May 2018 – At Home He Feels Like A Tourist

Van Gogh and Japan exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum review ****

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Van Gogh and Japan

Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam, 18th May 2018

There is an episode of the recent excellent BBC series Civilisations, on the history of art, where the presenter Simon Schama explores Japanese woodblock prints from the C!8 and C19 and shows their impact on the Western art canon. We often assume that the revolution in figurative art that came with Impression, Neo-Impressionism and Post Impressionism was born from the societies in which it flourished especially France, (VvG came to Paris in 1886), with some link back to greats from the past, Turner, Delacroix and Courbet. Subjects changed, colour and and the depiction of light intensified, artist got out a bit more. You don’t normally hear about how the flood of art from Japan influenced the way these chaps, (mostly chaps as always), saw their world.

This exhibition seeks to show the link between Van Gogh specifically, (it being the Van Gogh museum), and Japanese art but it does rather ram home the connection. Van Gogh collected Japanese prints like they were going out of fashion, which they so weren’t Japonisme being all the rage, so you get to see plenty of his 600 strong own collection, augmented with other jewels from the likes of Hokusai, Hiroshige and Kuniyoshi, contrasted with van Gogh’s own landscapes and other work. There’s even some fascinating direct copies by VvG of Japanese subjects, a bridge and, you guessed it, some blossom on a plum tree. And the exquisite van Gogh shown above is topped by its near neighbour in the exhibition, a bull finch hanging upside down on cherry tree branches by Hokusai. It is breathtakingly beautiful. You can get it as an I-Phone case. Not quite the same.

Oil paint might substitute for woodcut print ink but the same notion of perspective and dynamic, panoramic landscape leaps out. The thoughtful look in portraiture. The attempts to capture the detail of nature. Bold colours, uncluttered composition, clear lines, cropping. Your response might not be quite the same, reflecting the cultural history imposed upon you, but the ideas and impulses that underpin Impressionism, and the reasons why we can’t get enough of it, are uncannily similar. Van Gogh may not be as pretty-pretty as the generation that proceeded him but we punters can still intuitively grasp what he was about even when he had a bad day, which was most days poor fella.

The famous Self Portrait with a Bandaged Ear which we lucky Londoners can normally see in the Courtauld Gallery has a Torakiyo print of Mount Fuji on the wall. Van Gogh wasn’t alone. There is a Manet portrait of Zola with a sumo picture lurking in the background and Whistler brought the craze to London and copied it in his nocturnes.

Yet the differences are also striking. Oil paint adds texture. The woodcuts are flat. Van Gogh’s world is filled with unease, the Japanese masters exude calm (or am I just lazily stereotyping). Style contrasts with substance. Japanese art is steeped in the collective, in reverence for history and nature. Van Gogh peers at the individual and confronts head on the past and the world around him. Van Gogh is utterly devoid of irony or humour. He was, as we know, a serious fellow. The Japanese work was made to sell, (especially to us gullible gaijin), without his brother VvG would have been f*cked economically and artistically. That is why he is tortured genius personified. That, and the mental illness, a source of prurient audience fascination even as his descendants stewarded his work.

So the exhibition succeeds in showing the historical link between the two artistic cultures and the part Japan played in changing the direction of Western art. The questions art poses are universal even if the answers can vary through time and place. That is why VvG was taken with the idea of bringing his fellow artists together in some sort of Zennish brotherhood collective. The Occident and the Orient has been patronising each other for many hundreds of years. It also shows both the socio-economic and historical differences between the two worlds.

What it doesn’t do is show the actual art of either Van Gogh or the Japanese masters to best effect. Van Gogh, perhaps more than any other canonic Western artist, jumps off the canvas and wrestles the viewer to the ground. Old boot, chair, field, self, man, woman, flowers, vase. It doesn’t matter what the subject is, you cannot not stare. Of course you can whizz through like so many punters were doing in the main collection as it filled up. (I got in the queue on the opening – they have slot times now – and bounded up – well took the lift actually – to the top floor which I had moreorless to myself for twenty minutes or so). Even the cultural tickers and phone clickers though get pulled up by something from van Gogh.

In contrast the Japanese prints need a bit of proper looking. That takes time. When some hulking VvG landscape is lurking nearby they get pummelled. No matter. There are just so many astounding things to see in this exhibition that it doesn’t really matter if you accept or reject the message of cultural globalisation. Just enjoy.

Describe the Night at the Hampstead Theatre review ****

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Describe The Night

Hampstead Theatre, 23rd May 2018

In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Describe the Night hasn’t gone down too well with the London critics. The SO and I think they might have missed a trick. It is ambitious, ranging across several periods of Soviet and post Soviet Russian history, with a fairly cavalier approach to naturalism, and mixes fact and fiction, real and imagined events. Its workshop-py creative methodology shows through, but it was for us highly effective and enlightening. We’ve seen a fair few other plays that have fallen far shorter, despite their more limited intent. So hats off to Rajiv Joseph the writer for giving this a go. I see he won an OBIE, off Broadway award, for best new play with this. That’s probably a bit generous, (or New York is lamentably short of new work which I refuse to believe), but it’s proof that this isn’t the disappointment some have claimed it to be.

Polly Sullivan’s design sees a cliff wall of grey metal filing cabinets punctuated with a raised corridor and spiral staircase down to a dark open space with a couple of spindly birches. This, with some nifty work from Johanna Town’s lighting and Richard Hammarton’s sound, serves as backdrop for an underground KGB/NKVD filing room, an interrogation room, a minicab office, a plush Moscow apartment, a sparsely furnished flat and a forest exterior. The action kicks off in Poland in 1920 during the Russo-Polish war, (a conflict itself near forgotten), where we meet Isaac Emmauilovich Babel played by Ben Caplin and Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov played by David Birrell. Both actors are superb by the way.

Now Babel was a writer whose stories about his childhood and this war were initially feted by the Soviet authorities but who was eventually arrested, his work confiscated, and he was executed in 1940. Yezhov was a small man, a party functionary, who drank to excess, but rose to become a favourite of Stalin and head of the NKVD through the Great Purge. Eventually though he fell foul of Stalin, his wife Yevgenia Solomonovna Feigenburg (Rebecca O’Mara) was arrested, and he too was executed in 1940, despite trying to save his skin by ratting on his friends including Babel. The photos above show how he was famously “non-person-ned” out of history.

The two meet in a forest near Smolensk as Babel is trying to “describe the night” around him. The literal Yezhov has very little of the poet about him, Babel relishes metaphor, and the two debate the nature of facts and truth. They strike up a firm, if unlikely, friendship. We move forward to 1930s Moscow where we see Babel, whose estranged wife is in Paris, begin his affair with Yevgenia, (which, in reality, had started earlier before she married Yezhov). In the next scene we have whizzed forward to 2010 and Smolensk, where the plane taking the Polish president, his wife and various political and military elite to the commemoration of the Katyn massacre of 1940, has just crashed. Journalist Mariya (Wendy Kweh) is looking to evade the police and enlists the help of Feliks (Joel MacCormack) to made good her escape so she can tell the story.

For those that don’t know the crash is still the subject of conspiracy theories, despite the Polish and Russian authorities concluding it was down to human error, and the Katyn massacre saw the murder of some 22000 Polish military and intelligentsia by the NKVD, although Soviet authorities only finally admitted this in 2010 having previously blamed the Nazis.

We also seen Wendy Kweh as cantankerous Mrs Petrovna and her “daughter” Urzula, played by newcomer Siena Kelly, living in Dresden in 1989. Urzula wants to escape to the West. They have come to the attention of Vova, extravagantly played by Steve John Shepherd, who you might know as one Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. We see our putative Putin rewriting his own history in a confrontation with Yezkov, who has “lived on” to control the files of the NKVD/KGB. The real Putin’s early history is somewhat uncertain. Urzula may be the grand-daughter of the illegitimate child of Babel and Yevgenia, who ended up in an asylum thanks to Yezkov, unable to distinguish Babel’s stories from her own memory. Vova also interrogates, unpleasantly, Mariya, mirroring Yezkov’s interrogation of Babel.

And so the stories weave together and what is true and what is fiction becomes ever more uncertain. Babel’s diary, started in 1920, becomes the physical link between the “scenes”. Some have seen parallels in th eplay with other contemporary regimes alongside Russia where the truth is routinely manipulated. Rajiv Joseph is after all an American playwright. There is certainly much to ponder on from Mr Joseph’s particular narratives. and from his mix of fact and fiction, with even some magic realism thrown in, (never be tempted to drink leech soup). History has always been uncertain, from the moment it is “made”. Leaders and states have always sought to confound “truth”. limited only by their shame and intelligence, or lack thereof. The multiplicity of viewpoint that curses our contemporary digital world might seem like it has “never been as bad as this” but it has, as this century of Russian “history”, shows us. People lie. History is rewritten. Truth is fiction and fiction truth where only art might be trusted. The scale of Russia’s current strategy of disinformation may be exaggerated by technology but it certainly isn’t novel.

We thought that Rajiv Joseph’s text and Lisa Spirling’s (AD of Theatre 503) unhurried direction turned into an invigorating display of these “realities”. The cast all seem to have adopted a slightly forced quality in their delivery, which is though entirely consistent with the structure of the play and the world it inhabits. The “workshopped” construction, this version is different from its NYC cousin, does sometimes mean the pace eases ever so slightly, and the play is, perforce, disjointed, but the rewards more than justify this. (I am much happier saying this about Describe the Night than Maly Theatre’s Life and Fate, a similar dramatic exploration of Russian history). There is dark humour throughout. I can imagine a more fleet-footed production, (Stoppard and Kushner, also writers who relish the interplay of ideas and theatre, similarly need momentum), but the play is already asking a fair bit from its audience, (there is definitely a case for reading the excellent HT programme in advance), so a less stagey approach might risk confusion.

For the moment though this is well worth the effort. There are a few performances left at the HT but I have a feeling this will come back in some form or other and will be a “grower” whose reputation will grow with time. Not everything is what it initially seems maybe.

PS. The foyer of the HT contains some of the material from David King’s splendid collection of Soviet graphic art and photographs which formed the backbone of the recent excellent Tate Modern exhibition. There are a few links below to reviews of other cultural events that plough a similar furrow. Treat yourself.

Red Star Over Russia at Tate Modern review ****

Life and Fate at the Theatre Royal Haymarket review ***

Ilya and Emilia Kabakov at Tate Modern review ****

The War Has Not Yet Started at the Southwark Playhouse review ***

The Death of Stalin film review ****

Russian Art at the Royal Academy review ****

Mayfly at the Orange Tree Theatre review *****

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Mayfly

Orange Tree Theatre, 21st May 2018

A play set in a rural location about a family processing grief. Not a million miles away from the not entirely successful Nightfall at the Bridge Theatre I hear you clamour. (Nightfall at the Bridge Theatre review ***). Well yes after a fashion. Joe White’s debut play though benefits, unlike Nightfall, from its location, in the round in the intimate OT space, and because its writing is tighter, funnier and more affecting. This may not be the most innovative play in terms of form and subject that you will ever see but it is a mightily polished effort which marks Joe White out as another talent to add to the list of young British playwrights.

Harry, (a disarmingly genuine performance from Irfan Shamji), works in a rural pub that is closing down. He encounters the plainly damaged pig farmer Ben (Simon Scardifield) trying to take his own life in the river. It is a Sunday in early May in Shropshire. (There are allusions to Housman, Auden and even Breughel through the play. Mr White clearly knows his elegiac English, and Flemish, onions). Loops, played superbly by Evelyn Hoskins, “hard as fuck me”, remembers Harry from some school cadet trip and means to make him her boyfriend. Cat, played by Niky Wardley, completing the quartet of marvellous actors, is lonely and makes an embarrassing pass at Harry in the pub. We soon see that Ben and Cats marriage is stressed to breaking point and immature daughter Loops is trapped. Their pain stems from the death of their young lad, Adam, son and brother. Harry gets sucked in when he comes to eat with them. He too is grieving. Some, limited, catharsis follows. The End.

All in one day. Like the life of the mayfly. The play works because Mr White is neither afraid of, nor forces through, the emotional core at the heart of his story and because it is very funny, more so than many comedies you might see. The naturalistic lilt of the character’s speech is expertly captured but there is still room for telling metaphor. The crumbling of the social and economic fabric in rural areas lurks in the background mirroring the household’s breakdown. When the pub goes all that will remain will be a Spar and a betting shop.

Mayfly is sympathetically directed here by Guy Jones, one of Paul Miller’s proteges at the OT, and the set from Cecile Tremolieres is inventive, (as it was for Suzy Storck at the Gate last year). I’d be surprised if this play doesn’t pop up again elsewhere and I certainly recommend tracking Mr White’s career. The plot here is just occasionally derivative. With a bigger and more complex idea I reckon he might surprise, big time.

Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis at the Barbican Hall review ***

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London Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Chorus, Michael Tilson Thomas, Camilla Tilling (soprano), Sasha Cooke (mezzo-soprano), Toby Spence (tenor), Luca Pisaroni (bass-baritone)

Barbican Hall, 20th May 2018

Beethoven – Missa Solemnis

Hard to believe that the scruffy scrawl above is from the hand of the greatest ever composer in one of his greatest ever works. At least he thought so. And so does Michael Tilson Thomas, Conductor Laureate of the LSO, judging by the number of times he has taken it on.

I am not so sure though and find myself siding with Adorno on this. This will probably be the one and only time I can make this absurdly pretentious claim since, however hard I try, I cannot understand a word of what the Frankfurt School of Marxist critical theory was about, though the intellectual posturer in me dearly wishes I did. I would love to know a lot about a lot, or even a lot about a little bit of what there is to know. Instead I am doomed to know a little bit about very little.

The thing is there isn’t much of the theme and variation repetition thing than Beethoven took to unparalleled heights (at least until The Fall and Wire came along) in the Missa Solemnis. The giant fugues at the end of the Gloria and Credo provide me with some structural understanding, and connect with other late works like the piano sonatas and string quartets, but otherwise there is quite a lot of, well, Romantic meanderings.

Now it is Beethoven with massed choral forces offering up a Mass on a scale comparable with the Choral Symphony so it can’t all be bad. And it isn’t. There are stills scraps of cracking tunes which are explored in imitation to conjure up the goose-bump feel that the earlier masters of polyphony managed. Especially in the second half of the Gloria, the middle of the Credo and the beginning of the Sanctus. But there just isn’t the overarching structure to help my little head stay happy. LvB intended to complete the MS for his patron and mate, Archduke Rudolph, who was receiving some honour or other in March 1820. He missed the deadline so didn’t actually complete it until 1823 just ahead of the Ninth. Maybe that changed it.

The LSO chorus is now so bonkersly brilliant that it sort of didn’t matter when they were belting it out. Especially in the soprano section. And, like I say, MTT knows his way around the score. The soloists seemed well matched to me, though I would marginally take Sasha Cooke’s mezzo and Toby Spence’s tenor over Camilla Tilling’s soprano and Luca Pisaroni’s bass-baritone.

I will keep trying but I don’t think I will ever fully succumb to the MS. Whisper it but I am happier listening to the Mass in C which, as Beethovian experts will tell you, leaves me on the nursery slopes and forever banished from the pistes. So be it. Vita summa brevis.

Life and Fate at the Theatre Royal Haymarket review ***

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Life and Fate

Maly Drama Theatre of St Petersburg, Theatre Royal Haymarket, 20^th May 2018

The Maly Drama Theatre of St Petersburg was founded in 1944 and is one of just three European theatre companies to have been awarded the title Theatre of Europe from the EU. (No I didn’t grasp the geography of that either). The company has been led by Lev Dodin since 1983 and is renowned for its Russian adaptations of theatrical classics and for its examination of the paradoxes and realities of culture, society, life and politics in the Soviet Union. The relationship between culture and government in Russia continues to fascinate me and I wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to see Theatre with a capital T come to London.

Life and Fate was premiered in Paris in 2007 and is based on the epic novel by Vasily Grossman, pictured above, which documents the life of the Shtrum family through the 1930s and WWII in Soviet Russia. Vasily Grossman was born in 1905, a Jew in Ukraine, and initially trained and worked as a chemical engineer. He took up writing full time after his one of his short stories In the Town of Berdichev attracted attention. In the 1930s he just about managed to stay the right side of the authorities, in contrast to many of his peers, but in 1938 his wife was taken into custody following the arrest of her ex-husband. He became a renowned war correspondent and was one of the first to enter Ukraine following its liberation, only to find his mother, and indeed the whole Jewish population of his hometown Berdichev, had been murdered by the Nazis. Ukrainian complicity in the genocide was covered up.

This personal history provided the material for Life and Fate which VG sought to get published in the thaw that followed Stalin’s death. However the manuscript was seized by the KGB and pronounced unpublishable for at least 200 years. After VG’s death in 1964 a secret copy was smuggled out and eventually published in Switzerland in 1980 and, finally, following Glasnost, in Russia though still with some passages removed.

It is then a Book with a capital B of immense significance. It is also a whopper extending to near 800 pages, echoing War and Peace. In another of the now not uncommon marital coincidences chez Tourist the SO has it near the top of her to-read list having been recently drawn into the world of investigative journalist Svetlana Alexievich, who also shines a light on Soviet and post Soviet life, albeit more recent decades. Unusually it was me that recommended her books. The cultural division of labour, with the SO doing the hard work of reading and writing, and me the easy jobs of seeing and hearing, art, theatre and music, is thus alive and kicking in the Tourist household.

Condensing down this work into three and a half hours of theatre must have been some undertaking, taking time (3 years in fact), effort, research and immersion. The play starts in 1943 after a prominent physicist, Viktor Shtrum, returns to Moscow and the Institute he works in. He lives in a flat with wife Lyuda, and schoolgirl daughter Nadya. Lyuda’s son from her first marriage, Tolya, has been killed in the war. Her first husband Abarchuk is a political prisoner in the gulag along with Krymov, the ex-husband of Lyuda’s sister Zhenya who comes to stay with the Shtrums.

The Soviet labour camp also houses another political prisoner Monidze and criminals Barkhatov and Ugarov. Their plight is contrasted with the prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp, Mostovskoy, Ikonnikov, Ershov and Osipov, overseen by SS officer Liss. There are scenes set in the Battle of Stalingrad with tank Colonel Norikov who is Zheya’s lover, his number two Getmanov and a runner Vershikov, and in the Moscow Institute with colleagues of varying political committment, Sevastnov, Sokolov, Shishakov and Kovchenko.

Fortunately there is no doubling up and the programme notes are excellent in providing context. For the scenes do deliberately mesh into each other, with some very well choreographed rearrangement of the set, and actors from one location often remain on stage when others take the lead. The chronology is also fluid and the presence of Victor’s dead mother Anna is made flesh in the most moving laments in between key scenes.

All this is intended to point up the equivalence between the totalitarian regimes of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia and in this the play overwhelmingly succeeds. Viktor is Jewish and this leads to his ostracism and expulsion from the Institute as the policies of nationalism and anti-semitism infect Stalin’s regime in ways that mirror the more overt ideology of its enemy. If Viktor repents and confesses he might be able to save himself and his family, and continue with his work, but only if he abandons the truth and his identity.

And then along comes the fickle finger of fate as Stalin himself rings up and “wishes him success in his work”. It seems Viktor is the key to unlocking a nuclear bomb for the Soviets. He is safe. Life goes on. Except that the horror around him doesn’t stop. And Viktor is eventually faced with signing a letter that he knows will condemn dissidents to death.

It is an immense journey which in many ways is cleverly captured on this smallish proscenium stage. BUT it is very Actorly and very Speechy. Declamation is the go to style of delivery and this, compounded by the subject, makes for a gruelling evening. I was fortunately promoted to a much better seat, sightlines being untenable in my normal cheapskate TRH perch This exaggerated the staginess and meant a fair bit of my attention was lavished on the sur-titles for Francine Yorke’s translation. Now, I hear you cry, what did you expect going to see an epic set in the darkest period of the C20 delivered in Russian. Elf the Musical? Well no, I get that this did, to all intents and purposes, do exactly what it said on the can but I do think the production, not the material of course, tended to the overly grandiose.

I would find it invidious to pick out any of the cast or creative team for particular praise though you cannot deny the sheer presence of Sergey Kuryshev as Viktor and Tatiana Shestakova as Anna. I was also struck by Daria Rumyanantseva as Nadia, Alexander Koshkarev as Shishakov and Oleg Dmitriev as Liss but like I say this is large-scale, and I mean large, ensemble acting which I rarely see.

I feel unworthy saying this but the point of this blog is to record what I see, hear and learn. I have no doubt though that the next time one of the major Russian theatre companies comes to London I will be there. As with the visit of the Vakhtangov State Academic Theatre of Russia last year (Smile Upon Us Lord review at the Barbican Theatre review ***) the style may not grab me, the stories obviously do. And I am grateful to those who financed this visit. Anything that promotes mutual understanding of our histories must surely be valuable.

Christoph Sietzen and the Wave Quartet at the Concertgebouw review ****

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Christoph Sietzen, Wave Quartet (Bogdan Bacanu, Vladi Petrov, Emiko Uchiyama, Christoph Sietzen)

Het Concert-Gebouw, Recital Hall, 16th May 2018

Emmanuel Séjourné – Attraction for marimba, vibraphone and tape
Iannis Xenakis – Part B (from ‘Rebonds’) for percussion
J.S. Bach/Brahms – Chaconne (from Second Partita in D, BWV 1004) (arr. B. Bacanu) for marimba
Stewart Copeland – Sheriff of Luxembourg for marimba, percussion and tape
Ivan Boumans – The Cloth, op. 140 (encore) for percussion
Josh Groban – The Wandering Kind (arr. E. Uchiyama) for marimbas
J.S. Bach – Allegro (from Concerto in C, BWV 1061a) (arr. B. Bacanu) for marimbas
Astor Piazzolla – La muerte del ángel (arr. E. Uchiyama) for marimbas
Astor Piazzolla – Oblivion (arr. E. Uchiyama) for marimbas
Reentko Dirks – Danza non Danza (arr. The Wave Quartet) for marimbas
Astor Piazzolla – Milonga del ángel (arr. E. Uchiyama) for marimbas
Astor Piazzolla – Libertango (arr. E. Uchiyama) for marimbas
Rodrigo Sanchez / Gabriela Quintero – Tamacun (arr. E. Uchiyama) for marimbas
Rodrigo Sanchez / Gabriela Quintero – Juan Loco (arr. The Wave Quartet) (encore) for marimbas

OK so I confess I was a captive buyer for this. This was what was on in the Concertgebouw on the night I was there. There were a few other tourists in the same boat, and a healthy contingent of local Amsterdammers. Which, even in the smaller, though still resplendent recital hall, made up a full house. The recital hall, in full blown neo-classical style, is topped by a rotunda with the names of the Romantic greats immortalised, and some not-so-greats as well.

Anyway whilst I didn’t know the percussionist Christoph Sietzen, and the crack marimba team of which he is a member, the Wave Quartet, this programme intrigued. In particular the Xenakis, who is near the top of my further investigation list, the Bach and the Piazzolla. The programme consisted of the first five pieces for solo percussion with Mr Sietzen and then the pieces for the entire quartet, largely arranged by Ms Uchiyama. Bogdan Bacanu, who might just be the most accomplished marimba player ever, and certainly its greatest advocate, was a child prodigy and went on to teach the other three members, amongst others, in Linz and Salzburg I believe. He is also responsible for the Bach arrangements, which are completely faithful to the originals.

Remember there are a lot of works by Bach that weren’t necessarily written for specific instruments but its a fairly safe supposition that he didn’t have a percussion instrument in mind when he set down the pieces here. On the other hand the marimba, which is by some way the most expressive and dynamically sophisticated of the percussion stable, ranging across 4 or 5 octaves, even if its timbre is so particular, isn’t too far away from the harpsichord in terms of effect. It is, as we see here, becoming increasing popular in contemporary classical music and the technical proficiency of playing has come on in leaps and bounds in part thanks to Mr Bacanu.

The first piece was by Emmanuel Sejourne who is the pre-eminent composer for marimba and vibraphone and a world renowned player. It was originally written for violin and marimba but here Mr Sietzen substituted violin with a vibraphone. I have to say it was impressive though I might have preferred to here it later on once I had adjusted to the marimba sounds. Even so it is breathtaking to hear what is possible for these instruments.

Xenakis composed two pieces for solo percussion, this piece Rebonds, and Psappha. It isn’t much of a surprise given the composer’s mastery of rhythm and structure but it is genuinely mind-boggling in its complexity. There are two movements in Rebonds. Mr Sietzen only played Part B, a shame as I would love to have heard Part A as well. It is scored for two bongos, one tumba, one tom-tom, one bass drum and a set of five wood blocks or wooden slats. Xenakis leaves some decisions on the score to the performer, all part of the mathematics of his music, (remember he was architect, engineer and mathematician as well as composer and not averse to shunting the laws of physics into his work). Xenakis is so far beyond what I understand in music but, trust me, the intensity of the rhythms here, despite the abstraction, still provokes a basic, primal reaction which needs no maths degree. You will laugh at me, but if you have listened through a John Bonham drum solo in Moby Dick (Google it kids), you will understand, though this is way more sophisticated than Bonzo thrashing away.

I took the opportunity to listen to Psappha. Amazing.

You will likely know the Bach Chaconne from the Violin Partita No 2 which Brahms amongst others transcribed for the piano left hand. (There is a YouTube performance by Danile Trifonov no less if you are interested and if you want the violin original please listen to Rachel Podger’s recording). I am not going to pretend that this marimba version matches that but it is still absolutely the same beautiful piece of music and shows astonishing virtuosity.

The Stewart Copeland piece, which was commissioned for Mr Sietzen, was a little less convincing by comparison to what else was on offer in this recital but was pleasant enough. Mr Copeland, for you youngsters who regard this as ancient history, was the drummer for popular English beat combo The Police in the 1980s, whose cod-reggae sound should never have worked, and never have been as popular, but it did, and it was. Mr Copeland has gone on to write film and game soundtracks and some classical compositions including this. Prior to the Police he was manager and drummer for Curved Air for those of you with an unhealthy interest in progressive jazz-rock. (Never ever get into conversation with me about Soft Machine).

After Mr Sietzen’s marvellous show of musical, and physical, prowess in the first half we might have expected something more sedate after the interval. No way Jose. (That being a reference to the Latin fuelled energy of the last few pieces). The Wave Quartet were decked out in bright red shirts, think Kraftwerk circa Man Machine without the black skinny ties and Fascist undertones.

There are many areas of music which are a complete mystery to me. I had never heard of Josh Groban before. Apparently he is a big noise though in the popera world. I can happily maintain my aloof indifference on the basis of this piece.

The second Bach piece is arranged from the first movement Allegro two harpsichord version of the Concerto BWV 1061 for the same instruments. So each of the four marimbas players with their two mallets (called knobs) in each hand is effectively one hand of the score. Given that the harpsichord notes can’t really sustain there is sound logic (literally) to transcribe to marimbas. It works, though I am not sure I would turn to this again in a hurry. I can’t deny Mr Bacanu’s dedication in adapting Bach in this way. I see the Wave Quartet have recorded the other harpsichord concerto arrangements with orchestra.

Astor Piazzolla was the genius Argentine who meshed the tango, the Baroque and jazz into a fresh and exciting musical world in the 1950s and 1960s. I can see exactly why the Wave Quartet would want to play these pieces. You will definitely know the Libertango. (I first heard in I’ve Seen That Face Before by Grace Jones). You will think you know the other pieces. The arrangements didn’t seem too complex which meant the Wave Quartet could pull of all sorts of flourishes. They were having a ball and so was the audience. The Reentko Dirks and Sanchez/Quintero pieces, originally for guitar, have similar heritage, with the final Juan Loco seeing young Vladi Petrov showing off on a simple beat box drum. Cheesy but undeniably joyous.

There you have it. A celebration of just what percussion can do and a salutary reminder not to get bogged down in serious classical music.

Spira Mirabilis at the Queen Elizabeth Hall review ****

Spira Mirabilis

Queen Elizabeth Hall, 15th May 2018

Beethoven – Symphony No 7 in A Op 92

Spira Mirabilis is a group of talented young musicians from around the world who play in various European orchestras. They hole up in Formigine in Northern Italy near Bologna to learn from each other and devote themselves to intensive study of major orchestral works of the canon which they then take around Europe to entertain us punters, and, more importantly, show us how it is done. I suspect they also have a bit of craic along the way.

The twist is that they have no conductor. Which means, in the spirit of a chamber ensemble, they have to “immerse themselves in the score with the aim of reaching an interpretative consensus on a shared vision and a complete synthesis with the work”. Now if you thought that the conductor of an orchestra, as I did a few years ago, was just there on the podium to provide a bit of visual light relief, you would be very much mistaken. Someone has to impose a musical vision on even the most detailed score involving all manner of decisions on tempi, dynamics, who does what where, when and why, and all manner of other stuff way above my pay grade. If you dump his or her direction then I imagine you are collectively setting yourselves up for one hell of an away day. Yet this is exactly what they do with the intention then of trying to explain to us how they did it. Wonderful.

In this case they just happened to pick, IMHO, the most perfect piece of music ever written. I believe Beethoven to be the greatest of composers, the symphony to be the most complete musical form and this to be his best. Though I can see why others might disagree with any and every part of that statement. Moreover I admit that there are individual pieces by modern composer/performers in popular music genres that would just edge it for me on the eponymous desert isle. (I should probably post something on that).

Spira Mirabilis have in fact already been through an entire Beethoven cycle, good call, so this constituted something of a revival. Yet there was still a palpable sense of excitement in the Hall ahead of, and through, this performance. When Beethoven wrote this his hearing had significantly deteriorated and he had retired to the spa town of Teplice in order to gee himself up. There is no programmatic intent, unlike its predecessor the Pastoral, yet it is an astonishingly uplifting, happy work. That maybe because it is essentially dance music. Anyway it was a hit from the off and it is easy to see why.

The first movement starts slowly but when the “dotted” rhythmic figure finally kicks in LvB proceeds to push and pull it around in so many ways that it barely seems plausible that it can tolerate this level of innovation. If you ever need to understand Beethoven’s genius in taking simple material and wrestling it into music of unparalleled emotional and intellectual power through progressive variation, it lies here. This is the longest movement of any of the symphonies.

Then there is the Allegretto. A funeral march where the ostinato is repeated and repeated until it attains monumental proportions. Strings largely in minor keys, woodwinds take the major. If you need to give someone important to you a good send off, alive or dead, this is the music you need. It is the most hummable tune ever written. The Presto that follows is joyous and funny and contrasts with its central hymnal trio and the Finale cuts loose completely. I’ll warn you. Avoid sitting next to a fat bloke, likely in shorts, probably leaning forward, imperceptibly wiggling his fingers, in time just about, if the Finale of the Seventh should be playing. He might just start sobbing. With joy. Truly pathetic.

It takes a marvellous performance to overwhelm me and I have to confess this wasn’t quite there. It was insightful in glimpses, especially in the third movement, the negotiation between the players was intriguing and there was a slippery quality I liked. Tempos were sensible but I might have preferred something a little brisker in the first two movements, especially in the second subject of the Allegretto. But I still think the necessary compromises made everyone hold back just a bit. A sense of “after you Claude”. I am all about consensus in the “real” world but in the realm of the creative democracy can only take you so far.

I also have to confess that I didn’t stay for the post match replays and interviews. No good excuse other than wanting to see the SO and LD that evening. Though they of course completely ignored me when I got home early. I discovered that Spira Mirabilis had repeated the second movement, this time whilst randomly sitting in the audience. Damn. I wish I had stayed for that.

Still overall a fine performance of a transcendent work intriguingly delivered.

An Oak Tree the Orange Tree Theatre review ****

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An Oak Tree

Orange Tree Theatre, 13th May 2018

Tim Crouch’s An Oak Tree has been on my theatrical wish list for a little while now. First performed in 2005 at the Edinburgh Fringe it was, I understand, inspired by Michael Craig-Martin’s, (he of the day-glo technology), seminal work of conceptual art of the same name (see above) which “explains” why a glass of water balanced on a shelf is, in fact, an oak tree. Absolutely guaranteed to make the philistine’s blood boil. As so, to some extent, would Tim Crouch’s best known play.

Caryl Churchill no less described the play as “about theatre, a magic trick, a laugh and a vivid experience of grief, and it spoils you for a while for other plays”. Turns out that, for once, Ms Churchill maybe over-egging it a tad but it is still a fascinating work. Mr Crouch plays a stage hypnotist, complete with shiny waistcoat and cheap patter, whose act is crumbling, we discover, following a road accident which led to the death of a young girl (or maybe not). The other actor plays the father of the girl, Andy, who he encounters at one of his shows. The play then is ostensibly about guilt and grief, and how we process these emotions, a theatrical staple which has become something of a specialism at the OT.

But there’s a twist. The actor playing Andy, here Kate Hardie, hasn’t seen the play or the script before. Which leaves her being guided, like hypnosis, with a mixture of spoken and whispered instructions, headphones and script in hand, by Tim Crouch, in and out or character. It takes time for us, and her, to believe in Andy, though “he’ always remains slightly, and rightly, bewildered. Mr Crouch, on top of his “directing” duties also plays a character putting on an act, hypnotising an audience no less, and imagining an audience in parallel with us the real audience. We are asked to accept at various points that a chair is the dead child and that the grieving father in turns believes that an oak tree, (actually a tree which is part of the OT set for other current productions just in case this wasn’t all meta enough), is in fact his dead daughter, not just her spirit nor a symbol. It really is to him. This is analogous to the explanation of the Craig-Martin art work which informed the play. Indeed Mr Crouch exits the auditorium to fetch a glass of water at one point.

The wonder is that, as Mr Crouch piles on the deconstruction in his essay on performative language, counterpointing art and life, representation and reality, absence and presence, the artifice and magic of theatre, we actually end up caring about these two characters because of, and not in spite of, the form. No dry, academic exercise but a real play, albeit one with many conceptual layers through its 70 minutes.

You need to see it. And I need to see more of this magician’s work.

Oedipus at Amsterdam Stadsschouwburg review ****

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Oedipus

Tonneelgroep Amsterdam, Stadsschouwburg, 17th May 2018

The Tourist sets off to Amsterdam to see the new version of Oedipus from the mighty Toneelgroep Amsterdam. As well as his first visit to the Concertgebouw and a chance to reacquaint himself with one Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. The Tourist finally blogs as a Tourist.

What was the attraction. Oedipus first. Your man Sophocles could write a drama, no doubt about that, and for me, this, Oedipus the King (Rex or Tyrannus), tops his other oft-performed work, Antigone, (though that is still a cracker of a story). These two plays, in a trilogy, sandwiched Oedipus at Colonus where our unfortunate hero leaves Thebes with his daughters and proceeds to pop his clogs after a lot of philosophical chat.

I hope one day to see an adaption of Sophocles’s version of Electra, (all three Greek tragedians had a pop at this story), and Ajax, the miffed warrior who, surprise, surprise, tops himself. I hope, as has occasionally happened, some clever creative will also see the potential in Philoctetes, (wounded soldier on high horse – metaphorically of course – who doesn’t want to fight again). I gather the least interesting of Sophocles’s seven remaining plays is Women of Trachis.

Anyway, as you almost certainly know, the plot of Oedipus the King is an absolute belter. It’s been hard for any writer to top this, for sheer OTT intensity, ever since 429 BCE. That weirdo Freud even named a theory after it. Unwittingly kill your Dad and marry your Mum. It doesn’t end well.

How to adapt this though is the perennial creative conundrum. Which brings me to the second reason to hop on a train to see this. (Yes it is now possible to take the direct train from London to Amsterdam if not yet the return. Cheap as chips, door to door no longer than a flight. And so much more civilised. The bit from Brussels to Amsterdam was pretty much empty).

Namely director Robert Icke. For those that don’t know, Mr Icke, at just 32 years old, is the wunderkind of British theatre direction, though there are many others who match him in my opinion. He was responsible for the revelatory Almeida Hamlet with Andrew Scott, the recent Mary Stuart, 1984, Uncle Vanya and Mr Burns, all at the same venue, (where he is Associate Director), and The Red Barn at the National Theatre. Not all perfect but in many cases mightily close. Yet, of his work to date, probably the most breathtaking was his Oresteia, which even managed a West End transfer after its Almeida run.

Here he took Aeschylus’s mighty trilogy, dispensed with the chorus, pumped up the back story, gave the Gods a court-room at the end to weigh up Orestes’s guilt, (with a bit of audience participation), and carved out a family revenge drama of startling power, where black and white is mutated into every shade of grey, and where death is viscerally real. His adaptation translates the poetry into something more immediate which any audience can grasp. Greeks doesn’t get any better than this.

So no wonder he was invited into the Toneelgroep party to have a go at Oedipus. And there is a lot that Mr Icke has in common with the masters of TA, Ivo van Hove and Jan Versweyveld. The set of Oedipus is one of the modern, faceless, corporate offices which IvH and JV used so effectively in Kings of War and Roman Tragedies. Though given Mr Icke’s set up for Oedipus, a campaign headquarters on the night of an election result, Hildegard Bechtler’s design could hardly be more appropriate. As it happens Ms Bechtler designed the Hamlet set so she knows the Icke drill. The TA stage in the Stadsschouwburg is wide and deep like the Lyttleton. I reckon you could sit anywhere, (and seats are a bargain €30 or so), and see everything. As well as the set, the use of video (Tal Yarden) and screens, a bit of on-stage eating in a family dinner, the modern, relaxed dress, the sound of Tom Gibbons and the lighting from Natasha Chivers, all echo the TA aesthetic. Mr Icke also borrows freely from his own back catalogue, most noticeably with the giant digital clock counting down on stage, representing the time to the election result, but more importantly the revelation underpinning the prophecy. The domestic interplay, the interior setting, the on-stage suicide of Jocasta though thankfully not Oedipus’s gouging, (here with heels not dress pins, ouch), the bickering over the family dinner, the strategising, all will be familiar to those who have seen Oresteia.

The set-up is brilliant. We see a video of Oedipus talking to the press after the election has closed. He promises to clean up the plague which is debilitating Thebes. Here though the plague is shorthand for the political corruption and economic incompetence of the previous administration. “The country is sick”. He is offering a bright new future. “Yes we can” or “drain the swamp”. Take your pick. He also, on the hoof, commits to investigating, and getting to the truth of, Laius’s murder. Cut to the loyal speechwriter/adviser Creon, played here by Aus Greidanus Jr, having a go at Oedipus for making this risky promise. Tiresias (Hugo Koolschlin) is wheeled in to deliver the prophecy. Our first opportunity to see the nasty side of Hans Kesting’s Oedipus as he angrily dismisses the blind old boy’s “nonsense” and turns on Creon who he reckons wants the job of leader. Marieke Heebink’s Jocasta talks him out of sacking Creon, (no need for a chorus and executions in this scenario!), and we are on to the killing at the cross-roads.

But here Laius (Jocasta’s first hubby) is the victim of a road accident (limos not chariots obvs), and Oedipus starts to piece together his own accident story with the established version, questioning the Chauffeur, played by Bart Slegers. You know the rest …… and if you don’t you should. The way Robert Icke fits his version of the plot to the “original” is artful and ensures that the last third or so of the production is as powerful as it should be.

What Mr Icke also intelligently lays on top is the family dynamic as we see “Mum” Merope (Freida Pittoors), consumed by the agony of watching Oedipus’s unseen “Dad” Polybus dying whilst all Oedipus cares about is the prophecy and, here, his route to power, daughter Antigone (Helene Devos) and sons Polynices (Harm Duco Schut) and Eteocles (Joshua Stradowski). Their is some conflict between the two lads: remember they go on to bring Thebes to its knees by knocking seven bells out of each other. The entourage is rounded out by faithful retainer Corin (Fred Goessens) and assistant Lichas (Violet Braeckman).

The supporting actors are uniformly marvellous but it is Hans Kesting and Marieke Heebink who dominate the stage. Which brings me to the third reason to nip over to Amsterdam to see this. The Tourist considers Hans Kesting to be the best male actor in the world and Marieke Heebink to be the best female actor. They proved it once again here. No fear you see, massive emotional range and immense physicality. No point holding back as the revelations tumble out in Oedipus and, trust me, they don’t. The scene were Jocasta explains how she was abused by Laius, and conspires to smuggle her baby away, is unbearably moving. Love is about the trickiest emotion to capture on stage. These two show exactly how to do it.

So why just 4* and not the 5* that you might expect from this obviously gushing fan of the play, the ensemble and the director. Firstly there is maybe, as I allude to above, a bit of a sense that we have seen this all before. The setting works, how “fate” brings a “good, man” down, and, specifically whether it pays for a politician to be “honest”, but the look and feel is maybe just a bit too close to Mr Icke’s previous work. More importantly the text is maybe a little too direct. Remember I was following a sur-titled English translation of a Dutch adaption by Rob Klinkenberg of the original Greek filtered through numerous prior translations. This presumably makes its literalness even more literal. Helps plot and message but leaves poetry on the table. In TA’s other work I have seen, the Shakespeare for example, this has not been a constraint, the language still shines. In IvH/JW’s Antigone conversely, which came to the Barbican, the translation by Anne Carson was too challenging, though this disappointed more through Juliette Binoche’s miscasting it pains me to say.

Still overall this is a great piece of theatre. If it ever wends its way to London you must see it. Otherwise we have Marieke Heebink as the lead in Simon Stone’s Medea to look forward to next year at the Barbican and Simon McBurney makes his directorial debut at TA at the Staadsschouwburg with a Cherry Orchard. Yum. This creative collaboration, amongst so many other reasons, is why Europe is a good idea. Though I doubt any of the dumb-arses in England who think differently would care.

The Gronholm Method at the Menier Chocolate Factory review ****

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The Gronholm Method

Menier Chocolate Factory, 12th May 2018

Curious place the Menier Chocolate Factory. Properly fringe in looks and feel. But programming which is more Bournemouth than Borough. Still it knows its audience and seems to pack ’em in, even with prices that seem a little more confident than some of its more fringe-y fringe theatre peers. And quite a variable output based on the critics and the opinions of one or two of the Tourist’s nearest and dearests. Still sometimes they nail it, especially with their musical revivals if that’s your bag, and their production of Stoppard’s Travesties, now on Broadway, was an absolute triumph.

So the Tourist pays attention to its offerings and saw something in The Gronholm Method which drew him in. Glad I did for it is a very pleasing, humorous, gentle satire on the world on modern employment practice, and specifically, the job interview. It is the most successful work from Spanish playwright Jordi Galceran, and has been performed in over 60 countries since its premieres in Barcelona and Madrid. The translators here are Anne Garcia-Romero and Mark St Germain and the director is BT McNicholl, the production having been imported from off-Broadway.

Frank (Jonathan Cake), Rick (John Gordon Sinclair), Carl (Greg McHugh) and Melanie (Laura Pitt-Pulford) pitch up in a smart office room in New York for an interview for some high-powered sales role. A draw opens with a set of instructions. One of them is an Human Relations ringer and they need to work out who. Further, increasingly bizarre and/or personal instructions, follow. One of them will get the job.

OK so it is a bit of a stilted set-up, which never quite relaxes, but it is the vehicle for some pretty amusing interchanges and some smart observations on the lengths people will go to in the modern, competitive workplace. The twists are not earth-shattering but they come at sufficiently regular intervals to intrigue. The performances are very fine, particularly Jonathan Cake as the viperous egoist Frank and John Gordon Sinclair as bumptious everyman Rick, and together the four players generate enough tension to convince. The direction is slick across the shortish 90 minutes, the set from Tim Hatley is spot on and the accents are convincing to my ear.

You will enjoy watching I am sure, but more for the games it plays, with us the audience, as well as between the actors, but any pretence it might have to offer psychological insight flounders on the rather cardboard cut-out nature of the characters served up. So, I would guess, you will largely forgot the entertainment not long after climbing the stairs out. No matter. Take it for what it is. As I did. Hence 4* not 3*.

If you want real workplace drama, look out for Mike Bartlett’s Bull. That’s so real it hurts.