The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 35

ARTS GUARDIAN 35 The phantoms-at the opera THE GUARDIAN Tuesday December 13 1988 The weekend's juggling of the Rings at Covent Garden reflects the lack of a clear artistic vision, argues Tom Suteliffe 'endless' tunnel from the original Berlin staging of Gotz Friedrich's Gotterdammerung Tunnel vision for Wagner fiasco earlier in the year? Both cases were Haitink initiatives. The Lyubimov Ring replaced a long prepared Elijah Mo-shinsky-Sidney Nolan-Timothy O'Brien Ring project. But Haitink had taken against Mo-shinsky when they collaborated on Lohengrin (one of Mo-shinsky's most successful Royal Opera productions) and had also had a hard time with Moshinsky's superb Peter Grimes. Haitink, who is already recording The Ring with the Bavarian Radio Orchestra rather than Covent Garden, has admitted the limitations of his theatrical experience. No surprise for a primarily symphonic conductor who does not make the time to see a lot of opera elsewhere.

But with Jeremy Isaacs, a comparative operatic novice, at the top, Haitink is in a stronger position at the Royal Opera than Colin Davis was. He is also committed to the traditional music director's autocracy. Indeed the benefits of his sharp-eared and clear-eyed orchestral rearrangements are already showing. But he is essentially conservative and cautious in his taste. Why then has he been associated with such oddities? The answer must be his desperate desire for a highly distinctive success to establish his reputation in the operatic world, which his solid efforts alongside Peter Hall at Glyndebourne never gave him.

The restoration of Friedrich seems to have been engineered by the former opera planning boss at Covent Garden, Helge Schmidt, a kind of phantom of the opera who has returned to her old haunts in recent months as a consultant. Schmidt, together with Hai-tink's personal assistant Betty Scholar, has put together the deal with Friedrich which will enable Haitink to get his Covent Garden Ring on. The present opera planning boss, Peter Katona, seems not to have known 18 days ago that Lyubimov was being replaced. In a sense Isaacs, who believes in delegation and leaves things to his colleagues far more than success with the public (like Piero Faggioni's Girl Of The Golden West) it's soon absorbed. But who is taking the decisions that have produced two Wagnerian write-offs in less than nine months? And what chance is there that the latest planning decisions will work out better? By the time Gotz Friedrich's second time around Ring is completed at the Royal Opera, the concept on which it is to be based (his Deutsche Oper production first shown in 19845) will be getting on for a decade old.

Is Friedrich so uniquely distinguished an artist that Covent Garden should give him two bites? Lyubimov's departure, if it really costs the company nothing, will be a fortunate by-product of perestroika. The Russian director is now confident of being able to take power again at the Taganka. One of the ironies of Isaacs's early thoughts on how to revitalise Covent Garden was his proposal to have compulsory retirement at 60 or 65: Lyubimov is already past 70. It was no surprise to those who had worked with Lyubimov on Jenufa, in Zurich or London, that he liked to keep his options open until the last minute: in Rheingold changes were being proposed the day before the dress rehearsal and the machine on which Paul Hernon's design concept depended kept breaking down. Bernard Haitink walked out of rehearsals four times.

Although the show was sold out in advance, it was not a success with either audience or critics. No wonder it looked like sheer punishment for Haitink to have to complete the project. But who chose Lyubimov, and who chose Bill Bryden, the National Theatre director who was responsible for the Parsifal lined in Wagner's music-dramas. He takes as his motto for the production "The beginning is the end. The end is and, as the low flat pedal of Rheingold resounds in the orchestra he depicts a world reduced to rubble.

It is an image to which he returns after the waters of the Rhine have overflowed into the Gi-bichung Hall at the close of Gotterdammerung. Already the production has been seen in Japan, where Sykora had to redesign the framing tunnel last year to fit stages only 18 to 19 metres deep, and it will tour next June to Washington where the set will be rebuilt again for the Kennedy Centre. This, in essence, will be the basis of the production Friedrich will embark on at Covent Garden next season when he launches the cycle with Die Walkure with the cast engaged for Lyubimov's production. According to Covent Garden's Opera Director, Paul Findlay, one of the reasons it was decided to go for a second Friedrich Ring in this theatre was the fact that 75 per cent of the cast scheduled for the Lyubimov Ring has already sung in Friedrich's Berlin production. "Of course we considered other alternatives," says Findlay, "the Berghaus Ring in Frankfurt, the new Bologna production, but that is being directed by a non-German so within the low cost budgetary conditions we had imposed on ourselves this seemed the best decision.

I know Friedrich welcomes the opportunity to develop the ideas of his Berlin production." Certainly Friedrich is a director who never stands still. When I spoke to him at the time of the Berlin premiere, there were already aspects of the production he hoped to improve upon and looked forward to an opportunity of staging a third Ring. Speaking from his office at the Deutsche Oper yesterday he was delighted to be returning to London after a protracted absence. "As you probably know, Sir John Tooley asked me to re-stage my old production but I was not too happy about this. I feel very lucky to be able to go ahead with this new project and it will be a different Ring from our production in Berlin.

For me, it is boring to repeat anything but we will take the best things from Berlin, from Japan and from Washington. The space is different. I hope it can be interesting because there are many things I want to review. But it is not an emergency Ring." Steps in time A FEW weeks before Covent Garden took the decision to scrap the Lyubimov touring Ring, which was intended to fill the Royal Albert Hall when the Royal Opera was being rebuilt, Jeremy Isaacs decided it would be good for morale at Covent Garden to have a company pep talk and explain to the workers how his ideas were going. As always in an opera house, rocks loomed ahead, such as revised orchestral pay scales, and a pet (and sensible) proposal to cut overtime payments for stage staff by operating night shifts as well as day shifts.

Mr Isaacs, whose racy straight talking invariably makes a good impression, had things his own way for an hour and a half. But then a young man from the model shop stood up and asked how the general director was going to solve the huge over-run in costs for the new Rigoletto stemming from the failure to get decisions at the highest level? The sets were running late, and a lot of unnecessary overtime was having to be worked. Mr Isaacs did not handle the issue nicely. The atmosphere deteriorated. And when the young man walked out of the meeting, slamming the door behind him, he was given a long ovation by his fellow workers.

The truth is that the young man had hit the nail on the head. Opera is a high cost, high risk business and getting the decisions right at the proper time is crucial. The Rigoletto sets had to be partly contracted out to a maker in Italy, and when they arrived in Floral Street they didn't fit properly with the bits made in London. That's just an everyday crisis, and when the show is a big Oldham Pete Martin Carol Kidd THE carol singing season is upon us, but I have to confess that none of it moves me as much as this Carol and these songs. Making an all too rare excursion from her native Scotland, Carol Kidd produced an evening of real enchantment, fully appreciated by a packed audience at the Birch Hall.

And the presence of trombonist Roy Williams not only meant that two world class performers were on hand, but showed how compatible they are. The qualities which make Carol Kidd so special were evident right from the start. The piece was We'll Be Together Again, a quality song often taken at a slow ballad tempo by instrumentalists. In Ms Kidd's treatment it moved along at a medium swing, a change which brought out the sense of the lyrics, and transformed it from an attractive tune to a substantial song. The same thoughtful approach was evident in much of the material that followed.

Most memorable of all were the gentle, under-stated ballads in which she seemed to speak directly of the joys and sorrows of ordinary life, and in a way which, time and again, held the audience entranced. All were impressive, but on What Is There To Say and Don't Worry About Me we heard the art of the popular singer at its finest, as Carol Kidd brought out both the intensity and the complexity of every day emotions. You have to be a special kind of person to do this, rather than a vocal virtuoso. Not that there is anything lacking in Ms Kidd's technique: her range and control remain formidable, her pitching secure even on these difficult verse introductions which she sings with minimal accompaniment. My only regret is that we didn't hear more of Carol Kidd Si LONDON'S WEEKLY GUIDE 1 THE YEAR THE BIMBO Daryl Hannah Eats Her wows BROS At Last, The Real Story VIZ Hello, Rene Kollo as Siegfried in the John Tooley ever did, is presiding over two parallel operatic administrations, the prevailing one being in Haitink's office.

The trouble is that planning ahead is now proceeding regardless of results. Nuria Espert, whose Covent Garden Rigoletto and Butterfly do not show great operatic sensibility or technical efficiency, has already been engaged for Carmen and Traviata. And, after Moshinsky's resignation from Prince Igor, Andrei Serban, producer of the absurd and disastrous Fidelio with Colin Davis conducting, has been drafted in his place. Jeremy Isaacs's baptism of fire is demonstrating how difficult it is to run an opera house if you do not have a very clear artistic policy. Sir John Too-ley's bequest of Haitink to the Royal Opera may prove the hardest cross that Isaacs has to bear.

Is the Royal Opera triumvirate of Isaacs, Haitink, and Paul Findlay still working? Will productions improve? Is Isaacs's regime, after the restoration of Gotz Friedrich, just John Tooley's Covent Garden with a new accent. brothers Greg and Pat Kane (song writer and vocalist respectively) have succeeded in winning over the serious listener through their shrewd jazzsoul fusions, a certain pop sensibility and pin-up quality has broughthordes of teenage screamers to their gigs. Unlike similarly received bands who milk such emotional investment dry, the Kanes have steadfastly refused to patronise it, even stopping playing when it seemed the songs were be coming incidental to their pres ence on stage. Which is as good an indication as any ot what Hue and Cry are all about; namely a basic need to commu nicate irrespective of the age or expectations ot their audience. Yet as keen as they are to investigate such issues as spiri tual alienation, sexual politics, prejudice or poverty, their music remains essentially uplifting and celebratory.

And at Sheffield University they proved just how invigorating this combination can be. Augmented by a fluent brass section, their material boasts a depth and range that is exciting testament to Greg Kane increasingly mature songwriting skills. Lyrically succinct and precise, he is clearly aware of the cliched minefields that are often part and parcel of a four minute song. Equally encouraging is his interpretation of styles, his love of the big band sound and the rhythms and melodies of jazz translated into an intoxicating '80s beat. Complementing this throughout is the voice of Patrick Kane.

His range and pitch is undeniably impressive, often calling to mind the punch and resonance of a youthful Bobby Darin. Barbican Edward Greenfield LSO Rostropovich THE Shostakovich celebration, Music from the Flames, goes from strength to strength. Of all the many current series in this theme-packed season, it is the one which has been the most immediately exciting. Who would ever have expected a capacity audience at the Bar bican tor two ot Shostakovich least tractable symphonies, Nos 3 and 11, works which I cannot imagine have been played in a London concert for ten years and more. The music itself is rightly proving itself a magnet, but so are the performers.

Following Ashkenazy at the Festival Hall with the RPO. Mstislav Kostro- povich and the LSO have taken up the banner, and the voltage in this music of electric sparks could hardly be higher. In the two rare Shostakovich symphonies Rostropovich was in his element, reliving his Rus-sian-ness. The Third Sym phony, an early work written in 1929 before the Stalinist artistic clamp-down, yet has the flavour of a propaganda work. In a single half-hour movement Hugh Canning OTZ Friedrich's 19845 production of asner's Ring for the Deutsche Oper, Berlin, which he will adapt for Covent Garden from next season, is one of the most striking and theatrical of the post-Chereau era.

It takes its special character from the 'endless' tunnel designed by Friedrich's collaborator on the project, Peter Sykora, which descends deep 40 metres into the stage of West Berlin's opera house. Although Friedrich carried over many of his ideas from the 1970s Covent Garden Ring designed by Josef Svoboda and Ingrid Rosell his overall conception of the Tetralogy now carries more specific resonances on the effects of power politics as out- spired by socialist fervour over the First of May, and ends with an uplitting chorus rather less integrated with the rest than Beethoven's in the Ninth. Rostropovich never let one doubt for a moment how genuine the young Shostakovich was in his typical combination of sharpness and haunted lyri cism, but then from the start of No ll, with its eene picture of the deserted square before the St Petersburg Winter Palace, he underlined how tar the composer had travelled by 1957, when he completed this programme symphony about the unsuccessful revolution of 1905 and its bloody suppression. It is a comment on the composer that he wrote with such heartfelt feeling about this fail ure, when in the very next sym phony, No 12, another programme work but based on the successful 1917 Revolution, he was by comparison, treading water. The Eleventh is Shostakovich's longest symphony score, but it sustains that length as purposefully as the other epic works.

Rostropovich with the LSO back in scintillating form found unexpected taut-ness and concentration in the piece, demonstrating how Shostakovich's ostinato-based arguments can build up symphonic tensions of irresistible power, with the four movements linked in a single, unrelenting 65-minute span. Messiaen 's opera St Francois d'Assise, reviewed in yesterday's Guardian, was staged at the Festival Hall. Haropstead Michael Billington Smelling a Rat MIKE Leigh's strength is his satirical observation of English tribal customs: his weakness is a tendency to patronising caricature. But in Smelling A Rat at Hampstead Theatre his first stage piece since Goose Pimples in 1981 he has found the right form for his talents. Like Ayckbourn, he uses the stock properties of farce to expose the dire consequences of emotional cruelty: the result is funny and extremely disturbing.

Everything stems trom the unexpected return home from a Christmas holiday in Lanzarote of Rex, the monstrous boss of a pest-control firm. He is just get-tine ready for bed when he hears Vic and Charmaine, his deputy and wife, coming to check out the flat as arranged; so Rex pops into a wardrobe to eavesdrop on his underling. But when Rex's catatonic son, Rock, and his shoe-selling girl friend turn up, Vic and Charmaine also hide in the closets in a sweaty mixture of guilt and panic. Part of the fun lies in the inevitability that we shalLsee the bodies come tumbling out of the closets and the skeletons out of the cupboards. As Bedroom Farce, the boudoir is used for almost everything except sex.

Mike and Roy Williams together. But such things require the kind ot rehearsal opportunities which are generally denied to even the best jazz musicians. Manchester Robin Thornber Stig of the Dump HOW would they do it Clive King's now classic children's story is about a rather solitary eight-year-old who falls into a chalk pit and befriends a survi vor of the cavemen who's living on his wits in what has become a rubbish dump. You can do this sort of outdoor adventure on television but it defies translation to the stage, with its detailed survival techniques, lack of dialogue or fundamental conflict, and mystical, aeonic timeshift that simply demands to be read in the head. But Richard Williams's adaptation comes as close as you could hope to capturing this indefinable magic and in the process somehow sheds some of the book's rather dated, 1950s middle class tone.

He's dropped the twee fancy dress party and the more challenging, but unstageable sabotage of the hunt for fun rather than hunt for food. But he's kept the essence of a landscape that is inhabited by ghostly but real figures, of a child's world that is imaginative yet more truthful than that of sceptical adults. Barney's fall, like Alice's, is into an absurd world that makes more sense. The transformation is vividly envisaged and realised by Marty Hood designs and Stephen Henbest's lighting here a dreamworld you can believe in and it kept the kids quietly spellbound. The problem was a style of playing that lay between this supernaturalism and a sort of pantomime slapstick that held SPECIAL DOUBLE ISSUE Win A Year's Free Cinema PLUS Xmas Wrtti My Parents By Ruby Wax Leigh's prime concern is to nail the inherent destructiveness of a man like Rex (surname Weasel) who treats people as either pests to be brought under control or objects to be purchased.

He is both privatisation incarnate and a feudal despot in a tartan golf-cap. When Melanie-Jane, his son's girl, hides in the loo, he tries to smoke her out as if she were a piece of vermin; and his answer to the discovery that his rejected son simply wants a bit of sexual privacy is to hurl a wad of notes at him. Deep down, this is a political play about the new kind of sanctified millionaire entrepreneur who has wealth but no moral values. But the comedy stems largely from social observation; and while it contains elements of condescension (particularly in the character of Vic who loads every sentence with "in as much as" and who talks about the "en-suet it achieves a blithe accuracy in the scenes between Rock and Melanie-Jane. His taciturnity seems both a result of paternal victimisation and also Leigh's comment on a whole generation's disregard for language.

The only person unfazed by it is Melanie-Jane, a pampered tease in her early twenties with all the girlish gaucherie of an adolescent. The scenes between these two take off because the actors, presumably working from improvisation, seem to have found the characters in life. Greg Cruttwell, with a thatch of wir- ebrush hair and the kind of long, thin face you see in the back of a spoon, suggests someone who is psychically damaged yet internally alive. Saskia Reeves, tottering about in red stilettoes and drawing strands of hair across her face like a mask, is an equally aston ishing mixture ot provocation and shyness. Timothy Spall Vic, a duffle- coated figure with a mechani cal, braying laugh, struck me as more of a comic turn: there is an element of patronage about his verbal tics and his talk of the ascent of man leading him to reach higher kitchen units.

But Brid Brennan, at last released from playing victim ised Irish womanhood, is poignantly true and funny as his wife. And Eric Allan, with a tense whipchord body leading to muscular neck spasms, is suitably horrific as the airgun-brandishing Rex. The acting is always good in a Mike Leigh show: the prob lem is that the characterisation often seems stronger than the plot. ENGLISH NATIONAL OPERA LONDON COLISEUM CTMADTIU'C I UC repeated, were the result of deep cultural influences in the Chinese psyche. Like reverence for the Emperor? Yes, they say, though you wonder if there really has been a last emperor figure.

Their friendliness seems to ease Grey's old wounds. And a toddler in her mother's arms, urged to sing, begins: "Edelweiss, edelweiss, every morning you greet me Back in Britain there was more disinterring the past. Jane Corbin's report in The Shadow Of The Swastika (Panorama, BBC1) raised doubts about whether we should pursue 17 alleged war criminals said to have found havens in Britain. These are people who lived in the Baltic states, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, nations that suffered under Soviet occupation after the Hitler-Stalin pact. The accusations are that the 17 committed war crimes alongside the Nazis after the Germans drove the Russians out, then fled to Britain on the Red Army's return.

There are 6,000 people living here whose families came from the Baltic republics, and you might expect them to be aquiver now with the aftershocks of the nationalist risings in their homelands. But the Latvians in particular are worried that pursuing a handful of supposed war criminals will damage their community's relations in their host country. In the US, 31 people in the same category have been investigated, stripped of their citizenship, and in 10 cases deported. But they have not been prosecuted. And some mistakes have been made by Nazi hunters.

Corbin talked to Frank Walus in the US, cited as a war criminal, who had people spit in his face, before he was able to find new witnesses to establish his innocence. Next spring the British Government will receive a report on allegations about the 17, and decide whether war criminals should be brought to trial here. Forty years on Lord Shawcross, Britain's chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, believes evidence of identification after so long could not be reliable. And as in the Ivan the Terrible trial, it is not a comfortable prospect to think of old men peering at each other across a courtroom, trying to look past utterly changed features into unchangeable past sins. BOX OFFICE 01-836 3161 CREDIT CARDS 01-240 5258 the little kids but broke the spell.

Are we asked to believe in the flying horse, the tribal ritual, or laugh at such nonsense No-one knew because the thieves were such clowns. TWere" "wete practical prob lems. Stig cave painting nu minous as a tribute to art in the book was lost on the audience. But the tension between Barney (Tom Davidson) and his cynical sister (Saskia Downes) was as real as the charisma of Chris Garner's flash-faced Stig. You could quibble over detail.

I seriously think that the harmless drinking of water from a tub labelled weed-killer is a joke that could be cut from a show for junior school children. And I found the piano irritating rather than helpful. But it caught the essence of the book's transition from the mundane to the mystical and staging convincingly the building of a prehistoric stone circle is no mean feat. I liked it. Manchester Contact Theatre (061 274 4400) until January 27 Bolton Francesca Turner Cinderella "THAT were a fair smart show," 11-year-old Dean concluded hoarsely as we drove home.

Along with the rest of the ratbags (as Gertrude Kip-perfeet called us) at the Albert Halls he'd spent the evening roaring and pointing and straining to catch Buttons-thrown sweets ten times more precious than any we bought in the interval. So how could I argue with him? How could I squelch his enthusiasm by say ing that if I been on my own I'd have left half way through? it not that I'm past pantos. Usually, I love them. But the humour of this one rarely rises above "shut-your-cakehole" levels and much of the singing is inaudible. Some dads probably enjoy it because it is full of overtly sexy costumes and red stilletoes.

But the choreography is sloppy and amateurish and during one ballet interlude there's an excerpt of orchestral music which sounds scratchy enough to be an old 78. Wholly inappropriate pop songs have been bunged in presumably to fill up space and there were several production hiccups although it wasn't the first performance. Pressed by Dean to share what I liked best about it, I said the Uglies because they were at least dynamic. Buttons was lively enough, too. But if this is the shape of pantos to come at the Albert Hans tnis is tneir first professional one then Dean will have to go without me next year.

Sheffield Patrick Weir Hue and Cry A CONSTANT and peculiar aspect of Hue and Cry's career so far has been the dichotomy of the group's appeal. While Hugh Hebert Hi OUSE arrest sounds like a genteel alter native to penal servi tude, till you see who holding the key. In Return To Peking (BBC2) Anthony Grey walked up the steps where 20 years ago he had been forced to his knees by the Red Guards and had seen his reflection in a pool of his own sweat. He saw the tree in the courtyard where they had hanged his cat. Not a beautiful tree now, but then a mental anchor during the 30 months of confinement to a room in his own home; the only Western journalist in the city, spiked.

The Guards had broken in, daubing his furniture and his person with the angry symbols of the Cultural Revolution, settling down as his gaolers in his dining room. Last week we saw him in Vietnam, a country he once could not enter. This week it was the China he had been unable to leave as its people went through the great Maoist unpheaval. The two films together, directed by Roger Mills, are a kind of personal pilgrimage of reconciliation with the Far East. So here he was back having a civilised chat with the man who ordered his arrest, and taking a present for the servant who had stayed on: "I cook you Number He met a veteran of the Long March, and Ying Ruo-cheng, Vice Minister of Culture and star of The Last Emperor, who said there was no government office imposing censorship.

There was only "what we call self-censorship censorship by which has a nasty familiar ring. Everywhere Grey demonstrated the transformation from a nation on an ideological bender into the biggest consumer market in the Pacific Basin. Where he had seen only slogans copied from the Little Red Book, now there are billboards blazoned with the names of the new household gods: Casio, Marlboro, Seiko. But what happens next? In a park, people gather to practise their and tell him that the excesses of 20 years ago can never be LAST TWO PERFORMANCES PHILIP GLASS TONIGHT AND FRIDAY AT 7.30 LONDON WC2N 4ES Wf MAKlWHk SEATS FROM 2.50 Merry Christmas." ffcVy'; .7 of many sections, it was in-.