Swan Lake

Swan Lake

Music by Tchaikovsky

Birmingham Royal Ballet

The Lowry, 19 September 2012

Swan Lake. Photo: Bill Cooper

Rather different to most others, this production of Swan Lake, an altogether more melancholy and sombre, you could almost say sinister staging of the classic ballet.

Some of this may be due to the influence of Aronofsky’s film Black Swan, and black was certainly the predominant colour of the costumes and sets, save in Act 3 where Northern Renaissance colours, brocades of red and gold and (yes) black too were very much in evidence.  A Lucas Cranach painting come to life, it looked like.

But in truth you really don’t need to look further than the story and the score to discover a tragic tone.  If Tchaikovsky’s music is never dissonant, it is often disquieting.

The swans and cygnets were a much more positive force in this retelling than usual, intriguingly enough, and were emphatically on the side of the lovers.  They were like wayward naiads, not entirely under the control of the evil Baron.

The dance was perfect throughout, uniformly outstanding, always delightful.  Nothing else need be said as regards  that department.

At the end you were led to believe that, though the prince may be dead, he and his beloved are in a better place.  It is as though Epicurus were wrong when he said ‘Death is absence’, as though Nick Flynn had never written Some Ether.

I could quite happily see this version of Swan Lake again, just right now, and am sure I’d be as enthralled and enchanted as the first time.

Rich Hall

Rich Hall
The Lowry, 12 April 2012

There is a rich seam of grouchiness and grumpiness to Hall’s brand of humour, and Man does he mine it.

The first half covered such topics as British and American politics and various audiences’ responses to humour.  Hall also took time out to pummel Primark and cast a cold eye at Kraft’s particular aesthetic approach (‘laminated’ is the word that hit home most) to food production.  He also grilled and riffed off the audience: those guys in the front row, sitting ducks the lot of them, took a hell of a beating.  Well, a bit of a one: nobody died.

In the second half there was more of the same splendidly strong stuff, plus some songs.  One of them, which had the title of ‘Roberta’ and was about a young woman of the same name, stood out.  A thought struck me during this song: Rich Hall and Crimson Skye on stage together, wouldn’t that be something?

If you are looking for the kind of comedy that arises out of exasperation, sober disbelief at the goings-on in the modern world and dumbfounded despair at the same, then do go and see this cantankerous comedian.  Those dark jewels are his hallmark and he won’t disappoint.

Rich Hall is playing at The Lowry until Saturday 14 April (details here) and then performs elsewhere in the UK, details here.

Turn Back the Clock

Turn Back the Clock

A selection of songs & monologues by Joyce Grenfell

Adapted and performed by Cheryl Knight

Hidden Pearl Productions

The Lowry, 18 March 2012

In this show Cheryl Knight performs various monologues and sings a number of songs by Joyce Grenfell.  She also reads from a fair few of the great comedienne’s letters.

We got the well-known Lumpy Latimer routine as well as a couple of ‘Hey Shirl’ natters, amongst others, but best of all was a monologue called, I think, ‘In Transit’.  It was about a mother travelling to America to visit her son who’d married a black girl.  There weren’t many laughs in it yet it held your attention throughout.  You felt that Alan Bennett could have written it, for as a portrait of character it was that good.

Cheryl Knight does a terrific job of bringing Joyce Grenfell’s work to life with this wonderful show.   Fans will love it, but it’s not only a show for them.  People with only a slight knowledge of Joyce Grenfell, say from the St.Trinian’s films, will find there are many delightful discoveries to be made about her.

Turn Back the Clock is currently touring throughout the UK, tour dates can be seen here.

 

An Inspector Calls

An Inspector Calls

By J. B. Priestley

The Lowry, 31 January 2012

There is such a thing as society, and we are responsible for each other.

That’s the take-home message of J. B. Priestley’s classic play and it’s also probably the main reason for its universal appeal.  We feel it to be true and would all save a drowning child - or so we’d like to believe.

This production of the play is plenty fine.  The performances are terrific and Karen Archer as the priggish Mrs. Birling is spectacularly good.  Another big plus is the set, at its centre a shambolic house on a hill that’s at one point decidedly rickety.  Despite being a little contrived in places (why did the girl give herself so many different names?) and rather preachy, especially toward the close, this is an admirable play.  Its heart is as deep as a wheelie-bin and as big as a dustbin lid.

An Inspector Calls is showing at The Lowry until 4 February, details here.

Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast

Music by Glenn Buhr

Birmingham Royal Ballet

The Lowry, 24 January 2012

Ballets need ravens.

They always add a dash of dread to the proceedings, darkening even the most pastoral romance.  No doubt about it, they are plenty ominous birds.

This was another top-class production from the Birmingham Royal Ballet.  As the classic fairy-tale unfolded, everything served to enchant the audience.  Dance and music, the sets and the costumes; they all beat the band.  Quite copacetic withal; that’s what it was.

Once the curse was lifted, however, the enchantment abruptly ended.  For at the finish the Beast was transformed into – well, he could have been a Prince, God knows the current crop are bland enough.  But he looked more like a Customer Service Advisor or – Mary, Mother of Jesus forbid – a Digital Marketing Executive type, in truth.  All that palaver, and she ends up with this guy.

So was it all worth it in the end, Belle love?  Wouldn’t you have preferred someone wild and untamed?  We, the audience, got our money’s worth, but will you be happy and content when the curtains close?

Beauty and the Beast is at The Lowry until 28 January.  Details are here.

Midge Ure

Midge Ure

The Lowry, 6 November 2011

This was a scintillating solo show from the Ultravox frontman.

Yes, there is a nostalgia kick about seeing Midge Ure in concert once more, but what makes it all work is that the songs stand up.  Where once he dressed in New Romantic finery, now Midge is in checked shirt and jeans, strumming a guitar.  But the songs retain their terse, cinematic quality – reminding you that videos had just come in when Ultravox were at their peak – and Ure remains a charismatic performer.

Even the couplet ‘If I were a leader / Food from above I would feed her’ somehow shimmers and sparkles.

Midge Ure’s forthcoming tour dates can be found here.

Circa

Circa

The Lowry, 4 November 2011

When you watch this thrilling show you realise that human beings can be the physical equal of any animal.

But animals would not have the will, imagination, inclination or courage to defy gravity or risk injury as these performers do.

The show combines circus skills – acrobatics, contortion – with gymnastics and modern dance.  Many feats, most actually, involve more than one person and require coordination and communication of a high order, not to mention trust.  Some embody narrative, jokes or a dramatic situation; one or two could in fact be a long forgotten prehistoric ritual.  Especially so when you consider the way in which Kimberley Rossi, the only female in the troupe, was passed around like a prize, a resource the males fought over.  Caveman antics writ large.

 Kimberley Rossi got to wear red shoes in one intriguing sensual routine, mind.  These were peep-toe court shoes, according to The Ultimate Authority, though Americans, for their own obscure reasons, would call them pumps.

Circa as a show is intense, concentrated, fast-moving, polished and very classy indeed.  Expect a forest of formidable feats, a jungle of jaunty japes.

However good you think this show will be, it will be better.  Circa is at The Lowry again tonight then it tours Europe, tour dates are here.

Oh Mary

Oh Mary
Narrative by Anna Murphy
Performed by Bec Applebee
The Lowry, 19 June 2011

Credit: Steve Tanner

You couldn’t have a better testimony to the magic of live theatre than this wonderful, wonderful play.

It is a monologue, Bec Applebee playing Mary, a bonnet-borrower who is sent to Australia for her sins.  She becomes, on her journey, a mother and a wife, an adventurer, and eventually a cause célèbre for prison reformers.

Applebee’s performance is incredible: intense and engaging and, at times, unbearably moving.  If Mary Bryant had come before us to tell her own story, it could not, you feel, have been more authentic and actual.  That one actress was able to present this woman’s life with all its longing, sorrow and joy, is little short of wizardry.

There is a line of Blake’s which states that ‘the most sublime act is to place another before you’.  By this holy measure, Oh Mary is a sublime work of theatre.  Thank you, Bec Applebee!

Oh Mary will next be performed at the Gollowan Festival inPenzance on 22nd  June.  The full tour dates are here.

Celebrating Krishna

Akhilam Madhuram
(Celebrating Krishna)
Performed by Rama Vaidyanathan
Milapfest
The Lowry, 18 June 2011

These Milapfest events are like violets by a mossy stone: great hidden joys that should be brought into the light.

Tonight, there were five dances all told, all in praise of Krishna.  Each dance, introduced by Rama Vaidyanathan herself, took as its subject an incident from Krishna’s life.

The dancing was very fine indeed: graceful, expressive and jaunty too, when the singing and percussion took on that rat-a-tat-tat quality (perhaps this is not the correct technical term?) and the rhythm became so much more emphatic.  As for the four musicians and singers, their accomplished playing added colour and shading to the consummate dancing of the wonderful Rama Vaidyanathan.

Future Milapfest events can be seen here.

David McAlmont @ The Lowry

David McAlmont
The Lowry, 17 February 2011

On a previous visit to Manchester, David McAlmont performed a bunch of Harold Arlen songs.  In this terrific concert, he delivered a set of songs taken from his own extraordinary career.

We got ‘Yes’, ‘Lose My Faith’, a fair few other hits and a couple of numbers associated with Shirley Bassey; there were also some less well-known and new songs here.

David’s banter between songs revealed un homme tout rond: a man humorous, proud, self-accepting and a smidgeon divaesque.  Clearly, he is in a happy and good place at the minute.

And his voice is in good shape too, as fine as it’s ever been on this hearing.

When he performed some of the more rhythmic, driving songs, one wondered what he’d have become if he’d have embraced Little Richard as a model rather than Shirley or Dionne Warwick, say.  Although that’s likely a pointless, ‘The Jolly Corner’, kind of question.  A Jagger–like stagecraft was present here, at any rate.

To paraphrase the strapline of a current ad. campaign, Even Angels Would Fall to possess a voice like David’s.  And they’d likely want to exchange their wings for his wonderful feather boa as well.