Archive for March, 2009

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Edinburgh International Festival

In edinburgh, opera, preview on March 25, 2009 at 7:33 pm

Edinburgh International Festival announced its programme today. Quite exciting stuff. Top picks are:

  • Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, by Monteverdi. Ithaca becomes a Johannesburg hospital. “Opera singers, musicians, half life-sized puppets and animated film come together to retell the Greek myth Ulysses.” Produced in conjunction with South African puppet company Handspring (of Warhorse fame).
  • The Last Witch, by Rona Munro. Historical account of Scotland’s last witch trial, held in 1727. Commissioned for the festival.
  • The Testament of Cresseid. What did Cresseid (aka Cressida, Criseyde) do after Troilus and Cressida? Based on Robert Henryson’s work of 1590.
  • Faust, by Silviu Purcarete, after Goethe. Large scale work, industrial music, pantomime, huge cast. Promises that we will be “assaulted by a vision of base instincts as you’re drawn (literally) into Faust’s apocalyptic nightmare of life and death. Agony and ecstasy in a land of orgies, torture and murder.”

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Review – Stovepipe, HighTide/Bush/NT

In london, review, theatre on March 24, 2009 at 1:01 am

Time has not been kind to the West 12 shopping centre in Shepherd’s Bush. With the brand new £1.6bn Westfield Shopping Epicentre across the road, West 12 is left as home to Argos, Morrisons, JD Sports and Wetherspoons . And, as of a few weeks ago, a new indoor promenade theatre performance.

Stovepipe is a HighTide production (they of the rather fine arts festival), in collaboration with the NT and the Bush, so has an extremely find pedigree. Taking over the basement of the West 12, the production guides the audience through a montage of different landscapes in the Middle East, from five star hotels to desert roads to brothels to Green Zone bars to Jordanian convention centres, as they follow the efforts of a British mercenary to locate his kidnapped friend.

It’s an interesting venue in which to play out an interesting idea. The performers are close and the constant movement certainly keeps the audience on its toes; the conceit of having the audience follow performers around allows a range of sets and ideas which would be impossible (or impossibly clunky) to play out on a proscenium stage with the audience safely ensconced in their dark seats.

Despite this, it is also a production which is hopelessly muddled. There is no clear role for the audience and no continuity in the way in which we are supposed to respond: one moment we are delegates at a conference, being asked to interact with actors and complete questionnaires; the next we are silent observers on a scene in which could only take place in private.

It’s inevitable that Stovepipe will be compared with the gold-standard of promenade theatre: that of Punchdrunk, who brought us Masque of the Red Death and Faust. The comparisons are unfair, since the Punchdrunk work was much more about experience than narrative, but what they always managed to do was to make the production values incredibly high, never hiding behind the constraints of a venue. The same cannot be said of Stovepipe: we see an office with computers but no keyboards; we hear guns which sound plastic when they are dropped on the floor; five star hotel rooms do not feel like five star hotel rooms. Minor niggles, perhaps, but in a production which seems premised on immersiveness for the audience, these little details – which Punchdrunk do so superbly well – are missed.

But the main problem with Stovepipe is the plot, which feels like an afterthought. For such a short play it’s pointlessly convoluted: the main event which starts the play, a roadside ambush, is stylishly executed but isn’t clear enough as to its position in the narrative; we spend ten minutes finding out about an American journalist who then completely disappears from the plot except for one pointless cameo at the end; it is never quite clear who any one of the actors is supposed to be portraying or at what point in the story; and the play seems to have no message, no thesis, no driving force behind it.

Site-specific and promenade theatre can be superb when a venue is adapted to tell a story which would stand up in its own right; in the case of Stovepipe, it too often feels like a flimsy story has been created to fit an interesting venue.

Tickets from the National.

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Punchdrunk in Manchester

In preview on March 23, 2009 at 11:21 pm

It’s hard not to be a fan of Punchdrunk. The Masque of the Red Death and Faust rank as two of the most interesting theatrical events of the last few years. In fact, it is difficult to find anyone who didn’t pile on hyperbole after hyperbole after hyperbole (although there is always one, isn’t there?) after seeing these incredible site-specific productions, focused less (much less) on narrative than on immersiveness and attention to detail.

The truly superb thing about these two productions was the extent to which they seemed personal. Everybody emerged with a different story, a different path through the Punchdrunk experience – “I was dragged into a room where a nurse made me take off her dress”, “I was given three human teeth and told not to tell anyone”, “I saw two people throwing books at each other and for some reason was the only person in the world who didn’t manage to have a good time” – and as such those few hours in Wapping or Battersea felt irreplaceable, unrepeatable, something to share and explain and remember.

Which is why it felt like almost an absence when the group announced, after the superb, stunning success of Red Death (sold out for months at the Battersea Arts Centre), that they were disappearing, “immersed in an extended period of research and artistic and organizational development.”

But fear not, because it seems Punchdrunk are back. Manchester International Festival has announced that Punchdrunk’s new production, It Felt Like a Kiss, will appear at Hardman Square from 2-19th July. Telling the story of “America’s rise to power in the golden age of pop, and the unforseen consequences it had on the world and in our minds”, this production, unfolding across five floors and with original music by Damon Albarn, promises to be incredibly exciting.

Punchdrunk make the sort of theatre that people will talk about for years. Without wishing to be pushy, it’s worth trying to be one of those people. Three line whip, buy your tickets now.

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Review – Dr Atomic, English National Opera

In london, opera, review, theatre on March 15, 2009 at 1:53 am

I was unlucky enough to catch Dr Atomic at the ENO in the final week of its run.

Because it is absolutely stupendous, the sort of show that usually generates an all-points alert by text message insisting ‘you HAVE to see this, incredible, unbelievable, beg, borrow, steal, stand in line, join the chorus, just get to the coliseum’.

The opera, following Robert Oppenheimer in the weeks and moments before the detonation of the first nuclear bomb at Los Alamos, stands as one of the most audacious and exciting experiments in a theatre I can remember. And this from someone who, generally, for the most part, finds opera slightly ridiculous.

Things start slowly (operatically) in the first half. Oppenheimer spends a great deal of time telling the audience what his wife’s hair smells like (chocolate, tobacco, opium, etc) and how much he would like to eat it. But these operatic follies are soon forgotten as we, much like the scientists which are its subjects, are dragged along by the inexorable force of history into the central theme of this incredibly powerful opera: Oppenheimer, bringing down the curtain on the first half, sings Donne’s Holy sonnet XIV, praying for God to ‘batter my heart, that I may rise, and stand … burn and make me new.’ Here he is no operatic stooge; here he becomes an incredibly powerful image of the human condition: blessed, and cursed, with intelligence, the power to create this thing of absolute destruction.

And then the second half. The second half. What a second half. Suffice to say, things really kick off. No more opium or hair.

The bomb itself, just one of many numerous wonderful pieces of set design from Julian Crouch, appears as a wonderful and terrifying spectre on the stage. As the entire stage, and the entire world seems to converge on its awesome power the powerful libretto veers between the mundane (much discussion of the weather) and the truly spiritual and haunting (borrowed from the Bhagavad Gita: ‘At the sight of this, your Shape stupendous / Full of mouths and eyes, feet, thighs and bellies, / Terrible with fangs, O master.’).

The climax of this incredible opera comes powerfully, not in the least diminished or cheapened by the level of expectation established by the incredible, break-neck assault for the finish line insisted upon by the urgency and potency of the performances. Rarely have I ever been made to feel such anticipation, such genuine fear from the Upper Circle, as I did last night.

This is a truly incredible opera powerfully realised. If it’s not already too late, then beg, borrow, steal, stand in line, join the chorus: just get to the Coliseum.

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Royal Opera House Manchester

In opera on March 14, 2009 at 3:49 pm

The Arts Council has published its report on the viability of the Royal Opera House’s proposal to convert the Palace Theatre in Manchester into a second permanent home for the Royal Opera and Royal Ballet. You can read in full on the Arts Council website.

Estimates are that the project would cost £100m in terms of capital renovations to the Palace, and that the annual running cost would be £12-15m per annum.

The idea is a fantastically exciting one and would – if successful – revolutionise the way in which the arts are conducted outside on London. Audiences for Opera in Leeds tripled when Opera North was created. Audiences for Ballet in Birmingham more than doubled when BRB arrived. The hope is that ROHM could do even better than this.

There is much debate in the report on the impact on other arts organisations in the North, principally the likely impact on the Lowry which expects to lose £1.5m a year and 50,000 audience members should ROHM go ahead.

Even setting this aside for a moment, and accepting as a premise that the establishment of a permanent home for opera in the city would be a good thing, the question still remains: why the Royal Opera House? Why not plough £15m a year into Opera North or spend £115m creating a home-grown opera company for Manchester? The plan is that most of the management and impetus for ROHM should come locally in any case, so the question remains: what does the Royal Opera House bring to the proposal that any other opera company could not?

Principally, the Royal Opera House provides a brand, one which is synonymous with quality. However, as Charlotte Higgins wrote back in January, it is also a brand which is largely synonymous with a particular iconic building. Does this brand maintain its value when exported to a different building in a different city run by a different artistic team and with a drastically reduced programme? Will the opera-goers of the Second City be so awed by the glossy red programmes and the rampant lion on the front of the building that they will flock there in a way that they would not to a reinvigorated Opera North?

The key to the success for any new opera house will be for its audiences and its communities to adopt it as their own. In this, there is a material risk that the ROH brand could be a liability. Even with the best intentions, the ROHM will struggle to become anything except a junior partner to the ROH (the current plan calls for just 16 performances a year in the new venue; will the current ROH rename itself ROH London?) and local communities are unlikely to warm to an arts organisation which is seen as a colonial outpost of the ‘proper’ arts which are going on in the South East.

The two prime precedents for this project are Opera North and Birmingham Royal Ballet. Both started as off-shoots from London based organisations, the English National Opera and Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet respectively and are now enormously successful organisations in their home cities of Leeds and Birmingham. Can it be a coincidence that both these success stories have cut their ties to their London parents and now run as autonomous organisations in their home cities? Would they have been as widely adopted by local communities had they still been under the control of the Coliseum or Covent Garden?

There are numerous issues to be addressed. There are perhaps even better ways to spend the money. These debates are academic, however, since it is very unlikely anything will happen without the ROH. If there were £115m sitting around waiting for allocation to the cause of arts in the North, then there would be merit in debating whether ROHM or Opera North or BRB or a new Manchester Opera would be the most worthy beneficiary. But in the midst of a recession, the arts will have to fight tooth and nail for this money; and there is nobody better placed to do this than the ROH with their strong track record of providing regional access to the arts, their international reputation, their large-scale organisation and their relationship with the Arts Council.

It may be ROHM or nothing.

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New season at the National

In london, preview, theatre on March 2, 2009 at 11:11 pm

Ted Hughes’ translation of Racine’s Phedre with Helen Mirren is the headline show and absolutely bound to sell out. Almost in anticipation of this, this is the prototype for the new NT Live programme: following on from the Met in New York and then the Royal Opera, the performance on the 25th of June will be broadcast live in high definition to cinemas around the country and around the world. Full venue details are here; no official word yet on whether they’ll be broadcasting to cinemas in London, but I’d be amazed if the Curzon didn’t snap this up; interesting to see if the Barbican see the value here as well.

From May to July, Marienne Elliott will be directing All’s Well That Ends Well in the Olivier. Travelex £10 tickets for this one.

My top pick is The Observer , a new play by Matt “Five Wives of Maurice Pinder” Charman, about international observes overseeing an election in West Africa country. It’s coming to the Cottesloe from May to July. The cast includes Chuk Iwuji, who you may know from the RSC Histories Cycle last year (eponomous role in Henry VI), and is directed by Richard Eyre, former Artistic Director at the NT.

Public booking opens from 13 March, advance members from 6 March.