Arts

Director Phil Wilmott’s Three Sisters in a version by Tracey Letts (August: Osage County) is full of micro aggression. In a small space such as the Union Theatre’s new venue, nothing can be bigged up too much: subsequently this production is full of nuances sometimes so macro you’d miss them if you blinked. For this reason there is a distinct lack of the sense of the epic and more a feel of claustrophobia. It’s as if the three sisters (yearning...

New pictures have been released showing a stunning winter sunrise over the Malvern Hills in Worcestershire. Although recent days have been mild for this time of year, a cold snap is expected to arrive in the next few days painting a crisp winter's morning over the backdrop of the three counties of Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire. The highest summit of the hills is renowned for its panoramic views of the Severn valley, taking in the Welsh mountains, parts of thirteen counties,...

Hedda is down, but Ibsen is up in this crystalline razor sharp new translation of the playwright’s supposedly realist play by Patrick Marber and directed by Ivo van Hove. The Belgian director and his years long collaborator designer Jan Versweyveld have removed every inch of realistic detail that made Ibsen famous so that Versweyveld’s light cuts as easily across the bare stage as Marber’s parred back text cuts the air with all the ferocity of a pistol shot. Watching, it...

Once in a Lifetime is a show about the tenuous and complicated relationship between creativity and destruction. Re-adapted here by Chris Hart, son of one half of the original writing duo Moss Hart and George S Kaufman, the show may well be set in 1930s Hollywood just as the talkies are about to change cinema forever, but it might also be poking fun at an art form that is a little closer to home. Director Richard Jones always takes risks...

Entries for the SWNS Media Group Picture of the Year have been submitted for a public ballet, with some stunning photos to choose from among this year's entrants. Every year the SWNS news wire supplies newspapers and magazines around the world with some of the most fascinating, captivating and powerful photographs you could ever hope to see. From 2017, the media group will also be revolutionising how they submit pictures to the national media. Funded by Google under their Digital...

It’s not possible for the audience to hide in the darkness in the Young Vic’s Maria Studio because there isn’t any. Throughout the show the lights remain on and the audience can see every bead of sweat, every grimace, cutting smile and flick of the eye in Mark Lockyer’s physiognomy as he describes his battle with Manic Depression. He can also see the audience. A match has been lit, a mirror erected, so that the audience can peer into the...

It’s ironic that The Unmarried, where “gig meets theatre” by Lauren Gauge, part of Camden People’s Theatre’s All the Right Notes, starts off with a rendition of The Rhythm of Life by Beatbox Academy artists Kate and Nate because it is precisely that that Gauge’s character Luna is running from. Luna’s a lager lout out for a good time. Gauge’s choice of theatrical genre echoes that of Jim Cartwright’s Raz, which some months ago played at Trafalgar Square Studios and...

  This is the world's biggest painting of an elephant - aimed at making a jumbo-size contribution to save the species. The magnificent life-size 'big tusker' has so far taken artist Jonathan Truss three weeks - during which an estimated 2,500 elephants have been killed for their ivory. His elephant appears to be charging from the 15' x 12' canvas in the stunning 3D-like work. Jonathan, 55, whose paintings sell for thousands, set himself the huge challenge to raise money...

Rising from the ashes of the Brexit vote and all the uncertainty London’s migrant population have been plunged into - and from the literal ashes of last year's fire that wrecked a magnificent renovation of South London culture hub the Battersea Arts Centre (BAC), this year’s London Stories project invites us in to listen to 24 migrants talk us through their journeys to the capital. The optimism, community spirit and determination behind the mammoth task of restoring the BAC again after its devastating fire...