THEATRE Strictly speaking, two of the most exciting 2007 shows were 2006 events. The National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch and Tim Supple’s India-set A Midsummer Night’s Dream both opened last summer to rave reviews, but strictly limited runs. The former was not just the hit of the Edinburgh Fringe, it was also the most viscerally exciting thing I’d seen there in a decade of attendance, and far exceeded anything I’d dared dream of for my homeland’s new national company. Gregory Burke’s site-specific ensemble piece, devised from interviews with former Black Watch soldiers who had served in Iraq, was internationally relevant while being robustly, roguishly Scottish-accented.
As theatrically thrilling, reportedly, was Supple’s Dream, which enchanted the lucky few who caught it at Stratford as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s monumental Complete Works festival. Their entranced accounts have secured it a six-week run at the Roundhouse, in London (from March 8). Black Watch, meanwhile, will tour Scotland in the spring and is near to securing a site-specific space in London (dates and venues to be announced).
Back with the RSC, the spring highlights of the Complete Works festival promise to be Ian McKellen as King Lear (from Mar 24) and Michael Boyd’s Richard III, starring Jonathan Slinger (from Thu). Other Shakespeare productions to earmark are As You Like It at the Sheffield Crucible, with Samuel West directing the effervescent Eve Best (from Jan 31), and the Old Vic residency of Edward Hall’s all-male company, Propeller, already previewing Twelfth Night and The Taming of the Shrew.
At the National, a draw for all right-thinking women will be the dangerously charismatic Tom Hardy as Etheridge’s Man of Mode, directed by Nicholas Hytner (from Jan 29). Others will be pulled to Deborah Warner directing Fiona Shaw in Happy Days (from Jan 18).
Last year’s musicals glut means there is space for only one biggie to come in. The Lord of the Rings, directed by Matthew Warchus, is at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane from May 9. On the non-musicals front, the Almeida has a new Frank McGuinness play, There Came a Gypsy Riding, with Eileen Atkins and Imelda Staunton (from Thu). Jessica Lange will be in The Glass Menagerie at the Apollo (from Jan 31), coinciding with Kristin Scott Thomas in The Seagull at the Royal Court (from Jan 18). On a more left-field note, the director Lucy Bailey will stage an adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s Don’t Look Now at the Sheffield Crucible (from Feb 22) and the Lyric Hammersmith (from Mar 13).
Patricia Nicol
DANCE
Three British touring companies will premiere full-length narrative productions. David Bintley’s Cyrano for Birmingham Royal Ballet, based on Rostand’s play, has a commissioned score by Carl Davis (Birmingham, Feb 7). David Nixon’s A Sleeping Beauty Tale (to Tchaikovsky’s music) for Northern Ballet Theatre reinterprets the classic in a futuristic, interplanetary setting (Leeds, Feb 24). Later in the year, Michael Corder creates The Snow Queen, based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale and set to music by Prokofiev, for English National Ballet (Liverpool, Oct 11).
At Covent Garden, the Royal Ballet’s Johan Kobborg stages Bournonville’s sunny Napoli Divertissements as a companion piece to his exemplary La Sylphide (Jan 16), and two ballets by home-grown choreographers receive premieres — Children of Adam, by Alastair Marriott (Mar 5), and Seven Deadly Sins (Brecht/Weill), by Will Tuckett (Apr 26). Balanchine’s Theme and Variations is a new acquisition (March), and notable revivals include De Valois’s Checkmate, Ashton’s beautiful Symphonic Variations and two contrasted MacMillan ballets, La Fin du jour and the magnificent Song of the Earth (April/June).
Matthew Bourne’s popular dance thriller The Car Man returns for a UK tour, which includes four weeks at Sadler’s Wells (July 10). As always, the Wells’s programme is eclectic, embracing flamenco, hip-hop, tap and all varieties of contemporary dance and ballet from home and abroad.
The big-draw Sylvie Guillem reprises both her new-mould collaborations, Push, with Russell Maliphant, and Sacred Monsters, with Akram Khan (Mar 20 and Apr 17). The Belgian choreographer Wim Vandekeybus’s Spiegel is a conspectus of his ferociously energetic work for the Ultima Vez troupe (Feb 9 and touring); in classical contrast, American Ballet Theatre makes its first UK visit in 15 years (Feb 14).
New work by various British modern-dance companies — such as Rambert, Phoenix and Henri Oguike — is featured on tour and in London during the spring, and in the autumn, Michael Clark completes his three-part Stravinsky project at the Barbican (Oct 30). The great Bolshoi Ballet returns to London (Coliseum, July/August), offering a swathe of its big productions, another chance to see The Bright Stream (Shostakovich), which was a hit last year, and a triple bill including a new creation by the British choreographer Christopher Wheeldon.
David Dougill
CLASSICAL
The birth of opera’s first great masterpiece, 400 years ago, is celebrated by Opera North (Feb 16) with a new production of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (Orpheus, the tamer of the infernal furies through music) by the American iconoclast Christopher Alden — gradually acquiring the notoriety of his twin brother, David, whose production of another early Italian baroque opera, Cavalli’s La Calisto, comes to Covent Garden from Munich later in the year. The title role is sung by the outstanding singer-actor Paul Nilon.
After last year’s Mozart and Shostakovich bonanzas, 2007 has somewhat lower-profile anniversaries, though Elgar’s 150th birthday will be marked in June (2-3) by Mark Elder and his Hallé Orchestra with a “festival” weekend, Elgar in his Kingdom, devoted to three works: the popular Cello Concerto (soloist Truls Mork) and Second Symphony, and a large-scale rarity, the oratorio The Kingdom (with Sarah Connolly and Alan Opie among the vocal soloists).
At Covent Garden, the Royal Opera promises a long overdue new production of Gluck’s masterpiece Iphigénie en Tauride by the Canadian director Robert Carsen, already acclaimed in Chicago, as a vehicle for the lustrous American diva Susan Graham, with Simon Keenlyside as her long-lost brother Oreste (Sept-Oct). Bryn Terfel takes a comic breather before the rigours of his first Ring-cycle Wotans this autumn with his first performances of Puccini’s trickster Gianni Schicchi in a new Richard Jones production, conducted by Antonio Pappano in a double bill with Ravel’s risqué comedy L’Heure espagnole (Mar 30). Jones, our most original opera director, also tackles Verdi’s Macbeth for the first time at Glyndebourne this summer (May 19), with Vladimir Jurowski in the pit — a winning team already. Late spring and summer brings rival operatic queen bees swarming to the Garden: the Finnish “Venus”, Karita Mattila, in Beethoven’s Fidelio (May 27); opera’s Russian It girl, Anna Netrebko, in a revival of Don Giovanni (June 11); and America’s first lady of the lyric theatre, Renée Fleming, in a concert performance of Massenet’s steamy shocker Thaïs (June 27).
After the reopening of the Festival Hall in June, all eyes and ears will be on Jurowski’s assumption of the chief conductor’s baton at the London Philharmonic (from September). With Valery Gergiev already installed as the London Symphony Orchestra’s principal conductor at the Barbican, there is a whiff of a musical contest in the air.
The concert to which I most look forward in 2007 is the return of the fiery Neapolitan maestro
Riccardo Muti to his old orchestra, the Philharmonia, in one of his chevaux de bataille: Verdi’s dramatic Requiem Mass (Westminster Cathedral, Mar 14).
Hugh Canning
ART
After the spectacular exhibition year we have just had, it would be greedy to hope 2007 might offer anything to match Velazquez at the National Gallery or Holbein at Tate Britain. It doesn’t. Those were particularly rare treats.
But our old friends the impressionists return, with several shows popping up throughout the year. The Royal Academy’s financially fruitful obsession with Monet continues with a display devoted to his pastels (Mar 17), followed by Impressionists by the Sea (July 7). But the National Gallery is sneaking in first with an ambitious-sounding survey of Renoir’s Landscapes(Feb 21). I make it the impressionist show of the year, on the wafer-thin grounds that Renoir is marginally less familiar than Monet.
The Tate empire will be as busy as usual, though I don’t see much point to the Gilbert & George retrospective at Tate Modern this spring. Haven’t we seen quite enough of G&G already? I’d rather head for Tate Britain, where the impressive run of investigations of the finest British artists continues with a welcomeHogarthshow (Feb 7). So many of British art’s best flavours can be traced back to Hogarth. In particular, our obsession with lowlife began with him. On which subject, I see the Courtauld plans to showcaseWalter Sickert’s unsettling series of Camden Town Nudes (Oct 25). That really will be unmissable.
Some time in the spring,Charles Saatchi is due to reopen his gallery in a new venue at the Duke of York’s former HQ in Chelsea. I can’t wait. I detested the gallery’s previous home in that creepy old GLC building. Chelsea sounds more like it. And, given that everything Saatchi does today, the rest of the world does tomorrow, it will certainly be interesting to see what the world’s most active collector is buying now that the painting revival has come and gone.
Waldemar Januszczak
TELEVISION
This year’s TV treasures all fall under the loose headline of “chaotic on-screen antics”. The hit drama from last autumn in America, Heroes, comes to the Sci-Fi channel in February and to BBC2 in the summer. It’s a neat twist on the superhero shtick, with most of the people who develop superpowers — the cheerleader who’s invincible, the artist who can predict the future on heroin — hating the skills they’ve been given. A serial killer looms, New York may be nuked, and this lot aren’t the X-Men. BBC2 also has Party Animals, a romp about passion-fuelled, hard-partying twentysomethings coping with love, sex, friendship and paying the rent in the big city. The only difference is, they’re all researchers or policy wonks in the House of Commons; think This Life meets The Thick of It. And on BBC1,Harry Enfieldis reuniting with his old partner Paul White-house for — what else? — a sketch show.
On Five, March sees Eddie Izzard take his first serious role on the small screen in Kitchen. He plays an alcoholic celebrity chef overseeing a kitchen full of petty criminals, deranged sociopaths and drug abusers. The cast of Trainspotting, in other words. Talking of Irvine Welsh, his screenplay Wedding Bellescomes to Channel 4 in February. It’s a one-off, movie-length dark comedy about a hen party and wedding in Leith, starring Shirley Henderson, Michelle Gomez, Kath-leen McDermott and Shauna Macdonald as women trying to keep their friendship going as they grow up and apart. Of course, the obstacles they have to overcome are as extreme as the language.
Swearing also figures in the next venture from the Jerry Springer — The Opera duo, Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee. They’ve applied the formula to Television — The Opera, with a 45-piece orchestra, opera singers and comics performing explicit versions of shows like Question Time and Wife Swap. Fortunately, David Dimbleby has no organised protest movement on his side. Finally, ITV begins its drama fightback — which includes a Jane Austen season featuring Billie Piper in Mansfield Park — with Primeval, in February. Taking on Doctor Who in the Saturday slot, the series is a tale of dinosaurs breaching time to invade contemporary London. It uses effects by the Walking with Dinosaurs team, has a script by Rome’s Adrian Hodges and stars Douglas Henshall and Hannah Spearrit from S Club 7.
Stephen Armstrong
POP
With Bob Dylan’s reputation riding higher than it has since the mid1970s, now would be the perfect time to catch the Never-Ending Tour, which comes to Glasgow, New-castle, Sheffield, London and Birmingham in April. Meanwhile, we can catch up with his radio show. Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour is on BBC 6 Music on Fridays at 9pm (Jan 12) and returns to Radio 2 in a weekly slot (Mar 21), offering the perfect opportunity (and the perfect guide) to explore the nooks and crannies of rock’s musical bloodline. Dylan’s friend Mavis Staples has a fascinating album, We’ll Never Turn Back, due in April. Produced by Ry Cooder, it’s themed on the civil rights movement.
The most eagerly awaited album of 2007 is Damon Albarn’s latest project, The Good, the Bad and the Queen, featuring the Clash’s Paul Simonon on bass, the Afrobeat genius Tony Allen on drums, the Verve/Gorillaz guitarist Simon Tong and Danger Mouse behind the mixing desk (Jan 22). Not long after comes Lucinda Williams’s latest, the rather excellent West (Feb 13).
Newcomers to look out for this year include Kate Nash, namechecked by Lily Allen and providing a slightly more leftfield take on London pop. She’s offering “cakes, tea and creativity” at two London gigs at the end of this month (details at www.myspace.com/katenashmusic). The Little Ones should appeal to anybody hooked on the recent soft-rock/power-pop resurgence (Feb 12). And Phil Campbellcould be 2007’s Ray LaMon-tagne, or even its Damien Rice, appealing to the more grown-up, sensitive singer-song-writer market. His album, Joy, is out on March 12. Meanwhile, following the emergence of their lead singer, Beth Ditto, as the coolest person in the world (according to NME), the Gossip are poised for main-stream success. Their album, Standing in the Way of Control, will be rereleased, a tour is planned for April and their song Eyes Open looks set to be used on a Levi’s ad.
This year’s comeback albums might — just might — include one from Michael Jackson. It’s being produced by will.i.am, and if anybody can make the deposed King of Pop chart-friendly again, it should be the Black Eyed Peas man. A slightly surer bet to reemerge from troubled times isWhitney Houston, whose album is being master-minded by Clive Davis. The most exciting comeback prospect, though, must be the Stooges. Thirty-three years is a long time, but since Iggy Pop appears to have the same energy levels as he did the last time the Stooges made a record, there’s every reason to look forward to the band’s reunion album, due in March.
This year’s “could go either way” recommendation is Scarlett Johansson Sings Tom Waits, in which the voluptuous actress does exactly what the title suggests. It’s due out on the revived Atco label, but no release date has yet been set.
Mark Edwards
ARCHITECTURE
Landmark buildings — the ones that tend to get all the publicity — are by definition always a tiny minority of what gets built. I’d gladly trade them all in for an improvement of a few percentage points in the quality of the everyday stuff: housing estates, distribution warehouses, hospitals, schools, for heaven’s sake.
The newWembley stadium,at last, could open for business this spring. After all the wrangling, let’s hope Lord Foster’s tilted-arch design is worth the wait and the £757m cost, particularly as it will hardly be used for the 2012 Olympics. Still, it will be great for pop concerts (the Concert for Diana is there on July 1, Muse in June). And the Festival Hall reopens in June after a titanically expensive (that’s £91m) clearout and refit by the architects Allies and Morrison. Nobody doubted the demotic merits of the original 1951 building, but can it now be the world-class concert hall London badly needs?
Liverpool’s European Capital of Culture programme for 2008 may not be the strongest in the world, but at least it will have a big venue: the £100m Kings Waterfrontarena and exhibition centre by Wilkinson Eyre, double winners of the Stirling prize. It should be finished by the autumn.
November will finally see London connected to the European express train network when the venerableSt Pancrasstation reopens as London’s international terminus. Expect to be gob-smacked by its mighty brick-vaulted undercroft, opened up for the first time. Rejoice that Paris has never been closer.
At last, the celebrated chain ofMaggie’s Centres, the cancer-support buildings designed by the world’s top architects, comes to the capital — for a long time it seemed determined to stay a predominantly Scottish institution. Richard Rogers’s example in Hammersmith, to be the HQ of the organisation, should just about be ready by the end of the year. Unlike his desperately needed Terminal 5 at Heathrow, for which we will have to wait a while longer yet.
Hugh Pearman
My must sees for 2007
NICHOLAS HYTNER, artistic director of the National Theatre
I’m excited about too many shows at the National to be able to pick out only one, but I’m looking forward with great anticipation to what Dominic Cooke does with the Royal Court Theatre as its new artistic director.
I can’t wait to see Declan Donnellan and his Russian troupe’s Three Sisters at the Barbican (May 15-19) — their Boris Godunov was one of the most impressive pieces of theatre I’ve ever seen.
Performances by the Royal Ballet of Kenneth MacMillan’s Mayerling are always an event, and I’ll be there in the spring to see Edward Watson dance for the first time the crazy prince he was born to play.
CHRIS ADDISON, actor and comic
My top events will be: Miah Persson et al at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, on April 16. Gain serious cultural kudos by opining that it’s worth going to this recital just for Persson, the breathtaking Swedish soprano who was unspeakably great as Fiordiligi at Glyndebourne last year.
The Tempest, Royal Exchange, Manchester, May 23 to July 7. One of England’s greatest theatres produces one of England’s greatest plays, starring one of England’s greatest actors, Pete Postlethwaite. Can’t go wrong.
Big Shed, Will Pryce, Thames & Hudson, published in March. The third in the photographer Will Pryce’s wonderful series of books about architecture will examine the modern phenomenon of massive great bloody buildings. Really beautifully.
VERITY SHARP, radio and television presenter
I’m looking forward to: BBC Radio 3’s week of Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky (February 10-16), when all the schedules will be cleared for the two composers, concluding with a performance of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture by the BBC Concert Orchestra broadcast live from the Imperial War Museum.
BBC Radio 3’s Awards for World Music, which will take place at the Barbican on May 27, this year feature a weekend of events around the ceremony.
Womad 2007 (July 27-29). Peter Gabriel’s festival of world music, arts and dance celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. The festival is also moving to a new location, Charlton Park, in the heart of the Wiltshire countryside. It will feature seven stages and workshop areas, and the weekend will field more than 70 world-class artists from 40 countries.
STEWART LEE, writer, director and comedian
The Russian physical-theatre group Derevo promises a new work for 2007, Robert’s Dream. Photographs show a man asleep on a spiral staircase, a naked figure walking along a giant piano keyboard and willowy bodies dancing in mist. There are no British dates announced yet, but there’s an Edinburgh-shaped hole in August, where the bald freaks are always a highlight.
In the mid-1980s, the stand-up comedian Ted Chippington anticipated Vic Reeves’s postmodern showbiz persona, deconstructed alternative comedy before it had even really begun, then went back to being a lorry driver. Now he’s headlining TedStock, a benefit for himself at London’s Bloomsbury Theatre on February 5. A generation of comics, like me, who were inspired by him, await his return with trepidation.
The Australian instrumental trio Dirty Three curate All Tomorrow’s Parties (April 27) at Butlins in Minehead. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds alumni line up, alongside artists the headliners have collaborated with, for a three-day overview of the best in gothic rock for grown-ups.
CHARLES HAZLEWOOD, conductor
The BBC launches The Tchaikovsky Experience in late January. I confess I’m involved: I present a two-part drama documentary about the composer, starring Ed Stoppard.
Then there’s an adaptation of DBC Pierre’s Vernon God Little at the Young Vic, directed by Rufus Norris (April 27). It will be interesting to see how a story with which so many people had such a close relationship will be brought to the stage. Finally, in New York, the Metropolitan Opera’s The First Emperor unites the novelist Ha Jin and the composer Tan Dun (listen to the company’s performances on Sirius internet radio).
ALEX JAMES, musician, farmer and cheese-maker
The Royal Bath and West show is a big farmers’ event near Wells, in Somerset. I’ll be taking my cheeses along; they’ll have a big cultural impact.
I’m looking forward to seeing all the amazing farm machinery and animals and flowers. I used to go down that way for Glastonbury; now I go for this.
Can I choose the new Blur album? I’ve been talking to Graham (Coxon), and there might be some good news. It’s by no means in the bag, but it looks quite promising. Maybe the time is right. We’ve always left the door open for him, so that’s what I’m hoping for.
