The historic but dilapidated venue – the very last of England’s old music halls, and the venue for several of London’s best-known experimental productions in recent years – was in danger of having to close for safety’s sake after failing to secure Lottery funding for repairs. Now a little-known government trust has contributed £700,000, enabling the first stage o renovations to begin.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Damien Hirst With Your Spot Paintings, Eat Your Heart Out
“The Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama transformed a completely white room, including furniture, into a spectacle featuring her signature dots, helped by children who visited the exhibition over two weeks and placed brightly coloured stickers throughout the installation.” (Much more fun than Hirst’s rigid grids.)
Reborn Orchestra In Honolulu Set For Debut
Just over a year after the Honolulu Symphony’s ignominious collapse, musicians and backers have created the Hawai’i Symphony Orchestra, which has announced a slate of eight classical programs to be performed in Honolulu from March through May of this year.
The Harder They Fall: When Dancers Get Injured Onstage
Joan Acocella: “Sometimes, when it happens, you’re not sure at first that it really did happen. Even if the dancer crawls offstage (I’ve seen it), it could be part of the choreography, no? … For the audience, shamefully, an onstage injury is not just a misfortune. It’s also an adventure, like something in a movie.”
Wislawa Szymborska, 88, Nobel Prize-Winning Poet
“She was popular in Poland, which tends to make romantic heroes of poets, but she was little known abroad. Her poems were clear in topic and language, but her playfulness and tendency to invent words made her work hard to translate.”
An All-Black Waiting For Godot – What Does (What Can) It Mean?
“Of all the things the play has been interpreted as – a howl of existential angst, a rueful tribute to music hall, quite deliberately about nothing at all – how it relates to race remains an intriguing, and controversial, question.”
Britain’s Young Black Actors Should Go To America, Says Top British Black Actor
David Harewood, Birmingham-born star of US cable series Homeland: “Unfortunately there really aren’t that many roles for authoritative, strong, black characters in this country. We just don’t write those characters, that’s a fact. … I would encourage, particularly young, black actors, to get to America … as quickly as they can.”
Israeli Nationalist Group Campaigns Against Arab-Israeli Actor
Im Tzirtu, an organization created after the second Lebanon war which “acts to strengthen and promote Zionist values in Israel”, is running pickets and media protests against a Tel Aviv theater’s engagement (to play Bernarda Alba!) of Mohammed Bakri, who made a controversial 2002 movie about the Israeli Defence Forces’ actions in Lebanon’s Jenin refugee camp.
After 50 Years, Dictionary Of American Regional English Is Finished
“From whoopensocker to upscuddle, strubbly to swivet, 50 years after it was first conceived the Dictionary of American Regional English is finally about to reach the end of the alphabet. The fifth volume of the dictionary, covering ‘slab’ to ‘zydeco’, is out in March.”
Barcelona’s Liceu, Short Of Cash, To Close For Eight Weeks
With two successive years of major funding cuts and a deficit now estinated at €10 million, the Gran Teatre del Liceu will close down from March 20 to Apri 10 and again from June 5 to July 8. Seven programs have been cancelled, including two opera productions and a ballet.