Saturday Review - 20/02/2010

Tom Sutcliffe is joined by literary critic Peter Carey, academic Maria Delgado and diplomatic correspondent Bridget Kendall to review the cultural highlights of the week. Crazy Heart begins with its hero down on his luck. One-time country star Bad Blake (Jeff Bridges) is reduced to driving himself and his guitar along the back roads of New Mexico to gigs in bowling alleys. His former protegé Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell) is now a huge star and they've fallen out. But possible redemption presents itself in the shape of a young newspaper reporter (Maggie Gyllenhaal). The original songs by T-Bone Burnett are sung by Bridges, which may have helped to secure him an Oscar nomination for his performance. Joshua Ferris's first novel was an amusing satire set in a recession-hit advertising agency. The tone of his follow-up, The Unnamed, is very different. Tim Farnsworth is a partner in a New York law firm and lives with his wife and daughter, but this picture of success and stability is compromised by the recurrent, undiagnosed condition which afflicts him. During these attacks his body is compelled to walk and keep on walking until he collapses with exhaustion. Despite the strategies which he and his wife employ to try and mimimise the dangers which this exposes him to, the journey back to normal life becomes more and more difficult. Judi Dench was first cast by Sir Peter Hall to play the role of Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream back in 1962 at the RSC in Stratford when she was 28. Forty-eight years later she reprises the role in Sir Peter's production of the play at the Rose Theatre in Kingston. She initially appears on stage as Elizabeth I, interrupting a group of players rehearsing the play and taking a fancy to the role of the Queen of the Fairies. Rachel Stirling's Helena has been praised, but not surprisingly it's Dame Judi's performance which has attracted most attention. Blood and Oil, a two part thriller for BBC2 by the award-winning writer Guy Hibbert, begins with the kidnapping of a group of western oilmen by Nigerian militants. This need not end badly: in the Niger Delta ransom payments for senior executives are just part of the operating costs. But there's something different about this kidnapping. For one thing the oil company, Krielsen International, have flown out a PR woman, Alice (Naomie Harris), to cover the affair. For another, one of the men's wives, Claire (Jodhi May) is on the scene too. Both women discover that oil pollutes in ways that they had never suspected. Designer, architect and artist Ron Arad first made his name in the early 1980s with the Rover Chair, constructed from a Rover car seat and scaffolding. The extraordinary sculptural directions in which he has subsequently taken the humble chair can be seen in a major retrospective exhibition at the Barbican in London. Also featuring his architectural designs and pieces which made it into mass production, the exhibition highlights the significance of experimentation, process and materials in Arad's work. And you can take the weight off your feet when you reach the final space and use some of his pieces for the purpose for which they were designed.