The Engine

THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD by JOHN MILLINGTON SYNGE At the LYRIC THEATRE On the 10 th October 2019 The Lyric seems committed to offering us a snapshot of the slow evolution of Irish theatre as last years The Colleen Bawn by Dion Boucicault gives way to The Playboy of the Western World by J.M.Synge.   Boucicault’s drama was sneered at and dismissed by both Shaw and, J.M.Synge’s friend, W.B.Yeats because of its pretentious use of snippets of Irish, stock characters and stereotypes, stage Irishmen and Irishwomen and its limited relevance beyond the theatre.   In short, Boucicault was producing an image of Ireland for consumption in America and at this he was very adept, his plays were immensely commercially successful even if they failed to please his critics.   Yeats, with his remote, aristocratic stance looked upon the peasantry as a hindrance to civilisation and Synge too looked upon their manners and mores with a glint of satiric intent.   But his actual t

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD (dir. Quentin Tarantino, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie) Small screen addiction is the subject of Quentin Tarantino's latest film offering 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood'.   Specific details of the late 60s/early 70s period are meticulously recorded, and overall Tarantino succumbs to the pervasive revisionism that was probably initiated by the rippling flag in the NASA moon shot still.   This time Tarantino is revising the murder of Sharon Tate and friends by The Family, a crazed hippy cult led by guru Charles Manson.   The big story of the time, the events horrified the public and seemed to end the period of hope and optimism, of flower power, Woodstock and free love.   The real big cheese of the movie, Roman Polanski, is rarely seen in the movie but we do see Sharon Tate (played by Margot Robbie). She hardly has a line, and this is where the film somehow missed out on something.   Her big thrill is watching

VAN GOGH AND BRITAIN At the Tate Britain, July 28 th , 2019 Today at Mill Bank. A washout meant that I could cover Van Gogh and Britain , a far-fetched poetic fantasy about the artist’s early youth. Tons of collaborators admitted to knowing him after he was made into an icon. It is difficult to learn from Van Gogh's inimitable style and fatal to imitate it but terms like ‘asylum’, ‘fallen woman’ and ‘lunatic’ mean that the narrative fashioned about his life is undeniably entertaining. Van Gogh and Britain follows a brief chronology before unfolding into a discourse on the artist’s imitators and those he influenced.  The implied message is that Van Gogh (1853-1890) is actually very close to us.  For instance, he lived for three years in London, between 1873 and 1875, initially working for an art dealer called Goupil before subsiding into depression, unrequited love and eventual unemployment as he was dismissed from his post.  Afterwards he left for the Borinage in Belg

NATALIA GONCHAROVA AT THE TATE MODERN 10 th of June 2019 Natalia Goncharova (1881 – 1962) was born in Tula province, Russia, 200 miles from Moscow in 1881.  Her career encompassed the Russian avante garde, she was involved in painting, lithography, design and later in her career worked as a set and costume designer for Diaghalev’s Ballet Russe .  Her family were impoverished aristocrats who made their living from textiles.  Goncharova was familiar with the creation of textiles in all stages of their production.  She was initially motivated by her interest in traditional Russian forms of art and design, rejecting western models.  She collected traditional Russian icons, paintings and designs avidly and later in her life campaigned for their preservation, just as Stalin’s project of collectivisation sought to wipe them out.  Her work Peasant Woman from Tula Province (1910, State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow) illustrates these interests in traditional peasant costumes, depi

EDVARD MUNCH AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM 11 th of June 2019 This exhibition at the British museum concentrates on Munch's work beyond painting as he sought to use lithographs, woodcuts and other media.   Intricate technical details of these processes are provided to indicate the diversity of Munch’s artistic methods.   While he experimented, he also tended to go back to oil painting as his first point of reference.   He used these other forms in order to make his work more accessible to the general public. Edvard Munch (1863-1944) began his artistic career in Kristiania, the former name for Oslo, capital of Norway.   Munch was a member of the Kristiania Bohemia, a group of artists, writers and intellectuals who met in clubs in the city to discuss ideas, new movements in ideas and the arts and presumably to drink absinthe, the preferred drug of the avante garde of that time.   An early lithograph represents Hans Jaeger (1854-1910), a member of the Kristiania Bohemia, whose work w