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Conflict – Mint Theatre www.minttheater.org Conflict is a lovely old fashioned play in the tradition of Harold Brighouse. Written in 1925, it is a love story set against the backdrop of a hotly contested election. A very English hotly contested election, I should add. Miles Malleson, almost forgotten now, was an important playwright in his time, although better known as an actor and screenwriter. With Conflict he combines his two great passions – sex and politics. Married three times with a great many more liaisons, open and clandestine, Malleson was an ardent pacifist and socialist as well as a prolific writer. The result is a provocative romance that sizzles with wit and ideas, although the end is never in doubt. You have to email [email protected] for a password and then follow the instructions to watch. I do wish they wouldn’t make watching their videos an obstacle course. Met Opera- History of Opera Click here to watch This week’s nightly Met Opera Stream is a history of opera itself through, well, operas. They start with Handel, the master of Baroque opera, and meander night by night through 150 years by way of Gluck, Mozart, Rossini, Verdi, and Wagner. And this is only Part One, so we can expect Part Two next week. Alongside this history the Met is enhancing the historical tour with a programme guide and other related articles. To access it, there’s a button to click alongside the Schedule marked Related Content. It’s all good stuff for opera lovers. Nobody can say that the Met isn’t doing everything it can during closure to keep its repertoire in our consciousness. Alone Together by Simon Williams - a Zoom play reading Click here to watch Having been watching actors all my life, sometimes from the audience, sometimes from the production table, sometimes from the control room, depending on what part of the process I was working on at the time, I am still amazed by what a good actor can do. Actors are magical creatures. Sometimes you can see their character thinking, sometimes they can tell you with their eyes and gestures what their character is not saying, often they can be saying one line and the audience hears another. This is called ‘subtext’ and the master at this was Noel Coward, but it takes another kind of master, an acting master, to deliver subtext so that the meaning of both the playwright and character are unobscured. I was thinking of this as I watched Simon Williams and Lucy Fleming in Alone Together as a couple who have failed to communicate over 25 years of marriage about the most important and traumatic event of their lives. Skillfully, they nudge us, the audience, into following their individual emotional journeys as they navigate themselves and us through this deceptively simple story. Much credit must go to the director Tam Williams (yes, this is a family affair) who extracts fine performances from both of them and from an excellent supporting actor, Joseph Timms, while working in the unfamiliar and unfriendly new environment of Zoom. The actors, playing close emotional scenes, couldn’t see one another, and had to cope with the cold and unforgiving technology of Zoom, while maintaining their characterisations and relationships throughout. As I said, actors are magic. Dusty Springfield – Live at the BBC - 1987 Click here to watch In last week’s blog I wrote that, for me, the immortal Sarah Vaughan was the greatest singer who ever lived and I’ll stick to that, but she’s not alone in my pantheon of great “girl singers” as they used to be called. One who is completely worthy of that designation – ‘immortal’, not ‘girl singer’ – is, or rather was, Dusty Springfield. Growing up in a middle-class but dysfunctional English family, Dusty and her brother, Tom, formed a singing group with a friend, known as The Springfields, and they had much success in the pop/folk genre. But when she left the group and became what was then known as a ‘blue-eyed soul singer’ (in other words, white), she became the most popular and highly paid female singer in the world. For many of us, Dusty was the gold standard of rock and pop singers, the soundtrack to our childhoods and adolescence, as she found meaning in the music and lyrics that she was unable to express in her rather sad life. Dusty, despite her enormous professional success on both sides of the Atlantic, was deeply unhappy, with drug and alcohol addictions that started very young and self-harm, which came later. The vulnerability we can easily hear in her beautiful voice came from deep within her, although, in this BBC special from 1987, you can hear the joy that she took in singing. A word of warning, it’s in black and white, do not adjust your set! Little Wars Click here to watch This is a digital revival of Steven Carl McCasland's Little Wars starring Juliet Stevenson, Linda Bassett, Debbie Chazen, Natasha Karp, Catherine Russell, Sarah Solemani, and Sophie Thompson, and directed by Hannah Chissick. Set during a fantastical dinner party, the piece features real life characters, Gertrude Stein (Bassett), her girlfriend Alice Toklas (Russell), Dorothy Parker (Chazen), Lillian Hellman (Stevenson) and Agatha Christie (Thompson) and anti-fascist freedom fighter Muriel Gardiner (Solemani). It is a fundraiser for Women for Refugee Women, hence that fantastic cast. Tickets are £12 and the play runs November 3-8. Shana Farr – Impossible Dream a capella Click here to watch Shana Farr is one of New York’s top cabaret singers. Tall, blonde, stunningly beautiful, with a voice to die for, she has the ability to sing everything from coloratura soprano to an Ethel Merman belt, usually wearing a shimmering gown with her hair in a glamorous chignon. I know, I’ve heard her do it all. But on this recording, made with her phone, there are no pyrotechnics, no show, no orchestra, not even an accompanist, which is why I wanted you to hear it. She has a 5-year old child, and like the rest of us, she worries about his future and his dreams. Aunt Dan and Lemon and Evening at the Talk House Click here to watch Readings of two successful plays by American playwright, essayist and editor, Wallace Shawn. Aunt Dan and Lemon highlights a romantic friendship between an adult and a child, which nourishes an addiction to vicarious violence. In this political horror story, Lemon looks back on her relationship with her captivating Aunt Dan, and conjures for us, in a most personal way, the terrifying allure of cruelty, and the enduring appeal of political strongmen who echo the dominating figures in our lives. I did see that one in the theatre but Evening at the Talk House is new to me. In this one, everyone’s invited to join the company of a playwright’s under-appreciated masterpiece, Midnight in a Clearing with Moon and Stars, at a get-together to raise a toast on the 10th anniversary of its opening night to recall that wonderful creative atmosphere, which they all miss so much. Tickets are $25 for each play or $45 for both but your purchase includes access to watch and re-watch the stream until 11:59PM EST on Sunday, November 29, 2020. Annoyingly, this company makes you ‘register’ before you can buy tickets. It’s how they get your email address so they can bother you some more later. But the extensive casting for both plays is top of the line – excellent American stage and screen actors such as Matthew Broderick and Jill Eikenberry so may be worth it. Isaac and Nora and family
Click here to watch And here’s the only thing I’ve heard this week that made me feel better about the world. Isaac and Nora are 11 and 8 years old, they live in France but are originally from South Korea. The guy with the guitar is their dad, the person behind the camera is their mum. And that’s all you need to know for you to feel better about the world too.
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AuthorRuth Leon is a writer and critic specialising in music and theatre. Archives
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