ArtwordBlog

Author: Ronald Weihs

  • RSC: Tartuffe in Birmingham

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    Ronald Weihs
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    Tartuffe (played by Asif Khan) takes a selfie. The RSC’s new version of Molière’s Tartuffe is a remarkable piece of work. It transports the plot to Birmingham, and sets it in a Pakistani Muslim household. Tartuffe is a fake holy man, who has gained influence over Imran Pervais, and is imposing his fundamentalist version of…

  • Richard II at the Almeida: the real Beale

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    Ronald Weihs
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    It was with great anticipation that I went to the Almeida to see Simon Russell Beale in The Tragedy of Richard II. He had been a brilliant Timon of Athens at the National in 2012, in a startling production by Nicholas Hyntner that connected Shakespeare’s stark fable to the Occupy movement and Wall Street corruption.…

  • Tate Modern Photo-ops

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    Ronald Weihs
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    Picasso retrospective I love the Tate Modern. There’s the shows, of course — the free ones from the permanent collection and the blockbusters. There’s the mysterious Tanks and the clever Artist Rooms. There’s the building, with all its curves and angles and long, long escalators, and the wonderful smooth sloping Turbine Hall. There are the…

  • Gallery 46: Photos of homeless in 1970s London

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    Ronald Weihs
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    A room in Gallery 46 Gallery 46 is in Whitechapel at 46 Ashfield Road, one of two adjacent Georgian houses. To be admitted to 46, you knock on the door of its neighbour. The gallery occupies three floors of the otherwise empty house. The exhibition was “A Sort of Home”, photographs by David Hoffman of…

  • National Theatre: Consent

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    Ronald Weihs
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    Consent at the Harold Pinter Consent is what used to be called a “problem play”, an examination from various perspectives of a current hot topic. The topic in this case: consensual sex versus rape. The characters are almost all lawyers or lawyers wives, except for one: a woman from the working class who has been…

  • Arcola Theatre: Donizetti and Ravel Operas

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    Ronald Weihs
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    Opera Alegria poster for Grimeborn Grimeborn is an annual summer series of opera performances by alternative companies, held at the Arcola Theatre in Dalston. This is a chance to hear chamber versions of operas, sung up close and personal by accomplished singers, accompanied by piano or sometimes small ensembles. Sunday, August 5, it was a…