The History Boys on Broadway, Sherman at Twenty, Tsotsi on film

Welcome back dear readers (all nine of you), from the Easter Break. Hope it was refreshing.

After its critically-acclaimed but low-key run at The Sydney theatre, the NT's (National Theatre, London) production of Alan Bennett's deliciously wordy play, The History Boys, opened at the Broadhurst Theatre in New York last week, to lavish praise from the serious critics. John Lahr in the New Yorker starts his review by quoting from the play:

"“How do I define history?” asks one of the grammar-school highfliers cramming for the Oxbridge exams, "It's just one fucking thing after another."

This is as good way as any to evoke the whiplash humour and biting ironies of a play that is two and half hours long, but never for an instant lets you feel bored. As in Sydney, this is the original, brilliant London cast and Richard Griffiths excels. All the schoolboys are excellent, with standouts being Jamie Parker (Scripps), Samuel Barnett (Posner) and Dominic Cooper as the much admired class spunk, Dakin. The design and stagecraft is the best, simplest and most theatrically inventive I have seen for many a year. Five big ones - see it if you can.

At the movies, the best thing I've seen lately is the South African feature Tsotsi, which is on worldwide arthouse release, having taken the Best Foreign Picture Oscar, to the obvious astonishment (at the ceremony) of its director, Gavin Hood. Even though the premise (bad boy steals car with baby on board and discovers his humanity) is not that original, there is something uncompromisingly honest and believable about the world evoked in this film, which raises this simple redemption story above mere sentimentality, although there is plenty of sentiment, to paraphrase Somerset-Maugham. The movie does not try to be 'International', and most of the dialogue is in 'Sowetospeak' (my term because I can't remember what it's called), an amalgam of Zulu, Sotho, Xhosa, English, Afrikaans and several other languages. The cast are 'unglamorous' in every way. It is this truthfulness to its own vernacular which perversely gives the film its universality. South African film comes of age.

To Sherman Galleries last week for the launch of their impressive book TWENTY, celebrating 20 years in the game. Interesting to see the usual power crowd of black (or tweed)-clad movers and shakers supplanted for the night by black (or denim)-clad artists and their artwives, arthusbands, parents and children - something of a family affair. Gene Sherman gave an enthusiastic and endearingly gauche speech, and Charles Merewether gave a robust and rather rigorous one. Everyone admired the Hari Ho photographs (of each other) on the walls with suitably ironic commentary, and a good time was had by all. The book is excellent, and will be seen as an important milestone in the internationalisation of the Sydney commercial gallery scene. It sets a new, high benchmark for gallery publishing and shows all the evidence of having been properly resourced - a very classy piece of print indeed. Can it be long before we see something along the same lines from Roslyn Oxley? Only better, of course.

A tout a l'heure.