Sea of Troubles – Yorke Dance Project Click here for tix Yorke Dance Project's made-for-film production of Sir Kenneth MacMillan's Sea of Troubles breathes new life into an acclaimed classic. In 1988, choreographer Kenneth MacMillan captivated audiences with his emotionally charged interpretation of Shakespeare's Hamlet In 2017, the Yorke Dance Project revived the work, creating an atmospheric film adaptation that tastefully enhances MacMillan's vision of Hamlet's turbulent world. Directed by the documentary director David Stewart, this visually stunning production brings MacMillan's original choreography and costumes to the grounds of the moody Hatfield House, an English country estate built in 1611. MacMillan's achingly beautiful dance sequences have a newfound depth as Shakespeare's beloved characters move through the damp halls and misty gardens of the impressive estate. Dancers include Dane Jeremy Hurst, Romany Pajdak, Benjamin Warbis, Oxana Panchenko, Edd Mitton, and Freya Jeffs. Great Women Artists – Met Museum Click here to watch This is an illustrated article from the Met Museum by the art historian Kathryn Calley Galitz inspired by Linda Nochin’s pioneering feminist essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”. Kathryn Calley Galitz is a scholar of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century French art. At The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Galitz has organized international exhibitions on artists including Chassériau, Girodet, and Turner. This article exmines the work of three painters who radically reenvisioned the role of women artists around the time of the French Revolution. La Caravane du Caire - Andre-Modeste Grétry Click here for tickets This brilliant comic opera/ballet was highly successful and a breath of fresh air at the time of its premiere in 1783, but André-Modeste Grétry's La Caravane du Caire has been little-performed in the intervening centuries. At the time, it enchanted audiences who had begun to grow weary of the tragédies lyriques in style at the time. Nobody quite knows why it has not survived as a regular part of the operatic repertoire but fortunately, this 2022 coproduction from the Tours Opera and the Opéra Royal de Versailles has brought the little-known gem back into the spotlight, thanks to a highly-skilled cast of dancers and singers, in a creative, sparkling staging from Marshall Pynkoski. La Caravane du Caire is unique in its harmonious blend of French texts and Italian theater conventions. The German critic Friedrich Melchior Grimm, was a big fan, "No composer before Grétry has been able to so skillfully adapt Italian melodies to the character and flair of the French language," he wrote. Bells Are Ringing – Kelli O’Hara and Will Chase Click here to watch I once asked a famous violinist why he wouldn’t allow anyone to watch his rehearsals. He looked horrified at the question. “That would be like inviting dinner guests into the kitchen to taste an uncooked dinner,” he expostulated. Fortunately for us, not all artists agree. My friend Adele has unearthed this delightful rehearsal footage from Bells Are Ringing. No, not the original production of Comden and Green and Jule Styne’s glorious 1956 show which starred Judy Holliday, but the next best thing, Kelli O’Hara and Will Chase rehearsing the 2010 Encores production at City Center. The show’s plot revolves around something that doesn’t exist any more – a telephone answering service with live operators, which is why it would be difficult to revive today. But here’s a taste of that gorgeous score with two favourite Broadway singers. Pocket Review Nye – National Theatre Olivier Plays are like buses, you don’t see one for ages and then two come along together. I wrote last week about The Human Body, Lucy Kirkwood’s new play at the Donmar about the birth of the NHS. This week Nye opened at the National, a biographical memory play about the socialist politician who, almost single-handedly, gave birth to the NHS. The Human Body focuses on one woman, a GP who believes in a universal health system as most doctors just after the War, did not. She is fiction, emblematic of all the health workers who fought, and still fight, against incredible odds to make this extraordinary social experiment work. Aneurin Bevan was real, an unlikely hero who emerged from the Welsh coalfields with an unquenchable desire to make health care available to all, to “save everyone”. With the support of his wife, Jennie Lee, whose own remarkable career only happened after his death, he bullied, pushed, compromised (but not very much), and persuaded his Parliamentary colleagues to pass the 1946 bill that brought the NHS – tax supported health care free at the point of delivery – to everyone. By the day of its launch, July 5, 1948, 94% of the population was enrolled. The only choice to play Bevan, known as Nye, was inevitably the Welsh actor Michael Sheen at his best. We meet him when he is dying in an NHS hospital bed from which he soon emerges to live out, in his red striped pyjamas, all the important moments and crucial relationships of his life. The director, Rufus Norris, and designer Vicki Mortimer, have given him an empty stage decorated only with hospital curtains which stand in for nearly all furniture, and hospital beds which are put to many uses, not all of them beds. But innovative use of projections and film and choreography fill in all the gaps. And what a busy play this is, taking in a lifetime of incident, personal and political, in a country recovering slowly from war and social turmoil, through scene after scene, from schoolroom to Parliament, without actually losing us along the way. The enormous cast is wondrously marshalled, even taking part in a fullscale song and dance number, and doubling and tripling roles without confusion. Nye is a fine achievement.
0 Comments
|
AuthorRuth Leon is a writer and critic specialising in music and theatre. Archives
April 2024
Categories
All
|