Ashes | Ian Botham on England’s Bazball: ‘I’ll throw something at the television’
Nov. 27th, 2025 02:39 pmWhy Congress govt move to expand Hyderabad civic body has BJP feeling uneasy
Nov. 27th, 2025 02:32 pmThis is what I get for being civilized
Nov. 27th, 2025 09:44 amDespite my best intentions of routine insomnia, I was awake too late because I fell into a 1990 BBC Radio 3 production of Michael Frayn's Benefactors (1984) which I had never read and barely heard of and if I had a nickel for every play by Michael Frayn which dips in and out of the fourth wall of the timestream as its characters post-mortem what went wrong in the complicated spaces between them all those years ago, I still wouldn't be able to afford a cup of coffee at these prices even if I could drink it, but since I've seen two productions of Copenhagen (1998) and heard a third, I still think it's funny. Benefactors is more sharply edged and patterned, still a memory play of arguments it can't answer, still the lacuna of human actions at its heart. "But then you look up on a clear night and you'll see there's only a dusting of light in all creation. It's a dark universe." If I have to be thankful for something at this miserable moment of history, the accessibility of art is a strong contender. Also cats.