Well, nice try anyway.Listen, I'd love to believe in Bob Dylan; I'd love to hear the mythic, death-haunted Time Out of Mind that august commentators such as Greil Marcus hear. But for me, there's more soul and melody and life-affirming humanity in The Band, that rollicking 1969 album by Dylan's occasional electric henchmen, than there is in all of the master's collected works.A bracing factoid to emerge from Sounes's Down the Highway is that when Dylan was gravely ill back in 1997, only one of the musicians he'd ever worked with was sufficiently moved to send him a get-well card. Ouch! True, many "geniuses" have been unprepossessing human beings, and still we judge them by their work rather than their biographies. But in Dylan's case the unlovableness is precisely what one hears in so much of his obtuse, overrated music..
The National Theatre has joined the V&A, the Royal Opera House, BT and Railtrack: yet another British institution that no one wants to run. The National Theatre has joined the V&A, the Royal Opera House, BT and Railtrack: yet another British institution that no one wants to run. The theatre, one of the most distinguished drama venues in the world, is finding that those who should be thrilled to follow in the footsteps of Laurence Olivier and Sir Peter Hall are reluctant to apply.Trevor Nunn announced last month that he will not seek a second term as director when his contract runs out in September 2002. But he has said he will stay until a successor can take over, a promise he may regret.Already Sam Mendes, the acclaimed director of the Donmar Warehouse, is said to have turned the job down. After the success of the Oscar-winning American Beauty, he is thought to want to concentrate on his film career. Another leading contender, Stephen Daldry, formerly of the Royal Court Theatre and the director of Billy Elliot, has been berated by Nunn for not making an approach to the National.
But Daldry has made it clear that the South Bank Centre does not appeal.One who has made little secret that he would like the job is Nicholas Hytner. He denies putting himself in the running, but has not been slow to offer his opinions on how the National should be run, and is thought to have discussed the post with the board's chairman. Critics of Hytner, who has worked in opera, theatre and film, directing The Madness of George III on stage and screen, say that he lacks the flair to make a success of the National's three theatres.Jude Kelly, artistic director of the West Yorkshire Playhouse, has also been mentioned as a candidate, although there is concern that she is a better administrator than director.After Nunn, whose tenure has been criticised for timidity one critic called it "a saturation diet of musicals" it is the likes of Daldry and Mendes who are believed to have the skills to bring the lustre back to the South Bank. But the lure of the Thames-side establishment cannot match that of Hollywood.. The BBC has provided some of the most memorable moments in the history of television with its award-winning documentaries. Yet the programmes which were once the centrepiece of an evening's viewing have been gradually pushed to the fringes.
