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.

Last Tango at St Leonard’s / Pipe Dreams – Lantern Theatre Liverpool – 19/11/2013

Another evening of fresh, new theatre in the friendly buzz of the Lantern, with this double bill.

Last Tango at St Leonard’s first hit the boards in September as part of the Write Now festival at Unity Theatre, where it enjoyed two performances and collected three performance awards.

If you put John Cleese and John le Mesurier into a cocktail shaker you might well pour out something like Thomas Casson in his portrayal of the hyperventilating hospital administrator Eddie, for which he was named best actor. He is a tall actor and the tiny stage of the lantern makes him appear even more so, exaggerating the larger than life style in which the character is drawn. In his increasingly desperate efforts to save the hospital from threatened closure he embodies so many middle aged middle managers that we have probably all met. Imagine if you can a blend of Basil Fawlty and Sergeant Wilson and you’ve got something like Eddie.

Natalie Kennedy is a delight to watch and is a perfect foil to Eddie in the part of Elaine, as she follows him faithful as a puppy about the set with eyes like soup-plates. She is besotted, but Eddie is so wrapped up in the daily grind it takes him almost the full hour of the one-acter to realise it. Kennedy took runner up best actress at Write Now for this role.

Alongside this comic pairing was the hyper-efficient Cheryl, with Josie Sedwick Davies stepping ably into the part at short notice. She is all flapping hands and short of patience for Eddie and Elaine but not quite on the ball enough to notice the scam pulled off by the rehabilitated convict-come- IT man - Darren Pritchard (runner up best actor). Pritchard plays this very straight, as does Philip Barwood-Scott as Malcolm, grounding the play and setting the parts for Casson and Kennedy into sharp relief.

Last Tango at St Leonard’s was written by Mari Lloyd and directed by Lydia Searle, and it manages to extract a good deal of humour from some of the serious issues of hapless management in the NHS. I’d like to say that at some of the situations were a little far-fetched, but sadly I actually do remember an incident some years ago when a manager in my own workplace held the door for someone stealing a computer...

After an interval came the second play of the evening, Pipe Dreams, written and directed by Sarah Van Parys. Pipe Dreams was originally presented as part of the Luxembourg ten minute theatre festival last year and Van Parys has now fleshed it out into a full one act play, lasting approximately an hour. The promo material tells us it now makes less sense than before.

Despite programme references to absurdists Pirandello and Ionesco, most of us would probably be rather more likely to recognise Beckett in this play, which is certainly absurd and often surreal - increasingly so as it progresses.

A besuited neighbour played by Robert Moore comes and goes and tries to make some sense of things. The cast heet describes him as Narrator but perching Puck-like on a window ledge to observe the action he acts rather more in the role of chorus.

In their sitting room a mildly clumsy, tea slurping John (James Price) and his partner (Shawney Ross) appear to re-live the same sequence of events over and over again, becoming ever more frustrated by the crazed interjections from Lee Burnitt and Claire Bryan’s Nigel and Wife. Most bizarre of all though, are the repeated appearances of Jack Spencer as a debt collector – at first seemingly ordinary, if a little off balance, but with each entrance becoming odder and odder in both manner and attire.

All six of the cast gave engaging performances, but it is the extremes of John and the Debt Collector that defined this piece for me. James Price balanced his delivery so as to make John appear ordinary despite the situation, while Jack Spencer’s obvious delight in layering the madness on the Debt Collector was mesmerising.

Despite the deepening mayhem that surrounds them, our hapless couple seem to end the play on the way to some sort of resolution or at least resignation.

This double bill played two nights at the Lantern Theatre Liverpool on 18th and 19th November. Keep an eye on their website, as shows mostly have short runs and seats sell out quickly.

The Grand Gesture – Liverpool Playhouse – 12/11/2013

Aladdin may have only just started rehearsals but you could be forgiven for thinking that the Panto season has already arrived at the Playhouse this week with the arrival of Northern Broadsides and their latest touring production... until the interval.

In its opening musical number, Deborah McAndrew’s freely adapted version of Nikolai Erdman’s The Suicide manages to find an original rhyme with its lead protagonist’s name, Simeon Duff. It has been re-set in “a port in the north west of England” and this opener might draw us to the city it is playing in this week. By the time we have met all the other characters however, we could be anywhere between Heysham and Grimsby!

Simeon Duff is fed up. He is doomed to staying at home while his wife Mary goes out to work and it’s denting his pride. When some confusion over a sausage leads people to think he’s ready to end it all, he begins to think that might be for the best. Unfortunately this seems to offer endless possibilities for various townsfolk to have someone make a Grand Gesture in the name of their personal cause.

His landlord has taken fees from them all and arranged the event before Simeon’s feet start to get as cold as his sausage.

There is a serious point underlying all this, and in these times of austerity some of it could become a bit too close for comfort in a more serious reading, but McAndrew’s earthy, comic script and Conrad Nelson’s uproarious direction ensure that it keeps the laughometer needle well up the scale.

As we have come to expect from Northern Broadsides, there are a great many larger than life characterisations, none more so than Alan Chadwick’s Al Bush, Robert Pickavance's outrageous Victor Stark and Alan McMahon's Father McCloud. But the show is stolen by two strikingly sympathetic performances by Mike Hugo and Samantha Robinson as Simeon and Mary, and by Angie Bain’s teacup and egg-nog wielding Sadie, who seems to make more than a gentle nod toward Father Ted’s Mrs Doyle.

All the music in the show is performed live on stage by the actors and while this is a little incongruous in some places it provides a lot more opportunities for humour and shamelessly dreadful rhymes, and later adds weight to the drama.

The set by production designer Dawn Alsop is imaginative and about as off kilter and distressed as the lives of its inhabitants and Mark Howland has lit the piece imaginatively too, although I could have done with slightly less of it in near total darkness in the early scenes.

Russian literature and drama is very much in evidence on the stage at present and I have seen at least five examples this year, from Gorky to Gogol and Dostoevsky to Bulgakov and ranging from the surreal and absurd to social realism. This re-imagining of The Suicide aims straight for the absurd and gets there with a lot of humour. We’re told that Stanislavski fell off his chair laughing when he first read the original, and it seems that this irreverent romp of an evening has set out to do the same to its audiences, but with the traditional twist in the tale.

Set your minds in Panto mode for the first act folks, but be prepared for an emotional shift in act two, when the play really reveals its heart on its sleeve.

The Grand Gesture is at Liverpool Playhouse until Saturday 16th November 2013. It then continues its tour at the Stephen Joseph Theatre Scarborough and the Viaduct Theatre Halifax until 30th November.