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Swan Song (Susan Elkin reviews)

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

 

I am normally chary about agreeing to read self-published books especially if they’re by people I know, however peripherally. I’ve come unstuck too often when they’re embarrassingly bad – either because the unedited text is dreadful or because of amateurish presentation.

I agreed to read this one, and didn’t regret it, because it has Stewart Ross’s name on the cover as ghost writer. I’ve known Stewart and admired his work and enthusiasm for decades. He and I used to sit together on a committee at Society of Authors or which first he was Chair and then I was. He is a respected,  prize winning author who has written many excellent books for children and adults.

What I didn’t realise until recently, is that he and Charlie Ross, the TV auctioneer and antiques dealer are brothers. Perhaps I should have done. They look so much alike they could be twins. So here is Sold!,  Charlie’s witty, self-deprecating life story (just how DO you get to be an auctioneer, let alone one on national TV?) written, I suspect mostly by Stewart. It is published by Blean Books, the Kent based publishing house Stewart has set up to publish a few titles of his own which haven’t gone to his usual publishers. Stewart is mentioned so often in Charlie’s story that it is clear that the two men are very close, anyway.

They were the sons of a touchingly snobbish mother and well-meaning but unworldly father (eventually separated) who got into disastrous debt to send them to boarding school. There Charlie, a good talker, quick thinker and reasonable singer, failed his A levels so he couldn’t follow his successful uncle into dentistry. Instead he went to work for an estate agent which meant auctions. Very gradually, with lots of serendipity because he had no life plan, he worked his way into antique dealing and auctioneering. For many years he  and a business partner ran their  own auction house, Downer Ross in Woburn. Along the way he played a lot of rugby and cricket, acquired a wife and  two children and played The Pirate King in an amateur production of The Pirates of Penzance. His ebullient personality sustained all his activities.

Then came a call from the BBC inviting  Downer Ross to feature  in the programme Flog It!. He’s funny about later participation in The Antiques Road Show for which he wasn’t always serious enough but says that working in STV’s Antiques Road Trip and Celebrity Antiques Road Trip have given him some of the most enjoyable moments of his broadcasting career. Today (long story) as well as charity auctions and lots of other jobs he regularly auctions very high value vintage cars in America – a dream job if those sorts of vehicles are your thing. He has no plans to retire.

Charlie Ross is good company, although I confess I switched off a bit during a whole chapter about cricket. He has been professionally very successful but he’s no show off and that works well in this rather entertaining book which has lots of lovely photographs at its centre.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: The Lightless Sky by Gulwali Passarlay with Nadene Ghouri

 

 

The Gondoliers

WS Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

Illyria

Directed by Oliver Gray

Fowlmere Village Hall, Cambs and touring

 Star rating: 3.5

 

Yes, you really can mount a G&S opera with a cast of only six and make it vibrant for an audience who are mostly new to the piece. Oliver Gray, who founded Illyria 32 years ago, knows exactly how to cast multi-talented  performers able to hop in and out of roles and costumes at high speed. He is also very good indeed making the best possible use of a bijoux playing space the size of a mediaeval cart carrying strolling players.

The open space around Fowlmere Village Hall, it has to be said, is not an ideal venue (although there’s plenty of parking and good loos)  because it’s the village recreation ground and the show had to share it with a noisy mini skate board park and other distractions. The cast, however, as Illyria casts always do, rose to the challenge and maintained energetic momentum to the last.

If you play, G&S on a small scale you can hear every word – and WS Gilbert is very funny – along with every delicious harmony in the choruses, quartets, trios and duets, Bravo to all especially to Richard Healey for some imaginative arranging.

Casting a female (Naomi Halliday who also doubles as a spectacularly slimy Grand Inquisitor) to play Luiz, the drummer who turns out to be the lost king, means that you have to do nifty things with keys to make the duets with Casilda (Emma Clare) work. Most of it comes off although Clare misses some of her highest notes.

The satirical story of two Republican Gondoliers who find that one of them, – but no one knows which –  is the King of Barataria,  is as topical as it ever was. And Oliver Gray’s topical updates for 2024 are fun especially in “A Regular Royal Queen”.

Alex Layfield, in his first professional acting role, excels as Guiseppe, singing impeccably and playing well off Ben Osland who plays Marco. The handstand moment in their second act duet is quite something. Sarah Pugh sings exceptionally well as Tessa too.  And Rosie Zeidler brings lovely physicality to the cowardly, self-important Duke of Plaza Toro as well as finding feisty sweetness in Gianetta. And every one of them has projectile ability to light up the stage.

I wasn’t keen on Healey’s decision to rework the music fairground style although that’s probably just personal taste. Sullivan’s music  has long been a popular choice for carousels, after all.  Moreover I appreciate the tight succinctness of this show given the mixed audience (and, at the performance I saw, rain with more threatening). I was sorry, though, that cuts include “My Papa, he has two horses”, “I am a courtier grave and serious” and “Small titles and orders”. On the other hand, Healey has ingeniously created/included a few extra bits of music to accommodate role changes and that is seamlessly slick.

 

 

The Hundred Year Old Letter

Johnny Handscombe

Bridge House Theatre, Penge

Good Wolf

Star rating 3

In 2021 a letter was delivered to an address in Sydenham – to a house which is now ten flats but which was once a gracious family residence. Christabel Mennell, who is in Bath, is apologising to Katie Marsh. The  letter was written in 1916.  Once the story hit the news it led to worldwide, fascinated speculation.

That is the basis for Johnny Handscombe’s quirky little 60 minute play which sits rather well at the Bridge House because it’s a local story.  He gives us four characters – the couple who found the letter in the building’s entrance hall among the pizza and curry hunk mail and two other women. All multi-role effectively as they discuss the letter and try out different scenarios.

There’s a lot of information tucked into this play as, for example one tells the others who the Quakers were, or sums up a century of Irish history. It just stops short of being didactic – but only just. Gradually we learn from their research (in real life a lot of this was the work of the Norwood Society) who these two women were, what they did later and when they died.

There is a lot of emphasis on what the ‘circle’, in which Charlotte said something she later regretted, might have been. Was it a séance? Or could it have been a Quaker meeting? Or something else?

It’s a decent enough piece of  community theatre by a newish local company although I don’t think much is gained from the mini-prologue and epilogue which explore the nature of rhythm and seem to belong in a different play.

This show also has a run on the Edinburgh Fringe next month.

Many decades ago, when I was teaching in the English department of a small town Kent secondary school for girls, we were relentlessly harassed by a parent whom I’m going to call Mr Misguided. He had it in for our library which contained, he said, filthy, blasphemous books as did some of our English lessons. He was (and still is) a well known local “do-gooder” who thrived on publicity. So our literary endeavours to corrupt the youth of the town were soon all over the local press and other media. Mr M seemed to object to anything which featured boys and girls communicating with other or which mentioned religion however obliquely. Well that actually covered just about everything in our library and department stock cupboard. For several months it was both stressful and funny. He backed off once his daughter was selected for transfer to the local grammar school at age 13, which was – we concluded – his purpose all along. And we were too weary by then to point out that the grammar school would  have all the same books.

I thought a lot about Mr M while I was reading Lula Dean’s Library of Banned Books (2024)  We’re in Troy, a small town in Georgia where fanatical citizen Lula Dean has set up the Concerned Parents Committee and managed to get a lot of books banned in the local school. She has also set up a mini library at her gate containing bland books about crochet, baking and etiquette – except that someone has swapped dust covers and people are actually borrowing the banned titles. On Lula’s hit list are Beloved by Toni Morrison, A Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl and “Are you there God? It’s me Margaret” by Judy Blume, all of which have actually been banned somewhere in the US –  along with other titles some of which Kirsten Miller has invented.  Of course Lula’s agenda is extreme right, anti-gay, misogynistic, “pro-family”, fundamentalist,  and anti-woke.

At the same time there’s a statue in the centre of the town which some people want pulled down. Wainwright was a slave owner who “built” the town  – or rather his enslaved minions did. It gradually transpires through 21st century DNA testing, that he is ancestor to half the town. Like many in his position he took sex from several of the women he controlled. There are now demands to remove the statue but of course there are many shades of opinion and Lula roundly supports its retention.

Miller depicts a whole community in this novel so there are lots of intersecting characters and story lines. The novel is actually too long and more complicated than it need be but it makes its point pretty well and the ending is neat. Some of the characters are delightful: Mr Minter, the gay head of music at the high school, for example. So is the doctor from Queens, whose ancestors came from India. And the style is upbeat and witty.  I laughed aloud when Lula’s estranged children return and “out” her publicly by listing the books they remember on her night stand. We often wondered what titles Mr M had on his bedside table because, of course, the more fanatical people are the more likely it is that they’ve something to hide or suppress. We need novels like this one to highlight their hypocrisy.

Moreover anyone who wants books banned is immediately hoist with his or her own petar because they are stressing just how influential books can be. And that’s exactly what those of us who think everyone should be free, encouraged even, to read anything and everything have always argued.

Next week on Susan’s Book Shelves Sold! By Charlie Ross with Stewart Ross.