Earlier this month I was delighted to make a very modest contribution to a conference in Oxford about Louis MacNeice, radio writer and producer co-organised by my Screen Plays colleague Dr Amanda Wrigley. Amanda and Professor more
Back in June I had more than a few sceptical words about the Royal Shakespeare Company's collaboration with Google, Midsummer Night's Dreaming. Truth to tell, I thought it was a misconceived mess, although with a glorious live event more
On Thursday evening Arena premiered the first of two films looking back at the history of the National Theatre. I am going to wait for the second to air before posting about them, but I do want to look today at more
I was particularly sorry today to learn of the death at the age of 89 of sculptor Anthony Caro. Like many others, I believe that he was a great artist, and he was also – at least on the evidence more
In 1966 Peter Brook and the Royal Shakespeare Company mounted a collaboratively devised stage show titled US. The subject was our relationship to and responsibility for the Vietnam War. The following year, with a minimal budget raised in part by more
Unsurprisingly perhaps, I have been posting a lot recently about Richard II. As a consequence of that, today's weekly post is rather shorter than usual. I should perhaps say that we had an excellent time at the opening night on more
Let's start with two important pieces of writing about politics. One is Charles Simic's Bleak house, a short but devastating state-of-the-American-nation piece for the New York Review of Books blog: We have forgotten what this country once understood, that more
I said that I am not going to post a 'review' of Richard II, which opened to a wonderful reception last night in Stratford-upon-Avon (with live cinema broadcasts on and after 13 November). And I'm not. Nor am more
On the day before the press night of Richard II, I am starting a page that I hope will be helpful to us all across the coming month and more. The cinema broadcast Live from Stratford-upon-Avon, in the more
After seeing Roger Michell and Hanif Kureishi's very fine film yesterday (above), with the incomparable Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan, this clip - which I have featured before - picked itself - it's from Jean-Luc Godard's more