Category: Reviews

If you can remember what you were doing in the Sixties, they say, you weren’t really there. So what a chance to enjoy it if you missed it. And without the headache. Beautiful is a stomping, stonking ride through Carole King’s greatest early hits, all helpfully listed in the programme, that had the audience rising to… Continue reading Beautiful: The Carole King Musical

Opera North and South Asian Arts-UK join forces to make music worthy of Monteverdi’s Orfeo, a massive challenge, and they succeed beautifully. Jasdeep Singh Degun, composer and sitar player, weaves and melds European baroque music and Indian classical music into a coherent whole, equally respectful to both sources. Half the opera (which originally premièred in 1607)… Continue reading Orpheus

Former Principal of The Royal Ballet Ivan Putrov’s showcase for the male dancer, Men in Motion, is back bigger and better. Kyiv-born Putrov has brought his productions of Men in Motion to London in 2012 (twice), 2014 and 2017. His Dance for Ukraine fundraising gala (together with Alina Cojocaru) in March this year must have… Continue reading Men in Motion 10th Anniversary Gala

German born independent dance artist Esther Huss, who has been based in Northumberland since 2019, brings her new work Stairwall to non-theatre settings during October and November and I caught up with this eccentric and charming piece at the timber merchants Percy A Hudson in North Shields. As I approached, the timber workers were busy… Continue reading Stairwall – the things we find

It is Paddy’s personal journey that lies at the centre of Paddy goes to Petra and not his cross-country travels to reach this somewhat off-beat, archaeological tourist destination in Jordan, a country surrounded by Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Israel and the West Bank. For middle-aged farmer Paddy and his wife, touring has become something they do… Continue reading Paddy goes to Petra

Leos JanačekRoyal Opera House, Covent GardenReleased 26 August 2022 There is an oppressive feeling from the opening of this haunting, claustrophobic production that reminded me of the dramatization of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Instead of the watermill in the stage directions and suggested by the rippling music, director Claus Guth sets the opening in a… Continue reading Jenůfa

Music by Julian Philips, Aran O’Grady, Ábel Esbenshade, Blasio Kavuma and Lucy Armstrong, writer and librettist Phil PorterGrange Park OperaReleased 14 November 2022 Gods of the Game: a Football Opera could be the perfect introduction to opera for anybody who thinks that the art form is pompous or stuffy. This brand-new 100-minute work, recorded before a… Continue reading Gods of the Game: a Football Opera

What a glorious triple bill (curated by Carlos Acosta)—I nearly write tipple, and I wouldn’t be far wrong, didn’t someone say that Beethoven must have written his Seventh Symphony in a drunken state? Hotel is very trippy. And Forgotten Land, for me, it is the best tipple of the evening—music and dance in perfect mix.… Continue reading Into the Music: Forgotten Land / Hotel / Seventh Symphony

It’s easy to overlook, hearing a celebrity tenor perform “Questa o quella” in concert with devil-may-care abandon, just what a nasty piece of work the duke really is, and what a degenerate court he rules over. No mistake here, though. Verdi’s censors originally complained of the piece’s “repellent immorality.” The composer’s point was to contrast… Continue reading Rigoletto

What a glorious triple bill (curated by Carlos Acosta)—I nearly write tipple, and I wouldn’t be far wrong, didn’t someone say that Beethoven must have written his Seventh Symphony in a drunken state? Hotel is very trippy. And Forgotten Land, for me, it is the best tipple of the evening—music and dance in perfect mix.… Continue reading Into the Music: Forgotten Land / Hotel / Seventh Symphony