The Observer from London, Greater London, England • 90

8 ARTS The Observer Review 31 January 1999 The Best from the arts in ttte week CfiBcs'choice THEATRE SusarrnahCbgp Intriguing collaboration between Simon jor.n;Berger.-Thurs to Sun, Aldwych Tube LStascn, London WC2 (book tickets advance: 0171 729 Peer ynt Threlfall opens at the Manchester Royal Exchange en ISfeb Sosiez3S Synphony Orchestra and BBC Singers, con-jKLxts" AmfesCavlSf'fftrfMTO wcrks by Bculez at the Roatiest-yal Hallantfon Radios, tomorrow glioithSiBfanla; JearBaiiardPorrtmfer, rayslBadMczary SaM-Saens, In Newcastle (Thurs), i FOP I SoniPmice' SiDy Latestmcarnauon of cult US doom- Palace Brothers. "ii PI -Tornorrpw, London 'strong on Aisling O'Sulvan and Sheila Hancock in Vassa Photograph by Neil Libbert IT. rr ifitiildferd Cmc Half, mothers do xave 7e Some Brookes Urn-, vefStyThurs Leicester Universfty, Sat Theatre Susannah, Royal Ballet opens jts two-week David Binttey'isen- ssaSsnal tragedy ballet- -f JfflagoFasifetJ afconwioe fear Wysornbe SrfJt, arifce ion-" rsr Pailasf t7 7 anrJ 11 Feb tnefocrd painter fN-oVeroileTss; atfhe Francis de la Tour -unguarded, droll, callous -plumps up a phrase with insinuation: 'ample7 becomes an infinitely suggestive tion, though full of lively detail, doesn't hang together. As a formidable daughter, and future matriarch, Aisling O'Sullivan glowers like Bette Davis and mouths her words. As a crushed son, David Ten-nant sneers like Rik Mayall.

For the first half of the play, until she assumes a more caustic mantle, there is a hole at the centre in the shape of Sheila Hancock, who plays the matriarch with a restrained, weary, almost casual air which drains away tension. the most unified aspect of the productionis the design. It's hard to go to the theatre these days without be'ing struck by ithe boldness and versatility of Rob Howell. For Vassa, he has supplied a lofty, beautiful, unsnug space part living-room and part business centre i in iw mm hi i im mil mm wi mtm SirtnaterciofSRB. more focused political dimension! Now Howard Dayies has adapted a translation by Tania Alexander and Tim Suter of the early version.

"What emerges most forcefully is a world seething not so much with commercial greed as with sexual secrets. Vassa contains a husband who is dying, it is hinted, of venereal disease, a daughter whose most hardy children are probably not by her husband, a son who years ago impregnated a servant, an uncle with a hidden child; even the apparently continent little wife is revealed as harbouring a baroque fantasy life. There are echoes of Ibsen, though the plot is more barnacled, less driving. There are loud echoes of Chekhov at the end of the play, three women look to their future together but there is scarcely a moment of languor or reflection. There are well-turned lines: 'That's not very the mother chides her cigarette-smoking, striding daughter.

'It's like this ive IRBjjity Fife Landlord embarfson his Cfeig5s yet -Seotharnpton Gantry, Thurs; Kremlin. It is both evocative and helpful. The same can't be said of William Dudley's obtrusive design for The Forest. His wood which needs to serve in the play as a metaphor for a predatory society teeming with voracious underground life has bristling trees that look like climbing poles in an adventure playground, and a folksy dado. His interior scene is fussy with finials and squiggles.

It takes too long to change between the two. Too much of Anthony Page's production is creaky, and too much of the acting is uninflected particularly damaging in a play which, written in 1S70; 34 years before The Cherry Orchard, features actors among its characters. But it flares into comic life whenever these actors a non-chalant Michael Feast and engaging Michael Williams -appear. As it does when Frances de la Tour comes on as Ostrovsky's matriarch. She is in succession unguarded, droll, callous.

She plumps up a phrase with insinuation: 'ample' becomes an infinitely suggestive adjective. She refreshes a straightforward line with an unexpected pause. When she turns to seduction, she uses her shawl as a schoolgirl imitating the dance of the seven veils might flourish a team scarf. Peter Gill's new play opened at the Almeida last week, with the author direct ing. Certain Young Men brings together a series of encounters between eight men three bickering couples and two argumentative loose cannons apparently aiming to persuade us that homosexual couples have the same bad times as heterosexuals.

It has an incisive, central episode, in which varieties of gay life are acerbicly described and the idea of a gay sensibility dissected and dismissed. It has bursts of completely authentic speech. The acting is uniformly strong: Jeremy Northam as an anguished doctor and Danny Dyer as an abused and eager-to-please young boy are particularly powerful: But for much of the time the piece suggests a physical and verbal exercise, lacking as is the way with quarrels between couples any dynamic progression. The difficulty of arriving at any settled intimacy is underlined by a number of self-conscious sequences in which one character, ending his responses with 'or keeps causing the action to take a sudden swerve. Nathalie Gibbs's design is uncomfortably like a rehearsal-room and its few decorations are too knowing.

Piled on the floor is A la recherche du temps perdu; on the back wall, two white neon bands encircle the action, one above the other: parallel lines never meet, you see. Vassa Albery the Forest National Theatre Certain Young Men Almeida THE BRITISH IDEA of the Russian dramaticrepertoire was expanded a little last week. That enterprising revi-taliser of classic texts, the Almeida, brought Maxim Gorky's Vassa to the Albery, while the National Theatre staged Alexander Ostrovsky's The Forest, in a new translation by Alan Ayckbourn, at the Lyttelton. There wasn't a shimmer of silver birch, not a whisper of melancholic lassitude in either play. Both dealt in action, snarling and bad character.

Both showed isolated households buzzing with spies and suspicion and governed by fierce women. Gorky, whose life was divided almost equally between tsarist and Soviet Russia, wrote Vassa in 1909. The story of an ageing woman who is prepared to murder in order to keep her family together and her business afloat, it featured melodrama, grim comedy and an attack on petit bourgeois materialism. In 1935, rewrote it, introducing the character of a social revolutionary who gave the play a -which is patterned with shadows and squares of light. It is I PasjfiBlfeteeejectlve opens at Hayward I "op TjiUrs (0171 261 0127.

JLne coHection LbarmAedfromlhs SBaneiuseum. From Frt at faODuaJ Gaiiy of $coliartddioburgh (0131 t2462005 ADVANCE WARNING lNpoUab6ratiK3 as part of Insh festival 0n28 March It at BarVcaFv Lcn)n EC2-C0171 638 8891 penetrated by doors which are continually being OH snaps back the daughter, There are vivid perfor flung open to show acres of space, often with a lis mances from a scurrying, flustered Debra Gillett, and from Adrian Scarborough as her complacently prancing, scheming husband. But these are the only two characters tener crouching at the key- hole; shutters are folded who give the impression of being bound up, however back to look on to a forest Steven Richard disagreeably, with each other. Most of the produc- Michael Feast and Michael Williams, that looks like the Inker Oawcims There's more to listening to music than listening to music Classical by Fiona Maddocks Penguin Music Classics "Is Science Killing the For the first time two of the world's most eminent scientists share a platform for a i fascinating debate on how the mind works and an exploration into our behaviour. Come and join the debate, chaired by the Guardian's-Science Editor, Tim Radford.

Wednesday febnjary 10. 7pm. Westminster Central Hal, Storeys Gate. London SVV1. Tickets 86 concessions.

"Old recordings with big names, many dead, come cheap7 Box Tsfc 01 71 467 1 613 (24hr7day voicemail) Fax 01 71 580 7680 Email: ticketsdiBons.org.uk In association with Penguin Books editing errors occur. On some covers, the orchestra is named, on others not. A novice might easily assume that Sir Colin Davis was performing the entire Mozart Requiem singlehandedly (he may wish he were since in the recording, made over 30 years ago, he is muddily supported by the BBCSO and John Alidis Choir); The performances are respectable, though some Neville Mar-riner's 1970, version of Vivaldi's Four Seasons or Britten conducting Bach -have the air of archeological curiosities. It's like telling a young person that television was better in black and white, or Penguin reusing old notes with new editions. At root is a misunderstanding of the difference between reading a Penguin Classic, which demands active engagement and celebrates the latest scholarship through illuminating exegesis and textual accuracy, and listening to a CD which too many writers seem to regard as a passive experience, a form of aural massage.

Music has more to offer than something against which to peel the potatoes or fix the back bumper, both difficult tasks to perform while reading Demosthenes. costs, notwithstanding, Penguin's 7.99 is steep. A new Naxos CD, with less famous performers but keenly abreast of musical developments, costs 4.99. What, a lost opportunity. Theapproach is depressingly middle brow, most of the writing woefully thin and anecdotal in sharp contrast to the vivid diatribes which arose from Canongate's comparable pairing of writers with books of the Bible.

So D.M. Thomas gently recalls listening to Mozart's Requiem when his wife was dying; Seamus Deane remembers hearing Vivaldi's Four Seasons over an airport intercom (always a good way of judging a work); William Boyd discovered RaChmani-nov 'about two years ago' (would someone so new to their subject have been invited to write the foreword to a Penguin Classic?) when he was in bed with flu. None of this tells you a jot about the music or fires you with a passion to learn more. The implication is that music is a backdrop against which life occurs: travelling, blowing your nose, dying. A few make genuinely thoughtful contributions.

Edmund White is sharp on Tchaikovsky, Humphrey Car- the publicity blurb) as the latest bald attempt to staunch the loss of CD sales, the original idea was honourable. A senior Penguin man, Michael Linton, newly arrived from Disney's Hollywood had an unhappy encounter in Tower Records trying to buy Handel's Messiah. Confounded by the array of recordings, he came out determined to help others through the maze with a set of comfortingly endorsed 'classics'. Unfortunately, the Messiah CD (highlights only) is the worst of the Penguin batch. To include Solti conducting Wagner highlights makes sense.

In Wagner, he excelled though would he, too, have described Flying Dutchman as 'drama on the high seas' or 'Ride of the Valkyries' as To call his 1985 recording of Messiah with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra a classic is misleading. But old recordings with big names, many dead (Karajan, Bernstein, Kertesz) come cheap. Rights will have expired or prove minimal It's a quick way to make money. Discs cost only a few pence (around 30p each, including case and simple sleeve notes). VAT and sundry distribution Tolstoy preferred Uncle Tom's Cabin to King Lear.

But Tolstoy was an expert ideological marksman. In terms of music, the application of 'classic' or 'classical' is more fraught. With a thousand years of history behind it, this art form never used to require adjectival assistance. It was the newcomers jazz, pop, rock -which needed labelling. Before the Three Tenors in 1990 and the commercial frenzy which followed, 'classical' meant music written between 1770 and 1830 (Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven).

Thus everyone knew Prokofiev's Classical Symphony (1918) was so named because it borrowed Haydn's style. Now 'classical' means anything 'serious' from Machaut to Thomas Ades. Belatedly cashing in on this, Penguin Books has gone into partnership with PolyGram and come up with Penguin Music Classics 20 CDs of key works performed by famous artists. The coup de prestige (which roughly translates as the 'unique selling point' or USP) is a brief introduction by a well-known writer. Tempting though it is to be cynical, to regard this 'unique marriage' (to quote at Surname Pfease book me Title Address THE ROMANCE of personal discovery always has to vie with the urge to conform, especially in cultural matters.

If you slog through the complete works of Beethoven or Trollope, preferably in a handsome, matching edition, you can't go wrong. Better still, if you follow someone else's recommendations and pursue only the acknowledged best, cultural correctness will be on your side. What you lose in serendipity, you gain in confidence since you're getting to grips with the Western canon. Exploring this theme, the Arts Council and Water-stone's have just published a book in which 47 writers answer the question: 'What makes a classic a Most replies are boastfully anti-literary: 'Jane Austen doesn't do a huge amount for from A.L. Kennedy or from Vanessa Feltz a complaint about Henry James's long sentences.

Famous precedents exist for this kind of cavalier dismissal of the masters. In What is Leo Tel- Postcode E-mail address. I enclose my cheque made payable' to Diltors the Bookstore Value Cheque No. Wnte your name, address and card number "on the back) Or, debit my VisaMastercanifAmex i penter spirited about his own attempts to play Gershwin. John Fowles writes tellingly of late Beethoven.

Michael Ignatieff celebrates Bach's Goldberg Variations (played by Andras Schiff, the best of the CDs) and Jane Smiley compares short-story writing with Mozart. More of this quality would have worked wonders for the enterprise. Were Alan Hollinghurst, Bernard Mac Laverty, Philip Hensher asked? Perhaps, wisely, they turned it down. Inconsistencies and sub Issue Expiry Print name Signatoe Post taTte Deba PnsK BEQ. Tickets wS be postel isiffl February 4.

Quejfes.0171, How many fcnss a wedc do you buy the Gtiaftfisn? '--t How trany Smss a month eo youbuytha Observer? pteassSdcbcx i.