You can tell it’s Christmas – about 50 productions of A Christmas Carol, all claiming to be unique, at least 20 versions of The Nutcracker, and Christmas concerts by everybody you’ve ever heard of, singing seasonal songs you never liked in the first place but which have achieved the patina of classics by annual repetition. Let’s ignore them, and perhaps Christmas will go away completely. Instead, here are some gems to get us through this week and I’ll think again next week. Meet Me in St Louis – Irish Rep Dec 11-Jan 2 Click here to watch Let’s start with something to cheer us up in these dark days, a grand old musical with a lovely score. You already know the songs from the 1944 Judy Garland movie so you can sing along. Meet Me in St Louis was adapted for the stage in 1989 and has been abridged by New York’s Irish Rep for this digital production. Don’t worry, the songs are still there. The cast is headed by Shereen Ahmed in the Garland role as the girl on the trolley; Max von Essen as the boy-next-door; and Broadway star Melissa Errico as the matriarch, Anna Smith. I’d pay to hear Errico sing the telephone directory so I’m expecting great things from this necessarily homemade lockdown production in which the cast, separated from one another by the restrictions of the virus, had to do their own tech, filming, lighting, and their period hair and makeup, before they could sing a single song. In these circs, I’m happy to make allowances. Accessing the production is blessedly clear from the Irish Rep website but, for those of us not on US time, I advise checking the start times carefully because they’re all listed for the US. For those of us in Europe, it’s easiest to pick one of their 2pm or 3pm matinees which translate into 7 or 8pm UK. This time, though, the Irish Rep has kindly put on several performances, on Dec 19th and Jan 2nd, with start times throughout their day so even Australia and Hong Kong can tune in. Don’t forget to register in advance. National Gallery – Director’s Choice Click here to watch The director of London’s National Gallery, Gabriele Finaldi, takes three of his favourite paintings – a Titian, a Cezanne, and a Vermeer – not the obvious choices, and tells us about them with the knowledge and passion of a real connoisseur. Folksbiene Chanukah Spectacular Dec. 8-12 Click here to watch If you’re not Jewish (or a New Yorker) you may not know that Chanukah, the Festival of Lights, starts this week. It involves the lighting of candles every night, so don’t set fire to the house. The National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene is going international for this mix of live performances and video greetings from a globe-spanning array of performers, including Mandy Patinkin and Barry Manilow and what appears to be every Jewish star in the world. Adam B. Shapiro, who was a fabulous Tevye in the cast of the company’s hit Yiddish version of Fiddler on the Roof, is the Master of Ceremonies. This should be a lot of fun whether you’re Jewish or not. It’s free but you need to register in advance. New York Times - Chinatown Click here to watch Every visitor to New York goes to Chinatown which just as dirty, noisy, crowded, and uncompromising as it always has been. Even if you’re just in search of the perfect dumpling or a knockoff handbag, Chinatown is the closest to its history of any New York neighbourhood. And the food is wonderful, with so many tatty-looking restaurants serving heavenly and authentic dishes from all of China’s regions. The residents are not exactly unfriendly, they’ll take the tourists' money quite happily, but they’re not welcoming. This is a neighbourhood for those who live here or used to live here. Some days it feels more Chinese than Shanghai. Here’s a wonderful interactive virtual tour of the neighbourhood with NY Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman. Metropolitan Opera – English week Click here to watch All the operas in this week’s Nightly Opera Stream were composed within the past 90 years and they are all in English. That is to say, English is their original language, they are not translations from Russian, German or Italian. There are some crackers here. The perfect new production of Porgy and Bess, about which you have heard me rave before, is Friday’s opera and, please, don’t miss it. Also not to be slighted are two Thomas Ades operas, Exterminating Angel and The Tempest, John Adams’s Doctor Atomic, Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes, Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, and John Corigliano’s exquisitely romantic The Ghosts of Versailles. There are useful programme notes about each opera on the Met website alongside the schedule. Just click on Related Content and then Weekly Guide to find everything you need to know. Or you could just watch and listen to the music. By the way, Porgy and Bess is not 'The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess' as the Gershwin Estate and the Met now insists, it is George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward’s Porgy and Bess. Ira Gershwin came late to the project at Heyward’s request and wrote additional lyrics. Dubose Heyward, who introduced George Gershwin to his original play and to the Gullah music of South Carolina on which the score is based, is shamefully excluded from recognition. An Evening with Audra McDonald December 9 at 7:30 PM ET. Click here to watch This one is quite expensive for an online concert - $35 - but it IS Audra McDonald, vocally and dramatically one of the glories of the American musical theatre, so perhaps her myriad fans will want to dig deep for this one. Also, it’s for charity, supporting New York City Center, Manhattan’s first performing arts center, founded by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia with the mission of making the best in music, theatre, and dance accessible to all audiences. McDonald, the only six-time Tony winner, will headline New York City Center's 2020 gala, which will be filmed live on the venue's stage, and streamed Dec 9 at 7.30 New York time but will then be available on demand for one week following the premiere, for the rest of us. Royal National Theatre at Home Click here to access Why is the National Theatre so clueless? They have started a new streaming service giving access to their unparalleled archive of plays online, which is exciting, indeed thrilling, the best news for theatregoers in ages, and what do they do? They design a website so complicated that it’s virtually impossible to navigate. I finally worked it out. Here’s how you do it. Go to the National Theatre website, then click on Start Watching, then click on Browse. This will give you the choices. Click on your choice, then click on Subscribe. You can either watch a single play or subscribe on an annual or monthly basis. It costs £83.32 annually, or £8.32 for a month, which, if you’re an avid theatregoer, doesn’t seem to me to be exorbitant. And you can just join for a month, if you only want to see that single play and then you can cancel before the month is up. Whew! Sing For Your Supper – Liz Callaway/AnnHampton Callaway/Shirley Callaway Click here to watch You will probably be familiar with the work of musical theatre leading lady Liz Callaway and that of jazz and cabaret singer/songwriter/pianist Ann Hampton Callaway. You may also know that they are sisters, both of them Tony- nominated Broadway and concert artists. What you may not know is that their mother, Shirley Callaway, now sadly no longer with us, was a considerable talent in her own right as a singer, pianist, and a famous vocal coach who worked with many stars in the Broadway theatre. It is a tribute to her, as well as to them, that her daughters, both hugely talented and successful, sound completely different from one another. Shirley Callaway was clearly no cookie cutter coach. I found this clip online of the three of them and they looked and sounded so happy together that I asked if I could share it with you. I'm sure you will agree that it's the perfect way to start a new week.
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AuthorRuth Leon is a writer and critic specialising in music and theatre. Archives
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