MoviesObituaryMaureen Swanson obituaryBritish film star known for her roles in A Town Like Alice and The Spanish GardenerNever having had the chance to justify her initial build-up as "the next Vivien Leigh", the svelte brunette Maureen Swanson, who has died of cancer aged 78, deserved much better than she was given in the 1950s by the Rank Organisation, to whom she was under contract. Although Swanson was not a graduate of the much-maligned Rank Charm School, she was, to her chagrin, often referred to as a " Read More...
StageReviewPlaywrights Horizons, New York
A play about a charismatic pastor who has had a revelation that upsets his congregation asks difficult questions about belief and behaviour in America
Whether or not you believe in God, you should believe in Lucas Hnath.
Hnath is a youngish playwright with an interest in form, argument and the stories we tell in order to consolidate our lives and beliefs. His latest play, The Christians, at Playwrights Horizons, delivers on the earlier promise of Isaac’s Eye, a heavily fictionalised and heavily footnoted treatment of an episode in the life of the young Isaac Newton, and A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney, a loosely biographical tribute to the showman, structured as a table read in a blandly corporate conference room. Read More...
The ObserverSportThe growing pains of the world's strongest boyMedical experts were appalled. Richard Sandrak, driven on by his parents, looked more like a champion bodybuilder than an eight-year-old child. Seven years on, Andrew Anthony goes in search of the 'mini-Schwarzenegger' and finds a familiar tale from La La LandI am heading north out of Los Angeles on Interstate 5, bound for a meeting with Richard Sandrak. His name sounds like that of a double agent from the Cold War. Read More...
