Sadly little to report recently due to a combination of work, social life and sheer laziness. Nonetheless, I yet again manage to bring you an entirely useless review on a production now finished. The possibility in this case of a revival may mark what I write up to potentially useful, if anyone can still find it by the time that occassion comes. Certainly, the production in question deserves plenty of revivals.

I came to Jonathan Miller’s clearly rather unorthodox take on Cosi Fan Tutte almost entirely unfamiliar with the opera. Having now had experience with Mozart only through such modern-dress takes on it, coming across a so-called traditional production might come as a bit of a shock. Actually, this production works on two levels; jokes like the lovers photographing their misdeeds on their mobile phones may raise a laugh simply from the presence of these most un-Mozartian of appliances. But for the most part, they also work dramatically; the vanity and delight taken by the men is all to clear as they revel in humiliating the other’s fiancée. Certainly, the traditionally sexist nature of the Opera is offset by presenting the men as quite as vile as the women, and probably more so. And the palpable hostility between them following the supposed resurrection of the relationships at the end suggests their tensions are far from over.

The strongest character, both in terms of moral fibre and delineation in the writing, is Fiordiligi, played here by Dorothea Roschmann doing a fine line both in vocal dexterity and despair. Her first aria was delivered with dazzling and electric ferocity, while her second also showed off a rich lower range to great effect. I was surprised to read that she played Pamina just a few years at Covent Garden to great success, a part that is associated normally with a far lighter, less mature sound. That would seem more suited to Elina Garanca as the shallower Dorabella, a Covent Garden debutante showing wonderful poise and a pure, soaring voice.

Thomas Allen, now a regular Don Alfonso in this production, sparkled in his acting, though vocally seemed to be holding back. No matter; In a part also played by Allen in his youth, Lorenzo Regazzo had more opportunities to shine in this respect, though some of the comedy of both he and Mathew Polenzani as Ferrando was a little laboured. Rebecca Evans projected more successfully a comic character in a space that, in all fairness, could scarcely be less welcoming to that kind of domestic comedy. The orchestra was conducted with a wonderful lightness of touch by Colin Davis. To the ears of somebody as yet relatively unfamiliar with opera, it all seemed pretty faultless. You can almost forget that set to anyone else's music (or, worse still, performed as a straight play) a three and a half hour piece on this story would become nigh on unbearable.

I wonder why this blog doesn't appear on google when I search it? Clearly I'm doing something wrong...

Hello and What am I doing?

I have no idea why am doing this blog. I'm not sure I even knew what a blog was until not all that long ago. Nor am I sure why anyone might have any interests in reading the ramblings of a narrow-minded and obsessed 15 year old, as lengthy as they are (sometimes) uninformed and filled with almost inevitably inaccurate points of reference.

OK, hopefully that avoids sounding too up myself or too self-deprecating. Now that that's out the way, I'm writing this largely as an outlet for my own views and opinions to lessen the need to voice them frantically to my friends and family. And if people derive some pleasure or interest from what I say, so much the better. If not, so be it. To start in a vein of pointlessness in which I mean to continue: A report on last week's semi-staged production of Sweeney Todd at the newly refurbished Royal Festival Hall, Antony Sher in Adrian Noble's production of Kean and the Donmar revival of Betrayal. As all but one of these productions have now closed (and the one still running has only one week of ridiculously sold out performances left to play), the main purpose in writing about them is pretty unclear. Nevertheless, I intend to do so with what little inspiration I can muster.

While the recent refurbishment may have left audiences in greater comfort, Sweeney Todd is a piece that seems more likely to work its magic best in the sort of claustrophobic, uncomfortable Fringe theatre that turns the whole experience into something genuinely masochistic. Quite apart from the comfort of the upholstered seats going as far as possible not to fulfil this description, the pristine wooden stage of the Hall set a quite inappropriately bloodless tone. Fortunately, the performances were, by and large, far from bloodless. Given minimal direction by David Freeman, the special ingredient in this production was always going to be its cast, composed of a roster of the brightest musical theatre stars including Maria Friedman, Daniel Evans, Philip Quast and Rosemary Ashe. And leading a cast a West End producer could only dream of, there was little doubt that after a career built around often definitive performances of leading operatic roles around the world, Bryn Terfel would make easy work of at least the singing.

That they would all do well enough on their own terms was to be expected. But casting two performers in the lead roles, one of whom falls so firmly into the world of musical theatre and the other equally firmly into the world of opera, seemed like a possible clash. How could two such completely different vocal and performance styles find a satisfying equilibrium? Fears were quickly laid to rest however, as Terfel and Friedman made a deliciously charismatic and comically mismatched duo, with a sexual frisson matched by a mutually dark and dangerous sense of humour in numbers like A Little Priest. Terfel, his eyes terrifyingly wild and the corner of his mouth turned up in an inimitably sinister leer, was unforgettably psychotic as Todd. Vocally he was (of course) stunning, storing up much of his strength for an Epiphany that terrified at quite close quarters several members of the front stalls. He may have lacked the dramatic colours an actor like Philip Quast (himself excelling in the relatively small role of the Judge) might have brought to it, but that astonishing voice more than made up for it. As Mrs Lovett, Friedman proved her strength as a character actress of immense skill and versatility, her impeccable phrasing and sharp comic timing compensating for a slightly bizarre, self-taught singing technique. Her By the Sea was filled with such an infectiously depraved glee, I found myself positively beaming along to every step of her macabre scheming.

The supporting parts tended to be more variable; Daniel Boys may have stood out on Any Dream Will Do, but despite considerable charm was acted and sung off the stage by the more experienced performers, lacking the technique required for much of his (difficult) material. As Johanna, Emma Williams was mostly strong vocally; her Green Finch and Linnet Bird soared effectively when required, though occasionally lacking strong enough approaches into notes. The lack of a consistent or engaging interpretation was more problematic; it seems to be a role forever doomed to be unfairly dismissed as something of a simpering ninny. Daniel Evans fared far better as a manically affectionate Tobias, delivering Not While I'm Around with real poignancy, while Philip Quast developed the Judge far beyond the pantomime villain he can be played as. The absence of his one solo seemed perverse given his abilities, and explicable only in the context of his unusually sympathetic portrayal (and perhaps also his occasional struggles with tempo). Adrian Thompson, the only other opera singer besides Terfel in the cast, minced hilariously as Pirelli using a voice noticeably more trained than the rest of the supporting cast to great advantage. Rosemary Ashe shone as the Beggar Woman and Steve Elias, despite some lapsing into caricature, was generally effective as the Beadle.

In a concert setting, questions of what this viciously enigmatic work is really about go largely unexplored. Dressing the chorus as wayward tramps went some way to establishing a social context, though without anything like the sharpness of the attack found in the Hal Prince staging. It was through its casting, however, that it did succeed in directly attacking the question of whether the work is an opera or musical, and ended up suggesting quite persuasively that it is probably both. Far from upsetting the balance of the evening, the combination of Terfel and Friedman served to consolidate the work's utterly hybrid nature. And such was the strength of them and most of the performers that a lack of staging scarcely mattered. This combined with the joy of hearing the gloriously chromatic score performed by the London Philharmonic, conducted with considerable momentum by Stephen Barlow, ensured a wonderful evening for Sondheim-lovers. Plus Joanna Lumley was sitting behind us...

A rather subdued crowd took their seats in the stalls of the Apollo on Tuesday evening; such was the sparseness of the house that even after upgrading the upper levels there were still empty seats to be seen at the back. All in all, what had started sounding like one of the rare saving dramatic graces in a West End seriously lacking in serious drama, had lost most of its hype following a distinctly mixed set of reviews. Nonetheless, Antony Sher tends to dazzle in just about anything, and having not been the principal target of the criticism leveled at this production, I assumed it would be worth going at least for him.

Sartre’s main point here seems to be that the actor is a constant shape-shifter lacking in any real human identity. Judging by the deliberately mannered performance style abundant in Adrian Noble’s (inexplicably) 1950s production, this is supposed to extend to most of the rest of society too. That this idea is a little dubious could be passed over were it better presented dramatically. However Sartre is a philosopher, not a dramatist, and we therefore find actors proclaiming ideas to the audience in the manner of a thesis rather than a play. Similarly, the over-the-top style of delivery adopted by most of the cast may make Sartre’s point about the many dramas we carry out in our lives, but does so in a way that becomes tedious shortly into the first scene. Upon reading the programme during the interval, I discovered it was meant to be a farce, of which it shows no visible sign until some way into the second act. When it finally does come, it seems oddly misplaced with the more reflective, philosophically explicit style of what has preceded it. This may be in part down to Noble’s slightly heavy-handed direction; by all accounts other directors have taken the philosophy less seriously and treated it more as a colourful romp. This is deliberately evaded by the relocation of the play to the 1950s, a setting altogether more drab and restrained, both in terms of its theatre and society. Sadly, neither the production nor the writing is strong enough to support it on these terms.

Nonetheless, there is plenty to enjoy in Sher’s performance, who surprises by striking a slightly restrained note in his first speech as Richard III. Later though, he provides a deeply melancholic centre to the piece not to be found elsewhere in either play or staging. In choosing to avoid parodying the kind of grandiose acting Kean was famed for, Sher misses some of the mad brilliance Kean was famed for, but movingly conveys the confusion and state of existentialist despair Sartre cannot really succeed in dramatizing. He also makes more of the very variable one-liners than most of the others, delivering them with a bitchy hollowness that is both funny and pathetic. Elsewhere, Sam Kelly stands out in a quietly moving performance as his eternally loyal dresser.

In a climate where the existence of many plays featuring running times of 90 minutes and casts of between one and three can be explained only by their cost efficiency, Betrayal is a refreshing change. Here is a scintillating piece of extraordinary verbal economy, with a highly theatrical mastery of language. An opening duologue consisting simply of two people asking about each other's health becomes a lucid psychological study, especially in retrospect given the information revealed later in Pinter's chronologically reversed plot. Here the dramatis personae totals three (plus one almost entirely thankless bit part), but seems inspired by dramatic rather than economic necessity, as we see three people entirely trapped in their own separate existences and unable to understand those of others around them. Family members are discussed as dirty words, mentioned by virtue of their social necessity rather than any emotional attachment. And it is worth noting that, at least in this production, almost all prolonged moments of physical contact are clearly acts of desperate dependency rather than mutual affection.

Both play and staging are designed to allow these ideas to stand in some theatrical glory. Roger Michell's production avoids any sort of clutter; bar a kind of white curtain between scenes to represent the passage of time, the action takes place on a virtually bare stage. What we lose in physical atmosphere we gain in clarity of performance; the deceptive, duplicitous characters are allowed to come to the forefront. Here, the performers stand up to such total scrutiny. Yet even in a lesser production, the writing would be strong enough to withstand it: in direct contrast to the Sartre play, Pinter presents his story with a fantastic mixture of dramatic clarity and ambiguity, allowing some ideas to speak for themselves and some to fester uncertainly in our heads. Fortunately, it is also carried through with immaculate detail by Roger Michell and his astonishing cast. Whereas in the recent Peter Hall revival the focus was on Janie Dee's naturally (and in this case, inappropriately) warm and transparent Emma, here Dervla Kirwan's enigmatic, inscrutable performance is superbly complemented by the two men. As Jerry, Toby Stephens is initially superbly shallow, hilariously conveying his disbelief at his best friend's infidelity, even after his wife has had a 7 year affair with him. Gradually, he convincingly reveals the desperation beneath his mask of urbane refinement. Even more impressive is Samuel West as Robert, capturing perfectly a very North London sort of (would-be) intellectual. Rather than go for caricature however, West continually deepens and darkens his interpretation. He is also less of a victim than he might be, taking a far more active part in the power politics here than I recall from Hugo Speer's performance. He captures both the state of depraved melancholia into which his wife's emotional detachment drives him and the raging jealousy at her other apparently more satisfying relationship. And he moves with powerful irony through Pinter's backward structure from a buttoned up-air of nonchalance in his first scene after the end of the relationship to the state of depression and rage on discovering his wife's affair.

All in all, a very satisfying week. Being a self-professed Sondheim "nut", more thoughts seemed to spew out of my head about Sweeney Todd than either of the other two productions, though as I know the script for it inside out perhaps it's not surprising (yes, I am a dork...) It's closed though, so too late... Do beg, borrow, steal, or otherwise cliché your way into Betrayal.

Coming next week... I don't really know actually - in my state of disorganisation on a hitherto inconceivable scale, I have long since given up on actually booking very much in advance this summer. Oh well, something interesting... If anyone actually reads all of this, I will be slightly amazed, but hey...