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The Color Purple - at Home Click here for tickets Leicester’s innovative Curve Theatre, in association with the Birmingham Hippodrome, are reviving their 2019 award-winning regional production of The Color Purple, in an online version to stream for just three weeks. Set in the American South, The Color Purple celebrates life, love and the strength to stand up for who you are and what you believe in, and treats themes of racism and cruelty as well as warmth and humanity. This ground-breaking musical has songs by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray based on jazz, ragtime, gospel and blues rhythms, and a script, adapted from Alice Walker’s novel, by Marsha Norman. 16 Feb - 7 Mar £20 All on Her Own Click here for tickets This is a rare outing for Terence Rattigan's All on Her Own. This is a powerfully atmospheric one-woman play, starring Olivier & Evening Standard Award-winner Janie Dee as Rosemary who, alone at midnight in London, has a secret burden to share that is both heartbreaking and sinister. Running a scant 25minutes, this is a new digital production directed by Alastair Knights. 16 – 21 February £8 + £3 booking fee Met Opera – Zeffirelli Week Click here to watch I doubt if there are many opera lovers who are unfamiliar with the name of Franco Zeffirelli. It is rare, indeed, almost unknown, for a director in any medium to achieve the status of being able to sell tickets on his name alone but news of a new Zeffirelli production at the Met or Covent Garden was sufficient to start a queue forming at the box office before the audience even knew who would be singing. Trained in art and architecture before becoming a theatre designer, Zeffirelli thrived in the live theatre before he became one of the cinema’s most distinguished movie directors. He was famously extravagant, his sets and costumes the most lavish of any designer and, while he flourished in the world of stars, he was also known for casting unknowns in his films. His most successful movie was probably his Romeo and Juliet in 1968 which made him a household name, in which he cast two teenagers in the title roles. The Met famously provided him with enormous budgets for his new productions and the results of this largesse is on display this week in the Nightly Opera Stream. All of this week’s operas are Zeffirelli productions and many deserve a good wallow. They are all beautiful, if occasionally somewhat overwrought, but sometimes the extravagance of the settings can overwhelm the singing. Romeo & Juliet free – Shakespeare’s Globe Click here to watch While we were talking about Romeo and Juliet’s in this Valentine’s week, I forgot to tell you about this one from Shakespeare’s Globe. Designed for young audiences, it’s been cut to 90 minutes to appeal to the kids who have the play on their curriculum for exams this year. Modern dress, young cast, and a lot of action to hold the interest of famously inattentive teenagers. Title roles played by Charlotte Beaumont and Nathan Welsh. Cocktails with a Curator - Frick Click here to watch Another in the Frick’s wonderful weekly series. This week, Chief Curator Xavier Salomon takes us on a tour of El Greco's "Vincenzo Anastagi", a full length portrait of yet another Renaissance figure I’d never heard of before. What makes this series of Cocktails with a Curator – a short lecture devoted to one of the works in the Frick Museum in New York – is that I always come away having learned more than the details of the specific work of art under discussion. Much more. Divine Sass: A Tribute to the Music, Life, and Legacy of Sarah Vaughan Click here to watch Sarah Vaughan was a pivotal figure in the history of jazz who influenced generations of vocalists with her unique style of expression and melodic phrasing. In my humble, or not-so-humble opinion, she was the greatest jazz singer who ever lived. Vaughan helped desegregate the American airwaves and set the stage for the civil rights activism of the 1960's and 1970's. She was nicknamed "Sassy" by the greatest Jazz musicians. The wonderful Tony Award-winning actress and vocalist Lillias White, wrote this online show and performs it at New York’s Flushing Town Hall. For those of us in Europe, it’s going to be another late night. 7pm ET translates to midnight GMT. But, to me, Sassy’s worth it. Feb 18 at 7pm ET, Feb 19 at 12.00 GMT Hymn - Almeida Theatre Click here for tickets One of the most successful actor/writer partnerships in the British theatre is that of leading actor Adrian Lester and his wife, playwright Lolita Chakrabarti. Hymn, Lolita Chakrabarti’s searching, soulful new two-man play asks what it takes to be a good father, brother or son. It will be streamed live from the Almeida theatre for five performances this week and features Adrian Lester and Danny Sapani. At the time of writing, unfortunately, I was informed that tickets are sold out, but the Almeida is trying to solve the problem by adding more. If they manage it, I'll be first in line. Keep trying. 17 –20 February £10 Songs For A New World - Jason Robert Brown Click here for tickets We have just a week to watch this moving collection of powerful songs examining life, love and the choices we make. Filmed during the first UK lockdown, entirely in isolation and on the artists’ smart phones. Performed by Rachel John, Ramin Karimloo, Cedric Neal and Rachel Tucker, this was Tony Award winner Jason Robert Brown’s first musical - an examination of a defining moment in history, a reflection of the state of the world when it premiered in 1995 and again in the Summer of 2020. 21-28 February £15 + £3 booking fee Ave Maria - Schubert Click here to watch It was announced last week that more than 100,000 of us have died of Covid-19 since March, a dreadful statistic. Irish soprano, Ailish Tynan, sings Schubert’s Ave Maria beautifully and simply as a memorial to those we have lost. She sings with sincerity and sadness, out of doors, accompanied only by a harp. The camerawork is shaky, clearly amateur, but there's nothing shaky about this heartfelt perfomance. I thought it was incredibly moving and wanted to share it. Thanks to Grange Park Opera and Wigmore Hall. Tchaikowsky and His Poets - Wigmore Hall Click here to watch There is what looks to be a lovely concert on Friday when British mezzo-soprano Alice Coote presents an evening of songs by Tchaikovsky interspersed with readings from actor Ralph Fiennes, including poetry by Aleksander Pushkin and letters penned by the composer. The pianist is Christian Blackshaw. Feb 19 at 7.30pm GMT Piaf – Her Story... her Songs - Raquel Bitton Click here to watch Part documentary, part stage performance, “Piaf… Her Story… her Songs” is a “powerful, emotional and mesmerizing” look at French chanteuse Edith Piaf as she tells her story through a theatrical presentation by singer Raquel Bitton. Bitton literally becomes Piaf while singing, but steps back and tells her story - in English - between the mostly French songs. Archival photos of Piaf illustrate her life of lucky breaks and tragedy. Some of the evening’s best moments are of Bitton and Piaf’s friends, lovers, composers happily discussing Piaf over food and wine at a Paris bistro. The event features 16 songs performed with a full orchestra, including “La Vie En Rose,” “No Regrets” and “Hymn to Love.” February 15 at 7:30PM ET and then available for four days through February 18. 3 Little Maids on Zoom – The Mikado Reimagined Click here to watch This is what made me laugh this week – three thoroughly up to date young sopranos (all called Millicent Blair, surprisingly, how did that happen?) unable to get on with their lives because of the pandemic, so they’ve turned to the bottle. Personally, I like this version of Three Little Maids a lot better than Gilbert and Sullivan’s original. And such a lovely voice. We all know kids who are feeling like this right now but most of them aren't as resourceful. Or as talented. Good on you, Millie, that stuffy old misery W.S. Gilbert would be proud of you.
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AuthorRuth Leon is a writer and critic specialising in music and theatre. Archives
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