Monthly culture: November
Tuesday, December 13th, 2016 06:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tamaranthAm hideously behind on reviews: luckily (?) November was a very quiet month culturally.
12-NOV-16: La Boheme (Puccini, version by Robin Norton-Hale) - Cutty Sark Theatre, Greenwich
Updated version, funny and witty, sung in English and set in Kilburn (apparently: there were several local references, so maybe it's just a generic 'young graduates in the big city' setting). Opera UpClose delivered a sterling performance: particular kudos to Musetta, sung by Sarah Minns, who wore red, sashayed like mad and leapt up onto a table right next to us in the bar scene. (We could have done with more clarity about the literal shift in location for Act 2: audience meandered to other end of the Cutty Sark theatre, which is under the belly of the ship, rather haphazardly.) Lovely venue, though, despite occasional strange acoustics; appreciative, and youthful, audience; respectful updating of Puccini's classic.
a more coherent review here
15-NOV-16: Acedian Pirates, Theatre 503, Battersea
A small, spare production set at the end of a long war. The soldiers are due to go home, and they'll be taking their captive -- "Let's just call her Helen". None of them have actually seen her ("She's the moon, so they say"). There's a prophecy involved. Their commander, Troy, is bruised and bloody and grinning with it: a dangerous man. He's done something terrible, though the nature of his crime is never stated.
The play focusses on Jacob, a military intelligence officer from 'the other side', and his growing despair at and detachment from the violence, boredom and claustrophobia of war. Maybe the ligthhouse is the fifth circle of Dante's hell, reserved for those who have sinned by acedia: 'a state of listlessness or torpor, of not caring or not being concerned with one's position or condition in the world'. The Acedian Pirates concludes with Troy declaiming a line from Dante's Inferno: "now we are sullen in the black mire", and adding, "well, boys, what shall we do now?"
I found this slightly too wordy, but utterly compelling. The staging was beautiful, and the actors convincing. a more thorough, more critical review
12-NOV-16: La Boheme (Puccini, version by Robin Norton-Hale) - Cutty Sark Theatre, Greenwich
Updated version, funny and witty, sung in English and set in Kilburn (apparently: there were several local references, so maybe it's just a generic 'young graduates in the big city' setting). Opera UpClose delivered a sterling performance: particular kudos to Musetta, sung by Sarah Minns, who wore red, sashayed like mad and leapt up onto a table right next to us in the bar scene. (We could have done with more clarity about the literal shift in location for Act 2: audience meandered to other end of the Cutty Sark theatre, which is under the belly of the ship, rather haphazardly.) Lovely venue, though, despite occasional strange acoustics; appreciative, and youthful, audience; respectful updating of Puccini's classic.
a more coherent review here
15-NOV-16: Acedian Pirates, Theatre 503, Battersea
A small, spare production set at the end of a long war. The soldiers are due to go home, and they'll be taking their captive -- "Let's just call her Helen". None of them have actually seen her ("She's the moon, so they say"). There's a prophecy involved. Their commander, Troy, is bruised and bloody and grinning with it: a dangerous man. He's done something terrible, though the nature of his crime is never stated.
The play focusses on Jacob, a military intelligence officer from 'the other side', and his growing despair at and detachment from the violence, boredom and claustrophobia of war. Maybe the ligthhouse is the fifth circle of Dante's hell, reserved for those who have sinned by acedia: 'a state of listlessness or torpor, of not caring or not being concerned with one's position or condition in the world'. The Acedian Pirates concludes with Troy declaiming a line from Dante's Inferno: "now we are sullen in the black mire", and adding, "well, boys, what shall we do now?"
I found this slightly too wordy, but utterly compelling. The staging was beautiful, and the actors convincing. a more thorough, more critical review
