142 stories by "David Nice"
Given a fair few strange and languishing Brecht-Weill pieces that The Rest is Noise Festival's Berlin strand might have explored, Vladimir Jurowski and the LPO had a tough time of it by piec…
It's Weimar Berlin time as the Southbank Centre's The Rest is Noise festival moves through the 20th-century music scene " so it must be Liza Minnelli time too. Or must it? Though she's immor…
I laughed quite a bit going round the exhibition to which the Barbican's latest theatre events are tied, The Bride and the Bachelors. Pioneer Marcel Duchamp's 1921 "Readymade" Why Not Sneeze…
It's odd that Jerry Herman merits only a passing mention in Stephen Sondheim's two-volume autobiographical take on Broadway words and music, Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat. In a co…
Hot on the heels of the latest English uncle over at the Vaudeville comes Dyadya Vanya from Moscow, bringing with it no samovar or old lace. Rimas Tuminas, the Vakhtangov Theatre's artistic …
Updating Chekhov is nothing new, despite the preliminary flurries about this production, yet the singular directorial take can only highlight the master's modernity in the bigger issues. If …
Diamonds one day, stones the next: compulsive giver Timon's swift descent into raving misanthropy would be better packed into a gritty pop ballad than a full-length play.read more
The rain it raineth every day this week, sometimes with monsoon-like persistence. Yet there's no dousing the ardour of groundlings and thespian visitors to the global Shakespeare village wit…
Of all Shakespeare's plays, his reprise of Falstaffian humour to please Queen Bess is surely the most specific in its prosaic gallimaufry of earthy English vocabulary. Yet it's also the most…
Two precisely imagined dream-visions bookend a cornucopia on the musical front. I'll start with the deadly but save the apparently frivolous for the top slot. Christopher Alden's pitiless ex…
You know what to expect from an audience with Dame Edna Everage. The London-loving Merry Widow of Moonie Ponds can be trusted to hurl her gladdies, patronize the paups in the cheap seats, di…
Ken Russell is, it seems, alive and well and directing Germans in Shakespeare. Actually, no, it's outgrown theatrical terrorist Thomas Ostermeier, but it might as well be our Ken to judge fr…
Is this the year that G&S became definitively chic again? The slow-burn effect of ENO's "Miller Mikado" and Mike Leigh's Topsy-Turvy now results in numerous fringe benefits. Sasha Regan'…
Russia's Shakespeare, Alexander Pushkin, has enjoyed imaginative treatment on the British stage and screen. Brighton Theatre's now-legendary Vanity conjured the world of Eugene Onegin vividl…
The 1968 film at least has Beryl Reid, who could even have lit up the kind of third-tier Carry On affair Frank Marcus's flat script often resembles, as well as documentary-value scenes of th…
Ten years on from 9/11 and the polyphony of reactions will not, and should not, be stilled. Creative artists have had to tread carefully in what they amass, and how they present it. Headlong…
"Whoring after the public taste" is how Ingmar Bergman described some rather funny hanky-panky in one of his most singular films. It's what showbusiness thrives on, and it's fine if done wel…
