Robert Sharp

Pupil Barrister

Tag: Diary (Page 19 of 30)

Shockingly late War Horse Round-up

17 December 2007 / / 3 Comments

War Horse59 Productions did the video design for the delightful War Horse. It has been running for a few weeks now: Better-late-than-never with my customary company-aggrandizing review round-up.
Michael Billington of the Guardian enjoyed his four-starred evening at the National, and his colleague at The Observer, Susannah Clapp, predicts a success:

War Horse will be one of the National’s biggest ever hits: it is inventive, distinguished and it makes audiences cry.

Charles Spencer describes the show stealing puppets in the Telegraph:

Joey and the other horses in the show are truly magnificent creations by the Handspring Puppet Company which don’t aim for picturesque realism but with their wooden framework, translucent fabric skins, and extraordinary mobility somehow capture the very essence of everything equine.

And Christopher Hart in the Sunday Times explains just how compelling the horses are:

This is acting of the highest order, inhabiting an entirely different character and bringing him to life before your eyes. It just so happens this character isn’t human

And check out Sam Marlowe in the week-day Times:

Now and then the theatre throws up a piece of work so exhilarating that it makes you rejoice to be alive

I suppose, in a way, its a shame that the technical achievements of projecting onto a 20 metre strip of scenerywere glossed over by the reviewers. But this is a very blinkered outlook. In fact, all design aspects, top-notch though they are, must play second saddle to the horses… as indeed do the performances of the actors playing human characters! The appearance of Joey and Topthorne always get the biggest cheers at the curtain calls, and it is the puppetry that provides all of the stunning coup d’theatres that punctuate the show. Do go and see it if you get the chance. If you miss the current run, I hear it will be revived later in 2008.

Bottle

12 October 2007 / / 1 Comment

Conservative MP Robert Niell at PMQs:

Would he like to come and see the work that we are doing in Bromley? I could take him and show him one of our bottle banks.

Whether you believe, as Matthew Parris doesn’t, that Gordon Brown lost his “bottle” last week, it was interesting to see just how quickly the meme spread. It is a convenient piece of derogatory slang, so much better than the more conventional “coward” or “scared”. As soon as the Tories began using the phrase, Brown was cornered.

'Carmen' Review Round-up

2 October 2007 / / 0 Comments

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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