Itching for more Proms, the Berlin Philharmonic began a two ninth fest featuring the huge 7th Symphony from Gustave Mahler. It’s been a while for me where I’ve seen a instrumental blend this fine and musicianship this stellar. One can never picture taken on his big works on a whim, the lesser favoured piece is finally getting the love it deserves. It’s funnier than usual as well, with merry tunes and drinking songs which as ever, are met with black doubts and lingering uncertainties. Here the woodwind shines, the brass enthral and the percussion (when used) add that extra bite to proceedings.
The large set of strings delivers jabs, swoons and haunts us all. This feat of musicianship was made crystalline by conductor Kirill Petrenko, who’s flamboyant flair and care for the orchestra is very telling of his persona. These five movements remain quite strange in their form, moments for guitar and mandolin or the cowbells evoking the Austrian Alps are another quirky touch. I found the near 90 minutes whizzed by, some Mahler can drag and this being so fresh and alive it was never a test. The composer wouldn’t have believed a performance like this could be done of this work, so tight and polished. Great work indeed.
BBC Proms continues till 10 September 2022. Listen live to all concert on BBC Radio 3 or listen back to all concerts on BBC Sounds.
We are a nation and a current series of generations where our childhood and knowledge of history is emphasised by the brilliant Horrible Histories books by Terry Deary and the beloved show shown on CBBC (but let’s be honest: when was it ever for the kids!).
So when invited to a show that has changed this to “Herstories” I was definitely intrigued and excited. Horrible Herstories is a hilarious and unbridled take on female history, flittering between different parts of history in a sketch-show-like manner. The premise basis itself on a group of men who are all hammed up and one dimensional and hilarious versions of the gender. All called Phil, they are unaware of anything to do with women, let alone their place in history, and the mick is very much taken of them. This is where it leads to them learning just what an impact woman had and what they had to put up with.
Like any sketch-show, the sketches are small and to the point. They don’t need to be long to be absolutely side-splittingly hilarious and it was in a way brilliant to see the occasional man in the audience not quite get the quip or feel uncomfortable. It was a shake up of the comedic kind but also a political stance with no inhibitions.
The performers were all brilliant; just like the television programme, they could all turn their hand to a huge range of characters – from the typical news reporter, the egotistical man, the girly girl women. And it all worked brilliantly. They were fully in each character, supported with minimal staging and costume, but this didn’t matter; in fact I would say it enhanced this. We didn’t need sparkle and flashy theatrics; all we needed was the brilliant writing and comedic approach to true history.
As this was the last night and they had run for a month, there were moments of corpsing and if you have read any of my former reviews, you know that I love this. I think it shows the comradery of the actors, the fun they are having and as a performer myself, I know that a long run is always met by silliness and a euphoria in the end. It was clear that the performers had a great connection and were having fun, celebrating the end of a successful run of such a brilliant production.
Horrible Herstories seems much in its infant stage, but what a brilliant place it is at this point. It is witty, funny, clever and an absolutely brilliant production, that can only go from strength to strength.
Set in the basement of the Edinburgh Army centre, NMT Automatics production of Troy & Us is very apt for such a setting.
Tempus Fugit: Troy & Us is the story of a British soldier, his wife and his tours in Afghanistan. It addresses their progressive relationship from marriage, to war PTSD, to a baby and all the other bits in between. It is a raw and poignant production, mirroring the story of Andromache and her soldier husband Hector in the Trojan war, this production shows the pain of war and that this is a phenomenon that is almost as old as time.
Tempus Fugit is a combination of short dialogue meeting physical theatre and dance; the moments where we are transported into the past to look at the Trojan War are signified with beautiful mask work to break the difference in scenes. Focussed mainly around plain brown boxes that create furniture, barriers, sculptures and buildings, the performers move effortlessly between and with one another, showcasing euphoria, pain, war scenes and so much more. It is accompanied by music and storytelling recorded narrative to enhance the scene and show the juxtaposition but the similarities of the past and the present.
The performance is beautiful and there does seem to be genuine (or at least realistic) emotion and connection between the characters, whether they are the modern characters or the Ancient Greek ones. They effortlessly flick between the two and moments can be recognised that have cleverly been shown earlier on in the production, mirroring the modern day equivalent with the same movements and emotion.
However, for me, the scenes were all too quick. It felt like we flittered from scene to scene very quickly, whether that was from Troy or to the modern day, and I felt it needed a moment of stillness, or just a breathe. The fast paced nature left me wanting something meatier to hold onto for just a moment before we were catapulted to the next element. To really revel in and feel the emotion and the, what is a beautiful and painful story to engage with, it would have been nice for some different levels in energy.
Tempus Fugit: Troy & Us is a unique and interesting approach to real stories and of a kind of life only a small amount of people experience. It shows the truth of the feelings and thoughts behind war but it also needed to let us have a moment to internalise the story and feel it for ourselves.
The world of Greek Myths is full of tyranny, of hypocrisy, of sex, of comedy, of sheer power and grotesque storytelling. They are the stories that have most been carried through time, updated and mirrored in popular culture and continue to be apart of society. This is very much what we get from Myths Unbound Productions and their production of Prometheus Bound (Io’s story).
Taking a new approach to Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound, Myths Unbound have updated and changed the viewpoint of this tale. An ancient Greek tragedy, this story focuses on the competition between the God’s, the injustice of punishment for helping humans to progress and, by taking it from the point of view of Io, a mortal plagued by the God’s doings, looks at what it means to be a human as opposed to a higher being that society trusts the judgement of.
This production has an edgy-ness to it. No toga’s or golden crowns but a gothic, alternative take. All in black, there are little elements added to the immortal beings to differentiate them using colour and make up that Tik Tok stars would admire, along with their differing personalities and interactions, to show these staple characters and their impact to the story. Simple changing of jackets helps to double up on a character and with this and other parts of the writing, Myths Unbound take a comical view of breaking the fourth wall and playing upon being self aware as a theatre production – the same actor is acknowledged and the confusion of the characters; we are addressed and yet Io asks “who are you talking to” which for sure brings comical moments. The only difference is Io who is dressed in a cream to create the dynamic between the humans and the Gods. This was quite refreshing, showcasing that the Gods aren’t so “heavenly” and actually the darker part of the tale, despite their idolisation.
Despite these interesting elements, I found it hard to engage. With such a complex story, it felt that you probably had to know the tale well to understand their changes to the original story. A story I’ve not heard before, it therefore left me a little confused and some elements I wasn’t sure were fully explained. Not a criticism, but the performer playing Prometheus was of slight distraction with his uncanny performance and looks similar to Captain America’s, Chris Evans.
Overall, the aesthetics of Myths Unbound Productions, Prometheus Unbound (Io’s Story), were refreshing and a modern take on such an ancient story. I just found it slightly a hard storyline to follow which, I can completely understand could plainly be to my own lack of knowledge.
The National Youth Theatre of Wales isn’t a company like other theatre companies, so its work can’t be lined up against standard productions. It’s more akin to a BTEC Performing Arts course in which the end-of-year show is designed to give all students an equal opportunity to participate. Because of this, there aren’t individual stars whose performances can be picked out. In The In-Between, the main plotline features a heroine but she is played by different performers at different times.
Reviewing is not course moderating. Reviewers can’t comment on the process that lies behind the end product, even though the workshopping will have been a key part of an educational process and will be very valuable to the student. The performance is only the tip of an iceberg, however exciting it may be.
Equally, you can’t say much about the script, which is specially worked up for this production and which may never be used again. So, there are difficulties reviewing The In-Between.
To stick to facts, the production features twenty-three performers, backed by a creative team of twenty-five. It’s no small undertaking. The combined work of these people (assisted by staff at Theatr Clwd) is compressed into a fifty-five minute, single act showcase. The linking theme is the story of Fay, a student on a performing arts course who is considering dropping out. The show starts with Fay’s failure to hand in her homework, or perform ‘her’ song for her lecturer. It ends with her predictably deciding to stay on and at the end, supported by the entire cast, she sings what is quite an effective pop song, celebrating the state of being in between training and working.
As Fay’s story unfolds, group activity is choreographed around a series of small sketches. There is a constant supply of business, much of which centres on a stolen letter. This handwritten letter, in which Fay tells her lecturer she is dropping out, is recognised as being an anachronism and a bit of a joke. Dialogue throughout is in English but it’s peppered with Welsh in an evocative way. Overhead screens carry the script, like subtitles, and a signer works at the side of the stage for deaf members of the audience. There were a couple of fluffed lines and the screens seemed to get stuck at one point but generally everything was done enthusiastically and well.
– Only I did want a bit more. I wanted more character acting, allowing a dramatic penetration of Fay’s crisis of confidence. The self-conscious conversations about the problems of working in the industry didn’t achieve this in any depth, since students really know little about what awaits them down the line. There might have been a second person, a friend, who does leave the course, recognising that there are other things in life beside the performing arts. (Sacrilege!) The snatches of character acting there were – like the cameo of a grandmother and the emergency call handler who breaks out into ‘Staying Alive’ to demonstrate the kiss of life (!) – were delivered properly, making you think the cast members could easily have done more of the same.
Perhaps I wanted more conventional acting because I don’t greatly like musicals, even though I recognise their popularity and their economic importance for theatres and for television. Unless there is an exceptional score, as in West Side Story or Mac The Knife, personally I never feel musicals rise above the level of light entertainment. I prefer shows that make a demand on my intelligence rather than ones that aim to make me tap my feet. I like plays where verbal control and projection goes into lines rather than songs and when physical agility is present in movements and gestures and not just in dances.
I am also intrigued by work where the two genres overlap. However, in The In-Between there is no question but that music theatre is the be-all and end-all. It comes with the fairy tale suggestion that fame and fortune do wait around the corner for the girl who is determined to make it come what may. I didn’t engage with this idea. I wasn’t bothered about whether Fay delivered her course work or not. I started thinking instead about the cast and the fact that there were more than four times as many young women as young men performing. A BTEC computer course would probably reverse this statistic. (In contrast, the production team is almost evenly split and the script was written by a woman and a man.) Maybe this production could have referenced the social conditioning behind gender imbalances.
I would have enjoyed an exploration of late adolescence in which anxiety really came centre stage. Anxiety is hardly the sole preserve of those on performing arts courses: it is wide-spread and not just in the student community. Watching one character overcome anxiety in a convincing way would have been interesting. Watching another fall victim to it might have been moving. Could there have been a second half?
You could say my taste means I am not the target audience but another feature of this particular type of work is that it has no target. It was pleasing to see the large audience in the temporary auditorium at Theatr Clwd (where the buildings are being redeveloped) was an unusual mixture of young and old and the show did have something for everyone – we laughed and applauded – but it didn’t have quite enough of anything in particular to mark it out.
Maybe the title – and the subject of Fay’s delayed solo – says it all. The show itself is in-between genres. It left me in between admiring it for what it contained and for what it allowed its young performers to do but fussing about what it left out. For a student show, it was very entertaining. As a piece of contemporary theatre, it fell a bit short.
In a return to the BBC Proms in London, a new venue for the festival would call. Whilst I’ll confess the Printworks in Canada Water is a bit out of the way for this travelling reviewer, it was a fleeting chance to see another side of London. In a more laid-back, approachable look on classical music, the venue itself on first appearance looked cluttered, very busy.
As things went on, I found the whole thing to be truly wonderful, the direction of James Bonas with a metaphorical butterfly net keeping everything grounded, yet delightful.
The head turning array of soloist, orchestra, dance, art, beat-boxing and sound design filled the venue with the ambition of a classic happening. The star of the show was very much American counter-tenor Anthony Roth Costanzo who has dazzled audiences across the pond and over the world. It is his clear sex appeal and queer ideals that dust the show with beautiful goings on. In both the bejewelled Handel and Phillip Glass repertoire (extracts from both their operas, some never heard at the Proms along with a world premier from Glass) he proves his broad taste and mighty passions, his voice sharp and touching.
All the other goings on segway well into each aria, the dancers never quite getting the limelight (with emotive choreography by Justin Peck). The live painting of Glenn Brown was only truly visible to one side of the vast elongated factory. Players from English National Opera and conductor Karen Kamensek never wained is this apparent gamble that paid off all round. Costumes by Raf Simons are billowy, colourfull fun creations, slight and web like for the dancers, exaggerated for Costanzo.
Jason Singh would beatbox and add whispy vocal tricks to make space between the notes of the arias. What almost attempted to steal the show was the finely crafted surreal video work which graced the brick walls. The likes of James Ivory with Pix Talarico, Tilda Swinton and Daniel Askill and more had unsettling, vivid and witty films that got away with a lot of it’s demands.
A surreal trip to Bristol would herald a gig of epic proportions. Having discovered Dareshack in my last visit to Brizzle, I marvelled at the cafe establishment which is also a hairdressers, along with other goings on. The other Dareshack on Wine Street would host this fine gig and has a more bar like feel.
The warm up act for the evening was The Pleasure Dome, though the name is deceptive. Whilst I went along with their intense, cutting rock, I found the sound levels to be exceptionally loud. It appeared I was the “old man” for this set and it almost bordered on a feat of endurance. Lead singer Bobby Spender arrived on stage, bare chested and chugging a beer. There is a slight feel of Ozzy to him, even if I wasn’t able to make out a single word in any of the songs. On bass, Loz Fancourt provided additional support in the makeup within the wall of noise. Drummer Bert Elvin had the energy of a horse who I was drawn to for most of their time on stage. I noted Bobby getting extremely liberal usage of feedback pedals, I assume the source of the screeching in my ears throughout. I’ll stay on the case and be down to see more of The Pleasure Dome in the future.
With the breakup of the band Prince Rama, front-woman Taraka has been establishing her own strident solo act, though is still very much an all round artist. A technical glitch made a brief predicament for the start of her show, though things would set off pretty quickly. With a mattress and bed sheets on stage, Taraka made for joyful viewing and listening. It is her dreamy, post-punk vibes that holds everything together. The trippy mix of binary numbers, Shepard tones and spam voice-messages that make for quirky patter in her songs. It’s all very charming and her stage presence shines. Even an impromptu pillow fight with the audience was a liberating few moments.
As if were weren’t treated enough, her encores would prove her versatility with an intimate guitar show, the audience invited to join her on stage. She even shared with us a brand new song not performed before, another thrill just for this Bristol crowd. This giddy audience seemed to lap up what she offered and her funny, wry talk also made for a great time.
Taraka would prove a great success in Cardiff, we could easily see her at the Festival of Voice or down Womaby Street very soon. This is one singer to keep a keen eye on!
Taraka continues on tour to End of the Road Festival, Salisbury, Paradiso in Amsterdam and Endless Summer in Marseille.
The Pleasure Dome are again in Bristol at Exchange on 24 September and back at Dareshack on 7 October. They also continue on tour around England & Wales.
Another quirky Bristol encounter saw me in the well known Thekla, a docked boat on the river which hosts gigs. The warm up act Morly was soft and subtle, gentle vocals joined with the patter of Nord keys. Lot’s of loveliness, though I craved a little variety.
The buzz for the main line up was finally to begin (after a postponed gig), was palpable. Alexandra Savior has made waves online, some die-hard fans were present as they sang along to most of her songs. Her autumnal style is warm and cheery, she seems to sing to us though also for herself. Past relationships would reach their zenith in her craft, with her song Crying All The Time a real treat which could turn heads for its blunt beauty. Her band also were razor sharp and you can feel the collaboration oozes in no doubt many gigs.
What I really wanted to hear was Howl, my gateway song for Alexandria and sadly we would not hear it this time. One feels her star is still on the rise, even with the successes already achieved. You can really feel her growing pains in these songs, a young woman coming into her own, confident and sharp. This rocking concert made for a special Friday night treat. You can see the bigger venues opening up to her. The grooving and good buzz around the whole space is a testament to her talents. Go see her on tour.
Alexandra Savior continues on tour in the UK, Europe & Turkey.
In this tiny shipping container, we are welcome by an almost “ying and yang” symbol from two bodies in a box, amongst torn paper. What unfolds is emotional, fun and shocking altogether.
Sandcastles is about a unique friendship between two girls. Meeting as children, they grow up together and grow apart, as one stays to the town she has always known and the other moves across the world. Sandcastles takes on the trial and tribulations of female friendships, of long term friendships, of belonging and feeling displaced.
Focussed around this box, it took a long time into the production for me to realise that this was a representation of the sand box that these two characters meet in, building sandcastles as children. Two very opposing types of people, their comradery comes from the lack of inhibitions as children. As they grow up, they get drunk and hold eachother’s hair, they kiss boys and bundle around their local town and soon there is a realisation on their differences; the fear and the anxiety from one of leaving a place she knows and the other of someone who feels as if she doesn’t belong any where physical.
The friendship between these two seems natural, it seems uninhibited and naturalistic to an extent. Both performers did their characters justice, bringing a reality to this environment somewhat void of reality. You feel included somehow, even if this is between only two people and it makes you re-evaluate your own friendships.
The box of paper became extremely significant; the performance featuring around, in, on, by, using this box of paper, it doubles up as many things and signifies much of their friendship, centralising it. The choice to not use sand by white paper added an angelic and ethereal element to this story.
My only criticism was that there felt like a lot of content bundled in and a slow pace. Some elements could perhaps be condensed or not used at all, feeling more like buffer content. It also needed a little change of pace, something to break this and give it a little momentum.
Sandcastles is a really beautiful play and certainly can be relatable to female friendships, general friendships and growing up. It just needed a different dynamic occasionally to keep the pace interesting.
This surreal and funny production was the first show I saw of this fringe. Late at night, the room was nicely packed for something billed at this time and rightfully so.
The Rodney Buzzard tapes: Evidence of an Honourable Man touches upon the recent phenomena of True Crime. Utilising quintessential themes of these documentaries, a group of amateurist drama nerds and a criminology nut embark of telling this fictional story; full of satire and tongue and cheek of these shows, this production is hammed up and as absurd as it can get, which makes it all the funnier while they endeavour to find the truth about this serial killer.
It begins with, what I can only describe as something from The Mighty Boosh – very much looking as if they were inspired by the Betamax character from this shows third season, a tape enhanced monster, almost slimy in appearance appears, creating movement and shapes that are comedic but also slightly intimidating. It very much didn’t give anything away to what the rest of the hour would entail; whether this would be frightening or fun.
The story continues to be as absurdist and bizarre as this initial introduction. The premise being that a criminology enthusiast has coaxed his drama friends into re-enacting a series of experiences, from not only him but also the serial killer. There is very much a sense of making fun of themselves, of the situation they are in but also of drama students in general and so this is a particular element of comedy that fits with a good chunk of the fringe audience.
Unfortunately, while fringe is very much a place to explore productions, it did at times feel as if there was too much content and so lost some of the comical factors in this. This is something all theatre makers continue to face when creating something new and so isn’t the biggest of issues and i’m sure will be challenged in each rehearsal and performance as all productions do.
The Rodney Buzzard Tapes was a lovely surprise for a first production viewing of 2022 fringe. With a little more challenge of their content, this piece could hit every element of comedy and bizarrest intent, with ease.
Creating opportunities for a diverse range of people to experience and respond to sport, arts, culture and live events. / Lleisiau amrywiol o Gymru yn ymateb i'r celfyddydau a digwyddiadau byw
(4 / 5)
(3 / 5)
