'A Midsummer Night's Dream' by William Shakespeare

6 August 2011

On Friday we were back in Stratford-upon-Avon to see Nancy Meckler's new RSC production of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Meckler had set the play in a modern-day Athens with the gentlemen dressed in black suits and ties like a Greek Reservoir Dogs and the rude mechanicals actually wearing blue mechanic's overalls. I liked that, when Lysander and Hermia meet in the woods to elope, he arrives with just the clothes he stands up in but Hermia has the presence of mind to bring a sleeping bag, thermos flask and toothbrush! It was a very funny show, with the final performance of 'Pyramus and Thisbe' milked for every drop of humour but still leaving me wanting more. And it was great to see some serious comic dancing that could have come directly from a Hal Hartley film. But the humour of Peter Quince's players was surpassed by the lovers in a pillow-fight scene that was truly hilarious. All four of the lovers were excellent but the show was stolen by Lucy Briggs-Owen as Helena with her brilliant mixture of hysterical despair, falsetto disbelief and manic movement. She even outdid Marc Wootton who was fantastic as Bottom. And the fact that both Lucy Briggs-Owen and Marc Wootton are in their debut seasons with the RSC emphasises the company's ability to spot and nurture wonderful acting talent. 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' was a good example of the RSC's ensemble approach, with no real star names on the bill but a universally impressive cast. And while it made good use of the facilities of the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre, especially the massive pit beneath the stage, unlike the first two productions designed for the new auditorium (Macbeth, reviewed here in April 2011 and The Merchant of Venice, reviewed here in June 2011) it didn't appear to be so blatantly trying to show off the new theatre. The funniest Shakespeare I have seen for many years.

'The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet’ by David Mitchell

3 August 2011

In my previous job, when I was commuting to London every day, I managed to consume massive amounts of contemporary literature, often reading a novel a week. Now that the train has become my office, I find it hard to find time to read for pleasure. Regular readers may have noticed that my book reviews often tend to coincide with my holidays. I have therefore been amassing an ever-expanding list of books I am intending to read, with little prospect of making serious in-roads into it. I do, however, manage to find plenty of time to listen to music and radio programmes, usually on headphones while doing something else. So I thought I would see whether unabridged audio books might provide the answer to reducing my ‘to-read’ mountain. I signed up to the audible.co.uk subscription service and I have just finished listening to my first audio book, David Mitchell’s ‘The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet’. David Mitchell is one of my favourite contemporary novelists and I had been looking forward to his latest work. ‘The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet’ is an epic work – the audio version, wonderfully read by Jonathan Aris, lasts 19 hours. Structurally, it is much more straightforward than David Mitchell’s earlier novels, ‘Cloud Atlas’, ‘Ghostwritten’ and ‘number9dream’. This is an old-fashioned historical saga on a grand scale. Set in a Dutch trading post outside Nagasaki at the end of the 18^th century it tells the tale of a young Dutch clerk, Jacob de Zoet, arriving at this grim colonial outpost and beginning to learn the mysteries of the closed Japanese empire. Had I been reading the book in print I wonder whether I might have struggled to get into it – I suspect I would have carefully re-read the opening chapters to get to grips with all the Japanese and Dutch names and work out exactly who all the characters were. Listening to the audio version allowed me not to worry about pronunciation (all done for me!) and letting the huge cast of characters initially wash over me worked fine: you soon begin to differentiate the main protagonists without having to work too hard. David Mitchell manages to draw very clear characters – all of whom have believable flaws. Within each group in the story – the Dutch traders, the Japanese officials and the British navy – there are both likeable and despicable individuals: there is no sense that one side are the ‘baddies’. The sheer length of the work engenders, by its end, a huge emotional attachment to the main protagonists. While the author avoids false sentimentality, the last few chapters are incredibly moving: you really feel you know these people personally. The historical detail was also fascinating: without laying on his research too heavily, David Mitchell teaches you a great deal about Japan and the tussles between Britain and the Netherlands. But ultimately this is a book about fathers and sons – from the opening birth scene to the pain of a lost son to the heartache of parting from your father. ‘The Thousand Autumns of Jabob de Zoet’ reminded me a lot of the work of Louis de Bernières, particularly ‘Captain Corelli's Mandolin’ – the small, closed community, the Dickensian cast of characters, the clash of cultures etc. I really enjoyed ‘The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet’ – it felt like an epic journey but one well worth embarking on.

WOMAD 2011

1 August 2011

Everybody's WOMAD is different: like any big festival there are so many bands to see on so many stages that each individual curates their own personal festival. This year my WOMAD seemed to be dominated by the violin: a surprising number of the groups I chose to watch featured one or more fiddles - from the sublime Scottish folk fiddling of Rua MacMillan to the unbelievably fast playing of Romanian legends Taraf de Haidouks; from the klezmer violin of Oi Va Voi to the eclectic mix of styles of the Barrunto Bellota Band from Caceres in Spain; from the uncategorisable fascination of Arthur Jeffes' Penguin Cafe to the brilliant Norwegian folk fiddle quintet Majorstuen. I saw 30 different bands over the WOMAD weekend at Charlton Park in Wiltshire including 20 complete sessions. I particularly enjoyed the AfroCubism super-group - it was amazing to see so many African stars, including Bassekou Kouyate (reviewed here in December 2007), Toumani Diabate (reviewed here in May 2008) and Djelimady Tounkara, sharing the stage with members of Cuba's Buena Vista Social Club. And it was wonderful to see the veterans of traditional Egyptian band El Tanbura, triumphant from their performances earlier this year in Tahrir Square. The WOMAD crowd (Womadders? or Womadians?) is a generous and sympathetic audience: if a roadie was to accidentally drop a guitar on the stage someone would start dancing to it! It's always lovely to see bands from completely different cultures, such as the Korean Tori Ensemble this year, start their set with serious frowns of concentration only gradually to realise how enthusiastically their music is being appreciated by a passionate, massed crowd in front of the stage. As the performers begin to look at each other and smile and (this year much more than I remember previously) take out their mobile phones and take photos of their audience, you begin to feel optimistic again about the prospects for intercultural dialogue and understanding. I think my favourite performances of WOMAD 2011 were those by: the young virtuoso of the South Indian veena (an earlier version of the more familiar sitar) Hari Sivanesan with the Cuban violinist (another violinist!) Omar Puente; the 10-strong Chinese acoustic group from Inner Mongolia, AnDa Union; the laid-back acoustic pop mixed with Scottish folk and Maori vocals from female trio Pacific Curls; and the stunning set by London-based five-piece female vocal group The Boxettes, led by world champion beatboxer Bellatrix. Oh, and I forgot to mention Appalachian clawhammer banjo maestro Abigail Washburn who was wonderful. All this and the weather was brilliant!

'Betty Blue Eyes' by Ron Cowen, Daniel Lipman, George Stiles and Anthony Drewe

23 July 2011

Last Thursday we went to London to see an animatronic pig - and it's not often you can say that! We were at the Novello Theatre to see 'Betty Blue Eyes', a new musical based on the 1984 film 'A Private Function. The film, written by Alan Bennett and starring Michael Palin and Maggie Smith, has been reimagined for the stage by Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman with music by George Stiles and lyrics by Anthony Drewe. Set in a small town in Yorkshire in 1947, much is made of the contemporary resonances of Royal Wedding celebrations amid Austerity Britain. As people struggle with the harsh realities of rationing, an unlicensed pig is being illegally prepared to feed local dignitaries at a private function to celebrate the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten. But local chiropodist Gilbert Chilvers, and his wife Joyce, steal the pig and start a three-way tussle between themselves, the town council and the meat inspector. Reece Shearsmith and Sarah Lancashire are excellent as the leads. There are some great song and dance numbers, choreographed by Stephen Mear. It was lovely to see a West End musical comedy that was actually very funny. 'Betty Blue Eyes' feels like an old-fashioned musical - tuneful, witty (with plenty of pig puns!) and moving. The pig doesn't quite steal the show but you certainly come out smiling.

Bedford Festival Fringe

21 July 2011

We're not going to the Edinburgh Festivals this year: we generally go every other year, but as August approaches and withdrawal symptoms start to appear it's been a pleasant surprise to discover the opportunity to see several Edinburgh Fringe-bound shows a little closer to home. This was our first visit to the Bedford Festival Fringe and our first visit to The Place Theatre in Bedford where we saw two 'bedfringe' shows. Simon Munnery is a veteran of many Edinburgh Fringes and I am familiar with his work from numerous glowing reviews but I had never seen him perform. Many years ago he was better known as 'Alan Parker Urban Warrior' and, later, as 'The League Against Tedium'. For this year's Edinburgh Fringe he is working on "a one man musical about the R101 airship disaster of 1930" but, when we saw him in Bedford, this was still very much a work in progress. A couple of songs from the planned musical made up a tiny proportion of his set, which also included monologues, musical jokes and comic observations. It was all a bit rambling and unplanned but Munnery carried it off with charm: he is clearly a very experienced and confident performer. His comedy mixes the absurd with the logically pedantic. He is a very clever comedian and whatever shape his show ends up taking in Edinburgh it will undoubtedly be well worth the price of admission. 'Spitfire Solo' was a very different kind of show. This one-man drama, excellently performed by Nicholas Collett (and devised by Nicholas Collett with Gavin Robertson) tells the story of the Battle of Britain through the reminiscences of a RAF fighter pilot in a retirement home. Playing both the elderly veteran and his younger self (as well as a host of other characters) Collett gives a wonderful evocation of what it was like to be a Spitfire pilot - and re-enacts the entire Battle of Britain using only a couple of sauce bottles and a few slices of bread! 'Spitfire Solo' is a poignant and moving play, lightened by some gentle humour - an excellent fringe show.

'A Visit from the Goon Squad' by Jennifer Egan

18 July 2011

Writing in The Guardian this week about 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2', Peter Bradshaw said that part of the colossal achievement of the Harry Potter movies was that they "brought home to me how terribly brief childhood is". As Douglas Adams said "Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." Jennifer Egan's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel 'A Visit from the Goon Squad', which I've just finished reading, is a fascinating reflection on time and the brevity and connectedness of human lives. It is a structurally amazing book, a jigsaw puzzle that only reveals itself fully at the very end. Set in and around the music business in New York, the opening chapter of 'A Visit from the Good Squad' focuses on Sasha, the kleptomaniac assistant to a record label boss, showing us the world through her eyes. But the second chapter shifts the focus to a different character (who had been mentioned in passing in chapter one) at a different time. A peripheral character in this chapter becomes the main protagonist in the next, and so on. Each of the book's thirteen chapters has a different subject, taking us backwards and forwards in time (from the late 1970s to the near future) and to different locations across the world. But all the characters are connected to each other in some way. This is social networking as narrative structure: apart from a brief namecheck of Facebook there is little mention of online social networks but Jennifer Egan uses the haphazard nature of 'friends' or 'friends' to construct a complex web of relationships. One review likened the book to David Mitchell's 'Cloud Atlas' and, while the timespan of 'A Visit from the Good Squad' is within one human lifetime rather than spread across several centuries, Jennifer Egan teases the reader, much like David Mitchell, before revealing the connections between her main characters. 'A Visit from the Goon Squad' is compelling, funny, clever and incredibly sad - a remarkable achievement.

Rhythms of the World Festival

14 July 2011

On Sunday we made a first visit to the Rhythms of the World Festival in Hitchin. Rhythms of the World is celebrating its 20th anniversary and has grown from a free event in the town centre to a substantial world music festival, now located in the lovely gardens of Hitchin Priory. I was amazed by the scale of the event which included more than 130 bands on 7 stages over 2 days - with full price tickets only £7 per day! We only managed to see 5 bands during our brief visit but they were all very impressive - from the excellent three-piece rockabilly band The Zipheads to the delicate songs of Glasgow group The Recovery Club to the rhythmic fusion of The Tabla Rhythmix. The highlight of our day was a performance on the main stage by the young English folk superstar Jim Moray (reviewed here in August 2008). I've been a fan of Jim Moray since his 2003 debut album, 'Sweet England', but I hadn't seen him live before. He put on a good show to a packed crowd - proving there is still life in the electric guitar/hurdy gurdy combination! Jim Moray takes traditional folk songs and reworks them with a rock feel, incorporating varied influences including electronic beats and rap. He looks every inch the rock star and it was great to see him approach the microphone in his leather jacket, with his electric guitar slung over his shoulder, to say "here's another murder ballad".

'The Long Song' by Andrea Levy

5 July 2011

Andrea Levy’s ‘Small Island’ is one of my favourite novels of recent years – a moving tale of Caribbean immigrants to the UK after the Second World War which manages to show you events through the eyes of each of the main protagonists so that you amazingly find yourself simultaneously sympathising with both sides of the racial prejudice at the heart of the story. Levy’s latest novel, ‘The Long Song’, also deals with Caribbean history but is set much earlier, showing us the final days of slavery in Jamaica in the mid 19^th century. The narrative style is more straightforward than in ‘Small Island’ with a single narrator, the elderly ‘Miss July’, recounting the events of her childhood and early adult life. It’s an often grim tale of slaves being treated as sub-human by their white masters. But Levy makes the history lesson compelling and entertaining by telling the story of one individual’s life: the wider political events are mostly peripheral to the narrative. And Miss July is a slightly naïve narrator, allowing us to read between the lines to deduce what was really going on. The story is interrupted by some comic arguments between Miss July and her grown-up son who is encouraging her to write her book. As we approach the end of the tale the son enters Miss July’s story himself and these entertaining interludes reveal themselves to be more significant than they first appeared. ‘The Long Song’ is an impressive and fascinating novel but I found it a little difficult to get into: in order to demonstrate the impact of the ending of slavery, Andrea Levy has to devote the first 100 pages or so to establishing how bleak the situation was before and this makes for some understandably uncomfortable reading. But it was certainly worth persevering with.

Wimbledon 2011

30 June 2011

We had a wonderful day at Wimbledon on Wednesday. We had seats on Court Number One where we saw two of the men’s singles quarter finals. Novak Djokovic against Bernard Tomic was a thrilling match with the teenage Australian qualifier looking out of his depth in the first set but finding his form to take the second. It was a fascinating encounter which at times seemed like a game of chess as the players tried to work out how to beat each other. Some of the rallies were superb with both players finding incredible angles. Djokovic’s experience saw him through in the end but there were several times in the third and fourth sets where I genuinely had no idea who was going to prevail. So many top tennis matches have an air of inevitability about them but this was excitingly unpredictable. Rafael Nadal against Mardy Fish was more one-sided but not without excitement with Fish fighting back to take the third set. The result was never really in doubt but it was absolutely fascinating to see Nadal live for the first time. He is an amazing player to watch – serious, focused, twitchy and powerful. He hits the ball harder than anyone I have ever seen and seemed in a different class, not just from Fish but also from Djokovic. We ended a wonderful day of tennis with the bonus of seeing a seniors’ doubles match in which Lindsay Davenport and Martina Hingis beat Gigi Fernandez and Natasha Zvereva which was great fun. After many years of visiting Wimbledon I think this was one of the best days of tennis I have seen.

‘Eden End’ by J B Priestley

30 June 2011

Last Monday we were at the Royal Theatre in Northampton to see Laurie Sansom’s production of ‘Eden End’ by J B Priestley. This family drama set in 1912 plays with the poignancy of its characters hopes for the future when we know they will shortly be engulfed by the First World War. The prodigal daughter, Stella, who fled the family home eight years earlier for a life on the stage, returns unexpectedly to disrupt the life of her younger sister who had stayed at home to look after their widowed father. An excellent production, wonderfully cast with outstanding performances by Charlotte Emmerson as Stella, Daisy Douglas as her sister Lilian and Nick Hendrix (making his professional stage debut) as their younger brother Wilfred. There was a lovely invention between two of the scenes where Wilfred and Stella’s actor husband Charles (Daniel Betts) appear in front of the curtain to perform a music hall song and dance number which both evokes the life on stage chosen by Stella (and adored by Wilfred) and perfectly evokes the men’s night out in the village pub from which they return rather the worse for wear in the following scene.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

28 June 2011

It’s been more than two years since the Northampton Symphony Orchestra last played at the Derngate in Northampton (March 2009). It’s a wonderful hall for orchestral music but extremely expensive to hire and a major financial risk for the orchestra as we need to sell considerably more tickets than for our other concerts just to break even. Our programme for last week’s concert was designed to attract the biggest possible audience and included two of the eight most popular requests from BBC Radio 4’s ‘Your Desert Island Discs’. Holst’s ‘The Planets’ is one of the best known pieces of classical music but the vast resources it requires mean that it is not that often performed. I’ve played it three times now and it’s a much more sophisticated work than is often assumed. I think our performance in the Derngate was of a very high standard with some truly thrilling moments. Sitting in the middle of the horn section as we played the undulating arpeggios in ‘Jupiter’ it was hard to understand why every composer since Holst hasn’t written for six horns! In the first half of the concert we played Elgar’s ‘Cello Concerto’ with NSO principal ‘cellist Corinne Malitskie as the soloist. It’s a passionate, emotional work and Corinne gave a wonderful performance which brought the house down. It was a great concert and we attracted a fairly large audience: I hope we’ll be back in the Derngate soon.

Music in the Brickhills concert

16 June 2011

"Voluntary arts group does some voluntary arts activity" doesn't seem like much of a story: makes you think of the old adage about "Man Bites Dog". A friend of mine claims genuinely to have seen the headline "local choir to put on concert" in a local newspaper in Bedford last year, but I'm not sure I believe him. The sad thing is that the somewhat understandable reluctance of the media to jump at the chance to report on voluntary arts groups doing what they do is a story of missed opportunities, because the real story is often much more fascinating and complex than we make it seem. Voluntary arts groups seem to fall into a trap of formality in their publicity, maybe mistakenly trying to seem 'professional', when what are most likely to attract media interest - and audiences - are the real human stories about what they are doing. Music in the Brickhills is a small organisation based in the Brickhill villages just to the South of Milton Keynes. Last Sunday Music in the Brickhills put on a concert of chamber music in the church in Little Brickhill: four things make this unremarkable fact fascinating. Firstly, until the development of Music in the Brickhills there were very few live music performances in these villages: local residents had to travel to Milton Keynes, Bedford or Northampton to see concerts. Secondly Music in the Brickhills deliberately programmes music which is not that often performed, bringing together local professional and amateur musicians who are attracted by the opportunity to play music they would rarely otherwise get the chance to perform and providing an opportunity for local audiences to experience it. Thirdly, rather than regular rehearsals Music in the Brickhills works on a project-by-project basis with a range of musicians and singers coming together for a few intense rehearsals before each concert - which makes it easier for busy in-demand individuals to commit to particular concerts. This has enabled Music in the Brickhills to attract some extremely impressive musicians to perform in these small villages: the musical standard of the performances is very high. Fourthly everyone gives their time and expertise free-of-charge and all money raised by the concerts goes to charity - each event supporting a particular local or national charity. This unique mixture is what makes Music in the Brickhills special and what attracted me last Sunday to hear the augmented Kaznowski Quartet play Schubert's String Quintet in C and an 'all star' wind ensemble perform Nielsen's Wind Quintet. The Schubert is seen by many as a high point in the history of chamber music. I'm not familiar with it but it is a long work encompassing great varieties of mood and a multitude of technical challenges. The Kaznowski Quartet gave a wonderful performance. I had not previously heard the Nielsen piece either: writing in the programme David Lack suggests that it is one of only a handful of masterpieces in the wind quintet repertoire. It is certainly a fiendishly difficult piece requiring virtuoso playing from all five musicians. Each instrument gets its (often completely unaccompanied) moment in the sun and at Sunday's concert these were all accomplished with confidence and panache. I loved the idea that, because Nielsen was writing for the Copenhagen Wind Quintet who he knew well, he introduced the characters of the individual players into the piece. (David Lack says in the programme "variation 5 does make you wonder about the relationship between the clarinettist and the bassoonist in the original ensemble!") It was a lovely concert - fascinating music, played to a very high standard with every penny raised going to the Parkinsons Disease Society: definitely a good news story.

'Vertical Road' by the Akram Khan Dance Company

10 June 2011

On Wednesday evening we and the rest of the delegates from the International Congress on Active Cultural Participation in Europe were part of a packed and enthusiastic audience in the amazing old theatre of the Vooruit Arts Centre in Ghent to see the Akram Khan Dance Company perform ‘Vertical Road’. This was the first time I had seen Akram Khan’s much celebrated choreography. From the start it was clear that it was going to be a high-quality show. We started in pitch blackness, only very gradually beginning to make out the indistinct shape of a human figure behind a giant translucent plastic sheet. This membrane displayed elaborate ripple patterns across the stage when touched. Eventually the solitary figure emerged from behind the sheet to encounter six other dancers with whom he started to interact. The soundtrack, by Nitin Sawhney, began with primitive, natural sounds which grew into a variety of rhythmic and melodic pieces. The overall effect was brutal and uncompromising – occasionally very loud and using some strobe lighting – but there were also some very beautiful passages. At one point one dancer ‘discovered’ his ability to move one of the others like a marionette with invisible strings, lifting his hand to raise the other dancer’s head then thrusting it down to make his colleague writhe on the floor: the dancing, athleticism and physical co-ordination was incredible. Overall the show was very impressive but, not being very familiar with modern dance, I found it a bit too long (at 70 minutes) to sustain my interest without a clear narrative to guide me. Nevertheless it was a fascinating experience.

'The Merchant of Venice' by William Shakespeare

3 June 2011

We returned to Stratford-upon-Avon last weekend to see the second RSC production created for the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre. After Michael Boyd’s Rottweiler production of ‘Macbeth’, Rupert Goold’s ‘The Merchant of Venice’ is a poodle of a show. Set in a Las Vegas casino, it’s completely over the top and incredibly entertaining. Rupert Goold is always inventive and ambitious: I still remember fondly his amazing productions of ‘Othello’, ‘Paradise Lost’, ‘Doctor Faustus’ and ‘Hamlet’ for the Royal Theatre in Northampton. Given the wonderful new RSC stage and a massive cast Goold is in his element with ‘The Merchant of Venice’, throwing everything and the kitchen sink at this notoriously difficult play. Making Launcelot Gobbo an Elvis impersonator allows for a series of big song and dance numbers. And a fancy dress party sets up a great sight gag when Shylock’s daughter Jessica flees from her father’s house dressed not as ‘a boy’ but as ‘The Boy Wonder’. Patrick Stewart’s Shylock is a still, series centre to the pantomime going on around him but ‘The Merchant of Venice’ is really Portia’s show and Susannah Fielding definitely steals it in this production. The inspired idea of setting the Belmont scenes (where suitors attempt to win Portia’s hand in marriage by choosing between three sealed caskets) as a TV gameshow (‘Destiny’) complete with video screens and ‘Applause’ signs is a triumph. It’s all lots of fun but ultimately it’s not Shakespeare’s best play and strangely I felt, given how fast and loose Goold plays with the setting, his failing was in being too reverential to the text which would have benefited from much greater cutting, particularly towards the end. It was very interesting to see the emphasis on a homosexual subtext to the friendship between Bassanio and Antonio, poignantly puncturing Portia’s success. ‘The Merchant of Venice’ very effectively shows off the capabilities of the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre but is probably not one for the Shakepeare purists.

'Attack the Block'

31 May 2011

We were at the cinema last Friday to see ‘Attack the Block’ – a stunning directorial debut by the comedian Joe Cornish (best known as part of the double act Adam & Joe). Comparisons have been made with British zombie comedy ‘Shaun of the Dead’ and the two films have plenty in common: ‘Attack the Block’ includes a cameo performance from Nick Frost and Edgar Wright is among its Executive Producers. But ‘Attack the Block’ lacks the silliness of ‘Shaun of the Dead’ and is much more realistic and believable – which is impressive for a film about an alien attack on a South London tower block. (“What kind of alien would invade some council estate in South London?” “One that’s looking for a fight!”). This tale of a gang of young teenagers teaming up with the nurse they have just mugged at knifepoint to fight an army of vicious alien creatures is very funny precisely because it is so scary and real. There is some graphic violence but it never seems gratuitous and is genuinely frightening. The focus is mainly on the children (led by the excellent John Boyega as Moses the gang-leader) with the adults left in the background (with the exception of Jodie Whittaker as the nurse, Sam) making the film strangely reminiscent of an old Children’s Film Foundation production (albeit with considerably more swearing and violence!). There are clear references to E.T. (boys on bikes, light emanating from a shed etc) but I was also reminded of the comic gangland of ‘Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ and Kevin Smith’s debut ‘Clerks’ (which similarly was filmed entirely without sunlight). The child actors are all great and there are some wonderful characters. Their mock-American street slang feels initially threatening but soon reveals their naivety and is often unintentionally amusing. (Moses has a tendency to use the qualifier “get me?” as in “you get me?” which leads him to say at one point “the aliens are coming to get me get me?”) ‘Attack the Block’ is a fresh and exciting new British film: I loved it.

Music in the Brickhills concert

27 May 2011

My first experience of Music in the Brickhills – the local group established to present live music in the Brickhill villages to the South and East of Milton Keynes in order to raise money for local and national charities – was as a member of the audience for last year’s Brickhill Messiah (reviewed here in October 2010). Last weekend I got my chance to perform at St Mary’s Church in Great Brickhill as part of the ‘Music in the Brickhills All-Star Wind Ensemble’ (still thinks it makes us sound like the Harlem Globetrotters!). It was great to get a chance to play Mozart’s ‘Serenade for 13 Wind Instruments’ (the ‘Gran Partita’). I seldom play any Mozart and rarely play any chamber music: both require quite a different approach to the larger-scale orchestral works that I am more used to playing. In this context every note is vital and you need a high level of concentration throughout. The Serenade is a substantial work with some sublime moments and I think we gave a really good performance under the baton of David Knight. Although we only had one rehearsal as a group it was clear that everyone had either been practising individually or already knew the piece very well – or else they were all excellent sight-readers! The first half of the concert featured the excellent Kaznowski Quartet (reviewed here in January 2008) augmented by players from Milton Keynes Sinfonia to play Brahms’ ‘Sextet no 2 in G’. It was a lovely concert which raised more than £1000 for Macmillan Nurses.

‘Started Early, Took My Dog’ by Kate Atkinson

20 April 2011

‘Started Early, Took My Dog’ is Kate Atkinson’s fourth Jackson Brodie novel and follows ‘When Will There Be Good News’ (reviewed here in September 2009). Reading ‘Started Early, Took My Dog’ I initially worried that it so closely follows the format of its predecessors. Once again we see the action through the eyes of a range of third-person narratives which gradually coincide and overlap. Once again the book starts with a flashback to a violent crime many decades in the past which you know is going to have some bearing on the present-day events that follow. Once again there are some well-hidden twists and some great characters. But my initial scepticism that Atkinson has settled into a formulaic approach was allayed because the plot is incredibly gripping and drives you through the book’s 500 pages at some speed. The story is often grim and sad, though there are some very funny passages. And while the main plotlines are resolved and explained by the end there are some deliberately ambiguous loose ends left dangling. This manages to both create a satisfying conclusion and simultaneously to leave you scouring the details in your mind for days after you have finished reading. ‘Started Early, Took My Dog’ is a very assured and clever piece of writing.

'The Barber of Seville' by Rossini

20 April 2011

Last Thursday we were at The Playhouse Theatre in Alnwick to see a production of Rossini’s ‘The Barber of Seville’ by Swansea City Opera. This was opera on a much smaller scale than our recent experiences at Milton Keynes Theatre, and all the better for it. The set consisted of blown-up black & white cartoon drawings and Swansea City Opera created a cartoon comic opera that was incredibly funny. It helped enormously to be close enough to see the singers’ faces properly and there were some great performances. The Iranian baritone Aris Nadirian was a fantastic Figaro with a graceful swagger and a twinkle in his eyes. And Jeanette Ager gave Rosina the exaggerated air of a children’s TV presenter, her facial expressions turning on a sixpence. The six-piece orchestra provided excellent accompaniment and it was a really enjoyable evening in the theatre.

Northumberland

20 May 2011

We had a lovely week in Northumberland. We were staying in a cottage on a steep hill overlooking the small town of Rothbury with wonderful views across the Coquet valley. We did lots of walking, both along the coastal path and in the Northumberland National Park. The highlights were the walk up the coast from Craster to the ruins of Dunstanburgh Castle and climbing the crags of the Simonside Hills for spectacular views of Rothbury. Apart from being caught in a couple of torrential downpours, the weather was kind to us with lots of sunshine. We visited Cragside – a grand Victorian house which was the first in the world to be powered by hydroelectricity, and the amazing Barter Books – a huge secondhand bookshop inside the old railway station in Alnwick. But we left Northumberland feeling that we had only scratched the surface and we hope to return soon.

'Songs Lost and Stolen' by Bella Hardy

6 May 2011

As you may remember, I first discovered the young English folk singer Bella Hardy as part of a tiny audience in the bar at the Queen's Theatre in Barnstaple in March 2008. A few months later she was opening the BBC Proms Folk Day concert in the Royal Albert Hall (reviewed here in July 2008). In March 2008 I wrote "She sings traditional English folk songs that tell a story - mostly grim tales, even when the music is uplifting. I would have welcomed a little more variety of style - it would have been good to hear her voice in a more modern idiom occasionally". Now Bella Hardy has released an album of her own compositions, 'Songs Lost and Stolen', and it's been well worth waiting for. It's a varied set of songs (with backing from members of Scotland's Burns Unit, reviewed here in November 2010) which betray a multitude of influences. Some modern folk singers write songs intended to sound like previously undiscovered ancient tunes but these songs are much more modern - pop with a strong folk influence. I was reminded of the songs of Karine Polwart (herself a member of the Burns Unit and reviewed here in November 2005, April 2006 and April 2008), Megson (reviewed here in January 2008) and occasionally of Joanna Newsom (reviewed here in November 2006) though without Newsom's vocal eccentricities. It's a lovely album.

'Macbeth' by William Shakespeare

28 April 2011

Plenty of familiar faces in the audience but not so many on the stage: the official opening of the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, and the opening night of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s first production for the new theatre, on Wednesday was attended by many recognisable figures from the world of the arts. (I am sure it was no accident that the one member of the audience who was singled out to hold a live stick of dynamite was the Shadow Culture Secretary, Ivan Lewis MP.) But Michael Boyd’s ‘Macbeth’ emphasised the RSC ethos of ‘the ensemble’ without the need for any star names (with great respect to the marvellous Jonathan Slinger). The new theatre with its thrust stage and high-stacked seating on three sides, all very close to the action, will seem familiar to anyone who visited the RSC’s temporary Courtyard Theatre, albeit with a more solid, wooden feel to the auditorium. But if you can remember the old RST it’s an incredible transformation. I saw many productions in the old theatre and almost always found it difficult to hear and see the actors clearly (as we were usually in the cheapest seats, high at the back of the gallery). Also, I often felt that the scale of shows in the RST (the set, the costumes, the music etc) swamped the plays themselves and, even though you could appreciate the quality, made for an unsatisfactory experience. I remember the first time I saw a RSC show at ‘The Other Place’ – where the smallness of the space and the lack of a conventional stage and set gave you more direct access to the actors – being overwhelmed by the visceral power of the acting. This is the excitement that Michael Boyd wants to create in the main house by removing the proscenium arch and bringing the audience closer to the actors. Detractors of the thrust stage, including several previous RSC Artistic Directors, say that the result is that no-one in the audience now has a perfect view as there will always be actors with their backs to someone. But I’m not sure I would go back to squinting to make out tiny actors on a distant stage whose words I cannot hear. The opening night of ‘Macbeth’ was a triumph: a bold, uncompromising choice for the first new production in the new theatre, this was dark, violent, distressing tragedy. The acting was excellent, holding my attention throughout with the minimum of set, gimmicks or effects. Replacing the witches with three young children was eerie and disturbing. The three child actors then played Macduff’s children and later appeared as the ghostly reminder of their slaughter, suggesting perhaps that their first appearance represented the ghosts of other children and emphasising the ambiguity of the Macbeths’ childlessness. The murder of Macduff’s children was graphic and horrible – there is a lot of blood in this production. All the cast were great, particularly Steve Toussaint as Banquo, Aislin McGuckin as Lady Macbeth and Jonathan Slinger as Macbeth, whose face and body gave the impression of a brain working overtime and thoughts and moods turning on a sixpence.

'In Praise of Love' by Terence Rattigan

27 April 2011

My limited knowledge of the playwright Terence Rattigan stretches to those stiff upper lip drawing-room dramas of the 1940s ‘The Winslow Boy’ and ‘The Browning Version’ and the fact that Rattigan’s dramatic style was swiftly swept away by ‘Look Back in Anger’ and the angry young men of the late 1950s. So it was a pleasant surprise to discover his excellent late play ‘In Praise of Love’ at the Royal & Derngate in Northampton last week. Celebrating the centenary of Rattigan’s birth, this ‘Made in Northampton’ production, directed by Richard Beecham, showed me a different Rattigan in a different time. ‘In Praise of Love’ was written and set in 1973 (four years before Rattigan’s death) and deals with a cantankerous left-wing literary critic and the terminal illness of his Estonian wife. The play is a four-hander, with the couple joined by their successful American novelist friend and their grown-up son, who has outraged his father by campaigning on behalf of the Liberal Party (“a vote-splitting organisation carefully designed to keep the establishment in power”!). The Northampton production was perfectly cast with Jay Villiers, Geraldine Alexander, Sean Power and Gethin Anthony all excellent. I loved the set – a forest of bookshelves, described by Michael Billington in The Guardian as “the most convincing book-lined flat I’ve seen on the British stage” – which gave the play a timeless quality. It must have been tempting to dress the stage in 1970s detail but it was much more effective to leave period reminders to the occasional appearance of a leather jacket or a 1970s television. ‘In Praise of Love’ deals with the tension between being open with the people you love and concealing difficult truths to be kind or polite. Everyone knows something – but isn’t saying so. This is painful, irresolvable but brave, and very subtly handled without the need for any melodramatic revelations – though much is gently revealed as the play progresses. It felt like a mature work from a playwright at the top of his game and for someone with a fairly clichéd view of Terence Rattigan was a subtle revelation in itself.

'Il Trovatore' by Welsh National Opera

21 April 2011

The Glyndebourne on Tour production of Rossini ‘s ‘La Cenerentola’ (in November 2010) was very enjoyable but didn’t really knock me off my feet. So last Saturday we returned to Milton Keynes Theatre so see whether the Welsh National Opera production of Verdi’s ‘Il Trovatore’ might be more our thing. ‘Il Trovatore’ is one of the great incomprehensible and implausible operatic plots – revolving around the fact that Azucena, the daughter of a gypsy burned at the stake for witchcraft by the Count di Luna, steals the Count’s baby son, meaning to throw the child into the flames but accidentally picks up the wrong baby and throws her own son to a fiery death. What was more of a problem for me was that most of the action (including this tragic accident) happens off-stage, or well before the start of the opera, and is merely reported to us. Also, most of the scenes are set in the dusk or night and the set, lighting and costumes were uniformly dark and gloomy. And, maybe I’m being over-critical but the singers seemed quite static, often pausing mid-duel and lowering their swords to sing an aria. I know opera is not necessarily supposed to be completely realistic but I felt the balance between the music and the drama was too skewed to the former. Caruso is supposed to have said that in order to stage ‘Il Trovatore’ all you need are “the four greatest singers in the world”, implying both that (according to Nicholas Payne) “the plot is so far-fetched and ludicrous that it is best to ignore it” as well as that the four principal roles are extremely challenging to sing. And, having got my criticisms off my chest, I have to say the music was wonderful. Verdi is much more my cup of tea than Rossini and the score was thrilling, dramatic, passionate and moving. The WNO orchestra (conducted by Simon Phillippo) was excellent and the WNO chorus was stunning. I’m not sure whether we saw the four best singers in the world but the principals were all very impressive, particularly the tenor Gwyn Hughes Jones as Manrico and Katia Pellegrino as Leonara. (I must also say that the WNO printed programme was one of the lengthiest and most informative I can remember.) I loved the music but I think I would have been as happy with a concert performance.

'Shades of Grey' by Jasper Fforde

15 April 2011

Regular readers may remember how much I loved Jasper Fforde’s Nursery Crimes novels (reviewed here in April and October 2007) and his Thursday Next literary detective series (reviewed here in August, September and October 2008 and February and April 2009). I’ve just finished reading his latest novel, ‘Shades of Grey’, which is a much more ambitious, complex and serious work. It is set in a post-apocalyptic dystopian society far into our future in which social standing is determined by your ability to perceive colour – with the majority of the population only able to see grey and just a privileged few families seeing yellows, greens or reds. Fforde creates a future world that allows him to examine our current ‘colour’ prejudice and other aspects of discrimination. It also provides a backdrop for puns and parodies, though this is such a distant future that many of the ‘ancient’ artefacts and technologies that being rediscovered and misunderstood date from many centuries into our own future. The complexity and allegorical nature of Fforde’s future world reminded me of ‘A Canticle for Leibowitz’ by Walter M. Miller, Jr. and ‘The Phantom Tollbooth’ by Norton Juster. This oppressively regimented society with its governing ‘Rule Book’ is a very Orwellian vision of the future, albeit one with more than a touch of Douglas Adams. Jasper Fforde is never less than entertaining, and ‘Shades of Grey’ has a clever plot and a great range of comic characters, but it’s not half as funny as his earlier novels. It feels like a more grown-up work and is impressive in its complexity but I missed the sheer silliness of the other books. This future society is so far removed from the familiar that you really have to pay attention to follow the story, particularly in the early chapters where I found myself having to keep re-reading passages to make sense of them. This felt, at times, like hard work – though the prose itself isn’t difficult, just the alien setting. And I think I was paying so much attention to making sense of the unusual world that I probably missed much of the humour and hidden references to our own society. ‘Shades of Grey’ was enjoyable and intriguing but one for Jasper Fforde aficionados with some patience and determination.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

15 April 2011

In Saturday’s Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert we took on the challenge of Sibelius’ complex ‘Symphony No 7’. Despite being very fond of some of the earlier Sibelius symphonies I hadn't encountered the seventh before and I think it’s fair to say that it took the orchestra some weeks to get to grips with it. It’s a subtle, interlocking work which only began really to make sense once all the constituent parts found their place. But, for me, the rehearsals for this concert have been more rewarding because of this challenge and, as the symphony took shape, I came to understand and enjoy it. Sibelius manages to hint at references to his other works without every directly quoting them: on several occasions I found myself humming bits from his second or fifth symphonies after rehearsing the seventh. And I think our performance went very well, with the symphony sounding coherent, passionate and tuneful. We finished the concert with Beethoven’s ‘Symphony No 7’ – one of my favourite Beethoven symphonies. It was a thrilling performance, particularly for the heroic acrobatics of my fellow horn-players David Lack and Ian Frankland.

'Inspector Drake's Last Case' by David Tristram

14 April 2011

Last Friday we returned to the tiny TADS Theatre in Toddington to see a third case for the particular talents of Inspector Drake and Sergeant Plod in David Tristram’s play ‘Inspector Drake’s Last Case’. With local amateur actors Joe Butcher and Kevin Birkett reprising their roles as the mercurial Inspector and his intellectually challenged sidekick, we knew we were in for a treat. Joe Butcher is a compelling actor to watch, with a twinkle in his eye and an ever-expressive face that tells you much more than is actually being said. As with ‘Inspector Drake and the Black Widow’ (reviewed here in April 2009) and ‘Inspector Drake and the Perfekt Crime’ (reviewed here in July 2010), ‘Inspector Drake’s Last Case’ lampoons the drawing room murder mystery genre with a fast-moving conveyor belt of puns, sight gags, twists and misunderstandings, at the end of which the Inspector is presented with a suitcase covered in flowery wrapping paper just so that he can say “well, that’s another case wrapped up” (you get the idea!). David Tristram’s plays are very silly and extremely funny and the three TADS productions have been excellent. More please.

'Solar' by Ian McEwan

7 April 2011

Reading Ian McEwan’s latest novel ‘Solar’, I found I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn’t a work by David Lodge. McEwan seems to have parked himself squarely in Lodge territory with a comic novel about a frustrated, aging male academic. The theme here is climate change and the potential of solar power to solve our enegergy crisis and the book was inspired by a trip to the Arctic that McEwan made as part of a group of artists – a version of which provides a significant episode in the first part of the novel. ‘Solar’ is clever and well-constructed but not half as funny as David Lodge would have made it. Having created an unlikeable protagonist – the Nobel prize-winning scientist Michael Beard, through whose eyes we see events unfold – the challenge of the comic novel is surely to make us, against our better judgement, come to sympathise with him. I didn’t feel McEwan entirely achieved this – though I think we are supposed to see Beard’s bloated, dysfunctional body and his consistent refusal to seize any of the opportunities for redemption which present themselves to him, as an analogy for the failing health of the planet. Having said all that, I enjoyed the way McEwan pulled together all the threads of his somewhat non-linear narrative towards its inevitable climax.

Manhattan School of Music Symphony concert

7 April 2011

We were fortunate to be able to round off our New York holiday with a concert at the Manhattan School of Music. The MSM Symphony, conducted by Philippe Entremont, played ‘Appalachian Spring’ by Copland before giving the New York premiere of ‘Souvenirs’, written by MSM Professor Richard Danielpour as a tribute to the musical life of Philippe Entremont. This engaging and entertaining piece consists of five movements, each reflecting a place where Entremont has been a resident conductor: New York, Tokyo, New Orleans, Paris and Vienna. The second half of the concert was a performance of Bernstein’s Symphony No 2 ‘The Age of Anxiety’. Based on WH Auden’s poem ‘The Age of Anxiety: a Baroque Eclogue’ this powerful work showcases Bernstein’s unique mix of serious, lyrical, playful, dramatic and jazz-inspired and features a fiendishly difficult role for solo piano, here played by the impressive young Egyptian pianist Mohamed Shams. The student orchestra was fantastic, reaching a very high standard and creating and electrically exciting atmosphere. Great concert.

'Freud's Last Session' by Mark St Germain

7 April 2011

New York is home to a huge number of theatres and Broadway has a very similar feel to London’s West End (and seemed to be featuring many of the same shows). We sought out the delightful off-Broadway Marjorie S Deane Theater to see a new play by Mark St Germain called ‘Freud’s Last Session’. This two-hander imagines a meeting between Sigmund Freud and CS Lewis, shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War. Freud is 83 and approaching the end of his life while Lewis is half his age and a recent convert to Christianity. Their debate of religion, psychoanalysis and more was engaging and thoughtfully staged, with the interruption of radio updates on the war providing breaks in the dialogue. It was excellently acted by Martin Rayner as Freud and Mark H Dold as Lewis. An enjoyable and thought-provoking piece of theatre.

New York

7 April 2011

We had a brilliant week in New York. It was my first time there and we did just about all the main tourist attractions – and walked for miles! We stayed in an apartment in the Upper West Side with views over Central Park and quickly got the hang of the grid system and the subway. Manhattan is an amazing place – self-contained and small enough to find your way around easily but littered with iconic landmarks and a sense of familiarity from hundreds of movies. At the end of our first, exhausting day we collapsed into a cinema for a rest and chose the first available film which was ‘The Adjustment Bureau’ starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt, only to discover that not only was it set in downtown Manhattan but that we had just visited most of the places featured mere minutes before! We had great weather for most of the week – glorious sunshine and cloudless blue skies but extremely cold (even for New York). I think our highlight was the boat trip to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island: the Museum of Immigration is fantastic, particularly with the audio tour which puts the voices of people who passed through the entrance hall and tiled corridors to secure their American citizenship in your ears as you tread in their footsteps. And it was amazing to discover that this huge operation of screening people for suitability to enter the USA resulted in just 2% being turned back to the ships that had brought them. We enjoyed the views from the ‘Top of the Rock’ (the roof of the Rockefeller Center) and the Empire State Building, the tackiness of Times Square and the preponderance of excellent cheap cafés, each with an enormous range of fresh food. We visited Ground Zero, though there is not much to see at the moment as new buildings are well under way and the area is now a fairly inaccessible building site. The Frick Collection – a relatively small but elegant art gallery with a passing resemblance to London’s Wallace Collection – was charming and the massive Metropolitan Museum of Art was awe-inspiring. To cap it all, as we approached the Met we noticed crowds gathering outside and police positioning barriers along the side of Fifth Avenue. We asked a police officer what was happening and she told us that President Obama was about to drive past so we joined the crowds and caught a fleeting glimpse of the President as his motorcade sped past. Manhattan felt very safe and clean and we found most New Yorkers extremely polite and welcoming. We had a great time.

'King Lear' by William Shakespeare

21 March 2011

Week three of my theatrical hearing test: last Thursday we were back at Milton Keynes Theatre to see the Donmar production of ‘King Lear’ with Derek Jacobi, directed by Michael Grandage. We were sitting right at the back of the upper circle, even further from the stage than for ‘Hamlet’ a couple of weeks ago. Concerned about whether we would again have difficulty hearing the actors, we were delighted to discover that the performance was to be captioned by Stagetext, only to realise that we were sitting so far back that we could barely read the captions! Once the play got underway, however, we realised we needn’t have worried: the acting was excellent and we could hear everything without any difficulty (though the Stagetext captions were incredibly helpful in identifying which character was which). This production used a bare, boarded set with hardly any props or furniture – the changes of scene being signified by a very creative use of lighting. Inventive as this was, towards the end of the play (which ran for just under three hours) the scenes did begin to blur together. But the storm scene – conjured by flashing lights shining through the gaps between the boards on the floor and walls of the stage and freezing to silence for Lear’s spookily amplified whispered speech – was great. Derek Jacobi was fantastic as Lear – playful, spritely and capricious: a relatively young old man whose descent into madness was believably painful. And Gina McKee was stunning as Goneril – commanding the stage with an icy determination.

'Frankenstein' by Nick Dear based on the novel by Mary Shelley

17 March 2011

On Saturday we were at the National Theatre in London to see ‘Frankenstein’ – a new play by Nick Dear based on the novel by Mary Shelley and directed by Danny Boyle. This certainly felt like a major theatrical event – a complete sell-out with a real buzz in the foyer and high expectations all round (we were feeling very smug having booked our tickets months ago!). Inevitably it was always going to be difficult for the show to live up to all the hype but it was very impressive. The set, lighting and effects on the massive revolving stage in the Olivier Theatre were amazing and there were some truly jaw-dropping moments. The acting was excellent: we saw Benedict Cumberbatch as The Creature and Jonny Lee Miller as Victor Frankenstein (the two actors are alternating the parts). Benedict Cumberbatch’s physical performance, particularly in the opening scene where The Creature comes to terms with his new body and gains control of his limbs, was amazing. The care given to making this opening realistic and believable did, however, make it quite a slow start and it felt like the show only really got going when Jonny Lee Miller’s Frankenstein became involved. I thought he very effectively made Victor Frankenstein obsessive and unfeeling while also making us sympathise with his impossible moral dilemma. The decision to run for two hours without an interval seemed odd – I think the play could have taken a break without too much detriment. Some of the set-piece scenes – Frankenstein confronting The Creature on the mountain-top, the Frankensteins’ bedroom on their wedding night etc – were thrillingly handled. And Naomi Harries played Elizabeth as intelligent and brave – no hysterical screaming here. The fact that the play was fairly faithful to the original novel, rather than following the melodramatic horror of the Frankenstein films, strangely seemed a bit of a missed opportunity given the scale of the production which could have produced something spectacularly scary. It also suffered from the fact that, although Mary Shelley came up with a brilliant concept, her novel isn’t the greatest narrative. The plot is very episodic and Frankenstein does seem to spend half the novel being pursued across Europe by The Creature and the other half pursuing The Creature. But it was a stunning theatrical experience – and we could hear every word!

'Hamlet' by William Shakespeare

7 March 2011

On Saturday we were at Milton Keynes Theatre to see the National Theatre production of ‘Hamlet’, directed by Nicholas Hytner and starring Rory Kinnear. When I bought our tickets, the girl at the box office looked nervously at me and said “I have to warn you, it’s in modern dress – is that okay?” I’m not sure what they would have done if I had said no but actually it was very okay. The modern setting (early 1990s I would say, from the size of the computer monitor on Polonius’s desk and the absence of mobile phones) worked well with Elsinore crawling with suited secret agents wearing dark glasses and walkie-talkie headsets. And the sight of soldiers flooding into the palace firing machine guns was thrilling and quite scary. The set and lighting were great – in the opening scene the ghost miraculously disappearing into the shadows was stunning. And Rory Kinnear was a wonderful Hamlet – more cerebral than soldierly. He reminded me of Simon Russell-Beale’s interpretation of the part for the National Theatre some years ago. Rory Kinnear was a frustrated and irritated Hamlet, toying with the fools around him and managing to turn his mood on a sixpence. I also liked Patrick Malahide’s sinister Claudius and David Calder was particularly good as Polonius, reminding us that there is much more to the character than the bumbling fool we often see him as. This was a substantial Hamlet – running at more than three and a half hours – and I did feel the pacy contemporary style, set and music might have better fitted a shorter version of the text. We also had some difficulty hearing a lot of the dialogue. Maybe the National Theatre has better acoustics (and fewer people coughing!) than the Milton Keynes Theatre – and admittedly we were in the cheap seats at the back – but it’s quite difficult to sustain your attention for more three and a half hours when you can’t hear what the actors are saying. This was a shame as the production looked great and started thrillingly. But I did very much enjoy Rory Kinnear’s performance.

'Great Expectations' by Charles Dickens adapted by Tanika Gupta

4 March 2011

Last Saturday we were at the Watford Palace Theatre so see the Engish Touring Theatre production of Tanika Gupta’s stage adaptation of ‘Great Expectations’ by Charles Dickens. Relocating the story to India (though without changing the late Victorian period), Tanika Gupta emphasises the class divisions by making the villagers Indian while Miss Haversham, Jaggers and Herbert Pocket embody different aspects of the British Raj and Magwitch is a black convict from Cape Colony. This cleverly both simplifies the story and adds new elements of racism and colonial oppression. I thought it worked well and the set, costumes and music were spectacular. The decision to have the same adult actor play Pip as man and boy made the initial childhood scenes a little cartoonish but the second half of the play was darker and more realistic. Inevitably, dramatising a long and complex novel results in a rapid procession of short scenes and it was hard to forget that this was the play of the book. But it was an enjoyable and epic production.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

25 February 2011

Most amateur orchestras rehearse for months to prepare for a single performance. The logistics of bringing together (in the case of the Northampton Symphony Orchestra) 84 performers plus conductor and soloist make repeat performances impractical. Yet it is disappointingly rare that the concert performance proves to be the best the orchestra has played the works in question. All too often the combination of nerves, the need for prolonged intense concentration and either lack of familiarity or over-familiarity with the music leaves us feeling that the concert wasn’t quite as good as the standard we had achieved in rehearsal. But last Saturday’s Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert definitely bucked this trend with our performance, in particular, of ‘Harold in Italy’, Berlioz’s Symphony in Four Parts with Viola Obbligato, more delicate, more playful, more perfect than it had ever been in rehearsal. Former NSO member Becci Dyson played the solo viola part beautifully. ‘Harold in Italy’ is a jigsaw that requires every part to be in exactly in the right place. The tune flits rapidly between soloist and orchestra and between instruments within the orchestra. I think this is why it seemed to take us a while to get the point of the work in rehearsal: only when everything falls into place does the picture become clear and the piece really grew on me as we got closer to the concert. The rest of the concert continued the theme of works about Italy by non-Italian composers (and a sub-theme of viola solos!) with Elgar’s ‘In The South (Alassio)’ – a wonderfully Straussian piece – and ‘Capriccio Italien’ by Tchaikovsky, the end of which was definitely faster in performance than we had ever played it in rehearsal! It was an ambitious programme but the orchestra rose to the occasion and gave one of its best concerts for some time.

'Blithe Spirit' by Noel Coward

25 February 2011

Last Friday we were at Milton Keynes Theatre to see ‘Blithe Spirit’ by Noel Coward. This Theatre Royal Bath production, directed by Thea Sharrock, brought together an impressive cast, including Robert Bathurst, Hermione Norris, Ruthie Henshall and Alison Steadman as Madame Arcati. ‘Blithe Spirit’ is an enjoyable romp about the perils of allowing your present and former wives to meet – even if one of them is dead. The play lacks the witty word-play of ‘Private Lives’ but it was a high-quality production with a great over-the-top performance from Alison Steadman.

Hornroh

18 February 2011

Listening to last week’s Music Planet programme on BBC Radio 3, I was literally stopped in my tracks by the weird and wonderful use of Alpenhorns by the Swiss group Hornroh. Having reached my destination I had to sit in the car for five minutes until the end of the track. It is a hauntingly beautiful sound, reminiscent of whalesong, but played about as far from sea level as you can get, Hornroh create a wonderful, unique music. You can listen to free mp3 samples at http://www.hornroh.ch/en/music/

‘The Years Between’ by Daphne du Maurier

11 February 2011

Daphne du Maurier is probably best known now for two novels, ‘Jamaica Inn’ and the marvellous ‘Rebecca’, but she was a prolific novelist and short-story writer and also wrote two original stage plays. After the success of its revival of Tennessee Williams' first play 'Spring Storm' (reviewed here in October 2009) which subsequently transferred to the West End, the Royal Theatre, Northampton, has now revived Daphne du Maurier’s similarly neglected wartime play ‘The Years Between’ and we went to see it last Saturday. ‘The Years Between’ is the painful tale of a woman who believes her husband to have been killed in active service and, after several years of mourning, plans to marry again only for her husband to return from the war expecting everything to be as it was when he left. Apart from the emotional human story this creates, the play also highlights the tension between soldiers who feel they are fighting on foreign fields to preserve a way of life while those left at home feel they are fighting for change and a better world. It’s a clever and moving play and the Royal Theatre production, directed by Kate Saxon, was impressive and well-cast with Marianne Oldham excellent as the lead character.

Free Peace Band concert

4 February 2011

On Saturday we were at St James Church in New Bradwell, Milton Keynes, for a concert by the Free Peace Band – a three-piece band (see what they did there!) comprising Marcus Armstrong , Rebecca Parmer and Duncan Barnes, who perform to raise money for the i:peace charity. This concert celebrated the music of Simon and Garfunkel – for which the Free Peace Band’s gentle, three-part vocal harmonies, acoustic guitar and bass were perfect. It was lovely to hear all those familiar 1960s classics but I particularly enjoyed Simon’s ‘The Boy in the Bubble’ from his 1986 ‘Graceland’ album (more my era!) and was reminded me of Peter Gabriel’s haunting slowed-down cover of this track which I heard him perform at WOMAD (July 2009).

'The King's Speech'

28 January 2011

A couple of years ago I heard a really good BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play about King George VI working with Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue to conquer his stammer ahead of a live broadcast. I was intrigued to learn that this story was to be filmed and last weekend we went to see ‘The King’s Speech’. Tom Hooper’s film broadens the tale to encompass the abdication crisis and the outbreak of war. Colin Firth rightly deserves all the plaudits he is receiving for his performance as the King, Helena Bonham-Carter is great as Queen Elizabeth and Geoffrey Rush is very funny as Logue – I particularly enjoyed his audition for a local amateur theatre group – “too Australian” (which is all the more amusing as we then see Australian Guy Pearce playing Edward VIII). ‘The King’s Speech’ is one of those films where you can have lots of fun just spotting the well-known British actors in minor roles. It was lovely to see an all-too-rare appearance by Colin Firth’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’ co-star, Jennifer Ehle (here playing the Australian Mrs Logue). It’s a very enjoyable film which manages to be gripping even though you know what’s going to happen. Historically fascinating, emotionally engaging and often extremely funny – bring on the Oscars!

'Music Planet'

21 January 2011

It’s great to hear Andy Kershaw back on the radio after a long absence, co-presenting the Radio 3 series ‘Music Planet’ – a parallel project to the BBC 1 series ‘Human Planet’. In last week’s opener Andy was shark fishing in Papua New Guinea and dropped in on the Deep Sea Canoe Movement in the Solomon Islands who have been singing gospel music as an act of ‘continuity worship’ 24 hours a day (in 3-hour shifts) since 2006. Great radio journalism and great music – make your way to iplayer and turn up the volume!

'We Are All Made of Glue' by Marina Lewycka

14 January 2011

I really enjoyed Marina Lewycka’s debut novel ‘A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian’ (reviewed here in April 2006) and I had been looking forward to reading her latest book ‘We Are All Made of Glue’. It’s great fun – a similar contemporary domestic setting, easy to read with a cast of entertainingly comic characters (and cats!) who are all too believable. The setting and tone reminded me of David Lodge or Anne Tyler and Marina Lewycka has a similar ability to weave serious themes into an apparently light comic novel. In ‘We Are All Made of Glue’ the cartoon battles that the first person narrator, Georgina, wages with social services and estate agents on behalf of her elderly neighbour, Mrs Shapiro, form the backdrop for a much darker tale about battles between Jews and Palestinians and the impending apocalyptic end of the world.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1'

7 January 2011

A trip to the cinema over Christmas to see the new Harry Potter film has very quickly become such a seasonal fixture that, as with the Doctor Who Christmas special, it's hard to remember what we used to do before. In the case of the Harry Potter films we will soon be forced to remember but we enjoyed going to see the penultimate episode 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1' last week. "These are dark times, there is no denying" but there's little sign of austerity in this blockbuster. As I felt when reading the book (reviewed here in August 2007), freed from the formulaic strictures of another school year at Hogwarts, 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' is a thrillingly unpredictable ride. It felt like a more grown-up film and was often genuinely scary. I'm not sure whether you would be able to follow the incredibly complex plot if you were unfamiliar with the books but this has been a problem for all the HP films. This one feels like Emma Watson's movie with Hermione really coming of age - though, once again, in a few brief scenes Evanna Lynch's Luna Lovegood threatens to steal the show. The adult supporting cast is a veritable Equity directory of British acting talent: it's now much easier to name the prominent British actors who are not involved. And it's an amazing testament to the financial clout of the franchise to see how many really big name stars make incredibly fleeting, often wordless cameos: Miranda Richardson appears once in a newspaper photograph (albeit a moving one). Interesting also to see Bill Nighy doing a Welsh accent and Rhys Ifans doing an Irish accent. But as with the previous films it is to the director's credit (David Yates in this case) that the adults play second fiddle to the young leads. Any film which sets out to tell half a story feels a little unsatisfying but I felt this was one of the best of the HP series and I'm looking forward to the final instalment.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

17 December 2010

On Sunday I was in Northampton to take part in the Northampton Symphony Orchestra’s Christmas Cracker Concert. It was a real ‘something for everyone’ programme including excerpts from Handel’s ‘Messiah’ (with the Daventry Choral Society) alongside Kleinsinger’s ‘Tubby the Tuba’ (expertly narrated by Graham Padden and featuring NSO tuba player Nick Tollervey). We contrasted the ‘Sleigh Ride’ by Delius with the one by Leroy Anderson. And amid all the Christmas carols there was an explosion of piracy with Klaus Badelt’s music for ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ which prompted the appearance of pirate hats, eyepatches and hooks amongst the Santa hats and tinsel. A good time had by all!

‘The Pirate Princess’ by Lea Pryer

17 December 2010

Last weekend had a distinctly piratical flavour: On Saturday we were in Toddington at the TADS Theatre to see ‘The Pirate Princess’, a new pantomime by TADS member Lea Pryer – ‘Treasure Island’ combined with ‘Twelfth Night’. It was a swashbuckling performance incorporating all the standard pantomime conventions – principal boy, a dame, sing-along audience participation, slapstick cookery scene etc – but with a rather cute dragon in place of the usual pantomime horse or cow. It was lots of fun and very impressively performed. TADS regular Rachel Birks was great as Princess Aliyah – the serious, romantic centre to the story amid all the cartoon chaos. But what really set ‘The Pirate Princess’ apart from other amateur productions was the work of professionally trained choreographer James Sygrove. He created four fantastic song and dance numbers on the tiny TADS stage, culminating in a wonderful ‘Bollywood’ finale (to AR Rahman’s ‘Yo Ho’ obviously!)

'The Trip'

10 December 2010

I know ‘The Trip’ – the BBC2 series directed by Michael Winterbottom and starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon which finished this week – has divided opinion but I thought it was wonderful. Building on the fictional relationship developed through improvised scenes in Winterbottom's 2005 film, ‘A Cock and Bull Story’, Coogan and Brydon play "loose versions of themselves" as they embark on a tour of restaurants across the North England, ostensibly for an article for The Observer Magazine. The wintry northern scenery was beautifully shot and the series has already, apparently, created an increase in visitor numbers. The blurring between reality and fiction was unsettlingly achieved: I had to remind myself constantly that we were watching Coogan and Brydon playing characters based on themselves and that each of their friends, relations and colleagues that we encountered were actors rather than the real people. Part-way through the series I began to worry that, enjoyable as it was, the format was a little formulaic with each episode reprising the same scenes in slightly different locations. But as we approached the final half-hour I began to notice the subtle story arcs that had been carefully hidden in the background. Like the best dramas it was both incredibly funny and painfully sad, saying much about ambition, relationships, male friendship and mortality. Despite the verbal jousting and subtle wordplay that characterised most of the series, or perhaps because it came so unexpectedly in this context, a couple of pieces of physical slapstick in the final episode provided a fantastic comic climax. And the recurring references to Rob Brydon’s impression of a ‘Small Man Trapped in a Box' led to a brilliant pay-off in this week’s finale. A very classy piece of television.

'Canaich' by Duncan Chisholm

3 December 2010

When you think of Scottish folk fiddle music you tend to expect frantic feats of physical dexterity creating toe-tapping dance tunes, so I was intrigued to discover a different side through the music of the amazing Scottish fiddler Duncan Chisholm. Chisholm’s 2008 album ‘Farrar’ is a hauntingly beautiful collection of slow airs and laments – a mixture of traditional tunes and new compositions – quiet and understated but incredibly moving. This week I’ve been listening to ‘Canaich’ – the new album by Duncan Chisholm. This is a more varied collection which includes a few faster dance tunes but it’s the slow, melancholic tracks that grab my attention. Chisholm’s tone is clear and pure – truly beautiful music.

Milton Keynes Sinfonia concert

26 November 2010

A brief history of brass instruments: if you take any narrow metal tube or pipe, open at both ends, put one end to your lips and blow you can produce a musical note. The tighter you press your lips together and the harder you blow the higher the note will be. With most metal tubes you will be able to produce a limited number of different musical notes, based on the frequencies at which the tube will naturally resonate. The longer the tube the more notes will be possible, but even with a very long tube there will be a limit to which notes can be produced – enough for a fanfare but missing the notes in between that you would need to play most melodies. The precise notes available will vary depending on the length of the tube.

One early solution was to create a detachable section of tube that could be removed from the middle of the instrument and replaced with a similar section of a slightly different length. The early version of what we now call the French horn (which is a very long tube curled up to make it portable-enough to play on horseback) used this system of detachable ‘crooks’. But it was not possible to swap crooks fast enough to play a continuous tune requiring notes from the different crooks. A quicker way of altering the overall length of the tube was to create a sliding ‘crook’ that could be moved in or out while playing to vary the total length of the instrument, leading to the development of the trombone.

The alternative was to permanently attach several ‘crooks’ of various lengths to the instrument and create a system of valves to redirect the air through the appropriate pipes as required to make particular notes available to the player. The modern trumpet uses three vertical valves that, when pressed, channel the air through a second set of pipes from those used by default. Combining all three valves creates seven different possible total lengths for the air to travel through, providing the player with access to every possible note.

The modern French horn uses a similar system of valves, except that they rotate to change the direction of the air (rather than moving up and down as on a trumpet). Most horns have levers for the player to press which are attached to the rotary valves by ‘strings’ (thin nylon twine) which pull the valves round to the relevant position.

The reason I’m telling you all this is to set the scene for the Milton Keynes Sinfonia concert I played in last Saturday. The concert opened with the ‘Peer Gynt Suite No. 1’ by Grieg, followed by the Miaskovsky ‘Cello Concerto. Russian composer Nikolai Miaskovsky was a contemporary of Rachmaninov and wrote in a late-romantic style. His ‘cello concerto, written in 1944, is an interesting piece that was completely new to me – a little rambling, maybe, but with some lovely tunes. With the Milton Keynes Sinfonia’s conductor, David Knight, being an extremely accomplished ‘cellist himself, it was no surprise that the soloist he had chosen was something special: German-born ‘cellist Julian Metzger gave an outstanding performance.

I was only involved in the second half of the concert, in which we played Tchaikovsky’s mighty final work, the ‘Pathétique’ Symphony No 6. My role was ‘bumping’ the first horn part, ie doubling the first horn to allow the principal horn player to save himself, in this mammoth stamina-sapping work, for the more delicate solo passages. It started well, but shortly into the second of the four movements of the symphony I heard a snapping sound and realised that the string on my third valve had broken. This made the third valve unusable: replacing the string is a fiddly procedure and not one I was going to be able to accomplish in the middle of a concert, so I resigned myself to having to play the rest of the piece without using the third valve. Fortunately, the third valve is probably the least used but it was still a considerable mental challenge to calculate which notes I could play with an alternative fingering and which I would have to omit entirely – as well as a challenge of physical dexterity, particularly during the faster passages, to make sure I didn’t automatically revert to the familiar fingering patterns. All this made for a nerve-wracking forty minutes. I was fortunate that I was doubling the first horn part and was not the only player responsible for producing those notes. The fact that, after we had finished the performance the principal horn player, David Lack, said he hadn’t noticed my predicament suggests that I got away with it!

The ‘Pathétique’ Symphony is a very emotional piece: the third movement is a brilliant march with a magnificent ending that sounds like it should be the climax of the whole work. Most audiences burst into applause at this point – and our audience in Milton Keynes was no exception – leaving the heart-breakingly beautiful fourth movement to shatter the joy and lead us inevitably into despair. I was amused to discover that, in the tense, silent moments after the last note of the symphony, as orchestra and audience held its collective breath before relaxing into applause, one member of the audience was heard to say "I loved the Tchaikovsky, but what was that funny piece they played as an encore?".

‘La Cenerentola’ by Glyndebourne on Tour

18 November 2010

Regular readers may have spotted that I am not a very frequent opera-goer. I think the last full opera I saw was a production of Verdi’s ‘Falstaff’ in Peterborough in about 1996. But, aware of this gap in our cultural landscape, we took the opportunity of the visit of Glyndebourne on Tour to Milton Keynes Theatre last week to dip our toes in the operatic water. We went to see Peter Hall’s production of ‘La Cenerentola’ by Rossini – which we chose as a relatively light reintroduction to opera and one in which we would have no difficulty following the plot (it’s Cinderella – oh yes it is!). This Cinderella is the fairy tale without the magic – a more realistic version of the story without a fairy godmother or any supernatural transformation – and with a pair of bracelets rather than the more familiar glass slippers. It was interesting to compare this take on the tale with Gregory Maguire’s novel 'Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister' (reviewed here in March 2008) which also strips away the supernatural elements of the story, but somehow manages to create something even more magical in the process. ‘La Cenerentola’ was very enjoyable – high production values and an excellent orchestra, conducted by Enrique Mazzola. The singers were very impressive, particularly Allyson McHardy’s coloratura display as Angelina (Cenerentola) and the tenor Luciano Botelho as Don Ramiro (the Prince). And I loved the Glyndebourne Chorus who were powerful, dramatic and very funny. But, on reflection, maybe choosing a work with such a well-known story was a mistake as the plot really seemed to drag. It was an impressive production but didn’t really knock me off my feet.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

9 November 2010

When I did A-level music, one of the set works was Richard Strauss’ ‘Four Last Songs’: I can remember my music teacher worrying about the decision of the exam board to expose emotional, exam-stressed, teenagers to this melancholy reflection on morbidity. He needn’t have worried on my account: I am immensely grateful for this early discovery of Strauss’ masterpiece, which is now one of my favourite pieces of music and which seems to grow more perfect each time you hear it. It’s achingly sad: I will long remember watching the broadcast of this year’s BBC Proms performance by Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic, which ended with the Finnish soprano, Karita Mattila, staring forward, immovably, into space after singing her last note, her eyes filling with tears. I was not the only member of the Northampton Symphony Orchestra welling up during our performance of the ‘Four Last Songs’ in Northampton on Saturday. Young, local singer, Katherine Crompton, who is currently studying for a Performance Masters at the Royal College of Music, gave a beautiful performance. And it was a huge pleasure to welcome back our principal horn player, David Lack, whose seat I have been keeping warm during his absence through illness. It was wonderful to be able to leave the nerve-racking horn solo at the end of the second song, ‘September’, to Dave who played it exquisitely in his first appearance with the orchestra for 18 months. Not that my nerves were completely off the hook as I took the horn solo at the end of the first movement of Brahms’ ‘Symphony No. 2’ – one of those moments that, as a player, is both enjoyable but also a great relief when it’s over! The second symphony is a cheerful, Beethovenian work which I hadn’t played before. We opened with a powerful performance of Wagner’s ‘Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg Overture’. It feels like the NSO is really developing under the baton of Alexander Walker: it was a great concert.

'Side Show' by The Burns Unit

5 November 2010

Having first met at a Scottish Arts Council funded songwriting retreat in rural Scotland, the unlikely folk-rock-rap supergroup The Burns Unit (pun intended) have created a wonderful first album ‘Side Show’. The (mostly Scottish) Burns Unit are folk singers Karine Polwart (reviewed here in November 2005, April 2006 and April 2008) and Kenny Anderson, former Delgados singer Emma Pollock, rapper MC Soom T, Indo-Scottish bassist Future Pilot AKA, instrumentalist Kim Edgar, drummer Mattie Foulds and pianist Michael Johnston. The result of their collaboration is a varied collection of songs that manage to maintain a coherent overall identity. Some songs could have come straight from a Karine Polwart album (which is no bad thing at all) but the most interesting tracks are those that combine the disparate styles of the contributors – my favourites being those featuring the raps of MC Soom T.

'The Habit of Art’ by Alan Bennett

28 October 2010

Last Friday we were at Milton Keynes Theatre to see the National Theatre production of Alan Bennett’s latest play ‘The Habit of Art’. My expectations were high, as I had been looking forward to seeing how Alan Bennett and director Nicholas Hytner would follow their success with ‘The History Boys’, but I’m afraid I was a bit disappointed. ‘The Habit of Art’ deals with a meeting between WH Auden and Benjamin Britten in their later years to discuss Britten’s new opera, ‘Death in Venice’. But this is actually a play within a play as ‘The Habit of Art’ is set within a National Theatre rehearsal room, showing the actors who will play Auden and Britten rehearsing their lines. This allows for constant interruptions from the stage manager, other actors and the play’s fictional author which creates some clever ambiguities as the ‘actors’ move seamlessly in and out of character. There’s plenty of the dry humour you expect from Bennett and the complexities of integrating this framing device are impressively achieved. But I found the result a little too self-conscious and a bit lacking in plot to drive it forward. In ‘The Lady in the Van’ Bennett famously put two ‘Alan Bennetts’ on stage: in ‘The Habit of Art’ it seemed like there at least four Alan Bennetts vying for our attention (the ‘author’, Auden, Britten, and their biographer, Humphrey Carpenter). Nevertheless, the cast were excellent, particularly Desmond Barrit who had great fun playing Richard Griffiths as ‘Fitz’ as WH Auden.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

21 October 2010

It is the proud boast of the Northampton Symphony Orchestra that the composer Sir Malcolm Arnold played trumpet in the orchestra as a schoolboy in Northampton. So it was particularly fitting for us to be invited to perform in St Matthew’s Church last Saturday as part of The Official Malcolm Arnold Festival 2010. We joined forces with the Abingdon Choral Society under the baton of our mutual conductor Alexander Walker to tackle Arnold’s rarely performed large-scale choral and orchestral work ‘Return of Odysseus’. Perhaps not his greatest work but it was a very interesting experience, and featured some impressive solos from members of the choir. We also performed the Concert Suite from Malcolm Arnold’s ballet ‘Sweeney Todd’. This was also a new piece to me and seemed more quintessentially Arnold with some great tunes, dramatic effects and tongue firmly in cheek. ‘Sweeney Todd’ combines dark menace with the cheery spirit of music hall: it was an effective and exciting performance that seemed to be greatly appreciated by an enthusiastic audience of Malcolm Arnold aficionados.

'Hedonism' by Bellowhead

15 October 2010

I was very excited to get hold of a copy of the new album from the brilliant English folk big band Bellowhead (reviewed here in October 2006 and February 2009) this week. ‘Hedonism’ is the band’s third album and it doesn’t disappoint. Bellowhead continue to push the boundaries of their own peculiar sub-genre, enlisting the help of experienced rock music producer John Leckie, and ‘Hedonism’ has a more varied and experimental feel than its predecessors. But the characteristic Bellowhead swagger is still strongly in evidence and the best tracks sound engagingly familiar, even on the first listen. I’m not sure all the diversions into jazz and funk completely work (strangely the semi-spoken rendition of ‘the Hand Weaver and the Factory Maid’ reminds me of ‘Shopping for Clothes’ by The Coasters – not typical territory for an English folk song!). But the best of ‘Hedonism’ is Bellowhead at its best: the impossibly catchy opening track ‘New York Girls’ is a perfect example. Tap, whistle, stamp, sing, dance: you know you want to!

The Brickhill Messiah

8 October 2010

The area just to the South and East of Milton Keynes is known as the Brickhills. Long before the development of Milton Keynes, these villages boasted a strong choral tradition linked to the local churches. In 2007 a group of local residents, many of whom take part in amateur music groups in Milton Keynes and Northampton, established Music in the Brickhills to present live music in the Brickhill villages in order to raise money for local and national charities. On Saturday we were at St Mary’s Church in Great Brickhill to see the fourth annual Brickhill Messiah. Handel himself developed the idea of charity performances of his oratorio, perhaps the best known of which were his annual fundraisers for the Foundling Hospital. So we felt part of a venerable tradition as we joined an enthusiastic local audience last weekend to raise money for nearby Willen Hospice. I had never been to a full performance of the Messiah before (well there are no parts for French horns!) and it was fascinating to discover such a well known work for the first time. It’s a mammoth undertaking and the Brickhill Messiah was a very impressive achievement. Even with quite a few cuts, the performance lasted more than two and half hours (including an interval). All the soloists were amateurs, drawn from the chorus, and it was lovely to see them taking their opportunities to shine: it would be unfair to single anyone out but there were some really fantastic singers on show. The powerful chorus, including singers from the nearby Danesborough Chorus and Milton Keynes Chorale, created a wonderful sound and the final chorus (“Worthy is the lamb”) was a stunning finale. The band of local musicians was also of a very high standard. The performance was extremely enjoyable, its few rough edges merely reminding you what a challenge the Messiah is and making the many magic moments all the more special.

'Teechers’ by John Godber

29 September 2010

On Saturday we were back at the Theatre Royal in Bury St Edmunds to see the Hull Truck Theatre Company production of ‘Teechers’ by John Godber. ‘Teechers’ was written in 1987 (though it’s clearly been updated with references to mobile phones etc) and is a classic Hull Truck production with three actors playing a multitude of characters with a bare minimum of set and props but conjuring up a vivid picture of school life. Sitting historically and stylistically somewhere between a Joyce Grenfell monologue and Alan Bennett’s ‘The History Boys’, ‘Teechers’ is funny, moving and extremely enjoyable.

‘Steel Magnolias’ by Robert Harling

29 September 2010

Last Friday we were at the TADS Theatre in Toddington to see ‘Steel Magnolias’ by Robert Harling. Having not seen the 1989 film, I came to the play without knowing what to expect and was very impressed. ‘Steel Magnolias’ is set in a beauty parlour in a small town in Louisiana in which six women meet, talk and have their hair done. Taking on the challenge of live hairdressing and manicures on stage while maintaining impeccable Southern accents is no mean feat for an amateur company but one accomplished very slickly by TADS. I liked the episodic nature of the play: there are four scenes between which months or years have passed and you have to read between the lines to work out what has happened to each of the characters since you last saw them. The script is very witty with some extremely funny lines, which makes the tragic finale all the more poignant – maybe a little overly sentimental but there certainly wasn’t a dry eye in the house. The beauty parlour set was beautifully realised with a random assortment of mirrors around and above the stage which provided wonderful tableaux of the characters from different angles, allowing you to see the faces of actors even when they had their backs to the audience. The TADS production was very well cast: I particularly liked Tricia O’Toole, who gave Shelby just the right mixture of knowingness and naivety, and Rachel Birks as the beauty parlour proprietor Truvy. Truvy is a short, blonde woman with high heels, big hair and a big bust: I wonder which part Dolly Parton played in the film?!

'Bus Stop' by William Inge

23 September 2010

The Theatre by the Lake in Keswick really is, as the name implies, right on the shore of Derwent Water. It’s a beautiful setting for a lovely auditorium which is home to an impressive repertory company which tackles a rotating, varied programme of plays over the summer months: as in Pitlochry it is possible to stay a week and see several plays. We saw William Inge’s play ‘Bus Stop’ – chiefly remembered for having been made into a film starring Marilyn Monroe. Inge knew Tennessee Williams and you can see his influence but ‘Bus Stop’ is a lighter, less intense work than the classic Williams plays. It’s a great dramatic premise: when a cross-country bus is held up by bad weather, the passengers have to spend the night in a diner in a small town in Kansas. This allows for a series of hushed conversations, leading to confrontations and revelations as the night wears on and the liquor flows. At first the play has a light, comic feel with broadly drawn cartoon characters. But as the story develops there is much more to it than you initially expect. ‘Bus Stop’ is a clever, sad and funny work with some dark undertones. It also boasts two great comic set-piece scenes in the second and third acts. The Theatre by the Lake production was very effective and extremely well-cast with Amy Ewbank just right as Cherie and Patrick Bridgman subtly stealing the show as the thoughtful cowboy Virgil. Cherie, the main character, is a ditzy, blonde night-club singer hoping to escape to a better life: at the interval I was amused to hear the woman sitting behind me ask her companion “which part did Marilyn Monroe play in the film?”!

Cumbria

23 September 2010

We had a great time last week exploring the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales. We stayed at a cottage near Kirkby Stephen, ideally placed for both national parks, and enjoyed wonderful walks in the Eden Valley, Swaledale (along part of the Pennine Way), Cunswick Scar and the banks of Ullswater. We also made a long overdue first visit to the Theatre by the Lake at Keswick. We were particularly impressed by Farfield Mill at Sedbergh – a converted mill which now houses artist studios, heritage crafts demonstrations, a museum telling the story of the mill and a great café: it’s a clever and effective blend of contemporary and heritage crafts and visual arts.

‘Deaf Sentence’ by David Lodge

10 September 2010

I’ve just finished reading ‘Deaf Sentence’, the latest novel by David Lodge. It’s been a while since I’ve read anything by David Lodge (‘Home Truths’ reviewed here in September 2009) and is was a pleasure to remind myself how much I like his style. ‘Deaf Sentence’ draws on his own experience of losing his hearing and provides a tragic-comic guide to the inconveniences of deafness. But the real theme of the book is death: this is fairly dark territory for David Lodge and it’s a very sad novel - though not without his trademark humour and lightness of touch. Despite the impending sense that all was not going to end well, it gripped my attention and I very much enjoyed the journey. ‘Deaf Sentence’ is a study of family relationships and an ailing parent and reminded me of the similarities between David Lodge’s novels and those of Anne Tyler (such as ‘Noah’s Compass’ reviewed here in May 2010) while also making me think of 'The Corrections' by Jonathan Franzen, 'A Spot of Bother' by Mark Haddon (reviewed here in June 2007) and 'The Promise of Happiness' by Justin Cartwright (reviewed here in January 2008). But with its academic setting and references to Catholicism it’s unmistakeably David Lodge. He wears his research lightly and I enjoyed the references to linguistics. ‘Deaf Sentence’ is another accomplished, entertaining, moving and thought-provoking novel by a master of the genre.

Edinburgh Festivals 2010

3 September 2010

We had a great week at the Edinburgh festivals: we managed to get to 24 shows, most of which were of a really high standard. Highlights included Midori playing Bernstein’s ‘Serenade’ with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra at the Usher Hall, the Aberdeen Performing Arts/His Majesty’s Theatre production of ‘Sunset Song’, adapted from the classic novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon by Alastair Cording, at the Assembly Rooms, and the Bear Trap Theatre production of ‘Bound’ by Jesse Briton at Zoo Southside. ‘Bound’ was a quintessential fringe theatre show – six men in sou'westers evoking the gritty reality of life on a fishing trawler in a tiny studio theatre, using only some chairs, a table and a swinging lightbulb with some great sea shanties interspersing the scenes. We also enjoyed the amazing juggling of Belgian clowns ‘Pas Perdus’ (thanks Kelly!), Canadian rapper Baba Brinkman performing hip-hop versions of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Kalevala and Beowulf, Tom Wainwright’s dream narrative ‘Pedestrian’ and ‘Invisible Atom’, Anthony Black's one-man show encompassing quantum physics, free market economics and philosophy – with hilarious consequences! Tim Crouch’s ‘The Author’ at the Traverse was a fascinating, impressive and deeply uncomfortable experience: two sets of raked seating forced the audience to face itself with no stage in between and there was a lot of silent uncertainty before actors planted in the audience began to reveal themselves and a story very slowly started to emerge in a disjointed and non-linear way. The show tests the patience of the audience – and several people walked out when we saw it. For those who persevered the narrative did come to a conclusion but one which was shocking and unsettling. ‘The Author’ is a very powerful piece of theatre that plays with the boundaries between actors and audience, fiction and reality.