Category Archives: UK

London Theater Update

Posted on October 30, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

It's been slim pickings at TKTS, maybe because I've been showing up too early. Show up at or before 10am opening you don't have to wait very long, but there's less choice I suspect than if I showed up at noon and queued a long time. I would have loved to see the new David Hare play, but it's not on while I'm in town.

So last night I saw Jerry Springer: the Opera. I am more of straight theater kind of guy, but I'd read about this and, well, I guess I'm glad I saw it. I've only ever seen about five minutes of Springer in some hotel somewhere, and I was fairly disgusted. The show is pretty smart about walking a line between joining in with Springer and condemning him. It revels in his horribleness while at the same time inviting you to revel too while at the same time marking an ironic distance. That's clever. And uncomfortable. It's a somewhat well, not raunchy but defiantly rude show. And it's a real spectacle. The use of the audience as a modern trailer-trash manipulated Greek chorus is clever.

Jerry gets sent to visit hell, but the permanence of his stay is left ambiguous.

I left wondering what on earth Springer himself thought of it.

Apparently he liked it

“I 'm honored to the point that I realize that I'm the only human being on the planet earth that's an opera,” Springer says. “There have been others, but they're dead.”

This evening I saw an RSC production of “Twelfth Night” set in an Indian milieu. It did the play no harm, allowed the addition of nice costumes and some good physical jokes, and thus distracted a little from the play's utter implausibility. Orisnio was a drip who mostly didn't speak loud enough. Viola played the role very straight, which mostly was not too good except in her scenes with Olivia, who was generally magnificent…topped only by the Fool who kept stealing the show. On the whole a good production of one of Shakespear's weakest plays, but not in the same class as the History Boys, or the RSC production of Coriolanus I saw the last time I was in London, which I'm sure is the best Coriolanus I'll ever see in my life.

Tomorrow it's back to the National for “A Funny Thing Happened”.

Blogging may be sparse until I get back to the US late on Tuesday. Or, if we go on campus to watch the election returns with the students, maybe not till Wednesday…

Posted in Personal, UK | 8 Comments

ROFL

Posted on October 19, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Talk about two cultures divided by a common language. Wonkette channels the Guardian's followup to its letter-writing campaign directed to Clark County, Ohio in So Long and Thanks for All the Castles:

Americans respond to the Guardian's call for Britons to lobby Ohio voters against Bush. Mostly, they are not pleased, though some are more polite than others:

I used to visit the UK every year. I love the history and culture of your country. But after I heard about your campaign to influence our elections, I've decided that neither myself, nor my family will ever visit again. I'm offended by your campaign and because of it, I'm remembering more of the negative aspects I've seen in the UK than the positive ones. Though I still love the castles!

Versus, say:

Who in the hell do you think you are??? Well, I'll tell you, you're a bunch of meddling socialist pricks! Stay the hell out of our country and politics. And another thing, John Kerry is a worthless lying sack of crap so it doesn't surprise me that a socialist rag like yours would back him. I hope your cynical ploy blows up in your cowardly faces, you bunch of mealy-mouthed morons!

Our take: Yeah! Imagine that! A foreign power trying to, you know, assert control over a sovereign nation by writing letters. Why don't they just hand-pick a ruling coalition like a real empire would? Pussies.

Dear Limey assholes [Guardian]

Posted in Politics: US: 2004 Election, UK | 4 Comments

Scenes From the Hartlepool By Election

Posted on September 28, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

The Guardian has a first-class piece of detailed local reporting, giving a ground-eye view of the Hartlepool by-election: part one and part two. Hartlepool was Peter Mandelson's seat.

All politics is local. This is a well-told tale, of interest to retail politics political junkies everywhere. (Bloggers will also enjoy the role that one of the candidate's campaign blogs plays in the story.) The election will be the 30th.

Posted in UK | Comments Off on Scenes From the Hartlepool By Election

Antiquarian’s Delight

Posted on September 23, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Don't hold your breath, but apparently in the UK, impeachment, a procedure last used in 1805 remains vital today.

Tony Blair could be impeached before the House of Lords for misleading Parliament over the basis for military action against Iraq, two leading lawyers say in advice published today.

They believe there is a case that the Prime Minister is guilty of a serious breach of constitutional principles.

Rabinder Singh, QC, and Prof Conor Gearty say the ancient procedure, under which MPs initiate criminal proceedings for actions that would otherwise go unprosecuted, can still be used to call ministers to account.

There's no chance that the Commons, controlled by the New Labour Party, would ever convict. But I suppose there's a real non-zero chance that the quirky House of Lords might at least debate the issue of voting a bill of impeachment.

Of course here in the US we only impeach people for lying about sex, not for lying to Congress and the nation about why we are going to war.

Posted in UK | 1 Comment

The Daily Telegraph Makes Another Error About Jews

Posted on February 2, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

When I'm in England, I read the Guardian and the Financial Times. The FT may be the best written paper in the English-speaking world, and it has great international coverage. The Guardian has great UK political coverage, good jokes, and they spell as badly as I do. I would never be caught dead with the right-wing and relatively lowbrow Daily Telegraph (before Rupert Murdoch destroyed the Times of London, which could then claim to be the best paper in Britain, the old putdown used to be that 'gentlemen read the Times and their footmen read the Telegraph').

But when I'm in the US I tend to get my British news from the Daily Telegraph online instead of the Guardian. Partly this is because the Telegraph used to have a much better web site although the Guardian is catching up; mostly it's because the DT updates much earlier and I get tomorrow's news before going to bed.

Ordinarily that's ok, especially as I never read the editorial page, but every so often the Telegraph's biases set my teeth on edge. And one subject that they absolutely cannot deal with properly is Jews. The level of casual and unthinking antisemitism is beyond anything we'd tolerate in the US, at least before the new Mel Gibson movie hits the streets.

Today's example is fairly trivial compared to, say, John Keegan's defense of Holocaust denier David Irving but it was pretty typical. (I wrote the DT to complain about the Keegan article, but they edited out my claim of antisemitism, and only ran it online…plus it doesn't seem to be in their archives. The only copy I could find online today is at a Holocaust “revisionist” site, and I'm not going to link to it.)

Continue reading →

Posted in UK | 2 Comments

Hutton Live

Posted on January 28, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

The Guardian is scribing the live delivery of the Hutton report. So far it looks bad for the BBC and good for Tony Blair.

Update: It's over. Full summary is now here, with the headline “BBC targeted as Hutton clears Blair”.

Posted in UK | Comments Off on Hutton Live