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Music and Memory

On Sunday I was at the Brighton Dome to review a Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra concert – a routine and regular professional job for me. My Loved One was with me and we seemed, as things turned out, to have left Ms Alzheimer’s at home for once.

Before the concert, I spotted Gavin Henderson – Brighton man, sponsor of one of the BPO principal players, senior arts administrator and Principal of Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. I’ve known Gavin for some time and had spoken to him on the phone only a few days earlier on a different matter. So naturally I scooted across to say hello. He was with another man whom I also recognised and exchanged pleasantries with.

When I got back to MLO I said: “Gavin was with Nicholas Chisholm and …”. Before I could finish my sentence to explain that Nicholas is now BPO chairman, MLO had flashed back. “Yes! He used to be head of the Menhuin School and you once went down to Cobham to interview him.” This from a man who a few hours earlier didn’t know what day of the week it was and had completely forgotten that we were going to Brighton. Alzheimer’s is indeed a mysterious, patchy disease.

Perhaps MLO was getting into his stride for the concert because music certainly seems to bring the best out in him. I’ve noticed before that it seems to keep Ms A briefly at bay. The Brighton concert – Schumann, Tchaikovsky and Brahms – certainly put him in a very upbeat mood.

Last week we were at Merry Opera Company’s staged Verdi Requiem at St James’s Church, Piccadilly. Well the “staging” is a bit odd but the singing is fabulous and MLO’s eyes shone from beginning to end – something I haven’t seem for months. Ms A was definitely on leave for a couple of hours that night.

Everyone knows that music affects the brain in general and the memory in particular. That old “they’re playing our song” cliché has a lot of truth in it. For us, since you ask, it’s the Brahms B flat piano concerto. Then there’s the way certain sorts of music have been proved over and over again to benefit children’s learning and development – the so called “Mozart effect”.

And it’s good, when Ms A is thumping on your door, to remember happy times. She doesn’t like those and sulks. Good!

MLO has always been a bit of a classical music geek – pompous with it, in his poseur youth of course but much mellowed now, I’m pleased to report. I came to classical music in the first instance largely through playing and singing it at school. Some of the first things we did together as teenaged friends was to share music, usually on his primitive “Hi-Fi system” (remember those?)  and, when we could afford it, go together to concerts – mostly at Royal Festival Hall or Proms. I can only have been about 15 when he introduced me to Stravinsky’s Pulcinella and lent me a record of the Brahms’s violin concerto  – wonderful pieces both of them. What a gift! And, obviously, it’s something we’ve gone on enjoying together for the intervening half a century or so.

Whenever we hear something at a concert or on Radio 3  which we’ve known almost all our lives, I can see the music bashing Ms A on the head and triggering good memories in MLO. Music also makes him think – it’s as much an intellectual experience as an emotional one if you listen properly – and that’s very good for him too. It seems even to help him to remember other things I would have expected long since to have dropped off the hard drive in his brain.  It must be at least 15 years since I made that trip to the Menhuin School to interview Nicholas Chisholm.

 

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/