I took a walk today. No, don’t panic. I didn’t leave home. It was a virtual walk, a wonderful walk, and anyone with access to the internet can take it too, comfortable at home with a cup of tea in hand. Truth is, I hate walking, and this virus-imposed daily ‘exercise’ walk just makes me irritable. There’s nobody to visit, no bookshops or cakeshops, no gossip with the neighbours, and everyone carefully stepping around everyone else makes me feel like a victim of the plague which, I guess, is what I am. In my isolation, I take a daily trawl through the endless wonders of the free internet and, since there’s no live theatre to talk about, I thought I’d keep sharing some of what I find. Opera for Lovers This week, there have been two Cosi Fan Tutte full length productions, one from the Met, one from Covent Garden. Both seemed as fresh and modern as if Mozart had composed it yesterday, but the 1995 Jonathan Miller-directed version from Covent Garden felt entirely in the contemporary moment whereas the Phelim McDermot production, set in Coney Island, New York in the 1950s, felt slightly old fashioned, out of context. Without changing a word or a note, this thoroughly silly tale of four thoroughly silly young people has just as much to say about the fragility of love in 2020 as it did in 1790. Thank you, Mozart and Da Ponte. Both the Met and the Royal Opera are continuing to stream some of their best every day. https://www.metopera.org/user-information/nightly-met-opera-streams/?utm_source=OperaStreamsNewsletterW5&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1920_MISC&utm_content=version_A https://www.roh.org.uk/news/the-royal-opera-house-launches-a-programme-of-free-online-content-for-the-culturally-curious-at-home Theatre from the Boards Chichester Festival Theatre is streaming Flowers for Mrs Harris, a musical about a charlady who buys herself a Dior gown. It’s about the dream of a lifetime and what happens when it comes true. Claire Burt, a much underrated West End star with a voice to die for, leads the cast of this charming show. And if you have young people in the house and want something suitable for family viewing, the National Theatre’s Treasure Island is on all week and definitely worth your time. Do check out the website for Shakespeare’s Globe as they have a revolving series of plays from their stage, starting with Hamlet, changing every two weeks. https://www.cft.org.uk/flowers-for-mrs-harris-broadcast www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/at-home www.shakespearesglobe.com/watch Make Your Own Kind of Music. Of all the fun things to do while you’re stuck at home one of the most innovative has been invented by my brilliant friend, Debbie Wiseman. She’s the go-to composer of film and television music in the UK and the composer-in-residence of Classic FM. She’s inviting everyone, whether they read music or not, to learn ‘Together’ a new piece she has written especially for these times. She won’t mind if I describe the piece as simple because that’s what she intends, that anyone with a piano or a trumpet or a comb and tissue paper, or anything that makes a noise, can make music at home for fun. If you read music you can download the sheet music – both the starter and the advanced version - but she’s keen that nobody should be put off if they can’t. ‘Together’ is beautiful but, as I said, simple, and you can listen to her playing it and learn it by ear. She says anyone can. Once you’ve learned it, go ahead and embellish it, have some fun with it, orchestrate it or write lyrics for it, make your own version of it, and send it to her at Classic FM. The idea is for ‘Together’ to be played in as many different ways as possible. https://www.classicfm.com/composers/debbie-wiseman/download-sheet-music-together-piano-piece/ Pyjama Cast Party One of my favourite things to do when I’m in New York is Jim Caruso’s Cast Party at Birdland. Every Monday evening, he runs the classiest open mic in the city and just about any singer who’s anybody shows up to sing a song. One song. It’s never less than entertaining and even if there’s an artist who isn’t your cup of tea, they’ll be gone in 3 minutes and there will be someone who is. Jim Caruso himself keeps everything moving with a sense of fun and a series of terrible jokes. Usually the accompanying duties are taken by the wonderful Billy Stritch at the piano – to call him an accompanist is a terrible insult – and the terrific bass player Steve Doyle. Well, of course, in these parlous times, Cast Party has temporarily bitten the dust at Birdland but, nothing daunted, Caruso has launched a series, also on Monday nights, called Jim Caruso’s Pyjama Cast Party on You Tube which is really a lot of fun. Lot of good singers performing from home. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nthZBGY31JA A Walk on the Wild Side Back to that walk I told you about. It’s in my other home town, New York, and it’s well worth crossing an ocean for. Fortunately, you don’t have to leave your computer. Get a cup of tea and take a walk with me. A bit of geography first (never my best subject). If you’re walking down Fifth Avenue from Central Park you will soon come to 50th St. It’s an important cross road. If you turn right, you will be on West 50th and if you turn left, you will be on East 50th. And, at that very important cross street stands an enormous agglomeration of buildings marked by a huge statue of Atlas with the world on his shoulders so you shouldn’t miss it. A historian called Daniel Okrent wrote a book called “Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center” and it was he, together with the New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman, who took me for this fascinating walk. The photographs that accompany the virtual walk in a sadly quarantined New York show the finer points of the art and architecture which was vilified by many when it was built, although it was the last word in Art Deco design. I always loved it and I love it even more now that I know more about it. A line in one of my favourite George and Ira Gershwin songs, points out, correctly, “They all laughed at Rockefeller Center, now they’re fighting to get in’. Yes, it’s enormous, yes, it’s a monolith, yes, it’s the commercial heart of New York City, and who would laugh at that? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/arts/design/rockefeller-center-virtual-tour.html Sing For Your Supper
The great Stefan Bednarczyk, a specialist in the performance of Noel Coward and other nostalgic treats, is singing and playing some of his, and my, favourite songs on the YouTube channel of my favourite little theatre. The Jermyn Street Theatre, only slightly larger than my dinner table, is strong, brave, and has just survived what could have been a disastrous flood. The virus interrupted the run of Shakespeare’s The Tempest with Michael Pennington and then came the deluge but, nothing daunted, the intrepid Penny Horner who has run it as long as it has been a theatre, and her artistic director Tom Littler, bash on with a wonderful series of sonnets and songs online until they can reopen. www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk Next Year In….? This week is Passover, the celebration of the Jewish Exodus from Egypt, of freedom from slavery, and it is usually a family event where we invite our friends and our relatives to share a special meal and tell each other again the 5000-year old story. We call this the Seder. Children have a particular role in the Seder, questions the youngest asks of the oldest, so that the history will never be forgotten and all over the world, wherever there are Jews, they gather on this night to remember those who died and those who survived to escape slavery. This year, of course, it was different. Most of us were not squeezed around the family table but alone in our homes. So, for me, the most touching internet event of the week was a virtual Seder where Jason Alexander and about 100 stars of Broadway and Hollywood, not all of them Jewish, alone in their own homes, retold and sang the Passover story, made up songs, told anecdotes of Passovers past, examined the traditional table, made some great jokes, gave descriptions of the meaning of the holiday, and reiterated what it means to be Jewish on this particular night, even for those who are not. I was sad not to be among those I love for the Seder but I was grateful to all those artists who made me feel as though I was. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGRsH2Qti_Q&feature=emb_title
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AuthorRuth Leon is a writer and critic specialising in music and theatre. Archives
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