Row
Row is a sure sign that the Eixample district is waking up, getting dressed and going out dancing. This very popular club is installed in Eduard Samsó’s 1980s designer bar, the Nick Havanna. These days, this super trendy spot is run by experienced clubber, Joan Arnau, and features big name dance, house and techno DJs such as Roger Sanchez, Richard Dorfmeister, Terry Francis (who will be in house on August 11) John Acquaviva (performing August 12), to name a few.
Taxis
I caught a taxi from the Praha hlavni nadrazi train station in Prague to Ruzyne airport and paid a ridiculously high price. Because of earlier experiences with taxis in Prague, I thought I would be better off paying the metered fare rather than negotiating a possible inflated price. Unfortunately, taxi fares were deregulated in November, 1996. A negotiated price would have been much better. I’ll allow plenty of time to get to the airport in the future to avoid using a taxi or to at least make sure I get a much better deal.
The Taming of the Shrew
The outdoor Theatricum Botanicum opens its season with Shakespeare’s story of deception, disguise and intrigue, ‘The Taming of the Shrew’. When Petruchio arrives in the Italian city of Padua looking for a wealthy wife, he spies Kate, the bad-tempered daughter of Baptista Minolo, and instantly decides to tame her. It’s not an easy task but he is helped out by Kate’s sweet-tempered sister Bianca’s three suitors, in a comic story of the battle of the sexes. This production stars Richard Tyson from the blockbuster movie ‘Battlefield Earth’ and Jim LaFave from ‘The Crucible’.
François Delfosse
François Delfosse is to visual art what Sylvia Plath is to poetry and PJ Harvey to rock music. Using charcoal, crayons, Indian ink and paint, the Belgian artist depicts abstract images of confusion, angst and pent-up emotions that cannot fail to disturb. Traces of both Jackson Pollock and Jean-Michel Basquiat can be detected in his nervous breakdowns on canvas. This particularly applies to two works that he completed last year: ‘Morning are broken’ and ‘Edimbourg tatoo’.
Louise Attaque
In just two years, these four men (none of whom are called Louise) have grown into France’s biggest rock act, selling over two million albums. Largely acoustic, they combine the standard guitar/bass/drums format with the virtuoso violin playing of Arnaud Samuel. Although their lyrics are in French, their quirky pop vision has been compared with that of The Violent Femmes, whose singer, Gordon Gano, produced the Frenchmen’s first album. Their second album, ‘Comme on a dit’ (‘As we said’), was recently released to an enthusiastic response from their expanding fanbase.
Peeping Tom
Here’s a chance to see the fully restored Michael Powell film, ‘Peeping Tom’ (1960), starring Karlheinz Bohm and Moira Shearer. This Freudian classic is both Martin Scorcese and Roman Polanski’s favourite film and acts as a study of voyeurism and perversion where the film camera not only documents the events, but (in the hands of a psychopath) acts as the murder weapon.
