Oedipus Rex – Los Angeles Opera Click here to watch Igor Stravinsky based Oedipus Rex on the ancient Greek tragedy of the same name by Sophocles—yes, the one where Oedipus unknowingly kills his own father and marries his mother. The 1927 opera is a highly stylized, ritualistic work; in fact, the composer specifically requested that it be staged with minimal movement (which works well with COVID restrictions). This performance features imaginative projected animations created by Manual Cinema. A narrator describes the action throughout the course of the opera. Stravinsky set his work in Latin but specified that the narration is to be spoken in the language of the audience. Music Director James Conlon conducts a stellar cast led by tenor Russell Thomas, LA Opera's Artist in Residence, as Oedipus, the doomed king. Mezzo-soprano J'Nai Bridges is Jocasta, his queen (and mother). Stephen Fry will make his LA Opera debut (via audio recording) as the Narrator. June 17 Ian McKellen on Stage – National Theatre Prime Video www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/detail/B096Y44CMV/ref=atv_dl_rdr?autoplay=1 For the past few years, Ian McKellen has been touring the world with a one-man show of his life and work, anecdotes and performance, mainly Shakespeare, which you’ve heard me rave about before. He devised his solo show to celebrate his 80th Birthday year, earning £3 million for over 80 UK theatres. Through proceeds of its extended run at London’s Harold Pinter Theatre, which went to British theatre charities, further fundraising and the broadcast distribution of the show, the total money raised for the theatre industry is now over £5million. With extraordinary generousity, he has given the entire proceeds of his tour to the theatres where he has performed throughout his career, and, through the National Theatre and Amazon Prime Video broadcast of this celebrated show, and an extended West End run, raised more than £5 million, created a fund for emerging producers to cover actors’ salaries. Distributed via ATG Productions, multiple funding rounds will offer grants of up to £25,000 to pay actors’ wages for both new plays and revivals across UK Theatres, as long as they employ 6 actors or more and include a recent graduate from a theatre training school. Further information including eligibility and how to apply can be found at ianonstage.com. If you haven't seen Ian McKellen on Stage, and you should, it's now available on Prime Video in UK and Ireland only. From June 11. Perseus turning Phineas and his Followers to Stone – Luca Giordano Click here to watch Letizia Treves, Curator of Italian and Spanish Paintings 1600–1800 at the National Gallery, London. explains why some characters in this huge painting look decidedly off colour. A quite literally petrifying severed gorgon's head with magical powers is a lifesaver in Luca Giordano's mythical drama. I love Letizia Treves down-to-earth, English description of the truly mythic elements in the painting as if she were describing the menu for her evening meal. Brilliantly, though, she demystifies what would otherwise be incomprehensible to the casual viewer. Deluxe - BalletBoyz Click here to watch Celebrating their 20th anniversary year of Balletboyz, Deluxe fuses the work of some of the world’s most exciting and innovative choreographers and composers. Chinese dancer and choreographer Xie Xin creates a work set to an original score by composer Jiang Shao-feng, whilst Maxine Doyle (Punchdrunk) collaborates with jazz musician and composer Cassie Kinoshi, of the Mercury-nominated SEED Ensemble. The results, as always with the all-male dance troupe Balletboyz, is exciting, energising and innovative. Here are both new pieces, quite different from one another, but both demonstrating the trademark precision and body awareness that has always characterised Michael Dunn and William Trevitt’s wonderful ensemble. Dallaway Day – Royal Society of Literature Click here to register Every year on ‘a Wednesday in mid-June’, the Royal Society of Literature celebrates the work and legacy of Virginia Woolf. This year’s virtual Dalloway Day will feature online panel discussions, a writing workshop, a podcast, and self-guided walking tours of Bloomsbury. This full-day programme celebrates 100 years since Woolf’s only short story collection, Monday or Tuesday, was published and interrogates female friendship, and Woolf’s evergreen influence on literary, and material, landscapes. June 16 Candide – Opera Company of Middlebury (Vermont) Click here for tickets I guess we’ll have to watch the Opera Company of Middlebury’s production of Candide to discover why they’ve set it in a beach shack but it should be interesting. This is an imaginative retelling of Leonard Bernstein’s operetta. Although the production contains traditional theatrical elements, it also embraces 21st century technology. Using drones, green screen imagery, rear projections, and other cinematic techniques, the Opera Company of Middlebury is exploring the boundaries of opera’s potential. The company says that, rather than dwelling on the impossibility of live performance, the creative team decided to move opera onto a new platform for them - film. Their artistic director Doug Anderson took a chance on creating a filmed production of Candide, further exploring how to enhance what the Opera Company of Middlebury does best: telling stories. This is the result. June 15-30. $35 Marys Seacole – Lincoln Center Private Reels Archives Click here to register, Born in 1805 in Jamaica, Mary Seacole was a real person who has been described as the first nurse-practitioner, long before the term was in use. Her ‘hotel’ behind the lines of the Crimean War provided succour for wounded servicemen on the battlefields, and she nursed many of them back to health. She was determined to live a grand life. In this play, her adventures take her across oceans and eras, from a battlefield of the Crimean War to a contemporary nursing home, and many times and places in between. Marys Seacole is an exploration of what it means to be a woman who is paid to care. This is a record video, in other words, it was made as a record of the production for the Lincoln Center archives and never intended for public distribution, so it is by no means the kind of finished film you’re used to seeing. It was made with only two cameras at one socially distanced performance and the technical quality leaves much to be desired. But it’s an important play so I thought, with those caveats, you might like to see it. An excellent cast includes Quincy Tyler Bernstine who won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Play for her performance in the title role. June 10 and then available through July 4 Love, Linda: The Life of Mrs. Cole Porter Click here to watch If you love the songs of Cole Porter (and who doesn’t?) you’ll be able to forgive the somewhat patchy performance of Stevie Holland in Love, Linda, this show about Linda Lee Thomas, the Southern beauty who was married to the legendary songwriter for 35 interrupted years. I can think off the top of my head of a round dozen of current performers who could do a better job of staying in tune but Stevie Holland wrote the show and obviously had first choice of who was to play her. Though Porter was gay, Cole and Linda shared a spectacular, glamour-filled life, a life that was emblematic of a particular hedonistic time and place. Well, places, because the couple lived in Paris and Venice, in a palazzo, no less, as well as in the Waldorf Astoria in New York. He was rich, she was richer. And of all the great songwriters of that era, Cole Porter was the only one who was born rich. With innovative arrangements by award-winning composer Gary William Friedman, Cole Porter's timeless songs weave through the narrative, celebrating the undoubted love that Linda and Cole shared, while examining the darker sides of their life. From June 9th 7pm ET (Cole Porter’s Birthday) through June 23 The Comedy of Errors – Oregon Shakespeare Festival Click here for tickets Director Kent Gash set his finger-snapping 2014 free staging of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.during the Harlem Renaissance. That adaptation is now online for the first time. To remind you, The Comedy of Errors and its offspring The Boys from Syracuse is the one with two sets of identical twins whose mistaken identities and slapstick comedy lend the laughs to a preposterous tale. Through June 26 $15 Becoming Dr Ruth - Tovah Feldshuh Click here for tickets In America, she is known simply as Dr. Ruth. Certainly, she is the best known sex therapist in the US, thanks to her myriad books and television appearances, Dr Ruth Westheimer’s background includes living in five countries, marrying three times and identifying under four names. She is a force of nature. As is Tovah Feldshuh, six-time Tony and Emmy nominee, who inhabits the warm, wise, witty persona of Dr Ruth on stage and now, online, in a striking solo performance. Through July 4; $35 Broadway’s Back Click here to watch My bit of fun for this week comes from NBC’s The Tonight Show. Here are Jimmy Fallon and Lin Manuel Miranda camping it up but at the same time welcoming the reopening of Broadway theatres. Lin-Manuel Miranda is a great brand ambassador for Broadway. Which makes the imminent opening of the film adaptation of his musical “In the Heights” — and the reopening of the Drama Book Shop, which he now co-owns — a chance to deliver the Broadway-is-back message with grace, gusto and a few nifty rhymes.
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AuthorRuth Leon is a writer and critic specialising in music and theatre. Archives
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