painter for our time

In a lecture last year Alan Read, author of Theatre & Everyday Life, showed Goya's picture of two men fighting with cudgels.

Read pointed out that while the two men are engaged in fighting, they are also sinking into the swamp. He called this 'objects objecting - simply getting their own back'.

Goya has also inspired Andrew Bovell's play When The Rain Stops Falling, which opened last night at the Almeida. In this case, the picture was Saturn Devouring His Children (left). Bovell's play centres on the way one generation passes on a legacy to the next one.

As Bovell writes in the programme, 'We have not only threatened the future. We have devoured it.'