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.
theatre
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.
Truth to Power Café. Review by Barbara Lewis. Jeremy Goldstein is celebrating the 20th anniversary of his company London Artists Projects, whose missions include taking his “Truth to Power Café” across the world.
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.
Allegra. Review by Julia Pascal. This seemingly frothy play with music is a vehicle for Dame Maureen Lipman. She plays Allegra, a woman with a pathological desire to burst into song. Allegra is motivated to brighten the mood of those around her, even at the most inappropriate moments.
Romeo and Juliet. Review by Barbara Lewis. Even in times when women are cast as Shakespeare’s Lear and Prospero, it’s a bold move to do the same with Romeo – the byword for the romantic male lover. It’s the tactic of Greenwich Theatre’s artistic director James Haddrell, who has also dared to compete for audience attention with the World Cup and heatwave weather in what is billed as fresh, summer Shakespeare.
How to Make a Mess. Review by Barbara Lewis. Not the Bible, not “Winnie the Pooh” not even Harry Potter – “How to Eat” was the book the loving father of Anna (played by Natasha Karp) gave to his daughter to learn to read and as a life manual.
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.
Quartet in Autumn. Review by Barbara Lewis. Lonely, unloved women are the protagonists of Barbara Pym’s novels. The brave honesty of her subject matter led some publishers to reject her, although the poet Philip Larkin was famously among her advocates.
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.
Rinaldo. Review by Barbara Lewis. Handel’s Rinaldo, the first Italian-language opera created for a London audience, was an 18th-century hit about love, war and redemption. It was written at speed and performed with lavish special effects at a time when tales of crusading knights filled the popular imagination.
By Barbara Lewis • added recently on London Grip, plays, theatre • Tags: Barbara Lewis, plays, theatre