Love’s Memento Mori
La Bohème
by Giacomo Puccini, libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa
Glyndebourne Productions at Glyndebourne Festival Theatre until 29th October, then on tour until 26th November
Review by Mark Aspen
The street … the street can be a metaphor. It is not home, but it is not strange. It is the way home, but it is a place to meet strangers.
The street forms the sole setting to director Floris Visser’s vision for his semi-figurative production of La Bohème. It is a street that Visser chanced upon strolling off the beaten track one evening in Paris. It seemed to fit the mood of La Bohème, he thought. His set designer Dieuweke Van Reij agreed; thence the genesis of the stark metallic grey setting for Glyndebourne’s 2022 production of Puccini’s most popular opera.
A false perspective gives the impression of a long cobbled street, the sort that always looks damp, receding into the distance. Tall windowless walls frame the sides, and the carriageway seems to disappear over a slight rise in the background. Alex Brok’s inspired lighting design means that characters vanish as they pass over the rise. Much use is made of side batten lighting to accentuate the starkness.
Read more…Flower Power
The Marriage of Figaro
by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte
Glyndebourne Productions at Glyndebourne Festival Theatre until 28th October, then on tour until 24th November
Review by Eugene Broad
The Marriage of Figaro is a stalwart of classical opera. Widely viewed as one of the most perfect, complete operas – Brahms wrote that “every number in Figaro is for me a miracle” – it has become almost omnipresent in the opera repertoire. As a small data point, the archives of this website hold several different reviews of several different productions of The Marriage of Figaro, done by several different production companies – a clear testament to its popularity. As a wider data point, it regularly appears in the Top Ten lists of both performers and audiences of their favourite operas.
Read more…Italian Bagpipes??
Lucia di Lammermoor : Preview
Instant Opera at Normansfield Theatre, Teddington 14th – 16th October
Preview: Opera critic Thomas Forsythe discusses the forthcoming production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor with Instant Opera’s Nicholas George
TF: Hello Nick. Scotland has been a momentously topical place over the past few weeks. Donizetti’s opera about aristocratic families set in a Scottish stately-home, and running just a month after the mourning period for our late beloved Queen, seems almost like a tribute to Queen Elizabeth, whose last days were spent in just such a Scottish stately-home. Clearly, it is fortuitously so, as I imagine you have been planning Lucia di Lammermoor for some considerable time.
NG: Yes, hello Thomas, our production was originally planned for October 2020. Pestilence, war, climate change, political and economic turmoil, have also all happened since, not that anyone needs reminding. The tribulations of two ancient feuding Scottish families depicted in this melodrama seem almost sane in comparison! But seriously, one of the unique and exciting things about this production is the way that we will enhance and celebrate the evocative performance space at Normansfield Theatre, in a way I guarantee never seen before in its history!
Read more…Debs, Hyenas and Nazis
The Inn of the Dawn Horse
by Joanna Foster
Joanna Foster Theatre Company at Chats Palace Arts Centre, Homerton, 7th October
Review by Heather Moulson
After a two-hour car journey from Twickenham to Homerton, a sudden downpour and fine dining with a sandwich under a bus shelter (Pastrami – Co-Op’s own brand, recommended) things were beginning to feel a little surreal. So I was all set up and ready to see The Inn of the Dawn Horse and gain an insight into Leonora Carrington, the stunning surrealist painter who left us in 2011. The charming venue Chats Palace, a former library with grand ceilings, has a bohemian air and is colourful and seemed quite appropriate to the subject.
The Inn of the Dawn Horse references Carrington’s self portrait of the same name, featuring horses and hyenas, recurring motifs in her work.
Read more…Wisdom of Solomon
The Caucasian Chalk Circle
by Bertolt Brecht, adapted by Steve Waters
Rose Original Productions at The Rose Theatre, Kingston until 22nd October
Review by Celia Bard
This play has its roots in Hebrew lore, in the story recorded at 1 Kings 3:16-18 of two mothers claiming before King Solomon that each was the real mother of an infant son. Should you be curious as to how the dispute is resolved in this version of the story, do go and see this superb production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle performed by a talented and highly versatile group of actors skilled in all aspects of acting, dance, movement and song. The production is lengthy, but it succeeds in entertaining and enthralling an audience throughout, as judged by the rapturous applause of the audience at the end of the show.
Steve Waters’ adaption of the play is close in spirit to the original. It is about the impact of war on people. This version relocates the story from warring Soviet communes to a modern-day refugee camp, one in which refugees are divided in their opinions about the use of land, whether the valley should stay as it is or whether it should be given over to the building of a dam. A singer enters the camp and helps to resolve the conflict through the re-enactment of the story of the Chalk Circle, inviting the refugees to participate and thereby creating a story within a story.
Read more…Mayfair Lady
Pygmalion
by George Bernard Shaw
Teddington Theatre Club at Hampton Hill Theatre until 8th October
Review by David Stephens
One of George Bernard-Shaw’s finest plays, Pygmalion has been a favourite of theatregoers since its Viennese debut over a hundred years ago. Its prominent messages of social mobility and gender inequality remain as resonant with today’s audiences as they were to those who first saw it.
Also often told in its musical incarnation, My Fair Lady, this wonderful play tells the story of a working-class flower-girl, Eliza Doolittle (Anastasia Drew) and her aspiration to become one of the beautifully presented, well-spoken ladies that she so admires through the windows of Covent Garden’s dress shops. A chance meeting with Henry Higgins (Oliver Tims), a world-renowned professor of linguistics, leads to her being accepted as one of his projects and whilst guiding her, sometimes rather too sadistically, on her journey from ‘street’ to ‘chic’, he discovers a thing or two about his own flaws along the way.
Read more…Don’t Give Me Your Troubles
Ulster American
by David Ireland
Putney Theatre Company at the Putney Arts Theatre until 8th October
Review by Eleanor Lewis
Leigh is trapped on the sofa in his London apartment with Jay, an Oscar-winning, A-list Hollywood actor. Jay is loud, intense and very, very needy. Both men await the arrival of Ruth, the writer of a new play set in Northern Ireland about a Protestant activist to be played by Jay, in the West End. Jay thinks Ruth is an Irish writer and he’s hugely proud of his Irish roots, despite not having realised the difference between the Republic and the north of Ireland. Leigh is going to humour Jay for box-office purposes.
Read more…Doors and Sardines!
Noises Off
by Michael Frayn
Theatre Royal Bath Productions at Richmond Theatre until 15th October, then on tour until 29th October
Review by Andrew Lawston
There is something terribly fitting about the short delay before the curtain rises on Noises Off this evening. Although the word in Richmond Theatre’s foyer is that they’re finalising the extensive set, everyone who has seen a previous production of Michael Frayn’s much-loved play is cracking wry jokes about plates of sardines, and wondering what state the production will be in by the time the tour reaches Stockton-on-Tees.
But soon enough the curtain rises on Robin Housemonger’s classic bedroom farce Nothing On, and Mrs Clackett totters across the stage to answer a ringing telephone, with just a shade of the opening scene of The Real Inspector Hound in her delivery.
Read more…All for Nought
Noughts & Crosses
by Malorie Blackman, adapted by Sabrina Mahfouz
Pilot Theatre at Richmond Theatre until 1st October
Review by Eleanor Lewis
I vaguely remember, quite a long time ago, a TV series in which the power was flipped, and women were in control. They (the women) turned out to be nothing like as inspiring as you’d hope them to be. I think the basic idea was probably that all humans will behave badly if you give them the means and opportunity but, as I say, it was a long time ago.
Noughts & Crosses applies the same idea to race (it’s interesting that such a simple idea isn’t used more often). The dark-skinned Crosses hold all the power, which they wield over the light-skinned Noughts. Two central characters: Sephy, a Cross, and Callum, a Nought form a friendship as children and grow up with difficulty within the system that in fact oppresses both of them.
Read more…Arctic Adventures
The Gretchen Question
by Melly Still and Max Barton
Fuel Theatre at the Master Shipwright’s House, Deptford until 2nd October
Review by Patrick Shorrock
The Gretchen Question is a wonderful display of theatrical virtuosity in a glorious setting (the Master Shipwright’s House, which is one of the few remaining parts of Deptford’s former royal dockyard, founded by Henry VIII in 1513). Whether Melly Still’s and Max Barton’s piece is a viable play or not is, perhaps, more open to question. But it certainly makes for a stimulating and enjoyable evening in the specific site for which it was devised. However, punters are strongly advised to wrap up as warm as possible. Sitting down beside the River Thames for 90 minutes without an interval on a late September evening is a decidedly chilly experience, but well worth the trip.
Read more…
Mark Aspen 