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2024 Prom 14 (Susan Elkin reviews)

Prom 14,  July 29 2024

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Paavo Jarvi

Yunchan Lim

Those of us who were lucky enough to be present at Yunchan Lim’s Proms debut are going to remember it fondly when he’s being celebrated on world stages in a year or two’s time. His performance of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto was breathtaking. Many a young pianist can produce the notes but few can bring this level of maturity, sensitivity and poise to it. Lim, who comes from South Korea, is just 20

Paavo Jarvi, who ensured the BBC Symphony Orchestra duetted with him with understated elegance, worked with his young soloist in palpable partnership, often turning to watch the keyboard closely. The dramatic soft passages in the first movement were exquisite and Lim’s Adagio was the slowest I’ve ever heard it with Jarvi, ever responsive to Lim’s rubato. Then came that transition into the finale, one of my favourite Beethoven moments. Lim did it with gentle tension until he made it dance off into happy sublimity of the final movement. No wonder there were so many whoops and cheers form his huge South Korean fan club in the audience. They are entitled to feel very proud of him. He responded to the rapturous applause by playing JS Bach’s Siciliano as his encore which felt gloriously intimate considering the size of the Royal Albert Hall.

The concert had opened with Aditus by Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tuur. It dates from 2000-2 but this was its first performance at a Proms concert and new, I suspect, to most of the audience, including me.  Jarvi allowed the arresting chromatic scales and glissandi ring out with tubular bells and bass drum to the fore. He also made the most of dramatic contrasts, tensions and general pauses. It’s an interesting piece.

And so to Bruckner’s weighty first symphony which formed the second half of the programme. Jarvi is good at detail and the punctuating trombone, solo cello and busy, but incisive, string underpinning were good moments in the first movement. I also liked the flute and bassoon work in the adagio and the neatly pointed contrast between the scherzo and the trio. Once we reached the finale, though, there were balance issues. If, as here, the brass players are seated several tiers up with their feet at a higher level than the heads of the string players, their sound will blast out, sometimes too prominently. In places the ensemble didn’t feel quite integrated although there were some pleasing lyrical moments.

Deptford Baby
Written and performed by Chukwudi Onwere
Jack Studio Theatre
Star rating: 3

Chukwudi Onwere is a highly talented actor. In what is effectively a one-man show, he multi-roles
and moves with both muscularity and delicacy. It’s very physical and I wasn’t surprised to learn that
he trained at East 15. The voice he uses for his main character is RP with a Deptford twang and it
contrasts well with an exaggerated Nigerian accent for the young man’s father and high pitched
gentle Scouse for the girl he fancies – among other colours and timbres. It’s convincing, well observed and
entertaining.

The narrative presents a British Nigerian, a loyal Deptford native, en route to hand in his degree
thesis at Goldsmiths and dreaming of being a successful novelist, when suddenly there’s rumbling,
flooding, a giant fish which temporarily swallows him like Jonah  and a massive serpent which has to
be slain. It’s quite literally an “overcoming the monster” story in which the monster seems to be a
symbol of gentrification and the threatened destruction of community. It is, one infers, meant to be
a parable and as such I didn’t warm to it much, although it’s very funny in places. “Shaking like a
dithering politician” is rather good, for example. Other audience members were chuckling at jokes
about yams and other stereotypes some of which passed me by probably because I was in an ethnic
minority. It’s also a bit obviously didactic in places, explaining to the audience what the Biafran War
was, for instance, or telling us that Christopher Marlowe was murdered in Deptford in 1593.

DJ Tommy Tappah who also designed the sound, acts as on-stage stage manager, sound controller
and occasional support actor and he’s very good at all that. His turn as the Deptford Cat which sees
off a Pit Bull attacking a little girl is masterly. I could have done, however, without his laboured
attempts to “warm up” the audience as we found our seats and sat down. Being encouraged to
shout back like a nursery class at a pantomime clearly appeals to some people but it isn’t my
theatrical cup of tea.

Oliver!

Book, Music and Lyrics by Lionel Bart

Reviser and producer Cameron Mackingtossh

Director and choreographer Matthew Bourne

Desiger Lez Brothertson

Chichester Festival Theatre in Association with Cameron Mackingtosh Ltd

 

Star rating 5

Photographs by Johan Persson

Well, with the dream team of Cameron Mackingtosh, Matthew Bourne and Lez Brotherston on board, this was always going to be pretty special Oliver! And I’m delighted to report that it lives up to every expectation.

From the moment the orchestra (unusually for musicals at Chichester, in a conventional pit in front of the stage) you feel excellence: terrific violin work from Thomas Leate, for example when he’s not on viola or mandolin. It’s a work full of musical colour and conductor Graham Hurman presents it like a gloriously, rich aural painting.

Then the orphans arrive moving to the musical rhythm with such  electrically incisive vibrance that you’d know Matthew Bourne was involved even if you didn’t have a programme or hadn’t read the posters. It’s astonishingly arresting both in the opening scene and every time the ensemble melts or bursts onto the stage, thereafter You may have seen Oliver! many times before (and I have) but you’ve never seen it done like this.

Brothertson’s design is integral to the magic. He has worked with Bourne for thirty years so the two strands of the show are impeccably synched. The multi-level set revolves repeatedly to evoke different places: the orphanage, Fagin’s den, The Three Cripples. Mr Brownlow’s home and more with a terrific climax with girders and bridges so that Bill Sikes (Aaron Sidwell – good) can be shot dramatically fifteen feet or so above the thrust stage. The action makes interesting use of the revolve too, for example when Oliver is running away from the undertaker he’s been sold to.

Of course there are no weak links in this cast. Every single actor – including many talented, skilfully trained children – puts in a fine performance. Among these is Simon Lipkin’s Fagin – I think, on reflection, the best I have ever seen in this role, including Ron Moody, whom I saw live in a 1980s revival.  He interacts with the audience.  He drops in pretend ad-libs, he times every note and word of “I’m Reviewing the Situation” with superb comic timing. This production, incidentally, really brings out the Klezmer (Jewish folk music) elements in almost everything Lionel Bart wrote for Fagin and that’s a treat too

Shanay Holmes gives us a magnificent Nancy, rather more glamorous and less seedy than some interpretations. Her account of “As Long as He Needs Me” is passionate, sustained and powerful. Oscar Conlon-Morrey, who has a rich chocolatey operatic bass voice is splendid as the self interested Mr Bumble who ultimately gets his well-deserved come uppance. And Katy Secombe matches him beautifully as the revolting but flirty Mrs Corney. It’s fun too that, Secombe is the daughter of the late Harry Secombe who played Mr Bumble in the famous 1968 Carol Reed film that we’ve all seen so many times.

Cian Eagle-Service (who shares the role with Raphael Korniets and Jack Philpott) is a charming Oliver, as long as you can go along with the coventional assumption in this show (and in Dickens’s Oliver Twist  on which it is based) that 11-year Oliver has somehow acquired RP and perfect manners despite having been in a very ropey Midlands orphanage from birth. Cian sings with fine intonation especially in the challenging “Where is Love?” and nails the right level of wronged innocence.

The Artful Dodger is great part for any young actor and Billy Jenkins exploits it fully. Not only does he do the drawling East End accent and arrogance to the manner born but he dances with very attractive lightness.

The real star of this show, though, is Lionel Bart. Nothing else he did achieved  the success of  melodious, touching, funny Oliver!  in which every number is a showstopper. And this outstanding production celebrates that brilliance and allows it to shine though

It is a cliché – and I don’t usually gush – but you really need to see this show, even if you have to steal a ticket. It is simply a fabulous night in the theatre and a wonderful achievement for Justin Audibert to have programmed this in his first year as artistic director at Chichester.

I recently gave a talk at Catford Library about my latest book, All Booked Up. It followed a meeting of the library’s book group and two of its members stayed for my event. They were full of, and passionate about,  the book they’d just read and had been discussing: The Lightless Sky. So I bought it.

Subtitled “An Afghan refugee boy’s journey of escape to a new life in Britain” this harrowing book should be compulsory reading for  Keir Starmer, Yvette Cooper and everyone in the cabinet.

Gulwali was 12 when his desperate mother paid “agents” to take him and his brother to safety in Britain because their father and grandfather had been murdered. It took over a year during which he almost drowned, was badly burned in a lorry carrying chemicals, was arrested several times, and became ill from malnutrition. Sometimes, like a hideous game of snakes and ladders he was forced to go back a stage.  He, and others like him were ruthlessly tossed about, literally and figuratively. Moreover he was separated from his brother almost from the first day so there’s ongoing anxiety about where he was.  It’s gut-wrenching stuff. Human beings should not be having to endure experiences like this in the 21st century and as for the squalid,  inhumane horror of the “Jungle” at Calais, only 22 miles from our shores, I am almost at a loss for words.

And yet … underpinning this narrative are two very positive things. First there’s Gulwali’s unshakeable Muslim faith. His version of it is humane, gentle. kind and he is scathing about Muslim extremism. Eventually he comes to recognise and respect other religions too because decent people of all faiths and none – and that’s most of us – all want the same peaceful things.

Second, he makes a number of very good friends on the way, often separated from them and then sometimes joyfully reunited. Most of them are older than him and try to support him even when the situation is terrifying. And there are several occasions when supremely good charity workers really help him although, his mental health is so poor that he makes repeated irrational decisions to run away. So there’s celebration of goodness in this story too.

Now, when you read a book like this – Waheed Arian’s In The Wars which I featured here last year is similar – you know that eventually there will be some sort of happy ending because the narrator has, literally, survived to tell the tale.

After repeated failed attempts over several weeks, Gulwali and two friends eventually get to Dover by stowing away in a lorry full of bananas. Many interrogations follow and he has great difficulty making British authorities accept that he is only 13 – he has had to do a great deal of growing up in a short time and seems to be older.

Eventually he is taken in by a foster family in Manchester, put through a rehabilitation programme, learns English, goes to school, passes A levels and gets a degree in politics.  And by an astonishing piece of co-incidental luck,  he is reunited with his brother.  Today, a happily married man of 29, Gulwali works as an advocate for refugees. He is an active influencer too, giving talks about refugee rights. Hw works hard to support causes in Britain because, he says, he wants to put back as much as he can in the country which has taken him in.

The Lightless Sky is uplifting as well as disturbing because, obviously, for every refugee success story there are hundreds who die on the way or get sent back to dangerous environments having endured almost unthinkable hardships. Please can we stop thinking about the refugee “problem” and start working out what we, who have so much, can do to help people in desperate need?

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Swan Song

Adapted from Anton Chekhov and composed by Zara Harris

Orchestrated by Matthew Stanley

Directed by Abbie Freeman

 

Star rating 4

 

It is always cheering to see engaging new work created and performed by people at the very start of their careers, especially when it’s done well. And this take on a Chekhov short story about an old actor retiring, dying and regretting his past, is done with imaginative flair by seven accomplished young performers.

It began life in Leeds, the work of recent University of Leeds graduates. Now it makes its London debut in Penge and it was good to see the Bridge House Theatre almost full for the performance I saw.

It’s rare to get live music in a small show like this but, with some recorded backing we get two actor musos (Gigi Downey on reeds and Isaiah James-Mitchell on cello) along with Matthew Stanley on keyboard which certainly enhances the atmosphere especially when the instruments are integrated with the choral singing. The part-singing is both ambitious and pretty strong. It’s far from easy when you’ve got five singers each holding a different line, without being able to see each other or an MD. It almost always comes off and stays in tune and together. It’s a sung through piece which is presented as musical theatre but could just as easily be called opera.

Stevie Catney is outstanding as Vasili Sveitlovidoff, the elderly actor. The character is ill and unhappy and for long periods Catney has to watch his younger self (Sacha Smith – good) in wonder and regret, like Scrooge with the Ghost of Christmas Past.  Catney excels at concentratedly conveying his feelings of anguish silently with facial expression and body language.

There’s some fine ensemble work in this show too, At the start the cast becomes voices in Sveitlovidoff’s head and it’s slickly done. Moreover there’s a very arresting episode when he finally reveals his talent as an actor by dropping into Lear’s Blow winds and crack your cheeks surrounded by the cast who provide extraordinary, sinister, animalistic sound effects beneath him to represent the weather and other hostile forces. It’s both startlingly original and seriously disquieting.

There is a lot of talent among these seven actors. All the women sing well,  James-Mitchell has an unusually wide vocal range and Savannah Perry delights as Sveitlovidoff’s regretted love. I look forward to hearing more of these young performers and of the trio who created this pleasing show.

 

Prom 4, 21 July

Hallé, Hallé Children’s Choir, Hallé Youth Choir, Hallé Choir

Sir Mark Elder

Royal Albert Hall

 

Sir Mark Elder’s final performance with the Halle after 25 years in post as Music Director was bound to be a special occasion particularly in the Proms season opening weekend with the hall packed to capacity.

It lived up to every expectation. Sir James Macmillian’s Timotheus, Bacchus and Cecilia is a dramatic, celebratory homage to the patron saint of music, predicated on the doings of Alexander the Great as presented in John Dryden’s 1697 poem Alexander’s Feast; or, The Power of Music. It premiered in Cincinnati last year. This was the first performance at the Proms.

And with over 200 singers to work with, Elder made sure that at times the roof of the Royal Albert Hall was in danger of flying off, especially in the first section of this three-movement, continuous piece. The menacing bass drum in the middle section was a high spot as was the pianissimo (it may be marked even softer – I haven’t seen the score) string work under the immaculately trained children’s choir. Finally, the rousing climax at the very end, followed by one sung note, was electrifying. Moreover, and it’s a terrific achievement with such a vast choir , the diction was excellent. Every word was clear.

After the interval came the grandiloquence, pain, angst, warmth and challenge of Mahler’s 5th Symphony. It requires massive levels of stamina and control and got them in this powerful, moving performance.

Played like this, the delicious C sharp minor semitones in the opening movement sound unsettlingly exotic – highlighted by splendid work from the brass section. The second movement demands “grösster Vehemenz” and there was certainly plenty of that amongst the brooding disquiet.

The Scherzo is almost a horn concerto and principal horn, Laurence Rogers, moved one tier up to play it so that he could be seen. Elder found lots of tension in the subverted Viennese Waltz and the perfectly played  pizzicato string work was made to sound sinister.

And so to the Adagietto. It’s hard to make something as well known as this sound heartfelt and fresh (and stop the audience imagining Dirk Bogarde in a gondola) but Elder managed it. It was actually an expression of love for Alma Schindler whom Mahler had just met – they married in 1902. Here it was played with all the  quivering tenderness it needs and was deeply, richly compelling. Then came the cheerful resolution to a symphony which has earlier expressed a lot of distress. I liked Elder’s crisp delivery of the big orchestra sound and his very grand rallentando on the final page. Maybe there was a whiff of self indulgence here but I think he’d earned the right to that by then.

The applause was inevitably, and justifiably, rapturous. Because this was a valedictory concert, Elder then produced a microphone and addressed the audience with his usual fluent, dry wit.  Finally, after a few words in praise of Elgar, he and the Hallé bade us farewell (for now – they’ll be back but probably not together) with Chanson de Nuit.

It made a very satisfying finish to the opening weekend of the 2024 Proms season.

Acis and Galatea

 

George Frideric Handel

Directed by Louise Bakker

City of London Sinfonia conducted by Michael Papadopoulos

Opera Holland Park

 

Acis and Galatea doesn’t seem to get many outings these days apart from Polyphemus’s aria “Oh ruddier than the cherry” which is a Radio 3 pot boiler. I’ve seen it only once before and that was in a concert version with five performers so it’s a real pleasure to see it fully staged, with wit and verve. Well done, Opera Holland Park for running with it. It’s hard to believe this is your first ever Handel opera.

Of course the plot line is very simple and pretty clichéd : two males lusting over the same female. Partly because of the linear nature of the narrative and the tableau-esque structure of the piece it has sometimes been dubbed a masque rather than an opera. Indeed that was how Handel originally presented it before reworking it as an opera.  But director Louise Bakker, designer Alyson Cummins and choreographer, Merry Holden have found inventive ways of filling it with movement on Opera Holland Park’s  very wide, double playing space. This production is anything but static.

An ensemble of eight plays Galatea’s spirits. She’s a sea nymph and they work hard to dissuade her from falling in love with Acis, a mortal shepherd, because they know it won’t end well. (I’ve long suspected, incidentally, that this was partly what WS Gilbert was sending up in Iolanthe). They are colourful and individually dressed to look rustic and otherworldly with lots of feathers, horns, and leaves. They sing impeccably –  carefully cued by Papadopoulos who mouths every word – like a well trained chamber choir as they zip from place to place on the stage, continually re-grouping. The fugal singing at the beginning of Act 2 is a particular high spot.

Soprano Elizabeth Karani brings a blend of quiet dignity, innocent love and distraught passion to Galatea. She is especially good at sustained pianissimo notes which compel the audience to listen extra carefully. Anthony Gregory, tenor, gives us a richly musical Acis whose voice blends beautifully with Karani’s especially in “Happy We” when his line is often higher than hers which, somehow, adds to the all-loved-up glee they’re both feeling.

Ruari Bowen is outstanding as Damon, the sensible shepherd who offers advice and support.  His warm, light high tenor is perfectly suited to this role. “Softly Gently” is a very long aria but he sustains the calm, very attractive 6|8 lilt to the last. I also enjoyed the witty moment in which he fondles a sheep in time to the trills and runs he’s singing.

Chuma Sijeqa’s very deep  bass voice makes Poluphemus seem seductive even though he’s really a rapist trying to steal another male’s female. His low notes are suitably menacing and his higher ones almost plaintive. It’s a well balanced take on a character who is actually a lonely outcast.

Meanwhile the reduced forces of City of London Sinfonia are doing sterling work in the pit. Handel’s music is delicate, dramatic and tuneful in this work and Papadopoulos brings out every nuance. It’s a treat to see a theorbo (played by Paula Chateauneuf) in the mix too.

There are lots of chuckles in this engaging show. The ensemble becoming a flock of uncooperative sheep, chewing and baaing in fleece gilets is fun. So is the moment when Sijeqa forks his middle fingers and stabs them towards the huge single eye incorporated in his head dress in the time-honoured  gesture to signal to Acis that he’s watching him.  When we need to understand that Galatea lives in a pastoral paradise, the ensemble each puppet a paper bird around her, to some idyllic recorder playing which connotes bird song.

The set delights too. At its centre, immediately behind the orchestra is a circular arbour surrounded by ivy-clad Doric pillars to which ribbons are attached. It works as a frame and at one point becomes a maypole. The final scene of Galatea’s grief and eventual happiness is staged with strings of coloured lights, and since on a summer’s evening, the natural light has almost gone by then, it feels rather magical.

This is a fresh and original take on an engaging piece which still works well when given the right treatment, despite John Gay’s pretty awful libretto.

The Baker’s Wife

Joseph Stein and Stephen Schwartz

Directed by Gordon Greenberg

Menier Chocolate Factory

 

Star rating: 3

 

It’s remarkably sweet and unremarkably predictable but that does not mean that, in its undemanding way, it isn’t a decently entertaining show.

Nostalgia rules. Joseph Stein’s book takes us to a French village in the days when every such community, however small, had its own boulangerie. The plot, based on Marcel Pagnol’s 1938 film,  sits somewhere between Chocolat and Anna Karenina with more jokes and fewer trains.

Aimable, (Clive Rowe) arrives in the bread-hungry village to replace the former baker who has died. He brings with him his much younger wife, Genevieve (Lucie Jones). Goodness knows why a decision was made to mis-pronounce her name Jenna-veever which sounds clumsy every time anyone says it but the British never were any good at languages. Then the inevitable happens and Genevieve is tempted away but there’s a happy ending.

Rowe is excellent, as you’d expect. He presents a likeable, quite innocent man who lives for bread and is head over heels in love with his wife. He  convinces, even when she leaves and he flips. Used to his annual panto dame at Hackney Empire, I hadn’t realised what a fine lyrical singer Rowe is, placing harmonies in duets with accuracy and warmth.

Jones makes a good fist of her complex character. We’re left to imagine her back story. Why has she married this man with whom she’s not in love, although she’s respectfully fond of him?  Her dramatic, anguished full belt is quite something.

Joaquin Pedro Valdes is suitably alluring as Genevieve’s very determined love interest and Josephina Gabrielle delights as the feisty café-owner’s wife who triumphs cheerfully over her rather awful husband (Norman Pace – good) and his relentless put-downs. I would like to have seen, and heard, a lot more, though, of Finty Williams’s Hortense who is in an unhappy marriage and eventually extricates herself. There are 19 people in the cast of this show, each of them a named villager with a personality and role. Often they come together as an ensemble with some quite pleasing choreography by Matt Cole.

Probably though, the best thing about this show is Paul Farnsworth’s set. I’ve not seen the Menier Chocolate Factory space in a transverse configuration before and it’s very inclusive because some audience members are actually in the café behind the tables the cast are using. It’s awkward when an audience member need to leave, however, because there’s only one audience exit. Farnsworth makes imaginative use of balconies and Dustin Conrad’s nine piece band is tucked behind a screen on one of them. There are lots of leafy extrusions and French signs to connote a village public space.

The Baker’s Wife is a pleasant show. And it’s quite refreshing to spend two and a half hours in a London theatre without blood or relentlessly repetitive use of words which were once taboo.

Photograph: Tristram Kenton