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Irish Times
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
‘It's really a coup': Irish Baroque Orchestra to make BBC Proms debut with Handel ‘Dublin' oratorio not performed since 18th century
There must be nearly 50 people in Litton Hall. Stacks of chairs are pushed to the side of the audience area of the performance space at Wesley House, in Ranelagh in Dublin , which is often used for rehearsals. The curtains to the stage are closed, and sunlight is coming through a couple of high windows where the blinds aren't down. There are plenty of backpacks, jackets and instrument cases. On a large desk near the door sit a few copies of the vocal score for Bach's St Matthew Passion. Here, amid the clutter of the 21st century, period instruments and voices fill the room, soaring, powerful, moving, both grave and graceful. They are transporting the few of us listening at the edge back to the early 18th century. Not for nothing does the Irish Baroque Orchestra call itself Ireland's time-travelling orchestra. We're here on foot of the news, still under wraps on the day of this rehearsal, that they are to play at the BBC Proms this summer, performing a 1742 'Dublin version' of Handel's Alexander's Feast, dating from the period when the composer lived in Dublin, and pieced together for the first performance since that time. Today the ensemble is rehearsing Bach's great choral work for Easter. Twenty or so instrumentalists are sitting in a curve around their artistic director, Peter Whelan, who's both conducting and dipping down regularly to play harpsichord. There are two basses at the back, the organ in between, violins, violas and cellos in front. Four flutes (made of wood, as for Irish trad), a viola da gamba (similar to a cello) and four varieties of baroque oboe. READ MORE When the musicians change which ones of these they're playing, it's as if they're taking 'different instruments from a forest', Whelan says. Some are old, dating back to the 1700s; most are copies of period instruments, made using 18th-century techniques. 'We try to copy the sounds from that time, to make the music we do – music by Handel, Vivaldi, Bach – sound like you're hearing it for the first time. So the ink is fresh on the page, and that's how the audiences are hearing it. That's the plan. That's what we hope to do with our work.' At the front, facing the instrumentalists, are eight adult singers, in two groups of four, and eight children from the choir of St Patrick's Cathedral. The young choristers, who handle themselves thoroughly professionally, are here for the first part of the rehearsal, working on the sections they sing in, their voices sweet and pure. The Irish Baroque Orchestra in rehearsal at Litton Hall, Wesley House Leeson Park, Ranelagh. Photograph: Alan Betson Whelan envelops them into the larger ensemble. As rehearsal progresses, he is everywhere, hands, face, and body expressively bringing forward various sections, vigorous, animated. His hands twitch and sweep. He seems to have springs under his feet as he almost bounces or sways. His intake of breath is audible – pfff – or, as a movement subsides: oh . He encourages, praises, instructs. 'Lighten it.' 'That's tricky.' 'Make sure you hear their voices first.' 'The last note is a bit shorter.' This Passion is almost perfect, ready to go. Whelan talks later about the concept of rehearsal – 'Probe' in German, 'répétition' in French. The English derives from the medieval term for 'harrow again' – 'like pulling a plough through a field, and to do that again and again. That's where 'rehearsal' comes from. 'That's what we do, just keep dragging through the process and finding where there's weak spots, and trying to get the most out of the drama and get everybody on the same page. It's just about pulling all the people together and getting the same idea from them.' The mood is concentrated but confident. These are top-level musicians and singers, at ease with their skill and with each other. Occasionally, there's a moment of laughter as something unexpected happens. They have been rehearsing St Matthew Passion all week, and are polishing long sections at this stage, teasing out tricky intersections of the 70-plus short movements, chorales and arias. It's in glorious shape, exulting to hear up close and to witness how they bring it together. There's a sort of pleasing disjuncture between then and now: the sounds of the 18th century on baroque instruments, and the lives of the present. Almost as a reminder of this, as a powerful Bach chorus fills the hall, a young woman appears for a few moments, listening unseen at the door, with a tiny infant in her arms. This is Aoibhe Kelly, whose sister Doireann, the orchestra's general manager, is busy at the desk beside us; Kelly is minding four-month-old Orlando, who's travelled from Denmark with his mother, the mezzo-soprano Laura Lamph; she is singing her soul out inside. During a break, Whelan talks about the Irish Baroque Orchestra's Proms debut at the Royal Albert Hall in London on August 30th. It will be just the second time that an ensemble from the Republic of Ireland has performed at the annual eight-week summer festival, which has been showcasing classical music to wide audiences since the BBC began broadcasting it in 1927. It marks a milestone for the orchestra, following on from an Olivier award in 2022 for their work on Vivaldi's Bajazet, an Irish National Opera and Royal Opera co-production, and another Olivier nomination this year, for Irish National Opera's production of another work by Vivaldi, L'Olimpiad, in collaboration with the orchestra. The German-British Baroque composer George Frideric Handel moved to Dublin, bringing his harpsichord with him briefly; he lived on Abbey Street for a period from late 1741. The first performance of his Messiah was at the New Musick Hall (Mr Neale's Great Room) on Fishamble Street on April 13th, 1742. That year also saw two Dublin performances, in February and March, of Handel's oratorio Alexander's Feast. They were acclaimed at the time, reflecting growing appreciation of his work. Handel's setting of Dryden's ode, Alexander's Feast, was first performed at Covent Garden Theatre in 1736. The libretto describes a banquet held by Alexander the Great and his lover Thaïs in the captured city of Persepolis, where they are entertained by the bard Timotheus, whose music evokes emotions of joy, love, sorrow and anger in Alexander. Dryden's text was adapted by Handel's friend Newburgh Hamilton, the Irish writer, who 'took care not to take any unwarrantable liberties' with the poet's original. The version the Irish Baroque Orchestra will perform at the Proms is different. 'We're incredibly proud to bring this music back to life with parts made specially for this occasion – and to do it on such an acclaimed stage is a dream come true,' Whelan says. Re-creating the Dublin version involves marrying scholarship and musical excellence; Whelan tells a good tale about it. 'A lot of the work we've been doing here is to find out what Handel found when he was in Dublin. Who are the musicians he was working for, what kind of music was going on? 'We've been on this big journey around Messiah, and we've discovered so much about the Irish musicians at the time that he found ... We made some discoveries in Pearse Street Library. It was a bit like Indiana Jones, dusting off these old manuscripts. People know Alexander's Feast, but this Irish version will be something new for a lot of people. We're really excited.' Conductor Peter Whelan directs musicians during rehearsal. Photograph: Alan Betson In this version's libretto, 'the words are subtly different. And the big difference is that the version most people know is in two parts, and this Irish version is in three parts. There's extra material, and it's distributed in a different way. It's quite an exciting thing for everybody. Even Handel scholars are finding it very exciting. And just to know that we have something that's Irish, that the rest of the world doesn't know about. 'We're proud about classical music. When I was a kid, I felt classical music was extra: it belonged somewhere else and not to us as Irish people. And now we look back and you see these great figures who are here performing, writing special pieces for Irish audiences. I think that's just great. It brings it home. We've owned this music. It belongs to us. It was written for us for 300 years or more. We have a right to be proud about it.' The newly discovered version is pieced together from 'two sets of dusty manuscripts'. The library's scholars and other staff – 'the real heroes behind this story' – found 'a word book, basically programme notes from the day, just the libretto and no music. That's where we found that there's three parts.' Some of the music turned up at the Royal College of Music in London, 'but not the complete bit of the music, only a bass line that one of the cellos would have been playing, with some of the words written. 'We could piece the two together', working it out, 'so those words more or less fit there. We had to kind of reconstruct it, and then it becomes clear that way. It's like two little bits that we can join together. It's a long process, but the bits came together in concrete form over the last year or so.' Whelan talks about how 'some sleuths pointed them out – scholars dragging these things to our attention – and then all the parts just came together. 'Oh, we could do this ...'' The musicologist Donald Burrows – 'he's Mr Handel' – has been supervising Whelan's reconstruction of the work. The Royal Albert Hall invitation came about after the orchestra's chief executive, Aliye Cornish Moore, invited the director of the Proms at the time, David Pickard, to hear them play at the Royal Opera House in London last year. 'We had been trying to get him to a performance for a while, so we were delighted when he accepted the invitation. He was blown away, and confirmed almost straight away that he wanted the Irish Baroque Orchestra to appear in the 2025 season. It was just a question of what we would perform,' she says. Cornish Moore is a musician too: she was guest principal violist with the orchestra a few times before taking on the management role, which she says is 'a golden opportunity to develop a national period orchestra, and work alongside lovely musicians'. The workload means it's not feasible for her to play with the orchestra any more, 'but I do occasionally fill gaps in our education and participation programming, which I love doing'. Royal Albert Hall: a Proms concert in 2022. Photograph: Mark Allan/BBC The Dublin version of Alexander's Feast will be an hour-and-a-half to two hours long, Whelan reckons. It will be a big operation getting the orchestra to London; Culture Ireland is providing support. The Irish Baroque Orchestra will have to grow for the occasion, to well over 100 musicians and singers. 'It has to be huge, because it's in the Albert Hall,' he says. 'It's the biggest version of ourselves there's ever been.' In the rehearsal, he's just stepped out of 'it's basically one person singing each part'. For the Proms, 'there will be a big choir, a full choir to fill that space. It'll be just a big crowd of people. We need to be a giant version of ourselves.' The Ulster Orchestra has performed at the Proms; the only other orchestra from south of the Border to have been invited was the New Irish Chamber Orchestra , which performed way back in 1979. Lindsay Armstrong, that ensemble's cofounder, first manager and oboe player, recalls their all-Bach programme that evening, conducted by the noted Irish Bach interpreter John Beckett. Mary Gallagher was the orchestra's leader; the singers were the soprano Irene Sandford, the contralto Bernadette Greevy, the tenor Frank Patterson and the bass William Young, along with the Cantata Singers. Armstrong and his wife, Gillian Smith, who are now friends of Whelan's, are 'delighted for Peter and the IBO'. Whelan was a piano student of Smith's for years at the Royal Irish Academy of Music; she was involved in him getting his first bassoon. The Irish Baroque Orchestra is vowing to do more than celebrate a forgotten version of a masterpiece: it also plans to 'remind audiences that baroque music is anything but modest: it's thrilling, dramatic and alive with energy and emotion. The IBO is on a mission to demystify the genre, inviting music lovers of all backgrounds to experience its raw power.' Whelan says, 'It's really a coup.' The BBC Proms 2025 run from Friday, July 18th, until Saturday, September 13th. The Irish Baroque Orchestra 's performance of Alexander's Feast will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Saturday, August 30th, at 7.30pm
Sydney Morning Herald
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Queen of Funk works hard to overcome sonic flaws in anniversary concert
Still, given the night closed with Ain't Nobody, not the best song in her repertoire but a perfect mix of slink, simplicity, groove and glee to send 'em home happy, there's a sound engineer who might think he just about got away with this. MUSIC TOTO WITH CHRISTOPHER CROSS Darling Harbour Theatre, ICC, April 19 ★★★ Reviewed by James Jennings What to do when you've got, say, three songs that are bulletproof crowd-pleasers, yet you've been asked to perform a gig that lasts at least an hour or more? If you're Christopher Cross, a man who could justifiably be credited with creating the genre known as yacht rock (smooth, adult-contemporary music of the late '70s and early '80s) thanks to his 1980 hit singles Sailing and Ride Like The Wind, you strategically spread them out to one killer track every half an hour. Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do) completes Cross's crowd-pleasing trifecta. The rest of his set is wisely padded out with songs from his hit 1979 self-titled debut album, although a tune he refers to as a 'deep cut' called Dreamers and a new song called You both sound good enough to prove he's more than just a guy with a few 45-year-old hits. American pop-rock band Toto have a few better-known songs to their name, but the rule of three bulletproof crowd-pleasers applies to them, too. One of those, 1982's Rosanna, is second cab off the rank and goes down as well as you'd expect, even if only one person on stage – guitarist and singer Steve Lukather – is an original Toto member. The seven band members are all masterful musicians, particularly new keyboardist and singer Dennis Atlas, who plays his instrument as if he's been teleported straight from the '80s, even though he's the youngest by far at 27. Despite the skills on display, some sins are committed: several songs turn into extended jams (always more fun for players than audience; in that vein we also get solos on keyboard (two) and drum). There are a few decent songs along the way such as 99 and I'll Supply the Love, but more that feel like a chore to get through. It all becomes a bit of an AM radio-friendly soup. Then, finally, bulletproof, crowd-pleasing redemption: 1978 pop-rock classic Hold the Line livens things up considerably, the perfect entree for Toto's defining song, 1982's Africa, which seems to have only increased in popularity as the decades have rolled on thanks to numerous remixes, covers and pop culture references. It's a glorious note to go out on and makes up for a gig that could have done with a few more songs of the same calibre. MUSIC SYDNEY PHILHARMONIA CHOIRS Sydney Opera House Concert Hall, April 17 ★★★½ Reviewed by Harriet Cunningham Sydney Philharmonia Choirs' Vox and Chamber ensembles have come together with the Australian Romantic and Classical Orchestra (ARCO) to present Bach's St Matthew Passion in the 1841 arrangement of the work by Felix Mendelssohn. In the 300 or so years since Bach's St Matthew Passion was first performed, it has undergone myriad transformations: there have been changes in instrumentation, pitch and structure and it has been staged as an opera and a ballet. Mendelssohn's version, as recreated by ARCO's team of specialists, is notable for its orchestration. In place of a largely improvised keyboard and viola da gamba continuo, we hear Mendelssohn's written-out accompaniments for two cellos and bass. In place of the obsolete oboes da caccia, Mendelssohn writes for the new-fangled clarinet and basset horn. At times it feels like a revelation, a radically different palette of tone colours, bringing unfamiliar texture and suspense to the score. At others, it feels like an unfamiliar intrusion, especially when pitch goes awry between historic instruments and contemporary voices. The period interpretation also features romantic styles of rubato, which sound mannered to this modern ear. The Passion is a drama of many characters, some represented by singers, some by instruments. The choristers are particularly versatile, at one moment playing the mob, angry and ready to roar, and at another lulling us into contemplative wonder with a pianissimo chorale. It may be a small army of voices but it responds to conductor Elizabeth Scott with impressive precision and energy. Scott has also assembled an excellent line-up of soloists: Andrew O'Connor plays many roles with consummate skill and Penelope Mills brings fine clarity to the soprano roles, while Emily Edmonds' mezzo soprano voice is full of warmth. Concertmaster Rachael Beesley and flutist Melissa Farrow bring mellifluous virtuosity to their obligato accompaniments while Teddy Tahu Rhodes shines as a charismatic and eloquent Christus. Finally, the hero of the evening is Andrew Goodwin as the Evangelist, his voice reaching into the heavens with sublime ease. BLUES Gary Clark Jr Enmore Theatre, April 17 ★★★½ Reviewed by Bernard Zuel The clue was in his entrance. Long, extravagantly lean and topped by a high, wide and handsomely white hat, Texan Gary Clark Jr ambled on like he was just passing through. It was like purpose was at his disposal – like time was flexible, elastic even, and to be shaped not so much by will as by example. And it was. Even as the band began playing, a long, atmosphere-heavy introduction was measured in its tempo but deliberately vague in its intentions, all possibilities open. Then this moody, chugging blues emerged and Maktub took shape: decidedly north African in its desert airy expansiveness, it suggested both movement and stasis, with Clark's slide guitar in long strides rather than stealthy steps. He sang of suspicion and resistance in the tone of someone wearied by the fight but not bent by it; he warned 'just tell 'em, we're coming' but cautioned 'we gotta move in the same direction', with the patience of someone who has been this way before. And so it went, always undulating rather than surging, for almost 10 minutes, time immaterial. And so it went for the rest of the night: as the hour mark ticked over, Clark and band had only just started on their seventh song. There would be only four more, including an encore, in a show of almost two hours. In that time-defying space, variety was not as pronounced as in his most recent albums, which have seen Clark expand his remit well beyond Texas blues. Still, you could hear echoes of Parliament/Funkadelic in the loose, odd, rhythmically insistent Alone Together, while the hands of Curtis Mayfield and D'Angelo – old soul and nu-soul - could be felt in R&B-driven numbers like the righteously moved Feed The Babies, the first time Clark's falsetto emerged. One of those predecessors would probably have encouraged Clark to shorten the too-long preamble to the set's closer, Habits, which seemed a culmination of the noodling that crept in during the final stages of the night and served to speed the exit of some in the audience. But then the man might have responded by pointing out how the Catherine wheel of a solo which climaxed said noodling and the night all but washed away such thoughts – as if they, like time, didn't matter. Aliyah Knight, playwright and performer, is already on stage as the audience files into Belvoir Street's downstairs theatre and is still there when the lights go up. It feels like there is nowhere else to go. Just a scrim at the back (used to project text, sometimes readable, sometimes censored) and a block of stone – which turns out to be clay – centre stage. Music fills up the remaining space, enveloping and energising a young queer figure of colour as they spin, sway and groove. Snakeface is many things: a coming-of-age story, a myth, a fever dream and a mystery. Its title references the murderous, snake-haired Medusa of Greek myth. Knight's imagination transforms Medusa into a victim, made into a monster by sexual violence. This becomes a springboard into the mind and body of a woman whose transformation is anything but mythical. Loading There's a gritty, joyful authenticity about much of Knight's script, which captures the wide-eyed curiosity and liminal sensation of a life-hungry teenager. They watch two beads of sweat running down a naked man's chest and wonder which wins the race; they catch eyes with a stranger in a bar and hallucinate with pleasure. There's poetry in the prose of the young woman's words, and it clashes with the ugly words jumping out from the poetry projected on the backdrop. Knight delivers it all with fluency, flipping from chatter to chant in a sustained monologue, which I would be fascinated to read. Words, however, are only one of the layers: Snakeface is a physical tour-de-force from the comfortable groove as we walk in, to the sticky, icky mess of intimacy. The clay bench quickly leaves its mark, at first just pale grey dust on dark skin, then, as Knight digs deeper, becoming dripping gobbets of who knows what, caking their skin, embodying the disgust and rejection of their white lovers. Growing up black and queer is messy and violent and sexy and tragic. The way Snakeface tells it, it is also very funny, with good solid belly laughs to leaven a tough story. And while the ending is not exactly happy, it is joyous. Knight has created a hugely impressive, hugely affecting piece of work in collaboration with Fruit Box Theatre's brave team of creatives, which includes access and wellbeing consultants to manage the show's confronting themes. Belvoir Street Theatre's 25A program starts from virtually nothing: a space, a shoe-string budget, a great idea. It throws independent theatre a lifeline by offering the downstairs theatre for no cost to a carefully curated line-up of emerging creative teams.
The Age
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Queen of Funk works hard to overcome sonic flaws in anniversary concert
Still, given the night closed with Ain't Nobody, not the best song in her repertoire but a perfect mix of slink, simplicity, groove and glee to send 'em home happy, there's a sound engineer who might think he just about got away with this. MUSIC TOTO WITH CHRISTOPHER CROSS Darling Harbour Theatre, ICC, April 19 ★★★ Reviewed by James Jennings What to do when you've got, say, three songs that are bulletproof crowd-pleasers, yet you've been asked to perform a gig that lasts at least an hour or more? If you're Christopher Cross, a man who could justifiably be credited with creating the genre known as yacht rock (smooth, adult-contemporary music of the late '70s and early '80s) thanks to his 1980 hit singles Sailing and Ride Like The Wind, you strategically spread them out to one killer track every half an hour. Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do) completes Cross's crowd-pleasing trifecta. The rest of his set is wisely padded out with songs from his hit 1979 self-titled debut album, although a tune he refers to as a 'deep cut' called Dreamers and a new song called You both sound good enough to prove he's more than just a guy with a few 45-year-old hits. American pop-rock band Toto have a few better-known songs to their name, but the rule of three bulletproof crowd-pleasers applies to them, too. One of those, 1982's Rosanna, is second cab off the rank and goes down as well as you'd expect, even if only one person on stage – guitarist and singer Steve Lukather – is an original Toto member. The seven band members are all masterful musicians, particularly new keyboardist and singer Dennis Atlas, who plays his instrument as if he's been teleported straight from the '80s, even though he's the youngest by far at 27. Despite the skills on display, some sins are committed: several songs turn into extended jams (always more fun for players than audience; in that vein we also get solos on keyboard (two) and drum). There are a few decent songs along the way such as 99 and I'll Supply the Love, but more that feel like a chore to get through. It all becomes a bit of an AM radio-friendly soup. Then, finally, bulletproof, crowd-pleasing redemption: 1978 pop-rock classic Hold the Line livens things up considerably, the perfect entree for Toto's defining song, 1982's Africa, which seems to have only increased in popularity as the decades have rolled on thanks to numerous remixes, covers and pop culture references. It's a glorious note to go out on and makes up for a gig that could have done with a few more songs of the same calibre. MUSIC SYDNEY PHILHARMONIA CHOIRS Sydney Opera House Concert Hall, April 17 ★★★½ Reviewed by Harriet Cunningham Sydney Philharmonia Choirs' Vox and Chamber ensembles have come together with the Australian Romantic and Classical Orchestra (ARCO) to present Bach's St Matthew Passion in the 1841 arrangement of the work by Felix Mendelssohn. In the 300 or so years since Bach's St Matthew Passion was first performed, it has undergone myriad transformations: there have been changes in instrumentation, pitch and structure and it has been staged as an opera and a ballet. Mendelssohn's version, as recreated by ARCO's team of specialists, is notable for its orchestration. In place of a largely improvised keyboard and viola da gamba continuo, we hear Mendelssohn's written-out accompaniments for two cellos and bass. In place of the obsolete oboes da caccia, Mendelssohn writes for the new-fangled clarinet and basset horn. At times it feels like a revelation, a radically different palette of tone colours, bringing unfamiliar texture and suspense to the score. At others, it feels like an unfamiliar intrusion, especially when pitch goes awry between historic instruments and contemporary voices. The period interpretation also features romantic styles of rubato, which sound mannered to this modern ear. The Passion is a drama of many characters, some represented by singers, some by instruments. The choristers are particularly versatile, at one moment playing the mob, angry and ready to roar, and at another lulling us into contemplative wonder with a pianissimo chorale. It may be a small army of voices but it responds to conductor Elizabeth Scott with impressive precision and energy. Scott has also assembled an excellent line-up of soloists: Andrew O'Connor plays many roles with consummate skill and Penelope Mills brings fine clarity to the soprano roles, while Emily Edmonds' mezzo soprano voice is full of warmth. Concertmaster Rachael Beesley and flutist Melissa Farrow bring mellifluous virtuosity to their obligato accompaniments while Teddy Tahu Rhodes shines as a charismatic and eloquent Christus. Finally, the hero of the evening is Andrew Goodwin as the Evangelist, his voice reaching into the heavens with sublime ease. BLUES Gary Clark Jr Enmore Theatre, April 17 ★★★½ Reviewed by Bernard Zuel The clue was in his entrance. Long, extravagantly lean and topped by a high, wide and handsomely white hat, Texan Gary Clark Jr ambled on like he was just passing through. It was like purpose was at his disposal – like time was flexible, elastic even, and to be shaped not so much by will as by example. And it was. Even as the band began playing, a long, atmosphere-heavy introduction was measured in its tempo but deliberately vague in its intentions, all possibilities open. Then this moody, chugging blues emerged and Maktub took shape: decidedly north African in its desert airy expansiveness, it suggested both movement and stasis, with Clark's slide guitar in long strides rather than stealthy steps. He sang of suspicion and resistance in the tone of someone wearied by the fight but not bent by it; he warned 'just tell 'em, we're coming' but cautioned 'we gotta move in the same direction', with the patience of someone who has been this way before. And so it went, always undulating rather than surging, for almost 10 minutes, time immaterial. And so it went for the rest of the night: as the hour mark ticked over, Clark and band had only just started on their seventh song. There would be only four more, including an encore, in a show of almost two hours. In that time-defying space, variety was not as pronounced as in his most recent albums, which have seen Clark expand his remit well beyond Texas blues. Still, you could hear echoes of Parliament/Funkadelic in the loose, odd, rhythmically insistent Alone Together, while the hands of Curtis Mayfield and D'Angelo – old soul and nu-soul - could be felt in R&B-driven numbers like the righteously moved Feed The Babies, the first time Clark's falsetto emerged. One of those predecessors would probably have encouraged Clark to shorten the too-long preamble to the set's closer, Habits, which seemed a culmination of the noodling that crept in during the final stages of the night and served to speed the exit of some in the audience. But then the man might have responded by pointing out how the Catherine wheel of a solo which climaxed said noodling and the night all but washed away such thoughts – as if they, like time, didn't matter. Aliyah Knight, playwright and performer, is already on stage as the audience files into Belvoir Street's downstairs theatre and is still there when the lights go up. It feels like there is nowhere else to go. Just a scrim at the back (used to project text, sometimes readable, sometimes censored) and a block of stone – which turns out to be clay – centre stage. Music fills up the remaining space, enveloping and energising a young queer figure of colour as they spin, sway and groove. Snakeface is many things: a coming-of-age story, a myth, a fever dream and a mystery. Its title references the murderous, snake-haired Medusa of Greek myth. Knight's imagination transforms Medusa into a victim, made into a monster by sexual violence. This becomes a springboard into the mind and body of a woman whose transformation is anything but mythical. Loading There's a gritty, joyful authenticity about much of Knight's script, which captures the wide-eyed curiosity and liminal sensation of a life-hungry teenager. They watch two beads of sweat running down a naked man's chest and wonder which wins the race; they catch eyes with a stranger in a bar and hallucinate with pleasure. There's poetry in the prose of the young woman's words, and it clashes with the ugly words jumping out from the poetry projected on the backdrop. Knight delivers it all with fluency, flipping from chatter to chant in a sustained monologue, which I would be fascinated to read. Words, however, are only one of the layers: Snakeface is a physical tour-de-force from the comfortable groove as we walk in, to the sticky, icky mess of intimacy. The clay bench quickly leaves its mark, at first just pale grey dust on dark skin, then, as Knight digs deeper, becoming dripping gobbets of who knows what, caking their skin, embodying the disgust and rejection of their white lovers. Growing up black and queer is messy and violent and sexy and tragic. The way Snakeface tells it, it is also very funny, with good solid belly laughs to leaven a tough story. And while the ending is not exactly happy, it is joyous. Knight has created a hugely impressive, hugely affecting piece of work in collaboration with Fruit Box Theatre's brave team of creatives, which includes access and wellbeing consultants to manage the show's confronting themes. Belvoir Street Theatre's 25A program starts from virtually nothing: a space, a shoe-string budget, a great idea. It throws independent theatre a lifeline by offering the downstairs theatre for no cost to a carefully curated line-up of emerging creative teams.
The Guardian
17-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Figure: Side By Side review – spikily stylish baroque and contemporary music
'Phil, do we have clearance?' A thumb shot out from the gallery above the stage. The musicians of period-performance outfit Figure giggled, then plunged into Vivaldi's Concerto for Strings in D minor ('Madrigalesco'), its opening gestures drawn out in fierce, even bowstrokes. Not a hint of vibrato to warm the tone. They tightened the screws on the concerto's already weird harmonies with some artfully dissonant pitching. In the fast movements, the ensemble clicked together like a mechanical device, Vivaldi's passagework suddenly animated by fizzing energy and punchy attack. Then a scramble to swap bows – out with baroque curves, in with the modern – while Figure's co-artistic director, Frederick Waxman, introduced Caroline Shaw's Punctum, the first of the concert's four contemporary works. Punctum shadow-boxes with a passage from Bach's St Matthew Passion. Resonances pass in slow-motion ricochet across the string orchestra, gradually accelerating into something that approaches a Bach chorale heard at multiple times the usual speed. The performance was spikily stylish, segueing with ease from moments of razor-sharp crunchiness to quotations from Bach's own score. Next came works by Freya Waley-Cohen and Edmund Finnis, and the world premiere of a new commission from Joanna Ward, alongside baroque concertos by Handel, Geminiani (after Corelli) and their largely forgotten Dutch contemporary Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer – a programme that made clear not only Figure's talents, but also its ambition. Violinists rotated through the position of leader, each one setting a subtly different tone, while characterful solos emerged from across the ensemble. Every player was spotlight-ready. The programme's interleaving of the new and old was ideally suited to the haunted spaces of the neo-gothic Stone Nest, built as a church in the 1880s but more recently used as a nightclub, its gloomy dungeon-vibe still palpable. And musically, this group (established in 2021) is unequivocally impressive, its sound invigorating, its commitment absolute. But the concert involved multiple practical glitches and Waxman's spoken introductions fell far short of the level of the playing, repeatedly puncturing the spell cast by the music. Figure's mission to create 'immersive musical experiences' is within its grasp – but that aim demands a more thoughtful approach to performance as a whole. Figure perform Rhythm of the Seasons at Stone Nest, London, on 22 March
