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'Carmen' Review Round-up

Fifty Nine have been working with director Sally Potter, on the video design for Carmen at the ENO. As with Attempts on Her Life, a micro-site has been created, presenting trailers and blogs which chart the creative process from start to finish. Its an interesting method of engaging with audiences, and by-passing the traditional “gate-keepers” in the press.
In this case, the show has divided critics. Writing in the Independent, Edward Seckerson enjoys the dystopian setting:

Potter’s big metaphor for her Carmen is civil liberty under threat. She and her designer use the scrim to superimpose the jerky CCTV images over actuality. Surveillance is the new reality. Carmen’s entrance is pre-empted by her grainy monochrome image blown up to fill the entire screen. She pouts knowingly for the camera, as if to say: “I know you’re watching.”

Later, Carmen angrily asserts her freedom, her right to choose her own path, in the face of Don Jose’s frenzied passion. She gets a knife in the belly for her troubles.
In The Times, Richard Morrisson is less impressed with the chosen themes… but is still complimentary about the video work:

Forbidding walls topped with razor wire; an oppressed populace spied on by CCTV; menacing cops and booted tarts; desultory, neon-lit bars; bodyhoppers and hoodies; dreary airport transit corridors – where have we seen this before? The answer is in most ENO productions since the 1980s. Potter should get out more.
What is saddest is that the staging’s most interesting aspect – real-time video (by Fifty Nine Productions) projected on to a gauze to suggest a society under constant surveillance – is abandoned after one act.

Rupert Christiansen in The Telegraph also had mixed feelings about the setting, but still enjoyed the music.

Es Devlin’s sets are sparely beautiful and evocative, and Potter generates more intensity and atmosphere than Francesca Zambello did in her drearily conventional version for the Royal Opera. But I feel that Potter has been in two, or even three minds as to what she wants to do. Some scenes, including the final confrontation, catch fire. Others, such as Carmen’s arrest, remain inert.
…
The biggest applause was rightly reserved for Edward Gardner, conducting a vivacious orchestra in a sparkling, colourful and clean-textured account of the score which never becomes hysterical or heavy-handed.

Andrew Clements in The Guardian was unfortunately not at all impressed, and thinks that “one of the most ambiguous heroines in operas is reduced to a mere cipher”. Ouch.

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FEAST

Edinburgh residents: Don’t forget the FEAST performance this evening.

FEAST is a unique Chinese intercultural event to encourage greater understanding between Chinese and Scottish communities through a creative exploration of food, film and music.
Edinburgh-based band FOUND and Chinese composer / musician Kimho Ip will be giving a special performance at Eating Place on Castle Street (off the West End of Princes Street), Edinburgh on Thursday 30 August at approximately 6 pm. They will also present other performances earlier that afternoon. Read More

Chili Bowl

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The Clocks in Edinburgh Go Forward Tonight

Léonie is tired and emotional after the Edinburgh Fringe, not happy to be back in London.
Spare a thought for those of us still here. Although there is a week left to run on the International Festival, the chaos on the streets ends tonight as the Fringe finishes for another year. For us residents, it is nice to have the city ‘back’ (along with the keys to the flat we have so prudently rented out), but it also seems empty and lonely. During August, media focus is weighted heavily in our favour. As the cultural influence boomerangs back to London, I think we feel the loss.
No more late openings either. During the festival, it is as if the clocks in Edinburgh are put back a few hours, Edinburgh Daylight Squandering Time (EDST). In this local time-zone, 5am is the new 3am. Everywhere stays open later. This means parties and revelry finish later, which means bedtime is later, which means hang-overs are solved later… which means work starts later, which means work finishes later, which means parties and revelry start later, which means parties and revelry finish later. But the clocks go forward again tonight.

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Anacronisms and Affirmative Action

The BBC are promoting a rather extraordinary artists’ bursary from the Oppenheim John-Downes Trust.

Successful applicants must be … Natural born British Subjects born within Great Britain, Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man of parents both of whom are or were British Subjects born within the British Isles and neither of whose parents was or is of colonial or overseas original subsequent to the year 1900 (Section 34 of the Race Relations Act applies).

(The relevant legislation reminds us that since these provisions do not make reference to race/colour, they can be followed in full).
I suppose Mrs Downes was entitled to place whatever restrictions she wished on how her own money was to be spent. But it is clear she had a very narrow conception of what it means to be British, and the criteria leave a horrible taste in the modern mouth. It is odd that the BBC should be endorsing this sort of anacronism.

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Fuerzabruta

fuerzabruta
Last night I was lucky enough to see the astonishing Fuerzabruta, a kinetic dance/circus show down at Ocean Terminal in Edinburgh. Men running along treadmills, ballerinas chasing each other up walls, dusty cast members smashing pieces of set over the audience members’ heads, and a huge transparent paddling pool lowered to just a foot above the audience member’s heads! Each set piece presents a new thrill that challenges one’s perception of space and one’s relationship to the performers.
From the shocking opening to the wet finale, Fuerzabruta feels more like a concert than a theatre show. Never have I been to a Fringe show (or circus for that matter) that creates such a sense of communality in the audience. It is that visceral pleasure of being simply a part of the moment, that human moment, when everyone is moving to the same beat.
It will quickly become the talk of the festival – book now!