EIF 2012 – Samuel Beckett's Watt, or, A Brief Report of a Little Gem

This show is proof of a remark I have made before that very often simple is best. It consists of what I suppose one could call edited highlights of Samuel Beckett's novel Watt performed by Barry McGovern on an almost bare Royal Lyceum stage.

The novel tells the tale of Watt, his journey by train to the house of Mr Knott where he is to work, his life there and his eventual departure. Much of the pleasure is derived simply from Beckett's tongue twisting word games which McGovern brings off with real dexterity helped by his voice being one which I could listen to for hours.

For much of the show it feels funny, and inconsequential. But as the show reaches its conclusion one realises the story actually has a moving depth, and a lot to say beneath the word games about fundamental human dilemmas.

Sadly the run has ended so I can't urge you to catch this, but those outside Edinburgh should look out for future touring performances.

EIF 2012 – In Which First Music then a Musician Fail to Convince Me

Two brief reports follow on performances which for different reasons just didn't carry me off.

Greyfriars – His Majesty's Sagbutts and Cornetts and Concerto Palatino

Early Music has been a regular feature of the International Festival during Jonathan Mills's directorship. Generally speaking this is not an era of classical music that does much for me and I have consequently not attended many of the concerts in this strand over the last few years. However, I've always been intrigued by the idea of an ensemble of Sagbutts and Cornetts so I decided to give this performance a try.

The concert celebrated the 400th anniversary the day before of the death of Giovanni Gabrieli with an hour long selection of his instrumental pieces featuring various combinations of sackbut (the predecessor of the trombone) and cornetts – described in the programme note as “made of wood [with] finger-holes (like a woodwind instrument) but [using] the cup mouthpiece more often associated with brass ones.” The selections were taken from three collections of Gabrieli's music – the Symphoniae sacrae (1597), the Canzoni per sonare (1608) and the posthumously published Canzone e sonate (1615).

The quality of the playing was excellent and I found more to interest me in the pieces of later date which sounded more complex musically to my unfamiliar ears. That said an hour of this sound world was quite sufficient for me. I'm interested to have heard these performers once but I don't feel I need to hurry to hear them again. This is not a comment on them, but on myself – it rather proved to me that early music is just not really my cup of tea.

EIF 2012 – Opera North's The Makropulos Case

When the Festival brochure came out this was one of the show's I hesitated about. I wasn't at that stage sure how long I was going to come up for, I could (transport permitting) see it in Nottingham in the autumn, and I had recently seen the ENO revival of this opera. Suffice it to say that I was extremely glad I decided to join my brother at last night's performance.

Opera North has very strong recent pedigree in Janacek, as I noted when I previewed the opera programme, including a marvellous From the House of the Dead last year. This production continues in that fine vein – especially on the musical side - making this a worthy return visit to the Festival for them.

The opera is performed in English, and with one slight exception which I'll come on to, this is an entirely happy decision contributing to the real dramatic punch of the evening. The company's diction is mainly excellent, with the text delivered clearly and with point. This is an opera which, with its large number of medium sized parts, needs a really strong ensemble, and Opera North have assembled one including Paul Nilon (Albert Gregor), James Creswell (Kolenaty) and Stephanie Corley (Kristina). The only singer who is not wholly satisfactory is Yiva Kihlberg's Emilia Marty. She doesn't quite have either the stage or vocal presence to dominate proceedings in the way the character should and as Cheryl Barker did for Mackerras in the original run of ENO's current production. Part of the problem is I think that she, unlike the rest of the cast, is not wholly comfortable with the English – or at least she didn't sound wholly comfortable – and I would be interested to hear her perform the role in Czech. But too much stress should not be placed on this,  – it is a very creditable attempt and there is much to appreciate in her performance.

EIF 2012 - Waiting for Orestes, or, A Pale Imitation

Before setting out for this performance I was hopeful. The source material – the myth of Elektra - is dramatic stuff, and I had seen Asian theatre at last year's festival which was enthralling. Sadly this one makes for a dull 75 minutes.

According to the programme note Tadashi Suzuki, whose company this was, thinks that “all the world is a hospital” and had consequently set the drama in one. If he does this for all his shows, as said note seems to imply, I can't help thinking the novelty must have worn off some time ago. From my perspective this setting did nothing to illuminate the drama.

The best of this performance comes in the first ten minutes. The chorus appear in wheel chairs and execute a number of manouvers about the stage culminating in a very fast circuit round and round before crashing off stage left. This was visually quite striking, but it completely escaped me what relationship it was supposed to have to the story proper.

EIF 2012 - Here's Runnicles with Strauss's Alpensinfonie

After Friday's opening damp squib, it was fortunate that the man himself was on hand with the sort of work genuinely capable of blowing the doors off buildings: Richard Strauss's Alpensinfonie. The contrast with the Delius could hardly be more stark as Strauss employs similarly epic forces but orchestrates them to create jaw-dropping effects and vistas as he takes the listener on a climb through the alps.

In the wrong hands, the symphony can feel too episodic but with a Strauss conductor of the calibre of Runnicles such was never likely to be the case, and sure enough the music and narrative flowed smoothly and naturally. As the orchestra led us higher up the mountain they unveiled stunning alpine scene after stunning alpine scene. About the only reservation would be that the opening and closing nachts were not quite as pin drop quiet as needed for ultimate effect.

The piece places significant demands on the players, most notable the brass who have no shortage of the exposed entries. Here the BBC SSO acquitted themselves superbly, joined, it must be noted, by what must have been most of the professional brass players in Scotland. It wouldn't really be a Runnicles concert without some superbly placed offstage brass, and true to form a substantial battery of players had been located just outside the doors of the grand circle, creating a wonderful stereo effect where we were seated.

EIF 2012 - Delius's A Mass of Life

When hearing a live performance of a neglected choral epic there are broadly speaking two reactions, either "why isn't this performed more often" (e.g. Sibelius's Kullervo) or "that's been justly neglected". Delius's A Mass of Life fell firmly into the latter category, as well making a strong running for the title of most ironically named piece, seeming neither to effectively celebrate life nor contain a significant quantity of it.

It must be stressed that, for the most part, this wasn't the fault of the performers. The RSNO are generally a good orchestra and tend to be on the top of their game when under the baton of Andrew Davis as they were for this. Yet try as they might, they were unable to resuscitate Delius's score which remained stubbornly bland and devoid of emotion. They were joined by the festival chorus who didn't impress quite as much as they have done in some recent performances, though I am reluctant to criticise them too much since Delius's writing didn't seem designed to flatter them. The weak link in terms of performance was the quartet of soloists, particularly baritone Hanno Muller-Brachmann who seemed a little strained, though in part this may have been because he had by far the most to do. And even if you assembled the finest fantasy quartet in musical history it wouldn't make this work a much more appealing prospect.

The most significant flaw is probably Delius's inability to set text effectively. True, Nietzsche's Also sprach Zarathustra is a pretty mad affair but it is not without its moments, no more so than with "the world is deep" which Mahler sets so effectively in his third symphony, leaving you to feel as though the world has opened up to swallow you; Delius might as well be expressing a preference for the extent to which sandwiches should be filled. Elsewhere the bariton sings of the pangs of his heart, not that you would have any clue of that from the music.

Lohengrin at Bayreuth, or, Briefly Rising Above the Rats

For one all too brief scene two singers in this production rise about its lunacies. This blessed occurrence happens in Act Three Scene One. After the opening the chorus are not on stage and we have just the interaction between Klaus Florian Vogt's Lohengin and Annette Dasch's Elsa. The set is still not without its problems – I didn't think the cordoning off of the bed as if it was an art exhibit or the emergence of the swan boat from within the bed added anything to the scene – but for virtually the only time in the evening Vogt and Dasch were allowed to explore the relationship between their two characters without a lot of pointless busyness disrupting the engagement of the characters. For that one scene staging was in harmony with music. It was a telling illustration of just what a great house Bayreuth could be if they actually hired directors interested in achieving this on a more regular basis.

Unfortunately, as will now be clear, the rest of the opera does not match this – at least for me. It is not as awful a production as Marthaler's Tristan for two reasons – the principals are allowed to interact with each other most of the time and there is a certain fascination from trying to work out what the hell director Hans Neuenfels is trying to say, but as I found the former was surrounded by the silliness of the latter and I found it impossible to discern what the point of the latter was it was a pretty close run thing.

According to people I talked with at the interval the setting is supposed to be an animal testing laboratory in which Lohengrin is the only normal person. Consequently the chorus are all dressed as white, black or pink (Elsa's bridesmaids) rats. There are also a number of people wandering around in blue nuclear protection suits. The fact that Lohengrin is not from this place is indicated by his spending the Act One prelude trying to break into it. Quite why he wanted to break into it was never established and while I was watching this dumb show it was not in fact clear to me that that was what he was doing. What any of the rest of them are doing in an animal testing laboratory, what their roles are there or how any of this setting is supposed to illuminate text or music was not apparent to me either.

Tristan and Isolde at Bayreuth, or I Don't Care What The Text Says, Ignore Each Other!

The director of this production, Christopher Marthaler, makes his Edinburgh International Festival debut next week. According to the Festival, Marthaler is one of Europe's leading and most influential directors whose work has rarely been seen in Britain. All I can say is that if this production is a fair sample of that work then the less we see of him in UK houses the better.

Let us start however with the positives. Musically this was a very fine performance. Indeed after Act One I frequently closed my eyes and this improved the evening considerably. This was my first experience of Bayreuth. It is very clear that there is a distinct difference musically in terms of how Wagner sounds here as against other houses. Most notably the balance between voices and orchestra is rarely a problem – in fact just occasionally I felt the voices were over-favoured. The acoustic also gives a wonderful clarity to the orchestral sound – I felt I heard individual lines in the orchestra more clearly than I recall doing in other houses.

The stand out singer was Irene Theorin's Isolde. I was previously due to hear her in the ENO revival of Parsifal from which she withdrew, but apart from that if she has sung in the UK I have managed to miss her. I will be keeping a close eye out for her from now on, and UK houses should be rushing to engage her. She has a marvellous Wagner voice – warm, rich, ringingly powerful but not losing it in the quieter passages and tireless. She is also an excellent actress and did her level best to transcend the follies of the production.

National Theatre's Curious Incident, or, The Lies We Tell

Note: This is a review of the final preview on Wed 1st August. The press night took place yesterday, Thurs 2nd August.

I would have liked to take an audience straw poll after this show to find out what percentage had read the book, and then to discover how they found it. I have not read the book, so I was able to enjoy this show simply as a play and after a few moments of doubt at the beginning I was swept along.

On the face of it the narrative concerns the struggle of Christopher, who has Asberger's Syndrome, to solve a number of mysteries in his life – it starts out as the mystery of the death of his next door neighbour's dog but becomes about rather more than that. Most poignantly it's about the effect of having a child like that on a marriage, and about the lies we are capable of telling even, perhaps especially, to those we love when we are in pain. I won't give away any more than that because I don't want to spoil the story for anybody else who may see it not having read the book.

This story is brought to life by some superb acting. The central role of Christopher is played by Luke Treadaway, and I found him completely convincing. There's the striking mix of knowledgeable assurance in the areas about which he knows far more than the 'ordinary' people he encounters, but the production also brings out the overwhelming impact on him of new experiences like the, for most of us, simple business of train travel. His parents Ed and Judy are played by Paul Ritter and Nicola Walker. Both are very good but I would especially single out Ritter. The way in which his pain, desperation and guilt are gradully revealed is powerfully done. In the very first moments I was doubtful about Niahm Cusack's Siobhan – this is because it appears as if large chunks of the play are going to be narrated by her and something about her initial vocal tone grated for me -  but fortunately this is not the way the adaptation goes and Cusack's performance after that moment was spot on. Behind them is a six strong ensemble who perform multiple roles – all to a high standard.

La Boheme at Glyndebourne, or, A Confused Architect and Some Indifferent Singing

Well it had to happen sometime. I have been strongly supportive of much of the recent work of both Glyndebourne and tonight's director David McVicar. Tonight, I'm afraid was a bit of a failure in most departments (apart from the delightful company of my sister-in-law and the fact that it didn't rain).

David McVicar relocated the action to...well...quite honestly I'm not sure where we were except that it was a garret designed by a very confused architect, and there was a gas fire. This was, at least until Acts 3 and 4, an indifferent relocation – that is it didn't serious interfere with the drama but it did nothing to reinforce it at all, though it is never a good sign when in the opening moments the text is talking about smoke over the rooftops of Paris (or something like that) and one is wondering where in the world the performers actually are exactly. Nevertheless there is an awful lot of pointless busyness in this part of the staging (the fire jugglers added nothing), and I was sorely tempted to inaugurate a new award to be given to McVicar for superfluous use of revolve and insufficient use of gantry. After the interval things deteriorated further – in particular in terms of movement. First there was the problem of convincing one that Mimi is really dying. I realise that sopranos taking the role are unlikely (fortunately) to actually look consumptive so a director must find a way of disguising this. It was a great error on McVicar's part to place Mimi (Serena Farnocchia) centre stage in clothing which did nothing to disguise her healthy proportions. It was a further error to have Rodolfo (David Lomeli) pulling her upright periodically when she started coughing. The net result of all this was that I found it very difficult to believe that she was actually seriously ill. The second problem related to the issue of the bizarre architectural layout of the garret. For most of the action it appeared as if the four lived in one room beneath a gantry. How the gantry was supposed to relate to the room beneath it was beyond me. Moreover such limited use was made of this large, conspicuous piece of set as to make it seem fundamentally pointless. In Act 4, pointless became irritating. You may remember that Colline possesses a large overcoat which he bids farewell to in order to sell it to procure medicine for Mimi. As this moment approached it struck me that there was no sign of Colline's overcoat on stage. He departed into the wing (walking under the stage right set of stairs up the gantry) to collect it – nothing had previously been done to suggest there was any more of the flat in that direction. When he came back he walked in front of the set of stairs. I realise this may seem a small point but it was symptomatic of generally untidy and unconvincing movement and establishment of place. My wise sister-in-law did suggest that perhaps Colline had forgotten to bring the coat in with him on his original entrance, this is certainly the only explanation I can think of which would justify this confused piece of staging.

Kiss Me Kate at Chichester, or, Another Uneven Enterprise

This is the second time I've seen Kiss Me Kate live. The first time was a weak touring production in Edinburgh which mainly remains in my mind for my then girlfriend falling asleep during it (in fairness we went shortly after a transatlantic flight, it was also a fair comment on the quality of the performance). Chichester as one has come to expect throws everything at this production, but it is another Trevor Nunn enterprise that just doesn't altogether come off.

Part of the problem is the show itself and of course its source material. Apart from anything else it is just a bit difficult to take Kate/Lilli's submission to Fred/Petruchio seriously at the end since he has hardly been an angel – his sending a copy of their wedding bouquet to his new squeeze in Act 1 is especially low and he more than deserves to be on the receiving end of her temper. The only way I think that a production can really get round this is by convincing the viewer that there is a genuine, if ultimately somewhat irrational, love behind all the punishment the two visit on each other. Both Hannah Waddingham and Alex Bourne give solid performances but on this crucial point they did not convince me. My heart remained unengaged, at least by them.

The other problem with the material is trying to make the lengthy bits of Shakespeare in the show within a show come off. Here I'm not at all sure there is a solution – it is fundamentally a bit plodding – but I think you've got to try something other than just delivering it straight as here. Make more of the artifical quality of it perhaps, or have a couple of poor performances by the actors playing the roles within roles. Nothing along those lines, or indeed any other, is attempted here and the result is that these scenes drag.

Chichester's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, or, A Chilling Masterpiece

Sometimes as a theatregoer you are privileged to see a production in which everything works. The play is a masterpiece. The ensemble are spot on. The production is brilliantly judged. And the lead is giving the performance of a lifetime. Chichester's new production of Brecht's Arturo Ui is such an occasion.

Brecht's reimagining of Hitler as a small time Chicago hood taking over the grocery racket is fiendishly clever. It's often ludicrous (I don't think I quite appreciated before how potentially ludicrous the words 'cabbage' and 'cauliflower' are) but of course the ultimate effects are horrifying, and particularly as the play darkens after the inerval the audience are not spared. One other device to be mentioned is Brecht's clever use of Shakespeare – most obvious when having Ui appropriating snatches of Julius Caesar but present across the play and both serving as further mockery of the idea of taking the set up seriously (how can these gangsters be spouting lines of Shakespeare, and getting it wrong) but of course equally insisting that we do take it seriously – there is a Shakespearean tragic element to this enterprise only the culpable audience is much wider than the gangsters and politicians on stage.

As already mentioned, the supporting cast are uniformly excellent. This is a play that needs an especially versatile ensemble – it's a long way from the jazz which greets you as you take your seat to the fiery rant of the conclusion. It is worthy of note that most of the cast have to play at least two roles and they transfer between them seamlessly. Major contributions include William Gaunt's hapless Dogborough, Colin Stinton's courageous, doomed Ignatius Dullfoot, Lizzy McInnerny as his ultimately biddable wife, Joe McGann's fading Irish-American actor (whose scene with Ui provides a brief moment of hilarity in the descending darkness) and the trio of gangsters behind Ui. But everybody makes an important contribution to this stunning evening. At the centre though, is Henry Goodman's spellbinding Arturo Ui, who transforms before our eyes from the inarticulate butt of the joke in his first brief, silent appearance, to the searing, dominating dictator of the conclusion. So many little things contribute to this but I would single out two – the periodic, unsettling way that Goodman's wide staring eyes suddenly seemed to flash out at me, and his equally sudden transitions from reasonableness to vicious fury.