Blairs vs Clintons
by pvdonet | You Tube | November 25, 2010
Categories The Special Relationship Trailer Video
Tag: Helen McCrory
Categories Damian Lewis Personal and Family Life
Sicily for Bambini: A Family Holiday with Helen McCrory and Damian Lewis
Playtime, Pampering, and Pasta
by Helen McCrory | British Airways Highlife | August 1, 2010
Damian and children practice sword fighting in the castle ruins, Caltabellotta (Courtesy of Helen McCrory)
Actors Helen McCrory and husband Damian Lewis plus their two children head to Sicily for playtime, pampering and pasta.
‘Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, that’s a wrap!’ It’s 1am and I’m standing in a disused industrial park in London in the rain. We’ve been filming the same ten lines for hours now and even the writer has fallen out of love with the scene. But who cares. In 12 hours, I shall be sitting by the pool in Rocco Forte’s Sicilian Verdura Golf & Spa Resort for a week of pampering, peace, pasta and a bit of good old-fashioned shuteye.
My husband Damian and I both know Italy well, but I have never visited Sicily. Damian went there some years ago with a mate on an Edwardian-style grand tour, when he’d quickly learnt the all-important phrase ‘Posso avere una camera con due letti, per favore’ — which translates as ‘a single room with two separate beds, please’ — after they had been presented with a luxurious double bed on their first night. But they stayed in the northern part of the island and Verdura is on the southwest coast between Sciacca, a fishing port, and Agrigento, home to some of the best-preserved Greek temples in the world. The resort also has a children’s crèche, and we have a three-year-old, Manon, and a two-year-old, Gulliver, with energy levels that would put even the Sicilians’ famous love of children to the test. It sounds perfect.
Continue reading Sicily for Bambini: A Family Holiday with Helen McCrory and Damian Lewis
Categories Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Trailer Video
VIDEO: Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, Part 1, Official Trailer
Back at Hogwarts
by IGN | You Tube | June 30, 2010
Categories Print Media Reviews The Late Middle Classes
The Late Middle Classes at the Donmar Warehouse – Review
The Late Middle Classes is Simon Gray at the very top of his game
Finally, 11 years after its premiere, and almost two years after the dramatist’s death, Simon Gray’s The Late Middle Classes has made it into London.
This rich, haunting play, mostly set in the early Fifties on Hayling Island and with a period flavour so strong that you can almost taste the powdered egg, was bumped out of the West End last time around by a dire musical.
In a way, you can see why those who blocked the play’s transfer back in 1999 were nervous.
There is a rare subtlety, and ambiguity about the piece, a mixture of comedy combined with something far darker that resists easy explanation or analysis.
Continue reading The Late Middle Classes at the Donmar Warehouse – Review
Categories Reviews The Late Middle Classes
Review: The Late Middle Classes
Smooth Operator… Helen McCrory in The Late Middle Classes
by Michael Billington | June 1, 2010 | The Guardian
Justice has finally been done. This Simon Gray play expired on the road in 1999 without ever making it to the West End. Now, in David Leveaux’s sensitive revival, it emerges as one of Gray’s best plays: a quietly moving portrait of repressive 1950s England and, in particular, of the way children often become the victim of adult dreams and desires.
The action is bookended by two present-day scenes in which the mature Holly visits his former music teacher. But the bulk of the story takes place on Hayling Island in the 1950s where the 12-year-old Holly is caught between conflicting emotional needs.