The Arts Online this week - Sept 4-10

Van Gogh’s Cypresses – Met

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Gain a deeper understanding of Van Gogh’s artistic process through new discoveries from recent technical studies of Wheat Field with Cypresses and Cypresses in The Met collection. Hear from Museum experts about how these examinations have enriched our understanding of Van Gogh’s materials and process and shed light on his artistic vision.

This hourlong documentary, made by the Met, is basically a lecture by a range of experts on Van Gogh’s paintings. It is rather dry, a lecture rather than an entertainment, but spending time with it repays the lover of his work with insights that can come only from deep scholarship and longtime absorbtion in the work of a single artist.

The video/lecture amplifies the works in the Met’s recent exhibition of Van Gogh’s Cypresses, which closed this weekend. The contributors include Susan Alyson Stein, Englhard Curator of 19th Century Painting, Silvia A. Centeno, Research Scientist, Department of Scientific Research at The Met and Charlotte Hale, The Met’s Walter Burke Conservator of Paintings.

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Lil Buck - The Swan

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One of the most original dance artists performing today, Charles “Lil Buck” Riley embraces multiple styles including Memphis Jookin’, ballet, hip-hop, and modern.

He has performed and collaborated with artists including Yo-Yo Ma, Madonna, Alicia Keys, Janelle Monáe, and Lizzo, but here he takes on one of the big guns of the classical ballet repertoire, The Swan, from Camille Saint Saens’ Carnival of the Animals. 

This is best known as a classical ballet solo, The Dying Swan, made famous by the great ballerina Anna Pavlova. Lil Buck has abandoned the original choreography by Mikhail Fokine, entirely reworking it in his own vernacular dance, but retaining the underlying emotional content and story of a large bird at the end of its proud life, without losing any of its original character.

I am a huge fan of Lil Buck. He is a brave dance innovator who treads his own path and always makes me want to follow him down it. Recorded at Jacob’s Pillow.

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Jack Absolute Flies Again – National Theatre

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One of my colleagues has remarked that Jack Absolute Flies Again is “very funny but not a lot more”. Well, as long as it’s very funny, how much more does it have to be?

Jack Absolute, you will remember, was the hero of Sheridan’s 1775 comedy The Rivals. That was very funny too and this reworking, set in 1940s British summertime, written by Richard Bean who wrote the smash hit One Man, Two Guvnors, has a smashing cast including Caroline Quentin and Kelvin Fletcher to do it full justice.

After an aerial dog fight, Pilot Officer Jack Absolute flies home to rejoin his fearless young Hurricane squadron at RAF Fontwell. Once back on British soil, Jack is shocked to find his old flame, Lydia, on the base.

He sets his sights on winning her heart, but with turbulence and hilarity never far away, his advances quickly turn to anarchy.
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Staged to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, this joyous farce is just the thing to round off the summer, if you’re not looking for anything too weighty.

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Wigmore Hall​
​This is the 5th week of Wigmore Hall’s free access to their archive and includes a number of special concerts. Here are four of them:

Stephen Hough - Bach and Schumann

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First, this was a significant concert in the history of Wigmore Hall. Sir Stephen Hough opened the special series of lockdown concerts in June 2020 with Busoni’s piano arrangement of Bach’s D minor Chaconne for violin, evoking Busoni’s own gala performance at the opening of the Wigmore Hall almost 119 years ago to the day.
Here too is Robert Schumann’s Fantasie in C Op.17.

Stile Antico – Song of Solomon

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The erotic poetry of the biblical Song of Solomon consistently inspired the masters of the Renaissance to some of their most ardent music. Love, desire and seduction are here explored in this Valentine's Day Concert in a rich selection of motets by composers from the Low Countries to the Mediterranean collectively called Arise, My Love: Sensuous Renaissance Settings of the Song of Songs. 

Sean Shibe Guitar - Back, Balcarres, Rowallan and More

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The recipient of a the Gramophone Award for ‘Concept Album’ in 2019, Sean Shibe is acclaimed internationally for his versatility. Another from the lockdown series, this recital culminated in Steve Reich’s mesmerising Electric Counterpoint, first recorded by Pat Metheny in 1987.

Doric String Quartet - Beethoven and Haydn  

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​Highly regarded on the international scene, the Doric plays Haydn’s String Quartet in F Op. 50 No. 5 'The Dream', and they are joined by leading viola player, Brett Dean, for Beethoven’s early quintet of 1801, String Quintet in C Op. 29.

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dMichael Jeter - Grand Hotel

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Here is one of those musical numbers that stays with you long after the show has closed. This one is from Grand Hotel on Broadway which had a spectacular cast and starred, amongst others, Karen Akers, Jane Krakowski, Brent Barrett and Liliane Montevecchi.
 
Michael Jeter won the Tony as Supporting Actor in a Musical for this performance and in his touching acceptance speech sent a message to all those who had a drugs or alcohol problem that his Tony was living proof that these issues can be surmounted.

Michael Jeter and Brent Barrett perform "We'll Take a Glass Together" from Grand Hotel on the 1990 Tony Awards telecast.
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Here too is his acceptance speech.

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Pocket Review

Next to Normal - Donmar Warehouse 

If you have ever lived with chronic mental illness – bi-polar, depression, anxiety – in yourself or someone you love, avoid Next To Normal because it will poleaxe you with your memories of your inability to cope.

Here you have a loving middle-class American family occupied with all the usual stuff – school, work, piano practice – blown up by a mom whose reality is fractured by a mental illness triggered by a tragedy which can’t be forgotten, avoided or got around. This incident has for her an enormity which destroys not only the mother, superbly played by Broadway star Caissie Levy, but also her entirely family and everyone in her path.

Every member of this cast is excellent and Michael Longhurst’s production, his last as Artistic Director of the Donmar, is a paradigm. It is impossible to imagine a better production of this musical. Jamie Parker is perfect as the husband who, in trying everything to stop his beloved wife from shattering, is both the hero and the villain in that everything he does makes the family situation and her illness worse.

Eleanor Worthington-Cox, (who won an Olivier for Matilda), is brilliant as the talented but inevitably neurotic teenage daughter, and Jack Wolfe gives a storming performance as the son. Trevor Dion Nicholas is versatile as the numerous psychiatrists and Jack Ofrecio as the daughter’s dogged boyfriend has real sweetness as well as strength.

The rock score, some 30-odd songs by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey, does its job, often loud, always effective, and superbly sung by the entire cast. The on-stage band is set above the stage but always part of the action, and integrated throughout into the play and the characters.

One can argue with Next to Normal’s premise which is that the mother’s severe mental illness is exacerbated by over-medication, a common American complaint about the treatment of bi-polar conditions. I’m not qualified to judge, and that is definitely a reasonable argument to make in the context of this play but the fragmentation of this family, and their efforts to combat the dreadful effects of this kind of illness on family life, ring entirely true for anyone who has seen it at close hand.

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