If you can embrace it, lockdown’s shift from the real to the virtual is a liberation that makes anything possible.
theatre
Grange Park Opera Interim Season. Simon Keenlyside: An Autumn Walk in Wales (available online). Review by Barbara Lewis: Context is all, says Simon Keenlyside, as for the second time this year he delivers a musical tour of his own personal context – the woods around his Welsh home.
By Barbara Lewis • music, opera, travel, year 2020 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, music, opera, travel
Before lockdown, Bewley’s Café Theatre in the bustling heart of Dublin was the place to grab a short lunch-time play, a bowl of soup – and maybe even chat up a stranger. For now, those days are gone, but Bewley’s has joined forces with online events company The Lock Inn to open the tiny venue to a potentially limitless audience.
By Barbara Lewis • performance, plays, theatre, year 2020 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, performance, plays, theatre
The Dirty 30 II: Electric pay-per-view. Review by Barbara Lewis. Instead of loud applause and cheers, “you were spectacularly fabulous,” pops up on the side of the screen from an online viewer, as the imaginary curtain goes down on the Degenerate Fox theatre’s online adaptation to the times we’re in.
By Barbara Lewis • performance, plays, theatre, year 2020 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, performance, plays, theatre
A Feast in The Time of Plague, Grange Park Opera online. Review by Barbara Lewis.
By Barbara Lewis • music, opera, performance, theatre, year 2020 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, music, opera, performance, theatre
#FinboroughForFree. Adding Machine: A Musical. Review by Barbara Lewis.
By Barbara Lewis • musicals, theatre, year 2020 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, musicals, theatre
Ghost Light, National Theatre of Scotland film. A theatre never goes completely dark, even in lockdown: a single light bulb, known as a ghost light, carries on glowing like a sanctuary lamp.
By Barbara Lewis • film, performance, plays, theatre, year 2020 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, film, performance, plays, theatre
A paradox at the heart of Beckett is that he uses art to explore the meaninglessness of human lives, when many would say the prime purpose of art is to find meaning.
By Barbara Lewis • plays, playwrights, theatre, year 2020 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, plays, playwrights, theatre
An unexpected joy of lockdown is seeing world-class performers in their natural habitats. Habitat is the apposite word for Simon Keenlyside, who read zoology at Cambridge before focusing on his operatic career and who describes a love of nature as “the marrow” of his existence. He looks to music for its validation.
By Barbara Lewis • music, opera, performance, year 2020 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, music, opera, performance
For Wasfi Kani, the unstoppable founder of Grange Park Opera, even a pandemic is only a temporary setback. As soon as she had accepted this summer’s country house opera season at The Theatre in the Woods was lost, she set about mobilising the “pandemicists” and amassing funding for a Found season.
By Barbara Lewis • music, opera, performance, year 2020 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, music, opera, performance
Bernstein’s 45-minute, one-act opera Trouble in Tahiti is his only oeuvre for which he wrote both words and music and he made the language plain to ensure realism.
By Barbara Lewis • music, opera, theatre, year 2020 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, music, opera, theatre
Even more than an outpouring of passionate pacifism, Benjamin Britten’s Owen Wingrave is a universal exploration of the heroic strength of character required to reject decades of blind allegiance to an unholy cause.
By Barbara Lewis • music, opera, performance, theatre, year 2020 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, music, opera, performance, theatre