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Culture |
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London,
Culture The hulking concrete mass of the South Bank Centre, South Bank, SE1 (tel: (020) 7960 4242; website: www.sbc.org.uk), is one of the city’s cultural Meccas. It houses the Hayward Gallery and three concert halls – the Royal Festival Hall, the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Purcell Room. Next door is the flagship Royal National Theatre, South Bank, SE1 (tel: (020) 7452 3400 (information) or 7452 3000 (box office); website: www.nationaltheatre.org.uk). Flying the cultural flag north of the river, the labyrinthine Barbican Centre, Silk Street, EC2 (tel: (020) 7638 8891 (box office) or 7638 4141 (information); website: www.barbican.org.uk), is an all‐inclusive performing and visual arts venue with a varied all‐year programme of events. London Tourist Board’s Visitor Call service (tel: (0906) 133 7799) and the weekly Time Out magazine (website: www.timeout.com) provide details of the week’s entertainment. Ticket agencies include First Call Ticketing (tel: (0870) 840 1111; website: www.firstcalltickets.com) and Ticketmaster UK (tel: (0870) 534 4444; website: www.ticketmaster.co.uk). Music: The world‐famous Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, WC2 (tel: (020) 7304 4000; website: www.royalopera.org), is home to the excellent Royal Opera. However, despite some attempts to cut the price, ballet and opera tickets are still often fairly expensive. More accessible are performances by the English National Opera (website: www.eno.org) at the London Coliseum, St Martin’s Lane, WC2 (tel: (020) 7632 8300). Large‐scale concerts are staged at the Royal Festival Hall (see above), home of the London Philharmonic Orchestra (tel: (020) 7840 4200 or 4242 (box office); website: www.lpo.co.uk), or the Barbican (see above), home of the London Symphony Orchestra (tel: (020) 7588 1116; website: www.lso.co.uk). The Royal Albert Hall, Kensington Gore, SW7 (tel: (020) 7589 8212 (box office); website: www.royalalberthall.com), can also stage huge concerts, including London’s annual musical highlight, the summer series of the Proms (see Cultural events below). Music connoisseurs should head for the traditional but friendly surroundings of the Wigmore Hall, 36 Wigmore Street, W1 (tel: (020) 7935 2141; website: www.wigmore‐hall.org.uk), to hear impeccable chamber music and solo recitals. More informal concerts take place in halls and churches all over the capital, including St Martin‐in‐the‐Fields (see Key Attractions), St John’s, Smith Square, SW1, and St James’s, Piccadilly, W1. Theatre: Within the extraordinary diversity of London’s theatre scene, the Royal National Theatre (see above) and the Royal Shakespeare Company (tel: (01789) 403 404; website: www.rsc.org.uk) compete for audiences with commercial West End theatres, repertory companies, ‘off‐West End’ productions and fringe theatres. The National Theatre’s three auditoria – The Olivier, The Cottesloe and The Lyttleton – allow productions of different scale, from classics to new writing. The Royal Shakespeare Company, performing primarily Shakespeare and based out of Stratford‐upon‐Avon, did use the Barbican as its London home but will now perform in a range of venues including the Barbican. The Old Vic, The Cut, Waterloo, SE1 (tel: (020) 7928 7616; website: www.oldvictheatre.com), offers inspired traditional drama. Meanwhile, down the road, at 66 The Cut, the Young Vic (tel: (020) 7928 6363; website: www.youngvic.org) presents modern productions of contemporary and classic plays. The Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, SW1 (tel: (020) 7565 5000; website: www.royalcourttheatre.com), continues to foster excellent new writing. Quality innovative productions can also be expected from ‘off‐West End’ theatres, such as the Donmar Warehouse, Earlham Street, WC2 (tel: (020) 7369 1732; website: www.donmar‐warehouse.com), and the Almeida, Almeida Street, N1 (tel: (020) 7359 4404 (box office); website: www.almeida.co.uk). Fringe theatre, ranging from the inspired to the insane, is performed in dozens of local venues, including the King’s Head, 115 Upper Street, N1 (tel: (020) 7226 1916; website: www.kingsheadtheatre.org), which is the oldest pub‐theatre in London. From May to September, the Globe Theatre, New Globe Walk, SE1 (tel: (020) 7401 9919 (box office); website: www.shakespeares‐globe.org), stages open‐air productions of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. There are also outdoor summer performances in Regents Park, NW1 (tel: (020) 7486 2431; website: www.open‐air‐theatre.org.uk). Theatre tickets in the West End cost £15‐40. They can be purchased in advance from the theatre box office. Alternatively, for purchases on the day of the performance, there is a booth on the south side of Leicester Square, formerly called the Half‐Price Theatre Ticket Booth, now called tkts (website: www.tkts.co.uk). This is the official Society of London Theatre’s booth; visitors should avoid touts and other outlets in the area. The booth sells mainly half‐price tickets, although some tickets at 25% discount and some full‐price tickets. Because of the booking fee, when only full‐price tickets are available for that night’s performance, visitors are advised to go to the actual theatre box office. Dance: Touring dance companies perform mostly contemporary dance at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre, Rosebery Avenue, EC1 (tel: (020) 7863 8000 (box office); website: www.sadlers‐wells.com). Ticket prices are usually more reasonable than at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, WC2 (tel: (020) 7304 4000), which is home to the Royal Ballet (website: www.royalopera.org/ballet). Film: Local cinemas are less expensive than those in the West End, where tickets cost approximately £10. Two main cinema chains are Odeon (tel: (0870) 505 0007; website: www.odeon.co.uk) and Warner (tel: (0870) 240 6020; website: www.warnervillage.co.uk), with venues all over London, their biggest in Leicester Square, WC2. Barbican Screen, Silk Street, EC2 (tel: (020) 7638 8891; website: www.barbican.org.uk/film), is London’s leading independent cinema showing independent, arthouse and blockbuster movies, along with the National Film Theatre, on the South Bank, SE1 (tel: (020) 7928 3232; website: www.nft.org.uk). IMAX magic can be experienced at the largest cinema screen in the UK, the new BFI London IMAX Cinema, South Bank, SE1 (tel: (020) 7902 1234; website: www.bfi.org.uk). The Ealing Studios in west London presented English eccentricity and black humour in a distinctive London setting in the ‘Ealing Comedies’, such as Passport to Pimlico (1949) and The Ladykillers (1955). Before the war, Alfred Hitchcock established his reputation at Elstree Film Studios (website: www.elstreefilmtv.co.uk), with London‐based thrillers such as The 39 Steps (1935), featuring Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) hanging precariously from the clock face of Big Ben. Recently, Sliding Doors (1997), Shakespeare in Love (1998) and Notting Hill (1998) have achieved huge success by combining a London setting with the box‐office draw of Hollywood stars. The compelling gangster face of East End London has also been portrayed in Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and Snatch (2000). Less blockbuster, more critically acclaimed, London has been portrayed in Blow Up (1966), Mona Lisa (1986) and Wonderland (1999). The most recent movies shot in the capital include Bridget Jones' Diary (2001), Dirty Pretty Things (2002), Aboud a Boy (2002), 28 Days (2002), Bend It Like Beckham (2002) and Love, actually (2003). Cultural Events: New Year revelry (sometimes of the unruly and even violent sort) has long been a London tradition, with the focus on an overcrowded Trafalgar Square. A few weeks later, Lion Dancers welcome in the Chinese New Year in Chinatown, WC2. July brings the fun and festivities of the Coin Street Festival (website: www.coinstreetfestival.org) at Gabriel’s Wharf, SE1, the arts extravaganza that is the Greenwich and Docklands Festival (website: www.festival.org) and a chance for the city’s gay and lesbian population to strut their stuff in the Mardi Gras parade and festival. The Notting Hill Carnival (a two‐day celebration of Afro‐Caribbean culture during the August Bank Holiday weekend) is Europe’s largest street carnival, attended by over two million people. More sedate events include the Trooping the Colour, celebrating the Queen’s official birthday in June, and the impressive Lord Mayor’s Show in November, which is a colourful display of the long‐standing independence of the City of London. November also sees the two‐week London Film Festival (website: www.lff.org.uk). Summer brings the hugely popular music festival known as the Proms, with concerts running from July to September. Tickets for these BBC Promenade Concerts (website: www.bbc.co.uk/proms) start from £3 (non‐seated) and the Last Night, led by the BBC Symphony Orchestra (website: www.bbc.co.uk/orchestras/so), is one of the few occasions when unabashed patriotism is the order of the day. Summer also brings many other music festivals, including the City of London Festival (website: www.colf.org), outdoor performances running from June to July in the gardens of Kenwood House, on Hampstead Heath, NW3 (tel: (020) 7973 3427), and outdoor opera at Holland Park theatre (tel: (020) 7602 7856; website: www.operahollandpark.com), from June to August. Literary Notes: London has sheltered and inspired writers for centuries. Bunhill Fields’ graveyard has monuments to John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe and William Blake. Bloomsbury gave its name to a literary set that included Virginia Woolf, while the leafy suburb of Hampstead was once home to John Keats, H G Wells and D H Lawrence. Some of the country’s most famous writers are commemorated in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. The seething mass of 19th‐century London life (and its legendary fog) is vividly recreated in the novels of Charles Dickens. Sinister goings‐on in the capital surface in the Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stephenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and The Secret Agent (1923) by Joseph Conrad. Graham Greene captured the unique atmosphere of wartime London in The Ministry of Fear (1943). More recently, Martin Amis’ London Fields (1989), a depressing portrait of a London in pre‐millennial decline, Chris Petit’s Robinson (1993), which delves deep into Soho life, Tobias Hill’s Underground (1999), a poetic murder mystery woven around the Tube, Jake Arnott’s The Long Firm (1999), set in the London underworld of the 1960s, and Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2000) a tale of life in multicultural London, have added their names to the rich London literary canon. A lively and impressively detailed history of London that captures the essence of the city’s spirit is Peter Akroyd’s London: A Biography (2000). Brick Lane, by Monica Ali, was nominated for the Man Booker Prize in 2003. |