A Feast of Festivals
This week Latest’s Andrew Kay starts with the hot news that the Brighton Fringe website is already up and running with a wide range of shows already on sale and of course the equally exciting of course is the launch of Brighton Festival which takes place this week. In particular the Van Gogh Alive immersive art experience that celebrates the work and life of Vincent Van Gogh.
The exhibition also marks the long-awaited re-opening of Brighton Corn Exchange and studio theatre after a multi million pound refurbishment.
This year’s guest director Nabihah Iqbal is another excellent choice and will no doubt be bringing a diverse range of events to the city that reflect her own passions.
Multi-award-winning songwriter, iconic performer and one half of the globally revered Savage Garden, Darren Hayes comes to Brighton Dome for his first UK tour in over a decade! The tour will celebrate 25 years of Savage Garden, his well-established solo career and more. Darren Hayes is at Brighton Dome on the 22nd of March but indications are that this may already be a sell out show, so real fans need to act fast if they have any chance of catching him this time around.
Something for the kids next… or is it? Yes Dick and Dom are back in da bungalow with a 20th anniversary tour. Now for me, a gentleman of a certain age, the Dick and Dom phenomenon passed me by – completely! Now maybe prime was not the best choice of words there and I wonder if they would ever get a prime time kids TV slot in 2023? Perhaps not, which leads me to believe that the audience for this show may well not be kids but twenty somethings reliving their childhood. Whatever, Dick and Dom are at Brighton Dome with their bizarre form of entertainment on the 20th of April, I’m going to wait for an Andy Pandy and Bill and Ben revival tour.
For those of us who wasted an evening watching the BAFTAS it seems hard to believe that a celebration of some of the best that cinema has to offer from performance to design and most of all scripting, could have been so badly written. Richard E Grant’s off the cuff comments and gags were so not off the cuff and not funny that even he seemed embarrassed by them and Alison Hammond’s style of interview seems to be completely based on flirting. That said it was great to see so many greats honoured and in particular costume designer Sandy Powell who paid tribute to Derek Jarman with whom she worked back in the 1980s when she designed the costumes for his film Caravaggio. Since then she has worked with the best directors and actors building a reputation as the top costume designer in the industry on both sides of the Atlantic.
Welcome back to Latest TV news with me Andrew Kay. This week AK talked to Daniel Wade from the Table Talk Foundation about Sussex Showcase – a week-long series of collaboration dinners featuring the best chefs from Sussex and around the UK that includes chefs boasting 11 Michelin stars combined, two Great British Menu winners, one MasterChef: The Professionals winner, and one MasterChef judge. The event runs from the 6th to the 12 of March and takes place in top restaurants around the county.
