Two Boys, a new opera about children getting involved in sexual shenanigans on the internet, has just been premiered by English National Opera. And this week a film called Trust opens in this country also, looking at children and their sexual shenanigans on the internet. Both have tragic endings — the opera an attempted murder; the movie an attempted suicide. The opera includes strong language and some simulated masturbation. The film is not explicit, though its subject matter is tough and upsetting.
When I went to see Two Boys, which is composed by the American wunderkind Nico Muhly, I noticed a few youngsters in the audience, aged about 12. I suspect they were neither shocked nor offended. ENO’s website cautions that “some elements of this production may be unsuitable for those under 16”, but the note is advisory. Yet Trust has been given a 15 certificate by the British Board of Film Classification. Its director, David Schwimmer (yes, the Friends star), argues that the rating should be a 12A, as the film is about young teenagers. I think ENO is being adult, the BBFC a bit childish.Love's Kitchen has received the worst reviews for a British film - a real turkey
First, the good news. Birmingham is building the largest public lending library in Europe. Costing a tad less than £200m, it should be open in 2013. Actually, it is amazing that the financially strapped local authority is going ahead with this project. Now the bad news. Many other councils are cutting back or closing libraries, leaving the arts minister, Ed Vaizey, in a spot. He has no direct say over cuts made by local authorities, which run libraries, but has the power to intervene if he believes damage is being done. How and when do you define damage?
Can’t remember reviews for any British film worse than those for Love’s Kitchen, out last week and starring, if that is the right word, Dougray Scott as a widowed chef, Peter Bowles, Simon Callow and Gordon Ramsay as himself. An appropriate turkey. The national papers gave it star ratings ranging from none to one, although, to its discredit, the Daily Star gave it three. In America,the movie went straight to DVD. Love’s Kitchen should never have been made, but some British film production company decided otherwise. Its name? Just Nuts.
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A memoir of Sheridan Morley by his widow, Ruth Leon, has revealed that some of his theatre reviews in his latter years were written by her. More poignantly, Leon details how badly he treated her and his close family. It reminded me of my own run-in with Morley in 1998, when I wrote, for another Sunday paper, that he had been deliberately holding back the publication of his biography of John Gielgud until he was dead because he could then address the great actor’s homosexuality. Morley had given me the story himself, but, after it appeared, he sent a damning letter to my then editor, saying how disgraceful the article was and that he needed a full retraction.
Budapest currently has two big British TV productions in full swing. The trenches and underground tunnels of France in the first world war have been re-created in the Hungarian capital for a two-part BBC version of Sebastian Faulks’s Birdsong. More surprisingly, much of ITV’s Titanic series, penned by the tireless Julian Fellowes, is also being shot there, mainly because the city has a huge purpose-built water tank, in which the sinking of the ship will be staged. Fellowes gamely tried to get Belfast to construct a tank so that the series could be shot where the Titanic was built a century ago, but the city would not cough up. Pity.
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Tony Blair has selected nine of his favourite books for a new literary magazine, We Love This Book. I’m gobsmacked he has actually read nine. Even so, three are religious tracts — no surprises there. At least he remembered to list the boring Ivanhoe, by Walter Scott. After all, it was the one he chose on Desert Island Discs 15 years ago.
richard.brooks@sunday-times.co.uk