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Julius Caesar – National Theatre at the Bridge Click here for tickets Nicholas Hytner’s new production of Julius Caesar has just today been released online. This modern dress production is radical and startling and comes from the new Bridge Theatre which is, for those not familiar with London geography, located, unsurprisingly, near London Bridge. With a starry cast including Michelle Fairley, David Morissey, David Calder and Ben Wishaw, Hytner takes a fresh look at Shakespeare’s most testosterone-driven play. Wait, maybe that’s Coriolanus. What do you think? Whatever, in this version Julius Caesar holds a mirror up to the dangers of populism, which brings it right up to date. As I keep saying, Shakespeare is the most contemporary of playwrights. Ben Whishaw and Michelle Fairley play Brutus and Cassius, leaders of the coup, David Calder plays Caesar and David Morrissey is Mark Antony, who brings Rome back under control after the conspirators’ defeat. It is impossible to watch this play in 2021 without hearing its echoes in modern American politics but at least, unlike the recent Public Theatre production in Central Park, Caesar looks like David Calder and not like Donald Trump. The parallels are already too hot to handle. Songs for Murdered Sisters - Houston Grand Opera Click here for tickets Five years ago, the life of the famous Canadian baritone Joshua Hopkins was changed forever when his sister Nathalie, along with two other women, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend in a spree that is now considered one of the worst cases of domestic violence in Canadian history. In his grief, Hopkins conceived this song cycle. The music is by Jake Heggie and is set to poetry by Margaret Atwood. It is sung by Joshua Hopkins and played by Jake Heggie. This powerful and beautiful new work is Hopkins’s way of honouring his sister’s memory and speaking out against domestic violence. Co commissioned by Houston Grand Opera with Canada's National Arts Centre Orchestra. Until Apr 30. A Picture of Autumn – Mint Theatre Click here to watch Norman Charles Hunter, known as N.C., was a leading English playwright in the 1950s. He wrote good, meaty roles for actors tired of the lightweight drawing room comedies of his time and there was always a queue of actors who wanted to perform them, including John Gielgud, Wendy Hiller, Sybil Thorndike, Ralph Richardson, Vanessa Redgrave, Michael Redgrave, and Ingrid Bergman. He had major success with three plays: Waters of the Moon, A Day by the Sea and A Touch of the Sun. And then, suddenly, pouf, his plays were out of fashion, swept away by the tide of Angry Young Men, playwrights and novelists such as John Osborne and Kingsley Amis and almost never heard from again. Now the Mint Theatre, which specialises in disinterring forgotten plays, has dug up A Picture of Autumn, a sub-Chekhov play about an aging, once prosperous family, living in an aging, once grand manor, a gentle comedy from a bygone era. It had a one-night ‘try-out’ performance in February 1951, at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London’s West End and, despite good reviews, was never picked up by a producer. The play was described, in its only outing, as “a big, generous play, exquisitely written, both funny and touching.” So, what happened to it? Nobody knows, and it’s left to us to evaluate its worth, all these years later. Apr 19-June 13 Frick – Cocktails – La Comtesse Daru Click here to watch My favourite museum, the Frick in New York, is currently closed for renovations but instead of closing their doors for the duration, like London’s National Portrait Gallery, they’ve borrowed a building and temporarily brought some of their great paintings and artifacts up the street to the former home of the Whitney Museum. This building, currently renamed Frick Madison, is so different from their regular town house home that, I’m told, looking at some of their most famous paintings in the new setting is akin to seeing them for the first time. I can’t wait to see it but, intercontinental travel restrictions being what they are, I have no idea when that might be. Fortunately, the two curators, Xavier Salomon and Aimee Ng, are continuing their weekly series, Cocktails with a Curator. This one, guided by Aimee, is about La Comtesse Daru. Never heard of her? Me, neither, but by the time Aimee’s finished with her, not only will you have met her but you’ll also have met the painter Jacques-Louis David and found out about his revolutionary nature and the history of how this lovely, intimate portrait came to be painted by an artist largely known for producing monumental works in the service of Napoleon. We also get to hear a lot about the court of Napoleon and even Stendhal. What is marvellous is how this curator always shares her fascination with details that the casual viewer might not notice, so that a painting of an ordinary-looking woman in a satin dress becomes an exemplar of an artist's genius. Akram Khan’s Giselle – English National Ballet Click here for tickets Here is the ultimate classical ballet reimagined for the 21st century. Everybody, even the most casual ballet watcher, knows Giselle so it takes guts to take the ballet everybody knows and rethink it radically. Director and Choreographer Akram Khan has made it new with the willing connivance of English National Ballet in the person of its powerful artistic director, Tamara Rojo. She stars, as do James Streeter and Jeffrey Cirio. They must all have held their breaths at the first performances in case critics and audiences rejected the work as a form of cultural vandalism. Instead, it was heralded as a modern masterpiece, accepted as a logical retelling of this story of love, betrayal and redemption. I love it, but conventional Giselle-lovers will find it a bit of a shock. Neat - Charlayne Woodard. Click here to watch This one-woman coming of age play, written and performed by Charlayne Woodard premiered at Manhattan Theatre Club in 1997 and I remember it as being an affecting and intelligent portrait of a young girl on the cusp of womanhood. Now she’s revisiting that compelling show, this time with the emphasis on her realization that some of life’s most difficult times can also be the most fulfilling. Woodard is at least as good an actor as she is a playwright, she won a Tony nomination for her debut performance in Ain’t Misbehaving, and followed that up with a number of noteworthy performances, unusual for a black actor at the time. ‘Neat’ was the nickname of Woodard's aunt Beneatha. As an infant, Neat was accidentally fed camphor oil by her illiterate great-grandmother who was unable to read the bottle's label. When the poisoning was discovered, Neat was rushed to the nearest emergency room only to be refused treatment. By the time her mother got her to the black hospital, Neat was permanently brain-damaged. Woodard paints the story of her relationship with her childlike aunt, from her excitement of having a "grown-up" playmate to her embarrassment at some of Neat's simple ways. Woodard's story has no self-pity but it does have some moving, and painful, memories of what it was like to grow up black. RSVP Required. April 15-25 Elaine Stritch – I’m Still Here – Sondheim celebration Click here to watch The divine Elaine Stritch, performing one of Sondheim's signature songs at his 80th Birthday Concert with the New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center in March, 2010. I love that, with all the singers ranged on the stage behind her, all wearing glamorous ballgowns in the same shade of crimson, Stritch refuses to wear anything but her trademark trousersuit, although she did make the concession of allowing it to be tailored for her in the same colour. As is only right for the most senior and most beloved of all the great female singers of her era, she performed last on this iconic show, after Patti Lupone, Audra Macdonald, Kelli O’Hara, Bernadette Peters, Marin Mazzie, and others, and, as is only right, she stopped the show with this blockbuster performance.
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AuthorRuth Leon is a writer and critic specialising in music and theatre. Archives
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