Reviews
Boyd Tonkin
Bach’s St John Passion came into the world just three centuries ago, in Leipzig at Easter 1724. This year’s Proms shower of manna from musical heaven continued with a consummately polished, sensitive and – ultimately – very moving birthday performance by Masaaki Suzuki and his Bach Collegium Japan.Their profound familiarity with the work, and proficiency in all its idioms, bred not routine slickness but an inward intimacy that serenely bridged the gap between the liturgical rituals of the German Baroque and the music drama of today. For all his historically-informed scholarship (right Read more ...
David Kettle
Òran, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★ Glasgow-based theatre company Wonder Fools are having a particularly busy Fringe. Alongside a revival of their excellent football drama Same Team at the Traverse Theatre, their far smaller, more intimate show Òran has company co-artistic director Robbie Gordon deliver a blistering solo performance inside a shipping container at the back of the Pleasance Courtyard. It’s far better than that probably sounds.And while Òran might open with smiles and camaraderie – with audience members greeted and assigned micro-roles, for example – things quickly get far Read more ...
Gary Naylor
On opening night, there’s always a little tension in the air. Tech rehearsals and previews can only go so far – this is the moment when an audience, some wielding pens like scalpels, sit in judgement. Having attended thousands on the critics’ side of the fourth wall, I can tell you that there’s plenty of crackling expectation and a touch of fear in the stalls, too. None more so than when the show is billed as a new musical.By the interval (much before that if it’s a hit), you’re locating the production on a multi-dimensional spectrum, assessing its component parts (acting, plot, design), its Read more ...
Guy Oddy
The UK festival scene has been going through a bit of a difficult time in the last couple of years, with a number of events closing down due to financial problems. This has obviously hit the “boutique” end of the marketing hardest, with several smaller capacity, specialist weekends going to the wall. Stowaway Festival seems to be bucking this trend, however, and opened for its third year of business last weekend.Buckinghamshire-based and with a capacity of 4,000 or so, Stowaway explicitly caters for “true ravers, new ravers and little ravers” in a similar vein to family-friendly shindigs like Read more ...
Simon Thompson
I’m all in favour of the EIF taking artistic risks, and of them bringing a high-prestige international production to Edinburgh. This Marriage of Figaro from Berlin’s Komische Oper is both of those things, because it is the first production by Kirill Serebrennikov – the high profile Russian director, placed under house arrest by the Putin regime, now based in Berlin – to be seen in the UK.But the EIF agreed to host it before its Berlin premiere, and while they must have had their suspicions about how “radical” it was, I doubt they were prepared for just what a mess it turned out to be. For one Read more ...
David Kettle
Ni Mi Madre, Pleasance Dome ★★★★ Philip Larkin offered a famously pithy assessment of parents’ impact on their offspring’s future lives. It’s one that Brazilian/Ecuadorian/Italian/Dominican writer and performer Arturo Luíz Soria would no doubt sympathise with – at least partly – in the solo show he’s built around memories of his mother. In fact, Ni Mi Madre is very much the older woman’s show: Soria transforms himself into Bete, the larger-than-life diva, harridan and force of nature who raised him, taking us through her three husbands and countless kids, her extravagant neediness and Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
This year’s Proms programme initially gave rise to some now-customary sneers about predictability, banality and dumbing down. Well, it all depends on where you sit, and what you hear. And my seats have witnessed one absolute humdinger after another. Last night, Sir Antonio Pappano and his London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus partnered with three exceptional soloists to deliver Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem with a commitment, intensity and, above all, ferocious attention to detail that made it an occasion to remember, and to celebrate. To call this performance “operatic”, given Pappano’s Read more ...
Simon Thompson
People hold lots of different opinions about the European Union, but there’s really only one acceptable opinion to be held about the European Union Youth Orchestra; namely, that they’re brilliant. Their visit to the Edinburgh International Festival consisted of two hour-long concerts, but the hundred musicians, aged 18-26, hailing from 27 countries, crammed more artistry and brilliance into those two concerts than some orchestras manage in a season.Sure, the tone wasn’t always there, and occasionally you could notice a lack of maturity. The violins sounded rather too bright for Elgar’s " Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
More surely than any other London stage, the Globe has opened up our theatrical perspective on different languages. Its triumphant “Globe to Globe” 2012 season presented the Shakespeare canon in 37 different linguistic interpretations.Among those varied treats from, literally, across the globe, the British Sign Language (BSL) production of Love’s Labour’s Lost, from London’s Deafinitely Theatre, was the only one that did not cross national borders; instead, it crossed the boundaries of theatre itself.It’s a direction that the Globe has continued to explore over the years, with the opening Read more ...
David Kettle
Bellringers, Roundabout @ Summerhall ★★★★ Dystopian climate-crisis dramas seemed ten-a-penny at the Fringe a few years back, but they’re far thinner on the ground in 2024. Which makes this deliciously elusive, oblique debut drama from Daisy Hall all the more intriguing, and valued.Clement and Aspinall appear in monk-like cassocks in a church belfry, apparently summoned by a fast-approaching storm. It’s their job to ring the tower’s bells, perhaps to alert residents of their Oxfordshire village to the impending deluge, or even act as some kind of community-protecting talisman simply by Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“The Rollin' Stones are probably destined to be the biggest group in the R&B scene if it continues to flourish. They aren't the jazzmen who were doing trad 18 months back and who have converted their act to keep up with the times. They are genuine R&B fanatics.”So said Record Mirror’s Norman Jopling in May 1963 of the band which soon added a “g” to become The Rolling Stones. He went on to point out that “the number of R&B clubs that have [recently] sprung up is nothing short of fantastic.”At the year’s end the R&B-smitten Jopling wrote two articles for Record Mirror, each Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
My three Proms so far this year have all featured regional BBC orchestras conducted by women, all excellent, and it surely reflects well on the Proms management that they have done so much to address this gender imbalance in recent years. In last night’s Prom 36 the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra were led by the New Zealander Gemma New, who navigated a programme of Mozart, Mendelssohn and Bonis with élan, good humour and a gorgeous black frock coat.Before doing my research, the name Mel Bonis would have suggested an Australian Olympic athlete, or Californian surf champion, but she was in Read more ...