Anyone up for a jaunt to that dolls' house exhibition at the V&A Museum of Childhood next week? (any day except Wed) as I realise that the following week is already looking difficult; and then it ends.
***
The ghastly news that Jonathan Franzen's next novel includes 'a fanatical feminist' and that some woman writer whose name is unfamiliar to me ( Read more... )

Some years back I suggested that Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkmann gave strong indications that some Starkadders had gone to Norway and married into various families there.

After seeing O'Neill's Desire under the Elms at the Lyric Hammersmith this evening, I think other family members must have made it to New England...

This entry was originally ( Read more... )

Not sure if that was among all that life could afford for Dr J, what with the licensed theatres and so on.

Anyway, at the weekend went to the Jermyn Street Theatre (I think 'luxury studio theatre' is pushing it a bit, rly) to see Ibsen's* 'St John's Night', its first UK production.

It's a very early one of his, and the first set in contemporary ( Read more... )

Maybe it's a cultural thing, but I think even Ibsen his own self might have felt that some pause for reflection and assimilation of traumatic event was appropriate before rushing out with his Big Statement Drama on the Utøya massacre. Or at least might have filtered it through some different prism.

It was a horrendous event, particularly so as ( Read more... )

Next Thursday is, apparently, World Book Day (only one day? for some of us it's every day): Lucy Mangan thinks about this. May I say (and I am sure, dear readers, that many of you will concur) that black t-shirts saying 'Fuck Off, I'm Reading', would be a totally brilliant idea - though alas, probably would not deter that class of person who is so ( Read more... )

And this week's conferral of the It's Always More Complicated Award I think probably goes to David Aaronovitch for what sounds here (and in the other review I read in something probably not yet accessible online) like an excellent book about conspiracy theories in history, Voodoo History.

A S Byatt suggests that Ibsen's Nora is far from an ( Read more... )

Riffing off at a tangent from something I read this morning, have been thinking about the difficulty people have in imagining a state of being deprived of certain things they consider intrinsic to their identity.

I suppose it's a bit of a cliche that the young can't imagine how older people can bear to be old (for really quite junior degrees of ( Read more... )

Ibsen fan though I may be, and however good the production of John Gabriel Borkman seen at the Donmar Theatre this evening, towards the end I was becoming strongly of the opinion that there was a Norwegian branch of the Starkadders. Who married into both the Borkman and the Rentheim families.

***

Spotted near the local tube station this afternoon: ( Read more... )

Pillars of the Community at the National Theatre is really, really, good. The review in the Guardian is here. My own rather more random thoughts follow.

Wow, Ibsen certainly sets up a whole gunrack on the mantelpiece in the first act, doesn't he? And boy, do they go off in totally unexpected ways and in unforeseen circumstances.

Yay for Ibsen and ( Read more... )