If you can embrace it, lockdown’s shift from the real to the virtual is a liberation that makes anything possible.
theatre
![Susannah De Wrixon and Kwaku Fortune crop[4837]](https://londongrip.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Susannah-De-Wrixon-and-Kwaku-Fortune-crop4837-180x125.jpg "Susannah De Wrixon and Kwaku Fortune crop[4837]")
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.
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.
A Feast in The Time of Plague, Grange Park Opera online. Review by Barbara Lewis.
#FinboroughForFree. Adding Machine: A Musical. Review by Barbara Lewis.
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.
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.
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.
Money and heroic self-sacrifice have been considered throughout history the rational motivations for risking life. In pandemic lockdown, we’re more aware of that than ever as governments weigh economic damage and national health, while workers battling on the frontline make the ultimate sacrifice.
Brontë’s angry classic, which has for decades fired up rebellious, ambitious girls and women, has found new resonance in our self-isolating times as the National Theatre at Home allows another frustrated generation to ponder its lot.
Theatre blogger Jonathan Baz, who rates this show as unmissable, writes in the note at the front of the programme that an audience can only fully grasp its craftsmanship on re-listening or revisiting.
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