Various Artists: Sound System - The Story of Jamaican Music

Thomas H Green

Volcano was written in 1956 when Noël Coward was suffering the dubious status of having become Britain’s first celebrity tax exile.  The play – unperformed in his lifetime - is the product of his laidback life in Jamaica, and of a period during which he was regarded as a crumbling colonial relic outmoded by a post-war Labour government and the rowdy commotions of the Angry Young Men back home.

For most film buffs, the name of director Vincente Minnelli immediately recalls the quintessence of the MGM musical of the 1940s and 1950s - a world of fantasy, brilliant colours, stylish décor and costumes in which Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron dance and sing. The name also evokes steamy dramas and civilised comedies such as Some Came Running and Father of the Bride. As the BFI launches a major season of his films this week, however, it's worth pondering whether there is more to his oeuvre than meets the eye.

The Serpentine’s north gallery has been transformed into a magical space (main picture). Strung from floor to ceiling of the darkened room, shafts of copper wire glimmer in subdued lighting like sunbeams, or the searchlights that scanned the night sky for enemy aircraft during World War Two.

As this rampant return to our screens repeatedly underlined, one of the great joys of watching The Comic Strip throughout its 30-year frenzy of frantic - if intermittent - silliness has been never knowing what precise manifestation of oddness lurks around each corner. Where else, after all, would you find "Babs" Windsor popping up – utterly gratuitously – to give Tony Blair a meaty snog? Or Ross Noble ambling into frame as a socialist tramp, shortly to be throttled and thrown from a moving train?

A new play by Mike Leigh is always an event. So there was a palpable excitement in the air at the Cottesloe Theatre (the smallest and most intimate of the three National Theatre auditoria) when his latest opened last night.