A new age for journalism
Off to meet with some NYU (New York University) students tomorrow. The topic? The online future of journalism. I have a thing or two to say about that having recently extricated myself from The Independent in favour…
Adam Guettel and friends
Extraordinary to see the grandson of Richard Rodgers stroll over to a microphone in the Hippodrome’s Matcham Room and start in with the “country scat” of his first masterpiece Floyd Collins. More extraordinary still to hear it…
Routledge and I Guildford bound
Traveling with my star, Patricia Routledge, to the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford tomorrow, Tuesday. I gather they are rehearsing a Gilbert & Sullivan onstage until 3. Routledge was an unforgettable Ruth in the marvelous Joseph Papp…
The Bjork of the lieder world
I first came across Helena Juntunen in an Osmo Vanska concert at the South Bank. She sang Sibelius – and she sang it with such engagement and power, such rapture, that I came out at the interval…
Marvin Hamlisch: The Way He Was – Blog
So much has been said and will be said about this hugely talented musician – his loss comes way too soon. But as I sit here thinking back over his amazing body of work I keep recalling…
Love Never Dies…twice
Thinking back to the much-publicised revamp of Boublil and Schonberg’s Martin Guerre (with which Cameron Mackintosh cunningly succeeded in giving jaded critics a second bite at a great score whilst not actually fixing the show) I am…
Let’s hear it for Hammerstein
Leicester’s handsome Curve Theatre is surely unique in allowing its audience a pre-performance glimpse of the “innards” of each production. As we the audience stroll freely around the circular public walkway the backstage areas are exposed to…
Where do I begin?
It’s an in-joke that composer Howard Goodall could hardly pass by – quoting that song in his and Stephen Clark’s musical adaptation of the much-loved novel and film LOVE STORY. But it’s the moment he chooses that…
Rainbow’s End
It’s a terrible old cliche that it takes a star to play a star – but in the case of Judy Garland there never has been and never will be a star big enough to fill her…
Singin’ in the Rain, Royal Festival Hall
You couldn’t make it up: the water supply fails at the South Bank on the day they’re performing Singin’ in the Rain. I guess you call that a dry-run. At any rate it was the first ever…