Author: Ronald Weihs

  • Tate Modern Photo-ops

    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

    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

    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

    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…

  • Taming of the Shrew, Trinidad Style

    Taming of the Shrew by The Oratory Foundation in Stratord upon Avon Strolling along the Avon River on the way to see Miss Littlewood at the Swan, we chanced on an outdoor production of Taming of the Shrew by a little company from Trinidad-Tobago. I was fascinated, and only with regret tore myself away to…

  • August 4: Miss Littlewood

    Amanda Ayeh as Joan 2, Amanda Hadingue as Nick, Photo by Topher McGrillis Joan Littlewood was a theatre innovator who had a huge influence on how theatre is made. A tough cockney who  quit RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art)and walked from London to Manchester, she joined with young Jimmy Miller (later AKA Ewan McColl)…