Tuesday 15 April 2014

Powder her Face - English National Opera

On paper is sounded great.  ENO going off site to Ambika P3 to put on Powder Her Face charting "the glamorous rise and seedy fall of the notorious socialite beauty Margaret, Duchess of Argyll". <<http://www.eno.org/powder>>

However there were drawbacks.  Drawbacks to such an extent I can only give you a limited view of the performance here - I only made it as far as the interval.

It's not that there is anything particularly wrong with the opera by Thomas Adès, it's the performance space.  In a concrete bunker, two floors under the University of Westminster the performance is given an odd resonance with the sound bouncing all over the place.  Worse still is the seating.  Not having access to a seating plan when booking, I think I ended up with the worst seat in the room.  Not only was it high up, but it was in a corner and meant to get any sort of view of what was going on I had to lean forward and twist slightly.  As a result, by the end of Act 1, my back was giving me hell!  Much as I would have liked to carry on and see second half, my stamina deserted me.

Amanda Roocroft as the Duchess relished the role.  She did not hold back at all during the .... ahem ... rude aria!  But the acoustics did none of the cast any favours.

I would see it again, but only somewhere with a bit more comfort and better sightlines!

Friday 11 April 2014

Lac (after Swan Lake) - Les Ballets de Monte Carlo - ENO

Another week another ballet company at the home of ENO.  This week we had Les Ballets de Monte Carlo with Lac (after Swan Lake), choreographed by Jean-Christophe Maillot.  <<http://www.eno.org/whats-on/other/lac>>

I had read some reviews of this work from it's travels round the world, but not from its opening night in London.  These were pretty harsh.  I've now had a look at a couple from the opening at The London Coliseum and they are much kinder.  Like me they think there's not much you can (or should) do to Swan Lake - it's all there anyway.  Matthew Bourne, of course, is the noble exception - he got away with re-imagining Swan Lake and how!  I think these days there is a tendency to look the the film Black Swan as if that can help you in some way.  It can't!

Anyway, back to last night!  I wasn't holding out much hope.  In the end I enjoyed more than I had intended to.....I didn't have a clue what was going on, but in some ways that didn't matter.  The dancers were having a ball and some of the dancing was of a very high calibre.

My highest praise of the evening goes to April Ball as Her Majesty of the Night - Rothbart fused with Cruella de Ville.  She had the biggest role.  She had the slinkiest moves.  She had the most outrageous costumes.

The sets and lighting were very good indeed.  Musically - I could have done with a real orchestra.

Les Ballets C de la B - Alain Platel's tauerbach

I'm a bit behind in my mini reviews so you will all have missed this real 'treat' at Sadlers Wells <<http://www.sadlerswells.com>>

Really I should have known better when I remembered Alain Platel's previous work at Sadlers Wells "Out of Context" had the additional comment "for Pina".  I wasn't overwhelmed with that, thinking it a very shallow version of what Pina Bausch had created for decades.  So.....you can imagine how my heart sank when I saw the stage in front of the curtain littered with clothes and then on curtain up - a stage piled high with clothes.

According to the Sadlers Wells flyer...."tauerbach tells the story of a woman who suffers from schizophrenia and who lives and works in a Brazillian waste disposal site.  Living in these unusual conditions, she has developed her own very particular way of communicating with this small community she lives in."

We had lots of Pina-isms - obviously the cluttered stage, dancers dressing and undressing, throwing things around, singing, shouting, dialogue, monologue.  And in there we had some flashes of dance.  Occasional flashes of interest, but these weren't sustained.

I am afraid Les Ballets C de la B is off my list!