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Susan’s Bookshelves: The Power of Music by Sheku Kanneh-Mason

Of course I grabbed this book as soon as it was published. I interviewed Sheku Kanneh-Mason shortly after he won BBC Young Musician in 2016. Then in 2018 he came to Kent and gave his debut performance of the Elgar cello concerto with the Maidstone Symphony Orchestra. I’ve been the regular reviewer of MSO concerts for many years so I was there. Since then I’ve followed his stellar career and read with interest House of Music: Raising the Kanneh-Masons by his mother, Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason. I’ve also reviewed concerts in which his sisters, Isata or Jeneba Kanneh-Mason have played piano concertos.

And now comes this book which is effectively an impassioned plea for music education for all. Sheku uses the example of his own family – he is famously one of seven and they are all musicians – to show how it can be done. He paints a picture of seven children enjoying lots of noisy fun and laughter but also striving to excel because there’s no point in doing anything half-heartedly. Chamber music, and the interactive communication it requires, becomes a metaphor for family life because they played, and still do, in a range of trios, duos, quartets and, obviously, a septet. They were immersed in music: tapes in the family car, being taken to concerts, participating in festivals and competitions along with singing at church and in choirs. And there was a family concert showcasing work in progress every Sunday afternoon in their hall with the “audience” sitting on the stairs. You are left astonished that none of them ever rebelled although Sheku does hint that there was sometimes some naughtiness behind their parents’ backs and I was almost relieved to learn that he failed Grade 4 theory because he hadn’t bothered to put the work in.

The book, however, isn’t a family memoir. It’s a discursive examination of what music can do, how it communicates and why it matters. And we certainly need it set down like this because funding has been cut to such an extent that in many schools there is now no music at all. Sheku laments that – even at his own former state secondary school in Nottingham which used to be musically very rich –  STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects now overpower much of the curricular thinking. And there is no music in the English Baccalaureate – a set of core subjects which, if passed at GCSE gives the student an overarching diploma. Many people see music as a dispensable frivolity, especially in education policy making circles. Sheku visits many schools and meets children who play (where they’re lucky enough to get the opportunity) and some of his anecdotes are heart breaking.

Classical music shouldn’t be marginalised, he argues, although he likes blending it with other forms such as Bob Marley. And he makes the very valid point that having elite players in football teams doesn’t make it an “elitist” game. Football is for everyone and Sheku is personally pretty keen on it. The same should apply to music. Yes, there are some elite players and Sheku, who has done the Beethoven Triple concerto with Nicola Benedetti and Benjamin Grosvenor, knows most of them, but that doesn’t mean the music itself is elitist.

The other thing which the book centres on is “blackness” in music which should be irrelevant but isn’t. Black composers have long been ignored and/or excluded  although he observes, thankfully, that the tide is turning now. Far more black composers are being programmed and Errollyn Wallen is Master of the King’s Music. I was horrified, though, at Sheku’s account of the racist abuse which was hurled at him when he commented quite mildly that Rule Britannia at Last Night of the Proms makes him feel uncomfortable.

Sheku was 25 when he wrote this book and he’s 26 now. It reads like the work of someone much older and in places it’s quite world-weary in tone. Now that he has dispensed with his big fluffy hair he even looks a lot older than his years too. He talks about his childhood as if it were much longer ago than it actually is and the vocabulary is highly articulate, formal and sophisticated, considering that he tells us he isn’t good with words but talks, instead, through his cello. Perhaps all that world travel to play in magnificent concert halls hastens maturity. I’m puzzled, though, given his schedules, how he found the time to write it.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Pompeii by Robert Harris

REVIEW: THE FROGS, Music & lyrics Stephen Sondheim, at Southwark Playhouse Borough until 28 June 2025

Susan Elkin • 28 May 2025

‘Clever fun but too long’ ★★★ ½

Dating, in various forms, from the 405 BC and 1970s this pretty bonkers show tells the story of Dionysus (Dan Buckley – good) and his slave Xanthias (Kevin McHale – fine work) visiting Hades to rescue George Bernard Shaw so that he can save civilisation. As it turns out they meet Shakespeare while they’re there and set up a TV style reality competition. Of course he wins so they take him back to life and leave Shaw behind. The titular frogs, of which Dionysus is terrified, live in the river Styx.

It’s certainly very funny and full of anachronisms which make for good comedy. “We’re in Ancient Greece and the present” McHale tells us at the beginning and that sums it up. There is also a huge amount of self-referential joking about theatre itself which went down very well on press night when the house was full of actors, directors and theatre creatives. It might, however, be a bit esoteric for a mainstream audience on a wet Thursday night.

The writing is brilliant, however. Sondheim, with all that effortless rhyming was probably the best lyricist since WS Gilbert. And the music, played by a five piece band with Ed Zanderson (covering for MD Yshani Perinpanayagam) on keys, purrs along wittily. There are hints of other Sondheim songs and clever references to Shaw, both musical and verbal via Pygmalion/My Fair Lady.

The cast of ten are a talented bunch. It’s effectively a group of accomplished principals who form a well choreographed (Matt Nicolson) ensemble when required rather than an ensemble from which small roles emerge. There is, for example, bravura work from Karl Patrick, first as the laconic Charon bobbing up and down like a jack-in-a-box and treating his passengers to a dead pan cruise-style commentary. Then he is show-stoppingly funny as Pluto’s gatekeeper complete with a speech impediment characterised by perfectly timed sibilance. Bart Lambert, who sings in an attractive rich baritone, delights as the ever serious Shakespeare who expresses every thought in his own words – another bit of quite clever in-joking.

 

The ensemble, as and when it forms, is neat and vibrant. And the sequence at the end of Act 1 when they become frogs, all wide legs and leaps of both feet is suitably climactic.

Yes, there’s plenty to enjoy here but at over two and a half hours with interval, the show is too long for what it is.

THE FROGS at Southwark Playhouse 23 May – 28 June 2025

Music & lyrics Stephen Sondheim

Loosely Adapted from Aristophanes by Burt Shelgrove and Nathan Lane

BOX OFFICE https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/the-frogs/

Photos by Pamela Raith

This review was first published by London Pub Theatres Magazine: https://www.londonpubtheatres.com/review-the-frogs-at-southwark-playhouse-borough-until-28-june-2025

REVIEW: SHUCKED a musical comedy at Open Air Theatre, Regents Park 10 May – 14 June 2025

Susan Elkin • 25 May 2025

‘It’s fun and you’ll laugh and probably enjoy the skilful timing’ ★★★ ½

Who knew that corn could so versatile, both visually and practically? The opening number in this upbeat show, in which nothing is to be taken seriously, lays down the (often phallic, of course) parameters with slick clarity. We’re in Cob County which is somewhere in the remote deep South. The inhabitants enjoy their insularity and the economy rests entirely on, well, corn. Scott Pask’s set has thick rows of it growing on either side of the stage.

So of course something has to go wrong. The corn crop wilts and Maizy (get it?), played with faux innocence by Sophie McShera, goes to the bright lights of Tampa in search of a solution. She returns with a boat rocking con-man, Gordy (Matthew Seadon-Young) which leads, inevitably, to misunderstandings and sexy encounters.

The choreography in this show (Sarah O’Gleby) is splendid including some high speed movement work and a nifty trick with planks and barrels because corn whiskey is crucial to the plot. And the music from the unseen band is compelling with lots of rich country and western influence.

Of course this a comedy and it is very funny in places – gales of helpless laughter from the Saturday night audience I saw it with. There are more puns than in any pantomime and, for me at least, that becomes a bit wearing. Moreover the pretty daring double entendres come thick and fast and that too begins to feel a bit overdone after a while. The best line in the whole show comes when a young couple are falling out. “This isn’t an argument” she says. “I’m right and you’re just saying things.”

There are some excellent performances in the mix. Ben Joyce as Beau (that’s Maizy’s – err – beau) moves like an athlete and has a beautifully modulated tenor singing voice. He finds warmth, outrage and anxiety in his role as the young corn farmer who really doesn’t want his fiancée to go to Tampa. Georgina Onuorah is terrific as Lulu, Maizy’s cousin and corn whiskey distiller – plenty of common sense and wisdom and a magnificent full belt.

Monique Ashe-Palmer and Steven Webb do a good job as the multi-roling, all singing, all dancing story tellers although his hammed up, camp humour gets a bit predictable.

It’s fun and you’ll laugh and probably enjoy the skilful timing of all those silly jokes. But don’t go expecting to be stirred.

Images: Pamela Raith

SHUCKED

Book by Robert Horn

Music/Lyrics by Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally

Open Air Theatre, Regents Park

Box Office https://openairtheatre.com/production/shucked

This review was first published by London Pub Theatres Magazine: https://www.londonpubtheatres.com/review-shucked-a-musical-comedy-at-open-air-theatre-regents-park-10-may-14-june-2025

Dear Applicant – Theatre Peckham, London

Reviewer: Susan Elkin

Photo of The Reviews Hub - LondonThe Reviews Hub – LondonMay 26, 2025

0 1 minute read
REVIEW IMAGE HOLDER

Writer and Director: Ibi Kontein

Playing as part of Peckham Fringe, this bijou show (less than 45 minutes) simply explores the job application process in Nigeria and demonstrates how difficult it is.

Ja-ja (Patrick Popolampo) has worked for seven years to achieve a first-class honours degree and to qualify as a Chartered Accountant. Now he would, naturally, like a job commensurate with his qualifications. The play shows him in a series of interview situations that highlight the level of abuse and corruption which someone in Ja-ja’s position has to face. One selector asks him to sweep the floor, and another sends him to fetch the interviewer’s workbag. He is asked several times to pay a “fee” in return for a job and, in one case, propositioned for sex in lieu. Presumably, these are all examples the writer has researched from applicant experiences.

The acting is patchy, although there is some adept multi-roling, especially from Joy “Tutu” Torru and Funbu Sokoya. The latter is both strong and mildly funny as a terrifying tribal chief running a company. Popolampo makes Ja-ja so handwringingly humble – between bouts of short-lived assertiveness – that few people, even without the corruption, would employ a man quite so drippy. It is not clear whether this is deliberate.

A fair amount of work has clearly gone into making the Nigerian accents plausibly strong. At times, however, they are too broad for a mixed London audience and words quite often get lost along with meaning.

The show is staged in Theatre Peckham’s studio theatre with some attempt to involve the audience by addressing them as if they were interviewees or seminar attenders, with Popolampo seated in the front row.

Reviewed on 25 May 2025

Star rating 2

This review was first published by The Reviews Hub  https://www.thereviewshub.com/dear-applicant-theatre-peckham-london/

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Conductor Antonello Manacorda

Violinist Johan Dalene

Cadogan Hall  29 May 2025

 

A  pleasing concert, which spanned 120 years and three very different countries,  it packed  plenty of drama.

Mozart´s overture to The Magic Flute is insouciantly theatrical and I admired the contrasts Manacorda ensured we got between the delicate semiquaver passages and the big grandiloquent statements. He is an impassioned conductor although there´s plenty of restraint there too.

Thence to the extraordinary virtuosity of Johan Dalene, still only 24, who played Carl Nielsen´s 1911 violin concerto. It was new to me and, I suspect to most of the audience. Structured in two long movements it has many moods.

It opens, for example with what is effectively a cadenza over a woodwind pedal note so that we were immediately introduced to Dalene´s phenomenal technique. Like many violin concertos, it´s in D major which sits under the fingers more comfortably than, say the flat keys which work so well for piano concertos. I admired the way he can make the top harmonics, with lots of vibrato, ring out on that glorious 1725 Strad and his rhythmic double stopping in the first movement cadenza sounded like a violin duet. Then in the second movement cadenza we were treated to even more flamboyant double stopping punctuated with left hand pizzicato. And throughout, Manacorda ensured that the accompaniment was integrated and colourful. This concerto is an interesting piece. Magnificently played on this occasion, it  deserves to be performed more often.

Dalene completed his stunning performance by playing the second movement of Ysaye´s sonata number 5 with warmth and more of that stupendous technique.

The second half of the concert consisted of Tchaikovsky´s Sixth Symphony, the Pathetique and it was that which most people were probably there for. Famously written at the very end of the composer´s life, it may or may not be a reflection on death or even a “suicide note” although I don´t buy the latter. Either way it’s an unusual symphony.

Manacorda found ways of serving up very familiar music in a way which made it sound arrestingly fresh and as poignant and disturbing as I´ve ever heard it. For example, the opening was played with far more rubato than usual which has the audience actively listening for the next cadence. He also found unusual tenderness in the dynamic control and the pizzicato descending scales at the end of the movement were full of the tension they need.

Even the strange 5-4  second movement feels troubled because it´s trying to be a waltz but isn’t and Manacorda made sure we felt the dichotomy. The trombone work in the climactic, almost manic, excitement of the third movement was glorious and the frenetic string playing admirably crisp.

Now, I am normally relaxed about applause between movements. If people really want to clap then let them although I don’t care for it much. But this symphony is an exception. As always, at this concert, they went wild at the end of the third movement and it kills that moment when the orchestra suddenly drops into the brooding, profoundly dark finale. I’ve never seen a conductor succeed in preventing it and Manacorda was no exception. Perhaps we could, or should, encourage a programme note or a surtitle­ to explain. Once they were allowed to get it started, the RPO found all the plaintive pain the movement needs, complete with tender pauses and some bravura bassoon work before  finally letting it die movingly away to nothing.

Jill Paton Walsh (1937-2020) was very good at historical fiction for young readers and we used to promote, teach and use her work a lot in the schools I taught in. I remember pouncing on A Parcel of Patterns with glee when it was published in 1983.

It is set in Eyam in 1665. That’s the Derbyshire village which famously locked down when it was unaccountably afflicted with plague as an altruistic way of preventing its spread. It may have reached Derbyshire in a packet of cloth patterns ordered from London by the local tailor. Today, the history is clearly presented in Eyam Museum which opened in 1994.

Paton Walsh’s narrator is Mall Percival who has to see most of her family, friends and neighbours succumb to, and die from, the most hideous imaginable disease.  She’s a powerfully drawn young woman and passionate as she falls in love with a boy from the next village. They run a sheep rearing business together but, of course, she cannot see him once Eyam seals itself off although they do eventually get a short-lived happy ending. She introduces us to two parsons and, incidentally, we learn about the divisions in a country which has recently been through the execution of a king, eleven years of Puritan rule and the restoration of the monarchy with all the religious tensions, contradictions and changes these events have brought. Is the plague God’s will in which case we should simply accept it? Or should we look after ourselves and take common sensible precautions because the Lord helps those who help themselves? Even in 1665 they understood that hygiene, for example, must be a factor in limiting the spread of the disease although of course this is two centuries before the science of bacteriology arrived.

Rereading this powerful little novel now, I’m struck by two things.

First, anyone who writes historical fiction has to decide how to convey the speech mode because it would be very different from today. If we could hear a recording of Derbyshire people speaking English in 1665 we would probably struggle to understand it. Pronunciation changes over time and so does everyday vocabulary. I’ve thought about this a lot lately because in a small way I’ve been dabbling in historical (sort of) fiction myself.  Paton Walsh’s solution is to pepper her dialogue with old pronouns (thee and thou) and expressions such as “none this se’-nnight” (this week) or “that would be fine spite on them”. And she makes Mall uses words and expressions such as “casement” and “most heartily implored”.

Worthwhile and interesting as this novel is, in 2025, this feels like a rather cumbersome, dated way of ensuring that we never forget the period we’re reading about.

Second, of course, we’ve been through a global pandemic since I last read A Parcel of Patterns.  Paton Walsh’s Mall and other characters note, without understanding the reasons, that some people don’t catch the plague at all despite being exposed to it.  And some people get it mildly and recover. No one really understands anything except that all the laws of normal social interaction are overturned. It all sounds very familiar doesn’t it? Their terror rings true too, along with the contradictory advice they get and the scepticism and/or resignation as well as the occasional act of selfless heroism.  It’s quite a novel for our times especially considering it was written 37 years before Covid. Moreover it describes something which happened nearly four centuries ago thereby linking the two events although obviously that wasn’t her intention.

Well worth going back to.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: The Power of Music by Sheku Kanneh-Mason

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry – Minerva Theatre, Chichester

By  on Saturday, 24 May, 2025 in Onstage, Review

Mark Addy and company in The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester. Picture: Manuel Harlan

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry continues at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester until 14 June 2025.Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★★

“Flawless” isn’t an adjective I find cause to use very often in reviews. This time, however, it expresses my reaction perfectly.

Based on Rachel Joyce’s 2012 novel, The Amazing Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is an almost unbearably moving story about reconciliation, forgiveness and grief, given new, very beautiful vibrant life in this outstanding production: effectively a folk opera.

The titular Harold (Mark Addy – wonderful performance) receives a letter from a former work colleague, who he hasn’t seen or heard from for 20 years. She tells him she is dying in a hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed. To the astonishment of his anxious but initially chilly wife Maureen (Jenna Russell – good), he decides he must walk there from his home in Devon to save Queenie (Amy Booth-Steel) ….

Read the rest of this review at Musical Theatre Review https://musicaltheatrereview.com/the-unlikely-pilgrimage-of-harold-fry-minerva-theatre-chichester/

REVIEW: LITTLE BROTHER at Jermyn Street Theatre until 21 June 2025

Susan Elkin • 21 May 2025

‘Unusual, timely and important migration story’ ★★★★

 

This is an unusual play. And “timely” is an understatement.

It is the personal story of a man who travels from his home in Guinea and eventually, after many trials, arrives in Spain where he meets and became friends with Basque writer, Amets Arzallus Antia. Together they write his story, now adapted by Timberlake Wertenbaker. It’s an intensely powerful, deeply moving narrative which puts a much needed human face on the migration “issue”.

Natalie Johnson’s simple but ingenious set comprises pink-flushed cinnamon coloured steps with a hint of Islamic decoration over the door. It stands for the desert, various villages, shops, an inflatable boat and more as we travel thousands of miles through Africa. It’s a true-life quest story along the lines of The Odyssey or Pilgrim’s Progress although the ultimate destination shifts.

Ibrahima (Blair Gyabaah) doesn’t really want to be a migrant. He has to work from age 13 to support his mother and siblings, particularly after the sudden death of his shoemaker father. Then his younger brother disappears and Ibrahima follows him, with many a hindrance on the way, to the terrors of Libya only to discover eventually that his brother was a passenger on a  lost, overloaded migrant boat. Gyabaah gives us a finely judged account of a brave, hard working determined young man who cares very much about his family. He gets exploited but he also has a heart-warming gift for friendship.

The play is structured around Ibrahima and a strong, versatile ensemble of four who, between them play dozens of support roles. Mo Sesay, for example, is Ibrahima’s kindly father and unkind uncle along with various employers and fixers, each differently voiced and skilfully nuanced. Ivan Oyik finds plenty of childlike playfulness in the titular little brother, among other characters, and Whitney Kehinde plays the mother and all female roles with sensitivity.

Youness Bouzinab presents the story teller who works with Ibrahima in what is effectively a framing device. He also – with the versatility which characterises this production – plays a whole string of other parts and is especially chilling as a Libyan guard with scarf over his face and Kalashnikov over his shoulder.

At the end Bouzinab departs briefly from the script (it’s published by Faber) to tell us that Ibrahima was invited to London to see ‘Little Brother’. Then a week before it opened the Home Office cancelled his visa although he has a residence permit which enables him to work as a motor mechanic in Madrid and now has a passport which has allowed him to visit his family back in Guinea.

The inhumane vindictiveness seems never to end. And that’s why this is an important play.

Photos by Steve Gregson

LITTLE BROTHER by Amets Arzallus Antia and Ibrahima Balde

Adapted by Timberlake Wertenbaker

Directed by Stella Powell-Jones

Jermyn Street Theatre

15 MAY – 21 JUNE 2025

BOX OFFICE https://www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk/show/little-brother/

This review was first published by London Pub Theatres: https://www.londonpubtheatres.com/review-little-brother-at-jermyn-street-theatre-until-21-june-2025