Susan Elkin, Author at Susan Elkin

Investec Holland Park

Isabeau is a strange, rather clunky piece and it was completely new to me. Think Spamalotmeets The Merchant of Venice with a seasoning of The Emperor’s New Clothes which finally morphs into Lear or Oedipus. And with characters with names such as Ethelberto of Argyle and Randolf of Dublin it’s the sort of thing which provides ammunition for opera sceptics who want to ridicule the entire art form. It isn’t hard to see why Isabeau has more or less disappeared from the repertoire in the last 80 years or so although it enjoyed a fair amount of ongoing success following its 1911 Buenos Aires premiere.

Virginal Princess Isabeau i(Anne Sophie Duprels) is told by her tyrannical father (Mikhail Svetlov) the King that she must choose a husband from one of a series of competitors for her hand. She doesn’t fancy any of them, so her furious father says she must ride naked through the streets as a punishment. Citizens are forbidden, on pain of blinding, to look. Meanwhile a jolly falconer, Folco (David Butt Philip) has turned up – with lovely silver falcon puppet. He and Isabeau fall in love. He looks at her nakedness. He is blinded. They die. Yes the plot – or “book” as we would say if this were a musical – is utter tosh, however hard the production tries to find topical resonances relating to feminism, appearance and all the rest of it.

On the other hand Pietro Mascagni’s score is full of delightful orchestral colour every nuance of which is allowed to sing out under Francesco Cilluffo’s energetic baton. Isabeau gets a passionate aria in Act 1 in which she pleads with her father and each of her sustained notes is accompanied by shifting cadences beneath it. At one point the horns have a very dramatic and unusual repeated figure in which a very short note is followed by a stressed longer one. There’s interesting music for the harp and sometimes for percussion although the wood block for the horse’s hooves put me irreverently in mind of Monty Python.

There are some fine performances on stage here too. As a woman cheated of just about everything, Duprels uses her soaring top notes movingly to communicate passion and tragedy. Butt Philip’s tenor is warm and convincing especially when he is effectively in duet with the cellos. The piece finally becomes dramatically coherent in the last act when Isabeau visits Folco’s prison cell. Their duet work here is nicely balanced and judged in this production and you actually begin to believe in them.

Full marks to Opera Holland Park’s usual large, young chorus too. Chorus Master, David Todd, has done a fine job in making them sound really vibrant as they swarm over the set designed by takis.

There are problems with the set, however. It looks great with lots of steps, ledges and platforms on three moveable, interlocking “islands” presenting different configurations to connote a medieval castle. It’s visually a strong idea and it works especially well during Isabeau’s naked ride which takes place upstage behind the continuously shifting “castle” so that the audience gets the merest hint. The trouble is that these bits of castle are clearly very heavy and the cast and crew often struggle to start them rolling. And there’s a stage left chamber (a bit like a giant version of a disability lavatory on a modern train) whose big semi-circular door refused to budge on press night leaving cast members invisible to the audience who palpably resisted cheering when a stage hand, dressed as a churl, finally freed it, several minutes later. A case of a potentially good design whose practical problems have not been fully thought through? Let’s hope they sort it for the rest of the run.

First published by Lark Reviews: http://www.larkreviews.co.uk/?cat=3

Dulwich Opera Company

This rather elegant, intelligent Cosi is a good example of what can be achieved with six singers, a pianist and minimal props and set. Sung in Italian with “side titles” on small screens at the two edges of the playing area, it’s an enjoyably accessible take on the opera too.

Honey Rouhani is a delightful Despina. She makes every note sound gloriously effortless and she talks, quips and jokes with eloquent, flashing eyes. Her cynical, rippling 6|8 number when she first tells Fiordiligi (Loretta Hopkins) and Dorabella (Phillipa Thomas) what she thinks about men is sung with terrific verve.

There’s a strong performance from James Williams as the scheming bass, Don Alfonso too. He makes the bottom notes ring out with resonance – and cheerful malice. After all it’s a cruel joke he’s playing on the two women who are famously each tricked into yielding to the other’s disguised fiancé – to prove that no woman can be trusted because “cosi fan tutte” which translates roughly as “they’re all the same”.

I especially admired the ensemble work in this production. Many of the trios, quartets, quintets and sextets are beautifully sung, well supported by the warm acoustic of St Saviour’s Church. The solo work is generally adequate but not, in most cases as noteworthy as the group numbers – with the exception of Robert Barbaro’s 3|4 aria as Ferrando which is exquisite.

Loretta Hopkins – whose Fiordiligi is really troubled by the events which overtake her and, for a long time passionately resistant to seduction – is an outstanding, very convincing actor which more than compensates for the harshness in some of her top notes and thinness at the bottom. David Fletcher (as Gugliemo) is entertaining and a strong duettist. Thomas is a good foil to Hopkins and has an appealingly colourful voice.

And, on the night I saw Cosi, there was a terrific performance from Janet Haney on piano. She and Elspeth Wilkes have shared out the performance dates. I am, however, doubtful of the wisdom of opening this show – which is already quite long – with the overture played on piano. It feels a bit odd as if we’re starting the evening with a piano recital. Moreover, at times, especially in the first scene the piano seems to be drowning out the singers. Perhaps it is mis-positioned and would be better behind the action, further away from the audience?

First published by Lark Reviews: http://www.larkreviews.co.uk/?cat=3

Theatretrain, Sadler’s Wells Theatre

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

Styling itself “the company that loves to perform”, Theatretrain is a part-time children’s training organisation with branches all over the country.

It makes a specialism of bringing together groups of branches to stage big scale shows which they’ve rehearsed back in their weekly sessions.

Special Measures, the first of two shows at Sadler’s Wells, featured 400 children from Theatretrain branches in Basingstoke, Bristol, Maldon, Basildon, Southampton, Cambridge, Loughton and Reading …

Read the rest of this review at Musical Theatre Review: http://musicaltheatrereview.com/theatretrain-special-measures-sadlers-wells-theatre/

Artform at Broadway Theatre, Catford

This is an interesting ‘chamber version’ of a piece which is usually staged on a larger scale – at Menier Chocolate Factory in 2009 with a run at Theatre Royal Haymarket in 2010 – for example. Artform’s pretty competent cast of thirteen turns it into thoughtfully intimate theatre for which Catford Broadway’s studio space works well. And it’s a long time since I’ve seen a show of this type in a venue of this sort in which performers project more than adequately without radio mics.

It’s a 1960s show telling the story of a dance hall hostess (fine line between that and the Oldest Profession) desperate to escape and find true love. Her colleagues are justifiably cynical. And then just when it looks as if she has got her wish, her Prince Charming gets cold feet and she’s denied a happy ending.

There’s delightful work from Claire Goad as Charity who is rarely off stage. She is totally of top of the role with her expressively mobile eyes, eloquent flick of the blonde bob wig, ruefulness, comic timing, intensity and accomplished dancing. Her acting while concealed in Vittorio Vidal’s (Aneurin Pascoe – good) closet is lovely comedy.

Nathan Pollpeter plays Oscar Lindquist – so nearly the love of Charity’s life. He is a very accomplished, totally convincing actor. The scenes with Charity in the lift and at the top of the ferris wheel are very effectively paced. This more than compensates for his unremarkable singing.

Full marks to the other eleven cast members who play all the support roles and provide a vibrant ensemble. The sexy Big Spender number is terrific, for example. Sheila Arden, director, clearly knows exactly how to get the best out of a non-pro cast in a bijoux space and Caroline Essenhigh is, as ever, an imaginative choreographer.

The set – designed and constructed by various people as usual in a company where everything’s voluntary – provides a simple brick wall at the back, a moveable fountain, some basic furniture and simple suggestions of other things such as pole to suggest the lift and the ferris wheel – which means that actors can use mime for the lift button and so forth pretty successfully.

And oh yes, I do love a good band. One of the strengths of this enjoyable show is the six fine players squeezed into a stage right corner led by MD, John Hargreaves from keyboard. Well done Benjamin Essenhigh on drums in particular who has to make a 90 degree turn from his music to see Hargreaves but never gets out of synch.

First published in Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Artform-Sweet%20Charity&reviewsID=3258

Chichester Festival Theatre

It was one those ovation-for-the-understudy nights. Earlier in the day Matt Lucas, due to play Bill Snibson, had seen a throat specialist who decreed that he needed to rest his voice. So we got Ryan Pidgen in the lead role on the opening/press night. He had rehearsed for just a few hours. The result was a warm, confident, accomplished performance as the gor blimey jack-of-all-trades from Lambeth who inherits a title and a fortune. Pidgen dominated the stage with his singing, dancing and all those punning one liners for every second he was on it. It was a bravura performance by any standards. Had it not been obvious (to most people) that this wasn’t Matt Lucas I don’t think anyone would have known that Pidgen was an understudy.

Me and My Girl is a gloriously old fashioned, feel good musical dating from 1937. Like so many of the best British comedies it’s a play on social class with more than a whiff of both Pygmalion/My Fair Lady, Kind Hearts and Coronets and HMS Pinafore which is substantially referenced in Mark Cumberland’s sparky orchestrations of Noel Gay’s score.

Caroline Quentin is terrific as the fierce, bossy (but of course there’s more to her) Maria, Duchess of Dene. She flounces, frightens and fulminates in a fabulously frumpy tweed skirt until the very end when, Katisha-like she succumbs to the charms of her old friend Sir John Tremayne (Clive Rowe – engaging). As her glittering daughter, Siubhan Harrison flirts, swarms and there’s a very polished, make-you-gasp dance scene with a group of men in which she is thrown into all manner of unlikely poses. Goodness knows how long it had to be rehearsed for.

And there’s splendid work from Alex Young as Snibson’s titular “my girl” from Lambeth who really isn’t very likely to fit in as Lady Hareford. In her woollen beret and spectacles she initially presents a homely figure who can also sing and dance “to the manor born” – as it were.

But the real star of this tuneful, uplifting show is the ensemble who drive the piece along with energy and panache – assisted by choreographic strokes (by Alistair David) of witty genius such as suits of armour which tap dance and a tango with beach towels, The big set pieces such as Doing the Lambeth Walk (which I’m still humming 12 hours later) and The Sun Has Got His Hat On are gloriously vibrant too. The former, of course, keeps shifting its key up in semitones as it gets faster – hardly an original idea but it works very well indeed here and looks great as the pearly kings queens dance to the stage through the auditorium.

Anyone who reads my reviews even occasionally will know I’m a sucker for a good band and the 11 musicians led my MD Gareth Valentine certainly come up trumps here. It looks a bit odd to see Valentine’s head protruding from a triangular down stage trap while the rest of the band is concealed from view under the stage. But the sound works perfectly.

Daniel Evans knows how to stage a spectacle and he’s in fine form with this one which could, I suspect, be Chichester’s next West End transfer.

First published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Chichester%20Festival%20Theatre%20(professional)-Me%20and%20My%20Girl&reviewsID=3255

Guildhall School of Music and Drama

It’s quite a privilege to enjoy what is arguably one of the best musicals of all time in one of our foremost conservatoires. They can of course, rustle up a magnificent orchestra (plus on-stage Klezmer band for the wedding and talented Nicole Petrus Barracks as the titular fiddler) with Steven Edis as musical director to play all those delicious accelerating minor key melodies. And because GSMD has one of the country’s best technical departments the sets and costumes, designed by Adam Wiltshire, are splendid too – especially the 3D lit up cottages upstage left to suggest the village of Anatevke and the angled walkway across the back.

And as for the cast you get 25 final year actors, directed by Martin Connor, giving their all and their “all” is generally pretty impressive. At the heart of the show is Alex James-Cox as Tevye. It’s one of those iconic parts (cf Lady Bracknell, Richard III, Dorothy and Fagin) which everyone associates with a single actor. The knack is to put those memories and images aside and make it your own which is what James-Cox does very ably. He sings with passion, delivers every laconic Jewish line with warmth and panache, has stage timing that many seasoned actors would die for and clearly has no difficulty playing twenty years over his own age. I particularly liked the way he dances/conducts expressively with his hands, adding an extra dimension to Jerry Bock’s lovely score It’s a very fine performance and I’m sure we shall be seeing a lot more of James-Cox very soon.

Phoebe Marshall finds mature warmth in Tzeitel, the eldest daughter who chooses to marry Motel (Finlay Paul – another pleasing performance), a poor tailor rather than succumb to the matchmaker. Tallulah Bond is strong as Golde, Tevye’s long suffering wife, especially in her duet with him Do You Love Me?which really does sound like a spontaneous musical conversation.

The company plays villagers, Russians and a whole range of minor roles with Georgina Beedle especially memorable as Grandma’s ghost on stilts. There is a minor problem in that this is, by definition a young cast and they don’t always convince as old or older people. Poppy Allen-Quarmby, for instance, does her best as the matchmaker but she’s clearly just a young woman pretending as is Harry Harrington as Lazar Wolf.

But the quality of singing and dancing more than makes up for it. Interestingly these are acting, not musical theatre students. This fine show demonstrates how well they’ve been trained. The big ensemble moments – the opening, the wedding and the dream for example – zing along with some imaginative choreography, including the famous bottle dance and lots of vibrantly rhythmic dancing – are spectacular. The ending is as moving as I’ve ever seen it.

I’d advise you to see this show except that – understandably – it is sold out

First published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Guildhall%20School%20of%20Music%20and%20Drama%20(Student%20Productions)-Fiddler%20on%20the%20Roof&reviewsID=3252

I reviewed a show at Broadway Theatre in Catford last week and it’s a venue with which I go back a very long way.

Having grown up in the Borough of Lewisham I came “home” two years ago to live back in Catford after four decades elsewhere. What we used simply to call “The Town Hall” has been familiar all my life. We went there all the time, years ago. It was very much what we would now call a community space.

I sang there at least twice when I was still in primary school. Choirs from local schools came together to present a concert programme of songs they’d all learned with their own teachers – Mr Oliver James in my case at Rathfern Road School

I was taken to shows at The Town Hall too both by my parents and at least once in a party from primary school – often musicals and especially Gilbert and Sullivan. The ones presented by our local community companies: Lewisham Operatic Society and Eldorado Operatic Society were especial favourites. And by the time I was about 12, if parents were too busy, I just went with a friend.

And I remember at, maybe 16, going with a friend to hear a performance of Bach’s B Minor Mass in The Town Hall. To my astonishment my violin teacher, Miss Barbara Strudwick, was leading the orchestra. It had never occurred to me that she had a life as a freelance musician beyond teaching. She was utterly delighted when I told her the following week that I’d been in the audience.

We had our school speech days at The Town Hall too. So I attended, and took part in, eight of those during the years I was at Sydenham High School including one in the term after I left, to collect certificates. As I progressed up the school I sang in senior choir and played in the school orchestra at those Town Hall speech days. We used to get ready to file to our places in the small hall downstairs now converted to the studio theatre where I saw Artform’s enjoyable Sweet Charity last week. It used also to be a space for hire. I once attended a 21^st birthday party (older brother of a friend) down there.

Once I’d left school, been through teacher training college and returned to south London to a teaching job, I joined the Lewisham Philharmonic Orchestra. Musically they were a ropey lot, saved by stiffeners from the Royal Artillery on concert days. But we played some good stuff and I don’t have to tell you where the concerts were held.

Known for a long time as Lewisham Concert Hall, it’s a rather wonderful, curved art deco building dating from 1932 (architects: Bradshaw, Gass and Hope) originally built on the site of an old fire station as an extension to the existing Victorian gothic town hall next door and incorporating a performance space. That means that my father, born in 1922, and his father born in 1896 and both Lewisham men, must clearly have remembered it being built but I don’t recall either of them ever mentioning it. Even I remember the old town hall next to the concert hall which wasn’t demolished until 1965. John Betjeman did his best, I gather, but failed to save it.

In 1987 the small hall was converted to the 120 seat theatre it is now. I’ve seen several shows in there in recent years and it works well. You can still see the elegant woodwork and floors which characterise the building. And in 1993 someone had the sense to get it listed – Grade 2 status means that it’s pretty well protected from institutional vandalism.

In the early years of the millennium there was a £2.3 million refurb which restored some lost art deco features. It was then renamed Broadway Theatre in 2003.

The lovely old place, so full of personal memories, still seems to be a bit underused, and faintly unloved though (the main house was dark when I was there last week, for instance) and it would be excellent if it were to become a receiving house for, say, some mid scale touring shows. As it is there’s a thriving youth theatre, an annual pantomime, a diverse range of one night stands and short runs including community companies such as Artform which has a residency there. The activities, events and shows are varied and interesting but there need to be more of them and Catford needs classier stuff alongside the mainstream. Last year’s Shakespeare Festival – Catford on Avon – was a good start. It’s a fabulous building and I’d like to see it become an integral part of people’s lives as it was for me when I was a Lewisham child.

The old town hall in the centre with the new extension, more or less as it is today, on the right. Given the crowds this may be the opening ceremony for the extension.

When someone can process only part of what is said, normal conversation becomes impossible. The sort of casual remarks which human beings make to each other all the time get misunderstood and/or distorted when you’re involuntarily shacked up with Ms Alzheimer’s.

For example, if I say “I’ll put the bins out in a bit but I need to empty the inside ones first” then a few minutes later I’m quite likely to find My Loved One toiling out to the front with the bins. When I remonstrate he’ll say: “I’m sure you mentioned bins?”

One day recently I had to take my passport to the sorting office (ridiculous but there you go) in order to collect a parcel. On my return I removed the passport from my handbag and put it on the shelf on the upstairs landing to remind myself to put it away in its accustomed drawer when I next went downstairs.

“What’s this passport doing here?” asked MLO. “Oh, can you put it in the drawer in the dining room if you’re going down? I said, as if he were a normal person. Cue for Big Panic half an hour later when I checked and said passport was not in the drawer. I did find it in the end but Ms A hiding things is beginning to be a problem.

I know exactly where everything is in this house. He doesn’t. If he moves things then neither of us will know where they are we’re really in a pickle. And as I keep telling him all he has to do is to listen to instructions and not to fiddle with things – but of course it’s nothing like as simple as that.

Take the two big bags of bark chippings I brought home from the garden centre last week. I managed, with difficulty, to lever them both out of the car boot, rest them against the back of the car and then to drag one round to the back garden but it was really too heavy for me. “Is there any way you could bring that second bag round?” I asked MLO because he is still probably a little stronger than I am – a male body etc. He tried but told me he couldn’t shift it. “OK, leave it where it is” I said. “I’ll think of something”. When I later went back to the front the bag was missing. The silly twerp had, most unhelpfully, humped it back into the car boot.

We had a pretty graphic example of sequential failed understanding at Pease Pottage services on the way to Chichester this week – which ended up with me in tears of despair. I asked too much of him thereby managing to upset us both. Well done, Susan.

The problem is that I routinely overestimate what’s do-able and as the situation worsens I suppose it will get ever harder to adjust. On this occasion I shoved him into the Costa queue and told him to buy two bottles of water while I shot into next door M&S to buy sandwiches. Five minutes later MLO appeared beside me while I was paying for the sandwiches at a self-service till. “What are you doing here?” I demanded rather too crossly. “GO INTO COSTA AND BUY TWO BOTTLES OF WATER – please”. Well he wandered off but when I went to join him in Costa, sandwiches in hand, he had completely disappeared. A worrying five minutes later I spotted him in the M&S queue trying to buy sandwiches.

Well I’m afraid I don’t have the patience of a saint …Furiously, I dragged him to a table, sat him down and forbade him to move while I went and bought two bottles of water. When I got back he was anxiously examining the packets of sandwiches I’d bought because he was afraid he’d accidentally shoplifted them. That was the point at which I broke down and cried.

It is all very wearing as well as dispiriting and I’m ashamed to admit that it’s considerably easier to do jobs such as reviewing in Chichester or central London on my own. Then it’s quite therapeutic to be out working like a grown up and, at present (long may it last) he’s OK at home by himself. If I take him out with me the whole experience is, increasingly often, as stressful as it is upsetting.

I have “coffee shop offices” all over London and quite a few in other towns and cities. I’m drafting this blog in a one which is new to me – the quite nice coffee shop inside Lewisham Hospital which has delightfully friendly, cheerful staff and they make a decent cup of tea. After a frustrating four hour wait beyond our appointment time, MLO is – at last – upstairs in theatre having the carcinoma removed from his face. Fingers crossed that the anxiously anticipated surgery is going well.

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