Latest Articles - Page 105 of 664

19May

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

London

Die Walküre – Royal Ballet & Opera

Following 2023’s Das Rheingold, conductor Antonio Pappano and director Barrie Kosky reunite to continue the mythical adventure with Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), the second work of Richard Wagner’s four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. On a stormy night, fate brings Siegmund (Stanislas de Barbeyrac) to the door of Sieglinde (Natalya Romaniw), the fearful wife of bully Hunding (Soloman Howard), unleashing a love with the power to end worlds. Meanwhile, in the realm of the gods, an epic battle ensues between their ruler Wotan (Christopher Maltman) and his rebellious daughter, Brünnhilde (Elisabet Strid), after his wife Fricka (Marina Prudenskaya) has laid her own law down to him, and the battle of the Valkyries – Helmwige (Maida Hundeling); Ortlinde (Katie Lowe); Gerhilde (Lee Bisset); ...

Elgar’s Cello Concerto and More – Liverpool Philharmonic

19May

By Mark HumphreysNo Comments

North West

Elgar’s Cello Concerto and More – Liverpool Philharmonic

While much of Europe was glued to the Eurovision Song Contest, Liverpool offered its own musical spectacle at the Philharmonic Hall – and if the city had a jury, this concert might well have earned its own douze points. The evening opened with Fandangos by Puerto Rican composer Roberto Sierra, a vibrant and rhythmically charged piece that immediately set a cosmopolitan tone. Sierra, known for blending Latin American musical idioms with contemporary classical techniques, delivered a work full of colour and flair. The muted trumpets added a smoky, mysterious texture, while Helena Mackie’s agile oboe lines danced effortlessly above the ensemble. Tom Lessels’ velvety bass clarinet added depth, and the piece ended with a flourish that drew enthusiastic applause. It was a bold and brilliant o...

19May

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

REVIEWS

Salome – The Metropolitan Opera

Director Claus Guth gives the biblical story – already filtered through the beautiful and strange imagination of Oscar Wilde’s play – a psychologically perceptive Victorian-era setting, rich in symbolism and subtle shades of darkness, light, and shadow, as Strauss’ one-act tragedy receives its first new production at The Met in twenty years. Narraboth (Piotr Buszewski) admires the princess Salome (Elza van den Heever) and unable to resist her, allows her to descend into the cell holding Jochanaan (Peter Mattei). She is fascinated by the prophet’s body and begs for his kiss, but he rejects her, and she returns to the palace above. Herod (Gerhard Siegel) appears and offers her food and wine, but she refuses. Jochanaan cries out from below against Salome’s mother, Herodias (Michelle DeY...

19May

By Holly SewellNo Comments

London

Diagnosis – Finborough Theatre

Athena Stevens commands the stage in the world premiere of her new play, Diagnosis, playing at the Finborough Theatre. In a dystopian London police station, a woman with a disability, S/he (Athena Stevens), is questioned about an alleged assault against a stranger. In accordance with new procedural law around ‘vulnerable individuals’, she is taped, watched by an audience through a one-way mirror, and forced to be taken seriously - or that’s the idea. In reality, the endless red tape acts less as a support system than as a distraction from the truth of her story. The set is immediately eerie. There is one window, blinds drawn, through which an ominous red glow seeps into Juliette Demoulin’s dark interrogation room. A camera on a tripod records and projects onstage the entire questioni...

19May

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Keli – Royal Lyceum Theatre

Keli is writer and composer, Martin Green’s response to his adopted community and its music. The writer moved to a small mining town in the South of Scotland and became fascinated by the relationship between the brass band and the pit. The mines were of course long gone, but the music remained and had become an emblem of continuity and resilience, where ‘the band is the toon, and the toon is the band’. At the centre of life Green’s a fictitious small mining town is Keli, a troubled and foul-mouthed young lady with few prospects, an anxiety-ridden mother and a dead-end job stacking shelves. The one good thing in her life is the band, and when she picks up the tenor horn, she becomes a different person, somehow empowered and necessary. When she blows those few inches of air it is the one ...

18May

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

North West

Dirty Dusting – Rainhill Village Hall

Rainhill Garrick Society’s take on Ed Waugh and Trevor Wood’s laugh-out-loud comedy certainly dusts off the cobwebs and guarantees you’ll never look at a vacuum cleaner the same way again! When three elderly cleaners, Olive (Lynn Aconley), Gladys (Linda Saavedra), and Elsie (Jo Webster), are threatened with redundancy by their arch nemesis and boss Dave (Peter Cliffe), they feel that their lives are coming to an end until a chance wrong number gives them a new business start-up idea: why not run a telephone sex chat line? They’ve got motive, opportunity, and a lifetime of experience... some more than others. Cue hilarious one-liners in a style not dissimilar to a Carry-On film. With the play set in a nameless office building in St Helens in 2002, with updated local references, ...

Richard III – New Wimbledon Theatre Studio

16May

By Paul AckroydNo Comments

London

Richard III – New Wimbledon Theatre Studio

Alex Wakelam's new production of Richard III for the Carlton Theatre Group is innovative in the number of ways. As Wakelam explains at length in his directors note in the programme is made various changes to the text, including significantly reducing the number of speaking characters, introducing a scene from Henry VI part 3 and references to the Wars of the Roses. And it worked. The plot was easy to follow, and the dialogue flowed actually using Shakespeare's own language. It is also innovative that it set the entire play around a long dinner table with a cast seated on one side opposite the audience. The period was deliberately ambiguous. Possibly Victorian. The dinner guests were the main characters, kings, queens and courtiers dressed in evening wear, while in the background with th...

Sense & Sensibility – Shakespeare North Playhouse

16May

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

North West

Sense & Sensibility – Shakespeare North Playhouse

The Pantaloons roll up in Prescot again with their delightful ensemble of skits, songs, and gags this time aimed at Jane Austen’s first novel with lashings of Regency romp raising the bar high even if there are a few low flying beams to watch out for. All actors want to perform in a theatre-in-the-round but with nowhere to hide, only the best can deliver: The Pantaloons served up a theatrical masterclass tonight and a timely reminder of how great theatre can be. Sisters Elinor (Alex Rivers) and Marianne (Cicely Halkes-Wellstead) along with their mother are somewhat down on their luck and effectively palmed off by their older half-brother when their father dies to live on the estate of a cousin, Sir John Middleton (Christopher Smart). Elinor is disconsolate as she had become close to Edw...

15May

By Sadie PearsonNo Comments

London

1536 – Almeida Theatre

A period drama which couldn’t be more pertinent, 1536 by Ava Pickett is a triumph of feminist rage against a system which is perpetually rigged against women. The trail of Anne Boylen seen through the eyes of three anonymous women - stripping patriarchal attitudes down to bare bones, this electrifying drama exposes – with a warning claxon – the dangerously well-trodden path toward female subjugation. It is not a play to be missed. ‘History is told by victors. And for most of history, men have been the victors’ states Suzannah Lipscomb in the programme’s foreword. This is a play which inverts that narrative. In a small village near Essex, Anna (Siena Kelly). Jane (Liv Hill) and Mariella (Tanya Reynolds) gather in their seclusion of their childhood meeting place, hungry for London’s gossi...

A Small Enclosed Room with Alfie Murphy – Soho Theatre

15May

By Ralph JeffreysNo Comments

London

A Small Enclosed Room with Alfie Murphy – Soho Theatre

A Small Enclosed Room With Alfie Murphy is a unique and funny show that sometimes struggles to deliver on its strong themes and ideas. We begin as a one-man style show. Alfie confides in us about his life, telling us about his band ‘The Camden Stoners’ and the struggles he has with his more sociable, but rather shallow bandmate Jai. From the moment our other performer, Anna Constable, puts her head through the curtain (as Alfie’s ghostwriter dressed as a ghost), the show moves at lightning speed. Alfie falls out hard with Jai, travels to India to lose become a guru, and suddenly finds himself thrown into a particularly aggressive talk show interview before the fourth wall comes crashing down as Constable begins to object to all the costumes and roles, she is forced to put on in order to...