Aldeburgh 2012 - Perényi plays Bach and more

It is generally quite nice to start an Aldeburgh festival day with some chamber music in a Suffolk church, and this proved especially true of Miklós Perényi's recital in Aldeburgh church on Saturday morning. His programme, the first of three this week, was built around two Bach cello suites, part of a complete cycle.

He opened with the first, in G major, BWV 1007, which received a compelling and unmannered performance. Perényi is not a cellist I have encountered before, but his technique is of the highest calibre. True, the reading might not have been as emotionally engaging as some, and certainly it was very different from what we might have heard from Rostropovich (whose previous fund-raising performance of the suites in the same venue was referred to in a brief speech before the concert started), though this is not necessarily a bad thing.

And he was not without charm as a performer, drawing the audience in in a nicely understated manner: every now and then there was a playful spark in his eye as he glanced out towards us, or a smile as he prepared to embark on a particular movement. Still, the second suite, or rather the fourth in E flat, BWV 1010, was more emotionally satisfying with the Sarabande and the second Bouree being especially moving, but in part that is because there is more weight to the work. Both performances left me feeling rather sorry that I won't be making it to the other concerts; but, as ever at a festival, you can't do everything. If you can make Monday and Tuesday's performances at Blythburgh church, they should be well worth the journey.

Aldeburgh Festival 2012: Knussen Double Bill, or, Fairy Tale Magic and Morals

After last summer's amazing Louis Lortie performance at the Snape Proms it was firmly in my mind to make it to some of this year's Aldeburgh Festival. Then the opening weekend was announced and I knew I couldn't miss it. I first discovered Oliver Knussen's two operatic one acters based on Maurice Sendak's childrens books from a BBC Proms television broadcast. I was sufficiently beguiled to buy the CD but I'd never had the opportunity to hear them live, so I have been looking forward to tonight's opening performance with great excitement. I was not disappointed.

The production by Netia Jones and Lightmap put many of those on our main stages this season to shame. Using some of the most imaginative animation I've ever seen and, at least as far as Where the Wild Things Are was concerned (I don't know the book of Higglety Pigglety Pop to be able to judge) staying very faithful to Maurice Sendak's original illustrations, Jones conjured up beguiling imaginary worlds. By themselves the visuals were beautiful, but what made the dramatic side of the evening was the near seamless interaction between cast and animations, whether it was Lucy Schaufer's Jennie biting leaves off an animated plant, or Claire Booth's Max kicking his animated bedroom door shut. We do not see that kind of detailed performance often enough in an operatic context. There was more wonder and drama and emotional punch in these two one acters than in much other opera I have seen this season.

Musically it was fascinating to really listen to these works in a live context once again. I realised how much my ear had changed, how much more music I've heard since that Proms broadcast which I think took place back in 2002. Then I remember being sucked in by the way Knussen set the words of Higglety Pigglety Pop – the simple yet so true meditations of the dog Jennie on how dissatisfied one can be even when one seems to have everything, the quest for “experience” - and the not realising one is getting it at the time. This time I felt I appreciated much more in Knussen's score including the humour – for example, the repeated chorus which ends Pop.

Caligula at ENO, or, A Dull Dictatorship

Concealed among the adverts at the back of the programme for this production is one which sadly reveals that there is a CD recording dating from roughly 2006 of this opera. I say sadly because had those making the artistic decision to stage this piece had only material on paper on which to base their decision it would have been more justifiable. Had they listened to it in advance a discerning ear might have paused.

The best writing in this score is in the orchestra, but this isn't saying a great deal. There are a couple of striking climactic moments but Glanert has problems with how to proceed after them. There's a not ineffective strangulation scene – a nice variation on the usual love duet, and a briefly melodious, almost poetic trio for Caligula, Caesonia and Scipio towards the conclusion of Act One. Otherwise the problem is, as others have observed, that Glanert doesn't seem to be able to write very effectively for voices – this is particularly exposed by the number of times they break into straight speech, and by a lack of differentiation between many of the parts.

But the problem with the evening is not simply confined to the score. The production's approach is mistaken. It's not so much a question of design (the basic set is a section of a stadium) or costuming (although that of the chorus becomes increasingly bizarre as things progress), or even the inevitable full frontal nudity, but of fundamental atmosphere. It's all very well, up to a point, to play up the bizarre, crazed silly side of Caligula's behavior. But that has to be matched to a sense of chill – one has to feel the threat beneath it all the time that, at any moment, he may decide that someone must be killed. It isn't that plenty of people don't get killed in this production – quite a few of them on stage – but it left me indifferent verging on bored. Now this is partly the text/music which is poor at engaging the emotions, but the staging could have done something to mitigate that and here Benedict Andrews and his team fail.

The Physicists at the Donmar, or Proving that Plays that Preach are often Problematical

Note: This is a review of the preview performance on June 5, 2012. The press night takes place on June 7, 2012.

After the two blazingly good productions which opened Josie Rourke's tenure as artistic director at the Donmar (The Recruiting Officer and Making Noise Quietly) I had high hopes for this. There are good moments but as a whole it doesn't reach the same standards, though allowances must be made, at least as far as pacing is concerned, for the fact that it is still in previews.

The first issue is Durrenmatt's play. It starts off in decidedly comedic vein – indeed the first fifteen minutes as Inspector Voss struggles with euphemisms for murder are very enjoyable. But thereafter the comedy becomes sparser and sparser (although I loved the line - “the location is abominable but the air conditioning is excellent”). This would be okay if one felt the sense of sinister threat which seems to be implied by the text, and certainly by the final speeches, but somehow I just didn't. The ending struck me as preachy, and fell flat.

There are also problems with the performances. The centre of the play is that all the characters are finely balanced between sanity and madness and most of them are at the moment coming across as neither sufficiently mad nor sufficiently sane but too much on one level. Exceptions here are John Ramm's Detective Inspector (though he is perhaps assisted by mostly being the straight man to the lunatics) and Joanna Brooke's Nurse Boll who brings just the right implication of craziness into her manner and delivery. The three physicists of the title – Justin Salinger's Newton, Paul Bhattacharjee's Einstein and John Heffernan's Mobius are trying hard and all have some good stretches of delivery and manner – with a few more performances they may get it more completely right and this will probably help to carry the whole thing more successfully.

O'Neill's Long Day's Journey, or, A Masterclass in Every Sense

This production has been running in the West End for about two months now, and consequently just about every other reviewer has got to it before me. I don't have a lot to add to the praise which it has widely garnered, but I think it is important to record those rare occasions when one is lucky enough to see true mastery at work in live performance.

The mastery in the evening exists on two levels – the first is that of the play itself, the second that of performers and production. This is my fourth O'Neill play and I've really fallen for his writing. There's a wonderful poetry to it. Occasionally it can seem drawn out, perhaps a monologue a little too long, or a scene too extended but those moments of unevenness are part of his magic. Just surrendering to his world is a rich experience.

The performances in this revival are uniformly excellent. This is the first time I've seen David Suchet on stage and he was mesmerising. Two things especially struck me – his Act Four monologue which was one of those occasions when the whole theatre is just silent, hanging on every word, every pause, and the way that the Irish tinge to his voice becomes more pronounced as the evening, and the character's drunkenness draw on – the latter is a subtle thing, part of Suchet's deep performance. He is well matched by the crazed performance of Laurie Metcalf as his wife. I was really looking forward to seeing Metcalf again as she previously impressed me as the President's lesbian speech-writer in David Mamet's gem of a political satire November (when is somebody in London going to notice that Mamet has written a few things in the last few years and stage them over here?). Her performance in this production is testament to a remarkable range – it's a completely different kind of part and she is spot on. Again it's little things that stand out – the character has an awful lot of dialogue that has to come out at high tempo – Metcalf never loses the speed, the madness and yet every word is delivered with an extraordinary clarity. Also delivering excellent performances were three performers new to me – Trevor White and Kyle Soller as the sons and Rosie Sansom as the maid.

The Cunning Little Vixen at Glyndebourne, or, Once More Magic

As with last year's extraordinary Meistersinger, this new Glyndebourne production has attracted at least two carping reviews. For my money these are just as inexplicable as were the same persons criticisms a year ago.

Director Melly Still passes my ultimate test for an operatic director in this production. She convinced me that she had read the libretto and listened to the music and that an understanding of both those components informed her whole conception. Assisted by Tom Pye's sets, Dinah Collin's costumes, Paule Constable's lighting, Maxine Doyle's choreography and above all by Vladimir Jurowski's spot on reading of the score this is a true complete operatic evening in which stage, pit and performers form an organic whole.

This successful construction is begun by a beguilingly beautiful set. In the centre, stretching pretty much the height of the Glyndebourne stage is a large tree made of a whole series of pieces of wood, in which perch the observant birds. Behind it stretching up within the hillside is a twisting tunnel which doubles through the show as Badger/Vixen's underground burrow, human trackways through the forest, and in the final moving moments a path perhaps to whatever might lie beyond. The subtle changes of the seasons which are so integral to this story are picked out with spot on use of lighting and the simplest of stage effects – the fall of leaves, the billowing of snowy sheets. And the pacing of those effects perfectly matches the tempi of the score.

Antigone at the National Theatre, or It's All in the Delivery

Note: This is a review of the second Preview performance. Press Night is on Wednesday 30th May.

The life lessons I gleaned from this show can be summed up in three statements:

1) It is an almost infallible rule (the only exception I can immediately think of being the original London Into the Woods) that putting a clock which changes time during the show on stage is a serious mistake.

2) “There is no hatred more terrible than that of two people who used to love each other.” As someone who has endured an unpleasant divorce I know this to be all to sadly true.

3) It's all in the delivery.

Life Lesson No.3 became apparent because almost nobody manages to deliver the text effectively in this show. There is such a widespread problem of odd pauses and emphases as to make me wonder if some kind of foolish directorial instruction has been given, but whether actors or director are responsible swift action is required. For in much of this play everything depends on one believing what one is being told. The chorus has to make you see the things they describe. They have to make you believe in their fears. There are occasional flashes of this but nowhere near enough. Another factor may well have been the decision to split the chorus's lines around an ensemble of ten. None of them are given much individuality by costuming or direction, or enough lines to really establish their presence. They fade in, speak a few lines (too often to little effect) and fade out again.

Flora the Red Menace in Walthamstow, or, Break Heart, I prithee Break

I first saw this show in a production by the Dundee Rep at the Edinburgh Lyceum in 2004. I fell for it then and have been a devoted advocate ever since, an absolute believer that Kander and Ebb's first collaboration is a musical theatre masterpiece. I was thus thrilled when I saw that a London fringe production was being put on (the first professional production in the city in 17 years and, as far as I'm aware the first professional production in the UK since Dundee in 2004). As I say I was thrilled, but I was also afraid that I would be disappointed. Thankfully this was not the case. Everything in this production is not perhaps as it would be in my ideal staging. The company is not as uniformly well cast as might be desirable. But there is plenty to like in both, overall they allow this great work to shine, and, above all, this is an evening blessed with a stunning performance by Katy Baker in the lead role (deservedly nominated for an Offie).

For those who don't know this work, it is set in depression era New York and follows the attempt of our heroine Flora to get a start in life (alongside a community of her friends), and as a result her meeting and romance with Harry who turns out to be a Communist. Both book and lyrics are often witty, and the musical includes, for my money, some of Kander and Ebb's best numbers including Flora's introductory 'The Kid Herself', Harry's paean to the Communist party ('Sign Here'), and the little gem of a trio 'Where Did Everybody Go'. And yet this show has not entered the mainstream and remains better known for giving Liza Minnelli her start.

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau Remembered

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau died on 18th May 2012, a little over a week before his 87th birthday. He was without doubt one of the finest lieder and opera singers of his, or indeed any, generation. I will leave the writing of obituaries to others, but I thought I would put together some of my favourite recordings. The result can found in this Spotify playlist:

Wonderful Town, or it pains me to say this, but...

I wanted to love this performance, I really did. In fairness everybody on stage and in the pit are giving it their all, and that includes the most problematic performer of whom I shall have cause to say more later. But beyond that particular issue there is something broader that isn't quite right with this show, and when I observed that both choreographer and designer were also involved with last year's Singin in the Rain, the nature of the broader issue became clearer. It isn't that anything in design or choreography is mistaken but somehow that quality of naturalness, of humanity – that thing that makes you feel this story is being lived now before your eyes just wasn't quite there. Now it is true that this performance had a very tough benchmark to live up to as the last time I saw this show was in the marvellous Broadway revival with the incomparable Donna Murphy as Ruth and Gregg Edelman as Bob. However, I think this performance could have come a lot closer, even with the caveat already mentioned, but for the other elephant in the room.

For the sad, harsh truth is that Connie Fisher is not good enough to play Ruth Sherwood. This is not for lack of effort on her part. She tries to project the necessary personality which done right should make the character the electric centre of every scene she's in, but she just doesn't have it. And there is a more serious problem – the state of Fisher's voice. Despite miking it simply isn't strong enough for this kind of lead performance, and this is sadly exposed every time she's in a duet situation – Lucy van Gasse (Eileen), Michael Xavier (Bob) and Tiffany Graves (Helen) all sing her off the stage. If Fisher were able to compensate for vocal weakness with stage presence it might have been okay but as already noted that presence just isn't sufficiently there.

Globe to Globe's Balkan Henry VI, or Shakespeare transcends the Language Barrier

You're going to all three parts of Henry VI in three different Balkan languages? Are you mad? That is what I suspect most people would have said to me had I informed them this was what I was up to yesterday. However, after some early qualms when I gathered the surtitles would only indicate scenes and characters I can say it was a fascinating, for long stretches enthralling, day, which I would have been very sorry to have missed.

We started with the National Theatre of Serbia in Part One which they dismissed in two hours. There was some fine Shakespearean delivery from the start with Predrag Ejus's delivery of the Bishop of Winchester's eulogy on the deceased Henry V. Excellent use was made of the set of metal tables and chairs, for sound effects, for emphasising the division of kingdoms, for allowing ambush parties to rise up from beneath and drag bodies to their doom. Indeed one of the things that not understanding the language makes one appreciate far more is the movement and gesture. In this first part I was also much beguiled by Talbot's duel with Joan of Arc (or rather with the whole of the rest of the company), and her trial scene. However the highlight was the comedy turn of two messengers (I think but can't be absolutely certain played by Pavle Jerinic and Bojan Krivokapic). I can't recall how these figure in the original text, but having in the opening scene given us two nicely disputed versions of events in France, they rounded off this interpretation with a mostly mimed summation of the genealogy of the plot thus far – the payoff being that in a final attempt to get everything clear they deploy Henry V's ashes (which sat balefully overlooking proceedings through the rest of the play) as a prop, with predictable but entertaining results. All in all it was an auspicious beginning.

The Flying Dutchman at ENO, or in which the ship just never quite sets sail

This ENO production has been widely praised. It left me completely cold and fairly unimpressed. Pondering this overnight, I do think it is possible that going straight from Glass on Friday to Wagner last night simply overloaded my system and I was just not in the right place to get on with this performance. I also think it's possible that my ears were spoilt for this by having so recently heard really first rank Wagner under the baton of the man himself in Berlin. Finally, I conclude that this is an opera that I just do not like very much. Allowing for all these caveats, let me try and explain why for me this evening did not work.

The first issue is the work itself. This is only the second time I've heard it live. The previous occasion was the last time ENO mounted it in the unsuccessful elastic band production. It didn't make much impression muscially on me then, and a second hearing has not changed my mind. It does not seem to me that the Dutchman shows much evidence of Wagner having developed beyond the thin inspiration of Rienzi, and I find it interesting that the far more developed and fascinating Tannhauser fails to hold a comparable place in the repertoire.

The second issue is the problematic question of benchmarks. Quite a few of my recent Wagnerian performances have been truly musically great – in this category I would include the Berlin Lohengrin, the Glyndebourne Meistersinger, the Royal Opera Tannhauser and Lohengrin – all of them were strong (in two cases extremely powerfully so) in production terms. I just do not think that this performance/production of The Flying Dutchman got near that category. In a sense it seemed to me to illustrate the gulf that exists between the Coliseum and those other companies. Now you can of course argue that those other companies have greater resources, can employ the best singers and conductors in the world and so on and so forth. Perhaps the comparison is an unfair one, but I found it last night inescapable.