Three years after its world premiere, George Benjamin’s Written on Skin has already tattooed itself indelibly onto the story of opera. In a saner world, a piece this good would make its American stage debut in a generous run at the Met. As it is, we who caught one of three performances during a festival in the dead of summer will have to tell everyone else what they missed: a work of perfectionist bravado, stunningly performed. On a sturdy frame of plot, Benjamin stretches 90 minutes of music as taut as drum leather.The production, directed by Katie Mitchell, originated at the Festival Aix-en-Provence, and it’s a reminder of how much poorer the American opera world would be without a steady infusion of creativity from Europe. We benefit from that out-of-continent tryout, because whatever jagged edges might have marred by the original production have since been sanded away. Benjamin...
- 8/12/2015
- by Justin Davidson
- Vulture
Projects range from a film about centenarians to documentaries about renowned hunger striker Bobby Sands, Winnie Mandela, Ratko Mladic and Madonna’s backing dancers.Scroll down for full list of projects
Idfa (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam) has unveiled the 50 titles that will be presented at its international co-finance and production market, the Idfa Forum (Nov 24-26).
At the market, filmmakers and producers will present their documentary projects to commissioning editors from international television stations and other financiers with the aim of completing finance for their documentary projects.
A total of 50 projects have been selected for the upcoming Idfa Forum, including new projects by Heddy Honigmann, Janus Metz and Vitaly Mansky.
The Idfa 2014 programme contains 17 documentaries that were presented as projects at previous editions of the Idfa Forum.
Projects selected for this year’s Idfa Forum will be pitched in a variety of settings: the central pitches in the main auditorium of the Compagnietheater, the round table...
Idfa (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam) has unveiled the 50 titles that will be presented at its international co-finance and production market, the Idfa Forum (Nov 24-26).
At the market, filmmakers and producers will present their documentary projects to commissioning editors from international television stations and other financiers with the aim of completing finance for their documentary projects.
A total of 50 projects have been selected for the upcoming Idfa Forum, including new projects by Heddy Honigmann, Janus Metz and Vitaly Mansky.
The Idfa 2014 programme contains 17 documentaries that were presented as projects at previous editions of the Idfa Forum.
Projects selected for this year’s Idfa Forum will be pitched in a variety of settings: the central pitches in the main auditorium of the Compagnietheater, the round table...
- 10/14/2014
- by michael.rosser@screendaily.com (Michael Rosser)
- ScreenDaily
The Royal Court Theatre announces a new season of work today, Friday 27 June, including new plays from Molly Davies, Zinnie Harris, Rory Mullarkey, Tim Price and Jack Thorne a debut play from first-time playwright Diana Nneka Atuona a collaboration between scientist Chris Rapley, playwright and director Duncan Macmillan and director Katie Mitchell and a new production for young people and their families - Enda Walsh's new adaptation of Roald Dahl's The Twits.
- 6/27/2014
- by BWW News Desk
- BroadwayWorld.com
London — The English National Opera's 2013-14 season will include a world premiere of Oedipus-inspired opera "Thebans" and the return of Monty Python's Terry Gilliam to direct a new production, the company announced Wednesday.
"Thebans," based on the tragedies of Sophocles, is a first opera from composer Julian Anderson, with libretto by Irish playwright Frank McGuinness. It opens in May 2014.
Gilliam, who directed "The Damnation of Faust" at the Eno in 2011, will lead a production of Hector Berlioz's "Benvenuto Cellini" in June 2014.
Both will be conducted by Eno Musical Director Edward Garner.
The season includes 10 new productions, including Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Cosi Fan Tutte," directed by Katie Mitchell, a Calixto Bieito-directed production of Ludwig van Beethoven's "Fidelio" and Mozart's "The Magic Flute" directed by Simon McBurney – a co-production with the Netherlands Opera.
The company also plans revivals of recent successes including David Alden's production of...
"Thebans," based on the tragedies of Sophocles, is a first opera from composer Julian Anderson, with libretto by Irish playwright Frank McGuinness. It opens in May 2014.
Gilliam, who directed "The Damnation of Faust" at the Eno in 2011, will lead a production of Hector Berlioz's "Benvenuto Cellini" in June 2014.
Both will be conducted by Eno Musical Director Edward Garner.
The season includes 10 new productions, including Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Cosi Fan Tutte," directed by Katie Mitchell, a Calixto Bieito-directed production of Ludwig van Beethoven's "Fidelio" and Mozart's "The Magic Flute" directed by Simon McBurney – a co-production with the Netherlands Opera.
The company also plans revivals of recent successes including David Alden's production of...
- 5/1/2013
- by AP
- Huffington Post
The actor has long had a fraught relationship with the media and their intrusions on his private life. As he promotes his new film with Steven Soderbergh, he talks about life post-Leveson and his love of theatre
'I'm 40! I'm an adult!" shouts Jude Law. "Aren't I?" We hold these truths to be self-evident, I reply, as the actor, laughing, stares across the table with those adorable baby blues and more hair than's fair. "But," he says more quietly, "part of me thinks I can't play a doctor. Who would come to me?"
You've got to be kidding. Who wouldn't come to Dr Jude? In Steven Soderbergh's film Side Effects, Law plays an Englishman in New York, a slimy limey of a pill-dispensing psychiatrist who becomes entangled in murder, drug switcheroos, a risible lesbian insider trading scam and lots more vaguely voguish, putatively Hitchkockian hokum before the credits. Astute critics...
'I'm 40! I'm an adult!" shouts Jude Law. "Aren't I?" We hold these truths to be self-evident, I reply, as the actor, laughing, stares across the table with those adorable baby blues and more hair than's fair. "But," he says more quietly, "part of me thinks I can't play a doctor. Who would come to me?"
You've got to be kidding. Who wouldn't come to Dr Jude? In Steven Soderbergh's film Side Effects, Law plays an Englishman in New York, a slimy limey of a pill-dispensing psychiatrist who becomes entangled in murder, drug switcheroos, a risible lesbian insider trading scam and lots more vaguely voguish, putatively Hitchkockian hokum before the credits. Astute critics...
- 3/4/2013
- by Stuart Jeffries
- The Guardian - Film News
From a full programme of film and stage adaptations to a new James Bond novel, unpublished works by Rs Thomas and Wg Sebald and a new prize for women writers, 2013 is set to be a real page-turner
January
10th The Oscar nominations are announced unusually early this year. Keep an eye out for a bumper crop of literary adaptations, including David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, Yann Martel's Life of Pi, the David Nicholls-scripted Great Expectations, as well as Les Miserables, Anna Karenina and The Hobbit.
18th A new stage adaptation of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw at the Almeida theatre in London. In the year of the centenary of Benjamin Britten's birth, his musical version will also feature around the country in both concert and stage performances.
24th The finalists for the fifth Man Booker International prize will be announced at the Jaipur festival.
January
10th The Oscar nominations are announced unusually early this year. Keep an eye out for a bumper crop of literary adaptations, including David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, Yann Martel's Life of Pi, the David Nicholls-scripted Great Expectations, as well as Les Miserables, Anna Karenina and The Hobbit.
18th A new stage adaptation of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw at the Almeida theatre in London. In the year of the centenary of Benjamin Britten's birth, his musical version will also feature around the country in both concert and stage performances.
24th The finalists for the fifth Man Booker International prize will be announced at the Jaipur festival.
- 1/5/2013
- The Guardian - Film News
The Observer's critics pick the season's highlights, from the Misanthrope to Johnny Marr, Lulu to Lichtenstein, H7steria to Hitchcock. What are you most looking forward to? Add your comments below and download a pdf of the calendar here
December | January | FebruaryDecember
1 Film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (3D)
Well, not so very unexpected. Every move has been tracked by fanboys, from the casting of Martin Freeman as Bilbo and Benedict Cumberbatch as the dragon Smaug to the return of the king, Peter Jackson, to take over directing from Guillermo del Toro. But Middle-earth (or, as it's sometimes known, New Zealand) is back for the next three Christmases.
3 Pop Scott Walker
The avant-garde Walker Brother returns with his first album since 2006's The Drift. Not for the faint-hearted, Bish Bosch finds the former romantic hero deep in dystopian territory, at once sonorous and rigorous.
3 Classical H7steria
World premiere of...
December | January | FebruaryDecember
1 Film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (3D)
Well, not so very unexpected. Every move has been tracked by fanboys, from the casting of Martin Freeman as Bilbo and Benedict Cumberbatch as the dragon Smaug to the return of the king, Peter Jackson, to take over directing from Guillermo del Toro. But Middle-earth (or, as it's sometimes known, New Zealand) is back for the next three Christmases.
3 Pop Scott Walker
The avant-garde Walker Brother returns with his first album since 2006's The Drift. Not for the faint-hearted, Bish Bosch finds the former romantic hero deep in dystopian territory, at once sonorous and rigorous.
3 Classical H7steria
World premiere of...
- 12/2/2012
- The Guardian - Film News
In a new production of Jacobean sex-and-murder drama The Changeling, the asides have been replaced with pre-recorded voiceovers. Bold stroke – or bad idea?
In Michael Oakley's current production of Middleton and Rowley's The Changeling, a psychologically complex sex-and-murder tragedy at Southwark Playhouse in London, the play's numerous Jacobean asides have been replaced with voiceovers. Instead of the characters speaking their thoughts directly to the audience, their lines have been pre-recorded and play out from speakers dotted around the stage.
Oakley admits he was taking a risk in choosing to present the piece in this way, and the critical response has been mixed. Writing in the Guardian, Maddy Costa called it a "bold stroke" and said that, when this technique works, which she concedes it doesn't always, "it allows the actors a physical proximity that addressing the audience might preclude".
Michael Coveney, writing in What's on Stage, was less forgiving, deeming...
In Michael Oakley's current production of Middleton and Rowley's The Changeling, a psychologically complex sex-and-murder tragedy at Southwark Playhouse in London, the play's numerous Jacobean asides have been replaced with voiceovers. Instead of the characters speaking their thoughts directly to the audience, their lines have been pre-recorded and play out from speakers dotted around the stage.
Oakley admits he was taking a risk in choosing to present the piece in this way, and the critical response has been mixed. Writing in the Guardian, Maddy Costa called it a "bold stroke" and said that, when this technique works, which she concedes it doesn't always, "it allows the actors a physical proximity that addressing the audience might preclude".
Michael Coveney, writing in What's on Stage, was less forgiving, deeming...
- 11/24/2011
- by Natasha Tripney
- The Guardian - Film News
Former X-Files star will be joined by Oscar-winner Helen Hunt in Relative Insanity, a big-screen update that will see the Russian play relocated to present-day New York
David Duchovny and Helen Hunt are to star in a new screen adaptation of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull.
Deadline.com reports that Larry Moss, their former acting coach, is set to direct Relative Insanity, which will update Chekhov's play to the present day and relocate the action from the Russian countryside to the Hamptons in upstate New York. Maggie Grace, Joan Chen and John Davidson will also star in the film, which will be written by Michael Din and Juri Henley-Cohn.
The Seagull centres on the fading actress Irina Nikolayevna Arkadina's relationship with her son Konstantin, a failing playwright in love with a bright, young actress, Nina Mikhailovna Zarechnaya. Though casting hasn't been officially announced, Hunt is likely to take the Irina...
David Duchovny and Helen Hunt are to star in a new screen adaptation of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull.
Deadline.com reports that Larry Moss, their former acting coach, is set to direct Relative Insanity, which will update Chekhov's play to the present day and relocate the action from the Russian countryside to the Hamptons in upstate New York. Maggie Grace, Joan Chen and John Davidson will also star in the film, which will be written by Michael Din and Juri Henley-Cohn.
The Seagull centres on the fading actress Irina Nikolayevna Arkadina's relationship with her son Konstantin, a failing playwright in love with a bright, young actress, Nina Mikhailovna Zarechnaya. Though casting hasn't been officially announced, Hunt is likely to take the Irina...
- 10/18/2011
- by Matt Trueman
- The Guardian - Film News
Our young critics competition turned up some fearless talent
What makes a great critic? Lots of things: an eye for detail, an instinct for the right adjective, an empathy with audience and artist. A great critic can make a reader feel that they, too, have been there: watching, listening, holding their breath. A great critic's opinion carries conviction; a great critic loves language. And, in a world where everyone has an opinion, and the means to share it, these qualities matter more than ever: a professional 21st-century critic has to look harder, write funnier, be smarter than anyone else.
So it's a tough job, but somebody has to do it – and somebody has to do it after this generation have had their turn. For the fourth year running, we've been looking for the UK's best young critics. We asked for entries in eight categories, and split those into two age...
What makes a great critic? Lots of things: an eye for detail, an instinct for the right adjective, an empathy with audience and artist. A great critic can make a reader feel that they, too, have been there: watching, listening, holding their breath. A great critic's opinion carries conviction; a great critic loves language. And, in a world where everyone has an opinion, and the means to share it, these qualities matter more than ever: a professional 21st-century critic has to look harder, write funnier, be smarter than anyone else.
So it's a tough job, but somebody has to do it – and somebody has to do it after this generation have had their turn. For the fourth year running, we've been looking for the UK's best young critics. We asked for entries in eight categories, and split those into two age...
- 10/12/2011
- by Melissa Denes
- The Guardian - Film News
The Brontës are often dismissed as up-market Mills & Boon. But with the release of two films this autumn, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, they look set to rival even Jane Austen in the public's affections
Ours is supposed to be the age of instantaneity, where books can be downloaded in a few seconds and reputations created overnight. But the Victorians could be speedy, too, and there's no more striking example of instant celebrity than Jane Eyre. Charlotte Brontë posted the manuscript to Messrs Smith and Elder on 24 August 1847, two weeks after the publisher had expressed an interest in seeing her new novel while turning down her first. Within a fortnight, a deal had been struck (Charlotte was paid £100) and proofs were being worked on. In the 21st century a first novel can wait two years between acceptance and publication. Jane Eyre was out in eight weeks, on 17 October, with Thackeray...
Ours is supposed to be the age of instantaneity, where books can be downloaded in a few seconds and reputations created overnight. But the Victorians could be speedy, too, and there's no more striking example of instant celebrity than Jane Eyre. Charlotte Brontë posted the manuscript to Messrs Smith and Elder on 24 August 1847, two weeks after the publisher had expressed an interest in seeing her new novel while turning down her first. Within a fortnight, a deal had been struck (Charlotte was paid £100) and proofs were being worked on. In the 21st century a first novel can wait two years between acceptance and publication. Jane Eyre was out in eight weeks, on 17 October, with Thackeray...
- 9/9/2011
- by Blake Morrison
- The Guardian - Film News
Find out who will be judging the competition in each category
Entries will initially be narrowed to a shortlist of up to 10 in each category (ie, five in each age group) by the Guardian arts desk and a panel of independent adjudicators. These shortlists will then be read by the judges' panels below, who will agree on the best under 14-year-old and the best 14-18-year-old in each category. An overall winner will be chosen from these 16 finalists by the Guardian arts editor, Melissa Denes; culture editor of guardian.co.uk, Alex Needham; Georgina Henry, head of culture, Gnm, and Alan Yentob, creative director of the BBC.
Pop
Emmy the Great, singer-songwriter
Alexis Petridis, chief pop critic
Michael Hann, editor, Film and Music
Tim Jonze, editor, guardian.co.uk/music
Caspar Llewellyn Smith, music editor, Guardian News & Media
Visual art
Susan Philipsz, artist
Adrian Searle, visual art critic
Jonathan Jones,...
Entries will initially be narrowed to a shortlist of up to 10 in each category (ie, five in each age group) by the Guardian arts desk and a panel of independent adjudicators. These shortlists will then be read by the judges' panels below, who will agree on the best under 14-year-old and the best 14-18-year-old in each category. An overall winner will be chosen from these 16 finalists by the Guardian arts editor, Melissa Denes; culture editor of guardian.co.uk, Alex Needham; Georgina Henry, head of culture, Gnm, and Alan Yentob, creative director of the BBC.
Pop
Emmy the Great, singer-songwriter
Alexis Petridis, chief pop critic
Michael Hann, editor, Film and Music
Tim Jonze, editor, guardian.co.uk/music
Caspar Llewellyn Smith, music editor, Guardian News & Media
Visual art
Susan Philipsz, artist
Adrian Searle, visual art critic
Jonathan Jones,...
- 6/19/2011
- The Guardian - Film News
Coliseum; Barbican; Linbury Studio; Queen Elizabeth Hall, all London
Based on column inches and lurid images alone, never mind the incalculable online torrent, the big event this week was Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust at English National Opera. After squawks over the company's recent choice of directors from outside opera, it was a pleasure to witness a superbly staged, ingenious production from opera novice Terry Gilliam, best known as a Hollywood director and genius ex-Python animator. If you want to use film in opera, and most now do, Gilliam shows you how.
Musical standards, with Edward Gardner in the pit, were secure though not vintage, and Berlioz's infinitely delicate score survived just about intact despite being zipped into an all-in-one concept and tumbling out wittily for a choreographic Treaty of Versailles and a dance of the gas masks. The iconography – the 1936 Olympics, Kristallnacht, a glimpse of the Obersalzberg – pinned us...
Based on column inches and lurid images alone, never mind the incalculable online torrent, the big event this week was Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust at English National Opera. After squawks over the company's recent choice of directors from outside opera, it was a pleasure to witness a superbly staged, ingenious production from opera novice Terry Gilliam, best known as a Hollywood director and genius ex-Python animator. If you want to use film in opera, and most now do, Gilliam shows you how.
Musical standards, with Edward Gardner in the pit, were secure though not vintage, and Berlioz's infinitely delicate score survived just about intact despite being zipped into an all-in-one concept and tumbling out wittily for a choreographic Treaty of Versailles and a dance of the gas masks. The iconography – the 1936 Olympics, Kristallnacht, a glimpse of the Obersalzberg – pinned us...
- 5/14/2011
- by Fiona Maddocks
- The Guardian - Film News
Our critics pick the season's highlights: From Lady Gaga to Harry Potter, Coppélia to Tony Cragg, this summer has something for all
May
4 Film The Tree of Life
The much-delayed fifth feature from director Terrence Malick, snapped up by Icon for UK release ahead of its Cannes showing, is a multi-generational drama featuring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn – and, reportedly, dinosaurs.
5 Classical From the House of the Dead
Opera North's production of Janáek's final work, directed by John Fulljames and conducted by Richard Farnes. Stars Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts, Alan Oke and Roderick Williams. Leeds and touring
Dance By Singing Light/Romance Inverse
National Dance Company of Wales bring Stephen Petronio and Itzik Galili's arresting double bill to Dance City in Newcastle, with the former set to the poetry of Dylan Thomas.
6 Theatre Shrek
Nigel Lindsay plays the lime-coloured, lovelorn ogre, with Amanda Holden as Princess Fiona and Nigel Harman as Lord Farquaad,...
May
4 Film The Tree of Life
The much-delayed fifth feature from director Terrence Malick, snapped up by Icon for UK release ahead of its Cannes showing, is a multi-generational drama featuring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn – and, reportedly, dinosaurs.
5 Classical From the House of the Dead
Opera North's production of Janáek's final work, directed by John Fulljames and conducted by Richard Farnes. Stars Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts, Alan Oke and Roderick Williams. Leeds and touring
Dance By Singing Light/Romance Inverse
National Dance Company of Wales bring Stephen Petronio and Itzik Galili's arresting double bill to Dance City in Newcastle, with the former set to the poetry of Dylan Thomas.
6 Theatre Shrek
Nigel Lindsay plays the lime-coloured, lovelorn ogre, with Amanda Holden as Princess Fiona and Nigel Harman as Lord Farquaad,...
- 4/30/2011
- The Guardian - Film News
From Twelfth Night to Danny Boyle's new production at the National Theatre, theatre adores twins and doppelgangers. What's really going on?
Danny Boyle's hotly anticipated production of Frankenstein, in a new version by Nick Dear, opens next week at the National theatre. The show's two leads, Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, will be alternating the roles of Victor Frankenstein and the Creature, so, unless they can afford to go twice, audience members are going to have to choose which way round they want to see the casting. But is this doubling up just an astute marketing ploy? Or is it, perhaps, a broader commentary? Can the relationship of Frankenstein and the Creature tell us anything about the symbiotic relationship of stage and audience? Even about the theatre itself?
There is quite a history of doubling parts in the theatre. The renowned 19th-century actors William Macready and Samuel...
Danny Boyle's hotly anticipated production of Frankenstein, in a new version by Nick Dear, opens next week at the National theatre. The show's two leads, Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, will be alternating the roles of Victor Frankenstein and the Creature, so, unless they can afford to go twice, audience members are going to have to choose which way round they want to see the casting. But is this doubling up just an astute marketing ploy? Or is it, perhaps, a broader commentary? Can the relationship of Frankenstein and the Creature tell us anything about the symbiotic relationship of stage and audience? Even about the theatre itself?
There is quite a history of doubling parts in the theatre. The renowned 19th-century actors William Macready and Samuel...
- 2/17/2011
- The Guardian - Film News
Katie Mitchell made her name directing difficult, bleak drama for adults. But since the birth of her daughter, Edie, when she was 41, she has discovered a knack for madcap, fast-paced kids' shows
Katie Mitchell, theatre's harbinger of doom, "the princess of darkness", is known for being one of the most serious and uncompromising of British theatre directors. Her productions – Bruckner's Pains of Youth, say, or Euripides' Women of Troy – involve intense rehearsal periods and scour the depths of human emotion and behaviour. She enjoys using the word "rigorous" and mentioning Stanislavski and "complex psychological ideas". She is inspired by eastern European theatre, in particular the work of Pina Bausch; her favourite film is Tarkovsky's plotless The Mirror (1975); she cites Rothko as her favourite artist. So she is not necessarily the first person you would imagine directing a children's show, Beauty and the Beast (age group eight to 12), complete with insect orchestras and goldfish-swallowing,...
Katie Mitchell, theatre's harbinger of doom, "the princess of darkness", is known for being one of the most serious and uncompromising of British theatre directors. Her productions – Bruckner's Pains of Youth, say, or Euripides' Women of Troy – involve intense rehearsal periods and scour the depths of human emotion and behaviour. She enjoys using the word "rigorous" and mentioning Stanislavski and "complex psychological ideas". She is inspired by eastern European theatre, in particular the work of Pina Bausch; her favourite film is Tarkovsky's plotless The Mirror (1975); she cites Rothko as her favourite artist. So she is not necessarily the first person you would imagine directing a children's show, Beauty and the Beast (age group eight to 12), complete with insect orchestras and goldfish-swallowing,...
- 11/27/2010
- by Sabine Durrant
- The Guardian - Film News
Mike Leigh and Athol Fugard star in Hall's ambitious bid to restore Hampstead to its illustrious past
It's good to see Ed Hall installed at Hampstead and announcing a juicy opening season: it includes Hall directing Shelagh Stephenson's Enlightenment, Athol Fugard at the helm of his own play, The Train Driver, and Melly Still's Beasts and Beauties, a funny, magical piece that premiered at Bristol Old Vic a few years back (not to mention the return of Mike Leigh, who will direct his 1979 hit Ecstasy.
It's brave of Hall to take on the Hampstead challenge, a theatre that has already seen off Anthony Clark, and has never really recovered from the move from its leaky old premises to a spanking new theatre. The place might have keeled over entirely if it had not been for the Arts Council's determination not to see it fail.
There was a time when...
It's good to see Ed Hall installed at Hampstead and announcing a juicy opening season: it includes Hall directing Shelagh Stephenson's Enlightenment, Athol Fugard at the helm of his own play, The Train Driver, and Melly Still's Beasts and Beauties, a funny, magical piece that premiered at Bristol Old Vic a few years back (not to mention the return of Mike Leigh, who will direct his 1979 hit Ecstasy.
It's brave of Hall to take on the Hampstead challenge, a theatre that has already seen off Anthony Clark, and has never really recovered from the move from its leaky old premises to a spanking new theatre. The place might have keeled over entirely if it had not been for the Arts Council's determination not to see it fail.
There was a time when...
- 7/7/2010
- by Lyn Gardner
- The Guardian - Film News
Comedy, London
Almeida, London
Cottesloe, London
She's as sculpted and svelte as a trophy. She's the coquette as maquette. It was truly ingenious to cast Keira Knightley in Martin Crimp's updated version of The Misanthrope. Knightley plays a Hollywood actress, a magnified version of her public self. The less she acts, the more she becomes the part. Crimp's play, given a sparky production by Thea Sharrock, carps at suckers-up to celebrity and at media minions; it does so with many postmodernist winks. And what's more postmodern than an attack on celebrity culture which features a celebrity?
First seen in 1996, and now revised, Crimp's adaptation has a go at bankers and at Tom Stoppard; it creates a critic called Covington – bit of a cut and shunt with reviewers' names there – who's a would-be playwright with bad hair and a blazer; it alludes knowingly to Molière. It does all this in tremendously dextrous,...
Almeida, London
Cottesloe, London
She's as sculpted and svelte as a trophy. She's the coquette as maquette. It was truly ingenious to cast Keira Knightley in Martin Crimp's updated version of The Misanthrope. Knightley plays a Hollywood actress, a magnified version of her public self. The less she acts, the more she becomes the part. Crimp's play, given a sparky production by Thea Sharrock, carps at suckers-up to celebrity and at media minions; it does so with many postmodernist winks. And what's more postmodern than an attack on celebrity culture which features a celebrity?
First seen in 1996, and now revised, Crimp's adaptation has a go at bankers and at Tom Stoppard; it creates a critic called Covington – bit of a cut and shunt with reviewers' names there – who's a would-be playwright with bad hair and a blazer; it alludes knowingly to Molière. It does all this in tremendously dextrous,...
- 12/20/2009
- by Susannah Clapp
- The Guardian - Film News
Playing a biographical figure poses a host of challenges—most pointedly accuracy, or at least capturing the person's essence. Sophie Okonedo doesn't dispute that, though she insists mimicry is not her style and in the end the script is her bible. In her latest film, the weird and disturbing "Skin," she plays the still-living Sandra Laing, a woman of mixed heritage. Set in apartheid-era South Africa, it recounts the tormented experiences of a black child born to two white Afrikaners who are unaware of their black ancestry and determined to raise their child as a Caucasian. Sandra has no idea she is black—or even of mixed race—until she is 10 years old and brutalized and ostracized at the white school she attends. The film follows Sandra's 30-year journey, including her love affair with an abusive black man, estrangement from her parents, and ultimate reconciliation with her mother.Okonedo met...
- 10/22/2009
- backstage.com
This December, Lincoln Center's Great Performers series will present Tony Award-winning actor Stephen Dillane in two unique performances directed by Katie Mitchell that are based on the relationship between music and literature. Just added to the series, Mr. Dillane performs T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, followed by the Miró Quartet's interpretation of Beethoven's late String Quartet in A minor, Op.132, which originally inspired the poet's timeless texts. Four Quartets, which originated at the Donmar Warehouse in London in January 2009, will be performed December 2 and 3 only at Baryshnikov Arts Center.
- 10/19/2009
- BroadwayWorld.com
Long before "An Education" was even being made, Carey Mulligan was showing career smarts. And now that Hollywood is finally noticing her, she has the solid credits to back up her celebrity. Surely you noticed her in her first screen appearance, playing one of the unflaggingly giggly sisters in 2005's "Pride & Prejudice." So when you see her in "An Education," opening Oct. 16 in limited release, you'll immediately nod in happy recognition. And then you'll be astonished at the wonderful work Mulligan is doing in said film—playing Jenny, a 16-year-old whose thoughts of seeking admission to Oxford University fall aside when she meets an older, ultra-sophisticated man, played by Peter Sarsgaard.Mulligan attributes her rising star to luck and her enthusiasm for each project, but she seems to have had a consistently commonsense approach to her career. Although she never formally trained, she was active in drama in school in the United Kingdom.
- 10/12/2009
- backstage.com
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