Bel-Canto Bomb-Burst
The Capulets and the Montagues
by Vincenzo Bellini, libretto by Felice Romani
English Touring Opera at the Hackney Empire, 22nd February and on tour until 26th April
Review by Mark Aspen
The intrepid photojournalist Letizia Battaglia kept a live record of the atrocities of the violently uncompromising Sicilian Mafia during the 1970’s in her “archive of blood”. It is these raw photographs that inspired director Eloise Lally’s production of Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi, entirely unlike the soft flowery balcony pictures that we associate with Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
Both Bellini and the Bard draw their sources ultimately from a 1524 novella by Luigi da Porto and both flesh out the same skeleton, but in different ways. Bellini (with a nod towards an 1818 Italian play by Luigi Scevola) has no Nurse, for there is no comedy here, and all the early hostilities that inflame the rivalry between the Capulets and the Montagues have already happened.
Read more…Once Bitten
The Shark is Broken
by Ian Shaw and Joseph Nixon
Sonia Friedman and Kenny Wax Productions at the Richmond Theatre, until 22nd February, then on tour until 17th May
Review by Denis Valentine
The Shark is Broken takes place in the unique setting on the film-set making Jaws in 1974, where it depicts the day to day life and times of the film’s main three (human) actors (Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Scheider and Robert Shaw). The show takes a good look into the human experience and condition from three different perspectives, in a quite surreal situation. There is plenty of banterous dialogue between all three, but also poignant and reflective moments from all three, which makes for a fun-filled and intriguing ninety minutes witnessing people trying to stay sane and normal in quite a bizarre situation.
Read more…Lockdown Hoedown
Here You Come Again, the Dolly Parton Musical
by Bruce Vilanch, Gabriel Barre and Tricia Paoluccio, adapted by Jonathan Harvey
Simon Friend Entertainment at the New Wimbledon Theatre until 22nd February
Review by Thea Diamond
Written by Bruce Vilanch, Gabriel Barre (who also directs) and Tricia Paoluccio (who also stars as Dolly herself), Here You Come Again is truly a memorable night out, even for someone such as myself who felt quite the imposter surrounded by diehard Dolly fans. I only knew a handful of her best known songs, but was left humming the hits and tapping my toes, despite being transported back nearly five years to the upheaval at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic (including the weekly ritual of banging pots and pans for the keyworkers).
Read more…Jaws that Bite, Claws that Snatch
Alligators
by Andrew Keatley
Putney Theatre Company in the Studio at Putney Arts Theatre until 22nd February
Review by Polly Davies
Andrew Keatley’s Alligators is a tough but rewarding watch. The programme rightly contains a few trigger warnings about the adult themes and language that are an intrinsic part of the play. The intimate setting of the Studio pulls the audience into the deftly constructed comfortable domestic living room. Children’s toys scattered on the rug, a baby photo on the bookshelf, furniture and pictures suggest a happy middle-class family home. A TV on the wall ingeniously shows the passage of time as Daniel and Sally find their predictable world increasingly turned upside down.
Read more…Couldn’t Bear to Miss
The Koala Who Could
by Rachel Bright, adapted by Emma Earle
Nicoll Entertainment at the Rose Theatre, Kingston until 23rd February, then on tour until 2nd September
Review by Steve Mackrell
“Koala bears live upside down in Australia and eat eucalyptus leaves” announced my eight-year-old grandson with great authority as we went along to the Rose Theatre, Kingston to see The Koala Who Could. “Told you so” he said proudly afterwards, and indeed he was right.
This children’s show, adapted from the best-selling book of the same name written by Rachel Bright, with illustrations by Jim Field, was first published in 2016. The author, who incidentally studied at Kingston University, has written over thirty children’s books, selling well over eight million copies with translations running into some forty languages. Indeed, a stage version of her previous best-selling children’s book, The Lion Inside, was successfully presented at the Rose Theatre last year. Seemingly, her colourful stories are expanding to cover an ever-increasing menagerie of different animals which, so far, have included lions, koalas, squirrels, pandas, camels and wolves. So, next up, perhaps a production of her squabbling squirrels’ story?
Read more…Scots on the Rocks
Mary, Queen of Scots
by Thea Musgrave, libretto by the composer after Amalia Elguera
English National Opera, in co-production with the San Francisco Opera, at the London Coliseum until 18th February
Review by Mark Aspen
The political elite of Scotland are in hostile conflict with each other and with cousins south of the border; there is infighting within the various factions; the people are restless and volatile; and bubbling away in the background religious enmities find violent expression.
This may all sound very contemporary, but here Scotland is not ruled (tenuously) by the SNP, but (tenuously) by the royal dynasty of the House of Stuart. It is not today, but the mid sixteenth Century, although the setting is distinctly modern.
Read more…Shakespearian Chocolate Box
What Dreams May Come
by various composers, words by William Shakespeare
English Touring Opera at the New Diorama Theatre, 15th February and on tour until 25th April
Review by Patrick Shorrock
Valerina Ceschi’s collection of Shakespeare’s song settings provides lots of food for thought and an opportunity to showcase some impressive talents. It displays broad musical range. Just to mention the most famous names, we have songs by Henry Purcell, Thomas Arne, Gerald Finzi, Amy Beach, Joseph Haydn, Benjamin Britten, and Franz Schubert. It was probably a forlorn hope that these fragments, wrenched from their original context, could all be reassembled into a jigsaw that was musically and dramatically coherent. But what fun to try and break out from the obvious concert format.
Read more…Around The World in Ninety Minutes
A Real Race Around the World
by David Hovatter and The Company
The Questors at the Questors Studio, Ealing until 22nd February
Review by Andrew Lawston
Puck could put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes, Phileas Fogg took eighty days, while Lavarède managed the trip with just five sous in his pocket, in Paul d’Ivoi’s novel Les Cinq Sous de Lavarède. Ever since the first Magellan-Elcano circumnavigation of 1519-1521, fictional characters and real people have been trying to get around the world ever faster.
This penchant for speedy travel reached its zenith in 1889, when the New York World’’sinvestigative journalist Nellie Bly set off on a transatlantic crossing to beat Phileas Fogg’s fictional eighty day record. Meanwhile, a fledgling magazine called Cosmopolitan sent writer Elizabeth Bisland west, in an attempt to make the trip even faster.
Read more…With All the Trappings
Deathtrap
by Ira Levin
Teddington Theatre Club at the Hampton Hill Theatre until 15th February
Review by Louis Mazzini
Presented by Teddington Theatre Club at Hampton Hill Theatre, Steve Taylor’s production of Ira Levin’s Deathtrap delivers on all fronts.
Daniel Wain plays Sidney Bruhl, a once celebrated playwright who hasn’t had a hit in eighteen years. In the opening scene, Sidney has just finished looking over his post. It includes a playscript sent to him by Clifford Anderson, “one of the twerps” who had attended one of Sidney’s seminars the previous summer. Clifford is played by Jacob Taylor (the director’s son) and, dishearteningly for Sidney, Clifford’s script – ‘Deathtrap’ – is surprisingly good.
Read more…A Blinder
The Marriage of Figaro
by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte
English National Opera at the London Coliseum until 22nd February
Review by Mark Aspen
If you were hoping to see a traditional Mozart offering, or indeed the spectacle of the opera, you might feel short-changed by director Joe Hill-Gibbins’ “Figaro for today”. But if you are looking for a less superficial Mozart, then in the simplicity and analytical approach of his stripped-back Marriage of Figaro,it will be enriching.
The London opening of Hill-Gibbins’ The Marriage of Figaro was suddenly truncated after one day in March 2020 by the sudden severity of the Covid lock-downs. It had had a brief pre-run at the Oper Wuppertal the previous year, but now returns to the Coliseum with some of the original cast.
Read more…
Mark Aspen 