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.
Born in Bethlehem is performed by a small Palestinian theatre company called Al-Harah. The company is extremely small in comparison to most and consists of seven people: a director, four actors, a technician and a producer. Its close knit production team help to give the play its emotion and depth.
The play itself lasted for about an hour and follows the story of a tour guide called George who hires two actors to portray the nativity story. There is one problem though: the actors will not stick to the biblical story. What results are flashbacks from Bethlehem 2000 years ago entwined with the current issues of modern day Palestinians.
The set was very simple; there were two linen screens on wheels that were used in a variety of different ways from the usual stage division while the actors got changed to being converted into a car! Then there was a linen screen on to which the projector was shone- this showed pictures from present day Palestine, as the audience were taken on a guided tour around. The actors used several items of clothes to help the audience in the transition from past to present.
The company’s ability to work so well as a team and the compassion they feel towards their subject comes through in the acting and script. They are all Palestinians and what they are speaking of is from personal experience, which for me was rather an eye-opening experience. Also heightening the personal feel to Born in Bethlehem was the fact that it was performed in the studio at the York Theatre Royal. For anyone who has never been in the studio it is much, much smaller and plainer than the main stage and its simplicity in my opinion enables a play to be taken to a different level in terms of its emotion.
After the play finished there was a short interval and the audience were invited back for a discussion. This was centred on the current events taking place in the actors’ home-land. I have to admit to my ignorance, as at the time I had not got much knowledge of what was happening, but through the discussion and since then I have looked into it in more depth. I guess therefore, I am a good example of what the play is trying to encourage. All it wants is for people to have a little more awareness of what is taking place in the world around them.
The play was trying to show the situation from both sides of the story and warn people not to always trust what they hear in the media. Something which many people have a problem with, as we are meant to live in a free country, is the idea that our media may still not be 100% accurate. This is at times hard to swallow. I found the production really informative and the play, while having a rather serious context, still had a sense of humour about it. Occasionally I found myself chuckling which helped to lighten the load somewhat.
For me it was a rather challenging evening, but still I would suggest this play to anyone with an open mind. I came out and I could not stop talking about what I had just seen. In my opinion it was one of the most well spent evenings I’ve had for a long while.
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