National Theatre at Home – Antony & Cleopatra and more Click here to subscribe Many more theatre-lovers have been able to see the productions of the Royal National Theatre since it initiated its on-demand streaming platform National Theatre at Home, a year ago. Every month several new productions are added and this month, the acclaimed Antony & Cleopatra starring Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okonedo has become available. And, just in time for Christmas, War Horse will also be available for the first time, to watch anytime anywhere. You can subscribe for a month (£9.98 /US$12.99 + tax) or a year (£99.98/ US$129.99). Paddington Saves Christmas – Broadway on Demand Click here to watch Inspired by Rockefeller Productions’ highly acclaimed stage production, Paddington Gets in A Jam, this charming puppet performance. Paddington Saves Christmas, has been created for children and families to enjoy at home over the holidays, while raising money for theatres around the world that are unable to put on family entertainment this year. In Jonathan Rockefeller’s Paddington Saves Christmas, Paddington helps his ever-grumpy neighbour, Mr. Curry, who is panicking in anticipation of the arrival of an important visitor for the holidays. Paddington volunteers to help Mr. Curry prepare his house for Christmas, but in typical Paddington fashion, his good intentions lead precipitously from one predicament to the next! $9.99 until Jan 4 Ladysmith Black Mombazo – Center for the Art of Performance UCLA Click here to watch Here is a wonderful, uplifting concert by the South African vocalists Ladysmith Black Mambazo. This concert was recorded in March 2020 and it’s what I listen to when it all gets too much. It’s not to everyone’s taste but it sure is mine. Music to lighten your soul. Songs are in Zulu and English, sometimes you can’t tell the difference, and it doesn’t matter at all. Ladysmith Black Mambazo are one of the world’s greatest and most distinctive vocal groups. For sixty years the legendary a cappella male choir have invoked the soul of South Africa with their intricate rhythms and harmonies and powerful, joyous songs. They shot to global stardom after featuring on Paul Simon’s Graceland and have been touring the world ever since. I defy you not to be cheered up by these songs. You can dip in and out whenever you need a mood lift. Metropolitan Opera – Online Click here to subscribe Throughout the pandemic the Metropolitan Opera made their archive available to audiences throughout the world and we had the opportunity to watch the most extensive library of great operas and legendary stars in our own homes. We still can, although now, unsurprisingly, we have to pay. From old-school legends to today’s great stars, we can still experience more than 750 full-length Met performances from their online streaming service. They are currently offering a 7-Day Free Trial which will automatically roll into a monthly subscription unless cancelled before end of the trial period. The Met has been videoing their performances for many years and they are the experts. The production values of audio and video are second to none and their interval features and interviews are often fascinating. This is the ultimate opera streaming collection, and can be watched on your computer, tablet, or mobile phone for $14.99/month or $149.99/year. For that, we can access any number of performances on their unlimited subscription plan. If you love opera this is definitely worth doing. Shana Farr and Steve Ross - 5th Annual Holiday Concert Click here for tickets If you enjoy Christmas songs, here’s a very classy Christmas cabaret from Steve Ross and Shana Farr, two of New York’s finest and most famous cabaret artists, livestreamed from St John’s in the Village. Greenwich Village, that is. If you’re not in New York you can pretend you are by tuning in on any device - phone, tablet, computer, or your big screen TV - while sipping on some hot cider (spiked, or not), and singing along to your seasonal favourites. They include: “We Need a Little Christmas”, “Christmas Time is Here”, “Winter Wonderland”, “White Christmas”, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year”, “The Christmas Song”, “I'll Be Home for Christmas”, “O Holy Night”, “Almost Christmas Eve” (by Steve Ross), “Department Stores Mean Christmas to Me”, and more holiday delights. Dec. 14-17 $35 Giselle - Royal Ballet - Rehearsal Click here to watch You can’t beat a good Giselle. One of the greatest of all Romantic ballets and a classic tale of love, betrayal and the supernatural. It doesn’t happen by accident. It takes years of training and weeks of practice and hours of rehearsal. In this video, fascinating for balletomanes (good word, that), Principal Dancers Matthew Ball and Yasmine Naghdi, the Giselle and Albrecht for this production, are coached by legendary teacher, Olga Evreinoff. This is how it happens, this slow, painstaking, step-by-step, movement by movement assembling of perfection. Whatever you may have thought, dancers are made, not born. No matter how talented, they have to learn how to do it. This video demonstrates that even these dancers, among the Royal Ballet’s best, at the peak of their form, still need the careful help of a master teacher. They do all this so that you can sit back and watch them make ballet magic. Giselle – Royal Ballet - Performance Click here for tickets Peter Wright’s traditional production for the Royal Ballet is superbly atmospheric in its telling of Marius Petipa’s classic tale of love, betrayal and the supernatural. Giselle is the classic ballet of the Romantic era – and, for the dancer performing the title role, one of the greatest challenges in the repertory. Peter Wright’s production, a classic itself, perfectly achieves the dual aspects of the ballet, moving from the naivety of young love between Giselle and Albrecht in the village setting of Act I to the ethereal Wilis in Act II’s eerie moonlit forest. Rich in vivid character detail and poignant depth of feeling, Giselle is a reminder of ballet’s power to move and thrill. The cast is: Giselle – Yasmine Naghdi, Albrecht – Matthew Ball, Hilarion – Luca Acri , Myrtha – Marianela Nunez – Berthe – Kristen McNally. The music is by Adolphe Adam, and the production and additional choreography are by Peter Wright. Dec 3-Jan 2 £16 Pocket Review 2.22 A Ghost Story – Gielgud Theatre Piercing screams penetrate the theatre at intervals throughout 2.22: A Ghost Story. This is supposed to be scary but initially it’s unexpected, and subsequently just annoying. The hostess of this dinner party insists that her house has a ghost who appears at 2.22am every night and the houseguests, an old friend of the host and her working-class boyfriend, are keen to stay up to verify her claim. Throughout this predictable rehash of all the ghost stories you’ve ever been bored by, and while impatiently waiting for the inevitable twist at the end, I was idly wondering whether any of these four actors had ever been on a stage before. Given that we were sitting in a West End theatre, at West End prices, that seemed an idiotic speculation. Not at all. A quick look at the online programme afterwards confirmed that they were all television actors without a theatre CV among them. Cue another scream. The Gielgud is no place to be if you have a headache.
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AuthorRuth Leon is a writer and critic specialising in music and theatre. Archives
April 2024
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