John Baker’s Blog

York Theatre Royal has been hosting the English Touring Theatre’s production of Uncle Vanya, directed by Peter Hall, for the past few days. We were, luckily, at the matinee on Saturday afternoon.
This is not a play I know very well, though I love Chekhov’s insight into the shared deep place which is simultaneously the seat [...]

Robert Fulford in the National Post discusses why art is his religion. The cons and the pros.
. . . we also can’t claim that immersion in the arts will create a lively mind. Art education has produced armies of learned bores. I knew a man who had Shakespeare, Verdi, Beethoven and the rest of the [...]

The bad news first: the film is far too long. It should have been cut from its present running time of 135 minutes to around 90. On the other hand, didn’t Dylan himself once make a film that ran for 5 hours?
The film, by Director Todd Haynes, is a rumination inspired by the various lives [...]

A boy – an apprentice to the fisherman Peter Grimes – dies at sea. At the inquest, Grimes has to answer for the death. Was it an accident? Was it due to neglect? Or was it something worse? Most of the townspeople have already made up their minds. Only one or two, such as the [...]