‘Could you tell these were by women choreographers?’ asked my neighbour during an interval of English National Ballet’s She Said. Good question. How would you know?Could you tell that the opera I saw the following evening – Lucia di Lammermoor – was directed by a woman, Katie Mitchell? Good question – but impossible. Start slapping labels on aesthetic qualities – feminine/masculine – and you’re … [Read more...]
New old, same old
The Beggar's Opera and Dead Dog in a Suitcase The world has grown old. There are no new stories, no new songs. We stick to what we know. Comfort-binge legends of sweet romance and poetic justice. Inarguable hard truths of self-serving cruelty. This is the genius of John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera, and of Dead Dog in a Suitcase, the inspired new version by theatre company Kneehigh. Gay, writing … [Read more...]
Stop all the clocks
Directors have been shuttling between theatre and opera for decades now. Makes sense. Both forms tell stories, establish tension, explore characters and ideas. Ten years after Peter Gelb took charge at the Met, directors with stage cred (Bartlett Sher, Richard Eyre) have become recurring guests, while John Berry, ENO’s departed chief, hired Complicite’s Simon McBurney and Improbable’s Phelim … [Read more...]
Tralalalala
What’s the most haunting moment of Carmen? The rousing toreador’s song? One of the stompy dances? Carmen’s own teasingly lush habanera? Maybe. Or maybe it’s the wordless, taunting snatch of melody with which Carmen taunts Don José – the soldier already in thrall to her, dick and epaulettes caught in a hopeless struggle. ‘Tralalalala,’ she hums, as if to herself. ‘Tralalalala.’ It the perfect, … [Read more...]
In and out of history
What happens when an artist outlives their own era? When a voice, once so urgent, seems out of time, flailing for connection? Yuri Lyubimov, the great Russian director who died earlier this month aged 97, was a theatrical lightning conductor during the icy Soviet years, gathering the implacable forces of the state and zapping them back in provokingly surreal and thrilling ways. His theatre in … [Read more...]
Beyond the peter meter
So, let’s start with me. Spindly and saggy. Generously beconked, meagrely maned. A cavalcade of design flaws, a factory second at knock down prices. That’s me. And to an extent, that’s most of us. Even among critics there are eye-wateringly scrumptious exceptions (you know who you are), but in general, if they start hiring hacks for their looks, we’re all in trouble. Good looks and how to … [Read more...]