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Brighton Philharmonic Concert 8 October 2017 (Susan Elkin reviews)

Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto is a bit out of fashion – apart from, maybe, at Raymond Gubbay concerts. I haven’t heard a live performance for several years but it’s a gorgeous old warhorse and it was a real treat to hear it in the opening concert of Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra’s 93rd season.

And what a performance from young Romanian soloist, Alexandra Dariescu who sat at the centre of it like a full-skirted silver fairy. She worked her way colourfully though all those contrasts in the first movement from lyrical to passionate and from thunderous to whispering. She and conductor, Barry Wordsworth achieved a delightful balance in the mini-duets in the second movement with flute, oboe, cello and horn. The elegant delicacy in Dariescu’s playing is quite special.

The concerto was the substantial meat in the sandwich which gave us Schumann’s overture Genoveva (yes, new to me too and, I gather to most of the orchestra) at the beginning and Brahms’s third symphony at the end.

The nicely played Schumann included a long – very Schumannesque – slow introduction with lush strings before dancing away into a syncopated fortissimo section with nifty work from lower strings and some tuneful interjections and fanfares from brass and woodwind all leading to a satisfyingly resounding conclusion.

Wordsworth and the BPO gave us an enjoyable, workmanlike account of the Brahms. Especially noteworthy were the lovely brass and woodwind solos and the cello led 3/4 melody at the opening of the third movement.

First published by Lark Reviews

It is often said that his Requiem is Verdi’s greatest opera and it certainly isn’t short of musical drama. So it’s an interesting idea for an opera company to “stage” it as opposed to singing it from the front in a choral group. Stage director John Ramster (who also directs the company’s well established staged Messiah) sends his performers all over the church busily acting out their individual dramas and chalking key words such as “light”, “guilt” and “sorry” on boards.

Accompaniment on organ by Richard Leach works pretty well although, of course, one misses the bass drum and the brass in Tuba Mirum.

The cast consists of eleven young opera singers plus bass, Matthew Quirk an ex-businessman who founded and runs Merry Opera Company. Each ensemble member has worked out his or her back story and each is, in some way, coming to terms with the inevitability (or imminence?) of death. Of course the audience isn’t privy to the details of these personal stories and what we see is a great deal of facial horror, awe, despair along with much gesturing, some of it quite neatly choreographed.

Much of this, especially the constant movement of people amongst and around the audience, is off-puttingly distracting, but there are two massive upsides which make this performance a pretty riveting experience.

First every single note sung by anyone is deliberately sung to someone else – another performer, an audience member or some sort of unseen presence. It means that there is far more passion and intensity in the singing than I have ever heard in a conventional concert performance. And it’s very much an ensemble piece because the solos and chorus parts are split among all 12 performers – that’s what you can do (musical director: Mark Austin – who conducts from a side aisle) if you have a complete team of accomplished solo-standard voices.

Second, because the singers are often dotted around the church in various configurations each audience member is inside the sound. When you can hear the tenor line in the Dies Irae being sung only a few feet away from you or the alto part of the silky Lacrymosa from just along the pew you’re sitting in, you hear the music – however well you think you know it – from a completely fresh perspective.

Almost all the singers in this group are good – and it can’t be easy to keep everything together when your amorphous groupings are so disparate. There is especially fine work from Laura Wolk-Lewanowicz who is an absolutely stonking soprano and from Emma Stannard who has a beautifully modulated mezzo voice.

It’s well worth catching:

Sat 7 October, University Church of St Mary, Oxford

Sat 14 October. St John the Baptist, Penshurst, Kent

Thurs 19 October, St James’s Piccadilly

Sat 21 October, St Peter’s, Broadstairs, Kent

Sun 29 October, Our Lady of the Star of the Sea, Lowestoft.

First published by Lark Reviews: http://www.larkreviews.co.uk/?p=3833

 

It’s 1953. War widow, Frances Farrar (Alix Dunmore) has just divorced her second husband and has returned, with her children, for a holiday with her adoptive mother, Laura Anson (Susan Tracy) at the country house she grew up in. There are tensions between Frances and Laura’s son, Julian (John Sackville) and the rest of the household simmers with back stories which are gradually unrolled. It’s beautifully written, nicely observed, often witty and very compelling in the hands of director, Tricia Thorns and her cast. Hunter was very highly regarded in the early fifties and this play ran for two years at the Haymarket with John Gielgud (who also directed), Sybil Thorndyke, Lewis Casson, Ralph Richardson and Irene Worth in the cast. So why have there been so few revivals? Perhaps this production will start a trend.

Tall, willowy elegant Alix Dunmore is excellent at the unhappy Frances. She is bitterly brittle but also manages urbane chat in a voice which is spot on for the 1950s – let’s call it semi-heightened RP. And she looks fabulous in her 1950s clothes (costume design Emily Stuart). The matching hat, gloves and bag are a perfect touch. There’s fine Felicity Kendal-esque work from Susan Tracy too, She’s warm, kind, exasperated, intolerant and used to being in charge with a mannered speech mode which never quite sounds natural – I had friends whose Grannies were exactly like that in the 1950s.

David Acton enjoys himself as the outrageous, drunk, resident doctor who evokes as much sympathy – he has messed up his life – as disapproval. Stephanie Willson turns in a pleasing performance as the frumpy, 35-year-old nanny trying, in calculated desperation, to snatch at what she sees as her only chance of avoiding permanent spinsterhood. And John Sackville delights as the up-tight diplomat especially in the second half when his circumstances change. The long scene between him and Dunmore is a good example of finely judged duologue.

This is quite a big play – a cast of ten including the two children – but it sits quite neatly in the small playing space at Southwark Playhouse configured conventionally with a quasi fourth wall and a stage left entrance beside the auditorium. Alex Marker’s set – two garden scenes and two on the beach – is suitably atmospheric and there’s some nifty and well managed shifting by cast members between scenes.

I was told before I saw this play that some people regarded Hunter as the English Chekhov. Well no, not quite that. More like Jane Austen spliced with Tennessee Williams. It would make a good film.

First published by Sardines http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Southwark%20Playhouse-A%20Day%20by%20the%20Sea&reviewsID=2994

 

Chino Odimba’s neat twist on Oliver Twist makes the point that the exploitation of boys like Oliver by criminals in Dickens’s novel is exactly paralleled by the trafficking of innocent helpless, terrified young refugees into Britain today.

Deftly directed by Natalie Wilson, this slick five hander takes us from Aleppo where Adbul (Jordan Bamford) has lost almost everything, to a refugee camp where his mother (Dilek Rose) dies of pneumonia, to the heart of a criminal network in London. The ensemble work is smooth and stylised physical theatre drives the story telling forward. There’s a good moment, for example, when the whole cast is in a dangerously small boat. And, inevitably there’s much doubling of roles although that too is skilfully done through fine acting, voice work and minimal costume change so that there’s never any doubt who is who.

One of Theatre Centre’s many strengths is its talent for finding and casting excellent young actors. All five here do a fine job – Bhav Joshi as the ruthless Fabian, Alister Hawke as the smiling, devlish factory owner and later as the Bill Sykes character, Skinner. Then there’s Rebecca Hamilton as the charismatic, thieving but ultimately decent Nancy and Jordan Bamford as Abdul, shaking with fear, gibbering in a strong accent, not knowing whom to trust and wanting only to find his Aunty Yasmin.

The really outstanding performance, though, comes from the highly accomplished, versatile Dilek Rose. First she is Abdul’s be-scarfed mother, in love with her journalist husband and thrilled with her new baby. Before long, she is alone and trying to get her teenager out of the war zone to safety. At other times Rose gives us a nicely observed, totally naturalistic police sergeant in London trying both to do her job and help a lost boy. Her cameo as the kindly woman feeding birds in the park who finds the lost Abdul and takes him home to food and safety (or so she thinks) is delightful too.

This is a show which really makes its audience – many of whom are likely to be young – think about some very serious, relevant and topical issues. And as usual with Theatre Centre it pulls that off without ever forgetting that this is a play so it also has to entertain. It’s full of dramatic tension and occasionally there’s humour. And Abdul’s situation is so dire that it is probably only audience members familiar with Oliver Twist who aren’t surprised that Odimba allows Abdul a happy ending – or at least the chance of a new beginning.

First published by Sardines http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-West%20End%20&%20Fringe-Twist&reviewsID=2993

 

It’s time to sing the praises of Theatre Centre – the new writing company specialising in young audience work, based in Shoreditch Town Hall.

I’ve seen and admired many of their shows over the years but was reminded afresh of what a good job they do when I saw Twist by Chino Odimba at Soho Theatre last week. Five terrifically talented young actors unfold a horrifying 60 minute story about an orphaned boy from Aleppo who comes to be trafficked though crime gangs in London. It’s loosely based on Oliver Twist, hence the title.

Shows like this entertain in the widest sense of the word at the same time as making everyone in the audience think – and think hard. There will a lot of reflection and questioning as this play tours to schools. Theatre Centre has no theatre of its own because it wants to take work out to young people who mightn’t otherwise have access to it.

Brian Way founded the company in 1953 because he was detirmined to create theatre for young people which would have the same production values as theatre for adult audiences. He strove for parity of status between young audience work and adult work too –  quite a revolutionary concept 64 years ago.

Today the Theatre Centre, led by Natalie Wilson (also the director of Twist) works extensively in schools across the curriculum, provides CPD for teachers and employs a rich diversity of young actors.

It also champions the work of playwrights. Skylines is a newish project working in the first instance with 50 writers and five regional partners. There are online resources and support to develop stageable work.

Well done, Theatre Centre. I really admire what you do and have achieved.

If venues take money from the theatregoing public for children’s shows, then they have a moral duty – it should be a legal one – to accommodate their customers. Far too many neglect it.

I recently saw What the Ladybird Heard, which played under Thriller Live at the Lyric on Shaftesbury Avenue. The target audience was under-fives… It wasn’t Gotterdammerung.

The venue was presumably expecting hordes of young children. So why were there no booster cushions so that small people could see over the seats in front? …

Read the rest of this article in The Stage https://www.thestage.co.uk/opinion/2017/susan-elkin-thoughtless-theatres-leave-kids-booster-cushion-blues/

Launched four years ago, Michael Grandage’s MGCfutures charity is committed to giving tomorrow’s creative talent a leg-up in the theatre industry, through its mentoring, bursaries and network of support. Beneficiaries including a playwright, a director and a hat maker tell Susan Elkin how the scheme opened doors for them

Former dancer Dean Hescott-Burke, aged 31, decided in 2014 to retrain as a theatrical milliner. This year he has worked for the Royal Opera House, Garsington Opera and feature films including Mike Leigh’s forthcoming Peterloo, among other projects. He attributes his career success to MGCfutures …

Read the rest of this article in The Stage: https://www.thestage.co.uk/features/2017/michael-grandage-supporting-tomorrows-theatremakers/

Table Manners, Living Together, Round and Round the Garden

Jonathan Broadbent leaps around the stage demonstrating that chess isn’t a sensible game because in real life horses don’t jump sideways and bishops don’t have a funny walk. Trystan Gravelle meanwhile rolls off a sofa in slow motion, with real comic precison, during someone else’s argument. None of the characters on stage has a sense of humour. Everyone takes his or herself very seriously. Welcome to 1970s Ayckbourn country – as funny and well observed as ever. And his dialogue is so impeccably well written that it simply dances into the hands and mouths of the actors. People run in and out getting stressed, misunderstanding each other and sex is never far from the surface.

The real strength of The Norman Conquests, though, is that it’s a trilogy for six actors with each of the three plays presenting the action in a country house where they’ve gathered as at a weekend to care for a hypochondriac mother/mother-in-law and to spar or flirt with each other. The action occurs at different times in each play so that the three sit one on top of the other like a Picasso Cubist painting – thus providing lots of scope for situational comedy laden with dramatic irony. And sometimes a pregnant silence is funniest of all. Ayckbourn has always insisted that the three plays are performed together as an integral tryptich rather than as three stand alone plays which might or might not be grouped together. At Chichester you can see them all three on one day in an Ayckbourn marathon – as the press did – or you can catch them on different days. They probably don’t need to be seen in any particular order

Director Blanche McIntyre has allowed, or guided her cast, to find every laugh and make the humour beam through. The pacing and comic timing is impeccable as, for example, Jemima Rooper as earnest, put upon Annie realises that she’s just been the victim of yet another verbal assault or John Hollingworth as her amiable boyfriend Tom bumbles and fumbles jovially for the right thing to say. To work well, Ayckbourn has to be very slick with the cast playing skilfully and energetically off each other and that’s certainly what, for the most part, happens here. For instance, we watch Gravelle as Norman and Hattie Ladbury as Ruth his wife curl up in the hearthrug for reconciliatory sex and enjoy Broadbent’s reaction as Reg when he finds them there in the morning. There’s nothing remotely relaxing about this long house party as Ayckbourn gradually unfolds the dynamic between them.

And it’s all played out on Simon Higlett’s busy domestic set with Chichester Festival Theatre configured so that it really is in the round with around 100 extra tiered seats behind the playing space to complete the 360 degrees. The trouble with that arrangement is that actors have to work extra hard with audibility and Hattie Ladbury over compensates by shouting. On the other hand the intimate immersiveness it creates is welcome, especially, when – for example – Sarah Hadland (good) as Sarah fusses around unpacking cases at the beginning of Living Together.

I don’t suppose Ayckbourn want’s to be called a national treasure but if the cap fits …. The Norman Conquests is well worth a trip to Chichester.
 First published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Chichester%20Festival%20Theatre%20(professional)-The%20Norman%20Conquests:%20Table%20Manners,%20Living%20Together,%20Round%20and%20Round%20the%20Garden&reviewsID=2990