Tuesday 18 April 2017

Limehouse at the Donmar, or, Yes, This Is How It Might Have Been

Note: This is a belated review of the performance on Wednesday 12th April 2017.

My hopes were high for this show after Steve Waters's powerful Temple at the same venue in 2015. I was not disappointed. This is an outstanding play, superbly performed: politically charged, emotionally moving, and posing us difficult questions.

The drama focuses on the hours prior to the Gang of Four's famous Limehouse Declaration founding the SDP. David Owen (Tom Goodman-Hill), and his wife Debbie (Nathalie Armin), Shirley Williams (Debra Gillett), Roy Jenkins (Roger Allam) and Bill Rodgers (Paul Chahidi) gather at Owen's house to argue, by turns bitterly, ambitiously, idealistically, and with anguish about political futures – their own and the country's.

The Royal Opera Season 2017-18, or A Doubtful Legacy

Note: You can find the full listings for the 2017-18 Royal Opera House season here.

The 2017-18 Royal Opera House season bears strong marks of departing artistic director Kasper Holten. If his farewell production, a dismal Die Meistersinger, saw him, as some suggested and I'm inclined to agree, shaking his fist at an under appreciative London public, this season reminds us of the broader legacy he leaves behind. It is, overall, not an encouraging one.

Starting first with the pick of the new productions which for me only arrives in March with Krzysztok Warlikowski's take on Janacek's From the House of the Dead. As a director he will be new to me, and I am slightly uneasy about someone who thinks the director's task is "to inject life into the structures imposed by the score and ossified conventions" (quoted in a fuller profile here) which suggests a distrust of the form which makes me uneasy. This new staging will also be up against stiff competition in Opera North's recent fine production, but it's great news that Janacek finally returns to the House after too long an absence, and Warlikowski's operatic work has been well received elsewhere, so I hope for the best. The conductor, Teodor Currentzis will also be new to me, but there are some fine singers in the ensemble – most notably Johan Reuter and Nicky Spence.

Monday 17 April 2017

Twelfth Night at the National, or, Played Too Much For Laughs

Note: This is a slightly belated review of the performance on Tuesday 11th April 2017.

This is a production that finds its groove after the interval. Director Simon Godwin at that point seems to realise that this is not a pure comedy. The melancholy and uneasiness which exist throughout are allowed to properly emerge and moments of real power result. But the effect, with one notable exception, is less than it should be because it doesn't emerge from a sufficiently complete reading of the piece.

Quite where Godwin's Illyria is never comes into focus. Elements of the new (a buzzer entry to Olivia's house, motor vehicles) and old (swords for the duel) are juxtaposed. My partner identified various references to current popular culture which passed me by. The show gets away with this on the whole, but I think a more concrete sense of place could have added depth.