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London Theatre Breaks 2011/2012
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London Theatre Breaks 2011/2012
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December 30 2011, 12:28pm | Comments »
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I posted to flickr.com
London Theatre Breaks 2011/2012
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AndyRobertsPhotos
London Theatre Breaks 2011/2012
December 30 2011, 12:27pm | Comments »
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London Theatre Breaks 2011/2012
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AndyRobertsPhotos
London Theatre Breaks 2011/2012
December 30 2011, 12:23pm | Comments »
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London Theatre Breaks 2011/2012
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AndyRobertsPhotos
London Theatre Breaks 2011/2012
December 30 2011, 12:22pm | Comments »
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London Theatre Breaks 2011/2012
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AndyRobertsPhotos
London Theatre Breaks 2011/2012
December 30 2011, 12:21pm | Comments »
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London Theatre Breaks 2011/2012
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AndyRobertsPhotos
London Theatre Breaks 2011/2012
December 30 2011, 12:19pm | Comments »
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Vaudeville Theatre
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AndyRob
Vaudeville Theatre
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June 20 2011, 3:06am | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Arts venues band together to fund new festival of finest radical theatre
Not Edinburgh or London but a Nottingham international arts and theatre festival. Nottingham’s Neat 11 theatre festival opens on 26 May 2011.
This article titled “Arts venues band together to fund new festival of finest radical theatre” was written by Vanessa Thorpe, for The Observer on Saturday 30th April 2011 23.06 UTC It might not seem the right time to launch an international arts festival, but Nottingham is to take this fearless step. Later this spring the city will hold neat11, the first Nottingham European arts and theatre festival, to prove the way to beat the cuts in the arts is to pool resources. Nottingham Playhouse has joined the city council, the regeneration body One Nottingham and many of the city’s other arts venues – including the Theatre Royal, Lakeside Arts Centre, and the Broadway Cinema – to present a range of radical theatre, music, film and visual art from across Europe between 26 May and 12 June. The festival will showcase the work of leading foreign companies such as Det Norske Teatret, Deutsches Theater and Theatre Nowy alongside the work of British companies including Cheek By Jowl and Gob Squad. In the face of reduced grants from Arts Council England, funding of £98,000 has been earmarked for the project. “This is work you would not be able to see anywhere else in the country,” said Giles Croft, the artistic director of Nottingham Playhouse. “Audiences will be able to see great performers from Kosovo, Bulgaria and Denmark. And for me, key highlights are Deutsches Theater’s productionq of Woyzeck by Georg Büchner, using the songs of Tom Waits, along with the only UK performance this year of Cheek by Jowl’s Three Sisters, performed in Russian. I am also really looking forward to Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther by Det Norske Teatret from Norway.” Croft argues the festival will emphasise the “strong cultural life” of Nottingham. “Bringing this kind of work here will also demonstrate that it is a European city. We are hoping we can bring the festival back in two years time and establish it as a bienniale. I am absolutely confident we can make it a success.”
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Related posts:Theatre Blogger: 52 Venues in 52 weeks What to see: Lyn Gardner’s theatre tips Theatre in Scotland Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band
May 3 2011, 5:29am | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
What to say about … Betty Blue Eyes
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/15/what-to-say-about-betty-blue-eyes
A rasher of pocine metaphors breaks out among the theatre critics as a ham-imatronic animal makes a pig of herself in the West End. No porkies. It’s just a theatre review for Betty Blue Eyes.
This article titled “What to say about … Betty Blue Eyes” was written by Patrick Kingsley, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 15th April 2011 14.52 UTC Way back in 2008, when Barack Obama was but the junior senator for Illinois, he was involved in a right rumpus with the then-governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, about whether one could or could not “put lipstick on a pig”. At the time it seemed a debate into which Britain’s theatre critics were reluctant to wade. But people change. Would they put lipstick on a pig? Almost certainly, at least if that pig were animatronic, had the voice of Kylie Minogue and were on stage at the West End‘s Novello theatre as part of a heartwarming new musical called Betty Blue Eyes, directed by Richard Eyre and produced by Cameron Mackintosh.
“[W]itty, rude, lovable, warm, dramatic, hilarious,” proclaims the Times’s Libby Purves, a writer with more than a few adjectives up her sleeve. “[A] new smash musical is born.” The Telegraph’s Charles Spencer agrees, calling the show “popular entertainment at its very best”. Not for the first time, however, your correspondent was concerned for the safety of those sitting next to him, as the show left him “grunting and snorting with pleasure, and just occasionally snuffling with sentimental tears”.
Part of BBE’s appeal lies in its timely plot, which draws (conveniently enough) on the dual themes of recession and royal matrimony. “How fortuitous that it’s set in 1947,” point out bloggers West End Whingers, “with austerity and recycling paramount and preparations for a royal wedding celebration at full tilt.” It’s against this backdrop that we meet the show’s protagonists, Gilbert (Reece Shearsmith) and Joyce (Sarah Lancashire), the social-climbing Yorkshire couple who steal the pig that’s due to be roasted in honour of those royal lovebirds of yesteryear, Elizabeth and Philip.
It’s a story that, for the Guardian’s Michael Billington, trumps even A Private Function, the 1984 film part-scripted by Alan Bennett from which it is adapted: “The show’s creators [first-timers Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman] preserve the satire on small-town snobbery, greed and racism from the Alan Bennett-Malcolm Mowbray movie script, while sharpening the storyline and using music genuinely to enhance character”. They’ve done this, notes Paul Raven of West End Theatre, despite being American! “[H]aving a bit of distance from a subject is not a bad thing,” Raven explains, helpfully, “and they’ve written some pacey, witty dialogue that captures the spirit of the times without paying undue reverence to the movie.” But the show-stealer is Betty herself: “an animatronic, blue-eyed and weirdly flirtatious porker with a permanent smile and the singing voice of Kylie Minogue,” writes Henry Hitchings in the Evening Standard. “What a star she proves,” enthuses Spencer, who was particularly captivated by Betty’s “amazing repertoire of grunts, squeaks and, above all, farts”. “It’s a great pig,” Purves confirms. “And I am happy to relate that, despite the usual desperate first-night deadline scuttle, two of us critics remained riveted by the escape door long enough to hear it sing in the final curtain call.” Some of the bloggers weren’t so easily impressed. “By the standards of modern stage wizardry,” complains Peter Brown at London Theatre, “this is not exactly an all-singing, all-dancing kind of mechanical hog.” Ian Foster, blogging at There Ought to Be Clowns, thought the pig “a bit freaky”. Brave man.
Meanwhile, not everyone admits to being fond of the rest of the show. “Some of the humour is clumsy,” says Hitchings, “and some reminiscent of pantomime.” And if you detected a characteristically arch tone in the West End Whingers‘ remarks earlier, give yourself a sausage: they simply didn’t like it. “Sadly, we weren’t smiling much,” whinge the Whingers. “Our (in the) minority report puts Betty on the butcher’s block along with our own necks, yet again.”
But hey, at least they’ve got in the spirit with that butcher’s block analogy. For if there’s one thing that unites our reviewers, it’s their utter inability to avoid porcine metaphors. Bacon, for instance, has either already been “brought home” by Mackintosh (Spencer) or it’s in the process of being brought there by Eyre (Purves), or even by the show itself (Billington/Hitchings). It gets worse. For Michael Coveney at the Independent, Betty is “piggy in the muddle, all right”; for Hitchings, the play is no “mere pork scratching”; and Spencer, perhaps the most outrageous of the pigging punners, promises us “I’m telling no porky pies”. Not that I’m immune to hamming it up a touch.
Do say: [Some random aspect of the show] brings home the bacon …
Don’t say: … and [he/she/it] is laughing all the way to the piggy bank.
The reviews reviewed: Pigs can fly. Sometimes. If they’re animatronic.
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April 15 2011, 10:25am | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Smash! – review
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/02/smash-%E2%80%93-review
A Theatre review of Smash! at the Menier Chocolate Factory Theatre, London
This article titled “Smash! – review” was written by Michael Billington, for The Guardian on Friday 1st April 2011 20.30 UTC “Is there anything that matters less than a musical?” a character irreverently asks in this revival of the late Jack Rosenthal’s 1981 play. It’s not a sentiment one ever expected to hear on the stage of the Menier. But it sums up perfectly the comic anguish at the heart of Rosenthal’s biliously funny piece: a backstage story based on his own nerve-wracking experience of seeing his TV play, Bar Mitzvah Boy, turned into a musical floperoo. The musical, as everyone tells you, is a collaborative form: what Rosenthal captures is the high emotional cost of bringing together so many competing creative egos. In this instance, there is an added cultural clash: a Broadway composer and director find themselves yoked to a British lyricist and librettist under the shaky supervision of an American-Austrian producer. Things look bad from the initial New York encounter, when the veteran composer dismisses the book and its “cardboard, asshole characters”. Matters get even worse in the course of London rehearsals and a Manchester try-out after which the director demands new sets, costumes and rewrites of the rewrites. Yet, in the strange way of showbiz, everyone still believes miracles can be achieved by the time of the West End opening. I wish Rosenthal had defined more clearly the show on which they’re working: we learn its title, Whatever Happened to Tomorrow, and not much else. And, although Rosenthal forgiveably changed the book-writer’s gender to avoid a Twelve Angry Men feeling, it slightly weakens the enterprise’s testosterone-fuelled absurdity. But what he captures perfectly are the shifting loyalties of the team, the oscillations between insane optimism and despair, and the notion that a musical is like some giant, uncontrollable machine with which everyone feels obliged to tinker. As the director claims, in the play’s best single line: “In a musical nothing’s all right until it’s too late to be changed.” Tamara Harvey’s production creates exactly the right sense that everyone, while working for the good of the show, is protecting their own territory. Richard Schiff, of The West Wing fame, makes the composer a figure of wondrously acerbic vanity who prefaces every remark by reminding everyone of his 28 Broadway scores. Cameron Blakely’s director is all elegantly attired bombast masking profound insecurity. And Natalie Walter plausibly makes the writer, clearly representing Rosenthal himself, the still, small voice of sanity in this creative madhouse. But the funniest performance comes from Tom Conti as the producer who seeks to exude avuncular reassurance while secretly aware that the show is under-capitalised. What Rosenthal’s delightful play really proves, however, is that musicals operate in a special way: in conjuring up a world of fantasy, they leave their creators trapped in their own private bubble of preposterous self-delusion.
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April 2 2011, 11:37am | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
The Rise and Fall of Little Voice – review
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/01/the-rise-and-fall-of-little-voice-%E2%80%93-review
The Rise and Fall of Little Voice – a theatre review
This article titled “The Rise and Fall of Little Voice – review” was written by Alfred Hickling, for The Guardian on Friday 1st April 2011 20.45 UTC Jim Cartwright’s 1992 comedy has matured into an enjoyable period piece – just how much so becomes apparent in the first scene when Mari, a noisy northern housewife, is beside herself with excitement over the acquisition of a new phone. It takes two engineers to install it and plug it into the wall. It’s a minor miracle that the play has had any kind of continued production history at all, having specifically been tailored to expose Jane Horrocks’s uncanny ability to impersonate the great popular divas from Gracie Fields to Judy Garland. Yet it was successfully revived in the West End with X-Factor contestant Diana Vickers; and here it is the remarkable Rebecca Hutchinson who proves capable of switching from Bassey to Piaf and back again in a single breath. Cartwright’s drama has an archetypal quality – it’s essentially the Tale of the Ugly Duckling in reverse – and might be said to have invented its own genre of glittery northern realism. Director Amy Leach points out that it’s hard to conceive of Shameless or The Royle Family without it; though Cartwright’s language remains one of a kind. When Eithne Browne’s Mari rhapsodises over a “real pronto lip-lapping snog”, it’s hard not to picture exactly what she means. The downside of such loquacity is that it leaves little room for subtext. It’s a good job Hutchinson’s Little Voice and Sue McCormick’s amiable, roly-poly Sadie are practically mute or else the play would go on all night. Leach’s production is long enough, but the young, Bolton-born director has had an impressive run at the Dukes, suggesting that hers is another significant little voice on the rise.
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April 1 2011, 5:48pm | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
What to see: Lyn Gardner’s theatre tips
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/01/what-to-see-lyn-gardners-theatre-tips
Arts Council cuts have hit many of this week’s theatre companies, from Shared Experience to Manchester’s Greenroom. All the more important to go on theatre breaks and see them – now.
This article titled “What to see: Lyn Gardner’s theatre tips” was written by Lyn Gardner, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 1st April 2011 14.06 UTC There’s plenty of great theatre around this week, but the question after this week’s cuts is whether the same will be true in five years’ time – or even a year. The Arts Council is not to blame for the hand it’s been dealt by the government, but has it really done enough to realign the landscape and redirect money away from the haves to the have-nots? Most importantly, has ACE’s strategic thinking been as robust as it needs to be to ensure that theatre continues to thrive and audiences grow both in numbers and diversity? So let’s start What to see this week with fine companies who have been unlucky in the recent funding round. Shared Experience have been excluded from the National Portfolio but who – as their multi-layered production Brontë confirms – can deliver probing and beautiful work. Catch it at Oxford Playhouse until tomorrow, and then at London’s Tricycle Theatre from next Tuesday. Another casualty – and one of several small touring companies who have been cut, including Northumberland Theatre Company and Oxfordshire Theatre Co – is Forest Forge, which is out on the road playing village halls and venues with Peeling (tonight at the Lighthouse, Poole). Then there’s Manchester’s Greenroom, which for 28 years has been supporting artists making performance and live art in a city dominated by the Royal Exchange, and who are this week playing host to Kings of England and Levantes Dance Theatre through their Method Lab, a scheme that previously helped nurture Nic Green’s Trilogy and Drunken Chorus. Remove the venue, and where do the artists find the support they need? Despite an 11% cut for many organisations, regional theatre buildings are going to have to do a great deal more to nurture talent, support companies and present work. Feeling the pinch will be no excuse and it can’t be business as usual. Every bit of theatre is now reliant on collaboration. This week Coventry’s Belgrade theatre, which took almost a 15% hit, has a new version of Uncle Vanya, which will then transfer to London’s Arcola (which, with an 82% rise, was one of the day’s big winners). North in Bolton, the Octagon opens its tale of local hero and steeplejack Fred Dibnah, The Demolition Man, in the same week that its highly acclaimed revival of The Price transfers to the Stephen Joseph, which says goodbye to Paines Plough’s touring show, Love Love Love, which in turns is heading into the West Yorkshire Playhouse. It’s all connected, and my hunch is that it will have to be more so in the years ahead. Staying in the north, Birmingham Rep’s teenage drama of life and death, Notes to Future Self, goes into the Royal Exchange Studio, the excellent Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf continues at Sheffield Crucible before heading to Northern Stage, and Alan Bennett’s tale of the woman who took up residence in his garden, Lady in the Van, is revived at Hull Truck. While we’re in Yorkshire, do think about booking for Harrogate’s Two’s Company Festival in May, a mini version of BAC’s brilliant One-on-One Festival, which features Laura Mugridge’s delightful camper van show, Running on Air, a new piece by Analogue, and Tea is an Evening Meal, a collaboration between Northern Stage and Third Angel, (the latter very mysteriously cut by ACE). Two successes in the funding round are Freedom Studios who are behind Mill – City of Dreams in Bradford, and Theatre in the Mill, which this weekend offers the interactive thriller, The Falling Sickness, and follows it with Instant Dissidence’s One on One, When Night Falls, from Tuesday. Let’s head further south to the Royal and Derngate in Northampton, where Rattigan’s In Praise of Love opens next week, and from there into London, where the lively young Colombian circus, Circolombia, which is made up of former street kids, returns to the Roundhouse (another funding winner). Looking ahead, at the Roundhouse you should be booking for The Fat Girl Gets a Haircut and Other Stories, Mark Storor’s participatory show made with teenagers. The Almeida may have suffered a substantial 39% funding cut, but it still gets £704,000, which should be more than enough to ensure that it continues projects such as Crawling in the Dark, a new play for young people inspired by the current main house hit, David Eldridge’s addiction drama, The Knot of the Heart. Soho Theatre – another significant loser but with new artistic director Steve Marmion at the helm – has Bryony Kimmings’ Sex Idiot, a tale of STDs and pubic hair. Ireland’s Abbey Theatre bring Mark O’Rowe’s play about Dublin life Terminus to the Young Vic, which has a small uplift in funding. Cheek by Jowl take their Russian Tempest into the Barbican. Tim Etchells and Ant Hampton collaborate on The Quiet Volume, a unique experience in a library as part of the London Word Festival and check out Chisenhale Art Club, which always happens on the first Wednesday of the month. I rather like the sound of Hotel Confessions, too, which is performed in a Bermondsey hotel. Just outside London, Lee Hall’s terrific The Pitmen Painters sets off from the Theatre Royal in Windsor on a nationwide tour. Derek Jacobi’s King Lear is at the Theatre Royal in Bath. Fevered Sleep’s delightful children’s show And the Rain Falls Down goes into Bristol Old Vic, Comedy of Errors continues at the Tobacco Factory, Journey’s End goes into the Theatre Royal in Brighton and at the Basement choreographer Ivana Muller considers her place on the stage in 60 Minutes of Opportunism. Circus did well in the funding shake-up and its happy birthday to Circomedia in Bristol who are celebrating in style. Marivaux’s A Game of Love and Chance opens at Salisbury Playhouse. In Scotland – which is, of course, unaffected by ACE funding decisions – Liz Lochhead’s Educating Agnes, a version of Molière’s School for Wives, is at the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh. Elsewhere in the capital, the Jimmy Boyle-inspired The Hard Man is at the King’s, and Catherine Wheels’ new version of Beauty and the Beast, Caged, is at the Traverse today before moving to Aberdeen’s Lemon Tree tomorrow, with more tour dates to follow. Head to The Arches in Glasgow from Tuesday for a double showcase of award-winning work, which includes Me and the Machine’s dislocating love story When We Meet Again, Claire Duffy’s Money… the Game Show, Thickskin’s tale of teenage catastrophe, Blackout, and Gareth Nicholls’ Pause With a Smile, which lingers on everyday coincidences.
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April 1 2011, 3:47pm | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Regional theatre should take more risks
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/23/regional-theatre-should-take-more-risks
Programming Barrie, Noël Coward or Daphne Du Maurier is understandable when times are tough. But if regional theatre wants to safeguard its future, it must look beyond plays of the past
This article titled “Regional theatre should take more risks” was written by Lyn Gardner, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 22nd March 2011 11.57 UTC A couple of years back, in a passionate post on this blog about regional theatre, the Royal and Derngate’s artistic director Laurie Sansom observed that “Regional artistic directors used to behave as if they were on Countdown: ‘I’ll have a Coward, please, a Shakespeare, a new play in the studio, and another Coward, please, Carol.’ These days, I can only imagine producing Noël Coward if an artist has a personal connection to the material and a burning desire to give it fresh theatrical life.” Two years is a long time in theatre. Since Sansom’s post on the vibrancy of programming in regional theatres, we’ve had an election, the formation of a coalition government that has no understanding of the crucial role theatre can play in its community both economically and socially, and the prospect of funding cuts. But it is clear that, long before the axes have fallen, many theatre programmes have taken on the look of a nervy Countdown selection. Perhaps it’s hardly surprising: just as hemlines go down in a recession, maybe artistic directors are inclined to look backwards rather than forwards. Perhaps even more importantly, it is a reminder how much confidence and psychology plays a part in creating the conditions necessary for a theatre to take risks, then reap the rewards. Back in 2001, the fact that there was money on the way (in the form of the £25 million that was injected into theatre after the Boyden report) created a sea-change in British regional theatre that was apparent long before theatres saw a penny of the cash. In the circumstances, then, perhaps it is no surprise that the seasons currently gracing our stages – in many cases programmed more than a year ago – reflect a certain nervousness about audience attendance, and suggest a headlong retreat into pre-Look Back in Anger drama. That impression may be somewhat skewed by the Rattigan centenary, not that I begrudge him his moment in the sun: Thea Sharrock’s timely (and award-winning) After the Dance at the National made as good a case for Rattigan’s rehabilitation as the Almeida’s revival of The Deep Blue Sea in 1993. But, even if you take Rattigan out of the equation, we’re still seeing a rash of Cowards and Priestleys, even the odd Du Maurier and W Somerset Maugham. Or how about Barrie’s The Admirable Crichton? Restoration comedy seems to be making a come-back too. I can’t recall so much interest in The Rivals since the 1980s. Of course there’s wrong with directors rummaging around in the theatrical attic and finding plays that glimmer in the dark. There are also horses for courses: Salisbury Playhouse, which recently saw a fine revival of The Constant Wife, may actually be the only theatre in the country where you could still do Somerset Maugham, and there is no one more qualified to do it well than Philip Wilson – who knows how to mine beneath a brittle surface and who, incidentally, has previously has proved himself a superb director of Coward. Sansom was right two years ago and he is still right now, in suggesting that it is a burning desire to give a play new theatrical life that makes it worth doing. The results can be transforming, as we saw in the 1990s with Stephen Daldry with An Inspector Calls, or have seen recently at the Finborough with a rare revival of Emlyn Williams’s Accolade. And David Grindley’s touring revival of Journey’s End demonstrates that even an old war horse can have real vigour and relevance. So I certainly don’t want to write off the plays of the past, but do want to point out that if regional theatre wants to safeguard its future it can’t play things too safe. It’s risk-taking that keeps theatre alive.
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March 23 2011, 6:22pm | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg – review
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/23/the-umbrellas-of-cherbourg-review
Theatre breaks review of “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” by The Guardian’s Michael Billington
This article titled “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg – review” was written by Michael Billington, for The Guardian on Wednesday 23rd March 2011 00.24 UTC “Charmingly attenuated” was how the New Yorker’s Pauline Kael described the original 1964 Jacques Demy movie. Suspiciously thin would be my verdict on this stage version adapted and directed by Emma Rice for Kneehigh. The Michel Legrand score still offers its fitful pleasures, and the bittersweet ending is retained; but it seems an oddly gratuitous translation of a highly successful film into theatrical terms. Rice is faithful to the story: Genevieve, a naive teenager, falling for Guy, a Cherbourg garagiste; and then, when he is drafted into the Algerian war, being ardently wooed by a rich jeweller. But, one has to ask, what exactly is gained by the stage transfer? Rice heightens aspects such as the jealous pangs felt by Genevieve’s mum, who has her own eyes on the jeweller’s assets. Lest we miss the fact this is an essentially French story, Rice has also imported a roguish compere in the shape of a cabaret diva called Meow Meow, and adds a chorus of matelots in striped vests. I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky she stopped short of an itinerant onion seller. What is lost are the very things that made the film so original. One is the way in which the fluid camera movement matched the seamless recitative of the Legrand score: take that away, and you are left with a show that, with the exception of I Will Wait for You, seems strangely lacking in musical or dramatic highlights. The other missing ingredient is the candy-coloured artifice of the film, in which even the wallpaper matched the characters’ costumes. Watching the stage version is like seeing a Technicolor film rendered in black and white: Lez Brotherston’s set, with its partitioned steel structures, seems determined to evoke the reality of Cherbourg, whereas the point of the story is that it is a romantic fairytale. The performances themselves are fine. Carly Bawden conveys Genevieve’s innocence, Andrew Durand shows Guy plausibly embittered by both the war and his lover’s desertion, and Joanna Riding as Genevieve’s mum has the right flighty desperation. Nigel Lilley’s musical direction is tireless. And there are one or two striking images, such as that of a lovelorn Guy marooned in the midst of the Algerian conflict. But when you recall how ingeniously Kneehigh interwove film and live action in Brief Encounter, this seems a strangely prosaic attempt to capture the elusive poetry of the Demy original.
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March 23 2011, 3:04pm | Comments »
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Digital love: Manuelle Gautrand and the Gaîté Lyrique
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/20/digital-love-manuelle-gautrand-and-the-gaite-lyrique
The Gaîté Lyrique, Paris‘s newest theatre, is a marriage of past and future so bold it takes the breath away. Jonathan Glancey explores a temple of technology and art
This article titled “Digital love: Manuelle Gautrand and the Gaîté Lyrique” was written by Jonathan Glancey, for The Guardian on Sunday 20th March 2011 21.31 UTC Everyone knows appearances can be deceptive, but the newly renovated Théâtre de la Gaîté Lyrique in central Paris takes the Bourbon biscuit. From the outside, it seems as conservative as any French arts institution. Built in 1862, its slightly pompous facade makes it every inch a creation of Napoleon III’s overambitious second empire. When you walk inside today, though, a beautifully restored Italianate foyer gives way almost immediately to an ultra-modern world of pulsating, bleeping, thumping digital art, music and film. From this month, the building that in the 70s housed a circus school with elephants stabled in the attic will be simply known as La Gaîté Lyrique, an €83m (£72.5m) “theatre for the digital arts” created and paid for by the City of Paris. In fact, Gaîté Lyrique is far more than just a theatre. Bursting with energy, it is, according to its artistic director Jérôme Delormas, “a tool box”, a “place of continual evolution”, a “laboratory of cultural motivations”. Immediately behind the lavish marble of the lobby is a web of new spaces set across seven floors and shaped to allow the world of digital artistry to let rip. There is something distinctly French in this marriage between the grandly historical and the audaciously modern. Think of IM Pei’s glass and steel pyramid rising from the Louvre’s Cour Napoleon, or La Défense, a district of brutal 50s towers that stands to the west of the Champs-Elysées. In the early 70s, Paul Andreu‘s design for Charles de Gaulle airport evoked travel by spaceship rather than airliner. In 1977, Rogers and Piano’s Pompidou Centre emerged from the heart of old Paris like some sci-fi oil refinery, and four years later the TGV came snaking out from under the glass roofs of 19th-century Parisian train sheds, projecting rail transport into a new, 300kph era. Every so often architecture in France, moves suddenly, shockingly forward even though planning and conservation laws can be very tough indeed. “The Gaîté Lyrique took eight years to redevelop. “We had to think first of the sound,” says Manuelle Gautrand, architect of the new-look theatre. “There are 120 apartments in the neighbourhood, so we had to build as quietly as possible and to make sure that even when the performances are exciting, the building is completely quiet. So, each of the performance spaces sits inside walls that sit inside walls; it’s like a Russian doll.” It was possible for Gautrand to build inside the walls of the theatre, because while the facade has, in effect, remained unchanged since 1862, the interior had been largely gutted. After a long decline, the theatre was closed in 1987 to make way for Planète Magique, a kind of low-rent Disneyland. Where the glistering auditorium had once stood – in which Offenbach‘s celebrated operettas played, Victor Hugo celebrated his 70th birthday and Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes danced – there rose a clumsy great rollercoaster. Opened in 1989, the theme park closed just two years later. This grand architectural dame then stood empty until its radical transformation began. Delormas is the first to admit that the Gaîté Lyrique is likely to appeal mostly to an audience aged between 15 and 35: “For once”, he says, “it will be a case of young people dragging their parents to a museum.” The programme ranges from the latest experimental theatre by the Rimini Protokoll Collective – the young German directors best known for putting Das Kapital on the stage – to music from avant-garde artists such as Brian Eno to 3D digital performances. You can also come here simply to play the latest computer games. There are studios for artists, equipped with cutting-edge computer technology, a library that stocks hundreds of arts magazines, an auditorium for screenings and talks and, of course, a cafe, where the 19th-century architecture has been offset by funky new furniture and flying saucer-style chandeliers. In full flow – when walls dissolve into videos, three-dimensional computer-generated beings come to life in break-out spaces and futuristic music fills this enormous venue – Paris seems very far off indeed. The interior is something of a maze; sometimes seeming like an empty warehouse, at others a box of architectural tricks. The main performance space at the heart of the building – one of a number of theatres within the theatre – is lined outside with mirrored panels. Inside, this windowless black box can be transformed into a comfortable auditorium with rows of seats that pop up from under the floor. A second, smaller space features a floor built in steel sections; these can be raised and moved around to create different sets and seating structures. Galleries and mezzanines around the main performance spaces allow visitors to look into what’s happening and, as sound, light and images spill out of performances, these become auditoriums in their own right. Dotted throughout the largely windowless building – most of which is fitted out in a hard factory-like aesthetic, as well as splashes of bright pink, gold and yellow – are colourful mobile booths where you can watch a film, play a game, read or work. Gautrand calls these éclaireuses (girl guides); the idea is that they direct visitors through the ways of this unconventional theatre. “With the help of the éclaireuses,” says Gautrand, “you can find a place of your own even in all this colour and noise.” I enjoyed Gaîté Lyrique. It took me into another world. And, yet, the shift between grand Paris and the latest whizzy stuff is as abrupt as a train crash. I couldn’t help feeling a little like Jacques Tati in Mon Oncle, befuddled by technology, or Lemmy Caution, the private eye in Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville who arrives in a nightmarish, ultra-modern city. Alphaville was filmed in La Défense, an area many hate, but which Gautrand loves. The Marseilles-born architect, who set up her own practice in Paris in 1993, is designing a skyscraper to be situated here. A shimmering tower, dressed in what looks like a filigree fabric but is actually multi-angled sunscreens, it will, she says, “soften some of the harder aspects of Alphaville”. It will also be in stark contrast to most of the straight up and down office towers that characterise this ageing “city of the future”. The project is currently waiting for the final stage of planning permission before construction can begin. Gautrand also designed the eye-catching Citroën 42 showroom on the Champs-Elysées, whose steel and glass facade is made up of giant Citroën logos. Life, colour, emotion In Saint-Etienne, a city south-west of Lyon, Gautrand has designed a remarkable Cité des Affaires, steel and glass government offices that snake through the city, further enlivened by three bright yellow entrances which bring a shimmering gold light into the undercrofts and courtyards. “It is, I suppose, scenographic”, says Gautrand, borrowing the language of the theatre. “The building is a densely occupied development, so I have given it, I hope, some life, colour, emotion. Also, I felt that this part of Saint-Etienne was somehow sad; if there had to be new offices here, then they had to have something special, something you cannot quantify.” Whatever that something is, the Cité des Affaires is a remarkable development. “As with the Gaîté Lyrique,” says Gautrand, “the modernity here is definitely a contrast with the old world around it, but it can be as playful and as atmospheric as a 19th-century operetta, too. Why not?” So in Saint-Etienne and Paris, visitors and government officials can work and play in an ultra-modern setting that seems theatrical to its very core. Only in Paris, this bright and boisterous new world has been housed behind the walls of a historic theatre, rather as if Jacques Tati was to walk by with an iPhone tucked away in his old raincoat pocket. France’s five most thrilling architects Christian de Portzamparc De Portzamparc is French architecture’s most brilliant intellectual. An urban planner as well as an architect, in 1994 he became the first Frenchman to win the Pritzker prize. He’s working on several huge projects, including the Cidade da Música in Rio. Jean Nouvel Nouvel is an international star, who often represents French architecture abroad. His experimental architecture is characterised by its use of metal and glass, creating buildings that glitter. Dominique Perrault In 1990, Perrault delivered his signature building, the industrial, totally transparent Berlier hotel in Paris. He also designed the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, draped in metallic meshexcels internationally at the art to handle the large scale and the drapes of metallic mesh. Patrick Bouchain Though he builds little, Bouchain is a pioneer, famous for his low-cost transformation of industrial spaces into cultural zones. Edouard François François proves that sustainable architecture needn’t constrain the imagination. His environmentally friendly buildings use trees, pot plants and other living materials in their construction. Sophie Trelcat, architecture critic
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March 20 2011, 5:12pm | Comments »
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Portugal’s new tourism draws are Phantom Of The Opera and Evita
The near-bankrupt country of Portugal hopes a new festival of British musical theatre acts will draw the tourists it needs to recover. The Phantom of the Opera, Evita and Jesus Christ Superstar head the bill. Maybe other versions top London shows will follow.
This article titled “Portugal’s new tourism draws are Phantom Of The Opera and Evita” was written by Vanessa Thorpe, for The Observer on Sunday 20th March 2011 00.05 UTC The songs of Andrew Lloyd Webber have moved audiences to tears and set box office tills ringing in London’s West End for more than 30 years, but can they help to shore up the Portuguese economy? As the country struggles this weekend to play down new fears about an impending bailout by the International Monetary Fund, the national tourist agency has announced a plan to draw a stream of British tourists into Portuguese resorts this summer by booking a succession of popular British entertainment shows and acts. At the top of the bill are The Phantom of the Opera, Evita and Jesus Christ Superstar. The British band Morcheeba is already booked, as is jazz singer Norma Winstone. There are also plans to bring in Lamb, the electronic trip-hop musicians from Manchester. The entertainment scheme, called Allgarve Nations, aims to celebrate the culture of one of the favourite visiting nations each year in turn. “For this first edition we have chosen the United Kingdom, which is our main tourism market, with a programme that includes British artists as well as national ones,” said Augusto Miranda, the co-ordinator of the campaign. “The cherry on the cake is that we are still working on the programme and there are more surprises to come,” he added, announcing the programme of events in Faro last week. Despite his country’s economic crisis, Miranda said he hopes to secure the normal budget of €3m for promotional schemes this year. A reliable flow of holidaymakers from Britain has been crucial to Portuguese finances for some years, but the heavy burden of the economic crash means it is no time for complacency. The influential credit ratings agency Moody’s downgraded Portugal’s financial standing by two notches last week in view of the country’s weak growth prospects. The move prompted damaging speculation that a bailout similar to those handed out last year to Ireland and Greece cannot be far away. The rating agency said “subdued growth prospects and productivity gains” over the near- to medium-term were behind their decision, as was concern that reforms to the labour market and the justice system had yet to “bear fruit”. On Friday the Portuguese prime minister, José Sócrates, urged his parliament to back new austerity measures. “I will do what it takes to avoid a bailout,” he said, emphasising his determination to go to the EU summit this week with a solid plan. His minority socialist-leaning government has staked its reputation on avoiding a bailout and it claims its new programme of spending cuts – the fourth in a year – will restore market faith in the economy. Opposition parties are calling for more, including a pensions freeze. Another glimmer of hope for the Portuguese tourist economy comes from plans for more low-cost flights to the Algarve. A budget airline, Jet2, has announced that it will be adding two new British routes to and from Faro from next month. Property professionals believe the news will help to revive the plummeting local property market by encouraging investors who want to buy second homes and let them to holidaymakers. Prince Charles and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, are due to make an official visit to Portugal next week as part of a tour also taking in Spain and Morocco. Their visit will begin in Lisbon and will, according to Clarence House, “celebrate long-standing co-operation between the Portuguese and British navies, support British trade and investment opportunities and highlight the work of the substantial resident British community”.
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March 19 2011, 7:23pm | Comments »
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Flare Path with Sienna Miller
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/15/flare-path-with-sienna-miller
Flare Path with Sienna Miller
This article titled “What to say about … Flare Path with Sienna Miller” was written by Leo Benedictus, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 15th March 2011 15.50 UTC It is easy, and enjoyable, to snigger at Britain’s vision of its wartime flying heroes. The awfully wholesome banter, the Mansellian moustaches, the jovially racist dog-naming, the dark emotions, sealed in concrete, buried and forgotten 50 feet below some Hampshire rugger field. Which makes it all the more remarkable that Flare Path, Terence Rattigan’s 1941 play about the concealed strains of a bomber crew and their wives, had almost all the critics struggling to control their upper lips. “A masterly piece of theatre,” writes Sam Marlowe of The Arts Desk. “This is essentially a shattering ensemble work, in which every detail glows with truth, compassion and humanity, and where every seemingly ordinary second of life in an existence hemmed in by the ever-present threat of death is charged with a quiet intensity.” “The occasional romanticism is counterbalanced by Rattigan’s genius for barely expressed emotion,” agrees our own Michael Billington. “A simple exchange of goodbyes between a tail-gunner and his wife, as he leaves for a raid, brings a lump to the throat.” And it does even more to Charles Spencer. “If you have tears, prepare to shed them now,” he writes. “Trevor Nunn’s superb production [is] a three-handkerchief weepie that somehow manages to be both profoundly moving and wonderfully funny.” And to think the show’s publicity revolved around its star name, Sienna Miller, about whom it is also easy to be snooty. Pretty young things made famous by their film-star former boyfriends make big targets, remember. So it is remarkable, again, that the critics (this time) held their fire. “She brings to her role just the right mixture of glacial poise and agonised tension,” says Henry Hitchings in the Evening Standard. And, in the Independent, Paul Taylor agrees: “Her performance as the conflicted actress-heroine,” he says, “is genuinely heart-tugging in the subtle way it communicates this young woman’s struggle between patriotic duty and extra-marital desire.” But if Miller did well, her castmates did better still. David Benedict singles out “a career-making performance” from Harry Hadden-Paton, “[whose] character detail is there but not on display. It’s the fuel he uses to charge up his difficult, climactic breakdown.” Meanwhile, Sheridan Smith (now always to be known as “Olivier-award-winning scrubber Sheridan Smith”) is singled out for special praise by almost everyone. “She is wonderful as the barmaid married to a Polish airman,” says Libby Purves on a page you can’t read, “naive, cheerful, yet radiating immense doubt and pain in stillness.” “Smith is superb,” concurs the FT’s Sarah Hemming. “Always warm and impish, she becomes heartbreaking as she sits, smiling determinedly through her tears, while Peter gently translates for her a letter left behind by her husband.” Meanwhile, for balance, here are the views of the Express’s Paul Callan, who seems to have been watching a different show from everybody else. “All these stereotypes sadly combine to show the age-lines on this play,” he says. “The pace limps along like a battle-battered Wellington bomber flying on one engine.” Ah well, you can’t please everyone. Do say: “Chocks away!”, “Pip-pip!” and “squiffy”. As frequently as possible. Don’t say: Er … they were, you know, dropping bombs on people and stuff. The reviews reviewed: Jolly good show.
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March 15 2011, 11:27am | Comments »
