Candida – Gingold Group Click here for tickets This taut romantic comedy by George Bernard Shaw has been reset from London 1895 to Harlem 1929. In this new production by David Staller, the Reverend James Morell and his wife Candida live a comfortable life until the young poet, Marchbanks, is taken into their home and challenges everything they’ve built their lives upon. It’s a time of global upheaval as six characters come together on one tumultuous day to redefine not only who they are but also how to launch into their futures in a more fully self-aware way. Written as a lighthearted response to Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, this short but pithy play races along in ever-surprising ways. This is the play that inspired the Robert Anderson play, Tea and Sympathy. I saw this splendid revival live in the theatre when I was last in New York. It was directed impeccably by my friend David Staller, who runs the Gingold Theatrical Group (yes, that Gingold) an admirable company devoted to producing the works of Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw. The Group believes in creating theatre that supports human rights, freedom of speech, and individual liberty, using the work of George Bernard Shaw as their guide. It was the first company ever to present performances of every one of Shaw's 65 plays (including full-length works, one-acts and sketches). GTG brings together performers, critics, students, academics and the general public with the opportunity to explore and perform theatrical work inspired by the humanitarian and activist values that Shaw championed. Staller, probably these days the world’s leading expert on the plays of GBS, holds a staged reading every month of one of Shaw’s plays performed by top New York actors. For those who are within easy reach of New York, or visiting, these readings are a treat not to be missed. In the meantime, enjoy his production of Candida, which ran successfully at an off-Broadway theatre before being filmed and has now been released for streaming. July 25-30 $25. Senseless Kindness - English National Ballet Click here to rent A former principal dancer with the Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet and San Francisco Ballet, choreographer Yuri Possokhov creates a work for a UK company for the first time. This piece for four dancers, Senseless Kindness, is based on Vasily Grossman’s novel, Life and Fate, about a Russian family caught in the Second World War, and is set to Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No1. Using bold lighting and a stark, textured black and white approach, director Thomas James’s poetic and elegant film reveals the frantic endurance of the human spirit to endure, and to enjoy. Dancers: Francesco Gabriele Frola, Emma Hawes, Isaac Hernández, Alison McWhinney Rental also includes a bonus Behind the Scenes mini-documentary, featuring Yuri Possokhov, and dancers Alison McWhinney and Isaac Hernandez. Documentary by Michael Nunn & William Trevitt. Rent for £3.49 Michael Bublé: Tour Stop 148 Click here for tickets This one, obviously, is for fans, and they are myriad, of this phenomenally successful Canadian singer. Michael Bublé: Tour Stop 148 presents a front row seat and exclusive backstage pass to superstar singer Michael Bublé’s "visually thrilling and musically triumphant" To Be Loved Tour which was seen worldwide by two million fans in 2015 over the course of an epic schedule of 172 concert dates. The richly atmospheric concert film spotlights Bublé’s charismatic gifts as an entertainer and showcases live performances of the Grammy® winning singer-songwriter’s biggest hits, including Haven’t Met You Yet, Cry Me A River, Fever, Feelin’ Good, Home and Smile. Additional performance sequences are intercut with exclusive cinéma vérité-style footage showing what it took for Team Bublé to travel this movable musical-feast from arena to arena over the course of a two-year tour. Kent Nagano conducts Barber, Copland, and Brahms — Verbier Festival Click here for tickets This concert from the Verbier Festival's 30th anniversary brings three-time Grammy-winning American conductor Kent Nagano and together with the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra to perform a program of captivating contrasts: works by two of the greatest American composers of the 20th century, plus a monument of 19th-century European violin repertoire. Even within the all-American first half of the evening, we are treated to two pieces that could hardly be more different in character, beginning with Samuel Barber's haunting Adagio for Strings. Probably the composer's best-known work, this orchestral arrangement of the slow movement to Barber's 1936 String Quartet is ten minutes of pure pathos, guaranteed to leave nary a dry eye in the audience. It is followed by Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring, sweetly contemplative and effortlessly evocative of open landscapes and new possibilities, reflected in the Shaker hymn "Simple Gifts" that Copland quotes to magnificent effect. Back to Europe we come, for Brahm's Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77, one of the undisputed masterpieces of violin music, performed by the Greek virtuoso, Leonidas Kavakos. While the programme is slightly peculiar, with none of the pieces relating to one another and performed in an odd order, this is a concert of well-known works, well played, although is it unusual to hear the Brahms played by a chamber, rather than a full symphony orchestra. Ian McKellen, Playing The Part Click here for tickets Celebrate the life and work of acting legend Sir Ian McKellen with this feature-length film documentary. With stories and anecdotes from his illustrious career on stage and screen, including never-before-seen archive material. This doc explores the actor’s legacy as a gay rights activist, alongside his successful film career in blockbuster movies such as X-Men and The Lord Of The Rings, as well as personal thoughts on everything from acting to old age. Pocket Review Dr. Semelweiss – Harold Pinter Theatre “Wash your hands”. Sounds so simple, is so simple for those of us with access to hot water and soap, a 20-second ritual we perform without conscious thought several times a day. The admonition was reinforced during the Covid pandemic as a positive injunction, something we could actually do to help ourselves not to get infected and not to infect others. But what if we didn’t know that washing the hands removes not just visible dirt but also bacteria and germs? In 1847, in Vienna’s main hospital, a certain Dr Semmelweis, a young doctor working in the maternity wards, had the radical idea that it was bacteria on the hands of doctors who had lately been performing autopsies, that was causing the high rate of deaths among the patients. Nobody believed him because he couldn't back up his beliefs with science, even when he instituted hand-washing for everyone who was in contact with the patients, and the deathrates plummeted. This is the unpromising premise for Dr. Semmelweis, the latest exemplary performance in Mark Rylance’s unbroken succession. He plays Semmelweis as a man so obsessed with the rightness of his theory that he is positively unhinged by it, becoming increasingly frustrated until he tips over into actual madness. His self-righteousness and humourlessness don’t help and when even his devoted wife, pregnant and in need of his attention, is unable to distract him, he finds himself alone. But right. There are some actors I’d pay to see even if I had no idea what play they were acting in or what it was about. Mark Rylance is high on that list and if I tell you not to miss his current perfomance in Dr Semmelweis, you almost need no more information than that. But that would be to shortchange all the other splendid features of this production. The director Tom Morris, writer Stephen Brown and Mark Rylance himself, whose idea it was, have adapted an obscure biography into a thoroughly rewarding evening which at times is as much ballet and concert as a play. It includes an on-stage string quartet and a troupe of dancers who serve as a sort of Greek chorus and who represent the ghosts of the women who have died as a result of the doctors’ ignorance. Everybody deserves a mention here – sets, costumes, music, choreography, sound, lighting – as well as the actors in this large cast as nurses, doctors and administrators, all of whom are very fine. This is a remarkable theatrical concept, fully realised, and a story worth telling. Dr. Semmelweis comes together as a glorious whole, a play entirely worthy of your time and money.
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AuthorRuth Leon is a writer and critic specialising in music and theatre. Archives
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