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An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Sue Steward's rating
Reader rating
Natural beauty: Brigitte Bardot photographed in Spain by Terry O’Neill in 1971
A celebrity photographer who became a quiet celebrity, Terry O’Neill began shooting portraits in early Sixties Hollywood and Swinging London but was never a Zelig-like intruder into his shots, even when they included his then wife Faye Dunaway.
His classic portrait of her, exhibited here through large contact prints, highlight changing expressions and poses as she lounges over breakfast, the morning after winning the Oscar that stands on the poolside table.
The exhibition completes O’Neill’s trilogy, following Through a Lens and Fabulous, with another set of carefully composed, hand-printed, mostly black and white softly toned portraits. Visitors are lured by the £5,000-worth image of Frank Sinatra in the window: the singer strolling with bodyguards for a Life magazine shot that took days to effect.
Working for weeks on film sets offered O’Neill insight into his subjects beyond the frozen red-carpet images: so a young Clint Eastwood, stretches out in his trailer, feet on a chair, reading a paper; Robert Mitchum, cigarette in his mouth, raises an elegantly cupped hand to remove it (“The best smoker I ever saw”, said the photographer). In contrast to such rugged handsomeness, Brigitte Bardot smokes a cigar on a windy day in Spain, a stunningly natural beauty, closely shared by Kate Moss.
In the dawn of pop, O’Neill’s 1963 portraits include a characterless Beatles shot, dull in comparison with the effervescent Rolling Stones in the BBC canteen.
O’Neill’s fondness for pairing subjects to lend more character, is explored with Robert Redford and former CIA Director, Richard Helms, talking on Ryker’s Island against a misty Manhattan skyline, while shooting Three days of the Condor. But Redford remained mysterious, says O’Neill.
Paul Newman and Lee Marvin, posing like old gunslingers in stetsons, chat as if in a saloon bar, and they frame an amusing scene where Newman lies, pièta-like, across Ava Gardner’s chest. Such narrative elements come and go throughout the collection, but are strongest in the contact print sequences with Sinatra and Muhammad Ali — Sinatra in rehearsal, smoking a pipe, on stage, backstage, and “A day in the gym with Muhammad Ali” plays on the contrasts of domesticity and pugnaciousness.
A welcome break for shoppers, this exhibition is bizarrely but perfectly located.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
