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Showing posts with the label Mark Giesser

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A night at the opera: That Bastard Puccini! (Park Theatre)

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It’s hard to imagine that it’s only been 130 years since Puccini first premiered La Boheme. Nowadays, it’s a revered classic, and guaranteed to be on any opera company's annual programme if it needs to stay afloat. It’s a crowd pleaser with its melodrama of poor, impoverished artists loving, starving and dying in Paris. But Puccini’s La Boheme had a less auspicious beginning, with one of his contemporaries accusing him of stealing his idea and being poorly received on its first outing. And that’s at the heart of That Bastard Puccini! Currently playing at Park Theatre , writer James Inverne uses the friendship and rivalry between the two composers, Puccini and Ruggero Leoncavallo, to weave a comic tale of creative frustration with an awful lot of facts and tidbits about the opera scene at the time. It’s part comedy, part music appreciation.  It opens with Leoncavallo (Alasdair Buchan) at home with his wife Berthe (Lisa-Anne Wood), cursing about Puccini’s latest work, which is drawn ...
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Making it grate: Strike Up The Band @GatehouseLondon

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For many people, Gershwin songs conjure up sultry jazz singers in smokey basements singing in hushed deep tones about “the man I love”. So it might come as a surprise it’s sung by a soprano in a musical about a cheese war between the United States and Switzerland. But that’s not the only thing that jars in Strike Up The Band, currently playing at Upstairs At The Gatehouse . The show is full of classic Gershwin songs such as The Man I Love and I’ve Got A Crush On You. Set to a bizarre book that’s intended to satirise the military industrial complex of the United States. But a plot featuring tariff wars, trade wars and real wars seem uncomfortably relevant today. After all we're in the era of slowbalisation , where nationalistic rhetoric and economic self-harm is the order of the day. To emphasise this point, there are some nice touches throughout the show, such as the “Make America Grate” caps enlisted to buy American cheese. So, on one hand, this revival is a stroke of genius. ...
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Summer loving: The Lady With A Dog @TabardTheatreUK

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The first flicker of love, marriage and commitment are the subjects of The Lady With a Dog. Chekhov’s summer romance in Yalta is updated to 1920s Britain and France by writer and director Mark Giesser. But the performances and brisk pace capture the fantasy and romance of the story. It’s currently playing at the Tabard Theatre after a successful run at the White Bear Theatre. It opens with the lady and her (imagined) Pomeranian dog being eyed up by Damian Granville (Richard Lynson). He’s a London-based banker on holiday alone in Scotland. His plan is to get her attention by feeding the dog a few biscuits before working his charm on the lady. He’s also married but it’s a thoroughly modern one where his wife allows him to holiday alone in search of other women. But the lady Anne Dennis (Beth Burrows) is also married and holidaying alone due to her husband’s work. Jusxtaposed with their aquaintance are unhappy conversations with their real partners. Soon an attraction develops between th...
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