The Clive Exton version of Jeeves and Wooster, originally aired between 1990 and 1993 on ITV, has entered into adaptation heaven.  Starring the unmatchable combination of Stephen Fry as Jeeves and Hugh Laurie as Wooster, the show remains a staple for the type of people who claim to ‘not really watch TV, actually’, and to [...]

February 7th, 2013 Read more

Anastasia Reynolds braves the wrath of Korean curators and tiptoes into Tim Burton I turned a corner and BAM, there I was, face to face with a terrifying creature, all eyes and stitches, lowering out of the gloom and looming over me. I looked left: disembowelled, stunted figures, chimaeras of metal and flesh. To my [...]

February 6th, 2013 Read more

As far away as possible from the mainstream observational comedy of the likes of Macintyre and Whitehall, this performance is a tribute to the power of silliness. Announcing themselves as “totally un-internationally recognised” there is absolutely nothing glamorous about these four unremarkable looking individuals. Despite, or rather because of, this the Dog-Eared Collective are able [...]

February 6th, 2013 Read more

The recently opened Manet exhibition is one of those blockbuster shows that is anticipated for months. The tickets are usually sold out and the queues are outrageously long, justified by ambitious claims that the show has gone where no other has before. In this case Manet: Portraying Life is the first exhibition dedicated to Manet [...]

February 6th, 2013 Read more

English may be the language of Shakespeare and Eliot, but what’s missing from the Queen’s vocabulary and expressed better elsewhere? Aayah Nouno selects a few favourites   1-         Koi No Yokan (Japanese) The sense when you first meet someone that you will both fall in love with each other. 2-         Seigneur-terraces (French) Coffee shop dwellers [...]

February 5th, 2013 Read more

As the famous monochrome bird will attest, there are few things more worth following up than those given the label ‘all very shiny’.  And so it was that Bristol University’s Theatre Collection’s current exhibition, Shine, first came to my attention. Housed in the Theatre Collection’s main building down on Park Row – a comfortable walk [...]

January 30th, 2013 Read more

I don’t think I’m alone in watching some television programmes just to get that masochistic shiver of annoyance that, say, the dulcet tones of Spencer from Made In Chelsea can elicit with such success. And I think it’s a safe assertion that everyone has been involved, at least once, in a conversation about some poor [...]

January 29th, 2013 Read more

Welcome to the exclusive viewing of The Anger Games. Yes, you read that right, and we’re not talking about a grisly sequel to Suzanne Collins’s best selling series. The Anger Games is the title, chosen by the audience just minutes before its debut, of a 1 hour long, never before seen, 100% improvised play from [...]

January 28th, 2013 Read more

At the beginning of December I had the opportunity to see Juno and Avos, a landmark Russian rock-opera. This, apparently, means heavy guitar solos from men in tights, the Virgin Mary randomly appearing and screeching at the top of her lungs, and occasional interjections from God (an operatic baritone, natch). I didn’t know it was [...]

January 27th, 2013 Read more

We are conscious of the importance of technological development in shaping the arts and mediating our experience of them. The nascent invention of moving images not only engendered a new artistic platform with cinema but also had a profound effect on early twentieth-century painting. After which, the coincidence of cataclysmic war in mainland Europe and [...]

January 23rd, 2013 Read more