Latest news with #Leopoldstadt
Telegraph
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The 10 films to understand the art of Alan Yentob
Alan Yentob 's contribution to the arts documentary in Great Britain was unparalleled. From Arena to Imagine, plus his stints as controller of BBC Two, and then BBC One, Yentob celebrated, embraced and evolved arts documentaries in a manner similar to Attenborough and wildlife films. There can be few who have cleaved so closely to Reithian principles over the past few decades than Yentob, whose approach was unashamedly high-minded but always accessible. His reputation in later years was that of the shuffling, gnomish, ever-present interviewer of artistic titans, but arguably it is his earlier work – idiosyncratic, puckish, somewhat gonzo – that will define him. We have selected his 10 defining films, whether as director, producer or series editor, spanning nearly 50 years and taking in a pleasingly Yentobian smorgasbord of the arts. 10. Tom Stoppard: A Charmed Life (2021) While less groundbreaking than Arena, and rather unfairly dismissed as hagiographies by some, Yentob's Imagine strand could still deliver when it found the right subject. Tom Stoppard, then 84 and in a reflective mood as he discussed his semi-autobiographical play Leopoldstadt, was the ideal Yentob interviewee – happy to spar, generous with anecdotes, a tendency to dwell on the poignant. In another life, Yentob – stolid, empathetic, curious – would have made a terrific therapist and this was one of those interviews where he skilfully nudged and noodled his subject into some fascinating places. 9. The Cotton Club Remembered (1985) Directed by Yentob's long-time collaborator Nigel Finch (this is far from his last entry on this list), this one is a curio, made for PBS's Great Performances arts strand. In some ways it has not aged too well, as it deals rather uncritically with Harlem's Cotton Club – a Jim Crow-era New York venue that showcased the very best black entertainers and musicians, but catered to an almost exclusively white crowd. But the film does include an entertaining disagreement between Minnie the Moocher singer Cab Calloway and dancer Fayard Nicholas about whether the audience was segregated or not. It's worth it for the interviews, plus the terrific reunion gig filmed at the Ritz Hotel in London, which features performances from Doc Cheatham, the Nicholas brothers and from a 75-year-old Calloway. 8. The Man Who Saw Too Much (2019) A departure from his usual culture beat, Yentob visited Trieste to meet the 106-year-old Boris Pahor (he died in 2022, aged 108), then the oldest known survivor of the Nazi concentration camps. The Slovenian was interned at the little-known but savage Natzweiler-Struthof, a camp in annexed French territory which was ruled over by Josef Kramer, the commandant who would go on to be known as the Beast of Belsen. Yentob used excerpts from Pahor's book, Necropolis, as well as drawings made by inmates of the camp, to illustrate a story almost too hard to bear. Arguably Yentob's most emotional work. 7. Doris Lessing: The Hostess and the Alien (2008) A film that helps explain something of Yentob's success – his knack of catching interviewees at moments in their lives when they are feeling unguarded and garrulous (that also speaks to his talents as an interviewer). Yentob met the Nobel Prize-winner, then 88, in her North London home and got chapter and verse on her Rhodesian childhood, her terrible relationship with her mother ('We were engaged in bitter warfare all the time') and why she walked away from two of her own children. It's Yentob at his best: the calm, compliant house guest who you feel able to unload all your troubles to. 6. My Way (1979) Another Finch film, this is the extraordinary story of an enduring piece of music, told 'from inside the song'. While Paul Anka's English-language version written for Frank Sinatra is the version best known, the song was originally a French ditty called Comme d'habitude. Tantalisingly, the first person to put English lyrics to Claude Francois's tune was David Bowie, whose Even a Fool Learns to Love forms a typically engrossing part of this superb, seminal film. It's what Yentob's Arena did best – using a cultural monolith to get under the skin of the society around it. 5. Francis Bacon and the Brutality of Fact (1987) Simplicity and intimacy were hallmarks of the very best work associated with Yentob, who served as executive producer on this documentary rather than presenter. Here, the art critic David Sylvester interviews Bacon in his home and studio, drawing out crystal clear thoughts and insights from the artist about his work and his own nature. Sylvester begins by asking for Bacon's opinion on his critics, quoting Raymond Mortimer: 'If only Mr Bacon would paint us a rose.' Bacon's response – calm, impish, almost boyish – is perfect. 'The beautiful rose, which in a day or two is dying… is withered. So is there a great deal of difference between a rose and my subject matter?' 4. I Thought I Was Taller: A Short History of Mel Brooks (1981) Some of Yentob's critics found him, at times, a little too front and centre in his documentaries. But, in Mel Brooks, Yentob found the perfect partner for creating the thing he always seemed to want to make – an arts documentary that reflected its subject in its form (and had a good amount of Yentob in it). For Mel Brooks, that meant something that was chaotic, knowing, very funny and unlike anything else. (Brooks enters the film, inside an office corridor, in a motorbike sidecar, before continuing the interview in the toilet). The pair, who became friends, repeated the trick for 2018's Imagine episode Mel Brooks: Unwrapped. 3. Chelsea Hotel (1981) The third and final film on the list directed by Finch is perhaps the most celebrated, as the camera plunges about the legendary corridors of the famed New York institution. In its time, the Chelsea Hotel was home and refuge to some of the 20th century's greatest artists, from Andy Warhol and Dylan Thomas to Brendan Behan and Williams S Burroughs. The standout scene is a surreal dinner, contrived by the film-makers, at which Warhol (who never takes off his Sony headphones) and Burroughs (who looks bored to tears) make stilted small talk about biscuits and gravy. There is an early Yentobian refusal to overlay any kind of neat narrative on the piece, giving us an appropriately hallucinatory patchwork portrait of the whole edifice. 2. The Orson Welles Story (1982) While some would say that anyone could stick a camera in front of Welles, then 67 and barely concealing his bitterness towards Hollywood, and get wonderful results, that ignores the fact that Yentob coaxed one of the performances of Welles's life out of him. Welles is on top form – ebullient, witty, insightful, bitchy – but cannot contain his sadness at being left behind by the industry that he helped to build. 'I've wasted the better part of my life looking for money,' he says of film-making. 'It's no way to live a life.' One of the great interviews of recent British TV history. 1. Cracked Actor (1975) Yentob's breakthrough film is still the one that astonishes and captivates the most (made not for Arena, but for Omnibus) as he follows a stick-thin Bowie on his 1974 Diamond Dogs tour in the US. The camera hovers over Bowie's gaunt, exhausted features as he trawls sandblasted stretches of Americana in the back of a car, musing on the nature of his career and his performance ('I never wanted to be a rock star'). These are intercut with copious amounts of the live show, showing us the Bowie that emerged from the ashes of Ziggy Stardust. Wonderfully, it's clear that Yentob is fascinated by this ethereal creature, but just cannot quite get a grip on him. It's a film that stands as testament to Yentob's love of the creative arts and a body of work that sought to both demystify and exoticise the artist.
Chicago Tribune
18-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Writers Theatre's 2025-26 season includes the local premiere of ‘Leopoldstadt'
Writers Theatre in Glencoe will produce the long-awaited Chicago premiere of the highly acclaimed 2020 Tom Stoppard drama 'Leopoldstadt' as part of the its 2025-26 season, artistic director Braden Abraham said Monday. The expansive, Tony Award-winning drama, set in wartime Austria, explores how all four of Stoppard's Jewish grandparents were murdered by Nazis in concentration camps. It will be directed by the frequent Stoppard collaborator Carey Perloff. A coup for Writers Theatre, the ensemble-driven play likely will feature an all-Chicago cast. 'Carey found a way to do the play with slightly fewer actors,' Abraham said. 'That made it possible for us.' Perloff previously directed the new version of the play, crafted with Stoppard's help, at the Shakespeare Theater in Washington, D.C. The next Writers Theatre season begins in the summer with Hershey Felder's 'Rachmaninoff and the Tsar ' (Aug.13 to Sept. 21), a dramatic, concert-style entertainment with music by Rachmaninoff from the longtime Chicago favorite and piano virtuoso. The Chicago premiere of Shaina Taub and Laurie Woolery's new musical adaptation of William Shakespeare's 'As You Like It ' (Oct. 30 to Dec. 14) follows in the fall under Abraham's direction, with musical direction by Michael Mahler. Next winter, Writers will stage Nilo Cruz's 'Two Sisters and a Piano' (Feb. 26 to March 29, 2026) directed by Lisa Portes, followed by the Chicago premiere of the contemporary thriller 'Job' (April 9 to June 14, 2026) directed in Glencoe by David Esbjornson. Max Wolf Friedlich's tense, taut drama played on Broadway last year. 'Leopoldstadt' (June 4 to July 19, 2026) will conclude the season, with extensions to the run likely. As a subscription add-on in December, Writers Theatre will bring back the Australian magician Harry Milas to Chicago. Milas' intimate show, 'The Unfair Advantage' (Dec. 3-28), was well-received last year at Steppenwolf's Garage Theatre. More information on the season at 847-242-6000 and Also worth noting: In other theater news, it was announced Monday that a new James Taylor jukebox musical 'Fire & Rain' is in development. Both book and direction are by former Chicagoans: Steppenwolf Theatre ensemble member Tracy Letts has written the book and direction will be by David Cromer, who is currently represented on Broadway by 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' starring George Clooney and opening in New York on April 3.
