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Giffords Circus Avalon 2024 (Susan Elkin reviews)

Giffords Circus

Avalon 2024

Directed by Cal McCrystal

Chiswick House Gardens

Star rating: 2.5

 

It’s a very long time since I saw a circus. In fact I’ve not been since my bad old childhood days when we got lions perched on pedestals, dancing elephants and seals balancing balls on their noses. So I was curious to find out what a modern circus is, or does.

The answer – at least  under Cal McCrystal’s directorial hand – is a big glitzy panto, complete with rhyming couplets in a sawdust-floored Big Top spliced together with stunning and varied acrobatic acts. It’s glitzy, slick, fast paced  entertainment with each act well timed so that the pace never flags and you never get bored.

Giffords Circus Band is a six piece delight. They play almost continuously, timing everything perfectly to what’s happening in the ring which means they have to be exceptionally alert and versatile– and they certainly meet the challenge as we range from pop to folk to Paul Dukas, Simon and Garfunkel and music intended to evoke the Arthurian period. James Keay, MD has done a fine job. Sometimes there are vocals. The band’s own David Meredith is good but Nell O’Hara who floats rather unmemorably around the action singing, lacks the necessary presence and vocal power.

Although the clowning – mostly focused on Tyler West who’s a dwarf – brought gales of laughter from the press night audience and West is very competent at what he does, it did nothing for me. I remain unamused by “sizeist” stuff and by nonsense with audience plants. And when it got to two small girls, who clearly weren’t plants, the laughter at their reactions then, as far as I’m concerned it’s a turn off.

It’s the skilled and immensely talented physical performers who are, after the band, the real stars of this show. Dylan and Asia Medini, for example, are brother and sister. They do a startlingly good roller skate act on a small, pliable, circular base. I sat, heart in mouth, reflecting  first on the trust that such a performance requires and second the decades of practice it must have taken – probably since they were tiny children, She also does a fabulous hooping act with shiny hoops spinning in all directions at once and he contributes a clever balancing “rola bola” act. We also get The Godfathers who do hand balance and vaulting and  Nick Hodge who’s a wizard on the Cyr Wheel and very skilled on ropes – among others. They all excel at what they do.

My main issue with this show, however is the inclusion of animals. Yes, the use of wild ones is now banned in the UK, thank goodness. But, I now learn that it is still permissible to train and use domestic animals. This show included one act with a Shetland pony and another with four dogs. According to Giffords website these animals are loved and cared for, fully licensed and approved and all the rest of it. And I’ve no doubt that’s true, although they’re also exposed to the stress of bright lights, long journeys and performance routines.  Pat Clarrison and Pip Ashley, for example, have “rescued” all four of their dogs who live with them in their trailer as family. Latrova Donnert comes from an equestrian family and the Shetland pony she works with in this show is trained by her father to do these pointless tricks. In both cases the animals are constantly fed treats to reward their obedience. I found these acts  demeaning and utterly repellent in concept. I couldn’t decide whether the nausea I felt was caused by the appalling smell of the popcorn being munched by the women next to me or by the distressing spectacle in the ring: probably a combination of both. I hope passionately that someone in the new government finds time to push through an amendment so that the Wild Animals in Circuses Act  2019  comes to include ALL animals. I probably would not have agreed to see and review this show, had I known that it exploits animals who, unlike humans, have not chosen circus life.

The Sorcerer

WS Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan

Charles Court Opera Company

Wiltons Music Hall

 Star rating: 4

I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that I prefer my G&S, a century and a half after it was written, done chamber-style rather than by the big casts for which it was intended. Charles Court Opera Company – with its trademark cast of nine – has triumphed again.

The Sorcerer (1877) was the the first full length collaboration between Messrs Sullivan and Gilbert. And it has never achieved the  lasting popularity of, say, The Gondoliers or The Mikado. I’m a G&S buff but I’ve seen it only half a dozen times before, unlike their best known operas each of which I’ve seen 50 times or more. And it’s a shame because there are some lovely things in it.

The story – one of Gilbert’s whackier ones – gives us an English village in which a couple  about to marry decide that they want everyone in the village to be as happy as they are. So they bring in John Wellington Wells, the eponymous sorcerer, to administer a love potion (at a very English village tea party) which puts everyone to sleep. When they wake, hormones are astir … Think A Midsummer Night’s Dream spliced with John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos. It’s all characteristically dotty and shot through with unlikely subplots.

And it works very nicely in this production (pared down to under two hours)  for several reasons. First, director John Savournin trusts his material. He allows Gilbert’s humour to do its stuff without messing about with it. His cast spit out the spoken lines with facial expressions, pregnant pauses and telling gestures  and it’s funnier than it’s ever been.

Second, even in the finest, professional, large scale production, G&S choruses often sound muddy. Here – usually delivered by just two or four singers –  they work like exquisite cut glass. You can hear every one of Gilbert’s hilarious words and, even better, Sullivan’s delicious harmonies. Music Director David Eaton, who accompanies from piano near front stage left, has done an outstanding job with these accomplished singers.

Then you bring in G&S royalty in the shape of Richard Suart to sing John Wellington Wells. He has done these patter roles with many different companies right back to the D’Oyly Carte so he knows exactly what to do. Not that he’s in any way samey. This Wells is a rather slimy and totally convincing, smooth-talking car salesman type in sheepskin jacket and feathered trilby hat: perfect for the 1960s ambience of this production. Suart delivers the best known song in the piece with verve and freshness although I did lose the occasional word from Row L.

Other glories in this enjoyable show include Meriel Cunningham as Constance – she is hilarious as a frumpy, naïve girl in love with the vicar (Mathew Kellet – fine work). She can communicate more about sexual yearning with one lift of her foot than a bitch on heat and she does the extremes – lots of loud crying – brilliantly. And it goes without saying that her singing is top notch too.

Robin Bailey sings beautifully as Alexis and Matthew Palmer is richly, ridiculously funny as Sir Marmaduke. Every performer here is hughly skilled vocally as well as knowing how to command the stage and light it up. It’s what makes a Charles Court Opera Company show work so well.

A word of praise, too for Lucy Fowler’s set and costumes. Her main set device is an open sided tea van decorated with “flower power” and lots of pink. And the costumes are lovely –  the dressing gown worn by Catrine Kirkman (great performance) as Lady Sangazure looked as if it was straight from Biba. Where can I buy one?

I recently had a very pleasant short holiday in Bath, a city I hadn’t visited for some time. One of the things I learned while there is that Anna Sewell (1820-1878) lived in Bath for a while with her parents from 1860. And that reminded me that it’s many years since I read her very famous (and only) novel, Black Beauty, so I have now revisited it.  And first surprising thing is that, although it’s been marketed and perceived as a childrens’s novel since its publication nearly 150 years ago in 1877, she intended it for adults.

In case you’ve grown up on a different planet let me remind me that it’s a first person narrative by a horse who’s sold and resold several times, which Sewell uses as a vehicle to promote animal welfare – this, bearing in mind that, when all road transport was dependent on horses, welfare issues weren’t necessarily top of the agenda for most people. What fun it is, incidentally, to reflect in the 21st century that we still measure vehicle capability in “horsepower.”

What, as a mature adult, I liked about Black Beauty is that it isn’t anthropomorphic. Black Beauty and the other horses he is associated with can talk to each other. And they understand what human beings are saying although they cannot speak to them. Apart from these devices to allow the story to be told, Sewell’s horses are horses through and through. They eat grain and love apples. They sweat and get ill if they’re not rubbed down. They adore meadows and hate dark stables. They swish off flies. Their knees are vulnerable. When they can no longer work they will be shot and sent “to the dogs”. And I suppose they mate – or are gelded –  but this is Victorian England so she never mentions it.

Sewell’s purpose is to raise awareness of horse needs and feelings. I was never a horsey child and this was where I first learned about the cruelty of the check rain – the habit of strapping a horse’s head at an unnaturally high angle for reasons of fashion. It is desperately uncomfortable for the horse and makes it difficult to exert the power required, for example, to drag a heavy load uphill. Humane drivers and grooms will give a horse its head. And there’s the origin of yet another everyday expression. I suppose it’s inevitable that so many of our idioms are horse-related. People used horses for thousands of years. We’ve had mechanised road transport for barely 125 years.

“Flogging a dead horse” is another. Sewell is moving on the use of the whip. Through her equine narrator, she asserts that it should rarely be necessary and then – if the driver is competent and the animal complaint because it’s never been ill-treated – only a brush across the horse’s back. A well-treated horse, we learn, almost always knows what its driver or rider needs. And we see Black Beauty in a whole range of working situations: mount for a lady in a big house, carriage horse, cab horse, haulier’s horse, pulling a hearse and a lot more. And other horses tell him about their experience elsewhere – in the hunt, for instance.  In the end, with narrative neatness, he comes more or less back to where he started and the novel ends quite hopefully. It certainly drives home the message that horses were a key part of almost every aspect of everyday life in 1877.

Sewell’s message doesn’t stop with horses either. She also brings in a pitiful litter of puppies whose ears have been cruelly mutilated (“cropped”) for no reason other than fashion. She presents them in pain and bleeding and it’s quite distressing.

I do like the way though that Beauty and his fellow horses have some nasty experiences but also some very good ones. Many people are kind, decent and good at we’d now call “empathy” with animals. Her point of view is balanced and reasonable. And it was very innovative at the time to take an animal as your post of observation.

Poor Anna Sewell’s life was beset by illness. She had a serious accident in childhood which affected her for a long time. In adult life she was ill – and bed-ridden – for many years before her early death at age 58, probably from tuberculosis but maybe hepatitis – or both. She lived only five months after the publication of Black Beauty but it was an instant success so presumably she died secure in the knowledge that she had achieved something worthwhile. I hope so.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Mozart in Italy by Jane Glover

 

Marie Curie the Musical – Charing Cross Theatre

by  on Sunday, 9 June, 2024 in Onstage, Review

Ailsa Davidson in Marie Curie the Musical at the Charing Cross Theatre, London. Picture: Pamela Raith Photography

Marie Curie the Musical continues at the Charing Cross Theatre, London until 28 July 2024.

Star rating: two stars ★ ★ ✩ ✩ ✩

When it is obvious that a great deal of hard work has gone into a show, it is not a pleasure to report on its shortcomings. But sadly, in the world of theatre, stars are awarded for achievement, not effort.

Marie Curie sets out to tell the story of the most famous female scientist in history and the barriers she broke through. It also tries to weave in a strong line about the unethical application of the newly discovered radium and the conflict between making money and radiation sickness (usually aplastic anaemia) which soon emerges.

The storytelling is weak …

Read the rest of this review at: https://musicaltheatrereview.com/marie-curie-the-musical-charing-cross-theatre/

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Vasily Petrenko, Alexander Malofeev

Royal Festival Hall

09 June 2024

Alexander Malofeev is 22 but could pass for 14. He arrived on the platform like a smiley, gauche teenager. Then he  sat down at the piano and gave an astonishingly mature, poised performance of Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. It seemed gloriously incongruous.

He played the slower central variations with lyrical fluidity and was visibly attuned to Vasily Petrenko’s timings and signals. Malofeev is an unshowy performer. The action – and what action it is!  – is all in the hands which sometimes go so fast you can’t see them moving. Beautiful contrasts were achieved with Petrenko who really leaned on the colourful syncopated passages as well as the big romantic statement when the piano duets with the strings – all nicely balanced. Expcect to see and hear much more of Alexander Malofeev.

Now, I’m not normally a fan of talk at concerts but Vasily Petrenko has quite a gift for it – talking to the audience for a good ten minutes with a hand mic while the orchestra was rearranged and the piano removed in a two-work concert which ran without interval.

He was introducing Elgar’s Falstaff which I have heard before but not often because it doesn’t seem to get many outings so it was a welcome inclusion. Elgar called it a “study” in the sense of character stidy but it follows the fortunes of Shakespeare’s “fat knight” so graphically and with such a strong narrative that it is, in effect a substantial (35 minute) tone poem. Petrenko’s talk, delivered without notes, revealed him as someone who clearly knows Shakespeare’s Henry IV plays well and who loves this piece. And that enthusiasm shone through in this performance.

I loved the witty snoring moment with the bassoon punctuated by cello twitches and the very evocative passage depicting The Battle of Shrewsbury with super horn work and sumptuous pianissimo strings as Falstaff makes himself scarce because “discretion is the better part of valour”. His drifting away into death at the end was moving too.

I was delighted to see a pleasing number of children at this enjoyable concert. It restores my faith in parents who think that this music is for everyone and that you can’t introduce the next generation early enough.

The Adventures of Doctor Dolittle

Hugh Lofting, adapted by Oliver Gray who also directs

Illyria

Dartford Open Air Theatre

 

Star rating: 4

 

I have been enjoying Illyria’s very distinctive open air shows for family audiences for decades: the company is now in its 32nd year. So I always go with high expectations and this cheerful show delivers the goods – yet again.

Oliver Gray has trawled Hugh Lofting’s twelve Dolittle books to create a theatrical narrative for this show which is a revival from 2018. Thus the first half presents the eponymous, always penniless,doctor becoming a vet because he can talk to animals. Then comes the famous trip to Africa. The second half focuses on the circus and concludes with a pushmipullyu appearance. Along the way, without it becoming over didactic, we visit the evils of fox hunting, bull fighting and exploitation of circus animals.

It’s full of engaging songs. And the reason they engage is that Oliver Gray, who hesitates to call himself a composer, doesn’t bother to be original. We get what works: strong hints of G&S, Oliver! and Les Miserables and some hilarious lyrics. I like, for instance, “The orca from Majorca who’s a most prolific talker” and the wonderful Rat Shanty has been updated since 2018 with Gilbert-esque swipes at privatising the NHS and dealing with sewage in rivers. When we get to Casablanca and the Doctor agrees to take part in a bull fight because he wants to befriend the bulls, it turns into a morris dance (English Country Garden) with musical references to Swan Lake, the Can-Can and Carmen. It’s really very clever.

Illyria’s specific style comprises five talented performers who make split second timing and complex multi-roling look easy. In this particular company Edward Simpson plays the doctor, well meaning but unworldly, while Astrid Miriam Bishop. Nicholas Lee, Callum Stewart and Chelsea Vincent work miracles with everything else around him. One of the problems in an unforgiving open air acoustic like the field Dartford calls its “open air theatre” is making yourself heard but in general this quintet are pretty good at it.

The puppetry in this show is one of its many delights. Dolittle is, of course, surrounded by animals and here they are jumping about convincingly, singing, offering opinions and being captivating. All credit to the people who made them (Nick Ash, Mae Voogd and Alice King) and to the cast who’ve learned to operate them so effectively. I particularly enjoyed the shark who eats the pirate and the pushmipullyu which is done very simply by Vincent and Lee holding a head each and a blanket to represent the body – they dance in synch and it’s good fun.

I do have one reservation though. Nobody expects rapt silence from a large Saturday matinee audience including many children of all ages. Nonetheless there was more restiveness than there should have been at the performance I saw. Surely children could be told that it’s polite to look at and listen to the performance rather than chattering, scrapping and rolling or running about? And if you really have to speak, you whisper. Of course it doesn’t help if the adults with them are casually gossiping quite loudly among themselves. At times I was struggling to hear the performance because of the noise around me – and that’s a great pity when the quality of the work is so good. Could it be that, perhaps, the show is a bit too long for its target audience at nearly two hours including the interval?

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

St Giles Church, Cripplegate

06 June 2024

The opening concert in the 2024 Summer Music in City Churches began with Finzi’s Introduction to Love’s Labours Lost – thus setting the theme for the whole festival which is this year entitled Love’s Labours and focused  on “love, romance and Shakespeare in the heart of London’ Square Mile”.

Conductor Pierre Vallet, looking dapper in a rather unusual French navy suit, got the concert off to a rousing start with Finzi’s trumpet fanfares and drum rolls followed by a big fat, regal tune.

Chopin’s Piano Concerto Number 2 in F minor then came as complete contrast. I first met this lovely piece half a century ago (gulp) when I played second violin in a performance with Kettering Symphony Orchestra with Richard Markham, then still a student, as soloist. And I’ve never understood the snooty, dismissive critics who say Chopin couldn’t orchestrate because he certainly could. And Vallet demonstrated that by making sure we noticed all the colourful nuances.

Elizabeth  Sombart is a charismatic soloist and seated well in front of the orchestra she gave a pretty immersive performance. I was, for example, only 12 feet or so from her.  Her face was feeling, almost caressing the music especially in the larghetto which she played with a lot of rubato and silky romance particularly at the recap when the melody comes back with decoration. Vallet meanwhile made a fine job of keeping the orchestra together in delicate harmonic sympathy. Then came the Mazurka-based finale (lots of col legno which is always fun) played both by Sombart and the orchestra with flamboyant colour. She is, incidentally, the only soloist I have ever seen return to the platform alone to stand the orchestra up – a rather touching tribute to mutual respect.

The concert ended, after the interval, with Mendelssohn’s  Symphony no 4 in A (The Italian)  which is a pretty perfect choice for a summer evening in a scenic venue. Vallet launched the Allegro vivace at a cracking pace. There’s a great deal of very busy string work in this movement, delivered here with frisky aplomb. The vibrant woodwind playing in the Andante was another high spot  and I liked the warm lilt Vallet found for the third movement along with the strong brass work in the “trio” section.  The concluding Salterello needs to go like the wind – and it did. Full marks for urgent energy.

Spring Awakening

Book and Lyrics by Steven Sater

Music by Duncan Sheik

Director Hannah Chissick

Royal Academy Musical Theatre Company

 

Star rating: 3.5

 

I’ve seen many alumni from Royal Academy of Music’s post graduate course excelling in professional shows. It has been a while, however, since I last saw the grass roots course/company at work in the Susie Sainsbury Theatre at RAM.

It is the nature of Spring Awakening itself that the first half feels slow and occasionally dull although there is a lot of action and dynamic theatre in Act 2.

We are in a late nineteenth century community in Germany (the baseline play is by Frank Wedekind) where a group of children become teenagers and are pretty much sealed off from the reality of life, not least what sex is and how it works. Inevitably there are eventually some affectionate experiments one of which leads to disaster and some pretty dark results. It’s a popular choice for students and non professional groups because of the scope it offers for colourful small roles. The RAM production uses a cast of thirteen and there are two alternating casts.

Staged on a minimalist set in which few school desks and basic chairs also stand in for other things such as tombstones, the ensemble work is splendid. Shay Barclay’s choreography is imaginative and slick. I particularly admired the concept of the boys sitting at desks reciting Virgil in a visual, sedentary dance rhythm.

Of course this is RAM so it goes almost without saying that the quality of the singing is outstanding. And the young, nine-piece band in the pit plays Duncan Sheik’s evocative music beautifully. The music is very competently directed by Felix Elliott, leading from the keyboard. He is a Cambridge music graduate currently doing an MA in Musical Direction and Coaching at RAM.

Among the strong cast Beau Woodbridge finds all the initial insouciance and later anguish, anger, passion and despair that the role of Melchior requires. Hannah Eve Walker is delightfully, almost frighteningly, innocent as Wendla and she has an unusually well modulated singing voice.

It’s odd though, I was totally unmoved by the first act, not helped by a technical hitch which necessitated stopping the show for five minutes. By the end, however, this production had me fully on board and really caring about these characters, their loves, trials and tragedies as well as loathing the adults in their lives – nicely and variously portrayed by Holly Main-Grant and Nicholas Curry in the performance I saw. And like most of the audience I wanted to cheer at the end of the vibrant, determined number “Totally fucked” because it’s an assertive mood changer.

I look forward to seeing some of these performers in professional shows soon.