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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,
Barry Millington's rating
Reader rating
Trains: Tube: High Street Kensington 
Phone: 0207608 8840/8838
Sparkle: Charles Mackerras conducted the BBC Concert Orchestra
WS Gilbert feared that Patience, his satire on the Aesthetic movement embodied by Oscar Wilde, would date fast. He needn’t have worried.
Aestheticism had a broad following: Wilde was in the first-night audience at the operetta’s Savoy opening, while Whistler was a friend of Gilbert. Foppish and narcissistic as its more extreme practitioners were seen to be, they caught the zeitgeist.
So long as vanity, affectation and poseurs are with us, Patience will have its targets. Indeed, in the electronic age, fad-following has arguably become more fetishised than ever.
Martin Duncan’s traditional but lively semi-staging made no attempt to update the action but hilarious new life was injected into it by a fine team of singing-actors. In the role of Reginald Bunthorne, the central Wilde figure, Simon Butteriss drew on a vocal range from effeminate falsetto to cod-macho roar in his efforts to woo the ladies.
His rival, Archibald Grosvenor, was played by Toby Stafford-Allen, possessed of an admirable baritone deployed with exemplary diction. The rendering of their Act 2 duet, each bent on out‑mincing the other, was priceless. Proceedings were temporarily halted by the laughter greeting Butteriss’s line “I must not allow myself to be unmanned”, as Stafford-Allen, face at crotch level, clutched him by the waist.
Also outstanding as the redoubtable but ageing Lady Jane was Felicity Palmer. Her delivery of such lines as “My charms are ripe” was inimitable. Rebecca Bottone was the perky Patience.
Donald Maxwell, Graeme Danby and Bonaventura Bottone were excellent as the dragoons (the stiff-necked military are lampooned as mercilessly as the aesthetes), while Robert Tear made a cameo appearance as the Solicitor.
The ENO Chorus was in terrific form and Charles Mackerras, conducting the BBC Concert Orchestra, brought a Rossini-like sparkle to Sullivan’s score.
Information: 0845 4015040, www.bbc.co.uk/proms
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
