The Inspector General – Danny Kaye Click here for tickets Even as a small child it was difficult to make me laugh, especially at things that were supposd to be funny. Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy left me cold and I could never understand why my friends laughed at their silly grown-up antics. I was the kid who never wanted a clown at my birthday party. But then I encountered Danny Kaye. Not in person, obviously, but on film, and he made me fall off my chair every time. Whether he was singing a nonsense song or doing some complicated mime, or pretending to be a duck, I loved him. His Ugly Duckling song made me cry in sympathy, and I knew about inchworms almost before I could talk. I could sing, almost in tune, all his songs, even those which had no comprehensible lyrics. I was four when he made the movie of The Inspector General and I insisted on seeing it twice around in the local cinema. (Remember when you could see a film twice just by staying in your seat?) How did I know about it at all? No idea, but I was a city kid and somebody must have mentioned it in connection with Danny Kaye. The Inspector General is a Hollywood movie musical which bears only passing resemblance to the original satirical play on which it is loosely based, The Government Inspector by Russian dramatist and novelist, Nicolai Gogol. The play is a comedy of errors, satirizing greed, stupidity, and the extensive political corruption of Imperial Russia. Kaye's version sets the story in Napoleon's empire, instead of Russia, and the main character is Georgi, an illiterate clown fired from a traveling carnival for not being greedy or deceptive enough. He wanders into a town which is meticulously preparing for a visit by a government inspector general. Mistaken for the official, the town caters to the clueless Georgi's every whim--until the real inspector arrives. I think everybody has something or someone that tickles their individual funny bone. Danny Kaye still does it for me, just as he did when I was four, but even if he’s not your bag, you can enjoy the mediculous artistry and thought that has gone into every moment of his performance in this film. I didn’t know about that when I was four. I just knew he made me laugh until I fell off my chair. Macbeth - Patrick Stewart Click here for tickets As a theatre critic who spent 30 years going to the theatre at least 4 times a week, I have seen hundreds of Shakespeare productions, too many to count. In this long career, I’ve seen every great actor of my lifetime at their best – Gielgud, Scofield, Olivier, Redgrave, Robeson, and their female equivalents – and I decided, several years ago, to call a halt, not to Shakespeare as a whole but to those plays which are these days mostly performed to give our great, and not so great, actors the opportunity to measure themselves against the major roles. I reckoned they could do it without me. I had no need in my life to see another Hamlet, Macbeth, Cleopatra or Lear. Then I was nagged by knowlegeable friends to see Patrick Stewart in Rupert Goold’s radical rethinking of Macbeth. and it was a revelation. I thought I knew the play. Under duress, I could probably recite it for you, but my understanding of Macbeth was nothing like this. This production caused me to reexamine everything I thought I knew and see the play as if for the first time. I’m delighted it’s now on film and I can share it with you. Kate Fleetwood as Lady Macbeth and Patrick Stewart in the title role were both nominated for Tony awards for their New York stage performance but the real reward is a fresh look at this amazing play, Shakespeare’s shortest, relocated to a nameless 20th-century netherworld in this terrifying adaptation. It all goes to show I should never have pre-judged what I was going to see. If I’d stuck to my ridiculous prejudice, I should never have seen this Macbeth. On the other hand, you have to kiss a lot of frogs…… The Perfect American – Philip Glass Click here for tickets Recorded live at the Teatro Real Madrid in 2013, legendary composer Philip Glass's opera "The Perfect American", imagines the final months of the life of Walt Disney - the person who has, more than any other, influenced the current world of consumers. Children nowadays only see mice and ducks as Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck, thanks to the image invented for them by the Walt Disney factory. In opposition to the world of happiness he devised, the existence of this perfect American was marked by an unhappy youth and a personality whose political attitudes and beliefs didn’t bear scrutiny. The libretto, by Randy Wurlitzer, is based on a novel by Peter Stephan Jungk. It stars Christopher Purves, David Pittsinger, Donald Kaasch, Janis Kelly and Marie McLaughlin Conducted by Dennis Russell Davies, who has conducted almost all the premieres of Glass’s operas, and directed by Phelim McDermott, The Perfect American is a penetrating look into the nightmare of a happy world. One Hundred Masterpieces - Rijksmuseum Click here to watch I became mesmerised by these 1-minute videos about Rembrandt’s paintings in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. At the end of each you can just click to see the next so you can watch as many or as few as you have time for. The voice of the curator is so gentle, as well as so informative, that you’ve learned more in a minute than you might in hours of actually looking at the painting. Each one, though, makes you want to stand in front of the real thing and make use of your newfound knowledge of the painting and the painter. Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, born 1606, usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in all three media, he is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art and the most important in Dutch art history. It is usually assumed that he used himself as his model in so many of his paintings to save money on hiring a model. I think he was just fascinated with the contours of his own face, loved dressing up, and found it convenient to have the subject of his paintings close at hand whenever he felt like painting. Music for The Eyes – Garsington Opera Click here to watch During lockdown, the innovative Garsington Opera made this series of performance/documentaries, examining operas through their other artisic connections. In this first episode, Music for the Eyes takes Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro as its focus, looking at the rise of the middle class, gardens and ambiguity in many works of 18th Century art. These programmes look at opera side by side with visual art and literature to draw new connections between masterpieces. The series is presented by Garsington’s Johnny Langridge and art historian Dr Imogen Tedbury. You can watch the Garsington production of Le Nozze di Figaro that provides the trigger for this documentary in full on Garsington’s YouTube channel. Pocket Review Patriots – Almeida Theatre Boris Berezovsky is an unlikely hero. When we first meet him in 1991 he is, if not king, then king-maker. In Peter Morgan’s riveting new play at the Almeida, he is the first and most powerful of the Russian oligarchs, the post-Soviet group of entrepreneurs who made their fortunes in the chaotic last years of the USSR and parlayed their wealth into political power in the new, capitalist Russia. At the beginning of Patriots, Berezovsky – Tom Hollander in a performance of real strength and subtlety - has blackmailed his friend President Yeltzin into giving him Russia’s most important television network. Controlling the airways, he also controls the poitical landscape. Russia is his. With the fall of Yeltzin, Berezowsky, still at the height of his powers, casts around for a biddable, faceless bureaucrat to replace him and settles on a former KGB operative, the deputy mayor of St Petersburg. This man, he calculates, will do as he’s told and facilitate the money-making schemes of a small army of multi-millionaires led by Berezovsky which includes a starry-eyed acolyte called Roman Abramsky. The only small problem is that this man’s name is Vladimir Putin and, all appearances to the contrary, he isn’t going to be anyone’s puppet. Berezovsky has miscalculated. The playwright has skillfully sketched the rise of Putin, with a devastating performance from Will Keane, who, without mimicry or obvious imitation, grows into Putin to the life. We may think we know what happened when Putin began to exercise the power that Berezovsky gifted him, but we don’t or, at least, I didn’t, and was kept guessing to the end. This is a terrifically exciting play and, although it doesn’t mention the war in Ukraine, it makes it clear how it came about and what Putin’s interpretation of history and his own ambitions have led his country and his people to. And, as Berezovsky falls, how power can shift and corrupt.
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AuthorRuth Leon is a writer and critic specialising in music and theatre. Archives
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