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Chit chat - Sponsorship up in smoke
Tabard was pondering the muddy, murky waters of corporate arts sponsorship this weekend while leafing through a copy of the Independent on Sunday (well, somebody has to).
Radio review
If some far-off colony of aliens were to have been listening in to recent offerings from radio drama, it might have been of comfort to them. The overriding impression they would have gathered about human life is that when we’re not engaged in full-scale warfare or blasting each other out of the skies, we’re involved in one-on-one duplicity. No time, then, for inter-galactic battles, our Radio 4-friendly aliens might surmise, when we’re so busy trying to get one over on each other.
TV Review
Happy 90th Birthday Nelson Mandela was an intimate gathering in Hyde Park for fifty thousand of the celebrated nonagenarian’s closest friends.
Shakespeare authorship - in favour of Shakespeare as the author
Colin David Reese, actor and artistic director of La Compagnie du Cedre (France) replies to Mark Rylance and Prof Stanley Wells
Shakespeare authorship - in favour of Henry Neville
Author Brenda James attends the recent Henry Neville Symposium and outlines the arguments for Neville’s candidacy for the authorship of Shakespeare’s works
Chit chat - Pervy puppets
But if limb loss isn’t really up your street, don’t fret, Tabard has discovered something equally repulsive.
Chit chat - Cutting the night short
Playwright Anthony Neilson - no stranger to this column, some of you will recall - seems to be upsetting people at the Royal Court.
TV review
After a significant absence, I returned to EastEnders this week to find everything in Albert Square as normal. That is to say, normal for Albert Square. A madwoman called Dr May was running amok with a crowbar, taking hostages, trying to kidnap a baby and blowing herself up in a gas explosion.
Radio - Light entertainment
For decades radio has helped nurture the cream of British comedy with the result that the majority of successful performers and writers eventually move on to embrace the cash and kudos television can offer.
Rise to stardom - Ben Barnes
Ben Barnes has performed in The History Boys in the West End, the recent fantasy film Stardust and won the role of Prince Caspian in the big screen versions of the Narnia novels. He tells Emma Barnett how it feels to play the lead from a much-loved childhood book and acting tips he has learned.
Chit Chat - Virgin on the ridiculous
It’s just strange enough to be true.
Chit Chat - This is the age of the name
Meanwhile, theatre director Jonathan Miller has - in a not unChrist-like fashion - been rounded on by pretty much everybody this week following his comments about how you need a star name to get a play into the West End these days.
Radio review - Drama
There are numerous literary portraits of exploitation below stairs and in factories and mills, but few of us would equate minimum wage slaves with the building industry. That is, of course, mostly down to the jaundice of the middle classes, battling to keep home improvements within budget. I’d never read Robert Tressell’s 1914 novel, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, about heartless bosses and builders and decorators teetering between penury and the workhouse, but it seems that every well-known socialist of a certain age cites it as a seminal text in their political thinking.
TV review
Forty-four minutes of Margaret Thatcher: The Long Walk to Finchley had passed before the name of Mrs Thatcher was first uttered, and the effect was somewhat shocking. Up to that point we had been watching and admiring an ambitious, energetic and - let’s face it - sexy young politician called Margaret Roberts in her heroic struggle against the stuffed shirts and school ties that ran the post-war Conservative Party. But upon marrying businessman boyfriend Denis, and taking his name, the dreaded T-word surfaced and with it a whole barrage of hindsight-assisted connotations. I suspect audience sympathy took quite a dip at this point.
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Backstage
- Website is miles better
- Trussing manufacturer, Milos, has launched its new website at
- Girls are looking bold and bright
- Bandit Lites is working again with Leeds-based Production North, this time on…
- And the winner is...
- PLASA Events, the organisers of the PLASA Show at Earls Court in London in…
- Monsters of rock
- HSL supplied lighting production and crew to the main and Clash tent stages…
- Ol' Blue Eyes on the road
- Summit Steel specified and supplied production rigging and a Kinesys…
Obituaries
- John Malcolm
- John Malcolm, mercurial actor and co-founder of two important theatres, died…
- Ian Paterson
- Actor and singer Ian Paterson was born in Calcutta on July 28, 1926. The…
- Cyd Charisse
- Fred Astaire’s “beautiful dynamite”, the star whose legs were reputedly each…
- Johnny Byrne
- Johnny Byrne was the creator of TV’s Heartbeat and a much respected…
- Terry Duggan
- Comedian and actor Terry Duggan had a successful career in cabaret and…
Letters
- Resolving Matthews matter
- With reference to Ian Herbert’s column, “Running costs do ACE no favours”…
- Cash flow
- Mark Shenton’s interesting article (Insight, page 6-7, June 5) states that…
- Promising piece
- May I, through your pages, thank Pauline Daniels and her helpers and actors…
- Acting up
- In the play Fram at the National Theatre, the late Sybil Thorndike is…
- Tour thanks
- Just a note of appreciation to Bill Kenwright for bringing Blood Brothers…
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