Lucy Durack in character as Elle Woods from Legally Blonde The Musical (Photo by John Donegan/Getty Images)
Critical Mash

Film and music theatre

A marriage made in heaven, or one heading for the rocks?

With Stephen Sondheim’s swansong, based on two Bunuel films, coming to London soon, and Mark Anthony Turnage’s opera Festen opening to rave reviews, Robert Thicknesse rounds up some luminaries who ought to know the answer.

Don Boyd, elder statesman of the British film world, producer and director, whose lifelong ambition to bring opera and film together resulted most notably in the movie Aria of 1987. Composer Elena Langer, an expert in adapting existing scripts for opera; and theatre and music critic David Benedict, currently writing the authorised biography of Stephen Sondheim.

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