Naughty Neon Nursery-Tales
La Cenerentola
by Gioachino Rossini, libretto by Jacopo Ferretti
Opera Kipling at Upstairs at the Gatehouse, Highgate until 6th August
Review by Brent Muirhouse
The story of Cinderella is no stranger to anyone, yet in Rossini’s operatic version La Cenerentola, performed by Opera Kipling (in the wonderful setting Upstairs at the Gatehouse, Highgate), it transforms into something even more enchanting. A gloriously fun and very welcome fusion with 1980s pop culture weaves it further into a vibrant tapestry of references, resembling a much-loved, well-worn vinyl record from the ‘Now! That’s What I Call Music!’ series. As every scene becomes a figurative dance-off between the familiar fairytale and the decade nostalgia that peppers the narrative with an incredibly pleasing attention to detail. Cinderella in this rendition, directed by Guido Martin-Brandis, is an harmonious hybrid that enchants and engages, a fluorescent-hued love letter both to opera and a much-loved era.
Read more…Fab Five Folk
This Girl
by Mike Howl, music by Frankie Connor, Alan Crowley and Billy Kinsley
Mike Howl Company at Upstairs at the Gatehouse Theatre, until 2nd August
Review by Heather Moulson
The zebra crossing in Abbey Road is well-known to Beatles aficionados. Not too far away in North London, it is well worth the uphill climb from the tube station to this charming venue in Highgate Village, which was once a Victorian music-hall, for an exciting production that tells the Beatles story from the viewpoint of the late Cynthia Lennon. This Girl also features eight brand-new songs.
Read more…Emotions on a Knife Edge
Cavalleria Rusticana
by Pietro Mascagni, libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci
Pagliacci
by Ruggero Leoncavallo
West Green House Opera, at the Theatre on the Lake, Hartley Wintney, until 30th July
Review by Mark Aspen
It may be forty degrees and upwards in Sicily and only fifteen in damp Hampshire, but the West Green House Opera brings all the heat and passion of a Sicilian summer to its enchanting opera gardens with the inseparable Italian operatic pair, affectionately known as Cav and Pag.
Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci are opera’s torrid twins, or rather cousins, having different composers, but both from the same pedigree, the verismo school of late nineteenth century Italian literature and opera.
The realismimplied in the term verismo refers to opera that is not about the wealthy, the nobility, royalty or divinity; but about everyday people. One hesitates to say “ordinary, as the subjects of these operas are just as extraordinary as their higher-class counterparts.
Read more…Until Things Do Us Part
Maybe I Do…?
by Cova Camblor
Covadonga Camblor at The Hen and Chickens Theatre, then at the Rosemary Branch Theatre, Islington until 5th August
Review by Heather Moulson
Carmen, dressed in full white wedding regalia, waits to get married … on Zoom. However, Stuart is her real love. That is just the beginning of a wealth of misunderstandings and heartbreaks, as Carmen takes us on a bitter-sweet quest for love and other fulfilments. Despite painful life lessons, Carmen keeps her humour and exuberance, while she is to be admired for her steely determination to get back in the ring after suffering many blows.
Maybe I do…? is a one-woman show from the point of view of a Spanish girl living in London. With culture clashes, language barriers and other bumpy rides, no detail is spared.
Read more…Grave From Beyond the Grave
Glad To Be Dead?
by Donna and Jade Flack
MIM Theatre at The Hen and Chickens Theatre, then on tour until 8th October
Review by Heather Moulson
This dark-edged piece makes a bold start to the Camden Fringe. Written by mother and daughter team, Donna and Jade Flack, Glad To Be Dead? is gothic and chilling … and totally absorbing.
Long dead characters, some well-known, some not, are confined in a limbo dimension. They can look out of a window that only allows them to see so far.
Read more…Bonkers-Lite
Robinson Crusoé – in Concert
by Jacques Offenbach, libretto by Eugène Cormon and Hector Crémieux
West Green House Opera, at the Theatre on the Lake, Hartley Wintney, 28th July
Review by Mark Aspen
The none-to serious operetta, Robinson Crusoé, which was contentiously billed as an opéra comique when it was first performed as a pre-Christmas offering in Paris in 1867, is huge fun, in spite of (or perhaps because of) its putting its finger on a number of human weaknesses. If you like panto, you’ll like this. If you like Gilbert and Sullivan, you’ll love this. If you like wonderful symphonic music, you’ll adore this.
Glen Hurstfield, West Green House Opera’s Chairman, in his welcoming remarks from the stage, points out, a little too apologetically, that the evening’s one night stand is a concert performance, although he hints at some add-ons. He goes on to describe it as “quite bonkers”.
It doesn’t really quite fit either of these descriptions. In the event, it turns out to evolve from the black-tie concert event, then bit-by-bit into a costumed semi-staged performance. By the interval, it has acquired a set and we have almost the full works. Equally, it starts with establishing its setting and developing its characters, moves to become a lyrical love-story and on to being a gung-ho adventure, perhaps edging towards bonkers-lite. Everything happens at a joyful canter, whatever the outrageous goings-on, all enacted gorgeously tongue-in-cheek.
Read more…Paradise Found
Le Roi de Lahore
by Jules Massenet, libretto by Louis Gallet
Dorset Opera at the Coade Theatre, Bryanston, Blandford Forum until 29th July
Review by Claire Alexander
Dorset Opera was one of the first of the many summer opera festivals that have sprung up around the gardens of the UK in the last twenty years or so. In fact Dorset Opera, the prophetic brainchild of the late Patrick Shelley, then Director of Music at Sherborne School, will celebrate its 50th birthday next year and I am pleased to say it is in robust health.
Read more…Out in the Sticks
Cocktail Sticks and Two in Torquay
by Alan Bennett
BCP at the OSO Arts Centre until 30th July
Review by Vince Francis
A pleasant summer’s evening for an excursion to OSO Arts and, on arrival, the bonus of a jazz trio playing in the foyer. Nice. However, the evening’s dramatic offering consisted of an Alan Bennett double-header, Cocktail Sticks, followed by Two in Torquay.
Cocktail Sticks is an autobiographical piece, originally produced at the National Theatre in 2012, in which Bennett explores his feelings around his experience of childhood and his parents. He paints a picture of a budding author and dramatist, frustrated by the undramatic ordinariness of his upbringing and grieving for the lack of trauma, which he sees as the inspiration for good or great writers. The theme of separation is also explored, focussing on Bennett’s transition away from his working-class roots resulting from a university education, and echoing Willy Russel’s 1980 contemplation in Educating Rita. The piece is, to some extent, a revisiting of Bennett’s memoir A Life Like Other People’s, in which one of the themes is the prospect, or illusion, that other people have more fulfilling lives, including endless cocktail parties, which idea provided a fascination for both Bennett and his mother.
Read more…Inspiring Ensemble, Downbeat Musical
No For An Answer
Music and libretto by Marc Blitzstein
Arcola Theatre, part of the Grimeborn Festival, at Arcola Theatre, Dalston until 29th July
Review by Patrick Shorrock
Marc Blitzstein is possibly best known today for his translation and adaptation of Brecht and Weil’s Threepenny Opera rather than his own work. Tim Robbins’ 1999 film Cradle Will Rock told of the struggle against censorship to put on his political opera, The Cradle Will Rock, which was directed by one, Orson Welles.
Dawn Upshaw’s wonderful disc I Wish It So – recorded in 1993 (!) and one of my most played CDs, features Blitzstein along with Sondheim, Weil, and Bernstein. The Blitzstein songs on that disc hold their own against this formidable competition and include In The Clear from No For An Answer. Unfortunately, most of the other music in No For An Answer – apart from the rousing chorus that concludes Act 1 – is musically rather dull and not on this level. Even the programme note refers to the lethargic process of its composition.
Read more…Sticks and Stones, But …
Word-Play
by Rabiah Hussain
Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, at the Royal Court Theatre, Chelsea until 26th August
Review by Denis Valentine
Word-Play, written by Rabiah Hussain, aims to take a multi-layered look into how those in modern British society relate to each other and how at times a simple word or phrase to one person can have far out reaching connotations to another. The play has a multi-sketch structure and for many of them the dramatic central point is based on a person’s use of simple language and how it spirals into deeper meaning for another.
Read more…
Mark Aspen 