James Cauty: War Is Over Whilst fellow ex-K Foundation partner Bill Drummond is off making unheard waves with the17, James Cauty has gone all philatopeic. Yes, he who once helped torch a cool million in cash has been busily making stamps. His frilly-edged, 9/11-syle images of a flaming Big Ben are certainly stimulating, and it's almost a shame that his Banksy-esque, gas-masked Queen hasn't make it into the Royal Mail's new collection. But the piece de resistance must surely be his discovery of the real, true, new black; and it's the most expensive, purest yet. Of course, in typical K-style, if nobody buys his 6'x6', £2.37 million, giant, plain black stamp by Christmas Day, he's going to torch it. Now that's haggling.
God in Ruins Blending elements of Dickens's A Christmas Carol with an interest in everyman technological reliance and virtual worlds, the ever-inciting Anthony Neilson's latest play has been built around long months of improvisation and workshops with his cast of 11 RSC actors. The characteristically macabre and amusing result is, at its core, a festively troubled tale about one man and his daughter. Lay aside expectations of traditional Christmas Day giggles, and you'll be fine.
Night Watch While the Southbank is still looking elegantly festive with it's blue lit, winter-stripped trees, and Regent Street is enjoying its giant glowing baubles and predictably naff (and rather ecologically destructive) snowflake strips, Canary Wharf have commissioned Julie Mathias and Wolfgang Kaeppner of design collective WOKmedia to sort out something rather special to trump them all. Utilising the Chinese-originating technique of inside painting, Night Watch sees the trees and bushes scattered with 200, centrally-lit crystal balls projecting an entire forest's worth of animal eyes. Not so much of a See, then, as a Be Seen, Christmas on the Docklands is an aptly animalistic affair.
