ON THE RADAR DAR
The only female architect most people know anything of is the late Zaha Hadid. Was her reputation justified? Some would say that her pharaonic fantasies, dogged by controversy, are posthumously looking a little tired and overwrought. Forget about her, anyway: the ones you should know about are Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, two deceptively mumsy-looking middle-aged ladies based in Dublin whose practice goes under the name of Grafton. In Britain, their rigorously elegant style – a disciplined modernism that avoids Hadidic flamboyance – can be seen in their new building for Kingston University and a major ongoing project for the London School of Economics overlooking Lincoln’s Inn Fields. This year is proving their annus mirabilis: a few weeks ago they were awarded the coveted Riba Royal Gold Medal and last Tuesday they won architecture’s Nobel, the Pritzker Prize. In a profession that has been slow to recognise or promote female talent, this honour is highly significant.
A shout out for Love, Loss & Chianti, a double bill of two short plays in verse by Christopher Reid, just opened at the recently renovated Riverside Studios in Hammersmith. A Scattering reflects on Reid’s tragic loss of his wife Lucinda to a brain tumour and The Song of Lunch is a bittersweet comedy in which two old flames meet up in a Soho restaurant. I take a dim view of almost any verse drama later than about 1630 – and that includes TS Eliot’s flat-footed Murder in the Cathedral – but these work beautifully as miniatures, sensitively directed by Jason Morell and animated by superb performances by Rebecca Johnson and Robert Bathurst. First-nighters included Bathurst’s colleagues Matt Berry and Doon Mackichan from Channel Four’s gloriously daft comedy about the insanity of actors, Toast of London. Could another series be in the offing?
Sad but happy news about David Hallberg, the supremely elegant American dancer currently a much-admired guest at the Royal Ballet, where he is the preferred partner of Natalia Osipova. This week he announced that he’s taking off his tights and tunic for good to become director of Australian Ballet next year. Hallberg is only 37 and anyone seeing him on stage would assume him to be at the very peak of physical condition, with another decade of dance in the tank. But as his terrifyingly tormented autobiography, A Body of Work (published by Simon & Schuster), demonstrates, Hallberg is driven by an obsessive-compulsive perfectionism thwarted by an injury to his ankle that can never be truly healed. Suffering for your art is not a cliché in ballet: every day is a battle with the limits of your body.