Featured Post

Death becomes her: A Brief List Of Everyone Who Died @finborough

Image
For a natural process, death is not a topic that comes up naturally for people. We ask how people are doing but expect the response to be “I’m great”, not “I’m not dead yet”. And so for the main character in A Brief List of Everyone Who Died, Graciela has a death issue. Starting with when she was five and found out only after the matter that her parents had her beloved dog euthanised. So Graciela decides that nobody she loves will die from then on. And so this piece becomes a fruitless attempt at how she spends her life trying to avoid death while it is all around her. It’s currently having its world premiere  at the Finborough Theatre . As the play title suggests, it is a brief list of life moments where death and life intervene for the main character, from the passing of relatives, cancer, suicides, accidents and the loss of parents. Playwright Jacob Marx Rice plots the critical moments of the lives of these characters through their passing or the passing of those around them. Howeve

Opera and beefcake: Don Giovanni goes to Heaven

Heaven nightclub is an unlikely place for an opera at first. But Sunday night it was packed with people keen to take in a new twist to Mozart's Don Giovanni. The sexuality and genders of key roles are reversed with some surprising (and funny) results.

Heading the cast as the cad Don is Baritone Duncan Rock who has a voice to match his body... It's big. He has appeared at Glyndebourne, British Youth Opera, Opera Holland Park so he isn't just there to be pretty but he is central to making this show work so well.

With a book is by David Collier and lyrics by Ranjit Bolt this update has Don living as a yuppie in 1980s London where the sex, coke and boys are all one thing... Easy. There is also some inspired costumes including a very tight set of gold lame pants worn by one of the men. It's funny and amusing without too much dwelling on the gay gore for straight members or those curious about opera. There is also a lovely interpretation of hell and damnation for this modern Don.

Being at a nightclub the staging is somewhat unusual and inventive. The singers burst through the audience and perform on small stages throughout the club. It's best experienced when you move around with them and it took everyone a bit to get used to that at first. But it's also quite a marvel to see how the performers for the most part keep in time with the music, and for the conductor to keep things together... And unlike many of the pub operas that are doing the rounds these days, it is also a ten piece orchestra.

It is a pity that since the Royal Opera and ENO are always up for full frontal nudity (even when it isn't called for) that there wasn't even more flesh, but it is all good fun anyway. Besides, that's what the blogs are for I suppose...

Don Giovanni continues for a further four performances on 22, 23, 29 and 30 April. A return series is likely during Pride and to compliment the other shenanigans this summer and in future. Look out for offers on various sites as well.

Popular posts from this blog

Opera and full frontal nudity: Rigoletto

Image
David McVicar's oddly modern production of Rigoletto is back at the Royal Opera House . This modern and minimalist dark production has evolved over the years. It is better lit now but there is still an orgy and full frontal nudity within the first thirty minutes. This enables anyone not in the stalls an excellent view of a flaccid penis and a nicely shaved bush. But as time goes it seems more and more superfluous to the main focus of this tragedy of a court jester who seeks revenge. Here is hoping that the production continues to evolve... Conductor John Eliot Gardiner keeps the music well paced. Dimitri Platanias in the title role sounded great and received a rapturous applause for his interpretation of the role. You get a sense more of the doting father rather than the court jester or cursed man here. Vittorio Grigolo plays the Duke and sounds too lovely to be the cad the role calls for, but it is hard not to like when he is on stage anyway. And it is easier to understan
Read more...

Fantasies: Afterglow @Swkplay

Image
Nowadays no self-respecting gay play can be staged without full frontal nudity of some kind. It feels like the default response for the modern gay play now that gay rights are no longer an issue .   Afterglow, currently playing at Southwark Playhouse , serves it up in spades. From the beginning, three men are in a bed, naked. There’s what appears to be a very brief exhalation of ecstasy, before the obligatory rush to the shower. But the gratuitous nudity and excellent performances can’t conceal this is a pretty conventional and predictable story about a fantasy couple.  The three men in the simultaneous orgasm at the start of the piece are Josh, Alex and Darius. Josh and Alex seem to live in a New York world where they can afford a rooftop apartment in Manhattan while holding jobs as a theatre director and a grad student in chemistry. As writer S. Asher Gelman based it on his own experiences, perhaps gay plays with full frontal nudity are the way to achieve financial security
Read more...

Ramin Karimloo: the unstoppable beast

Image
Iranian-Canadian musical theater actor Ramin Karimloo is known for his work in the West End, performing in The Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables, as well as debuting the role of the Phantom in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera sequel, Love Never Dies. Recently he finished a run playing Valjean in Les Miserables on Broadway and gained attention for not just his vocals but his physical strength. He is back in London and getting ready for a show (tonight) at the Palladium on 16 July. Later in the year he will be joining Victoria Hamilton-Barritt and Kerry Ellis in UK premiere of the off-Broadway musical Murder Ballad at the Arts Theatre. The Palladium show will be another opportunity to see Ramin and his band mix country and bluegrass with musical theatre (and vice-versa), after sellout shows at Islington’s Union Chapel in January. I sat down with Ramin shortly after his return to London. We talked about the shows, his fitness regime and how he is looking for a goo
Read more...