Monthly culture, May 2026

[tamaranth]

May culture
01MAY26: Samurai -- British Museum
I'd meant to get to this exhibition sooner, and cannot recommend visiting on a Friday afternoon just before the exhibition ends. Horribly crowded and not very well lit. My secret weapon was a download of the 'large print guide', which provides all the captions that otherwise I'd have had to queue to read. I found the medieval and early modern exhibits strangely familiar, and would have liked more about the role of the samurai post-1861. But there were some interesting moments, especially around the role of female samurai.
01MAY26: Iberia: Gabriela Montero in Recital -- Barbican Milton Court
A joyous recital including Soler, Scarlatti, Chopin, Liszt, Albeniz ... plus some improv at the end, in the style of the Spanish Baroque. I do respect a pianist who asks for a better chair and changes (shoes) into something more comfortable mid-performance.
16MAY26: Unforgettable: Women artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750 -- Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent
I went to Ghent! With Nina! It rained, and I drank very little beer!
The exhibition was a very mixed bag, for me. On the one hand, I feel I have already exceeded my lifetime quota of still lives (in French, 'dead nature'): on the other hand, there were some fascinating portraits, including one of Sophie of Hannover in a Brazilian feather cloak, painted by Louise Hollandine van de Palts.
21MAY26: Dido and Aeneas (Purcell, ~1688) -- Cutty Sark
Gothed-up Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, performing under the coppered hull of the Cutty Sark. I've seen opera here before but differently oriented: for La Boheme the rows of seats were parallel with the keel, with a reasonable view, but for Dido and Aeneas the seats faced the prow -- which meant (a) the performers were surrounded by a collection of nautical figureheads (b) I, in the best of the 'cheap' seats -- which were not that cheap -- could barely see anything, except when performers came and went -- or when the chorus cavorted on the steps at the back.
That said, Karima el Demerdasch was a magnificent Dido, and Hubert Zapiór (sweltering in furs) a suitably heroic Aeneas. Glorious music, nice use of the space, shame about the seating.
29MAY26: Backrooms (Parsons, 2026) -- Greenwich Picturehouse
'Liminal horror' starring Chiwetel Ejiofor as Clark (a failed architect in possession of a furniture store, an alcohol habit and an ex-wife), and Renate Reinsve as his therapist Mary (who has her own trauma). A mysterious doorway opens in Clark's basement; he goes through and finds himself in a maze of distorted, yellow-walled rooms and corridors with weird lighting -- an architect's nightmare. Bad stuff ensues, especially when he takes his assistant and her boyfriend through to film the backrooms. Mary, initially disbelieving, also follows him and is the only one to emerge. I did not enjoy this film.
Also in May: a night in A&E for what was almost certainly not a stroke. Investigations continue, tediously but necessarily indicate probably a chronic sinus thing.