The Guardian | UK Note

The Guardian | UK

The Guardian is a daily newspaper published in London that provides opinion, debate and interviews from critical thinkers and progressive voices. It has a large global readership and a sister publication called The Observer, a British Sunday newspaper. They often feature in-depth articles on UK, International, Politics, Technology, Education, Culture, Travel, Science, Society, and Environment. News articles can provide in-depth analysis and commentary on public affairs. Interviews help readers to understand more about their favourite writers, politicians, or artists. Overall, it's a good source of serious news and current affairs.

Thread Of Notes

Royal Opera House, London This revival of Richard Jones and Antony McDonald’s 2022 staging has kept most of its excellent original cast Lisette Oropesa is imperious and gleaming as the enchantress Alcina Handel, but make it fun. Perhaps that was Richard Jones’s brief for his production of Alcina, first seen here in 2022 and revived by Sarah Fahie, its original movement director. And of all Handel’s operas perhaps it’s this one, with its desert-island storyline of sorcery and sex – what happens on the island stays on the island – that invites this treatment. Jones makes the “good guys” into members of a kind of puritan cult, so the tension between the moral world and the sensual, instinctive one is less of a gentle pull, more a tug of war. Alcina’s prisoners are transformed by a squirt of her eponymous perfume into birds and animals – a parrot, a mandrill, a King Charles spaniel, all wearing prosthetic heads so beautifully made that for the past year or two they have been in display cases in the Royal Opera House foyer. The animals are kept busy fawning over Alcina or moving Antony McDonald’s sets around: there’s a huge bed, a greenhouse and an enchanted forest on wheeled platforms, found behind the doors of what might be a hotel corridor. It’s a wide stage, and there’s often at least one singer running across it. Amid all this, the opera’s moments of warmth, insight and introspection risk getting lost or at least overshadowed. It’s brittle, but it is entertaining.
The actor makes her directing debut with a raw, fascinating film about her 2008 collaboration with the British dancer In the way that wedding rehearsals can be more emotional than the big day – all the untidy feelings that will be tucked away for the cameras still on show – this documentary from Juliette Binoche feels raw and unguarded. It goes behind the scenes of Binoche’s collaboration with British dancer Akram Khan; their dance-theatre piece, a love story entitled In-I, premiered in London to mixed reviews in 2008. Now, all these years later, Binoche makes her directing debut with a film that is essentially a study of their artistic process. And it’s unexpectedly fascinating, watching two world-famous performers pushing themselves outside their comfort zones, exposed and vulnerable – particularly Binoche, who had never danced professionally before. In-I in Motion is a film of two halves, ending with a performance on stage in front of an audience, the set designed by artist Anish Kapoor: a vast screen in murderous red. The first half is more interesting, shot fly-on-the-wall style during the months it took to create the piece in a studio. Binoche and Khan work with acting coach Susan Batson, who at one point thunders: “THIS IS FULL OF SHIT!” (never mind La Binoche’s Oscar). For some audiences, it will have a whiff of theatrical cringe; the endless stewing and fretting over how to achieve something truthful is ripe for spoof. But the pure intensity and focus is thrilling to watch.