Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs) – Liverpool Everyman – 21/06/2014

What is the world coming to?

In a tweet after the dress rehearsal, Everyman Playhouse AD Gemma Bodinetz commented that productions like Dead Dog in a Suitcase are what the Everyman was made for, and having watched it yesterday I see exactly what she means. It is anarchic, genre-defying genius.

Photo: Etta Murfitt

Yes, we expect the Everyman to continue presenting a broad and diverse range of work (which it has already demonstrated in this opening season) but its stock in trade has always been a brand of rebellious, thought-provoking theatre that simultaneously entertains and challenges, and this new work, co-produced with Cornish theatre company Kneehigh, falls squarely into that mould.

John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera has been a rich source of inspiration to writers, composers and performers almost constantly since it first appeared in 1728, and here Carl Grose has written a new script with music by Charles Hazlewood. It’s safe to say, since the original was without a proper script and was musically based on popular songs of the day, that any new version is going to be “freely adapted” but the aim, and certainly the result here, seems to have been to create a version of the tale for our times. Grose’s text retains the key characters and plot and manages to weave a tale that obliquely lampoons today’s establishment just as Gay aimed to do. Hazlewood’s musical settings are ebulliant and tongue in cheek, with a widely eclectic variety of styles and techniques brought together to create a world that defies any definitions of time or place.

The music is performed live on stage by the company, frequently acting and playing at the same time. I don’t believe I have ever seen someone act, play the violin and push a wheeled suitcase simultaneously, and this particular feat of multitasking was naturally performed by a female member of the cast!

As they warn you in some of the publicity, yes there is a dead dog in a suitcase, but as they play a sort of suitcasey version of the old shell game I was left wondering how even the cast could recall which one it was in. The health warning in the promo also promises us “...loud bangs, smoke, strong language and dodgy delights amidst corporate conspiracy, hit men, and songs culled from the edge of existence...” and we are served up with all this and more.

Directed as a tight ensemble by Mike Shepherd, the cast is large and the parts too numerous to attempt a full acknowledgement of them all, but I must unfairly pick out some personal highlights. Rina Fatania’s Mrs Peachum is full of biting humour, Audrey Brisson’s accordion playing Lucy Lockitt also takes advantage of her acrobatic training and Patrycja Kujawska’s Widow Goodman, complete with violin, has a mystical air of other-worldlyness about her. Dominic Marsh is our dashing highwayman Macheath who spends much of the play dodging the noose that hangs over centre stage throughout.

The set design by Michael Vale makes use of the full height and depth of the new Everyman’s space and that sense of space is highlighted by the skeletal nature of the structure, parts of which are surprisingly mobile. As much a part of the production’s look is Malcolm Rippeth’s lighting plot, which echoes the light and shade of Grose’s text and Hazlewood’s score. Here and there some pinpoint lighting accuracy is used to make actors and parts of the set almost float in mid-air.

Last night’s first preview performance received a full standing ovation even before it had properly ended and I’m sure it will be getting similar responses through its run. Here and there were occasional moments where the text was a little overwhelmed by the music, but never to the detriment of the narrative, and a couple of technical manoeuvres that momentarily pulled up the action will almost certainly become more fluid over the next day or two.

Final mention must go to the puppetry, under the direction of Sarah Wright. I won’t spoil it for anyone by describing the varied creations that appear, but let’s say that some would be instantly recognisable and familiar to John Gay, while others, large and small, take the parts of characters that may be troublesome if played by live actors. Puppetry is making a welcome return in British theatre in recent years, having previously fallen out of fashion, and it never ceases to amaze me how our minds can be fooled into seeing them as very much alive despite the frequently undisguised presence of their operators.

Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs) plays at Liverpool Everyman until 12th July, after which it transfers to the Kneehigh Asylum at The Lost Gardens of Heligan from 30th August to 28th September. It will then appear at Bristol Old Vic from 6th to 26th October.

 

Sizwe Banzi is Dead – Liverpool Playhouse Studio – 10/06/2014

Watching Matthew Xia’s new production of Sizwe Banzi is Dead it’s hard to believe that it is over forty years old, not least because the themes are so resonant with the here and now. Certainly when first presented in 1972 Cape Town in the midst of apartheid the play must have made waves, but so much of it still rings true that it drives home just how far we still have to go.

A guard ensured that audience members filed into the auditorium on the correct side of a rope barrier, according to colour. The generally pallid capacity audience made this difficult to carry to its logical conclusion but the point was well made, and it was clear that pertinent parts of the dialogue were directed pointedly to the white or non-white sides of the room.

This is a piece written almost like two separate plays that both deliver a similar message about freedom and identity. The first 40 of its 100 minutes are a monologue from a photographer named Styles, who proudly tells the story of how he fought to own this tiny studio in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth. Tonderai Munyevu plays this part with mesmerising stage presence and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of energy. He has Styles characterise numerous other players in his tale, including his own elderly father and some twenty-odd members of a family who arrive to have a group photograph taken. Can there really be this many ways to say “Cheese”? Munyevu’s storytelling is utterly captivating and in the muggy heat of the studio (it was still thundering outside the theatre) it was impossible not to be transported by him.

Styles’ narrative is interrupted by a knocking at his door and in comes a man claiming to be Robert Zwelinzima, although he seems strangely unsure of his name. He parts with his money and poses for a photograph, and at a click of the shutter he becomes frozen in time in this image.

And so to the other half of the story, in which we flash back to discover how Sizwe Banzi has been persuaded reluctantly to trade his identity for his freedom. He is played by Sibusiso Mamba, while Tonderai Munyevu remains to play his friend, Buntu.

Banzi has a stamp in his passbook that imposes requirements he cannot fulfil, and he cannot remain in Port Elizabeth. All he wants is to retain his dignity as a man – to work and to provide for his family – but there seems no way out of the dilemma. Not, that is, until Buntu literally stumbles across a dead man in the street, behind a bar where they have been drinking. This man is Robert Zwelinzima, and Buntu manages to talk Banzi into surrendering his identity in order to assume ownership of dead man’s passbook. Somehow though it now feels more as though the passbook owns him.

The bright, energetic, optimistic world of part one in Styles’ studio contrasts starkly with the second part’s slower paced and much darker atmosphere, but the ever present spectre of apartheid looms heavy over both. What does a man have to do to be able to own himself?

Sibusiso Mamba combines a gentle dignity with determination and despair and his outrage at having to surrender his very identity is both terrifying and heartbreaking.

Matthew Xia is familiar with the Playhouse’s Studio and he has used the space to maximum advantage, with his perfectly cast duo of actors giving him first rate performances. Hyemi Shen’s lock-up garage of a set is a box of magic and there are some beautiful details of theatricality in the staging, including the portrayal of the deceased Zwelinzima and the arrival of lunch.

Lighting by Ciaran Cunningham and sound design by Richard Hammerton complete the atmosphere.

Sizwe Banzi is Dead was originally written and devised by Athol Fugard, John Kani & Winston Ntshona and presented first in Cape Town and then in London, and over four decades on it remains as fresh as paint in this masterful new production from Eclipse Theatre Company and the Young Vic.

This is the end of a six venue tour following its opening run, and it closes here in Liverpool on Saturday 14th June. At the time of writing every performance is sold out, but please do check with the box office for returns to avoid missing out.

Der Rosenkavalier – Glyndebourne – Live in cinema, at FACT Liverpool -08/06/2014

This new Glyndebourne production of Der Rosenkavalier, only the third in the house’s history, sparked media interest for all the wrong reasons when it opened in May, due to a barrage of derogatory comments about Tara Erraught’s appearance from an alarming number of critics.

Mezzo-Soprano Alice Coote was among those who joined in the condemnation of these critics, citing the principle that opera is all about the music and beauty of the voice and nothing to do with the visual appearance or staging.

Whilst I agree that these descriptions of Ms Erraught were frankly out of order, veering away from just criticism and landing squarely in insult territory, I cannot agree with the idea that the appearance of a production is irrelevant. If it were, then opera companies would save themselves a whole lot of time, effort and money and would perform everything in concert versions and forget about the expense of sets, costumes and stage movement, concentrating entirely on blending voices and orchestra.

Or we could all just buy the recording and stop at home.

The USP of opera on stage is that it synthesises together the two expressive art-forms of music and theatre. If stage director and music director work together well, then this can result in something that suspends our disbelief and transports us into the world of the librettist’s imagination. Good opera production uses a seamless blend of the visual and the aural to deliver storytelling on a grand, sweeping scale. It is when the stage director and their design team forget about telling the story that things go awry. Too often, in their search for a new concept for a new production, directors make the assumption that their audience already know the intricacies of the plot beforehand.

When the curtain went up on the first performance in 1911, Rosenkavalier startled its audience with the sight of the Marschallin reclining in the embrace of her teenage lover Octavian. This new production finds her taking a shower, with Octavian looking on from the bedroom and her young page Mohammed sneaking a peek from the doorway, and the audience hardly bats an eyelid. This probably says something about modern audiences, although I’m not sure what. Director Richard Jones has taken a few such liberties over stage directions, but he understands the music and the narrative flow and his staging works well.

Sadly the same cannot be said of set and costume designers Paul Steinberg and Nicky Gillibrand. In common with Julia Hansen’s designs for last year’s Don Pasquale, some of the furniture and many of the characters have been upholstered in fabrics that exactly match the wallpaper on the broad and featureless flats of the set. Just when we think that Act 2 is going to be confined to the forestage, a blank wall flies into the tower to reveal the hall in Faninal’s palace, which has somehow transformed itself into something looking like the lobby of a tasteless modern hotel.

Costume design is a mixture of heavy damask upholstery and chintzy loose covers. Whilst some of the lead characters’ costumes hint at the piece being re-set at the time of the opera’s composition, the majority appear to have raided the dressing-up box and appear in an ill-fitting, garish miscellany of styles and colours. In an attempt to highlight the pantomime element of the storyline they have produced a result that is both visually confusing and deeply unattractive and which sets the piece nowhere at all. The footmen in Act 1 look like refugee playing cards from a school play of Alice in Wonderland.

Worst of all is the sequence of sartorial indignities piled upon the unfortunate Octavian. Both the first act dressing gown and the second act silver suit fall into the rococo furniture category, whilst the dress that makes him into Mariandel is back into Alice territory. Throughout, Tara Erraught was made to wear the most abominable wig that was more King Charles spaniel than teenage boy. The only concession to masculinity was a pair of ludicrous mutton-chop sideburns. Little wonder that many of the critics struggled with her appearance, but this had nothing to do with Ms Erraught herself and everything to do with the costume and make-up department. There is no rule that says Octavian needs to be tall and lanky – Tara Erraught could have easily pulled off the requisite boyish looks of the trouser-role if she had been suitably dressed for the part.

So much for the visual aspects, that are the reason we do these things in an opera house rather than the concert hall.

Musically, this is a very fine achievement. Kate Royal, Tara Erraught and Teodora Gheorghiu are splendid as the central triumvirate of Marie-Therese, Octavian and Sophie with their duets and the radiant Act 3 trio balanced beautifully. Others have noted that Gheorghiu was just a little forced at one or two moments when pitted against full orchestra, but from her first entry in act 2 she showed a beautiful evenness of tone and colour. Erraught shows herself as a great character singer, with a lovely sound and the ability to play a nasal, petulant girl when disguising herself as Mariandel. Royal has a dignity and poise in her voice to match her bearing, and if this debut in the role is anything to go by it won’t be the last time she is asked to take it. Lars Woldt is no stranger to Baron Ochs and is ideal for the part, with great comic timing and presence, while Michael Kraus is a suitably imperious, bemused Faninal.

Robin Ticciati drew some silken playing from the London Philharmonic and the richness of the score came across well in the relay to cinemas, which is where I saw this production in Sunday’s live transmission, also simultaneously streamed online.

The visual aspects of opera are not superfluous, and the blend of sight and sound is unsurpassed when it really works well. This, however, is a production with the perfect look for radio. It continues at Glyndebourne until 3rd July.

On 22nd July the same team will find its way to the Royal Albert Hall for the sixth concert of this year’s BBC Prom concerts. The concert stage will afford an opportunity to appreciate the musicality in isolation.

Or wait for the recording…