98th Post - June Overview

So here are June's posts, hope you enjoy them and find them interesting to watch, listen, eat, read and of course not forgetting about June's hottest beauty products and making sure you embrace this Summer's most elegant look. In the meantime, June has much to offer especially in London, head out this June and take in all the best new events, exhibitions and happenings in the capital.

Mick, Keith and their questionably-costumed cohorts said, “You can’t always get what you want.” But that doesn’t mean it’s okay for anyone else to have it either. When you do finally get what you want, the problem is there’s always someone that’s trying to take it away. And all that wanting makes us blind to the fact that things aren’t exactly what we think they are. Maybe it’s better sometimes to just get what you need. -- N

The Glass Menagerie

Perhaps surprisingly, there hasn’t been a major London revival of Tennessee Williams’s ‘The Glass Menagerie’ since John Tiffany’s dreamy 2017 take, although that’s largely because the pandemic robbed us of Ivo van Hove’s Isabelle Huppert-starring version, which was due to come to the Barbican in 2020 and certainly isn’t any time soon, if ever.

But 2022 should give us an exciting looking new edition, as Jeremy Herrin directs the magnificent Amy Adams – six Oscar nominee, and six times robbed – as she makes her London stage debut in the role of Amanda Wingate, the monstrous southern matriarch – based on Williams’s own mother – whose suffocating love leaves her children Laura and Tom deeply emotionally scarred.

The 1944 classic – Williams’ first and arguably best hit – is famously a ‘memory play’, taking place not in the present, but in Tom’s recollection. Usually a single older actor plays both the Tom looking back on events and the Tom who enacts the events, but in Herrin’s new version the roles will be divided, with Paul Hilton playing the older Tom and Tom Glynn-Carney the younger. Newcomer Lizzie Annie – who has cerebral palsy – will play Laura, while Victor Alli will play The Gentleman Caller.

Grace Jones’ Meltdown

International music, fashion and film icon Grace Jones follows (or maybe prowls?) in the footsteps of David Bowie, Yoko Ono, and Smiths Patti and Robert by curating the twenty-seventh iteration of the annual Meltdown festival on the South Bank, which continues this week with a banging line-up of musical acts, installations and interactive events. A lot of the big acts are already sold out, but you can still grab a ticket for neo-soul singer Greentea Peng on Thursday night followed by a rare live date from Sky Ferreira, before rocking out to Skunk Anansie and Nova Twins on Friday. There’s also an audio installation by theatremaker Travis Alabanza a a ‘mass hula-hooping’ event this Sunday, both of which are free. And it all leads up to a closing gig with the panther herself. Don’t miss it!