Extraordinary Alien. Review by Julia Pascal. Does a stand-up need to have a narrative or does a discursive monologue, laced with self-deprecation, stand up? Debra Tammer’s Extraordinary Alien (on its way to the Edinburgh Festival) promises much with its marketing image.
performance
Swan Lake. Review by Julia Pascal. What can be done with the plot of Swan Lake? Should this 19th century classic be interpreted freshly for the 21st? That is the question suggested by the State Ballet of Georgia.
Macbeth. Review by Barbara Lewis. The vocation of the HandleBards touring theatre company is to share a love of Shakespeare through sheer entertainment in settings that range from the classroom to country estates on summer’s evenings. That means comic relief prevails over tragic significance even when the chosen drama is The Scottish Play.
Shantify. Review by Barbara Lewis. For anyone who thought the modern wave of enthusiasm for fishing songs had crested with the lockdown singing postman, “Shantify”, uttered in an awed stage whisper, is here to prove them wrong.
Choreodrome; next steps. Review by Zoe Hewitt. The Place’s Choreodrome; next steps brought two emerging dance makers, Orla Hardie and Samara Langham, to the main theatre stage with new works developed through Choreodrome, the venue’s annual residency and commissioning programme.
Dance: “Tutu”. Review by Primrose MacFay. What fun! A show called “Tutu” threatens serious political attention and then turns out to be quite other, a genre-bending, gender-bending romping rampage through conventions not just of dance but of human, or – one might as well say it – sexual relations.
Poetry review – THE TRAPEZE OF YOUR FLESH: Thomas Ovans is impressed by Charles Rammelkamp’s extensive poetic history of Striptease and Burlesque
Prom 55. Review by Julia Pascal. Nelsons led his orchestra in such a way as to suggest that this was also the premiere for Stravinsky, Gershwin and Ravel.
Pension Europa. Review by Barbara Lewis. Austrian-Italian director Martin Gruber and his aktionstheater ensemble have for decades helped audiences to explore what it is to be a human wrestling with the anxieties of the day.
Candide, WNO. Review by Barbara Lewis. Too messy, too long, too anti-Semitic, too misogynistic: there are many reasons to avoid Bernstein’s Candide. And yet, director James Bonas and the Welsh National Opera bravely make a powerful case for staging this attack on the depravity of those in power and the futility of war.
Poetry review – TITS ON THE MOON: Charles Rammelkamp reviews a selection of diverting poems by Dessa
Dido and Aeneas. Review by Barbara Lewis. Singer and director Marcio da Silva opens his version of Purcell’s only fully sung opera with a request that the audience vote on who takes the role of Dido. It felt at first like a gimmick, at odds with high tragedy, and yet it takes on a serious purpose: we, like the gods, or the fates, or Purcell’s witches, are the arbitrary deciders of one human’s destiny.
By Barbara Lewis • added recently on London Grip, music, opera, performance, theatre • Tags: Barbara Lewis, music, opera, performance, theatre