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Monthly culture: October 2020
Friday, November 6th, 2020 08:14 amNot actually a quiet month (birthday, trip to Malta) but only three cultural viewings ...
17OCT20: MYTH (Sam Cassidy)
Rock musical based on the Orpheus legend. Some good songs, especially from the Fates, but also quite a few soulful ballads that went on a bit. This was very well filmed, and there were some good performances, but ultimately it failed to grip me: Orpheus was not a likeable character and Eurydice never quite got it together.
another review from someone who liked it more than I did
24OCT20: The War of the Worlds - The Musical (Jeff Wayne)
Still awesome after all these years. (The concept album -- remember those? -- came out in 1978.) The live musical version is discoed-up, and has some excellent special effects, as well as some other special effects. This performance was filmed at the O2 in 2012, the night before I saw it in Brighton with C, and features Marti Pellow singing the Journalist's songs (the Journalist's spoken part is played by hologram!Liam Neeson), Jason Donovan as Parson Nathaniel, and the White Cliffs of Dover as the Essex coast. The second half does lag a bit (I commonly make this complaint about musicals, so it might just be me) but the music, with all its classical quotations and motifs and bombast, still holds together very nicely. I really enjoyed this.
31OCT20: Ghost Quartet (Dave Malloy)
A spooky pick for Halloween: subtitled 'A song cycle about love, death and whiskey', this was fascinating if impenetrable. I gave up on trying to distinguish and interpret the lyrics, and just listened to the music. (According to the Guardian, "The story is woozy at best, fragments shaken together like a box of leftover puzzle pieces. Some of the stories have clear roots, while others float out of reach. Two sisters are lost in time. Ghosts, bears and ancestors reappear as the cast leap from tales of telescopes to tango dances to underground vaults where corpses are kept.". Which makes me want to listen again, ideally with a copy of the lyrics in front of me.) Disturbingly, there is an 18-minute darkness mid-production, with all the lights out. I would love to see this live, and I'm going to keep an eye out for Malloy's other works.
17OCT20: MYTH (Sam Cassidy)
Rock musical based on the Orpheus legend. Some good songs, especially from the Fates, but also quite a few soulful ballads that went on a bit. This was very well filmed, and there were some good performances, but ultimately it failed to grip me: Orpheus was not a likeable character and Eurydice never quite got it together.
another review from someone who liked it more than I did
24OCT20: The War of the Worlds - The Musical (Jeff Wayne)
Still awesome after all these years. (The concept album -- remember those? -- came out in 1978.) The live musical version is discoed-up, and has some excellent special effects, as well as some other special effects. This performance was filmed at the O2 in 2012, the night before I saw it in Brighton with C, and features Marti Pellow singing the Journalist's songs (the Journalist's spoken part is played by hologram!Liam Neeson), Jason Donovan as Parson Nathaniel, and the White Cliffs of Dover as the Essex coast. The second half does lag a bit (I commonly make this complaint about musicals, so it might just be me) but the music, with all its classical quotations and motifs and bombast, still holds together very nicely. I really enjoyed this.
31OCT20: Ghost Quartet (Dave Malloy)
A spooky pick for Halloween: subtitled 'A song cycle about love, death and whiskey', this was fascinating if impenetrable. I gave up on trying to distinguish and interpret the lyrics, and just listened to the music. (According to the Guardian, "The story is woozy at best, fragments shaken together like a box of leftover puzzle pieces. Some of the stories have clear roots, while others float out of reach. Two sisters are lost in time. Ghosts, bears and ancestors reappear as the cast leap from tales of telescopes to tango dances to underground vaults where corpses are kept.". Which makes me want to listen again, ideally with a copy of the lyrics in front of me.) Disturbingly, there is an 18-minute darkness mid-production, with all the lights out. I would love to see this live, and I'm going to keep an eye out for Malloy's other works.
