This week’s column is already long. It could easily be twice the length and still miss too much. I am entranced with the variety and quality of online arts offerings and overwhelmed with admiration for the artists who, though without paid work, and with no immediate prospect of any, are still making art for the rest of us. It’s impossible to turn on your internet without finding someone singing, or playing, or talking, or acting, often brilliantly, each contributing to the common good, each deliberately using their art to make our difficult passage through these hard times, easier. Thank you to all of you who do, and all of you who appreciate what they do. I’ve tried to make it easy for you to find each of these events but you may find that most of these links require you to Ctrl+Click instead of just Click. Sonnets, Sonnets, lots of Sonnets https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InIMPmMszkE&list=PLLLiEya-Q4RQdTJb97i8gU6MXHZs_HUlB https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSKVlKT-m0g This virus is enough to bring out the Shakespeare in you. Well, naturally. Patrick Stewart has launched A Sonnet A Day. Jermyn Street Theatre, a 70-seat studio in London’s West End, in spite of its disastrous flood, has one of the most innovative of online presentations during the virus days, another sonnet a day, this time with many different actors displaying their sonnet chops including David Suchet, Olivia Colman, Helena Bonham Carter, Dame Penelope Keith, Timothy West, Jamael Westman, Tobias Menzies, Aimee Lou Wood, Grace Saif, Dame Penelope Wilton, and Julie Hesmondhalgh. They have joined forces to perform Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets for the beleaguered little theatre. Fine with me, can’t have too many sonnets, the more the merrier. Besides Shakespeare’s original English texts, there are also performances of the sonnets in fifteen languages including Russian, Urdu, Greek and British Sign Language. To start the day with a great actor performing a great poem makes everything better. The Show Must Go Online https://robmyles.co.uk/theshowmustgoonline/ This is one of the most ambitious projects on the net and every time I’ve tuned into it, it’s worked so well that it’s hard to believe it’s unrehearsed. A self-confessed Shakespeare nut, Rob Myles, a young actor /director, has assembled dozens of out of work actors – at the moment all actors are out of work – from all over the world and set them the task of performing all of Shakespeare’s plays in the order in which they were written (so far as we know) on Zoom. Not only are they not on the same stage, they’re all in different rooms, often in different countries. It shouldn’t work but it does. Next week’s is Richard 111, but all the plays they’ve done so far are still available on this website. Tune in, you won’t be disappointed. Lynn Harrell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y7eMee_GYA Lynn Harrell died last week. He was one of the greatest cellists of his generation, his beautiful singing tone sounding closer to the human voice than any instrument has any right to, whatever the repertoire. No matter what he played, from Bach to Strauss, it became a song. Melody was set across harmony, with rhythm and tone colour always perfect, one never subordinated to another. Always honouring the composer and giving every note its full weight and value. This clip is just a taste of what Lynn Harrell could do. It comes from Rachmaninov’s G Minor Cello and Piano Sonata, recorded at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival with pianist Yuja Wang. I chose it simply because it’s a favourite of mine. Dear Lynn, I am so grateful that much of your music was recorded and through it we can keep you with us. Along with every other lover of the music you made so unstintingly, I shall miss you, old friend. A Separate Peace I was determined to see this short play by Tom Stoppard, produced, directed, and acted live online via Zoom but, as it turned out, because of a technical snafu (my fault, I’m sure) I only saw half of it. A noble experiment, no doubt, but with the obvious shortcomings of Zoom, the audio delays, the visual fatigue of looking at the actors’ images ‘bleeding’ into the unrelenting white background, I found what I saw of A Separate Peace to be hard work. The somewhat oblique plot of a healthy man who has checked himself anonymously into a private nursing home and wants to stay there, while the hospital staff are determined to find out who he is so he can be released, wasn’t sufficient to hold my attention, despite actors of the calibre of David Morrissey and Ed Stoppard. In these times where theatre professionals are actively seeking new ways to use their skills we have to applaud the ambition of this production and the effort it represented so I look forward to the next live online play. Harlem After Dark – Unplugged with Allan Harris https://www.facebook.com/events/221034829185537/ Every Saturday afternoon and Tuesday evening, that splendid jazz singer and musician Allan Harris sits down in his Harlem living room with one of his guitars and just sings. It’s relaxing, informative, gentle, and thoroughly enjoyable. This week he’s doing Ellington but he often gets distracted in the best possible way and sings something else. Tuesday at 7.30 EST and Saturday at 2pm EST live and that’s 12.30 BST and 7pm BST but available on YouTube if it’s the wrong time of day for you. Sing for Your Supper https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0LaqKjtcQw That most endearing and English of singer/pianists, Stefan Bednarcyzk (yes, really, he’s from Leeds) is doing his Jermyn St thing with Sing for Your Supper, a felicitous daily dose of Noel Coward, Tom Lehrer and other fine comic songwriters. If you know Stefan you’ll be bound to tune in but if you’re not familiar with his sense of humour, his musicianship, and his way with a lyric, you’re in for a treat. Cocktails with the Curator https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj4PE6BtgSk&list=PLNVeJpU2DHHR_0y_Zvgn3MgZQQFcFx2eI&index=2&t=0s I’m becoming addicted to the Frick Museum’s quirky, weekly Cocktails with the Curator, where an expert art historian discusses just one painting in the museum’s collection, complete with a cocktail that seems to complement it. This week, curator Aimee Ng hosts us at her New York apartment to tell the story of one of John Constable’s favourite paintings, the monumental “White Horse”. Aimee shares Constable’s inventive sketches and his nostalgic memories of the English Countryside. Tonight’s drink is, for some reason, gin and Dubonnet, reportedly Queen Elizabeth 11’s favourite cocktail. Why? No idea. Love, Loss, and What I Wore https://www.92y.org/event/love-loss-and-what-i-wore The late, great comic writer and journalist Nora Ephron wrote a hilarious entertainment with her sister, Delia Ephron, about the effect that clothes have on women. The play follows several women as they use their wardrobe to share their stories. I remember laughing hysterically at the first performance in New York, as did every woman in the audience, while the men looked on, baffled. It turns out there’s a recording of a 2017 one-night-only performance of Love, Loss, and What I Wore beginning May 4 at 8 PM ET and available for three weeks, featuring Lucy DeVito, Tracie Ellis Ross, Carol Kane, Rosie O’Donnell, and Natasha Lyonne. Tickets are $10 but worth it. Young Rembrandt at the Ashmolean https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000hqpj/museums-in-quarantine-series-1-2-rembrandt This week’s virtual tour is of the fabulous Young Rembrandt show at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, an exhibition tragically truncated by the virus. But Simon Schama got to see it for the BBC before it closed and, as only he can, he uses his erudition and his charm (it’s impossible to miss the charm) to make these paintings and drawings glow and live for us. Part of the ‘Museums in Quarantine’ series, this programme provides insights into Rembrandt’s techniques as well as his life, covering, as it does, the first ten years of his career, where the genius of the young artist is already on offer for anyone with eyes to see. I watched this programme twice, once for you, the second time for myself. The T-Shirt
www.theatresupportfund.co.uk. Starting on Wednesday, the Theatre Support Fund will have its own t-shirt. What makes it special is that the producers of each of the West End’s 16 biggest musicals, the ones that have had to close because of the virus, have given free access to their logos and branding so they can be sold to raise money for theatre professionals who are in difficulties because they are out of work. Civilians, people not in the theatre, may not understand how generous this is in that every one of these shows has their own merchandise which subsidises the ticket prices and are thereby losing money by allowing the use of their logos. Good for them. I’ve ordered mine.
25 Comments
|
AuthorRuth Leon is a writer and critic specialising in music and theatre. Archives
May 2024
Categories
All
|