What a glorious triple bill (curated by Carlos Acosta)—I nearly write tipple, and I wouldn’t be far wrong, didn’t someone say that Beethoven must have written his Seventh Symphony in a drunken state? Hotel is very trippy. And Forgotten Land, for me, it is the best tipple of the evening—music and dance in perfect mix.… Continue reading Into the Music: Forgotten Land / Hotel / Seventh Symphony
Month: November 2022
Rigoletto
It’s easy to overlook, hearing a celebrity tenor perform “Questa o quella” in concert with devil-may-care abandon, just what a nasty piece of work the duke really is, and what a degenerate court he rules over. No mistake here, though. Verdi’s censors originally complained of the piece’s “repellent immorality.” The composer’s point was to contrast… Continue reading Rigoletto
Into the Music: Forgotten Land / Hotel / Seventh Symphony
What a glorious triple bill (curated by Carlos Acosta)—I nearly write tipple, and I wouldn’t be far wrong, didn’t someone say that Beethoven must have written his Seventh Symphony in a drunken state? Hotel is very trippy. And Forgotten Land, for me, it is the best tipple of the evening—music and dance in perfect mix.… Continue reading Into the Music: Forgotten Land / Hotel / Seventh Symphony
The Cherry Orchard
In an effort to make the plays of Shakespeare relevant to contemporary audiences, directors regularly stage them in radically different places and times than originally intended. Generally, this process is not applied to other classic playwrights like Ibsen or Chekhov possibly because their works are so closely related to specific time periods or events. Although… Continue reading The Cherry Orchard
Bombay Superstar
Bollywood—in the West, the word conjures up a big budget spectacle of dance and colour that usually tells the story of a hero and a heroine, star-crossed lovers with a fairytale ending. In India, the actors are the icons of the people and the films escapist blockbusters that are an intrinsic part of their lives.… Continue reading Bombay Superstar
Much Ado About Nothing
Much Ado is a popular play this year with productions by the National Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe, the RSC (which also got televised) and elsewhere. This lively production was the eighth to be reviewed by BTG this year when it opened in Sheffield. One version was trimmed down to 90 minutes with only six actors, another… Continue reading Much Ado About Nothing
Dacre bows out of Northampton with Unexpected Twist
Northampton Royal and Derngate’s first production of 2023 will be Roy Williams’s adaptation of Michael Rosen’s children’s story Unexpected Twist, a retelling of Dickens’s Oliver Twist. It will be the last production directed by the venue’s artistic director James Dacre before he leaves after ten years in the role to set up his own production company. Unexpected Twist will… Continue reading Dacre bows out of Northampton with Unexpected Twist
Largest ever World Ballet Day
The Royal Ballet and The Australian Ballet have announced that 61 companies will participate in the largest World Ballet Day yet, streaming from six continents. Audiences are invited to take part in the largest ever global dance challenge, and share a video of themselves performing a piece of choreography inspired by The Sleeping Beauty, as… Continue reading Largest ever World Ballet Day
Let The Right One In
Based on Lindqvist’s 2004 novel and the author’s own adaptation for screen for the 2008 Swedish horror film, this play by Jack Thorne has at its heart a growing relationship between an almost-teenager and an ageless creature who survives from drinking blood but is certainly no Twilight. it begins with such a constant stream of… Continue reading Let The Right One In
Gustavo III
The idea of a European monarch being assassinated in Italian-ruled Italy was clearly too much for censors when Verdi first presented the opera that was to become Un Ballo in Maschera. How I would have loved therefore to be present in their conclaves if they had been presented with the prospect of this modern production… Continue reading Gustavo III