Month: October 2015

Jonas Kaufmann, Royal Festival Hall

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Jonas Kaufmann, the McDreamy of the opera world. I have heard recordings of his dark, intense tenor and seen the brooding photos that are inescapable for anyone who loves opera. But I had never heard him in person before tonight. I must admit to having wondered whether anyone could live up to the hype. I needn’t have worried; his singing was exquisite.

The evening was devoted solely to Puccini, and Kaufmann was partnered by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The evening began a trifle inauspiciously with a Prelude symphonic for which the rhythm was somewhat shaky, and “Ecco la casa,” from Le Villi, in which Kaufmann’s burnished tenor seemed slightly strained (although the top B flat was stunning). But everything from then on was utter pleasure (with the mild exception of the LPO’s Intermezzo from Suor Angelica, which was a bit tentative).

The first half contained selections from Le Villi (as mentioned), Edgar, and Manon Lescaut. I was only familiar with “Donna non vidi am” and “Guardate, pazzo son” from the latter opera, and perhaps it is for that reason that I thought they were by far the finest moments in that half. It is much easier to sing well loudly than to sing well quietly, and I was utterly gobsmacked by Kaufmann’s mastery of dynamic control and constant, absolute attachment to pitch. The LPO, and conductor Jochen Rieder, also deserve praise for their attention to detail and similar dynamic control.

The second half began with selections from Tosca, and I have never heard a better “E lucevan le stelle.” Ordinarily, artists in recital make lip service to acting, and focus only on the voice. Not Kaufmann – if I closed my eyes, I would have believed myself at the beginning of the final act of Tosca. It was utterly beautiful, perfectly despairing, and as subtle as that aria could possibly have been. It did not leave me in the state of bliss that it ought to have done, however, as I was filled with rage at the coughing hordes who hacked up lungs during what should have been only music. I was not alone in my anger, however, and the collective feeling of the healthy majority of the audience seemed to have pierced the shell of selfishness of the afflicted, resulting in (relatively) peaceful silence for the rest of the half.

Intermezzi from Madama Butterfly and Suor Angelica represented the LPO’s primary contributions to the second half, and Kaufmann’s “Una parola sola…Or son sei mesi” produced more glorious, bang on-pitch B flats. But the unquestioned highlight of this half was Kaufmann’s Nessun Dorma. There are a very few instances of great art that retain their power no matter how cliched they have become. The Ride of the Valkyries, Hamlet’s To Be or Not To Be speech, etc. Nessun Dorma is amongst those, and listening to Kaufmann’s vocal intelligence and that spinning, espresso tone, I truly believed that Calaf would win. It was phenomenal.

The encores included more selections from Tosca and Fanciulla, and went beyond Puccini to include selections like Refice’s Ombra di nube. It was a stupendous, stonking evening. And after the first admiration of the dinner jacket, I didn’t think once about his looks. The voice was all.

In the Heights

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I have spent my adult life circling around, but never really living in, New York City. But it is one of that city’s peculiar gifts that even those who have spent little time there can feel at home. I normally detest when theatrical productions are called “life-affirming,” but this Lin-Manuel Miranda musical was a true affirmation of life in Washington Heights as it was in the mid-2000s. The area is gentrifying (or, as a friend told me we are supposed to say now, “up and coming”) but Washington Heights has traditionally been a Dominican (and Puerto Rican) neighbourhood, and the musical represents a last pop of colour and culture before the inexorable market forces took over.

I didn’t make it to this at Southwark and made the trek up to the small King’s Cross Theatre, which is running this and The Railway Children in rep, with few expectations (I did wonder how long the theatre would be there, given the gentrification occurring in King’s Cross itself). I was absolutely blown away. This is a joyous musical with cracking tunes, beautifully danced, sung and acted by an energetic and very talented cast. I enjoyed it enormously and hope that it gains the audience it very much deserves.

In the Heights is an urban drama with overlapping storylines, in the manner of Rent. Nina (Lily Frazer, effervescent) is the local girl upon whom the community has pinned their hopes, as she was a straight-A student in high school, feted by the Mayor, who has just returned from her first year at Stanford. Kevin (authoritatively played by David Bedella) and Camila (Josie Benson, channelling Vanessa Williams) are her parents, who have spent their lives building up a car service business. Benny (Joe Aaron Reid, jaw-droppingly gorgeous) works for the business and quietly holds a torch for Nina. On the other, more scrappy side of the street, Usnavi (Sam Mackay, who deftly balances the requisite swagger and vulnerability) helps out his Abuela Claudia (Eve Polycarpou, touchingly beautiful) while trying to get up the courage to ask out Vanessa (radiant Jade Ewen) and managing his immature cousin Sonny (a charming Cleve September). The neighbourhood hair salon includes local busybody Daniela (hilariously played by a heavily pregnant Victoria Hamilton-Barritt) and slightly dim Carla (Sarah Naudi). The rest of the ensemble is similarly talented and sang and danced beautifully throughout.

Nina’s story was particularly resonant. It is very difficult, as a talented teenager who has done well in a small pond, to cope with a new, much larger and much more privileged environment. This is particularly the case when your family and community are very proud of you, but do not understand the particular challenges that such students must face when switching between the two. A lovely scene between Nina and Benny deftly addresses this code-switching. Frazer and Reid, and Bedella and Benson as the parents, played these scenes straight, without excessive sentimentality.

Another cliche that I normally abhor is the notion of a “love letter” to a particular place, but again I must eat my words. I am not sure what the London audience made of it, but references to the GWB, the Deegan, the Cloisters, the West Side Highway, etc made me almost homesick. There were lovely nods to the influence of other New Yorkers, with “a little schmutz” being wiped off Usnavi’s face and a delightful line, “If you’re buyin’, L’Chaim!” Reference was made as well to the Irish-Americans who previously inhabited Washington Heights, acknowledging that any city is a work in progress. The only thing I missed were the “Happy to Serve You” iconic blue coffee cups.

Lin-Manuel Miranda is the toast of New York at the moment for Hamilton (which I am very much looking forward to seeing), but this earlier effort of his is a somewhat hidden treat. I left with a smile on my face and, very unusually for me, a desire to see it again. Very highly recommended.

London Film Festival

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I do enjoy a good gala. The red carpet, the frocks, the people who dress up to the nines in the hopes that someone will take their picture…it’s all delightful. And the films aren’t bad either. I’ve seen five films at the LFF this year, and it has been a particularly woman-friendly year.

Suffragette This unabashedly feminist film stars Carey Mulligan as a working class woman who gradually gains political consciousness and seeks suffrage. She does excellent work, as do Ben Whishaw as her husband and Anne-Marie Duff as a fellow washerwoman and activist. Meryl Streep has a cameo role (seriously, it’s shorter than Judi Dench’s screen time in Shakespeare in Love) as Emmeline Pankhurst, and Romola Garai is a middle class woman who helps to fund the movement. It’s an important film, and a well-made and well acted one. There’s nothing particularly surprising if you know anything about the history of the suffragette movement and the film is more competent than extraordinary, but I hope that it is a success and that young women (who are among the least likely to vote) will exercise the right that their great-great-grandmothers suffered and died to gain.

He Named Me Malala I have long been an admirer of Malala Yousafzai, the young activist who was shot by the Taliban for being an advocate for girls’ education and who has recovered and made her life in Birmingham (because she hadn’t suffered enough before) (wee joke). This documentary is effective and uses beautiful illustrations to tell stories of life in the Swat Valley, where the Yousafzai family lived before being forced to leave. But the most effective scenes are those where the Yousafzai family reveal themselves as a charming family, and Malala a normal teenage girl with crushes on Shane Watson, Shahid Afridi and Roger Federer. Albeit a normal teenage girl who (spoiler alert) wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

Room I read Emma Donoghue’s 2010 book on which this film was based, and could never have imagined how they would make a half-decent film about it. This is the story of 5-year old Jack and his Ma, who live together in Room. They are kept there by Old Nick, who kidnapped Ma seven years before and has kept them confined (as with Josef Fritzl and Ariel Castro) ever since. The book was told entirely from Jack’s perspective, a difficult feat that Donoghue somehow managed to pull off. The film achieves similar miracles, which is partly down to the filmmaking and mostly down to astonishing performances from Jacob Tremblay as Jack and, especially, Brie Larson as Ma. Larson is absolutely extraordinary, making her love for Jack, her despair at the situation and her frantic desire to escape crystal clear. I have no idea how a 26-year old pulled off that performance. This is a film that really does not benefit from spoilers, so I will not say too much about what happens next. But there is wonderful work from Joan Allen as Ma’s mother and William H. Macy from her father as well. One scene where Ma says to her own mother, words to the effect of, “If you hadn’t taught me to be so nice, this wouldn’t have happened to me,” hit me like a punch in the gut. We do teach our daughters to be too nice. We need to encourage them to fight back. An extraordinary film, one of the best I have seen in this or any other year. I hope it, and Larson’s performance, get the recognition they deserve.

Brooklyn After Room, just about anything would have seemed trite. But Brooklyn was a charming palate cleanser. I read and enjoyed the book, but I maintain that had it been written by a woman instead of Colm Toibin, it would have been relegated to the “chick lit” section of the bookstore, instead of being feted as literature. (See also Jonathan Franzen). Saoirse Ronan is Eilis Lacey, a young Irish woman who is given a chance to emigrate to New York in the 1950s. Homesick at first, she grows to love the city and a young Italian-American man named Tony (Emory Cohen). But when she is forced to return to Ireland, she must decide whether to stay and move forward with local boy Jim (Domnhall Gleason) or return to Brooklyn. I very much enjoyed the exploration of how one’s notion of “home” can grow, and change, and perhaps be expanded rather than limited. It was beautifully shot and had excellent performances throughout. But it felt lightweight. A diversion.

Carol Well, I suppose I should have known what I was getting into with a Todd Haynes film. However, I enjoyed Far From Heaven enormously and the cast list for Carol was very intriguing. Cate Blanchett is Carol, a wealthy woman in 1950s New York with a husband (an excellent Kyle Chandler) and a young daughter. She’s also bored to tears, at least until she meets Therese (Rooney Mara) in the doll department of a department store (groan). From there, it’s all wide eyes and close-ups of exquisite cheekbones until they (finally, after many too many longing looks) get it on. But I could have done with rather less longing and rather more passion (and I don’t mean more sex scenes). It was a very idealised view of a lesbian relationship, and it seemed to me to come from the perspective of someone who really wasn’t interested in showing them wanting to be with each other in a sexual way. It also must be said that Mara, while beautiful, and thin, and possessed of lovely cheekbones, has rather a blank face. Blanchett, of the thousand facial expressions, did her best, but even she couldn’t create chemistry out of thin air. Frankly, I would have been much more interested in watching a film about the relationship between Carol and her (presumably) ex-lover and present friend Abby, gloriously played by Sarah Paulson. Watchable, but missable.

October Catch-Up Post

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Yet again I have fallen behind. It’s a busy time of year! So here we have another catch-up post to get back on track.

The Red Lion (NT)
I am not immune to the allure of the beautiful game at the top level. Messi’s impossible brilliance, Cristiano Ronaldo’s frustrating perfection and even Wayne Rooney’s brutish elegance are not lost on me. But I have never really loved football for its own sake, especially at the unglamorous, semi-pro league level portrayed in Patrick Marber’s well structured three-hander. Calvin Demba, Daniel Mays and Peter Wight were very strong as the young talent, desperate manager and aging heart and soul of the club, respectively. The comedy and passion elicited by Marber from this situation were remarkable, and I found myself caring desperately about the characters. It will be interesting to see if it is revived in a couple of years, and what the state of football will be when it is. One of two beautifully written Marber plays in this round-up.

Hangmen (Royal Court)
I have always enjoyed Martin McDonagh’s plays in the past, but thought his voice uniquely Irish. So it was something of a shock to see that he is equally comfortable (or seems to be, I am far from an expert) writing in the vernacular of the north of England. This unusual and blackly comic play involving retired hangmen (capital punishment having been abolished in England in 1965) was one of the funniest and most disturbing plays I have seen in ages. A stellar cast was led by David Morrissey as Harry, a retired hangman, and Johnny Flynn as Mooney, a slightly disturbing young man who may not be quite what he seems. A scene where Mooney employs classic “negging” and pick-up artist techniques on Harry’s teenage daughter Shirley (Bronwyn James, perfectly gullible) sent shivers down my spine and made me want to buy a copy of “The Gift of Fear” for every teenage girl in the world. It’s being given a West End transfer. Go, you won’t regret it.

La Musica (Young Vic)
A short two-hander about the end of a marriage, by Marguerite Duras. It began with the couple (played by Emily Barclay and Sam Troughton in a marvel of concentration) sitting on a raised plinth with their backs to us. Cameras projected their faces to us on the wall in extreme close-up, and I must confess to marvelling at Barclay’s beautiful complexion and lack of visible pores as much as the couple’s (exquisite) acting. In the second half, the couple moved to a small area to one side, and the audience followed, surrounding them. Such an atmosphere of claustrophobia added to the tension inevitably felt by the audience. It was an effective play, but I couldn’t help but feel that it would be utterly exhausting being married to either of the narcissistic, self-absorbed characters. An interesting experiment.

Tipping the Velvet (Lyric Hammersmith)
A play written by Laura Wade (who wrote Posh, which I thoroughly enjoyed), directed by Lyndsey Turner (a director whose productions I always find thought-provoking) and based on a beautifully written book about Victorian lesbians by Sarah Waters (one of my favourite authors in the world). What could possibly go wrong? Oh dear oh dear oh dear. It looked amateurish, seemed to last forever, and worst of all, there was no chemistry between Kitty (Laura Rogers) and Nancy (Sally Messham). The cast were talented (particularly Messham, who is clearly one to watch) but not enough to keep us there. After a first half of an hour and twenty minutes and faced with a second half of about the same length of time, we decided that discretion was the better part of valour and abandoned the effort. Stick to the BBC miniseries or better yet, the book.

Three Days in the Country (NT)
You may be wondering, what happened to the rest of the month? It was truncated in this version of Turgenev’s masterpiece, simply and effectively updated by Patrick Marber. The play was once memorably described by a friend of mine as “it’s just posh Russians going on about love,” but they go on very articulately in Marber’s version. Amanda Drew was a beautiful and charming Natalya, although as ever with this play, I found it difficult to believe that simply everyone was in love with her. John Simm was a dignified and funny Rakitin, and Lily Sacofsky a passionate and very young Vera. John Light’s Arkady was fiery (and his beard surprisingly flattering) and Mark Gatiss brought welcome notes of levity as Shpigelsky. Royce Pierreson was something of a blank as Belyaev, but then the character is supposed to be a blank on which others project their own feelings (and boy, do these people have a lot of feelings). It doesn’t matter though, as Pierreson is going to be a star. He has simply buckets of star quality, beautiful intensity, and great presence. An unusual though effective set, a great script and a wonderful cast made this an evening to remember. Highly recommended.

Hamlet, Revisited

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The media frenzy has died down and Cumberbatch and co have settled into the business of getting the thing done every night. I was delighted to have the opportunity to revisit the play so I could see how it had changed since the previews.

I must admit to being somewhat disappointed. The set was still as stunning as ever, but the changes made in response to the initial criticisms diminished the production significantly. First, the ‘to be or not to be speech’ was moved back to its proper place. This made sense structurally, but it meant that the prologue, with Hamlet sitting with his father’s record player, had very little meaning. They removed many of the instances of Nat King Cole’s Nature Boy and cut down the toy motif significantly. This had the effect of removing the emotional immaturity that I had rather enjoyed in the preview performance, and there were no overall themes to be found in its place. Ophelia’s characterisation was also changed, with her photography and piano-playing gone and a rather forced scene of passion with Hamlet inserted. Her exit, followed by Gertrude (which I had found touching) was also changed. Overall, it felt rather like the direction was being done by committee. There were aspects of the direction I had disliked in the preview, but at least I understood the themes. Here, there were no themes, but merely theatrical mush.

Some aspects of the production were changed for the better. Ciaran Hinds has grown into the role and is an excellent Claudius. They sorted Anastasia Hille’s microphone issues, but didn’t turn it up loudly enough. They restored some of Polonius’s speeches, which meant that we got to hear more of Jim Norton’s beautifully resonant speaking voice (and they’re awfully good speeches). There were cuts made, though, to Kobna Holdbrook-Smith’s excellent Laertes and a Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern that I had rather enjoyed.

Cumberbatch himself was just as good as ever. His Hamlet remains fiercely intelligent and athletic and the speeches beautifully voiced. He has settled into the role and I did enjoy his performance very much. However, the lighter moments seemed to have gone by the wayside, and there were only a couple of moments of laughter.

So I would say to directors: stick to your guns! If you have a vision, carry on with it. I do acknowledge that it’s difficult to do that when you’re working with a huge star and the most hyped theatrical production of the year, however. I also hope that this experience doesn’t put Cumberbatch off returning to the stage, as I enjoy his theatre work very much. An interesting experiment. And if it means that more people enjoy and are not put off by Shakespeare, then it will have been worthwhile.