A View From The Bridge – Liverpool Playhouse – 28/03/2014

The guy ain’t right…

As we take our seats some men are killing time pitching coins on the sidewalk outside Eddie and Bea’s apartment. The houselights are barely down when a ships hooter grounds us firmly near the Brooklyn Docks of Red Hook and a flurry of people pass by as if at the end of a shift.

Longshoreman Eddie Carbonne comes home to find his niece, Catherine, setting the table whilst his wife Beatrice is in the kitchen beyond.

On Paul O’Mahoney’s set this scene of domesticity is separated from the world outside by a break in the level of the stage, and although there are few walls the interior space has a claustrophobic feel that intensifies the heat of the tensions that build in this soon-to-be overcrowded living space.

It’s clear from the outset that Eddie is overly protective of Catherine, but when Bea’s Sicilian cousins Marco and Rodolpho arrive seeking a roof, having entered the country illegally, the dynamic is shifted uncomfortably. Catherine falls for Rodolpho and we are soon feeling that Eddie’s concern for her is rather more than fatherly. Rodolpho is tall, slim, blond and good looking, with a fine tenor voice and some other talents that Eddie finds less than manly, and he uses this to justify his aversion to their growing affection. Rodolpho’s big brother, however, is not one to be messed with and the tensions between him and Eddie grow to ultimately tragic consequences.

Julia Ford captures Beatrice’s weariness and family loyalty and Shannon Tarbet is splendidly coquettish as the shy teenage Catherine shows her feelings for the suave Rodolpho, played with a stylish swagger (and a good singing voice) by Andy Apollo. Daniel Coonan as Marco has all the solidity both of character and form to persuade us that he could do some damage if he wanted to and he also conveys a great sense of family loyalty.

Ultimately, however, it is Lloyd Hutchinson’s portrayal of Eddie Carbonne that steals the stage. He manages to balance the many facets of this complex and confused character perfectly. As Eddie wrestles with his passions, his loyalties and his conscience we are torn between empathy and horror.

Hutchinson’s Brooklyn-ese is as solid as his performance, and the other accents are well done, even if they do have an occasional wobble, and now and then I wondered if a village in Sicily had moved a bit closer to Russia than it used to be.

Through all this, we are guided by the sage words of local lawyer Alfieri, played by Bruce Alexander. As well as his segments within the main action, in which he tries vainly to guide Eddie away from his path to that certain door, he acts in the manner of a narrator. In the original one act version of the play his part was written in verse and acted as a Greek Chorus. When the play was extended the verse was re-written in straight prose, making the character appear more like the voice we often find in American film noir. He both opens and closes the dialogue of the play as well as providing occasional pauses for reflection.

Quercus Award-winning LEP Associate Director Charlotte Gwinner uses her cast skilfully to hold the tension tightly-lidded throughout, even leaving us holding our breath as the house lights come up for the interval. She also makes good use of stage movement and, occasionally an absence of it, and there are no parts of the action that will not be transparently clear to the entire house - even down to the careful substitution of a stool for one chair at the dining table so that nothing is hidden from our view.

In addition to the central cast listed above there is an eight strong ensemble of supporting actors who provide the ever watchful neighbours and dock workers. They offer swift movement in some of the scene changes and also some telling tableaux at key points of public scrutiny in the tale.

John Leonard’s soundtrack comprises mainly background and atmosphere and along with slick and well focused lighting by Mark Doubleday helps to hold us under the spell.

A View from the Bridge runs at the Liverpool Playhouse until 19th April

Andy Apollo, Shannon Tarbet, Julia Ford, Lloyd Hutchinson and Daniel Coonan.
Picture © Stephen Vaughan

Shakespeare Through the Looking Glass – Twelfth Night – Liverpool Everyman Theatre – 08/03/2014

Yesterday saw the first public performance in Liverpool’s completely rebuilt Everyman Theatre. Artistic Director Gemma Bodinetz thought long and hard before settling on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night as her opening show. She wanted something that was an ensemble piece to highlight the democratic ethos of the theatre, not something that would put one actor’s face on the poster. She also wanted something with poetry and comedy, something that reflected on loss and the joy of reunion and, above all, “...a play that celebrates love, a renegade spirit and a naughtiness”.

She has found all this and more in Twelfth Night and has assembled a cast and creative team who have brought her vision joyously to life in this wonderfully exuberant production.



Did you ever see the picture of we three?
Matthew Kelly, Paul Duckworth and Adam Keast
Photo © Stephen Vaughan

 Laura Hopkins’ design is made to appear as though it grows organically out of the very brickwork of the theatre. Audiences are greeted at the beginning by an almost empty stage dominated by a large, ornately framed mirror to the rear wall reflecting their own image, and its twin, smashed into fragments and scattered about the stage floor. These shards of glass offer opportunities for characters to reflect on their appearance, their identity and their motives.

It is very hard to know where to begin with the cast, as it is just what Gemma wanted – a great ensemble piece with strong individual parts. Matthew Kelly and Nicholas Woodeson worked together in the Everyman company of 1974 and seem a logical place to begin. Woodeson is everything you need in a Malvolio, lugubrious, poker-faced and faintly ridiculous as the pompous steward but turning into an excited little boy when he falls for Maria’s cruel joke. His Cheshire-Cat grin is something to behold, as is his unusual entrance in act 4.

Could Matthew Kelly have played any other role than this occasionally flatulent Sir Toby Belch? (It’s the pickled herring, you know.) He blends the comic element of the part with genuine pathos and imbues the part with tremendous energy. It’s through performances like this that the character is so memorable.

Adam Keast is a spot of casting genius as Sir Andrew Agucheek. His last appearance in Liverpool saw him suspended from a wire dressed as a giant shrimp in Aladdin (if you weren’t there don’t even ask!) Agucheek offers plenty of opportunity for some of the most eccentric excesses of comedy and Keast’s skill is in making us care about Sir Andrew despite his behaviour. Almost upholstered rather than dressed, he struts about with a ludicrous hairstyle and somehow captures our hearts.

And now to our shipwrecked twins: Luke Jerdy is a splendid Sebastian, wide eyed and full of confusion as the plot ravels and unravels around him. He is full of charm and also finds the sharp wit in the writing. Jodie McNee as his twin sister Viola is another crack-shot bit of casting. She is a perfect balance of determination and vulnerability and her masculine bearing throughout her masquerade as Cesario is nothing short of perfection.



Luke Jerdy and Jodie McNee
Photo © Stephen Vaughan

We strike theatrical gold with our Feste, Paul Duckworth, whose fearless performance really highlights the central importance of the part. His transformation into the fool is arresting, and he finds a wonderful balance between the many faces of the character. Often dark and almost sinister and occasionally leaning toward near burlesque, this is a splendid creation.

Alan Stocks playing Fabian appears almost part of the furniture at first, being onstage for a long stretch with no lines. When he does make his entrance he has the great stage presence that we expect from him and his cat and mouse scenes hiding in the shrubbery with Keast and Kelly, waiting for the woodcock to find the gin, are timed to perfection.

Maria is played by Pauline Daniels and her vocal characterisations almost nod in the direction of Hilda Baker at times. She has all the blustering blowsy personality to stand up to the difficult household that she finds herself trying to keep order in, and when she joins in with the revelry and gets caught she becomes a naughty schoolgirl.

Natalie Dew plays the bereaved and occasionally perplexed Olivia, who on finally breaking her self-imposed vow of chastity manages to fall for a wrong-un. Her turns between girlish charm and astonished confusion require some great comic timing and she pulls it off beautifully. Antonio falls to David Rubin. As the sea captain friend and saviour of Sebastian, he has tremendous stature and poise.

Neil Caple as Curio and Robin Morrisey as Valentine, with relatively little text, provide a perfect foil to the love-sick Duke Orsino.

So what of our noble Duke? He has the opening line and here he appears to be pondering its meaning as he delivers it. Adam Levy combines the dignity of the Duke with a real feeling of despair and disenchantment Decked in a natty linen suit he presides over Illyria with a melancholy charm and we have high hopes that he will find his match in the end.

I’ve already described the opening setting in Laura Hopkins’ design, but there’s more than meets the eye. In an opportunity to display some of the theatre’s new technical abilities there are some almost seamless and magical scene changes, and the set manages to reveal a few surprises from the beginning right to the very end. It’s easy to overlook the lighting when it is so neatly married with the action, and Paul Keogh’s lighting script uses the Everyman’s new equipment to blend the scenes together atmospherically.

Music is an important part of Shakespeare, and has a special part to play in Twelfth Night. A regular collaborator with Gemma Bodinetz, Composer Peter Coyte does not give us excess of it. The recorded segments of his score seep out of the pores of the production, whilst his live music performed by the actors themselves is as mysterious a mixture of styles as the fabled location of Illirya.

Feste accompanies himself with a guitar in a folk-like rendition of his ballads. It is he who opens the final lines of verse that end the play, and it seems only natural for the cast to add their voices to the refrain as they reassure us that they will – as we hope the Everyman will do for many decades to come – strive to please us every day.

If...

Twelfth Night plays at the Liverpool Everyman until 5th April 2014. Details are available from the theatre website: www.everymanplayhouse.com or the box office: 0151 709 4776

A Theatre Reborn – The Everyman Theatre Liverpool – March 2014

I was barely more than two years old when the Everyman Theatre was born on 28th September 1964 and Liverpool acquired its second repertory company. The converted Hope Hall, once a chapel and more recently a cinema, presented its work in a new type of arena for a Liverpool unfamiliar with a thrust stage before.


The New Everyman street frontage at night
(All images in this posting are my own, © N. P .Smith)

It was not until my late teens that I began to venture to the theatre. My school did not really teach drama or theatre in any sort of a serious way, confining its contribution to having students read out the parts of a couple of plays in class. For years afterward I felt somewhat disenfranchised, as many of my contemporaries clearly studied stuff like Shakespeare in earnest. The closest I got was the importance of Being Ernest. We certainly never had any school trips to the theatre. I have since become rather grateful in an odd sort of way, realising that many of those same friends of mine dislike Shakespeare with a passion and refuse to go near it, after having it shoved down their throats at school along with the over-boiled cabbage and lumpy custard.

My love affair with the theatre must have begun tentatively. I really don’t think that I could say what the first play was that I took myself to see, nor exactly where, but I do know that the place that rapidly became central on my radar was the Liverpool Everyman. Having been taken to concerts by my father since the age of seven at the nearby Philharmonic Hall I suppose that I knew that part of town, so it was a natural place to go, but there was something very special about the Everyman that made me want to keep coming back.

My Damascene moment came with a performance of a Midsummer Night’s Dream in the January 1983. Director Glen Walford and designer Sue Mayes managed to divide opinion by setting the play in something like a clearing in a forest somewhere in the Far East. Actors made their entrances via rope bridges slung over the audience and Paddy Cunneen’s live score was performed on a collection of strange instruments from a sort of tree house to the rear of the stage. The fact is that, over thirty years later, I barely have to close my eyes to be able to see, hear and almost smell that production. Its energy and rhythm and its sense of genuine stage magic were incredible and it completely wiped the slate clean in my mind as far as Shakespeare was concerned.

The following winter the season included month long runs of both Return to the Forbidden Planet and The Tempest, on which the former was (rather loosely) based – by this time I was hooked.

Two programmes from 1983/4 season

The mixture of both pioneering new work and daring re-imaginings of timeless classics continues to be one of the hallmarks of the theatre, whilst its scale and design have ensured that every member of the audience was able to feel enveloped in the experience.

With the passage of time the theatre, its work and the very building itself (including the legendary Bistro) have become part of the fabric of Merseyside’s cultural and social life. On more than one occasion its very existence was threatened by economic pressures, but each time people have rallied round to save it.

At the turn of the century the Everyman joined forces with the Liverpool Playhouse, another controversial decision but one that has proved to be a great partnering. With the arrival of a new Executive Director Deborah Aydon and Artistic Director Gemma Bodinetz in 2003, the theatres began to look to their futures with a new optimism in the lead up to Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture in 2008.

With its 1975 monolithic, brutalist facade and its modern reputation, it was hard for lovers of the Everyman to recognise that the main fabric of the building dated back to 1837 – some 29 years older than the Playhouse. Little wonder then, that when architects were brought in to look at the potential for improvements and renovations on both theatres, they suggested that pulling the Everyman down and starting from scratch was the most viable option.

Queues for one last visit on the Bistro's last day

There was naturally a great wailing and gnashing of teeth and the knives were out for anyone who laid a finger on our Everyman, but after almost a decade in the planning the Everyman went dark in July 2011 following Gemma Bodinetz’s triumphant production of Macbeth and a celebratory event to gather everyone’s memories of the place.

A representation of the extiguished neon sign burns atop the old theatre

All the memories were fond ones of course. Everyone who loved the Everyman (myself included) manages some sort of psychological trick of selective memory-loss, being able to forget how it felt to sit for three hours on a hard wooden bench or a rickety old cinema seat, managing for the most part to avoid passing out from the heat as the staff desperately tried to keep a few people cool with portable air conditioners whirring away at full kilter. Access to the auditorium was via steep narrow stairways and front of house areas were cramped. Backstage things were worse, with Spartan being something of an understatement for the conditions endured by the cast and crew.

Yes – I know we will all look back wistfully to the old Everyman, but give the company a break everyone – to put on a show fit for the 21st Century they need the space and equipment to do it and, let’s face it, we audiences aren’t going to complain about a comfy seat and room to move about are we?

The old girl wasn’t so much demolished as dismantled, painstakingly rescuing anything that could be re-used in the rebuild or auctioned off as souvenirs to bolster the rebuilding fund. Via a webcam on the building opposite we were able to see the slow descent of the Everyman and the building next door down to basement level, and then the growth of the new structure on the same site.

Although the building now has a larger footprint the auditorium occupies a very similar space, remaining roughly the same capacity in its standard configuration. The extra room has made possible much better provision for public circulation space front of house as well as new facilities for rehearsal and scenic construction, a venue for the youth theatre and outreach projects, a writers’ room and new offices for the administrative teams.

Last Saturday evening a lantern parade danced and played its way from the Playhouse to deliver a love letter to the Everyman. Giant lantern puppets representing the two venues danced together in Hope street in front of huge crowds before symbolically lighting the illuminated Everyman sign that adorns the new facade, beneath the curtain of aluminium shutters that depict 105 local people.

The following morning we were able to see behind that facade as the doors of the building were opened to the public for the first time for a free event allowing access to just about all areas, except some parts of backstage where the finishing touches were being made to the set for the opening performance.

The new Stalls Bar

The first thing that grabs you when you walk in is that it doesn’t feel brand new, somehow it has a welcoming, lived-in feel about it. The use of reclaimed materials, including a very large amount of bricks from the old building, as well as clever surface treatments, have combined to give the place a sense of instant history.

The theatre visitor will find an open, airy cafe bar at ground level, with the box office to the right of the entrance. This cafe bar can open out to the pavement when the sunshine beckons. The next level up is the stalls bar, with access to a balcony overlooking Hope Street (no glassware out there please folks) and doorways to the left and right of the auditorium. Stairways to each side take you to circle level, although this is also accessible from within the auditorium from the stalls via curved stairways. To the right of the auditorium and bars are the main stairs and lift access to every level, as well as toilets incorporating baby changing facilities. In this side of the building we find the other new spaces like EV1 for the youth theatre and the writers’ room, while the offices run along the front of the building from circle level upward, screened from the street and the sun by the portrait wall.

Stairwells and lifts seen from stalls bar level

All the public spaces are finished in warm tones, incorporating a deep red ceiling mural design, while here and there are reclaimed theatre lights. Also reclaimed is much of the wood providing the finishes to the bars etc. Even some of the timber shuttering used during concrete construction has been re-used in the finished design.

Entering the auditorium, we find ourselves in a space that actually does feel like the Everyman already. To enable the same seating capacity while offering better comfort and access, the architect has returned to an aspect of the pre-1970 Everyman in using a gallery but this time it has just two rows of seats, above a stalls level with fully flexible seating. The “standard” layout gives us the familiar large thrust stage with seating on three sides. With five rows all round and a sixth row of raised seats (with footrests) at the rear of the centre block the capacity is approximately 400, but this can rise to 500 if reconfigured to be fully “in the round”.

The auditorium with visitors to the housewarming
(note rehearsal desks over some seating)

In its default layout, every stalls seat offers a completely unobstructed view of the stage, but it’s useful to remember that the back row in that centre block are the high seats. I will be occupying one of these seats myself next week and will provide an update on the experience (see below for update). Up in the circle, the two rows of seats both have a safety rail with an open mesh below it, and there is a possibility that this may be slightly in the line of sight to the nearest part of the stage. This is theoretical advice and I will be checking it out in practice soon (see below for update).

Over the stage is a lighting and flying grid with another remarkable innovation, in that the catwalks for rigging are fully accessible, meaning that a wheelchair user can perform rigging work. It also makes the whole rig far more easily accessible and safer for the entire crew.

A view up into the overstage grid

No description of the new Everyman is complete without mention of the Bistro. This was once an iconic venue in its own right, attracting people with its great atmosphere and cheap, wholesome food. A haven for anyone who wanted to chat over a meal or a drink, and one of the first places in town to include a wide range of vegetarian dishes among its home-made and locally sourced menu.

It is inevitable that this will be an opinion divider, as the most careful reconstruction could never have entirely satisfied every died-in-the-wool regular. The architects here have aimed at recreating the scale and feel of the old without trying for a direct reconstruction and I think they’ve hit their target pretty well. The new Bistro is in a windowless basement (of course) and has the obligatory low ceiling. Furnishings are simple tables and refectory style chairs as well as bench seating against the walls. There are some suitably retro looking rise and fall lights (which are already fascinating the punters) and the room has some cunning acoustic treatment to cut down hard echoes and help maintain a convivial buzz of chatter when it’s full. Entering from the main entrance from the foyer you approach a central, island bar with a smaller seated area to the right and the main long room to the left. Between the two is an inglenook containing a wood burning stove. One end of the main room may be separated off by a large sliding door to create a smaller space with its own entrance. The substantial kitchens are tucked away to the far end and the open food display counter no longer exists.

Inside the new Bistro

The street level cafe bar is open from breakfast time and throughout the morning while the Bistro takes over at lunchtime, remaining open till late. This means that there is a food and drink offering all day every day, bringing people into the building and hopefully providing an additional revenue stream to help support the theatre.

I spent the best part of three hours in the new Everyman last Sunday, along with a few thousand other people who came to explore. I also popped in for a post-concert glass of wine in the Bistro after a concert at the Philharmonic Hall on Thursday, and was pleased to find a pleasant atmosphere and quite a number of people there even at that late hour.

All that remains now is to see a performance in the new auditorium, and for that I have to wait till tonight...

Update:

Subsequent to posting the above item, I have seen the same production again from other angles and can now report on the experience in other parts of the auditorium.
I sat in the end seat on row F stalls, the "high" seats on the back row. These are comfortable, with foot rests at two heights to afford a choice of leg position. The view is excellent and still feels close to the stage even though it is the back row.

I also sat in what must be the theoretical "worst" seat in the house - this being the very end seat at the front end of the back row of the circle. The effect of the safety rail on the view is minimal and I saw no-one in either row leaning forward because of it (as would be the case if view was impaired). View of the stage was excellent with the slight exception that the reveal to the side of the arch partially obstructed the view to the very rear part of the set that fell behind the arch. The effect of this will vary according to individual set design, but it was only entrances and exits that were occasionally out of view in this production. This was countered by an enhanced view into the "wings" at the opposite side of the stage. A quick shuffle while some seats were empty showed that only the very last two seats in this row are really affected and by the third seat along the restriction is minimal.

Both of these performances were full houses and my view was unaffected by the people in front of me. Also, it is the nature of an open stage design like this that most directors will block a piece in such a way as to use as much of the space as possible, and actors will play to the whole house rather than focussing centre front.

Mojo – Harold Pinter Theatre – 16/12/2013

“There's nothing like someone cutting your dad in two for clearing the mind”

Ian Rickson originally brought Jez Butterworth’s play to the Royal Court stage to award winning acclaim in 1995 and he returns the directorial chair for this revival, with a cast whose ensemble and timing are as slick as the Brylcreem in the dressing room. Butterworth’s dialogue is slick too, filled with a dark brooding menace enhanced with gloomy, claustrophobic sets by Ulzt and a pounding soundtrack from Stephen Warbeck and Simon Baker.

Ezra, owner of the Atlantic Club in Soho, is an ever present but unseen character, whose efforts to prevent rival Mr Ross from poaching his star performer Silver Johnny result in his grizzly demise and he spends much of the second act represented by two dustbins downstage.

Silver Johnny himself is brought explosively to life at curtain up by a Tom Rhys Harries. Harries disappears for most of act one, having been kidnapped by the opposition, and on his reappearance in act two he has a lot of hanging around to do before he springs back into manic action in the closing scenes. Fortunately Mr Harries has youth and apparent fitness on his side and hopefully won’t have too much need of the credited company osteopath - rather him than me though.

The rest of the cast are a motley crew of club employees who are occupied through most of the play in trying to save both the club and their own necks from Joe Ross’s henchmen. Mickey, charismatically played by Brendan Coyle, is hopeful of taking over Ezra’s Atlantic but Potts (Daniel Mays) and Sweets (Rupert Grint) have a more realistic, if somewhat histrionic approach to the situation and the ensuing siege-like situation builds in ever-increasing tension leading to the final tragic conclusion. Mays is superb and special mention has to go to Rupert Grint who, in his professional stage debut here, seems to have risen spectacularly to the occasion. Some commentators have moaned of mumbling but I was seated in one of the most acoustically challenged areas of the theatre in the rear stalls and every word was delivered perfectly well for me. His character earns the nickname Sweets for providing the supply of pills that fuels the cast in their chemical highs and lows and adds other unexpected colour to their lives.

This just leaves Baby and Skinny. Skinny is not the sharpest knife in the box and played with larger than life shambling and a good deal of comic charm by Colin Morgan. He appears to have a less than welcome fixation with Baby, Ezra’s wide-boy son, who in his strangely detached way deals with the bizarre events around him and the gruesome loss of his father. It is in his incandescent performance of Baby that Ben Whishaw all but steals the stage from his fellow cast, and I suspect he could easily walk away with the whole show if he had a mind to. This is a firecracker of a part and Whishaw clearly revels in it without ever overshadowing his colleagues.

Mojo crackles with electricity throughout and its quickfire dialogue – often not for the delicate ear – rattles along relentlessly, keeping the pace moving throughout its substantial two and a half hour running time. This is a great anarchic antidote to the safe mainstream world of much of what’s on offer nearby in the West End. It should sell itself for its fine writing and gritty atmosphere as much as for the star rating of its high profile casting.

Mojo continues at the Harold Pinter Theatre Panton Street until 8th February 2014.

Jumpers for Goalposts – Bush Theatre – 14/12/2013

“It’s a pull, Luke”

Pub licensee Viv has lost her sister and is throwing all her energies into her pub five-a-side team. Well it gives her something to focus on and a way of getting her brother in law Joe to get back in circulation. OK – being the token straight in a gay football team isn’t the obvious answer to his gloom but it gets him out – even if he can’t play. With Joe’s busker housemate Beardy Geoff and Danny, who can get the local sport centre for nothing as long as he cleans up, because of his course, that makes a team, almost. Luckily along comes Luke, who has seen the poster Danny put up in the library – what can possibly go wrong?

At least the team’s name, Barely Athletic, sums up their abilities on the pitch, which lead one well-wisher to suggest that Viv might like to try badminton. They’re never going to beat Lesbian Rovers, Man City are too good for them too but surely they can beat Tranny United – especially when they play in heels...

Successive scenes see the team in the changing room after the matches, picking over the bones of what went wrong and more besides, as the background to each character is filled in for us and they aim for their own individual goals. Mention must go to James Alexander Gordon, who recorded the score announcements that introduce each scene.

Viv tries to persuade Joe to get out more, while he struggles to get her to reflect on her loss rather than pushing the memories to the back of her mind.

Beardy Geoff has dreams beyond busking in Marks and Spencer’s doorway – his sights are set on the main stage at Hull Pride and he brings out his trust guitar to try out a succession of unlikely tunes. He acknowledges that “Go West” is a classic but when Hull is east it seems a bit off message.

But why did Danny only put one poster up, and in the library at that? Could it have anything to do with the fact that he had his eye on Luke who works there and if so why doesn’t he just say something – how hard can that be? And will Luke ever manage to overcome his overwhelming shyness and admit that he fancies Danny too?

The five-strong cast are directed here in superb ensemble by James Grieve in a one-acter that is full of beautifully stylish, witty, touching and above all real dialogue by Tom Wells. Every one of them give striking performances. Vivienne Gibbs’s Viv has stubborn determination, Matt Sutton’s Joe is full of gentle charm and Andy Rush’s Geoff is both engaging and extremely funny.

Ultimately it is the dynamic between Philip Duguid-McQuillan’s Luke and Jamie Samuel’s Danny that carries the emotional heart of the whole tale. It becomes pretty clear early on what the secret is that Danny finds so hard to talk about, but the fact that we find ourselves in on it before he reveals the truth to Luke has our hearts in our mouths as he tries to say the words. We can understand Luke’s reaction, given his character, and equally feel for Danny’s desperate response, but I for one was hard pressed not to cry out from my seat to them to wait and talk it through.

Philip Duguid-McQuillan delivers Luke’s dialogue with incredible flair – the hesitations and finely measured clumsiness are played to perfection and his Luke simply cries out for a huge hug. Jamie Samuel gives a pitch-perfect portrayal of someone who is outwardly confident but has a heck of a lot of insecurities under the surface. It would be a hard hearted person who could fail to fall for Danny - or to give him a second chance.
Re-reading the text after the show, I found the tears coming again as I reached Luke’s final diary speech.

This is really beautiful writing that is able to make us laugh and tug hard on our heart strings throughout, and it had me leaving the theatre with a huge smile on my face. Had I been able to obtain a ticket I would have returned on the Monday before my long weekend in London ended, but it was deservedly a sell out once again.

Jumpers for Goalposts opened at Watford Palace in April and has toured before arriving at the Bush Theatre, where it is playing until 4th January 2014.

This is the first time I have been to the Bush Theatre since their relocation to new premises in 2011. The way they have used the space in the former Shepherds Bush Library makes for a theatre with great warmth and a really friendly bohemian charm. The flexible performance space is an idea size and the bar and lounge areas (at present infused with the smell of mulled wine) are the sort of place you could while away some very happy hours. My thanks go to the Bush team for the warm welcome and for a great evening.

 

 

 

 

Andrew Manze with the RLPO – Liverpool Philharmonic Hall – 30thNovember and 5th December 2013

As artist in residency stints go, two concerts are about as short as you can get, but Andrew Manze’s return to the Liverpool Philharmonic was both widely anticipated and worth waiting for. When Manze last appeared with the orchestra it was clear that the performers enjoyed working with him and the results were equally well appreciated by the audience. The rapport was still very much in evidence in both this weeks concerts, and although audiences were disappointing in numbers the response was very enthusiastic.

After the previous week’s Phil concerts celebrating Britten’s own music, Manze had chosen to construct his two programmes around music from some of those whose work had inspired Britten - Purcell, Schubert, Schumann, Mahler and Mozart.

On Saturday, Swedish soprano Lisa Larsson joined the orchestra in a performance of Britten’s Les Illuminations, which was framed by Schumann’s Faust Overture (small but perfectly formed here) and Mahler’s 4th Symphony.

The Britten Song Cycle after Rimbaud is set for “high voice” and is more well known sung by a tenor (most famously of course by Peter Pears) but Larsson made the songs very much her own. With tremendous stage presence she inhabited the strange and shifting emotional world of the poems beautifully and made the very best of the sometimes skittish, often sumptuous settings to connect with the audience in a way that made it feel she was singing to us individually. I don’t remember feeling this well communicated to by a singer since Felicity Palmer peformed Ravel’s Scheherezade. The orchestra supported her with great poise and delicious textures.

Mahler 4 has a curious structure for its scale and needs a conductor who can give it some shape, and Andrew Manze had a very clear vision for it. It had all the dramatic sweep it needed without any of the histrionics it sometimes falls foul of and the Ruhevoll third movement was ravishing. Larsson had of course returned for the Des Knaben Wunderhorn text of the final movement and was able here to show yet another style of delivery in her coquettish portrayal of a child with more than a little wonder in its eyes.

Such a shame that a rare false alarm from the hall’s fire system, barely a couple of seconds after the final notes died away, deprived the performers of their applause.

Thursday saw Andrew Manze back with a programme of Schubert, Schumann and Mozart, with two tiny Purcell arrangements thrown in for good measure. This concert will receive a repeat performance the following evening.

Manze once again displayed his ability to beguile an audience with a fresh take on the familiar. Schubert’s early symphony No 3 was given tremendously elegant treatment here. Tremendously stylish playing too from a pared down orchestra that still gave a rich sonority. The centre movements can all too often end up sounding like something played by a musical clock, but here we were transported to a fashionable Austrian ballroom. A rare treat.

Similarly affecting and unaffected was Ronald Brautigam’s rendering of Schumann’s Piano Concerto with a matching understated accompaniment from the orchestra. No bravura or overt romanticism in this performance, but just a lot of really smooth and measured playing from both orchestra and soloist. Many pianists will milk this concerto for drama and pound out the tunes, but Brautigam found limpid delicacy in it and the notes flowed from the keys in liquid fashion.

In a reference to Britten’s love of Purcell the interval was followed by two miniatures - Andrew Manze’s own highly original arrangement of the Funeral Music for Queen Mary and Britten’s orchestration of the Chacony in G Minor – but they hid themselves almost like a pair of painted miniatures tucked between some full scale canvases in a gallery.

I had not exactly been enthusiastic to hear Mozart’s 40th Symphony (it’s not one of my favourite things) but Manze’s magic worked on this too and it presented itself to me in a new light. Again there was real style in the phrasing and some rhythms that could almost have got my two left feet dancing. The hall may not have been full (it’s that word “Britten” in the concert title that unaccountably puts people off I fear) but the crowd made some noise at the end and were joined by the Orchestra in applauding Andrew Manze, who I think we all hope to see again. Last time he was here floods from a burst water main had blown the power to Hope Street and with our rogue fire alarm this week he may be feeling cursed, but hopefully the response to this performance will convince him that we’re not trying to scare him away...

Britten Centenary Concerts – Liverpool Philharmonic Hall – 21st and 24th November 2013

With the hundredth anniversary of Benjamin Britten’s birth this year, fans both old and new have been treated to a lot of the composer’s work of late and especially this weekend, with the actual anniversary falling on November 22nd.

The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic are featuring Britten’s music throughout the current season but compiled a full concert of five of his works on the eve of the centenary on Thursday evening, repeating two of them in a mixed programme on Sunday afternoon.

Britten’s birthday fell on St Cecilia’s day and so the concert opener was appropriately the Hymn to St Cecilia – a setting of three poems by W H Auden for unaccompanied choir, which found Vasily Petrenko going back to his Capella School roots of choral conducting. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir made a fine sound featuring some good individual performances by soloists from the choir. The work itself remains something of an oddity, with text that sits awkwardly with the setting at times but it provided a fitting opportunity for the choir to take part in the tribute.

With the orchestra installed on the platform, the concert moved into more familiar territory with one of Britten’s most enduringly popular concert works, the Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes. Although Billy Budd just tips the balance for me, Peter Grimes is widely regarded as the best of his operas. The four orchestral passages that Britten arranged into a suite manage to capture the range of atmospheres in this turbulent and troubled tale, and Petrenko held the RLPO taut and controlled throughout, with wonderful tension in Dawn and Moonlight while Sunday Morning was as crisply played as I’ve heard it and the closing Storm stunning. Henry Baldwin’s climb to the gallows of the tubular bell added a note of visual drama and the stillness in the wordless “What harbour shelters peace?” before the whirlwind ending was beautifully measured.

Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang, making her Phil debut, then joined the orchestra for the Violin Concerto. Infrequently played, this is a beautiful piece that deserves more exposure. From the lyricism of the opening through its central frenzied scherzo to the enigmatic almost wistful close, Frang gave a fresh and deeply committed performance. The rawness of some of her eerie harmonics eschewed beauty in favour of atmosphere and sent shivers down the spine. With dazzling accompaniment from the RLPO and Petrenko, it was a disappointment that this was not one of the works to be repeated on Sunday.

Next up was another piece that was sadly not repeated on Sunday – the Sinfonia da Requiem. Its shattering opening had the lady two seats away from me jump out of her seat. This work for me was the emotional heart of the concert. In between the terrifying outbursts of grief and anger in the lacrymosa and Dies Irae the taut, slow-marching rhythms kept the audience on the edge of the seat until the gradual, slow release at the close of the Requiem aeternam. This was stirring and memorable stuff with some notably wonderful playing from some of the winds and timpani and the strings and brass drawing out passages of garment-rending anguish at times.

No concert celebrating Britten in Liverpool would be complete without the Young Person’s Guide to the orchestra, as Malcolm Sargent gave the work its first public performance in Philharmonic Hall in 1946 shortly prior to the first screening of the film for which it was written, so this orchestra can reasonably claim it as its own.

The work is popular for good reason and makes a triumphant close to any concert, as it did on this occasion. Providing an opportunity for every section of the RLPO to shine as the orchestra is gradually dismantled, the extended fugue in which it is reassembled began at greater speed than I can recall hearing and reached a thrilling climax, bringing to an end one of the most memorable evenings at the Phil in the season so far.

On Sunday the orchestra repeated the Four Sea Interludes and a quite possibly more exuberant Young Person’s Guide after the interval. On this occasion the first half of the concert contained two contrasting works by Mahler and Korngold.

Totenfeier was the name Mahler gave to the first movement of his second symphony. In the long creative period for the full symphony, Mahler suggested that his early version of the movement could stand alone as a sort of tone poem. It is a little strange to hear the familiar music diverge occasionally into unfamiliar territory, but it is for the most part the same. Where it differs most in this version is in its ability to be played with more speed and drive, as it no longer has to serve as the solid foundation of a huge symphonic structure. Petrenko and the Phil demonstrated once again the mastery of Mahler’s music that we have come to expect and even the quite young children sitting nearby me were riveted to it throughout.

Vilde Frang then returned to the stage, this time to play the lush and opulent concerto by Korngold. Another piece that doesn’t often get an outing, it has echoes of a Rachmaninov of the American years, and betrays Korngold’s skill with music for the screen. The addition of a vibraphone to the score gives an extra glow to the texture and the whole concerto is as indulgent as a box of truffles, but it manages not to wallow, and the dance-like final movement has a real spring in its step. In this concerto, offering Frang an opportunity to show more of her colour palette, there was beautiful playing both from soloist and orchestra.

Playing the same Norwegian folk tune arrangement as an encore that we heard on Thursday, she added an inadvertent twist when a broken string caused her to do a rapid and seamless swap, handing her 1709 Strad to orchestra leader Jim Clark while she finished the piece on his instrument. Needless to say the audience gave her an even more enthusiastic response than the first time round.

It remains a mystery to me why British audiences seem to shy away from Britten’s music and hopefully this year of showcasing it so prominently might re-ignite interest.