It's been nearly a century since Show Boat, and still some twerp in the Guardian opinion pages is referring to musicals as a 'gloriously daft' form. Come on folks, you can do better than that.

The book's coming out in paperback: www.bloomsbury.com/uk/how-stage...

Had a new experience today - I was lecturing on vertical dramas, and a student buttonholed me at the end and asked if I ever felt like a sellout. Mate, I don't earn enough to be a sellout.

I knew that you could add "-AI" to a search to avoid the slop. But there are a lot of very neat tricks here.

Merry Pancake Day! This week's Classic Folk includes tracks by: The Demon Barbers Cupola:Ward Nick Drake Vishtèn Dr Strangely Strange Sandy Denny Shirley Collins Blackbeard's Tea Party Alistair Anderson & Northlands Bottle Bank Band Megson Dave Burland and more! www.efdss.org/listen

Bit of a basic @secondmentions.bsky.social

Proof that there are still masterpieces to be found, even in a field as well-examined as Hollywood cinema. Lewis Milestone invents the screwball comedy working from a script by Lubitsch collaborator Hans Kraly, itself based on a play by Avery Hopwood... (1/4) www.imdb.com/title/tt0018...

1935 version of Jerome K. Jerome's play about a modern-day Jesus changing the lives of the inhabitants of a London rooming-house, updated to the then present day. (1/3) (1/3)https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026854/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_3_nm_0_in_0_q_passing%2520of%2520the%2520third%2520floor%2520back

the magic of the Muppets is that there are two fourth walls. they constantly break the one that reminds the audience they are performers. they NEVER break the one that reminds the audience they are puppets. this dynamic is the key to their entire comedy style

Wuthering Heights is not a romance. Obviously. But why do people think it is? So many reasons but... I'm going to be exploring how we got here through adaptation history in a workshop so come join me! www.eventbrite.com/cc/romancing...

Really enjoyed this, in which @oldfortunatus.bsky.social, @lucycmunro.bsky.social, and my esteemed colleague Laurence Publicover, all wearing lightly their massive learning, talk about how much fun the Henry IV plays are. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

So, Paul Simon (and Billy Bragg), if you were 21 years when you wrote the song, and 22 now you're singing it, does that mean you didn't sing it all while you were writing it? That must have been tricky.

@secondmentions.bsky.social 'the carrot-chomping icon' www.tcm.com/articles/now...

Woman overheard coming out of American Psycho at the Almeida theatre: 'Well, that was a headf*ck.'

There are 14 great choices in this favorite-Sondheim-song roundup, and together, they still represent just a tiny fraction of his brilliance. Come for the wonderful picks; stay for the guy in comments insisting that he's a "fraud" and that musicals died 60 years ago. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/28/a...

It's indicative of what a fecund period the postwar years were for Westerns that even a minor example like this should be a bit of a masterpiece. (1/3) Gehttps://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041625/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_in_0_q_man%2520from%2520col

Eric spoke to Samuel McIlhagga at @birminghamdispatch.bsky.social for this brilliant article on the seminal Penda's Fen and its impact today. www.birminghamdispatch.co.uk/pendas-fen-r... #pendasfen #birminghamdispatch #penda #pinfin #pinvin #worcestershire #midlands #midlandshorror #folkhorror

David Byrne Creates a Playlist of Eclectic Music for the Holidays: Stream It Free Online

Barry Joseph's "Matching Minds with Sondheim" is "clever and appropriately obsessive," says @newyorker.com. Read the full piece: https://bit.ly/48Fz6ao #DramaSky #Sondheim @methuendrama.bsky.social#DramaSky

Great list with plenty of obscurities to seek out

Caught this, John Osborne's first TV play, at the NFT's Richard Burton season decades after i first read about it in John Russell Taylor's Anger and After. Taylor calls it more an illustrated lecture than a play, which is harsh, but he has a point. (1/4) www.imdb.com/title/tt0341...

@secondmentions.bsky.social 'the double-hearted man from Gallifrey' - bravo!

I (and Rebecca) have a chapter in this: www.routledge.com/The-Routledg...

A fine night at the Cinema Museum, with @annodracula.bsky.social introducing a Japanese horror double bill. Also, Ma'am, are you sure that's your assigned seat?

Bizarre to think that the West End Theatre currently includes two separate shows about characters who were found in, and are named after, railway stations.

R.I.P Tom Stoppard. The first living playwright I was ever a serious fan of. Loads of masterpieces - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Jumpers, Arcadia - I even enjoyed Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth. Leopoldstadt was a worthy farewell.

I've heard a rumour on LinkedIn that the actor Andrew Jarvis has died. A genuinely amazing man - superb in the ESC's History cycle as Hotspur, Richard III and, in Henry V, the Dauphin against whom all others must be measured. He later became a teacher, notably at Mountview. (1/3)

Well, this is very lovely: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd8t...

Just saw a fellow carrying a Christmas tree.

At Angel station, I pay my money for a poppy, and the woman says 'We've only got paper ones, I'm afraid. Unless you're an Arsenal fan.', indicating a metal badge with a combined Poppy/Gunners device. I say 'No, thanks.', and she replies 'It's funny. No one round here seems to want those.'

David Cottis reviews Half Trick’s 2024 production of Antonio’s Revenge, dir. Courtney Bassett. 🎭: halftrick.com#antonio 📰: muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl... 📷: Eliza Roberts

This is a rabbit hole well worth falling into. Go down into the replies and up into the quote tweets, and enjoy a fantastic group writing project.

I’ve doubtless posted this before, many times maybe, but it really is an incredible piece of documentary filmmaking, which captures those near-far, fingertip folk histories that feel of our own time & just out of reach yet somehow simultaneously deeply arcane & otherworldly youtu.be/ic4qWguBYEM?...

How to Film a Ghost Story.

Nice anecdote in the BFI's melodrama booklet: when shooting The Whales of August with Lillian Gish and Bette Davis , Lindsay Anderson said at one point 'Miss Gish, you have just given me a perfect close-up!', to which Davis replied 'She should. She invented 'em.'

One of the few Disney animated features to have left practically no cultural footprint: no rides at the Magic Kingdom, no characters or songs that people remember. It's got all the hallmarks of the studio's output at this period: ... (1/3) www.imdb.com/title/tt0057...

Okay, never expected Debbie Harry to sound like Marianne Faithfull... www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAMm...

An outlier within the MCU, in that its mythos and characters are pretty much self-contained (as was the comic, originally - Jack Kirby only brought it into continuity under duress). As such, it suffers from the usual problems of multi-protagonist films... (1/4) www.imdb.com/title/tt9032...

Woman talking angrily on her phone, as she walks through Hendon: 'I said knee-length. Knee. Length. Do you even know what that means?'

It was a real status symbol in my infants' school to have seen this film when it was released in 1969 (this was in the days when we got US blockbusters a year later, in worn-out prints), so I'm glad finally to have joined the cool kids, over half a century later. (1/4) www.imdb.com/title/tt0064...

The number of great ones that we've lost recently (R.I.P. Diane Keaton) makes me think that maybe the real wonder is not that so many are dying, but that so many lived, and in particular lived in that extraordinarily fertile period that was the half-century or so after WW2. (1/2)

A fantastic Performance Reviews section in 43.1, with pieces from @terribourus.bsky.social, @davidcottis.bsky.social, @joestephenson.bsky.social, Justin B. Hopkins, Suzy Lawrence, Scott Shepherd, Katie O'Hare, @hanhbuiwrites.bsky.social, @emmakatwood.bsky.social, Olivia Soileau, and Laurie Maguire.

I've got a review in the current issue of Shakespeare Bulletin: muse.jhu.edu/issue/55715

One of those films that probably more people have read about than actually seen: John Huston's UK-set noir with the weird gimmick that a set of US stars (Tony Curtis, Robert Mitchum, Frank Sinatra, Burt Lancaster) play cameos in heavy disguise... (1/3) www.imdb.com/title/tt0057...

Two students, overheard walking past me in a corridor: First: I'm not good at any sport. Second: (in the tone of someone trumping an ace) Yeah, I'm no good at anything.

@secondmentions.bsky.social 'this garish gourd'

R.I.P. John Woodvine - an RSC stalwart when I was a teenager, during that company's imperial period; Banquo to McKellen's Macbeth, Falstaff in Merry Wives, Ralph Nickleby. Less of a film career, but he was perfect in An American Werewolf in London. The definition of an actor with authority.

Not really a film, more a video show, with Sam Costa lying in bed watching mimed performances by various second division '60s singers and bands. Freddie and the Dreamers top the bill, with Freddie Garrity dressed as a court jester, which seems about right. (1/2) www.imdb.com/title/tt0060...

London vignette: a teenager on a Lime bike, in the classic uniform of black jeans, hoodie, and scarf, cycles round and stops in front of me. He holds up his hand for a high-five, which I give him. I hear a couple of young people behind me cheering. I think I might have just won somebody a bet.

I'm not quite sure how I got to the age i am without seeing this, especially given how present Danny Kaye was in the culture when I was growing up, but a recent reading of a biography of Moss Hart, who wrote the screenplay, inspired me to seek it out. (1/3) www.imdb.com/title/tt0044...