The Golden Compass has bombed in the USA, where the film, based on the first book of Philip Pullman’s trilogy, has taken only £35m at the box office since its release in early December. (Compare this with the £100m takings of the dire Alvin and the Chipmunks over the same period.) Box office is almost the be-all and end-all in the States, though the film has done better elsewhere.

Warners had next intended to transfer The Subtle Knife to the screen. Pullman, whose Lyra prequel, Once upon a Time in the North, is published this week, has been publicly supportive of Chris Weitz’s Golden Compass screenplay. Privately, however, he has a higher regard for Hossein Amini’s screen adaptation of The Subtle Knife. The dilemma for Warners is whether or not to pull the plug on the next two films.

When Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s play Her Naked Skin, about the suffragettes, opens at the Olivier in July, it will, amazingly, be the first time a woman has had a play premiered on the National Theatre’s main stage since it opened more than 30 years ago. Last year, the National’s director, Nick Hytner, moaned about the “middle-aged white male” critics who write most of the newspaper reviews. But what of the middle-aged white - or, indeed, dead white - men who write most of the plays staged at the National? The venue’s smaller Lyttelton stage has also been starved of women writers – the last new play by one was Yasmina Reza’s Life X 3, in 2000. By the way, do rush to see her latest, the witty and perceptive God of Carnage, at the Gielgud (see review, page 22). The crack cast, which includes Ralph Fiennes and Janet McTeer, are in it until only the end of June. I suspect it will run and run, as Art did, so I wonder who’s being lined up next?

Safer than tranquillisers, cheaper than a therapist – monks’ chanting could be the best way to calm us in these troubling times. I wrote some weeks ago that Universal Music was on the lookout for singing monks. Its call to the spiritual world was answered by the Stift Heiligenkreuz monastery, based in the Viennese woods, which will cut a record of 12th-century Gregorian chants later this month, for release by June.

This is what I really like: the monks auditioned via YouTube. These Cistercians are not just wired up, but well connected – Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, the German writer and director of that wonderful Oscar-winner The Lives of Others, stayed at the monastery for several weeks to write it. Mirabile dictu .

I turned up for the Eagles at the O2 Arena last week. Sadly, they didn’t. Well, they were there in person, but not in heart, let alone spirit. Yes, it was pleasantly melodic stuff, but I felt they were just going through the motions. This was another gig to line already deep pockets.

The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is celebrating its 60th birthday. It has attracted some flattering headlines about “an organisation that remains as modern as ever”. Really? I have a long memory, and like to think I get around town a lot. The ICA is not bad at music, has occasionally useful talks and a fairly decent cinema. But it does not make the same mark on the arts as it did in its firebrand heyday.

richard.brooks@sunday-times.co.uk

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