border="0" //a/divdiv class="terms"a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; 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/divp style="clear:both" / - 5 days ago
Daily Mail | Baz Bamigboye
Sienna Miller to play Wuthering Heights heroine Cathy after Natalie Portman drops out- 14430 days ago
Scarlett Johansson misses shining moment at Cannes after studio refuses demands
- 14430 days ago
Why Blindness could be a real eye-opener for us all
- 14430 days ago
Cate Blanchett's baddie hair days
- 14430 days ago
Hunger strikes a cord at Cannes
- 14430 days ago
Sean Penn's pals light up Cannes on the sly
- 14430 days ago
Watch out for... Colin Farrell in Triage
- 14430 days ago
Brideshead Revisited gets an Italian touch
- 14430 days ago
Helen Mirren goes to war for a piece of Russian romance
- 14430 days ago
Oz comes to England with Eileen Atkins
- 14430 days ago
Reuters | UK Entertainment News
Michael Jackson book a headache for Jackie O- 6 hours ago
Former Beatles, Stones manager Allen Klein dies
- 2 hours ago
"Slumdog" child star moves into new Mumbai home
- 12 hours ago
"End of the Line" film rings alarm on fish supply
- 6 hours ago
Massive demand for Jackson memorial tickets
- 9 hours ago
Potter is back: box office big bucks assured
- 23 hours ago
Boats, sweat and Pimms down by the river
- 1 day ago
Prince booked to return to Montreux jazz festival
- 1 day ago
Concert promoter expects to erase Jackson's debts
- 2 days ago
Algerian star jailed in France over forced abortion
- 1 day ago
BBC News | Entertainment
Fans scramble for Jackson ticketsMore than half a million Michael Jackson fans have already applied for 17,500 free tickets to the singer's public memorial service next week. - 9 hours ago
'Abba concert' set for September
Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus are to take part in a UK concert showcasing Abba's biggest hits later this year. - 12 hours ago
Harry Potter star 'had swine flu'
Actor Rupert Grint, who plays Ron Weasley, is recovering from a "mild bout" of swine flu, his publicist says. - 6 hours ago
Young slumdog moves into new home
One of the child stars of the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire moves from his Mumbai shanty dwelling into a new home. - 7 hours ago
Big Brother gives Sree the boot
Sree Dasari is evicted from the Big Brother house as aspiring politician Halfwit survives the public vote for a fourth week. - 11 hours ago
Take That receive coveted award
Pop survivors Take That win the coveted Silver Clef award, recognising their 18-year chart career. - 1 day ago
Del Boy returns to TV as teenager
Only Fools and Horses wide boy Derek Trotter is returning to BBC One in a comedy drama about his teenage years. - 1 day ago
Andre: 'Worst months of my life'
Singer Peter Andre says the months since his split with glamour model Katie Price have been the hardest of his life. - 1 day ago
Blur comeback at Parklife venue
Britpop heroes Blur reveal the inspiration for their hit Parklife at the first of their Hyde Park reunion gigs. - 2 days ago
Blackpool to stage Variety gala
Blackpool is picked to host this year's Royal Variety Performance, featuring Britain's Got Talent Winners Diversity. - 3 days ago
The Stage / News Headlines
Just William back on the BBC- 14430 days ago
Move north rejected by majority of BBC middle managers
- 14430 days ago
Del Boy back in Only Fools and Horses prequel
- 14430 days ago
Cardiff's Sherman Cymru theatre wins Arts and Business award
- 14430 days ago
Sales of Theatre Tokens up 14%
- 14430 days ago
Acosta to perform with Ballet Nacional de Cuba at Coliseum
- 14430 days ago
Equity minimum wage proposal will 'destroy' fringe theatre
- 14430 days ago
Robin Hood dropped by BBC
- 14430 days ago
Twofour's Wright joins Foyle's War company Greenlit
- 14430 days ago
Lulu Baker children's books dramatised by BBC
- 14430 days ago
Society of London Theatre | News
Forbidden BroadwaySunday In The Park With George, A Little Night Music, La Cage Aux Folles; what do they have in common? Apart from successfully transferring from the Menier Chocolate Factory to the West End, they are all figures of fun in the London Bridge venue’s latest production, Forbidden Broadway. - 2 days ago
Acosta joins Ballet Nacional de Cuba for Spring Dance 2010
Ballet superstar Carlos Acosta is to headline Spring Dance 2010 at the London Coliseum, performing with the whole company of Ballet Nacional de Cuba for the first time in the UK. - 2 days ago
Brent Cross celebrates tkts birthday
The Brent Cross shopping centre will be alive with theatrical celebration this weekend (4 5 July) as it marks the first birthday of its own tkts ticket booth. - 2 days ago
Anna Jane Casey
It is not just any West End star who will offer to pop round to your house and lend a hand with your tiling. But Forbidden Broadway's Anna Jane Casey does not appear to have a prima donna bone in her body, writes Matthew Amer... - 2 days ago
Wyndham’s finds Redemption
The Gaiety theatre Dublin production of The Shawshank Redemption is to receive its London premiere at the Wyndham’s theatre on 13 September (previews from 4 September). - 3 days ago
Law’s Hamlet to be on Broadway
The Donmar West End production of Hamlet, which stars Jude Law as the troubled Danish prince, will be hoping to recreate its London success when it transfers to New York this autumn. - 3 days ago
A little less Night Music
The Menier Chocolate Factory production of A Little Night Music, which transferred to the Garrick theatre in March, is to close on 25 July. - 4 days ago
Pina Bausch dies aged 68
Pina Bausch, the renowned German dancer and choreographer, has died at the age of 68. - 4 days ago
Family Christmas at Hampstead
Hampstead theatre’s 50th anniversary season will be rounded off by two family shows: a visit from Charlie and Lola and a ghost story by Michael Punter. - 4 days ago
Clark stands down at Hampstead
Anthony Clark is to leave his position as Artistic Director of Hampstead theatre. He announced today that he will step down from the post, which he has held for seven years, at the end of the theatre’s 50th anniversary season in January 2010. - 4 days ago
