I Was A Rat! – Liverpool Playhouse – 19/03/2013

Adapted and directed by Teresa Ludovico from the novel by Philip Pullman - English version by David Watson. Produced by Birmingham Repertory Theatre in association with Nottingham Playhouse, New Wolsey Theatre Ipswich and Teatro Kismet (Bari Italy)

This play adapted from a children’s novel is billed to “...surprise, delight and move audiences of all ages” so I figured that, fitting this broad category, I may very well enjoy it - and I certainly did.

Good theatre has the capacity to transport us to other worlds and let us see life from another angle and this piece does so with a minimum of resources and truck-loads of magic.

“I was a rat!” declares a boy, arriving unexpected at the door of an aging couple who are just minding their own business. With the help of a huge cast of policemen, newspaper hacks, dodgy travelling entertainers, judge, jury, townspeople, civic officials, a princess and a family of rats, we follow him through a series of fantastical adventures and from autumn through to summer, until we finally discover why he should make this peculiar claim.

We know it’s happening all the way through, but when the entire complement of just eight actors take their call at the end we are still left wondering quite where everyone came from and just exactly how they managed to play this trick on our minds.

There is no physical scenery on the matt black stage, but a “light set” in which everything is suggested by exceptionally clever use of a complex and detailed lighting plot designed by Vincent Longuemare. I believe I said to someone yesterday that I am used to smoke and mirrors on the stage, but that this production achieves everything with just the smoke, and I am standing by the remark. Everything that appears before us is so very real but at the same time ephemeral, appearing and disappearing before our eyes. Teresa Ludovico has created a journey through the seasons of the year that mirrors the emotional temperature of the storyline.

Costume designs by Luigi Spezzacatene are equally striking, requiring actors to do frequent quick changes in the wings. They are like something from the illustrations in a fairytale, albeit at times a rather dark one, and they set the tone and style for the tale, prompting us to set our imaginations in top gear. The fairytale aspect is taken to the limit by the appearance of the princess who helps unravel the tale toward the end. I won’t spoil it for anyone, but must say that the entrance of this character is one of the most magical pieces of stagecraft I have seen in a long while and, along with a glorious snow storm, goes to demonstrate how well the less is more principle works in this show.

Frank Moon’s musical score is largely pre-recorded but is supported by live playing by members of the cast on a variety of instruments – ever seen a man standing on a four foot high chair playing a cello? The music has a suitably folk-tale style about it and adds to the edginess of the performance.

There may be no physical set, but this is an incredibly physical production. There is a lot of dance, mime and movement on the stage and the actors must surely burn off the calories doing it. I spoke to Dodger Phillips from the cast after the show and asked if it was physically draining but he explained how well they are able to draw on each other’s energy to get through it. This makes perfect sense, as it is a remarkably well choreographed ensemble piece.

The entire cast give tremendous performances, but it is 17 year old Fox Jackson-Keen who steals the show with his unfeasibly brilliant Roger – the Rat Boy of the title. One moment he is standing talking, the next he has slithered under a chair and is chewing on newspaper. Now hiding under furniture – then popping up behind someone’s ear. It is hard to believe that anyone could manage to have us suspend our disbelief like this, but somehow he does it. A former occupant of the role of Billy Elliott on the Victoria Palace stage with a grounding in gymnastics, he has all the dancing ability you might expect and more, and he carries off some remarkably acrobatic stage movement as well. We are captivated by his portrayal of this mysterious central character and he holds the audience in the palm of his hand.

Fire up your imagination, leave reality outside in the street, and prepare to be transported somewhere amazing and magical by this extraordinary evening of storytelling and illusion.

I Was A Rat runs at the Liverpool Playhouse until Saturday 23rd March and then continues touring via Bury St Edmunds, Truro, Cambridge, Salford Quays, Exeter, Leeds and Hereford until 1st June.
Visit www.everymanplayhouse.com or www.iwasarat.co.uk for booking information, tour dates and venues.

Torke & Prokofiev – Liverpool Philharmonic Hall – 17/03/2013

Michael Torke: Bright Blue Music – Prokofiev: Extracts from Cinderella and *Violin Concerto No.2 – Callum Smart (Violin), Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Orchestra conducted by Dane Lam and *Vasily Petrenko.

The LPYO always manage to pull off performances to a high standard but, when given the added inspiration of working with such prodigious talent as the astounding 17 year old violinist Callum Smart and a conductor of the calibre of Vasily Petrenko, then our expectations can be set very high. It was such a shame that the audience for this Sunday evening concert was so thin on the ground, as it was an interesting and challenging programme and one that delivered on its promises.

Torke’s series of colour pieces are all, dare I say, colourful, and make great concert openers. Bright Blue Music is one of the liveliest, with lots of syncopated and angular rhythms, and it is not the easiest of things to play coherently. Whilst there may have been some awkward articulation, especially in the strings, the orchestra played with enthusiasm and the performance was committed, if lacking a little in detail and focus.

Much more convincing was the substantial selection of extracts from Prokofiev’s ballet score for Cinderella. There was plenty of orchestral colour and the LPYO handled Prokofiev’s difficult rhythmic shapes well. The woodwind especially gave some very fine playing, while the large percussion section were in their element in this music, reminding me of the fact that a certain Mr Rattle used to play in that department of this orchestra some years ago.

Callum Smart was only 13 when he won the string finals of the BBC Young Musician of the Year in 2010 and has been making quite an impact since then. Vasily Petrenko conducted the orchestra for the concerto finals in that competition and was so impressed that he has been keeping an eye on the development of this young soloist’s career since. It was Vasily who invited Callum to play this concert with the LPYO and he took over the baton from their regular conductor Dane Lam after the interval, to direct the orchestra in Prokofiev’s 2nd violin concerto.

Wherever the inspiration came from, the LPYO seemed to step up to another level in the concerto giving very crisp and well focused sound and accompanying the soloist beautifully, which is no mean feat in a work of such contrasting styles and rhythms.

Callum chose the concerto himself, and although this is apparently the first time he has played it with an orchestra he gave a most compelling reading of it. His remarkable technical skill is matched by a tremendous musicality, and he really brought out the beauty of the work as well as its fire and energy. He has a very engaging presence on the stage, with a relaxed and not at all showy style of playing that makes him easy to watch. Playing from memory and with tremendous confidence it was barely possible to believe that he had not performed it with orchestra before.

I suspect that there are a lot of others as well as Vasily who will be following this young man's career with interest, and I do hope it isn't long before we see him on our Liverpool concert platform again.

Francesca da Rimini - Zandonai - MetOpera Live in HD - 16/03/2013

New York Metropolitan Opera Live in HD seen at FACT Liverpool

After three decades the Met have unpacked the sets and costumes and revived this lavish production of Riccardo Zandonai's most well known work.

Not that Zandonai is that well known at all, but listening to this outstanding performance we may be given to wonder why he is not more often performed. It seems conceivable that it may have reached a larger number of people in this one global broadcast than have ever seen it before.

The music occupies a sound world somewhere between Richard Strauss, Puccini and Wagner (if that makes any sense) and is very opulent, with rich strings, warm wind playing and a prominent part for harp, which was beautifully played. Marco Armiliato directed the Met orchestra in a sumptuous reading of the score.

Set designs for this '80s production were by Ezio Frigerio and it is hard to fault the concept. There is a solidity to every scene and tremendous attention to detail. Clever use of a central raised platform, which remains in place in every act, creates a focus in this piece that has a grand scale but revolves around an intimate relationship between three brothers and one wife.

Francesca believes that her arranged marriage is to be to the suave, handsome Paolo, and the first act in which she meets him ends in wordless bliss. During the first interval, it seems, the first act of treachery has taken place and she is now trapped in a loveless marriage with Paolo's elder brother Gianciotto, but still carries a torch for Paolo. Enter Malatestino, the yet more duplicitous younger brother, who also loves Francesca in vain. In act three he takes his revenge for being rebuffed by Francesca by telling Gianciotto of the love between his wife and his brother and the pair set up a trap to catch them together. In the final act Gianciotto, in attempting to stab Paolo, kills Francesca by mistake and he then kills Paolo too.

The tale is interwoven with those of Tristan and Isolde and of Lancelot and Guinivere, which provide a vehicle both for setting up the various scenes of passion and for a good deal of vocal and choral singing. A battle scene in act two also points toward the darker things to come and gives an opportunity for some dramatic scoring.

There are very few set pieces in this work, it being more of a continuous sweep of sound and texture, but there is some splendid solo and ensemble writing and a particularly lovely duet for Francesca and Paolo. First performed in 1914, after Puccini's Tosca and Butterfly and at around the time Strauss was revising Ariadne auf Naxos, Francesca da Rimini is opulently scored and lavish in scale, despite the small number of characters. It has an odd way of looking backward and forward at the same time and was taking some risks in its day. Its relative obscurity probably lies in the shortage of music that could be extracted as concert pieces to promote it. Bleeding chunks from Francesca would be hard to pull off, but the music is of excellent quality and it would be worth the effort of constructing a cohesive concert suite.

Franca Squarciapino's original costumes have been lovingly restored, altered and in some cases reconstructed and the detail in the Italian embroidery is astonishing. The colour palette changes from pastel pinks at the opening through flame reds and to much darker tones as the work progresses, following the emotional temperature of the plot.

For once the three male principals were perfectly believable as brothers. Mark Delavan's dark voice was perfect for the menacing Gianciotto, Robert Brubaker played the scheming Malatestino with considerable relish and Marcello Giordani had the perfect heroic voice for Paolo, although I needed to squint a little to get the young and handsome angle from him. It was the statuesque Eva Maria Westbroek, though, who stole almost all the limelight with her passionate and committed performance of the ill-fated Francesca. She has a huge voice and a range to match. Seeing her draped on the couch reading the tale of Lancelot and Guinivere with Paolo was like looking at an Alma Tadema painting.

Although relatively ignored, this is a work worth reviving for the opulence of it's score and as a vehicle for a great dramatic soprano.

The three long intervals afforded opportunities for the Live in HD audience to see some interesting interviews with the cast and backstage crew, including the costume and scenic supervisors and to watch the carpenters moving some of the immense scenery. Eva Maria Westbroek observed that the story is not as far fetched as it may seem, as even today we hear of women entering into arranged marriages agains their will and being killed as a result of fighting against it.

People by Alan Bennett – National Theatre, Lyttelton 08/03/2013

Directed by Nicholas Hytner

Alan Bennett’s new play at the Lyttelton Theatre rather gathers momentum as it goes along.

After a brief opening scene in which Dorothy (Frances de la Tour) and Iris (Linda Bassett) appear for now inexplicably oblivious to the startling appearance of a semi-naked Robin Pearce as Colin, we are then catapulted back a brief while to discover how they try to amuse themselves and keep warm huddled round an electric fire, in a small space they now occupy in a once grand house that they can no longer afford the upkeep of.

Iris knits and interjects randomly while Miles Jupp, as an auctioneer of dubious intent, takes an inventory of the contents of the attic. On Dorothy’s return events begin to unfold at a gradually accelerating pace. We meet Dorothy’s sister June (Selina Cadell) and eventually her old flame Theodore (Peter Egan) and Dorothy makes increasingly unsuccessful attempts to keep all these people, apparently of equally questionable trustworthiness out of each other’s sight hindered by Iris, who seems to have an agenda of her own or, possibly, none at all.

Dorothy cannot stand the thought of People traipsing through her home if they take June’s favoured option of handing the house to the National Trust. She has no hankering to become an exhibit and much prefers the idea of an attic sale or, better still, selling up to “The Concern” who promise her a good return and a flat with a non-arctic bathroom. It is Theodore’s unexpected arrival that seems to offer a third choice; that of using the house as a studio for the making of low-budget porn films.

By the time we arrive at the second act the situation has been well and truly set up for a sequence of events that demonstrate Bennett’s unique skill with the ridiculous and absurd, all carried along on a tide of dialogue that consistently lives up to our expectations in its wit and observation.

The designs for this play do give a real sense of decaying grandeur,with the single room set occupying the whole of the substantial stage at the Lyttelton. Dusty, moth-eaten curtains and draped pictures and furniture set the scene for a once great room in dilapidation while the lighting by James Farncombe adds the final touch of atmosphere to the production.

This play shifts along at quite a pace once it gets into gear and has plenty of Bennett's familiar wordplay and clever observational humour. There is a very strong cast led by a characteristically imposing performance from de la Tour. The supporting ensemble time everything splendidly and all the business is carried off with aplomb.

The transformation scene, when it comes, has something of an inevitable predictability about it, but the conclusion is both satisfying and, in an odd way, believable, despite the absurdity of the situations that lead to it.

People runs till 15th May 2013 at the Lyttelton Theatre after which it commences touring. The performance on 21st March 2013 will be transmitted live to selected cinemas worldwide.

A World out of Balance – My Perfect Mind, Unity Theatre Liverpool,06/03/2013

My Perfect Mind, with Edward Petherbridge and Paul Hunter. Presented by Told by an Idiot in association with Young Vic and Drum Theatre Plymouth.

Watching him now at the age of 76, it seems inconceivable that renowned Shakespearian actor Edward Petherbridge had not previously been offered the role of King Lear – he seems a natural for it. Nonetheless his first opportunity came in 2007 in New Zealand. Unfortunately he never got past the second day of rehearsals, as two strokes hospitalised him and snatched the part away from under his nose.

What he did notice as he began to recover was that, while many of his faculties including speech and movement had been severely affected, his memory of the entire text of Lear remained fully intact in his mind. He resolved that sooner or later he would play the part, even if it meant doing a one-man version of the play.

His first acting engagement following his illness was a musical, The Fantasticks, in the West End in 2010 where he met Paul Hunter, a founding member of Told by an Idiot. Paul suggested that a two man version may be a better idea; better still, a two man play about somebody NOT playing Lear.

A heavily raked stage (recalling their experience of The Fantasticks) has been turned through 90 degrees to face side-on and place the audience in the wings, creating a world very much out of balance in which walking is an uphill struggle and furniture won’t stand still. In such a world where nothing is on the level, the only parallels left seem to be those between the trials and tribulations of King Lear and those of a man whose life has been shattered by stroke.

Director Kathryn Hunter, whose mother suffered a fatal stroke at roughly the time the project was mooted, has worked together with the performers through many hours of improvisation to devise a play in which Edward Petherbridge acts out the story of Lear through a series of extracts from Shakespeare’s text, interspersed, or dovetailed as they put it, with the rather more disjointed account of the events that led to him not playing the part.

While the Shakespearian tale is told in more or less linear fashion, Petherbridge’s own story leaps back and forth in time taking us back to his childhood, through his career with the National Theatre and RSC, to the offer of the fateful part in New Zealand and beyond. We follow him through a phone call made to the emergency services from a hotel room floor and appointments with doctors, to his appearance in The Fantasticks and then even right into the performance of the play we are watching, which all becomes rather surreal.

He was quite adamant throughout the creative process that it must not dwell on his illness and become a subject of pity, but use the experience as a vehicle for exploring the wider subjects of the strength of the human spirit against adversity and, eventually, the triumph of positive thinking, highlighted by that Morecambe and Wise song played as the piece ends.

Paul Hunter manages to play a variety of parts including a German doctor, several of Petherbridge’s family including his mother, his drama teacher from Bradford, the theatre producer from New Zealand and an array of characters from King Lear. He himself reflected that managing to give a believable reading of Cordelia whilst dressed in a track suit and with paint daubed all over his face (don’t ask) is not the easiest thing, but somehow the alchemy of theatre allows it to work.

Speaking to the audience after the show on Wednesday night, the actors explained the mixture of techniques they had used to make something that grew out of improvisation appear carefully scripted, even when some of it is still a work in progress. They contrasted this with the more usual convention of making a classical script appear like something fresh and improvised.

The result of their efforts is something very hard to describe but strangely wonderful. A deeply engaging performance that takes us into the world of Lear through the mind of a man trapped by illness in an unfamiliar place and trying to escape back into the real world of theatre.

Confused? You won’t be. But if you go to see this play you can expect a lot of laughter, a rollercoaster ride of emotions and a thought-provoking and life-enhancing experience.

My Perfect Mind plays at the Unity Theatre Liverpool until Saturday 9th March after which it transfers to the Salisbury Playhouse and then the Old Vic, London, till 20th April.

For details, visit www.toldbyanidiot.org

Wagner – Parsifal – MetOpera Live in HD - 02/03/2013

New York Metropolitan Opera Live in HD seen at FACT Liverpool.

Note that any potential “spoilers” in my description of this production reflect elements of it that have previously been revealed in trailers and publicity from the Met and in their own picture gallery.

For this new production the Met have assembled both an astonishing cast of singers and a brilliant creative team to bring us a sweeping vision of a very difficult work.

Producer François Girard and designer Michael Levine have placed on stage a series of images that are descriptive, congruent and occasionally provocative and which enable the cast, dressed very simply by Thibault Vancraenenbroeck, to act out this story of complex emotions with remarkable clarity. Peter Flaherty’s Video design and David Finn’s lighting are exemplary and give the designs a tremendous sense of atmosphere.

On a desiccated landscape divided by an almost dried up stream and with a continually changing backdrop of stunning video projections, we see groups of singers in slow, elegant movement, mixing symbols of both Christian and Buddhist devotions. As the first act draws to a close, the stage separates, causing the stream to open up into a chasm, into which Parsifal gazes as the curtain falls, contemplating the journey he is to embark upon.

In the second act we find ourselves within this wound that will not heal. The rear wall of the stage becomes a massive cliff face with a fissure running its full height, behind which again are abstract moving images, appearing at times to run with blood. Klingsor’s magic garden is a thing of elegance if not beauty, with long haired, white draped maidens standing amidst a forest of steel spikes. As the action slowly develops we see that the entire stage has been flooded with 1200 viscous gallons of stage blood, the flower maidens’ feet red as they walk about in it. During the act this seeps into the costumes of everyone on stage, with Kundry’s seduction scene played out on a blood soaked mattress. Klingsor himself is a chilling figure, his hair and clothes matted with blood from his first entry. The scene in which the spear is caught by Parsifal is always a problem to stage, and Girard’s solution is both inventive and magical.

The final act finds us in a modified version of act one, with the landscape now littered with the graves of knights, in obvious and pitiful decline since Amfortas’s refusal to reveal the Grail. In the closing scenes as Amfortas is healed and uncovers the Grail, the staging is quite simply breathtaking.

The vocal performances are about as fine as one could hope for throughout. René Pape’s Gurnemanz, Peter Mattei’s Amfortas, Jonas Kaufmann’s Parsifal, Katarina Dalayman’s Kundry and Evgeny Nikitin’s Klingsor are all performances that command our absolute attention. Every one of the principals has genuinely bought into Françoise Girard’s reading of the work and their characterisations have real depth. I would incline to say that they are about as close to vocally flawless in their roles as we could hope to get. When the Met declare this to be a dream cast it would be very hard to disagree with them.

Daniele Gatti too has a clear and consistent feel for the music and directs the Met Orchestra in a broad sweeping reading of the score that allows the music time to breathe without ever losing the sense of forward movement. The chorus too are on top form and support the principals with some superb ensemble singing as well as beautifully coordinated stage movement.

Parsifal is a tremendously difficult work to stage successfully, not only because of the problems of casting singers who are up to the vocal demands, but also because of the demands of the stage directions and in interpreting the emotional plot. Girard’s clarity of concept for this production really does do justice to Wagner’s vision.  

One lady I spoke to was uncertain; disappointed that the magic garden lacked the fairytale quality that she preferred, but I would incline to say that even fairytales can be played out dark without losing their magic. Whilst this reading may not suit all tastes I think it would be a hard person to please who could not find a great deal to like in this production, which must be destined to remain in the Met’s repertoire for some time.

Screen direction for the HD cinema relay was excellent, with good use of camera angles giving a feel for the sweep and scale of the production. The voices were very immediate, if at times a little too prominently miked. I am inclined to agree with a friend who was present that the orchestral sound occasionally lacked a little weight in the lower registers, but I am sure that this was more to do with the sound reproduction than in the playing itself.

There will be a repeat screening of this as “Met Encore” this Tuesday, 5^th March at 1:00pm.

For further details of screenings from the Met see: http://www.fact.co.uk/ or http://www.metoperafamily.org
 

Jonas Kaufmann as Parsifal - Photo: Ken Howard/Met Opera

The Beggar's Opera - Epstein Theatre 01/03/2013

Benjamin Britten: The Beggar's Opera, with new dialogue by Robert Farquhar. Artists of the European Opera Centre, the Royal Northern College of Music and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Nicolas André and Richard Farnes, Directed by Bernard Rozet. Presented at the Epstein Theatre Liverpool.

In this Britten Centenary year, we are told that his 1948 re-working of John Gay's18th century Ballad Opera is only getting two outings as far as we can tell; a production by Opera Montpelier and this one in Liverpool. By all accounts the work has a chequered history and maybe the lack of performances this year is down to the problems of simply making it work.

One failing of the 1948 version is considered to be Tyrone Guthrie’s spoken dialogue that links it all together, and so the European Opera Centre have excised that dialogue altogether and replaced it with a newly written version by Liverpool Playwright Robert Farquhar (God’s Official, Dust to Dust, Bad Jazz, Dead Heavy Fantastic). This is intended to liven things up, keep the piece moving more quickly and to make more of the role of the Beggar, all of which it seems to achieve pretty seamlessly. He has used modern vernacular and a good deal of humour, which was certainly appreciated by the audience that packed the Epstein Theatre on Friday night.

The RLPO’s collaborations with the EOC over recent years have so far been concert or semi-staged performances at Philharmonic Hall, with full scale orchestral forces. Moving this production to the smaller theatrical setting of the recently refurbished Epstein Theatre created more intimate surroundings that suit these forces which may well have been swallowed up in the Phil’s acoustic, but were a good fit for this venue.

With the band of 5 string players, 5 winds, harp and percussion set to the rear of the stage, the forestage with covered pit gave space for plenty of stage movement. Designs were simple, with some movable platforms and a few items of furniture (some borrowed from the theatre bar, I see) but this fitted the work’s putative setting, in which the Beggar gets his cohorts to act out the scenes of his tale.

Stephen Colfer in the speaking part of the Beggar ably kept the story moving, and on occasions took the opportunity to throw in a few ad-libs,something that the technical crew making a live recording were probably cursing him for, but which added some additional humour.

The cast of singers drawn from the EOC and the Royal Northern College of Music were all in excellent voice. Special note must be made of Louis Hurst (Peachum) Michelle Daly (Polly) and Daire Halpin (Lucy Lockit) all of whom had great voices and great stage presence. Finest of all, however, was Alexander Sprague as Macheath, who really did command our attention with the role. Parts written for Peter Pears are always terribly difficult to cast and sing due to Pear’s unusual voice type, but Sprague had this one nailed completely. I believe he is singing Albert Herring later this year with Opera North and this is something to watch out for. Romanas Kudriašovas as Lockit has an astonishing voice with real depth, although he was a little hard to swallow as Lucy’s father unless you closed your eyes.

The choral segments had been well prepared and the assembly of Ladies of the Town and Gentlemen of the Road made a fine sound, and the whole was supported with the usual panache by the collection of musicians from the Phil, including some particularly lovely Cor Anglais playing from Ilid Jones.

Assistant Conductor Nicolas André found himself unexpectedly in the limelight conducting the first act, whilst Richard Farnes fought his way through traffic to arrive in time to take over after the interval, so we got two conductors for the price of one, much to the amusement of our Beggar, who took this as another opportunity to make one or two additional comments at the expense of “The ever punctual man with the fancy hands”.

It was good to see this performance sell out, and a reprise takes place tomorrow afternoon, with only limited ticket availability remaining.