Michael Morley

Coriolanus

April 2012, no. 340 • 21 March 2012

With its opening montage of colliding images – a knife being drawn across a whetstone, television footage of massed crowds, milling soldiers in combat fatigues, politicians alighting from cars, with linking television intertitles and an underlying soundtrack of pulsating drums – Ralph Fiennes’s and John Logan’s take on Coriolanus immediately establishes its connections to contemporary even ... (read more)

Michael Morley reviews 'Duke Ellington’s America' by Harvey G. Cohen

November 2010, no. 326 • 01 November 2010

Early in this magisterial and exhaustively researched examination of Duke Ellington’s role in American music and society, the author offers a succinct summary of the musician’s significance as an American artist. It is worth quoting at length, as it encapsulates most of the questions addressed over the book’s 577 pages of text and almost 100 densely packed pages of notes: ... (read more)

Michael Morley reviews 'Richard Strauss: A musical life' by Raymond Holden

July–August 2011, no. 333 • 29 June 2011

Over the decades, Richard Strauss has been well served by English-language commentators and scholars, ranging from George Bernard Shaw, through Norman del Mar’s magisterial three-volume study (1962–72), to Michael Kennedy’s shorter, though no less illuminating, critical biography (1999). The focus of Raymond Holden’s work is explicitly narrower than theirs, offering as it does a thorough d ... (read more)

Michael Morley reviews 'Talking Theatre: Interviews with Theatre People' by Richard Eyre

February 2011, no. 328 • 01 February 2011

One of many dangers lying in wait for the writer (and reader) of theatre-insider books is that he or she may slip into an endless series of tired anecdotes linked by preening paragraphs of luvvie-speak – though most readers may find luvvie-speak rather more interesting, and amusing, than the piles of polly-waffle foisted on us by our elected ex-representatives. In his preface to this collection ... (read more)

Michael Morley reviews 'Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954–1981)' by Stephen Sondheim and 'Sondheim on Music: Minor Details and Major Decisions, Second Edition' by Mark Eden Horowitz

May 2011, no. 331 • 21 April 2011

Given Stephen Sondheim’s well-known fondness for verbal games and puzzles (as a diversion from his day job, he has devised crossword puzzles for the New York Times), it seems appropriate to begin this review with a short quiz based on some of the ‘attendant comments and grudges’ referred to in the subtitle of, and dotted throughout, Finishing the Hat. Match the author’s critical judgements ... (read more)