Category: Reviews – Music Theatre

Burt Bacharach – a tribute from Ali Harper at Circa Theatre

Posted on by Peter Mechen

THE LOOK OF LOVE – An evening of songs of Burt Bacharach
written and presented by Ali Harper (vocalist)
with Tom McLeod (musical director/piano) / Callum Allardice (guitar)

Music arranged, produced and mixed by Tom Rainey
Soundtrack played by members of the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra
Backing vocals performed by Jennine Bailey, Naomi Ferguson and Juliet Reynolds-Midgely
Recorded and engineered by Thom O’Connor
Produced by Ali Harper and Iain Cave (Ali-Cat Productions)

Circa Theatre, Taranaki St., Wellington

Saturday, 23rd January 2021

I can’t think of another performer I know whose presentations give me more pleasure than do those of Ali Harper’s, for her unbeatable combinations of artistry, energy and sheer charisma! And here, at Circa Theatre once again, we were treated to all of those qualities put at the service of the music of one of the most iconic songwriters of recent times, Burt Bacharach. His is a name which, like those of songwriters of previous eras, such as Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer and Hoagy Carmichael, has become synonymous with the act of creation of songs that immediately bring to listeners’ minds memories of specific times, places and people.

For Harper this show seemed something of a chameleon’s act throughout the presentation, one that she brought off with characteristic whole-heartedness and engaging flair – unlike with her previous shows I’d seen in which she personified either a single performer (“A Doris Day Special”), or a number of stellar artists, either as themselves(“Legendary Divas”) or as their star-struck fans (“Songs for Nobodies”), her focus this time was a songwriter. How adroitly and persuasively, then, was she able to train her focus on either a singer associated with the song, or the situation/or context of the song itself, giving something of an organic feel to the songwriter’s motivations in each case and thus recreating Bacharach’s very own “story” through music.

I wondered beforehand just how Harper would approach these works, given that the confines of the theatre might have seemed to suggest a more intimate, cabaret-style performance, one that would have admirably suited many of Bacharach’s songs that I remembered. When we first entered the auditorium it seemed possible that this was to be the case, with “music stations” visibly set up for the singer, for piano, and for another solo instrument – what happened then was that, after the pianist and guitarist had begun, and Harper had entered, the song accompaniments “burgeoned” into what sounded like a full symphony orchestra backing for many of the numbers, Harper explaining at some point that the musicians were in fact members of the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, whose “sound” had been pre-recorded to recreate that well-remembered “Bacharach sound” – many of the songs would have responded well to “cabaret” treatment, but the music undeniably resonated more ambiently in the memory in these sumptuously-crafted “orchestrated” accompaniments.

I admit that it took me the length of the song “The Look of Love” to “adjust” to this “full-on” instrumental approach, not being a great fan in principle of pre-recorded sound and its deployment, but gradually coming to accept the sonic soundscape Harper and her valiant musicians deemed appropriate – thereafter I was caught up in the sweep and full-frontal engagement of it all – and, as with all sound recordings, the ear soon adjusts to pretty much whatever one hears and allows the essential enjoyment to reassert itself.

I’d hoped that, despite knowing many of the songs from radio-listening over the years, I’d be floored by surprises of the “did he write THAT?” variety – and I certainly wasn’t disappointed! Unexpectedly encountering numbers such as “The Story of My Life”, “Raindrops keep falling on my Head” and (perhaps most movingly of all) “Alfie”, pushed my Bacharach-parameters into hitherto unchartered regions, both enlarging and deepening my appreciation of his achievement, the latter song in particular one of those “not a note wasted” creations, and fully supporting the statement made by Harper and her pianist Tom McLeod when discussing Bacharach’s style of composing – that he didn’t like “vanilla”, or plain sweetness, but would “explore” unconventionalities in both harmonies and melodic lines. Here, “Alfie” seemed to proclaim itself as one of the great songs, Bacharach devising an almost Mussorgsky-like melodic progression that’s close to “sprechgesang”, plainly, though not entirely unsympathetically delineating the hero’s character, and put across by Harper simply, directly and most movingly.

In some shape or form there’s that avoidance of “vanilla” in most things I knew Bacharach had written as well – the spontaneous quirkiness of “Say a Little Prayer for Me”, “Walk on By” and “Anyone who had a heart”, for example, songs which somehow transmit both impulse and deeper emotion into and through music and find their mark. Bacharach may have had notables such as Dionne Warwick, and even occasionally Cilla Black as his music’s exponents, but here Ali Harper proved as worthy, insightful, and thrilling an interpreter, from the heart-in-mouth “opening up” of the emotional guns in “Magic moments” at the words “Time can’t erase the memory of….”, to the almost confessional candour of “A House is not a House”, a song which is all impulse and reflection, here expressed by both singer and pianist with exquisitely-focused simplicity.

Mentioning of Bacharach’s song-writing partner Hal David and the latter’s gift for crafting words whose individual sounds and configurations were matched by the music straightaway put me in mind of George and Ira Gershwin’s equally combustible partnership, and, in fact, daring me to suggest to Harper that perhaps one day……but no, it’s the here and now that should remain my subject, more properly paying tribute to the singer and her “team” for my enrichment of knowledge and awareness of Bacharach’s activities – Marlene Dietrich’s musical collaborator during the 1950s? – goodness! As for his contributions to films such as “Casino Royale”, “Alfie” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”, not to mention “What’s New, Pussycat” – well, I obviously didn’t take much notice of film credits in those carefree days of my youth!

What I thought Ali Harper conveyed most warmingly and lastingly was Bacharach’s ability in his music to relate to and uncover people’s emotions concerning basic human needs – I came away from the show with what seemed like pocketfuls of familiar feelings reawakened and stirred, some gentle tickling, and others via uncomfortably prodding, a full gamut of experience suggested and shared. And we delighted in the medium as well as the message, in the singer’s unfailing ease and warmth of communication and infectious, all-embracing delight in putting across the music for our pleasure.

The show was supposed to conclude with “What the world needs now”, described by Harper as “a song for our time”, the sentiments of the relatively unfamiliar verses expressed with filled-to-the-brim conviction, and the choruses lustily joined in with by all present – a standing ovation necessitated a “second conclusion”, with Harper and her musicians giving us “That’s what friends are for” to the ambient accompaniment of audience members’ torchlight beams bringing light to the darkness and hope to all present for a brighter future. Thank you, Ali! – so much appreciated!

Until 20th February – Circa Theatre

“The Older the Better” – a triumph of age and experience at Circa Theatre

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Circa Theatre and Hens’ Teeth presents:
THE OLDER THE BETTER – a Revue
(Part of WTF! 2020)

MC – Kate JasonSmith
Starring: Coral Trimmer, Sunny Amey, Dame Kate Harcourt. Linn Lorkin, Helen Moulder, Rose Beauchamp, Jan Bolwell and Margaret Austin

Producer – Kate JasonSmith
Lighting – Lisa Maule
Stage Manager – Johanna Sanders
Technical Operator – Niamh Campbell-Smith
Illustration and Graphic Design – Emma Cook

Circa Theatre, Taranaki St., Wellington
Thursday, 3rd December 2020

(until 20th December)

A footnote to the show’s title above the cast list in the programme reads: “The performers you may or may not see, tonight….”. When putting the show together around the talents of three ninety-plus performers, Dame Kate Harcourt, Coral Trimmer and Sunny Amey, the producer of “The Older, the Better” Kate JasonSmith found so many willing participants among what she called “a fabulous collection of Gold Card performers” that she was able to devise a “revolving support cast”, one whose membership would change for every performance.

It would be hard to imagine this, the opening night, being bettered, given that the show ostensibly and spectacularly revolved around the three performance “dames” (one of whom, of course, already has that official title), the rest being the “glittering gold-carders” who made up the “supporting” roles – though the beauty of the presentation was that there were no seams or lessenings of inspirational flow as turn followed star turn, with each of the “acts” offering its own characterfully-contrasted cache of distinctive delights (excuse the alliteration! – it just slipped out!)….

In keeping with the inclusive spirit which had gravitationally drawn this galaxy of heavenly bodies together, we in the audience were promptly invited to also audition for the show – as an audience! – and after agreeing, were put through our paces, demonstrating “audience behaviours” (clapping, laughing, dancing – someone even suggested “paying”!)….. I thought our “murmuring in sympathy” efforts creditable , but needing more conviction, more FEELING! – however, then, when we laughed uproariously at one of the MC Kate JasonSmith’s jokes, we clinched the role – “This audience is fine! – don’t bother to bring that other one in!” she promptly carolled towards the entranceway! – and so the show began, introduced by Kate JasonSmith, most interestingly as “Nine lovely women, and eight lovely costumes!” Oo-er!!

It would be churlish to self-indulgently “give the show away” by describing too many of the delights that followed in detail – but when “the talent” was summoned with the cry, “Talent! – Talent ON THE SET!” – the uproar that greeted the appearance of Dame Kate Harcourt to begin things in earnest was heart-warming! We got from her a vividly- coloured picture of a sassy character called Maud, who was enjoying life at ninety-three, insisting at one point that this was the oldest she had been! Putting it like that made for pandemonium in the aisles!

We had no sooner recovered when the fabulous Linn Lorkin was at the piano weaving bluesy magic with a song she wrote inspired by home thoughts from abroad while she was visiting a US beach, a number “Family at the beach” which undulated from rhythmic patter-song to dreamy, nostalgia-filled relivings of iconic childhood memories of being a child at a beach somewhere in New Zealand, capturing it all so unerringly for me, and somewhat redolently, for others as well. She morphed from this into a jazzy rhythm which brought the equally charismatic Coral Trimmer to the stage with her harmonica, aptly launching into Gershwin’s “I got rhythm” with terrific choreographic energy, then disarming us completely and utterly with “Londonderry Air”, a tune better known as “Danny Boy”, the duo’s playing milking the song’s ascending second part for all it was worth (juicy chordings from the pianist, and a glissando to boot!) before raptly delivering the piece’s concluding, lump-in-throat “water come in me eye” pay-off.

The arrival of eminent theatre administrator, producer and comedienne Sunny Amey then completed the trio of nonagenarians, Amey joining with Coral Trimmer to sing some parodies (the first of which (to the tune of “Colonel Bogey”) we all knew and joined in with the bawdy words!), then musing further on the process of ageing with gorgeous sendups of classics like “Shuffle off to Buffalo”, her gently self-deprecating forgetfulness-parables forging empathetic, belly-rumbling links with her listeners! And it was into this haze of opaque evocation that the ever-astounding diva Cynthia Fortescue and her accompanist Gertrude Rallentando (Helen Moulder and Rose Beauchamp respectively) burst to relive their triumph of “Going for Baroque” with the tried-and-truly-astounding “condensed and updated” version of Henry Purcell‘s celebrated opera “Dido and Aeneas”, here searingly and fearlessly revamped as “Diane and Andy”.

Cynthia’s unashamedly Boris Christoff-like assertion when introducing the work to us, ”I play all the characters”, seemed to me to more than adequately sum up the – well, some might think of them as “liberties” while others would unhesitatingly use the word “inspirations” – which abounded in the pair’s realisation of the age-old tale of love and betrayal – during which we as a proper “performing audience” had an infernally risible part to play as well, goaded into a frenzy by the leader of a coven of “wayward sisters”, a witch called Jacinda!  One excerpt only will I reveal from the adaptation to again convey something of the flavour of the whole – “Hear my plan/to rid Aotearoa/ of this dreadful man” –  (something involving a “Trojan virus” sent to the hapless Andy’s laptop)  – but that’s quite enough info to be going on with!….

We heard former dancer and performance-poet Margaret Austin’s wryly entertaining  “Should I lie about my age” dissertation, one which turned into a cautionary tale of association on her part with an impresario and a drink-besotted choreographer on tour throughout Europe, with its bitter-sweet conclusion; and, following further music-making from Linn Lorkin and Coral Trimmer, we were introduced to Jan Bolwell, performer, choreographer and playwright, and founder of the Crows Feet Dance Collective, whose stories touched on her father’s experiences in Italy during World War Two, when he was hidden by an Italian family from the Germans, of her own experiences in Italy when re-exploring her father’s “haunts” while a prisoner, including dealing with her sexual harassment by various Italian men, and of her defiance of the “women’s ageing” stigma in society, as expressed in a country and western song she had appropriated, whose yodelling choruses could be rewritten to fit the words “Older Ladies”. No prizes for guessing who were able to “try out” the song at a glorious full-throttle!

Not to be outdone, Helen Moulder’s Cynthia Fortescue made a plea to be allowed a final “scene” with “Dame Kate”, consisting of a single song, a delicious duet from Mozart’s “Magic Flute” opera depicting the meeting of two lovers the bird-man Papageno and his long looked-for mate Papagena, piquantly accompanied by Rose Beauchamp’s Gertrude! – had we not acquiesced we would have missed out on minutes and minutes of pure delight as the two “Pa-pa-ge-no/ge-na-‘d” themselves contentedly into the throes of connubial bliss. And then, seemingly as soon as it had all begun, it was over, with a rousing “all-for-one” rendition of a tune to which the words “The Older the Better” gave resonant ambiences for the rest of the evening. In all, it’s a heart-warming, unmissable affair, an inspirational initiative by Kate JasonSmith, a magical coming-together of past and present which will cause much amusement and delight!

 

Cinderella (Rogernella? Gingerfella?) the Pantomime, delightfully mixed-up fun at Circa Theatre

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Circa Theatre presents:
CINDERELLA – the Pantomime
Written by Simon Leary and Gavin Rutherford

Directed by Susan Wilson
Musical Director: Michael Nicholas Williams
Set Design: John Hodgkins
Lighting Design: Marcus McShane
Costume Design: Sheila Horton
Musical Staging: Leigh Evans

Cast: Gavin Rutherford (Rosie Bubble)
Natasha McAllister (Cinderella)
Jonathan Morgan (Bayley)
Kathleen Burns (Tommy)
Bronwyn Turei (Dandini)
Simon Leary (Buttons)
Jack Buchanan (Prince Ashley)

Circa Theatre, Taranaki St, Wellington

Until 20 December, 2020, then 2-16 January 2021

Two of the show’s actors, Simon Leary (Buttons the Rat) and Gavin Rutherford (Rosie Bubble, the Fairy Godmother) are the authors of this wonderfully irreverent “take” on the classic Cinderella story, complete with up-to-date parochial and international references, foot-tapping music (two songs I actually KNEW, despite my advanced years!) and entertainingly-staged ensemble dancing, some of the best I’ve seen at Circa Pantomimes. In fact I thought Leigh Evans’ actual staging of characters’ movements throughout these was among the most polished and slickly-contrived I’d encountered at a pantomime in recent times, there being various breathless sequences of more-or-less constant fluidity of character, incident and venue to enjoy.

Audiences vary, as any experienced performer will affirm; but I also can’t remember a Circa Pantomime at which an audience seemed to demonstrably enjoy the show more than this one did. We all seemed to be enclosed, fore and aft, in a kind of appreciative bubble of responsiveness with some very noisy company, everybody determined to make the most of every gag, clever one-liner, spectacular routine or irruption of surprise contrived for us by director Susan Wilson! And, of course, such a “chain reaction” fore and aft of the footlights added immeasurably to the show’s essential dynamic, leaving us both exhausted and replete at the end.

Pantomimes are occasions where, besides indulging in child-like enjoyment of innocent fun, one can give satisfying vent to one’s biases and prejudices of social and political kinds, thanks to the “types” embodied in the story-line or stage action – and especially when they’re connected, however tenuously or otherwise, to prominent public figures who are the representatives of things we love to love or love to hate! Gavin Rutherford’s portrayal of the Fairy Godmother “Rosie Bubble” bestrode all of these worlds, being in a theatrical sense an on-the-fence commentator, while also having an integral “part” in the proceedings – we loved his/her “fairy” aspect both for the wish-fulfilment magical powers and the LGBTQ association (underlined by Rosie’s sudden cry when surprised – “Don’t hurt me! – I’m a fairy! – You’ll be done for a hate crime!” at one point), as well as the inexhaustible stream of drollery, constantly mispronouncing Cinderella’s name throughout (with “Salmonella” being just one of a stream of hilariously Malapropish misnomers!).

The “good” characters drew from both established lore (Natasha McAllister’s Cinderella, Bronwyn Turei’s Dandini, and Simon Leary’s Buttons the Rat, Cinderella named as such by Charles Perrault in the classic French retelling of the story, Dandini, the Prince’s valet, by Jacopo Feretti, the librettist of La Cenerentola, Rossini’s operatic version of “Cinderella”, and Buttons the Rat a manifestation of that common fairy-tale phenomenon, a creature changed against its will into something less salubrious) and from present-day role models of positive renown (Jack Buchanan’s Prince Ashley of the Blooming Fields, whose modestly-expressed ambition during the drama’s course is to have “a meaningful job in the Public Service”)! The “bad guys” were both cross-dressed (Jonathan Morgan’s outrageous “Bayley” and Kathleen Burns’s spivish “Tommy”), each stigmatised with blatant “Real Estate Agent” labels through Buttons the Rat confessing to hiding from them in the rubbish bin!  One of them (I forget which)  admitted to being an “ex-parking-warden”, and both of them expressed delusions of a grandeur which would be attained by plotting  a connubial connection between Bayley and the hapless Prince Ashley!

Just as a pandemic is presently wreaking havoc through many peopled parts of the world, so was here an unnamed dread seen to be occasionally visited upon the land and its inhabitants in the form of a lightning-and-thunder sequence which intermittedly cast fear and uncertainty into the characters’ minds most effectively. But “kindness”, a recently-projected spin-off panacea for national ills, made a welcome appearance in the mix, here, if in a different, more personalised way, with the Prince’s recognition of Cinderella as an individual person, despite his “face blindness” affliction. And at the delusional end of the spectrum was the immortal line spoken by one of the villains, Tommy and Bayley, while in disguise: – “Ere! Don’t you know who we THINK we are?” – something I made a mental note to use for my own purposes somewhere socially as soon as I could!

Though very much the “acted upon” throughout, both Natasha McAllister’s Cinderella and Jack Buchanan’s Prince Ashley were perfect exemplars of goodness and innocence throughout, with McAllister’s singing voice a fulcrum throughout for the success of Musical Director Michael Nicholas Williams’ sure-fire musical continuities that played such a part in forwarding the action. The ever-pleasing Bronwyn Turei as Dandini I thought magnetic as always with her voice and physical presence enlivening the ensembles, and though I wasn’t familiar with songs like “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and “I need a Hero”, my 1960s antennae were sent into paroxysms of retro-excitement by the company’s full-blooded renditions of “Five O’Clock World” and “I’m a Believer”!

The props were simple but spectacularly effective as witnessed the remarkable skeletal-but-still-stunning coach which took Cinderella to the ball! And I liked the simple but similarly stunning transformation effect of Cinderella’s costume-turned-ball-gown, replicated by Bayley as part of the dastardly plot to install the latter as the Prince’s bride. The children who were called up onto the stage at one point during the second act would have relished the excitement and wonderment of entering into such a phantasmagorical land – such a pleasure to register the looks and feelings writ-large on their faces at certain points!

It was what it was all about for all of us, at our varying individual stages of appreciation, and real enjoyment of others’ pleasure! The show plays at Circa Theatre until December 20th this year, and from the 2nd to the 16th of January, 2021.

 

 

NZ Opera’s “Eight Songs for a Mad King” a brilliant, Janus-faced experience

Posted on by Peter Mechen

NZ Opera presents
EIGHT SONGS FOR A MAD KING

Music by Peter Maxwell Davies
Texts by Randolph Stow and George III

The King: Robert Tucker

The Musicians: Stroma New Music Ensemble
Hamish McKeich (conductor)
Rachel Fuller (keyboard/s)
Luca Manghi (flute)
Mark Cookson/Patrick Barry (clarinets)
Yuka Eguchi (violin)
Heather Lewis/Robert Ibell (‘cellos)
Jeremy Fitzsimons (percussion)

Director – Thomas de Mallet Burgess
Production Designer – Robin Rawstorne
Assistant Conductor – Timothy Carpenter
Repetiteur – Rachel Fuller

RNZB Dance Centre, Wellington

Monday 2nd March 2020

Firstly, some background for the curious – the “King” of this concert’s title is King George III of England, who suffered from mental illness throughout his adult life, eventually being removed from his throne and kept under lock and key in Windsor Castle. Over his final decade he lost his eyesight and hearing, and fell prey to frequent manic episodes, by all accounts babbling endlessly as he slid into dementia, and eventually dying in 1820 at the age of eighty-one. The King owned a number of caged bullfinches, and during his confinement became obsessed with teaching his birds how to sing tunes played by a mechanical organ or music-box. This instrument, along with a note identifying its provenance as owned and used by the unfortunate Monarch, came to the notice, almost two hundred years afterwards, of Australian author and poet Randolph Stow, who was inspired to create a series of poems, parts of which were drawn from recollections of witnesses to the King’s outpourings, and directly illustrated his pitiable condition. British avant-garde composer Peter Maxwell Davies set these poems to music, writing with the vocal talents of one Roy Hart in mind, a virtuoso South African singer who had become interested in exploring the range and limits of the human voice.

At the time of the work’s premiere, in April 1969, Davies fully expected “Eight Songs” to remain a “one-off” for Hart, never imagining anybody else being able or even wanting to perform the piece. He was therefore surprised and delighted at how the work soon took on a life of its own, becoming a classic example of a new “music-theatre” genre, which redeployed (and often subverted) existing performance conventions. Davies himself recorded the work with his own virtuoso avant-garde music-group, “The Fires of London”, though sadly for posterity, not with Roy Hart, the creator of the  role – fortunately the soloist on the 1971 Unicorn recording, Julius Eastman, was a worthy successor.

In his notes accompanying the recording, the composer stated that his intention was “to leave open the question – is the persecuted protagonist “Mad George III” or someone who thinks he is George?”. Naturally the work will forever be associated with the monarch in question, given that the song texts contain numerous actual quotations of the King’s words – the novelist Frances (Fanny) Burney was Queen Charlotte’s lady-in-waiting for five years, and during that time she recorded both events and utterances in which the King was central (as an example, the whole of the text of the sixth song, “The Counterfeit” is transcribed by Randolph Stow from Burney’s diary). But the suggestion that the character of the King might also represent any such deluded individual straightaway lifts the work out of its singular and historical confines and into the realm of general human experience, of which mental illness seems in our time to be an increasingly common affliction. Davies reminded us in his notes that until relatively recent times, “madness” was something to ridicule, and in more severe cases isolate, often in the most inhumane and nightmarish conditions; and while treatments and care-environments are nowadays less primitive, the stresses and inbalances that, if ignored, can lead to mental illness are still very much with us.

New Zealand Opera’s innovative production of the work gives audiences not one but two separate and different views of the terrain in all senses of the word – the mindscape of an extremely disturbed individual, firstly (as happened in my particular case) from the “outside” 0f the performance space, visible from the outside through windows, and audible by means of headsets for each audience member. So, first time round, we were seated in the open air, cannily underneath a tarpaulin in a space next to the building in which the opera was being performed – and through the windows we could glimpse the singer performing his on-stage peregrinations, and via the excellent headphones we clearly heard his cocktail mix of song, sprechgesang and random, wide-ranging vocalisings, along with the constant instrumental collaborations from the ensemble – the whole thing was an “outsider’s view”, a process that was observed, but without direct involvement, something that one could easily distance oneself from at a moment’s notice if one felt so inclined.

What a difference after one was ushered inside for the second performance (each took about thirty minutes), to sit right next to the stage (which was a kind of “catwalk” extending the whole width of the audience-space, and with seating on both sides)! Here, we straightaway felt “drawn in” by the immediacies, the sometimes startling proximities , and the “sharing-the-space” phenomenon that can make great theatre (and music-making, of course!). Singer Robert Tucker, looking none the worse for wear after having already given one performance of the piece appeared in close-up somewhat disconcertingly (a) youthful, and (b) dapper, not quite in accordance with my preconceived “image” of a deranged George III, but nevertheless exuding a kind of “authority” from the outset, entering quietly but portentously, and sitting at one end of the catwalk activating a “Newton’s Cradle”, waiting for the first of the instrumental explosions whose force and violence punctuate the music-drama.

In some performances the instrumentalists are positioned in separate giant birdcages, each player representing one of the King’s bullfinches he attempted to teach to sing – here the players weren’t thus confined, but sat as an ensemble at one end of the platform, the singer alternating his attentions between them, his audience(s) and wherever his mind’s fancy took him. And the “double audience” added a dimension to the singer’s confusions, his awareness of interiors and exteriors pathetically expressed amidst his tirades by glances through the windows at an “outside world”. Despite the close physical proximities, the venue’s largely empty spaces behind where we sat and its ample acoustic seemed to me to underline the essential solitude of the King’s existence. His interactions with his musicians and the audience, despite their sometimes startlingly visceral nature seemed all fantasy. “I am weary of this fate – I am alone” sang the character at the conclusion of one of the songs.

The performance in every way was astonishing – Robert Tucker as the King “owned” his character in a way that explored a gamut of human emotion, engaging our sympathies at his “plight” as readily as activating our discomfiture with his volatility. The demands of the role pushed the concept of “singing” into realms of expression which transcended the idea of the voice as a musical instrument as we might generally accept it through what the composer aptly termed “terrifying virtuosity”. But in appearing not as any kind of caricatured asylum-bound lunatic, whose tirades were neither extreme, nor “onslaught-like” as were some of the performers in the role I’ve witnessed on film, Tucker’s delineation of the character always seemed intensely human, in places touchingly bringing out the tendernesses of some of his utterances (as observed by Fanny Burney in her diary), if at times squeamish-inducing (as throughout his “close-up-and-personal” interactions with a hapless flutist, during “The Lady-in-Waiting”, brilliantly carried off by both singer and player). His anger, too, spectacularly vented at one infamous moment in the piece, mirrored a kind of reality of frustration, an impulse in tragic accord with human behaviour gone awry. This “one-of-us” aspect suggested  by the production brought home , to my mind, the “for whom the bell tolls” aspect of our human existence, so that our “relief” at the King’s eventual departure was singed with spots of pity and sorrow and even horror at the finality of the concluding percussive juggernaut, which consigned his heart-rending cries to oblivion.

Conductor Hamish McKeich led the Stroma Ensemble unerringly through a veritable thicket of coruscations, appearing to never miss a beat, shirk an uproar, or delineate a disorder! – and in parallel to these subversions the players sounded the lyrical moments, the dance-tunes and the whimsical parodies (a gorgeous two-step take-off of Handel’s music at one point) with delicious elan, as well as bringing to bear their array of bird-song devices in a veritable “chaos of delight” (alas, Charles Darwin’s words, not mine!). The accordance of theatrical movement with the music was exemplary throughout, the jaunty introduction to “To be sung on the Water” followed by beautiful ‘cello solos evoking a boat-ride down the river, one of a number of enduring memories of the performance.

Director Thomas de Mallet Burgess would have been well-pleased with both the powerful overall impact and the finely-crafted detailed focus his musicians brought to this production. Its dual-performance aspect gives it a singular kind of appeal, no matter in what order one experiences the “outside/inside” presentation, be it a savouring of expectation beforehand, or food for thought afterwards! – It plays again tonight (Wednesday 4th March) at 8:30pm, and then at the same time on both the 5th and 7th later this week at the RNZB Dance Centre next to the MFC in Wakefield St., Wellington.

 

 

 

 

Wonderland in Wellington at Circa Theatre

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Circa Theatre presents:
ALICE IN WONDERLAND – The Pantomime
Written by Simon Leary and Gavin Rutherford (after Lewis Carroll)

Director: Susan Wilson
Musical Director/Arranger: Michael Nicholas Williams
Set Designer: Lucas Neal
Lighting: Marcus McShane
Costumes: Sheila Horton
Musical Staging: Leigh Evans
Technical: Deb McGuire (Lighting) / Paul Lawrence (sound)

Cast – Gavin Rutherford : Dame Marjori
Natasha McAllister: Alice
Sarah Lineham: White Rabbit/Caterpillar
Andrew Paterson: Tweedledum
Susie Berry: Tweedledee/Voice of Cheshire Cat
Jonathan Morgan: The Queen of Hearts
Simon Leary: The Mad Hatter
David Duchovny Dormouse: Himself

Circa Theatre, Wellington
Tuesday, 19th November, 2019

(until 22nd December, then 2-11 January 2020)

This show was, I thought, an absolute knockout on the performance strength of the songs and their associated choreography alone!  Michael Nicholas Williams’ skilled arrangements of no less than thirteen (mostly?) home-grown classics, along with Leigh Evans’ splendid choreography lent musical magic to a scenario whose script I thought suitably action-packed enough, if not with quite the consistent raciness and fluency of other Circa pantos I’ve seen. Still, a talented cast under Susan Wilson’s direction here imbued the song-and-movement action with the kind of energy and seamless flow of engagement we couldn’t help but give ourselves over to – music theatre at its most happily compelling.

For this reason I took away at the end most readily a sense of ensemble created in these pieces, around which everything else revolved – a “whole greater than the sum of parts” feeling, which added to the overall pleasurable “glow” of the experience. Of course, people of my generation, steeped in the Lewis Carroll books and their iconic references (a number of which were quoted verbatim in the dialogue) would be all too ready to succumb to the tried and true attractions and fascinations of the various characters and their antics – and thus it was, here. And even for younger people, the scenario of a “Wonderland” where the unexpected becomes the norm can be accorded parallels with our more-than-usually mixed-up world, so continuing to lend itself as much, if not even more, to the kind of absurdities that appealed to the original author’s fanciful imagination.

Writers Simon Leary and Gavin Rutherford cleverly work local and topical references into the presentation via character’s names (here was Dame Marjori Banks Street, talking about ex-husband Kent Terrace, and the “other woman”, Courtenay Place!), and some hinted allusions to certain political leaders and their interaction in the characters of the Queen of Hearts and The Jabberwock! Film-maker Peter Jackson also gets a mention as the alleged uncle of Alice, Dame Marjori fancying her chances of making a valuable “contact” with someone whose connections might further her aspirations as a hitherto undiscovered performing artist (with a potently expressive right hand!).

The show’s scenario revolves around the circumstance in the original story of a famous theft – that of the tarts, made (as in the well-known nursery-rhyme) by the Queen of Hearts, though here, it’s the White Rabbit (rather than the Knave of Hearts) who’s placed under suspicion as the thief, and threatened with execution – naturally, Alice and Dame Marjorie, along with the Rabbit’s Wonderland friend, the Mad Hatter, strive to release the latter from the Queen’s clutches. Their adversaries include not only the Queen’s servants-cum-hit-men Tweedledum and Tweedledee, but the fearsome Jabberwock, whose presence is, until it finally makes an unexpected appearance, powerfully evoked at various stages of the story with a portentous leitmotif accompanied by a sudden darkening of the atmosphere – most effective!

It wouldn’t be a proper Pantomime without participation from the audience, most ostensibly the children who are summonsed onto the stage at one point by Dame Marjori to help thwart the  Queen of Hearts’ vengeful intentions towards the Rabbit. It’s done here with the power of love by the children holding up pictures of the Cheshire Cat’s smiling face and singing along with the Avalanche City song “Love, love, love”, which exercise comes off a treat (complete with mandatory-cum-heartwarming in-situ photograph-snapping!) There were also frequent exhortations  made to us to greet different characters, answer various questions or warn people of danger (to which we readily responded). As well, the Dame used her roving eye to suitable effect on the audience, at one point early in the piece lighting on a certain gentleman, asking him for his name, and then to our recurring amusement throughout the evening keeping him within coo-ee and on the boil!

In his tenth pantomime role, Gavin Rutherford again bestrode the Circa stage like a colossus, holding the audience in the palm of Dame Marjori’s hand as she described her “poor, lonely, widow-woman status”, though playing the “abandoned-wife” card this time round, courtesy of her absent husband Kent Terrace. Her flirtation and would-be liaison with Simon Leary’s wonderful, and hyperactively charismatic Mad Hatter promised much (with musically-framed “can this be he/she?” moments), before failing, at the cusp, to deliver, for reasons best seen rather than explained…..

Compelling, too, was Jonathan Morgan’s prima-donna-ish Queen of Hearts, as wilful and volatile as her divine right permitted her to be, responsive one second to the children’s exhortations of love, and then transforming into Gorgon-like aspect through the influence of the evil Jabberwock. Her song “Tears” in tandem with her cohorts Tweedledum and Tweedledee (Andrew Paterson and Susie Berry respectively) was, like their first-half “Out on the Street”, a highlight of the show, the three going spectacularly through their paces with fabulously-timed teamwork and superbly-concerted voices. And while Sarah Lineham’s character-parts of the White Rabbit and the Caterpillar were relatively low-key, the roles requiring more finely crafted than full-blooded, in-your-face assumptions, she came into her own in the song-and-dance routines as a paid-up-vibrant component of the ensemble.

As, of course, did the equally fine-tuned Alice of Natasha McAllister, whose role throughout was a kind of fulcrum, both as a foil for the outrageous Dame Marjori and a focus for everybody else, as their ostensible “dreamer”, an enabler whose presence was the sounding-board for practically all the other characters, her own beautifully presented in every way, a “constant” whose energy and vocal strength told in the concerted numbers which gave the show its special distinctiveness,

Backdropped by Lucas Neal’s simple but effective set of playing cards and a classic pantomimic “disappearing hole” part of whose charm and intent was its emphasis on “suggestion”, the non-stop action whirled kaleidoscopically around and about the performing-space to visceral effect, enriched by technicians Deb McGuire (lighting) and Paul Lawrence (sound) readily evoking the baleful presence of the Jabberwock. Sheila Horton’s costumings helped bring the characters to life, between dressing Alice classically (a la John Tenniel’s original illustrations) and the Mad Hatter fantastically, the latter complete with glove-puppet Dormouse. Director Susan Wilson enabled these disparate impulses and energies as a convincing and hugely entertaining whole, a show from which one felt like dancing into and through the streets afterwards, celebrating and prolonging its feast of music, movement, and laughter.

 

 

 

 

Helen Moulder and Sir Jon Trimmer warmly invite all of us to “meet Karpovsky” at Wellington’s Circa Theatre

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Circa Theatre and Willow Productions present:
MEETING KARPOVSKY
A dance-drama devised and written by Helen Moulder and Sir Jon Trimmer
Directed by Sue Rider

Sylvia Morton (Helen Moulder)
Alexander Karpovsky (Sir Jon Trimmer)

Music by Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Adam, JS Bach, Hérold (arr.Oliver), Weber (arr.Berlioz), Lincke

Original design – David Thornley (stage) / Philip Dexter (lighting)
Lighting – Deb McGuire
Sound recording – Joe Hayes

Circa Theatre, Wellington

Wednesday, 6th November 2019 (until 16th November)

I thought, both for myself and for the readers of “Middle C”, I’d explore the colourful genesis of Circa’s current production “Meeting Karpovsky”, as it was something I for one knew very little about, having not seen the original 2002 production. It all came about through actress Helen Moulder wanting to bring to fruition a long-held desire to be able to dance with Sir Jon Trimmer, the doyen of New Zealand ballet dancers – she then shared her idea for a “woman admirer meets famous dancer” scenario with Cathy Downes, director of the Court Theatre in Christchurch, who encouraged her to get in touch with Sir Jon and get something going. So, late in 2001 she contacted Trimmer, and to her delight received an interested and enthusiastic reply, as she did also from Australian director Sue Rider with whom she had previously worked (and whom Court Theatre were keen to have working there). So, with the participants, director, and venue sorted, and technical support, funding applications and projected dates set in place, what was then urgently needed was the actual play!

Gradually the scenario, along the lines of the original idea, took shape between actor, dancer and director, the title evolving from “The Woman and the Dancer”, through “Sylvia Fantastique” to “Meeting Karpovsky” (a fictitious name and character), the woman talking and the dancer communicating with “mime, dance and stillness”. Pictures of Trimmer (as Karpovsky) in “his most famous roles” were used to flesh out both the life-story of the woman,  Sylvia Morton, and the career of the dancer. Additional elements, such as the numerous boxes piled up in the room, and containing things such as a willow-pattern tea-set, found their place in the presentation’s unfolding. And, of course, there was the music, with excerpts from the ballets depicted in the posters taking pride of place in turn with other excerpts occasioned by different references, for example to the ballerina Anna Pavlova.

Reviews at the time were unhesitating in their praise of the presentation – worth quoting is that from the Listener of November 23rd 2002: –  “Moulder is remarkable as the helpless, hopeless Sylvia. She has a luminous quality and imbues the unworldly Sylvia with a rare beauty and charm. Trimmer plays Alexander Karpovsky with delicate grace. He glides silently, elegantly around the stage, tender as a love poem and replete with compassion and kindness. Together, they are magnificent: she a jittery, wounded gazelle gambolling alongside his sure dance of love and understanding”.

Moulder and Trimmer then toured New Zealand with the play in 2003/4, the production winning “The Listener Best Play” and Moulder the “Chapman Tripp Actress of the Year” awards. The production returned to Circa and then to some North Island venues in 2012 before touring the whole country with “Arts on Tour” in 2015.  This current Circa season of eleven performances is to commemorate Sir Jon Trimmer’s 80th birthday. From what we saw this evening no-one could guess as to the play’s extended performance history, everything seeming freshly-minted, and wrought out of impulses whose histories appeared to us to enliven and quicken the senses rather than weigh down and bedraggle the responses or blunt their edges.

Technically, the play is superbly presented, firstly at the very outset and then frequently and startlingly punctuated with disturbingly visceral sequences of sounds of trains passing, as it were “through the middle of the house”, a technical tour de force of evocation, though one felt the intention was more a psychological than a physical assault, akin to an inward cry of terror or scream of pain inflicted by a recurring memory or nightmare. Otherwise the darkness seems to be cultivated as a benign element rather than anything forbidding, especially as it brings the dancer, Alexander Karpovsky, into the room where Sylvia Morton is engaged in an endless struggle with her minutae, her memories and her demons.

Helen Moulder’s comprehensive ownership of her character draws us inexorably into Sylvia’s chaotic world criss-crossed with invisible strands she spontaneously activates, which in turn resonate others, often with through-line gentleness, but at other times with disconcerting, even panic-stricken switches of impulse. These invisible strands are woven through and around each of the large posters of Karpovsky dressed for his most famous roles, which Sylvia refers to in turn during the play’s action – thus she equates her hero Karpovsky with the charismatic Herr Drosselmeyer from Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker”, compares her relationship with her own daughter Anna to that of the Widow Simone’s and her daughter’s from “La Fille Mal Gardee”, sees the character of Albrecht, in “Giselle” as similar to that of Charles, her husband, who betrayed her, and identifies with the pain and sufferings of  the puppet Petroushka in Stravinsky’s eponymous ballet.

Sir Jon Trimmer’s equally remarkable assumption of the all-but-silent role of Alexander Karpovsky created the perfect foil for Moulder’s unilaterally besieged characterisation of the beleaguered Sylvia. His aspect was at once the personification of some kind of spontaneous extra-terrestrial whim, and a true figure for the ages, albeit one entirely without a baleful or sinister aspect – a “quality of stillness” instead conveyed his importance, if at first in a truly open-ended way. Dancers are, of course used to such meaningful conveyance, deprived as they are of the use of speech, and, like artists of mime, having to conjure meaning without words. Trimmer’s was a veritable “master-class” in this respect, including that enviable art of creating unprompted impulse, a quality unique and fresh (one, of course, that’s highly prized across all artistic disciplines). For this reason I felt the show’s single flaw was the “one word” uttered by the dancer – perhaps as an idea it seemed to have its own special impact on the process of Sylvia’s emotional journey, but in situ I felt more “deflated” than galvanised by the “alien” sound of the dancer’s voice, and found myself wishing that a simple gesture had been used instead – I thought it a blip of a distraction rather than a revelation.

Having gotten that very idiosyncratic judgement off my chest (I’m certain this aspect of the play would have been “put to the sword” on many an occasion by all and sundry – and by dint of its presence has obviously survived sharper anatomisings than my relatively blunt critical instrument could ever furnish!) I’m bound to say that it mattered hardly a whit to my overall reaction to the play. I thought it all touched greatness in so many places, not the least in conveying the dichotomy of having a character “imagine” and bring into being another character who then appears to step outside the boundaries of the original conception, all by way of portraying an “opening up” of understandings and strengthening of feelings. I could readily relate to it all, and imagine that others would also have invariably been touched in some way by this exceedingly gentle in places but at times surprisingly powerful piece of theatre – my thanks and congratulations to all concerned!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Berlioz, and his “Lelio”, given their dues and more by Orchestra Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Orchestra Wellington presents:

FANTASTIC SYMPHONIES

BERLIOZ – Symphonie Fantastique Op.14
Lelio, or “A Return to Life” Op.14b

Andrew Laing (Lelio)
Declan Cudd (Horatio)
Daniel O’Connor (Captain)

Orpheus Choir of Wellington
Brent Stewart (music director)
Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday, April 12th, 2019

My first reaction to the news that Orchestra Wellington was planning to give the New Zealand premiere of Hector Berlioz’s  Lelio, or “A return to life” in its properly-ordered place as a sequel to the well-known Symphonie Fantastique was a delightful amalgam of excitement, admiration, incredulity and skepticism regarding the idea. I knew the work from recordings, and it had long seemed to me of the order of something the composer obviously had to “entertain” and get out of his head before progressing onwards to “the next thing” – all more akin to a ritual of private expiation rather than material for a viable public presentation.

I didn’t, however, take into account two things, the first involving the work itself, the extraordinary capacity of Berlioz’s music for generating interest out of its sheer novelty, each part in isolation having its own fascination , but in tandem agglomerating a kind of theatrical through-line entirely of its own, and with idiosyncrasies becoming touch-points! In situ Berlioz’s sheer conviction both fused and propelled the material forwards, in ways that live musical performances often surpass recorded efforts of the same material in sheer spontaneous excitement.

Just as important was the zeal, enthusiasm and energy of the performers giving all of the above the necessary “juice” with which to “fire”. Conductor Marc Taddei was of course at the forefront of the concerted efforts of singers, instrumentalists and actors, as well as choir and orchestra members, bringing about a fruition of their efforts with inspired and unflagging direction. What I’d thought might fatally drag down any stage performance were the spoken sequences, the composer seemingly carried away by his own eloquence in thus anatomising his passions! – but here, a combination of an English translation, judicious editing and fully-committed performance brought those same sequences compellingly to life. With those patches having had their “purple” aspect removed, it suddenly seemed possible that the thing might work!

In “Lelio” the composer’s original stipulation was that the orchestra, chorus and soloists be out of sight on a stage behind a curtain, with only an actor speaking the part of Lelio in front of the curtain before the audience. The six separate pieces that made up the musical fabric of the whole are each  interspersed with a dramatic monologue, after which the curtain is lifted for the “finale”, a Fantasia on Shakespeare’s “Tempest”  for chorus and orchestra. Here, most enterprisingly, mists and atmospheric lighting created a kind of rather more naturalistic curtain for the musicians who, though visible, were most effectively shrouded in mystery. The singers, too, were able to be seen, in each case theatrically lit, with billowing mists heightening the almost Goethean atmosphere of their different evocations. Most pictorial of all was the Brigand Leader, whose swashbuckling aspect and colourful costume, complete with sword, suited his rollicking music to perfection.

The presentation didn’t go as far as following the composer’s instruction to reinforce the “awakening” idea by proceeding straight into Lelio without a break at the end of the Symphonie. Instead, during an interval the stage was reset, with a large couch as the central feature, on which the young artist was cast in a stupor, and behind which the musicians reassembled, as the mists gathered and the strange, eerie lighting was brought into play –  all sufficiently conveying the “do I wake or sleep” ambience required by the composer. As Lelio himself, actor Andrew Laing mesmerically held our attention from his first appearance as the young artist who had “dreamed” the Symphonie Fantastique’s different episodes (that we’d heard in the concert’s “first half” that evening). His monologue describing the dream’s torments gave us the essence of the original, with occasional amendments (checking his cell-phone, for example) and judicious editings supporting and colouring his full-hearted, hypnotic delivery of the words.

After this, each of the different pieces (all sung in French, except for the final chorus) followed their own spoken introductions, beginning with the setting of Goethe’s Ballad Le Pêcheur (The Fisherman) for tenor voice and piano, here beautifully and ardently delivered by Declan Cudd (from my seat I couldn’t tell which of the two wonderfully adroit pianists, Rachel Thomson or Thomas Nikora, was playing here). At one point here the music was interspersed with a poignant, dream-like remnant of the Symphonie’s “idée fixe” the melody associated with the composer’s beloved which appeared in different guises throughout the work.

Then followed  various free-ranging changes of scenario and mood – firstly a magnificent Choeur d’ombres (Chorus of the Shades), inspired by the “ghost” scene in “Hamlet”, and introduced by the brasses with lugubrious, sinister-sounding tones, the Orpheus Choir’s delivery of the words spookily evocative, certain parts reminiscent of the Prince’s invocation to the warring families at the beginning of the composer’s “Romeo and Juliet” Symphony, and everything brought into atmospheric play by the interaction of light, mist and darkness on the stage – wonderful!

The poet then castigated society in general for bringing the lofty ideals of Shakespeare into disrepute, before enjoined all artists to turn their backs on such besmirchment and  become brigands instead – introduced by a vigorous orchestral passage,  baritone Daniel O’Connor looked, sang and acted the part to perfection in the Chanson de Brigands, vigorously exchanging blandishments regarding the life of a brigand with the chorus’s male voices, and moving towards the front of the stage to great theatrical effect, to the strains of tremendously rollicking and abandoned orchestral playing!

Emotions wildly fluctuating, the young poet then imagined far-away music resembling the voice of his beloved, and sank into a reverie, as tenor Declan Cudd and his accompanying harpist Madeleine Crump joined with the orchestra to perform a Chant de bonheur (Song of bliss), the effect positively celestial, the voice again sweet and pure and the harp an ideal blissful companion. From this the poet further conjured up the idea of an Aeolian Harp strung across the branches of an oak tree besides his grave, a tree  through whose branches the wind would sound the ongoing strains of his dying happiness in the arms of his beloved – the tremulous sounds that emanated from the strings and a solo clarinet were breathtaking in their evocation of the beauteous power of the composer’s imagination!

Having thus considered his “options” the poet then announced he would embrace life, and celebrate the intoxications of music, his “faithful and pure mistress” by plunging himself into a work which he’d already planned as a sketch – a Fantasy on Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”. What followed was almost Brechtian in its theatrical manipulation, the poet suddenly becoming the self-appointed “producer” of the performance about to take place, freely dispensing advice to the musicians, chorus and orchestral players alike! Along with a few moments of engaging bombast, the work had some exquisite sequences, particularly the opening scintillations of piano duet and twinkling of winds accompanying the women’s voices, calling to Miranda (the text here in Italian rather than French). The strings then began a swirling, agitated section which conjured up a fierce storm underpinned by the timpani, then after some “Le Carnaval Romain”-like instrumental passages, the voices again called to Miranda, farewelling her from the isle, after which the orchestra exploded in a kind of ferment of agitated farewell. There was praise from the poet for the players of “Orchestra Wellington” at the end! – and then – from out of the silence came the same remnant of the Symphonie’s “idée fixe” as before – to which the poet murmured, “Again, again! – and forever…..”

Of course, these sound-reminiscences were reaching right back to the evening’s beginning, with the orchestra’s performance of the work that had started the whole process, the Symphonie Fantastique. Having not been able to resist the temptation to dive immediately into the intricacies of something unfamiliar and our of the ordinary, I now propose to make amends re the concert’s first half by declaring that the performance here of what is probably Berlioz’s famous work was no less remarkable than that of Lelio. In fact, conductor and players seemed to me to sound the work’s opening as if THIS music was the hitherto undiscovered or neglected treasure we had come to hear this evening.

Every phrase of this introductory sequence seemed to me to contain some “clue” as to what would follow, as if we were being asked to fit the pieces of some vast puzzle together, and that eventually it would cohere – the rapt concentration with which these sound-impulses were made was remarkable, with even the brief, dancing string passage catching and drawing itself back in, the detailing by the winds and the horns adding to the wonderment of each moment. I loved the horn-playing in the passage leading up to the strings’ growing excitement at the approach of the famous “idée fixe”, the long-breathed string motif Berlioz used to characterise his “beloved”. Here it was playful, capricious and tender all at once, and was received by the rest of the orchestra with joy, interest and longing – and who would not want to repeat the sequence straight away after such a reception?

The repeat allowed us to focus on something different a second time, the impulsive, grainy-textured lower strings accentuating the melody’s qualities, but maintaining an outstanding orchestral sensitivity – I thought the focus on what every instrument was doing remarkably detailed!  When we reached the oboe’s subsidiary melody I felt the focus and feeling of the strings “wandering” chromatic accompaniments brought out the music’s sinister undertow, a brief but telling antithesis of the bright nervous energies which we’d heard the instruments express so well in the movement thus far.

The big “tutti” was beautifully “voiced”, the excitement shared among the different orchestral families as the music gathered even more momentum – I felt that perhaps the accelerandi might have been just a shade less controlled and a bit more “animal” (easier said than done, of course!) – but the ending was superbly brought off, sounding just like a “prayer”!

The second movement, Un bal grew nicely from out of the swirling mists, the tune articulated beautifully and the detailing a joy – here the “idée fixe” was dovetailed in as deftly as I’ve ever heard it done, and the trumpet (cornet?) made a lovely florid impression over some of the dance’s measures, as the composer intended.

Out of the silences came the sound of a cor anglais, its rusticity emphasised by an answering companion oboe somewhere in the distance (beautifully managed!), followed by exquisitely limpid string playing. I thought the different texturings, accentuations and antiphonies of the string sounds throughout this movement stunningly realised. Conductor Marc Taddei didn’t overtly “push” the change of mood mid-movement – I wanted a shade more orchestral tumult, more “panic”, as the fierce fortissimos approached – but the moment still generated considerable impact! And the strings’ ensuing accompaniment of the clarinet solo was a divine moment, epitomising the performance’s romantic sensibility. The famous timpani responses to the despairingly unanswered cor anglais calls at the movement’s end were superbly controlled – one person in the audience, lost in admiration, NEARLY clapped, both forgivably and contrariwise under the circumstances!

Dark, menacing rumblings began the renowned Marche au supplice  (March to the Scaffold), with the bassoons playing up to their capacity for grotesquerie, the brass snarling and blaring, the strings excitable and vehement – the repeat gave us double the impact of the opening, while the climax of the piece gripped the sensibilities and wouldn’t let go until the final crash of the guillotine drowned out all traces of the “idée fixe” and its brief appearance – truly the stuff of nightmares!

If the March evoked Goya-esque imageries, the final Songe d’une nuit du sabbat (Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath) conjured up even more grotesque Hieronymus Bosch-like scenarios, the eerie, air-borne cries and squealings summonsed by harsh, whining wind-calls and subterranean rumblings, the orchestral playing gleefully giving itself over to the macabre and the fantastical! Here the “idée fixe” was transformed into a bizarre mockery of the original, galumphing accompanying rhythms reaching thundering levels before being mocked and ridiculed by the rest of the orchestra – taken up by the clarinets, the distortions become even more marked and awkward-sounding, again laughed to scorn by the rest of the band.

The bell chimes evoked great barren wastes, across which the spectral sounds drifted, answered by baleful brasses announcing the thirteenth-century “Dies Irae” chant.  Cataclysmic percussion set in motion grotesque “dance of death”-like sequences, eerily leading to scenes of total abandonment and dissolution whose aspect grew wilder and wilder, conductor Taddei finally unleashing an orchestral coda whose hair-raising impetus very nearly unhorsed us all, necessitating a wild and grimly wrought “hanging on” until the music’s tumultuous end. Pandemonium!

What more could one say except that it seemed Orchestral Wellington’s “Epic” 2019 season had begun as it obviously meant to go on – with a pair of suitably “epic” performances, that of Lelio an act of “resurrection” in more ways than one! And for Wellingtonians, faced with the further attraction of a night out with the NZSO the following evening, obviously a “bumper” weekend for orchestra enthusiasts here in the capital! In the words of Lelio himself “Encore! Encore! – et pour toujours….” indeed!

Side by Side with Sondheim at Circa a life-enhancing experience

Posted on by Peter Mechen

SIDE BY SIDE BY SONDHEIM
Songs and Lyrics from the stage musicals of Stephen Sondheim

Julie O’Brien, Matthew Pike and Sarah Lineham (singers)
Musicians: Michael Nicholas Williams and Colin Taylor (pianos)
Director: Emma Kinane
Musical Director: Michael Nicholas Williams
Choreographer: Leigh Evans

Circa One, Circa Theatre, Wellington

Saturday 23rd February (until 22nd March , 2019)

I’m not exactly a veteran of live performances of Stephen Sondheim’s musicals – New Zealand Opera did a splendid “Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” in 2016 (which production AND its performance I raved about, here on “Middle C”) and both the NZ Drama School and the NZ School of Music have presented sizeable excerpts from, respectively “Company” and “Into the Woods”, each of which was deftly, evocatively done. So Sondheim is a name which resonates for me more in reputation than actual experience – though judging from the amazing range and scope of the songs presented here this evening, he’s a composer whose work would seem likely to bear rich rewards upon examination.

Here, we were given something of a whirlwind tour with no less than twelve of the composer’s stage works represented – some repeatedly (both “Company” and “Follies” contributed eight songs each to the programme), though all the others were represented by either one or two numbers. Of the two most-represented shows, I thought the selection here in each case nicely touched upon the essences of the works, the songs from Company vividly encapsulating the lyricist/composer’s rather
savage anatomising of marriage as an institution via the portrayals of various couples and their interactions at a party given for their bachelor friend, Robert. As well as the married company, the “available talent” is no less caustically depicted via a sure-fire show-stopper of a first-half closer, “You Could Drive a Person Crazy”,  a trio featuring all three singers in a tour-de-force of energy, timing and sharp characterisation, with Matthew Pike as a thoroughly convincing “middle girl” – delightful.

“Follies” depicts a reunion of former showgirls, interacting with the ghosts of their former selves, re-instigating the trappings of their former glories, and reminiscing about former lovers, both sentimentally and naughtily – two of the girls, resplendent in feather boas, recall the particular talents of a particular boy in “Can that Boy” with suitably suggestive inflections putting lead in the pencil of the word “foxtrot” with suitable relish. Later, four consecutive numbers from the show take us to the beating heart of these faded glories, a trio (once again) of beauties introduce “La Grande Dame” extolling the charms of Paris, an Al Jolson-inspired “Buddy’s Blues”, and the heartbreak of a wannabe hopeful in ”Broadway Baby”.

Some of Sondheim’s most popular individual songs from other shows are here – I knew three of them instantly, the first, “Comedy Tonight” beginning the evening, both instrumentally (some nifty work by the two-piano ensemble of Michael Nicholas Williams and Colin Taylor, with barnstorming octaves in places from the former in the best romantic piano tradition) and vocally, the singers appearing one by one, bringing their very different vocal characteristics to the presentation mix. Another was “A Boy like That” from “West Side Story” for which Sondheim wrote the lyrics in tandem with Leonard Bernstein’s music, here presented as an individual number, though in a kind of medley entitled “Conversation Piece” various familiar songs from the show dominated the line-up.

But the show would have been unthinkable without the composer’s out-and-out signature tune, “Send in the Clowns”, from his work “A little Night Music”, a musical in which various relationships between people, both young and older are explored (it was based on Ingmar Bergmann’s 1955 film “Smiles of a Summer Night”. The song itself, unlike many we heard during the course of the evening, is more wry about than disillusioned with love and romance, and was presented here in suitably “Do I wake or do I sleep?” tones that also contrasted greatly with the high-octane thresholds of most of the evening’s “stand-and-deliver” excitements.

In contrast to the work of one of Sondheim’s mentors, Oscar Hammerstein, who became a kind of surrogate father-figure for the boy after his parents were divorced, most of the younger man’s stage works reflect an era of disillusionment and frustration within Western society, and specifically in the United States, presenting both the individual and whole groups of people at this time in conflict with their  expectations and aspirations, far removed from the worlds of standard fare like “Oklahoma”, “South Pacific” and “The Sound of Music”, with their “happy endings”. I remember being struck by something of this quality when encountering “Into the Woods”, at the end of which none of the fairy-tale characters get to “live happily ever after”. It’s the ambivalence about life that one comes away from Sondheim’s work feeling which matters and which is truer to life than any “dreams come true” scenarios.

Though the show wasn’t without its technical gremlins (resulting in the first half loss of a microphone for one of the singers) the performers, instrumentalists and singer/actors, threw themselves into this maelstrom of, by turns, wry and sardonic vexation and disenchantment, and brought a potent marriage of music and theatre to life. I thought the technique of getting the vocalists to “narrate” the context of each of the pieces made for an engaging, organic effect, perhaps to a fault in paces, as a few of the words were sometimes lost in an all-encompassing whirl of scenario-change activity.

It’s a tribute to the stage instincts of co-directors Emma Kinane and Michel Nicholas Williams that words, music and stage action here brought out for us all the variegated emotions and subtle detailings of Sondheim’s creations, given further ease and flow by Leigh Evans’ direct, unfussy choreography – the “clowns” were onstage in front of us at times, but they knew their place. Lisa Maule’s lighting I thought properly and stunningly “illuminated” what was important to notice and what was left to the imagination, engaging our sensibilities rather than putting things merely on a screen or in a box, enhancing the idea of our being in the same performing space.

I’ve already mentioned the almost visceral effects of the piano realisations generated variously by both players at their own instruments, with ample use of the “orchestral” effects of reducing the accompaniments in places, most movingly, to a single line. Each of the singers enhanced the songs’ individual contexts in this respect, so that we were readily taken by turns into those different, sometimes brashly-wrought, sometimes finely-delineated worlds of feeling as song followed song.

Each of the singers had their particular strengths, Julie O’Brien in particular “owning” everything she undertook, from the insanely tumbledown outpourings of “Getting Married Today” with its Gilbert-and-Sullivan-plus patter, through her naughtily teasing “I never do Anything Twice”, giving the fingers of her pianist Michael Nicholas Williams an anxious moment or two, to her ineffably moving, “imagined-out-loud” rendition of “Send in the Clowns” – throughout the latter, one could at any time have heard the proverbial pin drop most disarmingly. Matthew Pike’s gift for characterisation was evident throughout, but especially telling in “I Remember” (from the show ”Evening Primrose”),  a song requiring contrasting evocations of nostalgia, wide-eyed wonderment and spontaneous excitement, delivered here in spadefuls. And Sarah Lineham, bringing a completely different vocal quality to the mix, demonstrated a sweetness of tone and a stratospheric purity in places in her slower, quieter music, such as the opening of “Losing My Mind” from “Follies”, though her tones were more difficult to “catch” when her solo music quickened or hardened, as in the climax of the same number. However, I could forgive her anything after relishing her virtuosic solo trumpet-playing in “You Gotta get a Gimmick”.

Where Lineham also shone was in the ensembles, along with the other two – the contributions of all three in the first half’s closing “You could drive a Person Crazy” made for an absolutely delightful effect, as sharp and incisive as any “Andrews Sisters” realisation I’ve heard! The one or two stunning solo renditions apart, the overall effect of the presentation is one of superb teamwork, the only caveat being the extraneous microphone noises which made unwelcome contributions to the opening part of the first half – thankfully things seemed resolved and restored after the interval.

Sondheim fans will need no further urgings – the experience of hearing these songs so expertly brought to life has made me want to explore the composer’s work further, which I think in itself amounts to praise of a recommendable order. Many thanks to Circa and to the creative talents involved for providing such a life-enhancing experience!

Beautiful, visceral, hypnotic, disconcerting – Stroma’s “essential experimental” at Wellington’s Pyramid Club

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Stroma presents:
ESSENTIAL EXPERIMENTAL
An intimate evening of song, water, glass, harmonics, beat frequencies and vases

Music by John Cage, Peter Ablinger, Antonia Barnett-McIntosh,
Alvin Lucier, James Tenney, Chiyoko Szlavnics

Stroma: Michael Norris (sponges), Barbara Paterson (soprano, voice), Ken Ichinose (‘cello)
Antonia Barnett-McIntosh (voice) Rebecca Struthers, Kristina Zelinska (violins)
Reuben Jelleyman (accordion), Emma Barron (viola), Matthew Cave (double-bass)

Venue: The Pyramid Club, Taranaki St., Wellington

Thursday 29th November 2018

The venue really brought it all alive, in a way that I thought a more conventional concert-chamber-like place wouldn’t have done. In the most positive way we in the audience seemed to be “put at ease” by the “late-night club” surroundings at Taranaki Street’s Pyramid Club, and, rather than attending a concert, were instead made to feel we were “eavesdropping” on the ongoing creative processes constituting and shaping each item. It was a feast of visceral interaction between performers, media and audience; and even if the results at times gave rise to as much bemusement as illumination (speaking for myself, here!) I felt these moments pulled our apertures further apart and teased our sensibilities with even more of the workings and their trajectories.

This was the first of two performances scheduled that evening, and the venue was packed in the most encouraging and atmospheric way possible. Stroma’s presentations, under the leadership of Michael Norris have constantly sought to stimulate, engage and challenge audiences, and have steadily earned the group a loyal following based on its remarkable set of capacities for renewal in the form of fresh explorations and bold, and compelling performance practices. This evening’s programme, entitled “Essential Experimental”, was no exception, the items generating sounds from sources and practices in some cases far removed from conventional means, even when a number of familiar instruments were involved in the process.

Michael Norris called the outcomes of these presentations “unusual but beautiful sound-worlds”, and the first of these, featuring a 2002 work by Austrian composer Peter Ablinger called Weiss Weisslich 31e, certainly made good that description by way of a most intriguing and diverting set of procedures. Norris himself was cast in the role of “performer”, with the title given in the programme of “kitchen-sponge hanger-upperer”, his function being to fix a number of wetted sponges to places along a line strung over a number of amplified glass tubes laid on the ground, allowing the drips of water from each sponge to land on corresponding individual tubes. Because the “operator” can only hang or remove one sponge at a time, the acceleration and deceleration of “drip incidence” from each sponge takes place at a different time from each of its seven fellows, making for complicated “canonic” results involving different tones from the amplified tubes. Norris further varied the interplay of the drips and their sounds by rehanging the freshly-wetted sponges in a different order a second time round! Magical!

At times the very slow drips found themselves “paired” with rapid ones – and with the different amplifications directed through speakers placed in different parts of the room, both the different speeds, pitches and physical placements of the speakers made for some atmospheric antiphonal effects. Interestingly I found that in sequences where many different drips were sounding, I often noticed specific ones ONLY when they stopped or the sponge was removed, indicating that it was as much my subconscious as my conscious hearing that was “registering” the drips. The composer himself wrote that his material here “was not sound but audibility” and that he could “set audibility then inaudibility”, further explaining that “inaudibility can arise through…too little occurring, but also through too much occurring…” The drips created pulse, melody, counterpoint and texture at various times, ranging from altogether what one commentator somewhere called “a turbulent polyrhythmic forest”.

From these abstractions we were taken to John Cage’s 1958 composition Aria, originally dedicated to one of the most renowned performers of contemporary vocal music, soprano Cathy Berberian, and here performed with remarkable assurance by Barbara Paterson, her voice dealing most adroitly with the work’s many changes of mode, style, timbre and character – at certain points I was in fact reminded of composer/pianist Donald Swann’s virtuoso rendering of his similarly exploratory song “Korkoraki” (part of the well-known Flanders and Swann “At The Drop of a Hat” presentation). Here were far more divergencies from the conventional “art-song”, including words from different languages and rapid fluctuations between different styles of delivery – the emotional effect of Paterson’s cornucopian rendering was not unlike witnessing a performer attempting to piece together some kind of coherent message while in the process of either suffering from a kind of schizophrenia, reliving a series of traumatic experiences, or giving us the full gamut of what any singer’s physical and vocal equipment is put through in performance, most of which the performer has ordinarily been taught to suppress! – an incredible display!

Continuing to ring the changes, the concert next featured a work by Alvin Lucier, featuring the ‘cello-playing of Ken Ichinose, performing in tandem alongside a number of empty, differently-sized vases, all amplified – somewhat literally, the work was called Music for ‘Cello with One of More Amplified Vases.  The cellist was required to begin with his lowest note and slowly play an upward glissando, right up to halfway along his top string. At certain points along this journey, the resonances created by the notes reverberated within the empty jars and created an additional “presence” surrounding the tones already being sounded by the player. To my surprise I thought I distinctly heard the nostalgic “drone” of the engines of a distant DC3 taking off from Milson Airport in Palmerston North, a regular occurrence for me when a small child. Sometimes the vases seemed to be “duetting” or “quartetting” with the soloist, while at other times the effect was that of a companion ghost or guardian angel. Perhaps the work ought to be retitled “Unlocked…” or “Liberated” Voices………..

I must confess to the readership that I found the next piece, by Antonia Barnett-McIntosh, the current composer-in-residence at the Lilburn House in Thorndon, a REAL challenge! This was a work given the title yesterday blocks, and one to which the term “composed” seemed to me, for some reason, an inadequate description of the process! In Barnett-McIntosh’s own words, her work is described as presenting “the specificity of sound gestures and their variation, translation and adaptation, often employing chance-based and procedural operations.” As with John Cage’s Aria the only instrument in evidence was the voice, here the composer’s own voice in tandem with that of Barbara Paterson’s. The two “artists” produced narratives that seemed at several degrees’ removal from one another, though towards the end of the different discourses there seemed to be glimmerings of TS Eliot-Waste-Land-like attempts at communication, of the “Speak to me – why do you never speak?” kind of impulsiveness. Up to then, the composer’s disjointed narratives had run teasingly and tantalisingly alongside the other speaker’s half-conversation with what seemed like unheard inner voices. Was it delineating a fragmentary relationship between thinking and vocalising, an out-of-phase attempt to bring together recall and the present, or a conversation between parts of the same personality? – somebody playing with/being played by their alter ego? I found the crossover aspects involving both spoken theatre and music fascinating, as the voices seemed to me to increasingly coalesce, as if they were starting to “decode” one another – in effect very daring! – but for me very confusing!

More “conventional” (if such a word is allowed ANY currency pertaining to this concert!) was the next piece, Canadian composer Chiyoko Szlavnics’ Triptych for AS, written in 2006 for two violins and an accordion (“AS” is the composer’s mother, incidentally). Described as a “visual artist” as well as a composer Szlavnics is credited by the programme note with an “idiosyncratic” method of working, something about converting lines on a drawing to glissandi that exactly replicate the drawing (to say the first thought that came into my head, which was “Oohh, what about the “Mona Lisa” in sound?”, is to trivialise the concept, which I won’t!) What I also thought (hardly rocket-science!) was that there would be three “somethings” in all of what we were about to experience, as per the title.

The sounds were to be produced both acoustically (Rebecca Struthers and Kristina Zelinska the violinists and Reuben Jelleyman the accordion-player) and electronically (a bank of five sine tones). The opening chords straightaway had an “electric” quality, the upward glissandi generating incredible intensity, sounds with long, burgeoning lines, reminiscent of Ligeti’s “Atmospheres”. They seemed cyclic in effect with the strings re-entering the fusion and working their glissandi gradually upwards again. Both the second and the third pieces seemed to use higher pitches with a more intense result and a clearly augmented string-sound, the “quality” agglomerated by the electronic resonances. I liked the growing tensions, and the uncertainties of the points where the lines for the individual instruments “crossed” and the sounds “reared up”, Then, at the third piece’s conclusion, the accordion was suddenly left to carry the thread, a lone plaintive and isolated voice.

So we came to the final presentation in this hugely enjoyable panoply of creative innovation, a work by American James Tenney that’s part of a multi-movement piece called “Glissade”, in fact the first movement of the work, itself called Shimmer. Its three instrumentalists (Emma Barron, Ken Ichinose and Matthew Cave playing viola, ‘cello, and double-bass respectively) shared the sound-stage with ”delayed” computer-recorded reminiscences of what the strings played, the ensuing “womb of resonances” the agglomerated and on-going result of this five-second delay.

The viola began with a drawn-out repeated note, before moving into harmonics in a repeated arpeggiated pattern, before the ‘cello did the same, as did the double-bass – with all three instruments contributing plus their overlaid recorded echoings, I found the effect uncannily similar to parts of Wagner’s “Das Rheingold” Prelude, hypnotic and compelling, drawing one’s listening into the web and waft of it all. The discernible flecks of colour and tone added to the ongoing magic, as did the ever-increasing prominence of the glissandi, the sounds eerily ascending, before becoming like impulses of sunlight dancing on cloud-tops! As the tones gradually surrendered their intensities we became aware of being returned to a “place of origin”, eventually reaching a point where the players ceased, and allowed their own resonances to continue for a brief further moment in time, a treasure as much in the hearing as the letting go……what better a way to end such an absorbing collection of sound-adventures?

 

 

“Puss in Boots” Pantomime gives delight for young and old alike at Circa Theatre

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Circa Theatre presents:
Puss in Boots – the Pantomime, by Paul Jenden

Directed by Susan Wilson
Musical Director / Arranger – Michael Nicholas Williams
Set and AV design – Lisa Maule
Lighting – Marcus McShane
Costumes – Sheila Horton
Choreography – Leigh Evans

Cast: Gavin Rutherford (Camilla Miller)
Simon Leary (King Justin/Citizen)
Natasha McAllister (Martha/Citizen)
Jeff Kingsford-Brown (Mr.Brown/Troll/Citizen)
Jonathan Morgan (Puss-in-Boots/Citizen)
Carrie Green (Ms Green /Troll/Citizen)
Ben Emerson (Arthur Miller/Citizen)

Circa Theatre
Taranaki St., Wellington

Sunday 18th November, 2018

A director’s note in the programme from Susan Wilson paid tribute to the late Paul Jenden 1955-2013), actor, dancer, director and author of this and several other pantomines performed by Circa over the years, describing his presence as “sadly missed”. One of his most successful pantomime adaptations was of the well-known story of “Puss-in-Boots”, based on the European fairy-tale known in Italy as Il gatto con gli stivali, and in France as Le Maître chat ou le Chat botté (“The Master Cat” or “The Cat with the Boots”). The story tells how a cat uses his wits to gain power and riches for his poor, lowly-born master. Jenden’s pantomime, first performed by Circa in 2012, was here revamped and updated to catch the current drift of events and personalities that make Wellington the ideal on-going setting for such fairy-tale goings-on!

With recent Circa pantomimes “Peter Pan” (2017) and “Jack in the Beanstalk” (2016) having set positively vertiginous levels of expectation, I was thrilled to here find myself just as freshly “caught up” in the time-honoured fairy-tale theatricality of larger-than-life characters palpably becoming flesh-and-blood for a few precious hours of make-believe. I did struggle a bit at the very outset, finding it difficult to take in all the words of the very first musical number, despite the best efforts of the otherwise superbly characterised trolls of Jeff Kingsford-Brown and Carrie Green, my ears obviously adjusting to the acoustic – what English comedian Michael Flanders once called “getting the pitch of the hall”. Still, the gist of the characters’ intent (evil and mayhem! – naturally enough!), came across strongly in the dance movement, depicting the pair bent on taking the “Well” out of Wellington by being the spanner in the works of all recent disruptions such as the chaos caused by changed buses, bus routes and timetables. The Wellington settings and references continued throughout the show, giving it all a truly home-grown flavour and striking regular chords of approval with the audience.

The appearance of the remarkable Gavin Rutherford as the show’s “Dame”, in this case Mother Camilla Miller, established an immediate rapport with a sympathetic audience, Camilla losing no time in articulating to us her plight as a poor, lonely widow woman in the Aro Valley, “ruined” by the activities of her late husband, whose feckless behaviour had squandered the family fortunes. She then introduced her son, Arthur Miller (played by Ben Emerson with plenty of boy-next-door goofy appeal), the name  immediately occasioning the remark by Camilla “Google it, kids!”, first of a goodly number of wry references, including the priceless remark “Can you see Arthur Miller getting married to a rich and glamorous woman?” Social positioning in a “desirable” suburb – “Hataitai? – or Naenae? – or even Karori?” gives the song “Movin’ on up” its chance, as  we catch a glimpse of the eponymous cat for the first time – though Jonathan Morgan’s character lacked an ounce or two of voice-projection when singing he made up for it in sheer puss-onality, his dance leading to the entrance of a bevy of cats for a number inspiring a near show-stopping fusillade of cat-calls!

Adroitly evading both Mother Miller’s Trade Me “Talking Cat” schemes and the “Gareth Morgan” bogeyman threats, the Puss inherited the late Mr.Miller’s boots (along with his “hippie gear”), and lo! – we were suddenly in business! The cat was magically empowered and empowering, galvanising Arthur’s sensibilities with the suggestion that he could, with the Puss’s help, become “The Marquis of Makara” and then cementing their partnership with a song “Stick with me kid”, one whose positive vibrations countered the reappearance of the Trolls and their avowed goal of the city’s ruination, little by little, troll by troll!

Where would a modern scenario of Wellington be without a leader? – enter King Justin (Simon Leary a wonderfully “fairy-story-obsessed” monarch), here heralded at first by his feisty, kick-boxing daughter, Marilyn/Moana/Martha, whom he wished “was more like the princess you are!” while easing the patience of “a poor, lonely widower man”, taking time out from his troublesome affairs of family and state with a lavish picnic.  Marilyn (played beautifully by Natasha McAllister as a tomboy with simple-life, anti-princess yearnings) encounters Arthur, who, of course, falls in love with her – but she will have none of the “wooing of a princess” rigmarole, introducing herself to him as “Moana”. All of this was to the chagrin of Puss, who tells Arthur in no uncertain terms that he “deserves a princess” and to that end has been setting up the well-known “duckpond” scene for his master to make the happy transition from commoner to aristocrat, courtesy of King Justin and his daughter.

The fast and furious action involving all of the characters heading for the duckpond, with the Trolls, Mr Green and Mr.Brown (Carrie Green and Jeff Kingsford-Brown in scintillating and energetic song-and-dance form), embodying delight in mischief and malice, Marilyn/Moana/Martha rejecting the hapless would-be Marquis, Camilla Miller and King Justin disconcerted by each other’s presence, and the Cat pronouncing the ensuing mayhem a “cat-astrophe”, closes the first Act with the kind of gusto that leaves a quivering mass of unresolved tensions awaiting the best possible outcomes, which of course are realised in suitably quirky and post-happily-ever-after ways by the time the Second Act runs its breathless course.

Buoyed along by the music, a mixture of old and new (one particularly heart-warming number I’d forgotten that I knew!), contemporary and generational, with absolutely delightful word-adaptations in places, the show is a tribute in itself to the skills of musical director Michael Nicholas Williams, who accompanied most of the songs and joined in the vocalisations on occasions. Cheek-by-jowl with these energies was the engaging choreography of Leigh Evans, brilliantly tailored to fit both songs and situations, and performed with real panache by the cast members.

Pantos need “add-water” audiences to work, and this one was no exception – I found it at least as entertaining and involving from my “relatively sedentary” point of view as the other Circa productions along the same lines I’ve seen, with Gavin Rutherford’s command of blandishment and persuasiveness as potent with grown-ups as it is charming with children – the “bringing-onto” the stage of younger audience members is always a highlight of the proceedings, particularly the ensuing “out of the eyes of babes” expressions on some of the faces, immersed as they are in such a wondrous and magical land of flesh-and-blood make-believe! The range of jokes and gags covered all ages and sensibilities, with nothing too obviously risqué though still sufficiently “naughty” for the outrage to be funny. I thought the costumes and set designs and props deliciously colourful and beautifully lit (two highlights being the “cups” sequence performed by the King and Martha/Moana/Marilyn as they sang “When I’m Gone”, and the entrance of the royal carriage, with wondrously inventive horses providing a visual feast of spectacle and movement.)

In short, I would lose no time finding a jolly soul-mate (ideally along with one child at the very least!) with whom to go to this presentation. Susan Wilson’s direction and collaboration with her “creative team” has produced both a winner and a worthy memorial to the talents of the show’s original creator, Paul Jenden.

At Circa Theatre to the 23rd December 2018, and then from the 2nd to the 12th of January 2019.