Catherine Bennett resumes the weekly look at the performing arts world, with the sad end of Jerusalem, the luck of a cabbie, and French revolt. Do you hear the people sing?
Adam Alcock reviews Nigel Kennedy playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons and his own Four Elements at York Opera House.
Catherine Bennett highlights the trends in the performing arts world today.
Jonathan Cridford reviews 'Ghosts', one of the Freshers' plays for this year.
The play is staged in the intimate Drama Barn; the audience is close enough to feel the tension and really experience the atmosphere. The red silk sheets on the central double bed and low lighting give this play the dramatic and darkly sensual quality needed for this unusual and sadistically erotic play.
The gender issue was distracting, yet the comedy was too good to truly complain about.
From the start, the cross-dressing aspect slightly detracts from the societal messages that Genet’s text conveys. The script is complex enough; this is an absurdist play with thorough explorations of class, language and reality. Whilst the performances were astoundingly astute and comical, the added aspect of gender distracted somewhat from the ridicule of the socially-imposed class structure that so affected the script-write. I believe it was Genet’s original intention to have the play performed with an all-male cast; it just seemed a little too explorative for the small Drama Barn setting.
To not use this ensemble may have been a mistake, however, and if this is the reason for the adhesion to Genet’s intentions then I fully understand. Jonathan Kerridge-Phipps plays a worryingly convincing woman; his stance and mannerisms complement the feminine clothes in a way only a truly talented male actor would know how. Ed Duncan-Smith playing Claire, is an utterly believable albeit unrefined woman after an unsteady performance on a pair of stiletto heels. Of course, this placed an emphasis on the low status of his character; heel-wearing was possibly not a maid’s domain which reiterated the role-playing situation. Tom Powis played the patronising and domineering Madame with a pseudo-refined comical eloquence. His interactions with the subservient pair provided relief from the cyclical aspects of the script with a brilliant performance of that old cliché: fluctuating female moods.
A sexual tragicomedy with a seriousness underlying the parody of a bourgeois mistress with supposed unquestionable control; this play encompasses the meaning of absurd. I was thoroughly confused by it, as were my friends around me. However this was perhaps the script and not the performance as the acting was superb and the setting adequately enclosed. The gender issue was distracting, yet the comedy was too good to truly complain about. In summary, a weird script rescued by a superb cast in the sometimes disturbingly intimate Drama Barn.
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