With these few materials, she has made a woman bending over, and boiled down a classic male fantasy to its raw ingredients. Bitch consists of a table with a white T-shirt pulled over its legs Hanging in the T-shirt are two melons At the end of the table is a vacuum- packed kipper. She has used melons, bananas, fried eggs, baked beans, kebabs, cucumbers, oranges, milk and digestive biscuits amongst other things to make her art. Whereas, traditionally, food offers comfort, Lucas’s work often uses food in a way that makes people feel deeply uncomfortable. You know what you are eating.”
Lucas’s art also appears straightforward You know what you are seeing, though you may prefer not to. It’s either roasted or boiled, though you might have something with a strong flavour on the side, like a garlic mayonnaise It’s not mucked about with, not fancy.
Her studio is just round the corner from St John, a restaurant near Smithfield, specialising in traditional British food, where she eats fairly regularly “I like all that stuff I like my greens, most definitely The food there is plain. Sarah Lucas likes her food. Augusto Boal, one of this century’s most important theatre practitioners leads a debate at the RSC on the relationship between theatre and politics, with Janet Suzman, Tariq Ali, Jatinder Verma, RSC director Michael Boyd and Labour’s Mark Fisher, MP.Barbican Theatre, London EC1, (0171 638 8891), tomorrow 5-7pm. So much so that the entire production is sold out, but day seats and returns are still available.EYE ON THE NEWRecent South African history displays urgent links between sport and politics, but people all too readily deny the political dimension to theatre. He was last seen playing opposite his wife, Penelope Wilton, in Pinter’s production of his own play, Landscape.An actor of immense restraint and quiet authority – remember his scalding pain and frustration in Dance with a Stranger – this collaboration promises the sweet smell of success. Stage fright restricted him to the TV and movie screen for far too long – but Pinter lured him back, a few years ago, with Moonlight.
The exceptions were Reimann’s stunning opera at ENO, which doesn’t really count, and Deborah Warner’s underrated National Theatre production with Brian Cox which played in tandem with Richard Eyre’s Richard III, the inspiration for the McKellen film version.The National is now previewing Eyre’s Lear with the great Ian Holm, who in the 1960s and 1970s appeared in the first productions of every new play you can think of. My fault, to be sure, but I’m usually too overawed by the play to be transported by its undoubted emotional power. Had I been fortunate enough to see it, even I might have been moved I say this because Lear usually leaves me cold. Eric Porter, Anthony Hopkins, John Wood and Brian Cox divided up their kingdoms, had a good yell on the heath, staggered around with a lightweight actress in their arms, died and took the applause.
“Playing Lear is not as enjoyable as playing Falstaff,” wrote Robert Stephens, “he’s not as loveable and he has far fewer jokes.” Despite such misgivings, Stephens crowned his career with a performance which everyone praised to the skies.
Anyone old enough to have fathered three daughters of marriageable age was playing the only role which is the same as a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. All through the five acts of the Shakespearean tragedy he played the king as though under the premonition that someone was about to play the ace.”
A few years back, everywhere you looked there was a Lear. “Last night,” wrote the erstwhile critic of the Denver Post, “Mr Creston Clarke played King Lear at the Tabor Grand. Stunning.”Readers mentioning this offer get a 15% discount at M Blanc’s cookery school during March and April (01844 278881) There are eight places available on each week-long course.. Haaa! Unlike a European knife, it doesn’t work with the wrist, it works with the whole arm Totally lethal. Mmm.”Raymond Blanc chef “My delicate, hand-crafted sushi knife is so so so beautiful It was made by the same firm that made Samurai swords. Rubbing a fresh piece of root up and down on the jagged points makes a very juicy pulp like nothing else can to pop on my cold noodles.
It’s shaped like an upside-down spade on a pack of playing cards. In my childhood in Cairo, we had to spend hours and hours hollowing and stuffing, so it’s truly an object of desire.”Arabella Boxer cookery writer “I use a lot of ginger but I don’t like chopping and squeezing it, so I’m very fond of my little Japanese ginger grater I love Japanese aesthetics. It’s so much better than an apple corer for hollowing; it really digs in and captures It evokes so much to me. I came in doing cartwheels about it.”Claudia Roden cookery writer “I have a special place in my heart for my Turkish courgette corer You can’t buy one in Britain – it simply doesn’t exist here. After struggling with thin pallet knives for years, I’ve found the proper device for doing the job.
