The Times - UK (2022-05-27)

the times | Friday May 27 2022 11

The painter’s

thrillingly bleak

work shows what a

nuanced artist he

was, says Rachel

Campbell-Johnston

W

e all know
The Scream.
This icon of
irredeemable
angst is
fêted as
much as a
fixture of
popular culture as the first salvo of the
expressionist movement. But its fame
can obscure the more nuanced
character of Edvard Munch’s painting,
as this new show at the Courtauld sets
out to insist.
Edvard Munch: Masterpieces from
Bergen assembles for the first time
outside Scandinavia 18 works from
the collection of Rasmus Meyer, a
Bergen-born businessman who, first
discovering Munch in the early 20th
century, was soon spending the lion’s
share of his art budget on paintings
bought direct from the studio. Future
scholars, he hoped, would be required
to seek out his collection if they
wanted to study this painter’s work
more deeply.
This is precisely the opportunity
that the Courtauld offers. The show

The most memorable show of a winning career

I

s there a more reassuring all-round

comedian in the British Isles than

Dara Ó Briain? Oh, it’s not that he

always goes soft on his crowd —

sit in the front row and fail to

answer his burblingly motormouthed

questions with adequate velocity or

cogency and you will become a

running joke. And it’s not that he

necessarily avoids tough topics either.

In this show, So... Where Were We? —

probably the best, certainly the most

memorable from a consistently

entertaining career — he talks about

his belated search, soon before the

pandemic began, for his birth mother.

Didn’t know that Ó Briain was

adopted? He’s not one to get more

personal than he needs to on stage,

and is such a capable comic that that

has never felt like an evasion. But 18

months of pandemic shut inside his

London home with his wife and

children? What else is a man to do but

write a show about his birth parents,

his adoptive parents, his new titanium

knee, his one and only testicle? (Yes,

that too.)

I say “write”, but Ó Briain points

out at the end that he didn’t want to

turn a delicate story into “material”.

So he takes a deliberately winding

path to his big reveal, never gets too

serious for too long, maintains his

inclusive sense of absurdity. This is no

lecture, comical or otherwise, even if

he does touch on serious issues and

real emotions.

In fact, for the first, ooh, 90 minutes

or so this feels very much like a good

example of Ó Briain as usual. Wearing

a charcoal suit, white shirt, no tie, he is

the consummate professional, the man

in charge. And as he tells us about his

race to get home from the US as

lockdowns loomed in 2020, as he lets

us in on home schooling and knee

problems and the boons and perils of

being “slightly famous” for hosting

Mock the Week, he brings an unrivalled

sense of comfort to his discomfort.

He’s fast, he’s full of ideas, but he’s

inclusive too, even when play-acting

hostility or swatting away hecklers.

So, as he gradually turns the show

more personal, sowing the seeds for

revelations to come with anecdotes

the relevance of which he highlights at

the end, he keeps this forever feeling

like something easy and immediate

and, more often than not, joyous. I

laughed a lot, cried a little. And when

he capped it all with his artful party

trick that turns his front-row victims

into the stars of the show, I gave

thanks for a comedian who knows

that, even in an evening that

re-evaluates his very identity, he is

here to give his audience a good time.

Dominic Maxwell

Touring to June 17, 2023,

daraobriain.com

Dara Ó Briain

Kings Theatre, Portsmouth

{{{{(

comedy

Dara Ó Briain takes a deliberately

winding path to his big reveal

Will Hodgkinson

reviews Abba’s new

arena show

First Night, News

The return

of Abba

So Munch more than The Scream

his landmark The Frieze of Life project.

The monumental 1894 Woman in

Three Stages defines his symbolist

period. A later painting, The Four

Stages of Life, adapts it and lends it an

allegorical complexity.

More than half of the pictures have

never been shown in the UK before.

Make the most of your chance to

meet Munch’s sister Inger. All dressed

in white, lit up by the eerie glow of

a Nordic summer night, she broods

amid the boulders on a beach. Her

image captures the moment in which

Munch found his unique voice.

This is in part a show for the

scholar — not least when, among

the Courtauld’s magnificent

impressionist and post-impressionist

collection, you can find so many

stylistic echoes and allusions.

Compare, for instance, the sudden

bright vigour of a 1909 self-portrait

created by Munch when he was in

a sanatorium (painting formed an

important part of his recovery as he

pieced himself, brushstroke by

brushstroke, back together) with the

Van Gogh picture of himself with a

bandaged ear that you passed on your

way into the show.

But if you simply want an emotional

encounter with a doom-mongering

neurotic, who mined dark childhood

memories and adult despairs for his

paintings, then you will be equally

rewarded. The show may be compact,

but it distils all the brooding weight of

Munch’s melancholy obsessions. It’s an

exhibition worth screaming from the

rooftops about.

The exhibition runs to September 4,

courtauld.ac.uk

various reflections of his Scream, the

first version of which was also

produced in this “golden decade”. It

ends in the 20th century.

Highlights include Munch’s 1892

Evening on Karl Johan Street with its

swarm of spectral faces (he had stared

in the hope of finding the woman he

was infatuated with among them)

looming up in the lamplight. It is one

of several key works that come from

opens with one of the artist’s first

important paintings, his 1884 Morning,

in which the precursor of his many

solitary (and often melancholy)

females pauses for a moment in the

middle of pulling on her socks to

notice the light as it flashes upon the

flask of water by her bed.

As it moves through the 1890s,

viewers can watch Munch’s style

developing — not to mention spot the

Edvard Munch:

Masterpieces

from Bergen

Courtauld Gallery, WC2

{{{{(

KODE BERGEN ART MUSEUM, THE RASMUS, MEYER COLLECTION

Evening on Karl Johan Street, painted in 1892 — a swarm of spectral faces loom up out of the lamplight

visual art

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