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With a single dessert and just two glasses of wine our bill was kept in check - but the effort of doing so was not much fun
Babbo
Film
This is a film with beautiful performances and a visual style that urges you towards reflection
Bright Star
Theatre
Although the first half of Kwei-Armah’s production is pacy, funny and intelligent, the energy level then drops off
Seize The Day
I loved this film from start to finish. Take the girlfriend, tell your mum - I'd see it again tomorrow and will buy the dvd.
I saw this last night and can't remember the last time I was so moved in the theatre.
I have been to many of London's so-called best Japanese restaurants and none have been as good as the food that I've had at Aqua Kyoto
London,
Nicholas de Jongh's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Gregory Doran.
Cast: Roger Allam, Stephen Hagan, Richard Moore, Barry McCarthy, Simon Trinder, Ricky Champ, Philip Voss
Description: A new drama written by Antony Sher, set in 16th-century Florence. A block of Carrara marble becomes the centre of a conflict between the artists Da Vinci and Michelangelo as they fight for the commission to carve a statue of David.
Trains: Tube: Swiss Cottage 
Phone: 0207722 9301
Website: www.hampsteadtheatre.com
Playing around with history: Leonardo da Vinci, played by Roger Allam, experiments with flying
Antony Sher plays around with history in The Giant and dreams up an erotic fantasy. His fantasising depends upon the impact of suppressed homosexual desire on two great Renaissance artists, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, who are stirred to steaming point by a young quarryman with luxurious pubic hair and other cherished accoutrements.
In real life the two men met just briefly in the street. Here they have several encounters: they compete for the commission to sculpt David's statue and quarrel over Vito whose well-honed body is used by John Light's surly, hang-dog Michelangelo as model for his sculpture. If Sher's speculative and ambitious adventuring in the worlds of 16th century Florence, power politics, artistic creativity and sexual psychology had proved as interesting and purposeful in theatrical practice as they sound in outline, The Giant might not be such a confused, unrewarding experience.
Having settled upon his invented dramatic scenario, Sher seems prepared to demonstrate how gay impulses inspired, tormented and ashamed artists at a time when homosexuality had not been invented. But sodomy was all the rage in a Florence bound by Catholicism. In 19 aggressively verbose scenes, several of which director Gregory Doran should have removed or cut, Sher lets the action wander discursively around, as if to paint an entire but irrelevant Florentine picture, with Stephen Noonan's suave Machiavelli, a grand masque, Leonardo's dreams of flying, threatening Savonarola acolytes and Philip Voss's gorgeously camp Gonfaloniere.
Charismatic Stephen Fagan makes a spectacular London debut as the too-sexually-enigmatic Vito. He equips himself with an Ulster accent rather than a rural Italian one, while exposing every handsome, muscular, naked bit of himself for minutes. Light's enthralled but appalled Michelangelo, who is inclined to rant, and Roger Allam's wily, worldly but not very passionate Leonardo, often accompanied by Simon Trinder's anachronistic gay boy, survey him in hopeless fascination. The artists' jealous rivalries over Vito, the anguish and selfloathing that the quarryman inspires in Michelangelo, and the celibate Leonardo's attempt at seduction, need developing as the play's main business.
The evening's triumph belongs to designer William Dudley, who creates a Stone Yard, complete with what resembles a huge, horizontal marble slab. When thrillingly raised to the vertical and transformed into a towering statue of David we witness a designer's imaginative triumph and a rare theatrical feat.
• Until 1 December (020 7722 9301).
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
Absolute trash, an embarrasment to the actors and an insult to the audience. Don't waste your time.
- Eve Harrington, London
The play was a shambles, reducing Renaissance power politics to camp buffoonery, awful dialogue about eagles in flight and no sense of dramatic conflict. The sheer boredom of the performance was only enlivened by the brilliant set. A waste of good actors.
- Chris, London, UK
