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Showing posts with label opera. Show all posts
Showing posts with label opera. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 1, 2019
Tuesday, October 1, 2019
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Rating: 
I had a bad case of the Monday blues yesterday. I got soaked cycling to work in the rain and soaked cycling home afterwards. So when it came time to leave my warm house to head up to the King's Head Theatre in the rain, I was downright miserable. By the time I got there (you guessed it, soaked), I was sullen and glum - and wishing I was wrapped up in a blanket at home watching Netflix and eating pizza.
But then Opera’r Ddraig's The Elixir of Love began, and all that damp misery immediately washed away. From minute one I had a big smile on my face that persisted throughout the show (and through most of the still wet ride home).
Adapted from Donizetti's 1832 opera L'elisir d'amore, Opera’r Ddraig swaps the Basque village setting for Barry Island, South Wales in 1982 - and retranslates the work to fit the South Walian dialect. It's a smart decision - with hilarious friction generated from the highfalutin' poshness of opera incongruously clashing with working-class characters calling each other twats and telling their enemies to "fuck off already". Plus, as someone from South Wales, I got a kick out of hearing my home town of Pontypridd mentioned in an opera staged in Islington.
The plot finds lonely sadsack Nicky (David Powton) admiring cafe owner Adira (Alys Roberts) from afar. He wishes he cuold work up the courage to ask her out, only for quack salesman Dr Dulcamara (Matthew Kellett) to arrive offering a selection of love potions. Nicky enthusiastically purchases them, only for his romantic rival, soldier Brandon (Themba Mvula) to gazump him with a marriage proposal.
None of this is taken particularly seriously, with the show establishing a light-hearted, gently self-satirising tone early on and sticking with it. But, in an impressive feat of casting and performance, everyone is funny. There are moments where most of the cast is on stage, each providing enough entertainment to carry a show on their own. You don't know where to look for fear of missing out.
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| Matthew Kellett and Alys Roberts |
I hesitate to name many highlights because I enjoyed the whole damn thing. I'm smiling now when I think of Alys Roberts' trying to work out what that awful stink in her cafe is, or when Caroline Taylor suddenly becomes infatuated with Nicky, David Powton enthusiastically spraying himself down with piss, or pretty much every moment that Themba Mvula is strutting about the stage,
But, even within all this, Matthew Kellett's Dr Dulcamara crushes it. He gets the showiest songs, with his salesman's patter mapping perfectly onto Donizetti's music. He gets to subtly break the fourth wall, both singing to Nicky about how amazing his products are while confiding in us how incredibly stupid he thinks these people are. He's far from a villain though, eventually proving to be as gullible and dim-wittted as his various customers.
They're ably supported by careful direction, a fine musical score and a set that's evocative of Barry Island without getting in the way of the performances. I don't have a great deal more to say about The Elixir of Love without getting into hyperbole. It's the opera I'd take someone sceptical about opera to - and it singlehandedly eradicated my Monday blues.
The Elixir of Love is at the King's Head Theatre until 26 October. Tickets here.
Friday, September 27, 2019
Friday, September 27, 2019
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Reviewed by David James
Rating: 
Though I've reviewed a whole bunch of opera over the years I'm still a neophyte. I love smaller-scale comedies as performed by Pop-Up Opera, I check out the occasional large experimental piece at the ENO and, on a basic level, I just like the music and singing. So, Puccini's Madam Butterfly, performed above The Gatehouse Pub in Highgate by a small but talented company, should be very much my bag.
And it would be, if it weren't for the yellowface.
This is the bit where I stroll blithely into a decades-long debate about racism in opera. Hold onto your hats. Going in and taking my seat I had no idea what I was in for: I only knew the vaguest plot outline of Madam Butterfly (mainly that it is set in Japan) and with the programme cover and show posters featuring a Japanese woman in geisha makeup I naturally assumed that the show would feature this performer and other Japanese cast members.
So when white British actor Olympia Hetherington walked onto the stage as Suzuki, wearing a kimono, her face tanned and her eyes made up to look slanted my jaw dropped. What the hell kind of show have I come to? I sensed my plus one tense up next to me (later confirmed when, during the interval, we both immediately began talking about it).
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I can anticipate the defences. Yes, it's probably very difficult to find opera singers of Japanese origin to play these parts, especially for a small-scale fringe production. Or that Madam Butterfly has a long tradition of being cast and performed in this manner. Maybe it's not right to deprive audiences of the beauty of Puccini simply because contemporary politics have shifted. And, of course, demanding that all casting be accurate to the role's race is going to limit the amount of plays featuring characters of colour that are staged.
I thought about all this at length during and after the show. After all, the rest of the audience didn't seem to have a problem with it: perhaps this is just the way opera is done and I should just go with the flow.
But I can't deny what my conscience was screaming at me throughout: "this is wrong!"
If it's a choice between not staging Madam Butterfly vs doing it in yellowface - then you don't stage it. This shit just doesn't fly in 2019.
If it's a choice between not staging Madam Butterfly vs doing it in yellowface - then you don't stage it. This shit just doesn't fly in 2019.
By this point, it seems academic to get into the iffy politics of the narrative, which features stereotypically servile Japanese women and concludes with a noble white woman swooping in to rescue a mixed-race child and transport him back to the West. But believe me, that's not great either.
Thing is, aside from the racism, this production is full of pretty good stuff. I enjoyed Taylor-Stokes' singing in the lead role, Thomas Birch makes an enjoyably monstrous Pinkerton and the puppeteering of Butterfly's son is effective and technically inspired.
But quality doesn't mean much when it's rooted in a foundation this rotten. Surely at some point during the production of this show, someone queried whether performing Madam Butterfly in this way was a good idea. Based on some research it's not as if casting white performers in Madam Butterfly is a new debate, with most companies at pains to address this elephant in the room. That Opera Loki doesn't seem to have considered it at all reeks of privilege.
What on Earth were they thinking?
Madam Butterfly is at The Gatehouse until 29th September.
Thursday, May 24, 2018
Thursday, May 24, 2018
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Rating:
When I was 12 I spent most of my time arguing over which Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle was the coolest (Raphael, obviously), so watching an opera composed by a 12-year-old is a humbling experience, even if that 12-year-old is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
This is Bastien und Bastienne, one half of a double-bill with Der Schauspieldirektor, directed by Anna Pool and Berrak Dyer and performed by Pop-Up Opera. The company's mission statement is to broaden the appeal of opera by staging productions in unusual locations, combined with irreverent adaptations that preserve the tone but update the humour. It's a style that proves perfect for these two farcical comedies that poke fun at stuffy, self-obsessed elites.
First up is Der Schauspieldirektor, a 'singspiel' (basically half comedy/half music) about an impoverished arts company holding auditions for its next production. Problems arise when two sopranos, faded star Madame Herz (Sarah Helena Foubert) and talented newcomer Mademoiselle Silberklang (Hazel McBain) compete for the same role. There's only enough money to hire one of them, so the two women attempt to vocally outdo one another and claim the coveted title of prima donna.
Aside from the competing aria and rondo, this is primarily a goofy self-referential comedy about the difficulties of receiving Arts Council Funding and the egomania of theatre producers. Though it occasionally borders on being a bit too broad, Wesley Biggs and Laura Cheetham serve up two energetic, nervy caricatures familiar to anyone involved in backstage drama, with Foubert and McBain injecting their respective aria and rondo with character and humour.
But Der Schauspieldirektor proves to be a mere appetiser for the much more satisfying main course of Bastien und Bastienne. This opera tells the story of a dippy teenage couple on the outs. Bastien (Nick Allen) has been putting it about with the rich ladies in town, enraging his girlfriend Bastienne (Laura Cheetham). Despite their current woes, they're still besotted with one another, and so turn to mystical love guru Colas in an attempt to solve their problems with new age nonsense and yoga.
I've seen many Pop-Up Opera productions, but Bastien und Bastienne feels like the platonic ideal of what the company wants to achieve. The piece is performed in the original German and translated via Harry Percival's extremely funny surtitles. When Bastienne is furiously denouncing a recalcitrant Bastien, her rage is summarised as "jog on mate", and later her despair that her man has strayed is translated as her bemoaning that her "milkshake really isn't bringing the boys to the yard". I had a smile on my face from start to finish, with Bastien und Bastienne effortlessly sailing past my "three giggles" comedy test in about five minutes.
One of opera's biggest hurdles is perceived inaccessibility - a reputation is often well-deserved. But I simply can't imagine any audience not enjoying this particular production. The egalitarian, welcoming atmosphere the company create was amplified by Bethnal Green Working Men's Club, providing a charmingly bedraggled backdrop that aches with community history.
The show is set to go on tour over the next few weeks to a variety of excellent venues, including the attractively bombed out Asylum Chapel in Peckham, the acoustically incredible Thames Tunnel Shaft at the Brunel Museum and the enjoyably whiffy Garlic Farm on the Isle of Wight. There's many more listed on their website, but I can confidently predict that this show is going to delight wherever it goes.
Boring simply isn't in Pop-Up Opera's vocabulary and whether you're opera-sceptical or a die-hard fanatic you'll find great heaping piles of things to enjoy. I left happy and satisfied, with my only complaint that my cheeks were sore from grinning so much. Check it out!
'Der Schauspieldirektor & Bastien Und Bastienne is on tour until 27th July 2018. Details here.
Friday, November 24, 2017
Friday, November 24, 2017
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Rating: 
“A whore must always be a whore,” said Giuseppe Verdi about Violetta, the sex worker heroine of his opera, La traviata. Since then opera (and, to be honest, pretty much all of performing arts) hasn't been particularly kind to sex workers. The best case scenario is that they get whisked away from a 'life of sin' by a knight in shining armour, but in the vast majority of cases they meet a depressing end via disease, drug addiction or under the knives of male serial killers.
This all contributes to the intense stigma against sex work, which despite being the "world's oldest profession" is widely considered a demeaning and disgusting way to make money. Trying to understand the facts of the situation involves squinting through a cloud of moralistic judgment, negative stereotypes and buttoned up prudery. Fortunately, Experimental Experience's Sex Workers' Opera is here to clear the air and educate us on the practicalities, pitfalls and joys of sex work.
The show consists of a series of musical sketches performed by the cast, composed partly of performers and partly of sex workers (we are never told who's who). These sketches are formed from countless true accounts of what this job is like, with contributions from 50 individuals over 17 countries.
We progress from a lighthearted story of an Argentinian streetwalker giving her client marital advice, an amusing song about the draconian bans on what you can depict in porn, right through to a harrowing depiction of being arrested and brutalised by the police. Running through all this is a narrative throughline of sisters divided by one's choice to engage in sex work, a narrative that provides a mouthpiece for the anti-sex work arguments about safety, coercion and criminality.
The sceptical sister's position is less malicious and more sympathetically ignorant, giving the characters an excuse to defend themselves and explain what sex work entails. Naturally, the show is largely very positive about sex work: each participant explaining that they have made a reasoned choice to do this for a living, that it suits their personality and lifestyle, that they are smart enough to keep themselves safe and, most simply, that they enjoy it.
The core of the show is the mantra "listen to us". Much is made of the law around sex work: with the show taking a particularly strong stance against the UK adopting the 'Nordic model', in which the clients rather than the sex workers are criminalised. Their arguments against it are so convincing that you can't work out why it's being considered at all - but then you start to wonder exactly how much consultation the government does with sex workers when formulating new laws around the profession (I'm guessing not much). So, "listen to us" works as a minimalist and powerful argument for taking into account those with boots on the ground.
But while Sex Workers' Opera successfully tackles some of the stigma and misconceptions about sex work, it shies away from responding to legitimate criticism. The sceptical sister character is a bit of a strawman and her objections are summarised as boring and repetitive. To be fair they mostly are: the cast easily dismissing stereotypes that most sex workers are forced to do this, that they're addicted to drugs, that they're petty thieves and that they'll be somehow tainted by an invisible stain for the rest of their lives. But it's disheartening that the argument that sex work promotes the objectification of women is also tossed in the pile of things not worth debating.
Surely there's room for a legitimate debate over whether literally commodifying women's bodies contributes to societal misogyny? I'm not coming down on one side of the debate or the other (after all, there's decades of feminist argument on the issue that I haven't read), but it feels like the show dodges a pretty important question. It's not as if there isn't time to spare: while the majority of sketches and songs are great there are a couple of duds (primarily the prerecorded video shorts) that could be trimmed in favour of putting a bit more philosophical meat on the show's bones.
I don't want to sound too down on the show: Sex Workers' Opera is an imaginative, well conceived, well performed (Emy Fem in particular has a magnetic stage presence) and it's downright interesting piece of theatre. It will continue to have a positive impact on the world as long as it's staged: these are stories that need to be told and points of view that need to be communicated. If you're a legislator then buy a ticket and listen to this show.
Sex Workers' Opera is at Ovalhouse until 2nd December. Tickets here.
Wednesday, July 26, 2017
Wednesday, July 26, 2017
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Even after all these years, the sacrilegious thrill of mashing up high and low culture gives me happy little tingles. Nothing gets my goat quite like people snootily dismissing something because it doesn't fit their rarified opinion of what music, theatre, film or art should consist of.
In the best case scenario you dive into trash and come up clutching diamonds, as I did when I went to see Miley Cyrus perform her jawdropping Bangerz tour. On the other hand, you can just come up with a fistful of trash. For example, I was briefly convinced that Michael Bay's Transformers films were secretly genius subversive satires, but on closer inspection well, they weren't.
And so to The Marriage of Kim K, a musical by Leo Mercer (known as leoemercer) and Stephen Hyde that fuses Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro with Keeping Up With The Kardashians. We approach this through the framing device of Beth (Amelia Gabriel) and Mo (Stephen Hyde - also the show's composer), a young married couple arguing about what to watch on TV. Beth, a young lawyer, just wants to relax her mind for a bit with Kim and company, while struggling songwriter Mo turns his nose up and demands to watch televised opera.
On stage right are Kim Kardashian (Yasemine Mireille) and her (temporary) husband Kris Humphries (James Edge). Recently married in a blaze of publicity, the pair quickly realising that this may have been an awful mistake. Kris is a preening, jockish lunkhead who treats his new wife like an inflatable doll, while Kim is increasingly peeved at the way he disregards her feelings. On top of that, she's receiving calls from a lovelorn Kanye West...
Meanwhile, on stage right, excerpts from The Marriage of Figaro play out. In full period costume and slathered in stage makeup, Count Almaviva (Nathan Bellis) and the Countess (Emily Burnett) emerge, initially singing in Italian but soon in English (Beth demands the subtitles be switched on). Camp, highly strung and vaguely clownish, the pair as impressive vocally as they are comedically.
With Beth and Mo's creaky marriage literally at the centre of the piece, Keeping Up With The Kardashians and The Marriage of Figaro become two equally valid prisms to examine their problems through. When Beth identifies with Kim and Mo with the Count, we not only get insights into their individual personalities but into the social archetypes the pair represent. Beth is every brainy woman who feels judged for leafing through Hello when they're bored and Mo's the kind of dude who craves being seen as culturally literate, intellectual (probably while wearing a turtleneck).
This is all conveyed through genuinely neat wordplay and music. The Kardashian side of the stage is pop-inflected and the Figaro side pretty much traditional opera (with a bit more swearing than usual). As we near the end three stories and become increasingly intertwined and the cross-cutting becomes more rapid, melding each musical element into an effective high/low culture symphony.
It's an outright impressive feat of musical writing, with Faux and Mercer managing to keep everything balanced as they essentially tell three stories at once. Performative highlights are James Edge's wonderfully boneheaded Kris, who flexes and peacocks his way around the stage to great effect, Nathan Bellis's Count, possessed of an admirably expressive rubberface and Amelia Gabriel's Beth, who emotionally anchors the show.
Unfortunately, even though the ointment is damn fine, there are still a couple of flies to be found. Least egregious is that Mo is maybe a bit too much of a twat - I found myself rooting for Beth to ditch this stuffy failure and strike out on her own (but maybe this is the point).
Somewhat worse is that the show doesn't work well with the Arcola's thrust staging. I was way off to one side, and the triptych stage design meant that half of the characters were obscured at all times. On top of that, the sound mixing wasn't particularly great and a lot of (what I'm assuming were) clever lyrics were lost in an aural fuzz.
The Marriage of Kim K is clearly a great show but I'm not sure the Arcola has the right seating layout to properly stage it - if you do go, avoid sitting to the extreme left or right of the stage. But it's still refreshing to see something so resolutely unstuffy and playful, going so far as to successfully align the antics of Kim Kardashian with one of Mozart's finest operas. If I had a chance to see it at a better angle, I'd leap at the chance.
The Marriage of Kim K is at the Arcola until 29 July, then on tour. Details here.
Wednesday, March 22, 2017
Wednesday, March 22, 2017
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"I think we know the plot already...." someone snidely (and loudly) asserted as the scene-setting surtitles appeared at the beginning of PopUp Opera's I Capuleti E I Montecchi. But do we? This is Vicenzo Bellini's take on Romeo and Juliet, and fans of Shakespeare (or even of Leonardo DiCaprio) might find themselves surprised at how this pans outs
For one thing (spoiler alert) this is a Romeo and Juliet where almost everyone survives to the final curtain, with a cast of characters pruned down to just Romeo (Flora McIntosh), Giulietta (Alice Privett), Capellio (Andrew Tipple), Tebaldo (Cliff Zammit-Stevens) and Lorenzo (Richard Immerglück), and that begins after the star-crossed lovers have dispensed with balcony-based sweet-talk and progressed into getting the hell out of Verona.
It's an opera that Shakespeare purists apparently often turn their nose up at, indignant at the liberties Bellini has taken. Yet I Capuleti E I Montecchi isn't directly related to Shakespeare's play - it's more of a second cousin. Bellini's piece actually takes inspiration from the Renaissance tale that Shakespeare adapted, sharing only a broad structural outline.
Watching Romeo and Juliet and not knowing what's going to happen is quite a startling experience. You wait for the familiar old plot beats, but then the opera zigs where you assume it's about to zag, tumbling into unfamiliar territory. Most interesting is the amplification of the hatred between the two warring families. Absent are vaguely noble sentiments of "two households, both alike in dignity" - instead the viciousness, barbarity and gangland elements are cranked right up.
It makes for a raw and brutal experience, a love story punctuated by torture and intense misery. Of course, this heightened emotion makes the perfect fodder for a kickass opera. I've seen several PopUp Opera shows over the last couple of years and have been consistently delighted by their light touch and egalitarian approach to an art form that can feel overly rigid. But this is the first time I've seen them do a tragedy and it was fascinating to see their terse style adapting to the tone.
The underground caverns of the Vault, here low-lit and stripped back, accentuate the claustrophobia of the piece. Many scenes are set in the cellar of the Capuleti home, making the bric-a-brac feel little like Tony Soprano's basement. The best bits are when the characters light themselves, as when Giulietta cradles a lamp like a baby, strikingly lighting herself from below.
This staging is underlined by a bevvy of brilliant performances. I'm no expert so can't really speak for their specific vocal qualities - but their singing communicates such specific emotions that the surtitles are rendered nearly redundant. I specifically loved Flora McIntosh's robust Romeo with a chip on his shoulder. He stalks about the place with barely disguised contempt - his flights of passion and rage recognisably adolescent but less impactful for it. Alice Privett's Giulietta is a fine partner for him - her increasingly panicked performance the product of realising she's only a piece of meat for men to fight over.
It's a fine night out and more than lives up to the high standard the company has set for itself. Right now, PopUp Opera feels like the safest of safe bets when planning a night out, marrying technical and performative excellence to intriguingly bold takes on familiar material. You won't see another Romeo and Juliet like this anytime soon.
I Capuleti E I Montecchi is at the Vaults until 23 March, then touring. Details and tickets here.
Thursday, December 8, 2016
Thursday, December 8, 2016
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A great operatic voice cuts right you down to the bone. Héloïse Werner does just that in this touching, gripping and understandably morose study of death. Over the three acts of this one woman opera, Werner and composer Jonathan Woolgar get to grips with subjects as cosmic as the heat death of the universe, inevitable as the eventual extinction of the human race and the lonely death of every individual human being.
To a backdrop of quotes from poets, scientists and philosophers ("This is the way the world ends / not with a bang but a whimper" - T.S. Eliot / "The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." - Carl Sagan), Werner delivers a striking vocal performance that oscillates between pure, perfect musical notation, guttural cries of misery and mantra-like chanting ("oblivion.. oblivion..."). All that takes place on a pitch black stage, the only live musical accompaniment two black sticks she rhythmically bashes together and a tiny cymbal that produces a shiver inducingly piercing note.
At her most miserable Werner makes us feel like voyeurs, peering in on sadness usually screamed into pillows in 2am black hole lonelinesses. But, though Werner is the emotional fulcrum on which Scenes from the End turns, the coolly minimalist staging creates a detachment that lets us analyse rather than be overwhelmed.
Werner and Woolgar's gradual zooming in from the death of the universe to the death of the individual creates a secular spiritual continuity between us and the cosmos. Realistically, it's impossible for us to truly grapple with the universe dying: every atomic, chemical and molecular process gradually coming to a halt, the stars releasing the last of their energy, leaving behind nothing but an empty, lifeless void (a process scientists have evocatively named 'The Big Yawn'). The human race won't be around to experience it - yet it's all too easy to map this infinite blank emptiness onto personal experiences of depression and mourning.
But the next section, about the extinction of the human race is sadly somewhat less difficult to imagine than it was a year ago. You try and tell yourself that though history ebbs and flows, decency, intelligence and justice eventually prevail over stupidity and hate. Well, maybe they don't. Woolgar and Werner's elegy for a human species voraciously consuming its natural resources and destroying our planetary life support system is reproachful: "We have done well, but we forgot to survive".
Watching this sets off all kinds of philosophical sparkings. Perhaps too-late pushes towards ecological, sustainable living run counter to every animal instinct we possess? After all humanity has spent 10,000 years successfully tapping into its lust to build, reproduce, conquer, refine and expand. Can we truly stop now - is trying as futile as a colony of ants collectively choosing not to construct an anthill, or a spider making the decision not to spin a web?
This all sharpens the idea of personal loss - highlighting the individual amongst the masses. As Stalin memorably said: "one death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic". Werner explores the reactions to loss, from the intense physical pain of grieving to the platitudes offered by onlookers. The programme explains that Werner is channelling her own pain into this performance, and the naked honesty of the thing is palpable.
Scenes From the End isn't liable to send you skipping out into London's Christmas lights with a glint in your eye and a song in your heart. It is, however, a smart and moving dip into dark waters we all have to navigate at one point or another. What it definitely isn't is an unalloyed miserybomb, Scenes from the End might stare down darknesss, but it does so meditatively. I really enjoyed myself.
★★★★
Scenes from the End is at the Tristan Bates Theatre until 10th December. Tickets here.
Tuesday, June 14, 2016
Tuesday, June 14, 2016
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"Among all the torments that Mankind is capable of, the most dreadful of them is to be buried alive." So says The Most Lamentable And Deplorable Accident, a 1661 pamphlet describing the deeply unpleasant fate of Lawrence Cawthorn. Prior to modern medical science, comas and deep unconsciousness were often mistaken for death and with little way of delaying decomposition corpses were buried pretty damn fast.
So imagine poor Mr Cawthorn, gradually coming to and finding himself in pitch blackness. He tries to sit up, hitting his head as he feels the cold, hard wood surrounding him. Panic sets in. He begins to scream and scream and scream.
Churchgoers, alarmed by "great groanings and shriekings" from underground hastily disinterred him and opened the coffin to reveal a terrible sight: "the shroud was torn to pieces; the eyes were swollen; the brains beaten out of the head; clots of blood were to be seen at the mouth; and his breast was bruised black and blue."
So yeah, being buried alive sucks: confirmed. But how does it feel to be in the freshly buried's shoes? Oskar McCarthy's Buried Alive gives us an idea of the sadness, claustrophobia and misery via a performance of Swiss composer Othmar Schoech's Lebendig Begraben, a song cycle adapted from a poem by Gottfried Keller, sung from the perspective of the newly buried. Our protagonist awakes in panic, praying that a mourning girlfriend will hear his cries, or that an opportunistic grave robber will come to his rescue. No-one comes, and as the air thins he eventually sinks into hypoxic delusion.
For starters, McCarthy knows how to set a scene. Having initially performed this in the marvellously opulent Brompton Oratory last October, he shifts to the similarly impressive St Giles Church in Camberwell. From the moment you enter, the place practically shivers with atmosphere. Candles dot the aisle at the centre of the nave, creating a gloominess that's underlined by the gradually waning summer sun shining through the stained glass. At the crossing, a simple black coffin stands surrounded by a ring of candles.
Jammed inside with nary an inch of free space, McCarthy looks believably corpse-like, the underlighting giving his features a tinge of Hammer Horror. It's a powerful theatrical image, one able to withstand the enforced stillness of the performance. On top of that, McCarthy, though constricted to the coffin, puts in a great physical performance. As he sings out his claustrophobic despair he wriggles uncomfortably in his box, clenching and unclenching his fists. By the end he's mixing in an effective bit of mime, pressing against the unmoving lid in horror.
It's quiet, dreamlike and slightly hypnotic, McCarthy's baritone as convincing communicating hope as it is plumbing the depths of despair. I've seen this performer in a number of things: Pop-Up Opera's Cosi fan tutte and L'Italia in Algeri, and recently Midsummer Opera's Don Giovanni. Each time he's stood out in an ensemble cast and here, with the spotlight firmly on him, he similarly excels. There's a fine balance to his performance style, believably and naturalistically inhabiting a character whilst delivering a fantastic vocal performance.
A church-set German language song cycle might not sound like the most thrilling time, but wherever this plays next it's well worth a look-see. Tinged with cool gothic morbidity and with a deft, light and effective theatrical touch, Buried Alive is going to stick in the memory for a while yet.
★★★★
For information on future performances please see buried-alive.org
★★★★
For information on future performances please see buried-alive.org
Monday, April 18, 2016
Monday, April 18, 2016
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There was a time, not too long ago, where I'd have recoiled at the idea of sitting through a three hour, non-English opera. Can I appreciate music that I can broadly recognise as 'good' but have zero technical understanding of? Is it even possible for me to both follow and get involved in a byzantine tale of 18th century scandal?
Well, I enjoyed the hell out of Midsummer Opera's Don Giovanni, so I guess so.
St John's Church, opposite Waterloo station, makes for an interesting backdrop. Built to celebrate Napoleon's defeat, the ornate gothic interior was blasted away by Nazi bombs. The postwar reconstruction is politely austere with a gentle focus on community engagement, charity and progressive politics (I imagine there's few other British churches with mosaics of Malcolm X and Che Guevara on the walls).
Still, having a gigantic portrait of Christ looming over the room is an interesting juxtaposition to Mozart and Da Ponte's tale of ruthless sexual exploitation, cold-blooded murder and gleeful amorality. This was my first exposure to the lascivious Don and he more than lived up to the hype.
Skimming through the plot synopsis on the way to the venue, I began to get an inkling of just how fun it would be: "Don Giovanni, a young, arrogant, and sexually promiscuous nobleman, abuses and outrages everyone else in the cast, until he encounters something he cannot kill, beat up, dodge, or outwit."
The guy is a perversely likeable moral abyss. This attraction/revulsion complex is the core of the pitch-black comedy that made this production so damn fun. Gently and unobtrusively modernised, Andrew Mayor's interprets Don as a slithery middle-aged lothario. With his dark sunglasses, all-black outfit and rictus grin, he has a skull-like demeanour, making him a dangerously diabolical bundle of death n' sex.
Mayor takes pains to underline the sheer glee of the character, able to turn the charm on and off at will. For example, as he sings a sweet love song (Deh vieni alla finestra), Mayor slides hints of genuine sweetness into his vocal performance that seduce us in the audience as well as his target, an unsuspecting maid. Mozart feels as if he's showing off a bit at times like his, his music so beautiful that it bypasses every horrible thing we know about the Don and wallops us right in our glowing red emotional weak spots.
The rest of the cast are no slouches either. Highlights are his put-upon thrall Leporello (Oskar McCarthy): McCarthy has an enviable combination of musical skill and comedic expression, and as part of superlative company Pop-Up Opera has singlehandedly done an awful lot to make me appreciate the artform. Here he pitches himself as a patient henchman who's the embodiment of the shared addiction to finding out what depravity the Don will sink to next. Perhaps funniest is when the Don physically puppeteers him about the stage in an attempt to disguise himself, McCarthy gritting his teeth and rolling his eyes at his latest humiliation.
Similarly wonderful was Nicola Ihnatowicz'* Donna Elvira. An betrayed conquest of the Don, she's a ragged bundle of rage that first seeks revenge and gradually evolves towards pitying the loveless, hellbound Don. Ihnatowicz imbues damn near every motion with personality; be it way she imperiously jabs at her smartphone or morosely slugs back gin in the church pulpit. She's also got one hell of a set of lungs, most effectively deployed in Mi tradi quell'alma ingrata, in which she voices a hundred conflicting emotions at once.
My only real criticism of the show centres on the layout of the church. Sat near the back of the unassigned, flat seating I struggled to catch every nuance, occasionally wondering where the characters even were. I didn't exactly feel like I was missing out, but by the time I'd really started enjoying myself I was a touch jealous of those with a better view. Still, I guess them's the breaks when you perform in a church.
In all honesty, I know I don't quite have the musical chops to really evaluate the particular qualities of the musical performances. Even so, I know what I like and I liked this. Midsummer Opera's Don Giovanni wriggles with red-blooded energy, from the diabolical twinkle in Andrew Mayor's eyes to the personable hubbub of the choir to the broad, communicative body language that brings every scene to life.
★★★★
For upcoming shows from Midsummer Opera, see here.
*full disclosure - I know her sister.
Monday, March 7, 2016
Monday, March 7, 2016
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As a boy I was taken aside by the school choir teacher and gently told that it would be better that I mime rather than sing. Friends and family will attest that my vocal skills have not improved with age. So I find some sympathy in the eponymous Marguerite, a woman whose gap between her self-perceived and actual singing talent is of Grand Canyon proportions.
Loosely inspired by similarly tin-eared American soprano Florence Foster Jenkins (who is getting her own biopic starring Meryl Streep later this year), director Xavier Gianolli sets his tale in early 1920s France. This is a fractured country in recovery from the hell of the Great War, one that's beginning to question the ideals of nationalism, patriotism and calcified class structures.
We open at the country estate of the Dumonts, who're hosting a recital by the hoity-toity 'Amadeus Society' in aid of war orphans. We're led into this world by young singing talent Hazel (Christa Theret), who's ushered through a series of luxurious parlours, speckled with photographs of the lady of the house in various operatic costumes. This is Marguerite Dumont (Catherine Frot): spoken of with the utmost respect and consideration.
The crowd falls into a reverent hush as she enters the room, looking every inch the performance diva in an elaborate gown and a jaunty peacock feather head-dress. The full he orchestra strikes up behind her, launching into Mozart's notoriously difficult Queen of the Night from The Magic Flute.
She takes a deep breath and... what emerges is an utterly bizarre collection of strangled squeaks, off-key caterwauling and deformed notes. It's excruciating. The crowd collectively winces, politely suffering through their hosts demented warbling.
Yet at the back of the room, Lucien (Sylvain Dieuaide) and Kyrill (Aubert Fenoy) react somewhat differently. They're gatecrashers, eager to milk the rich for funds to launch an avant-garde art space - and they see Marguerite and her delusion as the perfect vehicle with which to expose the hypocrisies of the bourgeoisie.
The bedrock of Marguerite is a re-imagining of The Emperor's New Clothes; nobody has the guts to sit Marguerite down and candidly explain to her that she's incredibly untalented. Her husband, friends and professionals quickly realise that it's easier to support her delusion, fearing that a dose of reality might irrevocably hurt her feelings or, worse, interfere with her considerable financial bestowments.
Pretty much everyone in the film exploits Marguerite's in one form or another; be it her husband who needs her title and inherited wealth to maintain his business; the young artists who use her to make a political point; the music teachers who see her as a way of paying their debts and; the general public, for whom Marguerite is a wince-inducing freakshow.
The most fascinating of the exploiters is Marguerite's taciturn manservant Madelbos (Denis Mpunga). At first he appears intensely loyal to his Mistress, indulging her fantasies by shooting and developing endless soft-porny vanity shots of her. You initially assume that he's miserably going through the motions - yet there's gradual hints that he's the one orchestrating Marguerite's surreal journey to the limelight.
Madelbos is a striking character in a film layered with umpteen layers of political and artistic meaning. While it never really trips over its own feet on these, there comes a moment where you wish Gianolli had a smidge more focus. The various threads of Dadaist philosophy, French national character, class warfare, ponderings of what objective artistic skill is and explorations of mental illness (etc etc etc) never quite coalesce into a coherent statement.
This leaves a satisfying, ornate and well-performed film, yet one that's also a bit overlong and undisciplined. Side characters like introductory ingenue Hazel or avant-garde journo Lucien wander in and out of the narrative, leaving unresolved subplots dangling forlornly in the wind. The film even ends on a enigmatic note, refusing to neatly resolve the story we've watched. I don't want to criticise the film for prioritising message over narrative (and it is tres arthouse), but I'm a bit perplexed as to what the precise message is.
Despite those grumblings, the film is anchored by Catherine Frot's sterling central performance. She's infused with cool serenity, making it all too easy to understand why nobody can bring themselves to shatter her illusions. Frot understands that though Marguerite's delusion is unrelatable, her heartbreak, fears, hopes and passions are not, making her easy to root for.
Though not half as gut-bustingly funny as was promised by the advertising, Marguerite is an interesting and enjoyable watch. Giannoli successfully allows us to both laugh at his heroine and feel sorry for her - having his cake and eating it by gently implicating us in her delusion. It's a sturdy, good-hearted piece of cinema and worth a watch.
★★★★
Marguerite is on general release from 18 March.
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