Press ESC or click the X to close this window

Opera Holland Park: Kat’a Kabanova (Susan Elkin reviews)

This concise, passionate piece comes with echoes of both Chekhov and Ibsen – somewhere between The Seagull and A Doll’s House. Based on a mid-nineteenth century Russian play and inspired by Janacek’s late flowering love for a much younger woman, it is written with mature, if not always subtle, musical skill – that fortissimo timpani roll at the moment of sexual ecstasy for instance –  and, in this production, conductor Sian Edwards ensures that every nuance is brought out.

As always at Opera Holland Park the playing area is so wide that it’s almost transverse theatre except that the audience is all on one side. Designer Yannis Thavoris has used it pragmatically, with a pseudo river, complete with the ubiquitous reeds, winding across the space and a semi circular mini stage to represent indoors in various forms – I won’t dwell on the fact that in its first incarnation the latter reminded me of a trampoline guard. It was effective thereafter.

Kat’a (Julia Sporsen) is a married woman with an unexciting husband (Nicky Spence) and an appalling mother-in-law (Anne Mason). In her husband’s absence she falls in love with Boris (Peter Hoare) and of course – this is opera – it can’t end happily.

Sporsen and Hoare work pleasingly together and each brings out the raw longing, regret, guilt and all the rest of it with some impressive solo singing and duet work. The symbolic flying movement as they lift all four of their arms to create a sense of togetherness (with a nod at the old slang implications of “flying”) underpins the singing rather cleverly too. Amongst the supporting roles Paul Curievici as Kudrjas stands out as does Clare Presland’s Varvara.

The chorus is a strange beast in this production though. The score gives them very little singing but, since they have to be in the building, director Oliver Fuchs uses them a lot in other ways to provide a sense of bustling crowd scenes, people walking by the river or observing the action. The trouble is that there are 32 of them and the lay out of OHP’s stage means that it takes a long time to get that number of people on and into position for what are often very short scenes – the whole laborious concept is far too fussy. Full marks, thought, for their beautiful, elegant Downton Abbey-esque costumes – in brown, terracotta, amber, burgundy and orange; like warm old bricks.

Kat’a Kabanova doesn’t  seem to get as many outings these days as Cunning Little Vixen or Jenufa and that’s a pity because it’s an interesting piece worth exploring. Well done Opera Holland Park for the usual imaginative programming.

First published by Lark Reviews.

Oliver Ford Davies is an unusual actor because he’s also an accomplished academic – that makes him a pretty cerebral blend of practical and theoretical.  His latest book Shakespeare’s Fathers and Daughters (for Bloomsbury – in its Arden Shakespeare series) is a fascinating reflection of his dual approach. There are so many fathers of daughters in Shakespeare: Prospero, Capulet, Lear, Leonato, Egeus, Shylock et al and, of course, Ford Davies has played most of them. And means he’s worked with many interesting young female actors such as Mariah Gales who played Ophelia to his Polonius in the 2008 RSC production of Hamlet. He gives us plenty of insights into how an actor might approach this paternal/filial relationship along with background historical commentary on the changing legal rights and responsibilities of fathers and their portrayal in drama, “more nuanced and realistic” in Shakespeare than in say Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta in which fathers and daughters become “farcical melodrama.” It’s an accessible study, well worth reading.

So is John Kenrick’s Musical Theatre, a history (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama). This is a new edition of an American book first published in 2008 so it’s bang up to date – and that’s useful as the world of musical theatre is changing rapidly. It is strong on tracing the origins of musical theatre through the Greeks and the centuries before America was colonised. We then see how, after independence, America gradually hosted the evolution of a new theatrical art form – and why. Today, of course, tourists make up large swathes of the audience and Kenrick reflects on what changes that is triggering – as well as considering what will happen in the future.

A musical theatre phenomenon so big – and arguably unexpected – that it justifies a whole book of its own is the Disney musical and how it has triumphed both in the cinema and the theatre. Edited by George Rodosthenous The Disney Musical on Stage and Screen (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama) is a series of quite academic essays which explore topics such as gender and race or ask whether Mary Poppins was the precursor of the feminist musical. There’s a lot of very useful discussion here for serious students of the genre.

If you want to study rhythm – probably with a view to building up your own –  and how it works for actors then look at Elion Morris’s Rhythm in Acting and Performance (Bloomsbury). Morris is an actor and percussionist – an unusual combination – who teaches all over Europe. And do read Culture, Democracy and the Right to Make Art edited by Alison Jeffers and Gerri Moriarty (Bloomsbury) for thoughts about community art and why it matters. I saw Garsington Opera at Wormsley’s Silver Birch recently with a cast of 180 – a very accurate example of what this book is about.

And so to something a bit closer to the ground.  Nick Hern Books has added Jessica Swale’s Blue Stockings to its Page to Stage series. It’s really a study guide – by Swale herself and Lois Jeary to help students or anyone else who wants to study the play, stage it or both. Or read four plays by Christopher Shinn. Hard on the heels of Christopher Shinn Plays 1 comes, from Bloomsbury Methuen Drama Christopher Shinn Plays 2 with an introduction by Shinn himself.

That bloody fiend, Ms Alzheimers has taken up residence in my dishwasher – like a slug which has crawled obscenely up the waste paper.

My Loved One was King of the Dishwasher. It’s a gender thing, he used to tell me fondly as he expertly stacked plates and cutlery therein and, an hour later fussily put every item away in its accustomed place. And woe betide me if I dared put so much as washed mug in the cupboard or a knife in the drawer because it would never be up to MLO’s standards. Men are good at dishwashers. Women are not, I was told.  He passed the same wisdom (or something) on to both our sons too. Elkin men are dishwasher chaps. Impede them at your peril.

Well for decades I’ve acquiesced in this sexist nonsense because I am very busy and it was one less thing for me to do. I’d delegated it and if he chose to lord it over me on this one issue then fine. Get on with it, mate.

But now, of course, things have changed. MLO can rarely remember whether the machine has run or not so I often have to remove a dirty cup or plate which he has popped in to sully the clean things which are drying. He can no longer stack it logically either. Setting it to go and/or finding the tablet to put in the plastic compartment isn’t easy either. He unwraps the ready-to-use ones and leaves the cellophane on the ones you’re meant to undo.  And if he tries to empty it when the cycle is finished many things get put in the wrong places. I might find the cat’s dishes with our own plates and basins or tea mugs in with saucepans. Things I need in the kitchen disappear too and I sometimes search for days.

Yes, I see Ms A’s  foul face every time I open the dishwasher door. “Yoo-hoo, I’m in here too now” she crows. And I have to keep telling myself that I must never complain. It’s the illness, not him. It’s often hard to remember that though when – as this week – I exasperatedly found a ruined bag of expensive best quality oranges in the freezer instead of the fridge and had to remove a pile of dirty dusters from the tumble dryer.  Although the latter is in a different part of the house, MLO had forgotten and mistaken it for the washing machine.

She has long pernicious tentacles, does Ms A. And I’m afraid I grumble at her victim all the time. How can this orderly man I’ve lived with for nearly fifty years suddenly be unable to put the cutlery away competently or not know where his clean socks are?  It seems so ridiculous. What I feel instinctively and from long habit is at total variance with what the medics say and what, incredulously, I see happening every day.  I wish I were more saintly and could just keep quiet but …

Silver Birch

Need more proof that drama transforms young lives? I think most of us are already convinced but if you need evidence to support an argument with the unenlightened then I’ve seen three in the last week.

First there was The Midnight Gang at Chickenshed (awful place to get to from London’s deep south but always worth it when you make the effort). Chickenshed’s whole raison d’etre is inclusivity so David Walliams’s story about a “misfits” making their own fun in a hospital ward was a marvellous match. And it was a real joy to see young actors, many of them trained for many years by Chickenshed right through to higher education level, doing a fine, professional job on stage. “Theatre changing lives” is no idle boast. No wonder, David Walliams, who was in the audience and spoke at the end the night I was there, said that he had “welled up” during the show. It runs until 6 August so there’s still time to catch it.

Then there was The Hunting of the Snark which continues at Vaudeville Theatre in London’s The Strand until early September. It’s one of the funniest, most original shows for young children I’ve seen in ages and it certainly goes to show that Lewis Carroll’s deliberately daft 150 year old poem has still got what it takes. All the children around me – there’s a tiny bit of audience participation – were shiny eyed, engaged and laughing. More lives being enhanced.

Silver Birch which ran for three performances last weekend was Garsington Opera’s community show. With a cast of 180 based around six professionals, it included people of all ages (the youngest child was a year old and there were many silver heads) some with disabilities and some who are dealing with issues such as post traumatic stress disorder or domestic violence. The piece (byJessica Duchen and Roxanna Panufnik)  is about a young man who serves in Iraq and returns to his family, damaged by his experiences. It’s powerful stuff. And it’s wonderful to see all those participants, fizzing with confidence,  bubbling with excitement and producing work of such high quality. At the performance I saw there were children in the audience – not to mention Jay Smith, the man whose experiences in Iraq had provided some of the material for the plot.

Don’t ever belittle drama and theatre. It can, and often does, move mountains for people.

2919_1501328877

Left to right: MLO, George and our younger son on holiday in Spain

It’s deeply ironic that My Loved One should be succumbing to an age-related disease at this moment in his life. He finally became an orphan less than three years ago. Well, we knew that losing your last parent was the ultimate marker in attaining adulthood but we didn’t expect Ms Alzheimer’s to arrive on the scene almost before the “funeral baked-meats” were cold.

My father-in-law, George Frank Charles Elkin, died in October, 2014, just a few weeks short of his 90th birthday. And I am deeply thankful that he didn’t live another year or two to see his only child succumbing to Miss A because it would have been a hideous reversal of how things are meant to be.    George didn’t have Alzheimer’s. He was pretty deaf towards the end and a bit forgetful but perfectly sensible most of the time. He was just old.

When his father died, MLO was 69. They were separated by just 20 years. Back in 1944 George, 19,  knew that the army, which had just conscripted him  was about to send him to the Far East for a long stint. So he married his teenage sweetheart quickly while the going was good. A weekend’s leave a few week later meant that by the time George actually set sail for the Pacific Rim – where eventually he had to help deal with the aftermath of Japanese atrocities – his wife was pregnant with MLO.  He learned he was a father when the baby was a week old and didn’t actually see his first and only progeny until over a year later.

How, after all that, they ever settled down to become a proper family still astonishes and impresses me, but they did. MLO’s parents celebrated their diamond wedding just before her death in 2004.  George lived another ten years, most of them good ones. We took him on holiday several times with all his grandchildren and great grandchildren several times for example.

Now the reason I mention all this here is that something very odd happened when George died. MLO had never seemed to me to be in the least like his father in appearance, manner or outlook. If there were family likenesses at all it was his mother’s father and brother that MLO resembled. Well, you know how the Buddhists believe that when someone dies the soul is immediately reborn in another creature, human or animal? It was almost as if I was watching a version of that. From the moment that George breathed his last in Medway Hospital, MLO turned into him.

Logic, education and common sense tell me that it’s just the strange vagaries of genes combined with the influence of the demonic Ms A. But it feels disconcertingly uncanny when I hear George’s voice coming out of MLO’s mouth. The sound is slightly raspy and often higher pitched than it used to be. MLO also now makes exactly the same sort of (negative) remarks that his father would have done in precisely the same tone. And that’s new. When we were flying home overnight from Kuala Lumpur recently he thought the aircraft was “messing about” and that the pilot had turned off the engine.  I had to explain that we were cruising at 35,000 feet somewhere over Russia and that we’d be at Heathrow in 5 hours or so. “Huh!” he said contemptuously in George’s voice. “You’ve got more faith in British Airways than I have”.  If he were a mimic on a talent show, I’d give him full marks. Then there’s the slow trudging walk and small steps, all George could manage in his late eighties  – if I catch MLO out of the corner of my eye it’s like seeing a ghost. I do double takes all the time. And as for that silent hovering when I’m working …

What happened to that twenty years, the generation which separated MLO from his father, then? Gone. No wonder he frequently tells me that he feels he has been cheated of at least ten years of life.

Are we marginalising young people in the arts? We mount lots of theatre for them and are good at telling each other what (say) under 21s need. But do we actually involve them enough? Do we listen to them? Do we let go enough to give them space? I attended part of a conference entitled Uprising last week at the Gulbenkian Theatre in Canterbury which seemed to be suggesting firmly that young people get far too few hands on opportunities to show just how capable many of them are.

The Gulbenkian has a youth board called ART31 and was this group which – supported by the Gulbenkian, Lizzie Hodgson at Thinknation and Chris Duncan of Spark Film Production – who had organised the eclectic, busy conference. There is also Arts Council funding for ART31.  The day was vibrant and imaginative with lots of scope to share and discuss ideas with a wide range of people. Performances, discussion groups, break out sessions and lots more were the order of the day. Proof, if we need it, that many young people are dauntingly competent. They also know exactly what young people want and, usually, how best to do things. “We’re the experts. Ask us. We can provide most of the answers about young people” said Daniel McCormick, 23, Young Arts Advocate from Dunbartonshire (in amazing gold shoes)

The day began with a panel discussion chaired by Billie JD Porter writer, documentary film maker and TV presenter – and aged only 24. Along with McCormick the panel comprised Darren Henley (CEO at Arts Council England), Jasmin Vardimon (Director of her eponymous dance company), Michael Hill (KCC Cabinet Member for Community and Regulatory Services) and Brendan Relph, 16, CEO and founder Gocreative Group.

Describing ACE as “a talent agency – probably the biggest in the world” Henley wants to “bring young people to the heard of decision making because it brings them to the centre of power”. As McCormick says “We are the future”.

But the strongest message was subliminal. A retired army officer, Mr Hill is not a gifted speaker. There was a lot of fumbling with notes and stumbling over words as he delivered what was effectively a paean of praise for Kent County Council’s arts record. The words “political” and “spin” came to mind. He was followed by Brendan Relph. What a contrast. At 16, he has started his own profitable company and speaks without notes – and plenty of wit and inspirational verve.  Yes, youth has many advantages especially when it is as accomplished as Mr Relph, probably half a century younger than Hill.

None of that, however, justifies the public ageist putdown flashed at Hill by Porter as Chair. And I joined in the applause he got for his reply. Older people should never exclude young ones but the opposite is true too. Ageism can operate in both directions. And it shouldn’t. Surely it’s a case of working together and sharing complementary skills with shedloads of mutual respect?

However accomplished and imaginative a young theatre producer (for example) might be, he or she can still learn a lot from one who’s been doing the job for a decade or three. And it is both ignorant and arrogant to pretend otherwise. When I interviewed actor Julian Glover, 80, recently about his Lear with students from Bristol Old Vic he told me he was learning as much from them as he modestly hoped they might be from him. It is a two way process. Always.

I left the conference reflecting that yes, we in the arts must all work much harder at making young people integral to everything we do. But let’s also stop pigeonholing. “Folks is folks” as Scout observes more than once in To Kill a Mockingbird. We need boards, collaborative productions, companies and so on in which young people and older ones work together. The energetic imagination of the former combined with the expertise and experience of the latter is a powerful mix. The people we should be trying to ease out are the closed thinkers who pour cold water on every idea, the ones management textbooks call “blockers”. And they can be any age.

 

This week I put my loved one in charge of ordering three items by phone from a mail order catalogue – something he would have done without a second thought only a few months ago. On this occasion it’s a good job I hovered because he could remember neither the name of our road (we moved here 10 months ago) nor the post code. Fortunately the saleswoman at the other end of the phone was very patient and understanding.

In short things aren’t getting any better. The truth, of course, is that degeneration is clear – exactly as all the medics, media and everyone else confidently and bleakly predict. Our elder son said a week a two ago that he thought his father was worse on Saturday than he had been on the previous Tuesday. This condition is a one way street. Ms Alzheimer’s is here to stay and the foul fiend is very determined.

So MLO needs to try a cholinesterase inhibitor drug as soon as possible. Yes, I know such drugs do nothing more than slow the advancement of the symptoms for a bit. I also know that they don’t suit everyone. The side effects can be pretty unpleasant for some people. Moreover MLO has a slow heart beat (first either of us knew about it and no, he has never been an athlete) so there has to be a second opinion before a prescription decision can be made.

Enter the NHS with all its desperately slow, bureaucratic inefficiency.  MLO was deemed to need a 24 hour ECG monitor to check his heart rate over time. For some unfathomable reason, you are not allowed to make appointments in hospitals – as you would at the dentist, the vet, the hairdresser or the garage which services your car. No, you have to wait until someone deigns to send you a take-it-or-leave-it slot. Who on earth dreamed it up?  It’s an absurd system which must lead to hundreds of no-shows and cost the NHS (actually the tax-payer aka you and me) a huge amount of money. We’re always being told the NHS is strapped for cash. I’m convinced that they could at least dent that a bit if they just exercised some common sense occasionally and recognised that this is 2017, not 1947.

Another gripe is this entirely nonsensical (and costly) letters-in-the-post business. Why on earth can’t they email like the rest of the world? And spare me that facile data protection stuff. It’s just an excuse to do things in the most cumbersome, least convenient possible way.

To make matters worse, they “lost” our referral which means that had I not sought the help of two people in the know who pushed on our behalf, we’d still be waiting for the ECG appointment – indefinitely. Finally, two and a half months after diagnosis, MLO got the test done last week and now we wait for the next stage.

I have just rung and asked if I can make an appointment for MLO see the consultant so that we can get the ball rolling.  No no no, you can’t do that. Silly me. You have to wait until you’re “offered” one.  Why? I’m not trying to jump the queue. I know these things take time. But surely we could all operate like 21st century grown ups – with diaries?

I’ve always been a tooth grinder – at this rate I shall have no teeth left at all by Christmas.

This evidence gathering session at the House of Commons select committee cries out for verbatim theatre. “The object of this session is not to conduct a show trial” is a phrase repeated often, but in a way of course that’s exactly what it is.

The events, which took place in 2015, are riven with dramatic tension as six very competent, clear-thinking MPs push for answers from two people who obfuscate and squirm evasively.

Kids Company was a charity founded by colourful, larger-than-life Camila Batmanghelidjh (Sandra Marvin) to support children in poverty.

Alan Yentob (Omar Ebrahim) was chairman of the trustees. The charity had lots of friends in government and was awarded many millions of pounds.

Eventually, after years of unwise spending, the charity went bust and it was time to ask some very pertinent questions.

If, for example, Kids Company had 19,000 costly cases, why – when it was wound up – were there only a few hundred to hand over to local authorities?

Why, for example, was one child with mental health problems bought a pair of shoes costing £150? Is it true that some Kids Company money was given to people to pay mortgages?

And underpinning all this is Batmanghelidjh’s worrying assertion that thousands of vulnerable kids will be utterly lost without her charity to support them. There are no answers or conclusions.

As a piece of theatre, to an extent, it entertains as it shocks and is occasionally piercingly funny.

The trouble is that, in this case (unlike London Road) verbatim theatre and musical theatre are an unhappy marriage and the piece would have worked much better as straight theatre (book and lyrics are by Hadley Fraser and Josie Rourke, edited from the transcript of the evidence session).

Tom Deering’s music – played by a fine string quartet led by Torquil Munro on piano – is quite attractive. However, much of it is effectively mood music to tell us that, for example, characters are feeling stressed, and it’s pretty cumbersome.

Yes, there’s singing, but the verbatim text does not provide good lyrics. Characters speak a few sentences. Then they sing some. And it seems clunkily pointless. There’s some quite nifty chorale work to emphasise specific lines, but it doesn’t really add much.

Of course there are some notable individual performances. Sandra Marvin looks every inch the part and sings with plenty of warmth and passion.

Ebrahim has a magnificent operatic bass voice but it seemed almost incongruous in this context.

Alexander Hanson finds exactly the right puzzled authority for Bernard Jenkin; Rosemary Ashe does an entertaining turn as Kate Hoey; and Liz Robertson interprets Cheryl Gillan’s cut glass incisiveness nicely.

None of this, however, stops this from being a pretty unsatisfactory show. Directed by Adam Penford, it’s an interesting idea, but just in the wrong medium.

First published by Musical Theatre Review http://musicaltheatrereview.com/committee-a-new-musical-donmar-warehouse/