Featured Post

High anxiety: Collapse - Riverside Studios

Image
It’s a brave or maybe slightly provocative production to use Hammersmith Bridge on their artwork for a show called Collapse, which is about how everything collapses—poorly maintained bridges, relationships, and jobs. Nothing works. That’s probably too close to home for Hammersmith residents stuck with a magnificently listed and useless bridge on their front door. It gets even weirder when you realise the piece is staged in what looks like a meeting room with a bar. However, keeping things together in the most unlikely of circumstances is at the heart of Allison Moore's witty and engaging four-hander, which is currently having a limited engagement at Riverside Studios . The piece opens with Hannah (Emma Haines) about to get an injection from her husband (Keenan Heinzelmann). They’re struggling for a baby, and he’s struggling to get out of bed. But he managed to give her a shot of hormones before she started worrying about the rest of the day. She’s unsure she will keep her job with ...

Put it in a box: La Donna Del Lago

Joyce DiDonato as Elena in La donna del lago © ROH / Bill Cooper 2013 It's great that the Royal Opera warns you with its subtitle to La Donna Del Lago, that it is a melodrama in two acts. There is so much going on with love, unrequited love, arranged marriages that the opera strains under the weight of its exposition... At first. But as things eventually get moving, particularly in the livelier second act, it turns out to be a memorable night of music making.

And of course there are some incredible performances. Joyce Didonato as Elena, the Lady of the Lake captures the drama and beauty of the role and stops the show with her aria "Tanti Affetti". Equally captivating was Daniela Barcellona as Malcom, Elena's lover. She makes her Covent Garden debut and handled difficult singing (and some difficult tartans) with ease. And of course there was Juan Diego Florez, who makes runs and top notes seem as if they are easy. With such fine performances the audience was on their feet cheering at the end.


The audience were a tad hostile however to the creative team and the decision to set the action in a museum. I had left the auditorium by the time they came onstage but had to stick my head back in to see what the ruckus was about.
The last time I had heard catcalls and booing was during the most recent production of Falstaff, an unsatisfying update to the 1950s that made no sense. At least with this production the directorial choices were subtle and thought-provoking. Nonetheless the opening night audience wasn't up for it. Who knew that Rossini fans could be like that?

It is a silly opera anyway and what makes it memorable is the music making. So it hardly seems to be a crime to put everyone in glass boxes at the end or frame the action as a museum. The rationale for doing so, and how it represents the construction of a legend for other, nationalistic purposes, is described in the extended video below. It is worth watching before going to the opera. And whether it is a lady in box or a lady in the lake it looks and sounds great, and the opportunity to see some of the best interpreters of Rossini's work is one not to miss.

The preview for the opera is below. It runs until 11 June and is sold out so the usual 10am routine will apply where 67 tickets are available on the day of the performance if you head to the box office.



Photo credit: ROH Bill Cooper

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 ...
Read more...

Play ball: Damn Yankees @LandorTheatre

Image
Damn Yankees at the Landor Theatre is one hell of a fun, sexy show. A great cast of dancers and singers give this show about a man who sells his soul to get on his beloved baseball team (and give them a chance of winning) new legs and balls. It also helps to up the ante with the sexiness with some healthy doses of cleavage and legs (and that's just the men). The musical is a retelling of the Faust story set in the 1950s when the New York Yankees dominated the game.
Read more...