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Alla Nazimova as Salomé (1923).
I wrote a while ago about Alla Nazimova’s luscious silent film production of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé, a suitably Decadent affair with an allegedly all-gay cast, and costume and stage design based on Aubrey Beardsley’s celebrated illustrations. The film is currently touring England and Wales with a new score for four musicians [...]

I wrote about Peter Shaffer’s fascinating play, Equus, in September last year, and in passing touched on the horse and Mari Lwyd-inspired paintings of Clive Hicks-Jenkins which seemed to complement the play’s themes of sexuality and passionate obsession. Callum James had been having similar thoughts about Clive’s art and urged his friends at The Old [...]

Faust’s blood, sweat and hell-fire | A lavish new stage production of Goethe.

Poster for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, designed by Bronisław Zelek (1965).
Freedom on the Fence is a 40-minute documentary film by Andrea Marks about the history of the Polish poster which includes a look at the many unique cinema and theatre designs produced in the 1960s and ’70s. Marks spent ten years working on this short [...]

Another illustrated Shakespeare and another Archive.org PDF. Lucy Fitch Perkins’ adaptation dates from 1907 and while her colour work in this volume is distinctly bland, her ink drawings are styled with some tasty Art Nouveau flourishes. Puck with bat wings is an unusual touch.
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Something for the Summer Solstice, the whole of Arthur Rackham’s Shakespeare at Archive.org. Rackham’s paintings are classics of the period but for me William Heath Robinson’s black and white drawings are the superior renderings of this story. Happily you can see that book as well.
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• The illustrators archive
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The Untied States of America | New film and theatre projects from Adam Curtis.

Lightning & Kinglyface’s paper forest; photo by Jeff Moore.
Tunnel 228 is a collaboration between Kevin Spacey in his position as artistic director of the Old Vic Theatre, and experimental theatre company Punchdrunk staging an art installation/performance work in tunnels beneath Waterloo, London. Mention of the magic word “Metropolis” (in its Fritz Lang context) caught my [...]

Professor Pepper’s Ghosts, c. 1885.
From a page of old theatrical posters. A poster from the Egyptian Hall in London, home to regular performances by celebrated conjuror John Nevil Maskelyne, appears in the background of my Nyarlathotep picture.
For a contemporary explanation of Pepper’s Ghost, look here. Thanks to Thom for the tip!
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Backdrop for the League of Composers’ production, Philadelphia, 1930.
Something for the vernal equinox. The painting is a stage design by artist, writer and theatre designer Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947) for an American production of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Roerich designed the costumes and decor for the riotous Paris performance of 1913 and the Roerich Museum has [...]

The Chevalier d’Eon wins a fencing bout.
I’ve known of the cross-dressing Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Thimothée d’Eon de Beaumont—or the Chevalier d’Eon (1728–1810) to give him his title—for some time thanks to a typically witty and informative entry by Philip Core in Camp: The Lie that Tells the Truth (1984). The nobleman rubs shoulders there with the equally flamboyant [...]

Harold Pinter and Eartha Kitt.
2008: the year that keeps on taking.
The Guardian has a copious collection of Pinter pieces including Michael Billington’s lengthy obituary. Eartha Kitt was just as unique in her own way, prompting Orson Welles in the 1950s to call her “the most exciting woman in the world”. For my sister and [...]

It was 70 years ago today—October 30, 1938—that Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre traumatised American radio listeners with their brilliant adaptation of The War of the Worlds. I wrote about that recording last year so rather than repeat myself, here’s the final words from Howard Koch’s 1970 book about the play, The Panic Broadcast. [...]

More unclothed men with swords and another vintage example, shamelessly swiped from Planet Fabulon.
And while we’re on the subject of men, the Kangaroo Court Theatre Company has another new adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray (Matthew Bourne’s dance version is still touring) opening this week at the Tabard Theatre, London.
A daring musical adaptation transports [...]

Joe Orton memorialised
| “Orton Square” announced in Leicester.

Buchinger’s Boot Marionettes was founded in 2004 by Patrick Sims, Mafalda da Camara and Richard Penny. This pair of grotesques are from a show entitled The Vestibular Folds, described as “a tale about the engraving and destruction of a metaphysical gramophone record”. There is more…

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• Jan Svankmajer: The Complete Short Films

A juxtaposition of old and new theatre posters in the New York Times caught my eye this week, part of a feature about the current Broadway run of Peter Shaffer’s play. The news there, of course, has been Daniel Radcliffe’s on-stage nudity; understandable, perhaps, but celebrity trivia has overshadowed appraisal of Shaffer’s work as a [...]

The Library of Babel (no date).
Another French artist who specialised in fantastic architecture, Pierre Clayette’s work came to my attention via the picture above which illustrates a Borges story. This leads me to wonder once again what it is about French and Belgian artists which attracts them more than others to this type of [...]

Sentenced to a lifetime of stress
| Lindsay Anderson.

Yes to pansy but no to bugger: letters show censors’ war on permissiveness