Hofesh Shechter Shechter II HOME 31 October 2018 to 03 November 2018 Shechter II is the ‘young company’ of Hofesh Shechter Company, and their energy is incredible. Shechter has created an almost non-stop 55 minutes of dance for them – the central piece, Clowns, originally devised in 2016 and now topped and tailed by a substantial intro called The Entrance and a fun finale, named Exit. Clowns itself works up to a longish sequence of curtain-call style moves, and that’s still there, creating its own wild audience applause – the master-manipulator has not lost his touch. The eight dancers work together the whole time, and their accompaniment, most of the time, is a set of mesmerizingly iterated pounding rhythms – ‘tribal’, some would call it – four-to-a-bar in The Entrance and two in a bar for Clowns. Corelli’s Christmas Concerto gets a look-in, too, during The Entrance – though it uses only part of one movement, so why they credit the full track listing of their CD source, including the Pastorale which gives the concerto its nickname (but which we don’t hear), goodness knows. At the start it seemed as if – given that it was Hallowe’en and you soon thought ‘Tis the season to be creepy’ – the dancers were showing us the undead walking abroad. Slowly and dimly lit, their ragged shapes took on unsmiling movement, menacingly so even when the steps were happy-happy skipping and folksy circles. Shechter’s invention includes repeated bits of choreography which he brings back and combines like leitmotifs, and one set that becomes more and more dominant in this work, from the opening to Exit, is of physical assaults and murderous mimed movements. All just fake, of course. They’re clowns, doing it for fun, purely to entertain. Or are they? Maybe they’re like puppets dancing on someone else’s strings – the unremitting, stamina-sapping, continuous movement certainly gives that impression. You make what you will of Hofesh Shechter’s work: his Manchester audience clearly loved it and you can only applaud the technical accomplishment of all concerned (the lighting design team of Lee Curran, Richard Godin and Alan Valentine have achieved amazing things) and the superb skills and dedication of his young dancers.

Ian Rankin and Rona Munro Birmingham Rep Opera House, Manchester 30 October 2018 to 03 November 2018 I'm a Rebus fan, so really want to like his first stage outing, a tale specially written for the theatre, rather than adapted from one of the novels. But the reviews from earlier in the tour are not encouraging … It’s a new plot but involves one of his oldest characters, Big Ger Cafferty, a notorious Glaswegian gangster who has sparred with Rebus over more years than either will care to remember, and here he seems to know some of the answers to an unsolved case from the past. Rebus, now retired, comes into contact with the daughter of a murder victim whose killer was never traced, and she challenges him to solve the mystery. There are a satisfying number of twists and turns in the typical Rankin manner, and convincing performances. But it’s undeniably a sparsely populated Edinburgh compared with the books or TV versions, and while the inevitable concentration on character pays its own dividends, the visual concept – presumably arrived at after discussions between director Robin Lefevre and designer Ti Green – is an unfortunate mistake. It’s a huge, stage-filling collection of very dark grey walls and sweeping staircase, vast and dwarfing the actors, when what was really required was something much more intimate and involving. Charles Lawson (only recently having made a villainous revisit to Coronation Street as Jim McDonald, and now recovered from an on-stage mini-stroke a couple of weeks ago) is pretty much an ideal Rebus. His humanly defective detective is haunted by past failures – literally in this case – but with enough whisky-fuelled confidence to go into battle again. He looks almost exactly right, a little too handsome perhaps, but that’s OK. If they’re ever going to put Rebus back on TV – please – Lawson is the man. John Stahl’s imposing gangster, with his thin veneer of respectability but still oozing oiliness by the bucketload, comes into his own in a long second act confrontation that satisfyingly ratchets up the plot and tension. Just a pity that here, as elsewhere, audibility is sometimes a problem. I’ll say it again – all plays these days, in a 2,000-seater, should be mic'd. Perhaps the piece has gathered conviction and pace during the tour: whatever, I enjoyed it more than earlier reports suggested I would, and I’m happy to see the Opera House is still persevering with the occasional serious play among all the musicals and on this occasion attracting a sizeable audience. #Rebus #Lawson

Frederick Ashton Birmingham Royal Ballet Lowry Lyric Salford 24 October 2018 to 27 October 2018 Frederick Ashton’s 1960 rustic idyll is one of the most joyous and innocent works in the ballet repertoire. Loosely based on a scenario that goes back to the 18th century, it tells a seemingly timeless tale of rural life: Lise, a pretty young girl, is in love with young farmer Colas, but her widowed mother, Simone, wants her to marry the son of prosperous M. Thomas – one Alain, who, is a bit of a country bumpkin. Act 1 outlines the situation, Act 2 is a peasants’ harvest celebration ending in a sudden storm, and in Act 3 there’s nearly a forced marriage but in the end it all turns out happily, followed by general rejoicing. The staging is enchanting, from the dancing rooster and chickens who begin it, a live Shetland pony, a lot of ribbon twirling (part of the original tradition of this ballet), a clog dance and a Maypole to the final sentimental twist (which I won’t reveal in case you haven’t seen it). So, though the setting is ostensibly French, in style the ballet is utterly English: the prima ballerina’s role all daintiness and charm, the leading man all nobility and grace – with the music-hall tradition of female impersonation given to the man who plays Widow Simone – and a string of circling country-dance style movements for the corps de ballet. I guess that’s why David Bintley has chosen it as one of two company ‘signature’ works for his final year’s big tours with Birmingham Royal Ballet. Though I think it’s now 12 years since we last saw it at The Lowry, it used to be a regular both here and elsewhere. (Which meant that the big surprise on Press night was not that it was beautifully danced, or that the audience loved it, but that it didn’t draw as many punters as it should have done … perhaps they forgot to do the marketing on this one.) BRB has long been a family of performers, and this time I think in the casting we were being told: ‘This is the next generation – watch them …’ Miki Mizutani was as delightful a Lise as I’ve ever seen, with plenty of smiles and teenager-like pouts to express her surging feelings. Lachlan Monaghan was superb as Colas, with some magnificent jumps and completely equipped for all the lifts. Kit Holder, as Alain, and Rory Mackay, as Widow Simone, produced some very funny comic dancing, and Gus Payne (the cockerel) and his ladies strutted their stuff. Paul Murphy conducted the Royal Ballet Sinfonia in a lively reading of John Lanchbery’s score. #BRB #Fille #Ashton

William Shakespeare English Touring Theatre Oldham Coliseum 23 October 2018 to 27 October 2018 ETT’s Othello comes trailing golden opinions from its brief tour and London run in 2017. This time the major roles are all re-cast, with some of the actors at the outset of their careers and others highly experienced. The staging by Richard Twyman is sparse but none the worse for that – fashionable fluorescent tubes inside a metal frame being the main theme. There are a few attempts to get down with the kids by introducing bawdy chants and lively songs that have little to do with the script (also a fashionable gimmick). The casting of a professional-debut Othello (Victor Oshin) and a young Desdemona (Kitty Archer) certainly helps the attempt to relate to a young audience. They could be Romeo and Juliet, and maybe that makes the transition from ecstatic youthful infatuation to murderous jealousy more believable. That’s what the play is about, after all. The production plays up the idea that Othello is (apparently) a Muslim convert to Christianity (or the Venetian version of it), and implies that he rejects that badge quite early on – not because his mind is being poisoned but because the misogynistic barbarism of a supposedly Christian culture has got to him. There’s obviously plenty of misogynistic barbarism in the play itself, though whether Shakespeare thought of that as a specifically Christian characteristic is more doubtful. Most of the concept-raising and gimmickry is before the interval, however, and after it the play really gathers pace and menace as it should. Victor Oshin and Kitty Archer are perfectly good, but the intriguing portrayals come from Paul McEwan as Iago and Kelly Price as Emilia. This was definitely an interpretation where the mind of Iago was the lynchpin of the whole show. McEwan makes him far from a conventional slimeball, but an outwardly easygoing, dutiful guy (northern accent, even) who’s inwardly a hugely clever psychopath. It was seriously creepy, though the voice had some indistinctness … maybe part of the interpretation. Kelly Price – a superb performer last seen hereabouts in Aspects of Love at Hope Mill Theatre – was outstanding as Emilia. It is crucial that her testimony – despite being a woman in a man’s world – at the end of the play should be believed and that belief believable. She created a woman of strength and self-awareness – the only admirable human being on the stage.

Kenneth MacMillan English National Ballet Opera House, Manchester 17 October 2018 to 20 October 2018 Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon is that rare thing, a modern classic in classical ballet form. First created in 1974, it was quite daring for its time. Sexual love and sexual abuse are portrayed through more than just a few swooning moves in pas de deux – indeed, Wayne Eagling, the ENB artistic director who introduced it to the company (and brought it to the Manchester Palace Theatre 10 years ago) thought it was probably unsuitable for under-14s. But its innovation went further than that, as it doesn’t have much of the stop-start structure of many classical ballets, where the skills displayed in a particular sequence can be applauded, and the dancers break out of character, before anything moves on. This was a story-telling ballet, for all its opportunities for bravura performance. The story is that of Prévost’s Manon Lescaut – about a student who falls in love with a good-time girl only to see her whisked away from him by the lure of luxury and a sugar-daddy’s money: he wins her back at terrible cost, as they are both sentenced to deportation to that unholy wilderness, America, where they die. It has formed the basis of a number of operas, most famously those by Massenet and Puccini, but as early as 1836 Michael Balfe had huge success with it on the British stage in The Maid of Artois. MacMillan’s version uses music by Massenet, but not from the opera. Instead other works, operatic and more, are plundered for the lush, romantic, danceable music they contain. MacMillan’s original Royal Ballet production had lavish sets by Nicholas Georgiadis, but ENB, opening in Manchester this week on a tour which also goes to Milton Keynes and Southampton, use the ones made for a later Royal Danish Ballet production. Getting it on to the Manchester Opera House stage, rather than the Palace’s, may have been a bit of a problem, and some of the ensemble numbers looked slightly cramped, but the costumes are lavishly brilliant and the dancers overcame the spacing issues with great ingenuity. They are a big company of immense technical expertise, and it’s good that Manchester gets to see them in addition to those who come to The Lowry. The principal roles were danced with utter assurance and supreme skill. Alina Cojocaru is a wisp of a girl and floated through the title role with uninterrupted grace, partnered by Joseph Caley (until last year a Birmingham Royal Ballet principal) as Des Grieux, the ardent young lover and hero in every step. MacMillan made some wonderful partnering for these two, all grace and fluidity though technically very demanding, and they were wonderful to watch. There is a second female principal role in the story: Katja Khaniukova danced Manon’s brother’s mistress with such precision and style she could have stolen the show. And the brother (known simply as Lescaut) was performed by the young American Jeffrey Cirio, whose initial entrance with its massive jumps, and later clever acting-drunk, were sheer delight. Jane Haworth made a nice job of the ageing Madame, and the evil ‘Monsieur GM’ (the bad guy) was given some menacingly sleazy touches by James Streeter, all the more effective for their understatement. #ENB #Manon #touring

Clod Ensemble Clod Ensemble The Lowry, Salford 11 October 2018 to 13 October 2018 Dance as a way of exploring complex topics is not an obvious use for it, but Clod Ensemble have a track record of interaction with other disciplines, and in this one-hour, interval-less piece they show us aspects of the art of persuasion. It’s presented as an experiment in which we the audience ‘observe’ – mainly observing our own reactions. There are examples of movement giving rise to different interpretations of the same event (girl giving bunch of flowers to a man); of movement meaning different things according to what we know about the person doing it (are they enjoying it or is it hurting?); of the Pavlovian response of being a ‘performer’ when a spotlight is turned on; of ‘fake’ and ‘real’; of the power of suggestion – with a recurring streak of rebellion by the dancers against the instructions of the Big Brother who at first dominates the whole thing through a disembodied voice or against the facilitator from among their own number who seeks to engineer feelings of wellbeing. There’s even a vivid take-off of a 1950s-style advertisement for cigarettes. It’s all fairly interesting stuff, some parts more imaginative than others and some of it based on actual medical histories. The variety of things that can make a sufferer ‘feel better’ is extraordinary, and theatre people, of all people, should know about the power of illusion. Yet ‘placebo’ is a bigger concept than suggestion or faith healing: as Radio 4’s Insight mentioned this week, the combination of consultation and prescription seems to be much more powerful than consultation alone, even with the ‘no active ingredient’ type of placebo, and even when the patient knows they’re being given something that is, or could be, totally ineffective. Placebos also have their share of negative side-effects, so they’re not just about wanting to be better – and they work with animals, so they don’t always depend on any kind of understanding at all. The movement was not entirely original or grounded in the subject – it could hardly be either of those – but eventually they gave up the didacticism and danced a vigorous, lively and colourful ensemble finale, which certainly made me feel better. And I think it would have whether or not it said that on the tin. #ClodEnsemble #dance #healing

Kim Brandstrup Rambert Dance The Lowry 10 October 2018 to 12 October 2018 It must be a long time since Rambert performed a full-length piece on their major tour, rather than a triple bill, so Kim Brandstrup’s new work (it was premiered in London earlier this year) is an ambitious and welcome departure. I guess the reason we so often see triple bills is that contemporary dance lends itself to abstract concepts, or at least short and simple narratives, rather than detailed extended stories that can hold your interest through an interval and make you keep wanting more. Here the story is based (loosely) on a play about a prince who’s been imprisoned all his life being freed for a day – once liberated, he experiences the dark side of life but is re-imprisoned and told that all his experiences were a dream. When he gets out a second time he sees the world very differently. What we see is a man asleep in a cold, grim institutional space, and dreaming from the start: his dreams are repeatedly of someone being liberated by the touch of a young woman and of different characters all longing for another world outside their ‘imprisonment’. In the second part the sets are literally turned around, so he’s on the outside and experiences that other world as a real girl wakes him. And the ‘real’ world is a scary place – in the end he finds some kind of peace and affection, but only by returning to the prison. It’s Plato’s Cave, isn’t it (though I didn’t see a credit for the old Greek guy in the programme)? We’re all ‘imprisoned’ by our perceptions – seeing shadows and distortions of something out there, unable to come to terms with real reality if we do encounter it and having to settle for the limitations of the human condition. In the first part there are even flickering headlights coming through the windows and sounds from an outside world (imaginative contributions from the design team led by the Quay Brothers). But this is contemporary dance, and you have to imagine your own narrative from choreography that’s often form-led – beautifully so, with a graceful modern-ballet language of solo, duo and ensemble movement – but without mime or overt incident. What I got from it was that the dream showed ‘princes’ and two ‘maidens’ longing to escape their prison, their conflict and distress as they and their fellows realise they can’t, and an independent female who yearns for the same thing. In the second half the women of the outside world turn into dancing dementors over whom the liberated one has no control, but eventually he finds a glimmer of fulfilment in a lovely, long duet. (There’s also a kind of comic interlude in which he duets with his doppelgänger, rather like Peter Pan and his shadow, but I couldn’t see the point of that). The score – played live by a very good orchestra conducted by Christopher Austin – is all from Lutosławski: it makes good theatre music, with its range of atmosphere and deft capture of moments of despair, absurdity and joy, but (as with all dance created to existing finished concert works) requires its own time-frames to be filled out rather than being determined by the dance narrative. The quality of the dancing itself is superb – from Rambert we expect nothing less – and the sheer visual delight of it all makes for a fascinating evening. #Dream #Brandstrup #Rambert

William Shakespeare National Theatre The Lowry 29 September 2018 to 06 October 2018 There was virtually universal condemnation from the London critics for the National’s latest production of The Scottish Play when it opened in the Olivier earlier this year, but now, re-cast and re-staged for proscenium arch theatres – with director Rufus Norris still at the helm – it is launched from The Lowry on an 18-date UK and Ireland tour, and I have to say, yet again, never trust a theatre critic to get it right. On the other hand, Norris does admit to some re-thinking – as well as the major re-casting – so perhaps we’re not seeing anything like the London show anyway. It’s set in some kind of Mad Max future, in post-civil war turmoil, and is visually very black and bleak. Much of the London carping was about the visuals. But I have to say it looks spectacular (designer Rae Smith) on The Lowry’s vast stage – a steep wooden ramp against a massive backdrop of shredded black plastic, piercing lighting, costumes appropriately grimy, with combat jackets and so on. It’s been done in similar ways before, and it works again. With the overall scale of things here undoubtedly the show’s most impressive aspect, the domestic scenes suffer from lack of intimacy, and the unappealing breezeblock huts that are wheeled on to do service as various castles seem entirely out of place. The banquet scene, for example, happens in what looks like the staff canteen and undermines the whole thing. Michael Nardone is Scottish, so plenty of built-in conviction there. His Macbeth is no intellectual but definitely a warrior. Kirsty Besterman’s Lady M impresses in her early speeches but then rather fades from view. Very athletic Witches, who shin up tall poles circus-style Whatever, this is a memorable Macbeth, for most of the right reasons. At its best it’s big, bold, loud and involving and presented with the primary aim of making sure the text remains paramount. It’s undoubtedly a good production with which to introduce youngsters to Shakespeare, and The Lowry was packed with them last night. #MacbethNT #National_Theatre #Nardone

Leon, Stein and Lehar Opera North Grand Theatre, Leeds - at The Lowry 15th and 17th November 29 September 2018 to 17 November 2018 Opera North’s production of The Merry Widow, by Léhar, comes to The Lowry on 15th and 17th November – the former the 40th anniversary, to the day, of the company’s inauguration. It’s a revival of Giles Havergal’s brilliant production of the operetta, first seen eight years ago, and I went to Leeds to see it on the opening night of the new run. As then, it’s a guaranteed good night out. The story’s perhaps not quite so topical as it was just after the credit crunch – based on the idea that a country could have spent so much bailing out its own bankers that it faces disaster if their money ever goes abroad – but they do say another financial crisis is just around the corner, so maybe history will repeat itself. It obviously does from time to time, if the story of the imaginary grand-dukedom of ‘Pontevedro’ is anything to go by. The Merry Widow of the title is the young Hannah Glawari, who fell out with her true sweetheart, Danilo, and married money on the rebound. So much of it, in fact, that when her banker husband dies and she inherits, the fatherland is desperate she should find another Pontevedrian to share her loot with. But she’s living it up in Paris, and there is any number of suitors there … So the whole show is set in Paris, and by amazing chance good old Danilo is there, too, frittering his life away with the good time girls of Maxim’s nightclub. The one thing he’s determined not to do is to marry Hannah just because it’s his patriotic duty. Of course it all ends happily. But Opera North, this time, are reminding us of the show’s dark side. It was premiered in 1905, in what we now know was the slide into a horrific world war, and spread around the world in the next few years, and, when you listen for them, the lines are full of references to attacks, retreats and battles as if love and war were all the same. And the vainglorious posturing of minor aristocracy and empty elevation of ‘patriotism’ are very obviously part of the scenario. Hitler, incidentally, loved it. Léhar, not Wagner, was his real favourite composer. At the same time, Giles Havergal has not forgotten the real message of The Merry Widow, if there is one – that a damaged relationship can be reborn, once both money and patriotism are left out of the equation. Sentimental? Perhaps, but that’s what the story says, and not many popular love stories are about redemption. The production, with Stuart Hopps’ ingeniously lively but simple choreography, is full of life, movement, colour and humour. It may not have had quite the pizazz on opening night in Leeds that I remember from last time around, but by the time it hits The Lowry no doubt all of that will be back again. Katie Bird will be singing Hannah – she takes the role after Máire Flavin completes the Leeds run – and Quirijn de Lang is a suave but sympathetic Danilo. Amy Freston – who else? – returns to play the high-kicking, all-dancing, chorus-girl-turned-ambassador’s-wife, Valencienne. And the real chorus girls of Opera North have a high old time as Maxim’s ladies of the night. #OperaNorth #MerryWidow #tour2018

Co-creators Clare Duffy, Abbi Greenland, Helen Goalen, Jon Spooner and Becky Wilkie HOME and Unlimited Theatre, with RashDash HOME Manchester 28 September 2018 to 13 October 2018 Having your life hacked by your mobile is of course part of being human these days. But how far can it go? How far will it go? While so many are already practically glued to them, in the world envisaged here those phones will be glued inside them. Having a handheld is so yesterday. And it goes on from there. Implant Me, Upload Me, Upgrade Me. But then what’s human and what’s not? Here there’s a serial killer who refuses to have his brain tinkered with, preferring to remain as he is until executed; over there is a lover who doesn’t want to have her brain integrated into a machine because she will lose her body and all that goes with it. As the crib sheet being proffered on the way out explains it: “The technology of the future is being developed, in part, by very intelligent and/or very well-funded people who believe that death is just a technical glitch and immortality is genuinely possible. The human being is being upgraded. This is terrifying and exciting and it’s coming – whether we like it or not.” This unusual and thought-provoking mix of words, music, philosophy, quantum physics and captions is an adjunct to the Manchester Science Festival (Oct 18-28), created by Manchester-based RashDash and Unlimited Theatre from Leeds, the result of a great deal of research. Staged in HOME’s studio theatre, it’s performed on a large raised tray-like platform, covered in dark sand, and surrounded by hefty vertical plastic blinds that are tugged to and fro by the cast. Away to one side, one-person band Becky Wilkie, in all-blue, including face, performs her own rock score. Extremely slick captions, an integral part of the whole mix, flash up all over the place, including right next to the actors as they speak the words, very clever. And almost always pretty engrossing, until it gets to the last 15 minutes (of 90) or so, when the meta-speculation about the future of the human race morphs into a sequence where the cast strip to their underwear and start marching about on and playing around in that sand. I didn’t understand what was going on here and it was boring anyway. But apart from that, an interesting experience. #bodies #RashDash #ClareDuffy

Giacoso, Illica, Puccini Opera North Leeds Grand - and The Lowry 14th and 16th November 16 September 2018 to 16 November 2018 Opera North’s new production on this visit is of Puccini’s Tosca – an opera they last performed 10 years ago. It comes to The Lowry on 14th and 16th November, and I went to size it up last week in Leeds. Their last version was not a pretty sight. The director was making comparisons with the Italy of Berlusconi and Forza Italia, and the nasty, lustful police chief Baron Scarpia was as revolting as they get (which, let’s face it, he is meant to be). This time we’re in the present day again, and, if you look at the programme book, it’s Donald Trump we’re supposed to see as his parallel, as director Edward Dick presents the story. You can understand where that’s coming from: the heroine, Floria Tosca, is an opera singer in love with a painter (Mario Cavaradossi) whose sympathy for an escaped political prisoner puts him on the wrong side of the powers that be – in particular of Scarpia, who tortures Cavaradossi physically and Tosca mentally until she cracks. She yields to his lustful will until she thinks she’s secured her lover’s freedom, then stabs the villain to death after he says there’ll be nothing but a mock execution for Cavaradossi the next morning. Perhaps I shouldn’t give away what happens next … So it’s about a man whose lust for women is as big as his lust for power, both cloaked in a pose of religious piety. They didn’t give Scarpia a blond wig with a comb-over (alternatively, if they’d foreseen now-current events, they might have made him up to look like Brett Cavanaugh, and we could all think of other cases in point). He’s actually a villain right out of Victorian melodrama – and the play Tosca is based on was a Victorian melodrama to begin with anyway. But it’s also about a brave and passionate woman: the operatic role for a great dramatic soprano, in many ways. Here Opera North, and Mr Dick, have struck gold this time. Giselle Allen is an amazing interpreter of the role. She acts it like a real opera singer, not flouncing around as a ‘diva’ but an extrovert and a performer, still insecure beneath it; so her jealousy is a weakness and part of her personality, not an exaggeration. I liked the way she treats Scarpia at the start of the second Act, beginning with cautious politeness though she’s repulsed by him, too. Rafael Rojas is appealing and in excellent tenor voice as Cavaradossi. He doesn’t have to do much but act the noble hero and sing like one too, and he does precisely that. Scarpia, though, is a challenge: too nasty and you have a pantomime villain, too realistic and we feel short-changed. Robert Hayward, I think, was looking to make him a man we might really encounter some time, not a monster. This rather goes against the crashing, doom-laden chords that accompany his first appearance, and I’m sure Puccini meant that to be the incarnation of a bogey-man – it isn’t quite that here. Later you wonder whether he’s motivated by power, lust or maybe even sexual impotence … interesting but possibly a bit too psycho-analytical. There’s a nice touch when, in the middle of Tosca’s great solo aria, Vissi d’arte, he starts filming her passionate outburst on his phone. The piece does stop the entire action, quite unrealistically, after all – whether people decide to applaud after it or not (and it’s a good sign if they don’t – we’re not here for a recital of Maria Callas’s greatest hits). The conductor is Antony Hermus, a young Dutch musician who I think is quite a find (he won’t be on the podium on 14th November, but he will on the 16th). He has an excellent rapport with Opera North’s orchestra and also some strikingly fresh ways of approaching the phrasing and sound qualities of what can be a hackneyed-sounding score. If Opera North are still looking for their next music director, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s high up on the score-sheet. #ON #Tosca

William Shakespeare HOME and Lyric Hammersmith HOME, Manchester 14 September 2018 to 29 September 2018 When presented with a mash-up of Shakespeare’s Othello and Macbeth you don’t really expect to come out humming the sets. But award-winning designer Basia Binkowska, together with lighting designer Jushua Drualus Pharo, provide some of the excitement the production otherwise lacks. Othello is played on a fore stage, in front of a vast steel-panelled screen, which rises just before the interval – as the first play merges into the second – to reveal a huge, tiled, black box of a space, with white tiled floor, a solitary tree and a rocking chair. Above both sets is a metal mesh gantry, almost in the roof of the theatre. With plenty of smoke, lighting effects that chop-change-blackout the action in the current popular style, it’s all very impressive. I’m not however as enthusiastic about director Jude Christian’s concept overall. She has had the idea of putting the women from both plays more to the fore, not by re-writing – apparently everything here was written by Shakespeare – but by cutting some of the men’s lines to change the emphasis. Much depends on how well you know the texts. I’m far more familiar with Macbeth than Othello, and it took me around 15 minutes to focus on what the Moor was up to, but then it proved the more satisfactory part of the show. As Othello concludes, Kirsten Foster’s Desdemona, Melissa Johns’ Emelia and Kezrena James’ Bianca don camouflage jackets as they morph into the Three Witches of Macbeth. It’s effective, but that really is the only obvious link between the two plays. Lodovico and Lennox (who he?) are played by a rather stately Grace Cookey-Gam, but much of the rest is done pretty straight by the cast of nine. And Macbeth, the play, I’m afraid lacks the thing above all that Macbeth doesn’t lack, and that’s drama. Both plays are in modern dress and the cast are aiming for casual delivery of their lines, which is fine but not when it robs them of clarity and conviction. I liked Samuel Collings as Iago and Macduff; Kirsten Foster as Desdemona and Sandy Grierson as Cassio/Macbeth. I saw it at a schools matinee and it seemed to go down OK: it’s certainly rather different to the schools matinees I used to be marched across town to at the Library Theatre many years ago. I just hope the kids had a strong grasp of the text beforehand. #othellomacbeth #mashup #Shakespeare

Alan Ayckbourn Stephen Joseph Theatre Company The Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough 06 September 2018 to 06 October 2018 Astonishingly it’s number 82, and I have to confess to having missed much of Ayckbourn's more recent work – the master’s continuing output virtually passes the north west by (unlike in the glory days of the Manchester Library Theatre) – so it is a great nostalgic pleasure to find he is still very much on top of his game, writing ’em as well as directing ’em. Better Off Dead concerns one Algy Waterbridge, an ageing, out-of-fashion thriller writer whose novels about DCI Tommy Middlebrass of the North Yorkshire Constabulary – a somewhat stereotyped misfit who practises policing in his own inimitable manner – haven’t been adapted for TV in quite some time. Very much in the now-familiar tradition of odd couple cops, he is teamed with DS Gemma Price, a young female sergeant from darn sarf who finds the ways of the North, and Middlebrass in particular, just a little strange. Grumpy Algy is in his summer house, writing novel number 33, while the fictional Tommy and his sidekick circle around the garden outside, figments of Algy’s imagination whom he clearly prefers to his real life associates and family. He harangues his unfortunate PA, his wife is suffering from dementia, and an interview with a  careless journalist – the funniest extended riff in the play – results in a very unfortunate mix-up. To complicate matters further, his publisher arrives by helicopter (good sound effect, but no Miss Saigon on-stage landing) for a little chat about his future prospects. Immaculately directed on a set of a circular central cutaway pagoda surrounded by well-trodden grass (long-time designer collaborator Michael Holt), lit convincingly (by long-time collaborator Jason Taylor) it has a cast of long-time collaborator actors. Christopher Godwin as Algy leads the charge in totally convincing manner, while Russell Dixon prowls and plods around the periphery as the characterful detective. Leigh Symonds’ turn as the confused journo is a hoot, and Eileen Battye is charmingly confused as wife Jessica. There are undoubtedly echoes of the author’s own life in there somewhere, but best not to puzzle over those for too long, better to just sit back and laugh. It does veer in a more serious direction towards the conclusion, as Jessica’s dementia becomes more central and the plotting overall becomes a little more dense, taking rather too long to play out. But that’s about the only negative thought I’ve got about an otherwise highly enjoyable experience. #Ayckbourn #SJT #BetterOffDead

Giacosa & Illica, Puccini Clonter Opera Clonter Opera Theatre 20 July 2018 to 28 July 2018 Clonter Opera does an amazing job each year putting on a complete production of a mainstream repertoire opera, in its own theatre, with young singers who are at the threshold of their professional careers. Its track record bespeaks its skill at talent spotting and the value of its away-from-the-hothouse environment in building skills for future star performers. This year’s La Boheme is no exception to its form. In many ways it’s one of the best productions it has done. The set strikes you as soon as you sit down – Grace Venning’s design of a garret for the starving artistic young men of the title may be largely a collection of junk, but it’s striking and evocative. And there’s a concept behind the junk, too. Director Harry Fehr presents the story as Rodolfo, the main protagonist, returning to the attic in which those great formative experiences of his youth took place. So he enters the stage before the music starts, looking around and remembering. Everything seems to happen within his memories, and at the end the other characters slip away backwards through the doorways, like wraiths at the rising of the sun. I could quibble about minor incongruities (Rodolfo has to be middle-aged throughout the story, as he can’t rejuvenate instantly to fit the imagined flip back in time; the attic is full of chairs which enable it to convert into the Café Momus for the middle acts, but you wonder at first whether, if the lads were so short of fuel for the winter, they didn’t just burn them), but it’s a cinematic way of telling the story, and you have to suspend disbelief as you see it on stage. The stark and bare third and fourth acts work brilliantly: in fact the last was one of the best acted endings to La Boheme I’ve ever seen. Movement and placings are well worked out, and at the same time we see young people facing, all unprepared, the reality of death and its ending of their dreams. There was perhaps a little nervousness in Act One which detracted from a sense of young love’s first joys as the richly famous music was sung (and very well sung), and in a setting with no extras and limited space there’s not much scope for the Christmassy merriment of Act Two, but no doubt later performances will allow for compensation here. But with Clonter it’s always the voices that are the thing, and here they have struck gold again. Estonian soprano Mirjam Mesak (Mimì) is surely a singing actress with a great future, and she effortlessly shone out over the biggest vocal ensembles and accompanimental textures. Russian Alexey Gusev (Marcello) is a natural actor as well as a very good baritone, and Lebanon-born Bechara Moufarrej (Rodolfo) has a refined, mature and flexible tenor. Connor Baiano (Colline) and Jolyon Loy (Schaunard) will have much to give in future, too, and Pedro Ometto (Benoit and Alcindoro) has a comic gift in the making. And Erika Baikoff gave us a Musetta with attitude, not so much a hardened cynic as a youngster blending aggression and naivety (very convincingly), and singing beautifully. The Clonter Sinfonia, led by Liz Rossi, played the reduced orchestration with fire and affection, and Clive Timms conducted with his accustomed sure hand and dramatic skill. He has been music director for Clonter for the last several years and its achievements under his care have been exceptional. #Clonter #Puccini