The Lion King musical is a beast of a show – captivating US audiences since 1997, it is the highest-grossing production of all time, in theatre or in film, taking over $10 billion (£7.68 billion) worldwide. It’s currently celebrating 25 years in the West End, hits 27 years on Broadway next month, and has been staged all around the world – from South Africa to South Korea, Australia to the United Arab Emirates – visiting every continent except Antarctica.
Continue reading “‘I got major doubt from the movie guys’: Julie Taymor”Author: holly
Sherlock’s toughest case — can the sleuth draw a new audience to opera?
“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” It’s one of Sherlock Holmes’s most famous lines but you’ve never heard it like this before: sung in a rich, deep bass courtesy of Edward Hawkins, a knowing smile playing around his lips. As the now singing detective, he takes the lead in the first Sherlock Holmes opera to hit the stage.
Continue reading “Sherlock’s toughest case — can the sleuth draw a new audience to opera?”Covid-19 has hit — and the government refuses to trace infection. You decide to do it yourself
“I promised myself when I retired, I wouldn’t do any more public health – I’d do other things,” says Paul Redgrave, a former GP and director of Public Health in Sheffield, with a touch of wistfulness. A genial, grey-haired 72 year old, he breaks off our conversation at one point in absolute delight at spotting a woodpecker out the window – bird-watching being just the sort of “other thing” retirement is designed for.
Continue reading “Covid-19 has hit — and the government refuses to trace infection. You decide to do it yourself”The rise of the slow living movement
How does the idea of doing nothing for a year sound? No work, no emails, no career progression, no striving or achieving or being productive. For many of us, such a thought might once have brought its own anxiety attack – surely, work is status, earning money is achievement, and being busy is a brag? But these days, a year of nothing is more likely to sound dreamy, even aspirational – there has been, as they say, a vibe shift.
Continue reading “The rise of the slow living movement”Review: Small Pleasures, Clare Chambers
With her last novel, Small Pleasures, Clare Chambers experienced the sort of quiet success story that gladdens the heart. With her eight previous books mostly out of print, and having not published in a decade, Chambers considered Small Pleasures a last roll of the dice. She spun the literary equivalent of double sixes, producing a tender tale about a female journalist in 1950s south London suburbia that captured readers’ hearts and became a huge word-of-mouth hit.
Continue reading “Review: Small Pleasures, Clare Chambers”Review: Goodlord, Ella Frears
When I tell you that poet Ella Frears’s new “novelistic text” takes the form of one long email to a landlord, you might balk. You shouldn’t: Goodlord is a dazzling treat of a book, genuinely inventive, spiky and funny. Despite not having much of a plot – a young woman complains to her estate agent about the degradations of the housing market and what it means to be a young woman – Goodlord zips along, blackly compelling and readable.
Continue reading “Review: Goodlord, Ella Frears”How British theatre became obsessed with horror
You’re sitting in the dark, watching a scary story unfold. Maybe the hairs on your neck stand up. Maybe you’re on the edge of your seat – and maybe it’s a slightly tired, slightly cramped red velvet seat, next to a stranger nursing an overpriced plastic glass of wine… Because these days, you’re as likely to encounter a ghost story in a theatre as in the cinema or on your sofa. Horror is coming back to life on stage.
Continue reading “How British theatre became obsessed with horror”Starlight Express shaped my youth – how will the new version compare?
Forty years after it first opened, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s roller-skating musical extravaganza Starlight Express is back on stage. Admittedly less well-remembered than the 1984 London production – although just as significant for this writer – was a show mounted 11 years later, at the Pavilion in Llandrindod Wells, where, in a spirit of unbridled optimism, my primary school had a crack at staging this audacious, absurd musical about cosmic racing trains.
Continue reading “Starlight Express shaped my youth – how will the new version compare?”Review: The Buddha of Suburbia, RSC
Welcome to Bromley, 1976 – and a tale of “betrayal, deceit and heart-following”. It’s told by Karim, a young man still finding his feet as he attempts to strut towards adulthood. Even with an almost three-hour running time, this sprawling story – about the 17-year-old mixed-race, British-Indian Karim and the travails of his immigrant family – can feel fit to burst in Emma Rice and Hanif Kureishi’s adaptation of the latter’s debut 1990 novel.
Continue reading “Review: The Buddha of Suburbia, RSC”‘Readers loved the fisting’: Why novels need good sex scenes
When I published my first novel two years ago, I was naturally nervous about how people would react. What Time Is Love? imagines what happens when one couple meets at three different points in the 20th century, and I worried whether I’d got the different time periods right, or if my readers would care about my characters equally… I worried if anyone would even read it at all.
Continue reading “‘Readers loved the fisting’: Why novels need good sex scenes”