Even in times when rehash is more common than originality, the risk with a revival of Burt Bacharach’s late 1960s musical Promises, Promises, in turn based on Billy Wilder’s 1960 film The Apartment, is that it feels doubly derivative.
music
For the non-initiate, The Beastie Boys were a group of white New Yorkers who made the leap from punk rock to hip hop. The result was the number 1 hit Licensed to Ill and an opening up to the white suburbs of a previously black musical phenomenon.
Thomas Ovans gets to grips with an intriguing novel by John Lucas which deals with a small-town jazz musician’s rather complicated love life.
In our modern, toxic world, the perfect embodiment of the endless struggle between good and evil could be the green warrior versus the polluter.
Ultimately, that’s the premise of The Toxic Avenger, the rock musical, which director Benji Sperring happened to see during one free afternoon off-Broadway in New York in 2009.
Michael Bartholomew-Biggs draws together his impressions of a novel multi-media show that combines poetry music and film.
Northern Ireland’s permanent representation in Brussels periodically brings to the capital of Europe a sample of Northern Irish culture in a spirit of cross-cultural exchange that risks being disrupted in the event of a Brexit.
John Lucas is impressed by the depth and range of literary and musical knowledge displayed in a new collection of essays by Jim Burns
John Forth reflects on poetry in Loudon Wainwright’s lyrics
Embracing art’s ability to transcend national divisions, a young pan-European ensemble delivered Tchaikovsky at his most triumphantly Russian, as part of a vivacious and compelling beginning to its new season, known as the Hulencourt Art Project, which runs until May next year.
Romeo Castellucci at Brussels’ La Monnaie (De Munt in Dutch) opera house takes a real-life sufferer of locked-in syndrome and turns her into the protagonist of Ophee et Eurydice (adapted by Hector Berlioz from Gluck).
The Passenger English National Opera (until 25 October) Yes it is shocking to set an opera in Auschwitz. It shouldn’t work. But it does. David Pountney’s startling production of Mieczylaw Weinberg’s 1968 The Passenger breaks new ground.
The Welsh National Opera version of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, established in the 70s by director Joachim Herz, on the basis of meticulous research, and now directed by Sarah Crisp, delivers pure emotion with devastating directness.
By Barbara Lewis • music, opera, theatre, year 2017 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, music, opera, theatre