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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,
Fiona Mountford's rating
Reader rating
Poet and duellist: Joseph Fiennes as the over-sensitive Cyrano
You could see Roxane’s point about the problematic proboscis when the likes of Gérard Depardieu and Antony Sher were involved but you might think she could overlook that honking hooter if it had the rest of Joseph Fiennes attached to it.
Fears that the not uncomely Fiennes would prove too much of a pretty face for Edmond Rostand’s glorious, boisterous, gut-wrenching epic are delightfully dispelled the minute he arrives exuding that crucial “panache” — and doesn’t let up for the next three hours.
Trevor Nunn, making his Chichester debut in this summer’s all-star line-up of directors, is in his element here. He gets to oversee a bit of Les Mis-style barricade-storming in Act Four’s Siege of Arras but most importantly he brings each of the drama’s five distinctive locations to cogent, vivid life.
Fiennes, barely offstage for a minute, drags us viscerally through the pain behind the panache, aided by Anthony Burgess’s definitive translation.
Cyrano whimpers with joy when Roxane (Alice Eve, pleasingly bright, capricious and, finally, contrite) mentions an undeclared love, before the brutal revelation that it is nice-but-dim Christian (Stephen Hagan) who has erroneously captured her heart.
The supporting roles, including the baker (Paul Grunert) whose aim is a “synthesis of poetry and pastry”, are all carefully coloured rather than merely sketched in but the night overwhelmingly belongs to Fiennes, if not to his odd-looking plastic snout.
Let the man follow his nose into a West End sorely in need of sweeping heroism, and then to some Best Actor awards.
Until 30 May (01243 781312, www.cft.org.uk).
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
This is the play that gave the word “panache” to English. Anthony Burgess's three hour version starts, like Rostand's, with a knowing street-theatre scene and an audience on three sides.
Trevor Nunn's sprawling production for the Chichester thrust makes the most of this, the pastry-cook's emporium, and of course the barricades and the siege of Arras.
The verse translation was well served by the vast cast, [forty strong, I'd guess], not least Joseph Fiennes in the title role, who must have found in the wit and word play echoes of his other script-writers, Shakespeare and Stoppard. Though he is an impressive swordsman, he is especially good as the philosopher poet, “almost brother” to his Roxane, Alice Eve, nostalgically evoking their shared childhood.
This great play poses questions still relevant today. “Your lips, my soul” - Christian's body [Stephen Hagan], Cyrano's words. Must the bright also be beautiful ? Do only the brave deserve the fair ?
No tour, no transfer, apparently, for this wonderful revival, despite the critics' plaudits.
- Michael Gray, Chelmsford UK
