Culture

La Bohème – noirish reframing of Puccini’s classic weepy | Classical music

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Ditching the penguin suits and picnic hampers for affordable tickets and a smart-casual elegance, Glyndebourne’s autumn season opened with Floris Visser’s stylish La Bohème. Seamlessly revived by Rachael Hewer, it not only looks good, it does full justice to Puccini’s classic weepy while finding novel ways to raise the odd goosebump.Dieuweke van Reij’s set – a metaphorical highway to heaven – serves for all four acts with more than a nod to Brassaï’s noirish photos of 1930s Paris. Bare walls and glistening cobblestones are breathtakingly lit by Alex Brok, while Jon Morrell’s monochrome costumes ooze couture. Visser’s bohemians inhabit a…

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John Lodge obituary | Pop and rock

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The Moody Blues were a spectacularly successful band known for grandiose lyrics and flamboyant musical arrangements, but the deadpan title of their 1973 chart hit I’m Just A Singer (in a Rock and Roll Band) summed up the self-effacing approach of their songwriter, John Lodge.As the band’s co-lead vocalist and bass player, Lodge, who has died aged 82, was the antithesis of the wild rocker, largely resisting the hedonistic temptations that accompanied stardom in the 1960s and 70s and making no bones about his commitment to family and evangelical Christianity.Lodge was a member of the Moody Blues for 50 years,…

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From Annie Hall to Something’s Gotta Give: Diane Keaton was the quintessential comedy queen | Diane Keaton

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Plenty of great female actors have starred in romantic comedies. Usually if they want to win an Oscar, however, they have to reach for more serious roles. The late Diane Keaton, who died unexpectedly this week, followed a reverse trajectory and made it look disarmingly natural. Her first major film role was in The Godfather, about as serious an American masterpiece as has ever been made. But that same year, she reprised the part of Linda, the object of a nerdy hero’s affection, in a film adaptation of Broadway’s Play It Again, Sam. (Keaton originated the role opposite playwright Woody…

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‘I wanted to write more than I wanted to have children’: author Sarah Perry on rejecting motherhood | Sarah Perry

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Fifteen years ago, having said all my life that I never wanted a baby, that I couldn’t fathom why any free woman would do such a thing to her body and her mind, I suddenly and passionately wanted a child. I remember where I was when this feeling, so heretical to me, arrived: it was early morning in London, and having come down Fleet Street on my way to work, I was standing at the till of a newsagents to pay for a Diet Coke, a flapjack and a pack of Silk Cut. There were no children there and no pregnant women; nothing had been said or done to…

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The Intruder review – the daftest thriller of the entire year | Television

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You wear a tightly belted beige trenchcoat and you live in a cavernous show-home bedecked with mid-century pine and fashionably inadequate lighting. You are French. You have two uncommonly beautiful teenage children and are preparing to return to your prestigious role at a maison de couture after the recent birth of your uncommonly beautiful baby. But mon Dieu, you are anxious! You fear your glamorous workload will interfere with your ability to care for l’enfant. The solution? You will hire an enigmatic au pair. Alas, you have never watched television and are thus unaware that this will expose faultlines in…

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Witches of Essex: Rylan and Prof Alice’s look at one of history’s most shameful periods is unfailingly moving | Television

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Witches of Essex is one of those television shows that could have been created working backwards from its title. “It sounds like Witches of Eastwick!” you can imagine a producer brainstorming. “Can we do anything with that?”Yes, yes we can. We can put together a three-part documentary about the Essex witch trials, which saw hundreds of people – the majority of them women – accused of witchcraft in the 16th and 17th centuries. Crucially, we can hire everyone’s favourite Essex boy, Rylan (though less favourite since his comments on immigration saw more than 700 Ofcom complaints last month) to present…

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TV tonight: Sally Wainwright’s furious drama about a menopausal punk band | Television & radio

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Riot WomenSunday, 9pm, BBC One“Do you think women of a certain age become, you know, invisible?” Teacher Beth (Joanna Scanlan) gave her best years to her family – and now both her husband and son have left her feeling disposable. She’s also caring for her mother, who has dementia. But Beth’s world is about to be shaken up by a group of fellow menopausal women who want to start a punk band for the local talent show: “And you thought the Clash were angry?” Sally Wainwright’s new comedy drama feels her most personal and urgent. It’s wonderfully warming and wickedly…

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My cultural awakening: ‘Kate Bush helped me come out as a trans woman’ | Kate Bush

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It wasn’t safe for me to discover The Sensual World, the eponymous track on what Kate Bush described as her “most female album”. The song was intended to be a rejection of the masculine influence that had unwittingly shaped the artist’s previous work, and an ode to something taboo within the female experience. Based on Molly Bloom’s soliloquy in James Joyce’s Ulysses – a stream of consciousness in which the character reflects on her experiences of nature, sex and love – Bush wanted to celebrate the experience of life inside a woman’s body, and the ways it gives her spiritual and…

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Triple Trouble: Fairey, Hirst, Invader review – the most revolting visual soup imaginable | Art

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You’ve heard of the best of both worlds, well get ready for the worst of three. Down in Vauxhall in London, three artists have mashed themselves together to create the most revolting visual soup imaginable, an exhibition that isn’t so much the sum of its parts as a total negation of anything good any of them has ever done.Whatever qualities YBA kingpin Damien Hirst and street artists Shepard Fairey and Invader might have, none of them are on display in this staggeringly vast exhibition – it just goes on and on, huge room after huge room filled with aesthetic crap.Triple…

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Diane Keaton, Oscar-winning star of Annie Hall and The Godfather, dies aged 79 | Diane Keaton

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Diane Keaton, one of the best-loved film stars of the past 50 years, has died at the age of 79 in California.The news was confirmed by People magazine. Further details are not available at this time and her loved ones have asked for privacy, according to a family spokesperson.Keaton’s death came as a shock across Hollywood and the rest of the world. The actor had not been in the public eye for some months, but no illness had been announced.Bette Midler, Keaton’s co-star in The First Wives Club, said on Instagram: “The brilliant, beautiful, extraordinary Diane Keaton has died. I…

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