An Inspirational London Autumn

There have been inspiring art shows in London this fall. The Royal Academy has a big Auerbach retrospective and a smaller exhibition of some splendid withered old women by Rembrandt. I also went there to wave goodbye to the lovely Callipygian Venus, part of their loan exhibition from Baltimore. I love namedropping, and whenever I find myself at a table with a bevy of blue-rinse Daughters of the American Revolution I always manage to get the word "Callipygian" into the conversation and enjoy their reactions when I explain that it means "she of the beautiful buttocks." The forthcoming exhibition of Victorian nudes at the Tate Gallery will thus also do wonders for my small talk.

The big current subject for the cognoscenti is, however, the surrealist show, "Desire Unbound," at the Tate Modern. Every item is given plenty of breathing space, and the selection of works of art, photographs, books and letters is very imaginative, especially when one notices how little has been borrowed from Paris. The ghosts of Andre Breton and his coterie, who really started the surrealist movement, must be wandering sadly by the banks of the Thames. Rasmin, a clever friend of mine, commented that in the 20th-century rivalry between colorists like Matisse and Duchamp's urinal, the latter has won.

But if you are looking for pristine, unfaded colors take the trip to the Dulwich Gallery to see the Hickman Bacon collection of English watercolors?Turner, Cozens, et al. This is a unique collection, still in private ownership, and may never be shown again.

The exhibition of the Pisa Altarpiece at the National Gallery will certainly never be seen again. Masaccio's diptych was dismantled in the 16th century, and the pieces from museums in Berlin, Los Angeles, Naples and Pisa have now been temporarily reunited with the London Panel. Any curator who can persuade his colleagues to lend such treasures should be hired as a mediator in the Balkans.

As a child I remember the Hollywood films of Gunga Din and the Bengal Lancers fighting the ancestors of the Taliban. Shirley Temple, as the Colonel's granddaughter, leading her kilted highlanders up the Khyber Pass, stirred me to a state of martial frenzy. Why was I not similarly inspired by the heroics of Messrs. Clinton and Blair bombing the Balkans to bits from a safe height of 20,000 feet? Why was I nauseated by Blair declaring war on terrorists while dressed in a bombardier flying jacket? Blair has encouraged terrorists by releasing more than 400 of the Irish convicted murderers without getting any of the promised disarmament in return.

I am not supposed to write about politicians' crossdressing, but about events on the London stage. So, inspired by Downing Street fashion shows, I will mention the transvestite extravaganza at the National Theatre, Mother Clap's Molly House. The play is by Mark Ravenhill, whose earlier Shopping & Fucking was widely praised. The action takes place in a homosexual brothel, a venue I have never visited, and I am profoundly bored by productions that have no merit other than being shocking. The late Alexander Korda rebuffed a compatriot who wanted a screen test with these sensible words, "It's not enough to be Hungarian, you must have talent too." I feel the same way about sodomites.

Charlotte Jones, whose last play, In Flame, I loved, has now brought her Humble Boy to the National Theatre. With Simon Russell Beale as a young astrophysicist, and Diana Rigg as his Queen Gertrude-like mother, the play's derivative plot can be tolerated because of the wonderful performances. The same must be said about the one-off recital of the Chekhov love letters with Paul Scofield and Irene Worth. The letters were platitudinous and nauseatingly sentimental, but the performances by those two octogenarian thespians will never be forgotten by me. The Almeida production of Chekhov's early play, Platonov, did not have stars of quite that magnitude, but I was mesmerized during all three and a half hours of this marathon in its new David Hare adaptation.

David Rudkin's Afore Night Come was revived at the Young Vic Theatre. When it was first staged by the Royal Shakespeare in 1962 this sinister story of ritual murder amongst fruit croppers shocked audiences, and was therefore highly praised by the late Kenneth Tynan. Sadly it now seems harder for violence to shock us. Arthur Miller's All My Sons was another revival at the National Theatre and, in spite of a marvelous cast, seemed curiously dated. Janet Suzman, a great classical actress, appeared at the Soho Theatre in Cherished Disappointments in Love. A disastrously bad play by Jouko and Juha Turkka, it could only have become interesting if it had been staged in its original Finnish version.

Ronald Harwood is one of my favorite playwrights?The Dresser, Quartet and Taking Sides have been rightly acclaimed across the world. Taking Sides was a very sympathetic study of the great German conductor Furtwangler. Harwood's latest play, Mahler's Conversion, has not been liked by some of the critics. Sir Antony Sher plays the title role and Gary Waldhorn excels as Sigmund Freud. The ghastly Alma Mahler is portrayed by Fiona Glascott, who vividly reminded members of the audience that Vienna fully deserved its favorite son, Adolf Hitler.