performance
Virgin, theSpace. Review by Barbara Lewis,
Virgin
Venue: theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall, Edinburgh
Dates: August 3–25
Running time: one hour
Cast includes: Simon David
Writers: Simon David and Chris Larner
Producer: SD Productions
A show that leaves the line “Are you fucking kidding me?” ringing in your ears and delivers a series of morals that include “don’t pressure other people into sex because it doesn’t work” and “don’t judge people by appearances, unless they’re really hot” could cause offence.
Instead it serves to confirm the engaging innocence of Simon David, who spins an hour of entertainment from the flimsy premise that he has yet to bag that elusive record deal or any other relationship deal, making his unique selling points that he is still a virgin and wears a leotard. 
He’s that youthful mixture, which makes the Edinburgh Fringe such a life-affirming place, of the confident and the vulnerable, telling us that, of the thousands of shows at the fringe, only four are any good. He leaves us to decide whether this is one of them.
The closest he gets to more intellectual content is a list of the various names for different types of gay men. He, we discover, is a twink, as opposed to an otter or a bear.
There is nevertheless showbiz substance in an ability to override technical glitches and win over a skittish audience that are the mark of a true pro. He also has an irrepressible musicality in danger of making the prime role of his highly capable three-piece band not so much to accompany him as to provide complicity with a pleasantly bemused audience.
Barbara Lewis © 2018.
Elf Lyons, ChiffChaff. Review by Barbara Lewis.
Elf Lyons,
ChiffChaff,
The Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh,
Dates of run: until August 27,
Director: Aitor Basauri.
What do you do when life gives you lemons? Make lemonade is the wrong answer, says Elf Lyons, who is the product – and that’s not too economic a term – of father Gerard Lyons, former economic advisor to Boris Johnson, artist mother Annette Lyons and the Philippe Gaulier clown school on the outskirts of Paris.
A good economic answer is you can get a far better return if you don’t squander your best resource in one go and instead put the lemon in a jug of water and get a pub crowd to bet on whether it’s possible to balance a pound on it.
Better still, in the spirit of Elf’s artist mother, is to attempt the impossible and make lemonade without any lemons. You might fail, but the endeavour will be interesting.
Elf Lyons’ hour-long show, a look at economics that is as light as the song of the chiffchaff bird, has solid ingredients, as Elf has clearly picked up economic theory by osmosis.
Where she achieves the all-but impossible is in making a fringe audience care about the difference between Milton Friedman’s monetarism and John Maynard Keynes’ preference for stimulating economies through government expenditure, but, in this apolitical space, it’s unclear which works best.
The father who looms so large in the show and has been among the audience might even envy his daughter’s crowd appeal, but she’s the first to acknowledge her debt to him and the jibes are loving.
One of my favourite lines was her reference to how, as an economics lecturer, he tells his audience what he’s going to tell them, then tells it to them, then reminds them what he’s just told them. “He’s not a nuisance,” she insists; he only lectures people when asked.
If his approach is male and authoritative, Elf’s is to hide behind a Liza Minnelli persona, complete with a baby-girl accent and a skimpy sparkly dress. The joke’s on us, if we think she’s betraying generations of feminism; she just wants to have fun with her femininity and why shouldn’t a woman with a cute voice and a clown’s endlessly rising eyebrows know all about economics?
One woman who does emerge badly from it all is Theresa May, imagined by Elf cowering at the bottom of a drain with the rest of her government.
Trump also gets a slight as his tweets, along with antibiotic-resistant gonorrhoea, rank among life’s unpalatables in Elf’s rendition of “My Favourite Things”.
She also transforms the hit “Downtown” into “Downturn” and boogies along to “Let’s Get Fiscal”.
She’s not quite the only female clown or the only comic to joke about the economy that the Edinburgh Fringe has produced, but she is a standout it’s hard not to appreciate whatever your views on Brexit.
In the inclusive atmosphere of her show, that most divisive of issues gets only a silent reference in the form of a small elephant, lurking at the back of the stage and patterned with the stars of the EU member states.
Barbara Lewis © 2018.
BBC Proms 50. Review by Julia Pascal.
BBC Proms 50
Sunday August 19
Royal Albert Hall
Julia Pascal
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Clarinet Concerto in A major, K622
Clarinetist Amelien Van Wauwe
Gustav Mahler
Symphony No 5 in C Sharp Major
The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
Conductor Thomas Dausgaard.
The evening opened with Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A Major K622. This is Mozart’s last finished orchestral work. Composed in 1789, it is one of the most exquisite of Mozart’s creations. Annelien Van Wauwe’s interpretation was curiously intimate and delicate. She did not go for the yearning quality of the Adagio, rather she caressed the sound with such subtlety that it excited a new way of revealing this poignant second movement. However, there was a problem about the placing of Van Wauwe. For those of us sitting stage left, she was masked by the positioning of conductor. The gifted Van Wauwe, a BBC New Generation performer, has a strong performing presence therefore it was maddening that no director had realised she was unseen by so many.
Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 in C sharp major was written during 1901 and 1902. Although it has deeply lyrical elements, most particularly the poignant Adagietto for strings and harp, written for Mahler’s new bride Alma Schindler, it feels as if it were written later in the century. Mahler’s use of late-Romanticism and modernism provides a strangely disjointed mix. Stephen Johnson’s programme notes tell us that the Symphony has been considered by some to be schizophrenic. Certainly, there is no real sense of unity to the five movements and this fragmentation of style is not displeasing. The Scherzo seems redolent of Vienna at the turn of the century. Is Mahler honouring Viennese sweetness or mocking it? We know that as he was writing this Symphony, he had resigned his post as conductor at the Vienna Philharmonic and was suffering antisemitic attacks. The Symphony starts with the grim Funeral March. Did this express Mahler’s state of mind? This is an eloquent and sometimes angry composition which appears to lay the ground for Kurt Weill and Hans Eisler’s jagged rhythms. The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra performed both works with passion under the energetic direction of Thomas Dausgaard.
Julia Pascal © 2018.
Requiem pour L., Sadler’s Wells. Review by Julia Pascal.
Requiem pour L.
Alain Platel & Fabrizio Cassol
Sadler’s Wells.
The title Requiem pour L., if spoken aloud, translates as Requiem for her. Who is the anonymous woman that we see dying onscreen as Mozart’s Requiem in D minor, K. 626? We are not to know her identity. All that is revealed is that she was a friend of Platel. L. is a kind of Everywoman whose presence makes us confront mortality itself.
The evening may upset some because, watching a film of a woman slowly dying, is provocative. In the same way, this new interpretation of Mozart’s Requiem may disturb purists. Added to this there is the question of those who come to Platel to see his dance. There is very little. This is an imaginative performance that creates its own performance aesthetic and although it is informed by Mozart it takes his Requiem into a new staging where voice, percussion, electric guitar, drum, accordion and euphonium play over the memory of Mozart’s original.
Although Mozart is the impulse and reference Cassol adds influences from pygmy, Indian and Malian musical traditions. This means that, just when Mozart’s original is recognisable, the music appears to morph into a modern riff. Mass choral singing has been replaced by individual voices. This makes for a series of solos that sometimes inform one another rather than expressing the weight of a whole community.
There are texts in Latin, Lingala, Swahili with moments of Tshibula and Kikongo. The singers are outstanding and they bring with them cultural heritages which overlay the Requiem. Under Rodriguez Vangama’s poignant direction the team features musicians and singers who are mainly from the Republic of Congo. Bouton Kalanda , Kojack Kossakamwe, Silva Makengo, Boule Mpanya, Erick Ngoya, Russell Tshiebua and Fredy Massamba. Talent is also represented by South Africans Stephen Diaz, Owen Metsileng and Nobulumko Mngxekeza. But these cultural layers are even more complex as they include the impulses of Portuguese accordionist João Barradas working in concert with the Belgian musicians Michel Seba and Niels Van Heertum as well as the Brazilian Rodrigo Ferreira.
Is this a European work? Is it African? Does it matter? The very form of this exciting Requiem questions the way we ghettoise music and people. It emphasises that we are all united in death. Platel has designed the production within a Jewish graveyard where flat tombs receive stones from visiting mourners.
For those expecting dance there is a final moment of celebration when all artists are choreographed in a wild wave of continual sung-movement. They dance, on isolated spots in the cemetery and many performers are seated. These movements are isolated but, as a result of the energy, discipline and ensemble work, they are experienced as dynamically connected. Requiem pour L. is a deeply philosophical work that translates our anxieties about mortality into art and which poignantly offers a glorification of the lives and deaths that we cannot control.
Julia Pascal © 2018.
Sleeping Beauty, The Theatre, Chipping Norton. Review by Barbara Lewis.
Sleeping Beauty,
Venue and Town: The Theatre, Chipping Norton
Producer: The Theatre, Chipping Norton
Director: John Terry
Writer: Andrew Pollard
Music and lyrics: Harry Sever
Cast includes: Bea Holland, Erica Guyatt, Paul Tonkin, Christian James, Eamonn Fleming, Lucy Penrose, Connor Bannister
Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes, including interval
Dates of run: November 14 to January 14
Low-tech, unforced and innocent, the Chipping Norton panto lives up to the programme note’s promise to provide “an escape from the disposable pop culture that surrounds our children”.
The formula is the timeless one of groan-worthy jokes, cross-dressing and occasional political references, just in case we need jolting back to reality.
Where writer Andrew Pollard is modestly original is in giving us a genuinely male principal boy and in tweaking the wicked fairy’s spell to deliver a 400 year-sleep that allows the action to extend from the roses of Tudor times to the flower-power 60s.
Under John Terry’s relaxed direction, the production gently builds from the mildly amusing to the laugh-aloud comedy of a second half crammed with a late burst of plot intrigue.
In the process, it creates a tolerant world in which the impossible is accepted as possible, naming one character Fanny and another Willy barely raises an eyebrow and the weakness of the male roles is the point rather than a theatrical defect as all the strength is bestowed on the women or on those who dress as women, while evil doesn’t stand a chance.
At the centre, the aptly named in real life Lucy Penrose takes on the part of Princess Rose, who may be royal, but is blessed with spirit, adventurousness and northern vowels.
She must have drawn her forcefulness from her late mother, rather than her mild father King Lenny VIII (Paul Tonkin), a helpless single parent, struggling to change a nappy.
Help is at hand in the form of super Nanny Fanny (Eamonn Fleming), who regales us with slapstick and ever more extravagant outfits that camouflage a tender emotional core.
Rose’s other protector is Fairy Flax (Bea Holland) who must overcome Erica Guyatt, the wicked Belladonna Bindweed.
As the tension mounts in a second half that has sprung us into the 60s, the Belladonna Bindweed Corporation – BBC for short – is an evil empire striving for world domination and to steal Rose’s prince charming: Jagger Prince, an unsuspecting, pseudo Liverpudlian stripling played by Connor Bannister.
In one of the best realised scenes, a heroic rescue is viewed through the screen of a malfunctioning 60s TV set.
Another comedy classic is a three-in-a-bed squeeze featuring Nanny Fanny, King Lenny and Willy Wallflower, played by Christian James as the dogsbody, benignly content to be everyone’s amiable friend in this happy, inclusive world.
Barbara Lewis © 2017.
Hal Cazalet: Play on Words, Crazy Coqs, Zedel, London. Review by Barbara Lewis.
Hal Cazalet: Play on Words
Features: Hal Cazalet, Janie Dee, Barbara Moore, Simon Beck
Director: Hugh Wooldridge
Venue: Crazy Coqs, Zedel, London
Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes
Dates: October 5 only
To most Britons, P.G. Wodehouse is known as the creator of quaint, comic novels starring the blundering upper class twit Bertie Wooster and his astute valet Jeeves.
He also contributed lyrics and stories to a wealth of musicals and his step great grandson, the opera singer Hal Cazalet, who as a child slept in a room beneath the Wodehouse archive, tells us he only got to know P.G. Wodehouse’s prose through the song lyrics.
It’s the premise for an evening of warm entertainment that begins with Wodehouse and ends with Dudley Moore and Peter Cook’s “Goodbye”, taking in around a century of finely crafted songs between.
The recipe for a winning song is complex, but writing team-work and an understanding of stage-craft play their parts.
Cazalet, whose own deep understanding of musical theatre stems not just from sleeping beneath an archive but also from training at the Guildhall in London and the Julliard in New York, tells the story of George Abbott, legendary in Broadway circles as a producer, director and playwright, who stepped in to save the “My Fair Lady” song “On the Street Where You Live” from oblivion with a tweak to add vital context.
Less famous now, but successful at the time were Wodehouse and Jerome Kern’s collaborations when the Broadway musical was in its infancy.
“We’re Crooks” from the hit musical “Miss 1917” evokes an era of gentle, innocent subversion of the status quo with its mockery of the supposedly legal professions.
“We never worked on Wall Street because we have some self-respect,” is one of the lines.
Another period piece, greeted with particular warmth by the members of the Wodehouse association in the audience was “Oh Gee, Oh Joy” from the 1928 flapper-era musical Rosalie, again by Wodehouse, collaborating with George and Ira Gerschwin.
The Wodehouse material however charming is dated and Cazalet’s patter moves us on via tenuous connections to the songs that followed and in some cases are more timeless.
My favourite of the evening was Cole Porter’s “Wake Up and Dream”, as relevant now as when it emerged around the time of the Wall Street Stock Market Crash in 1929.
Cazalet, accompanied by pianist Simon Beck, is mostly the star of the show, but he brings in a few co-stars, introduced in the luvvie atmosphere of the intimate Crazy Coqs space.
The luminaries of today include Cazalet’s sister, the actress Lara Cazalet who sings “Bill” from the musical Show Boat, the work of a collective, including Wodehouse, Kern and Hammerstein.
Jazz pianist Barbara Moore, a collaborator and friend, but no relative of Dudley Moore plays the Blackbird Medley and regales us with anecdotes of a bygone era of musical revue and showmanship.
Happily it’s not all in the past. Janie Dee, starring in Follies at the National, took a night off to perform the hilarious “Copy Type” from Alan Ayckbourn and Paul Todd’s “Me, Myself and I”.
It’s a razor-sharp, rapid-fire, tour de force of sparkling typos that begins: “I’m a copy typist working for the BBD… C”.
The Crazy Coqs is not quite the New York Algonquin Hotel where Dorothy Parker, Noel Coward, Irving Berlin and Wodehouse congregated, as Cazalet reminds us, but it is a fine venue to celebrate the need for artists who make us wake up from the daily grind and dream.
Barbara Lewis © 2017.
Aberpella ’50 Tones of Grey’, Edinburgh. Review by Barbara Lewis.
Aberpella
50 Tones of Grey
Grand Theatre,
The Space@Surgeons’ Hall (V53),
Edinburgh,
Aug 21-26
Four women and five men from Aberdeen University’s A Cappella Society Aberpella tell us they thought they were being terribly witty in choosing the title “50 Tones of Grey” as a reference to the shades of the sky and stone of their university city.
Then of course they realised it happened to evoke a best-selling erotic romance and that provides the cue for 50 minutes of meticulously rehearsed, smoothly sustained a cappella around the theme of modern dating, with rather more family entertainment value than E.L. James’ novel.
As subject-matter, the ups and downs of young love have been something to sing about since time immemorial but this intake of Aberdeen student talent makes it its own with transformative arrangements of absolutely contemporary music.
They take us from the initial, animal excitement of Tinder profiles to desperation, fulfilment, disaster, betrayal and breakup.
It’s at once as light as air and, laugh as we do, it’s an exploration and a tribute to how emotional and intense all this can be.
The joy of a cappella is the pitch-perfect flow of moving parts, so singling anyone out is hardly fair, but a personal favourite was Vic (the performers used first names only), described as a tenor and a soprano, singing “Tears” by Clean Bandit.
If I have a quibble it is with Joshua’s vocal percussion – at first a musical joke, but one that wore slightly thin. For the rest, we could have carried on listening for hours.
Barbara Lewis © 2017.
Dr Zeeman’s Catastrophe Machine
A new stage show by poet Martin Figura turns out to be both entertaining and thought-provoking More →
NewBliss by Keith Donald, Brussels. Review by Barbara Lewis.
NewBliss,
Venue: Bozar, Brussels (and then various gigs)
Running time: 90 minutes
Cast: Keith Donald
Writer: Keith Donald
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.
On Friday March 4, it was the turn of Keith Donald, a musician renowned in his native land and beyond for playing countless gigs at prestigious venues with stars such as Van Morrison.
But, as he tells us, in his highly confessional one-man play, he was an alcoholic mess.
He had his first serious taste of alcohol at the age of 11 and by the time he left school, he had already spent a night in the cells for being drunk and disorderly.
The ferocious drinking was his escape – and yet so was his music – from sexual abuse, from shyness, from the death of his parents and two of his closest friends and from the physical pain of a series of accidents.
But escaping means not confronting and Donald brings home the human need to process all experience, good and bad.
To be an alcoholic is to self-destruct by failing to do that.
Donald, who tells us he has turned 70, might never have got that far, but for an epiphany at the village of Newbliss in County Monaghan that gives the play its title.
Since then, the drinking has been replaced by writing and the need to tell an audience his cautionary tale.
It’s as much a health warning as entertainment and, as cultural exchange, it confirms every European prejudice about doomed, drunken Irishness.
But finally we’re rewarded with, as Donald puts it, “showtime” and a vigorous jazz flourish on his saxophone that leaves us wondering why the music alone couldn’t always have been enough.
Barbara Lewis © 2016.
Proms 2019. Review by Julia Pascal.
August 27, 2019 by Julia Pascal • music, performance, year 2019 • Tags: Julia Pascal, music, performance •
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