The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 31

ARTS GUARDIAN 31 Mozart forte Big Apple turns sour for Ivory THE GUARDIAN Friday March 24 1989 and it will open on Broadway in September or next spring, depending on Redgrave's schedule. Why can't a woman play Mozart? Tilda Swinton, alias Amadeus, tells Vere Lustig what should really matter in British theatre iL TP" OU were won- derful.The play was won-1 1 derful ble production, but you were I think that's the most insulting thing that anyone can say to an actor," says Tilda Swinton. "It assumes a vanity in the actor which means that their first priority is their own performance, and it's extremely offensive because it assumes then the choice of work was second to the actor's opportunity to do a good bit of business." Swinton regards herself as a performer rather than an actor, and tends to buy tickets for dance, performance art and gigs by stand-up comedians in preference to theatre. She lists as her favourite theatres the Hackney Empire and the Almeida. She has played the Almeida herself a number of times, most notably perhaps in Botho Strauss's The Tourist Guide a couple of years ago.

Now she returns there to play Mozart in Pushkin's "little Mozart And Salieri. For the past three months she's been playing it in Vienna and West Berlin, and we met over lunch in the lazy warmth of the Almeida Wine Bar just after her return to icy, inhospitable rain. I remark that Swinton seems to choose her projects with great care, and with small regard to self-aggrandisement. "I sincerely believe that your choice of work is actually more important than how you do it. I'm not interested in doing something beautifully that I don't care about." Though the narcissism that's evident in so much of our theatre irritates her, Swinton is strongly aware of the importance of form: "This is pure Brecht the actor must constantly know the image that they are casting, know the shape of their body, the sound of their voice.

They must know how far away the person at the back of the stalls is so that they, can actually talk to them. As crucial as the choice is the kind of professional set-up a performer works in. "It's no secret that I find structures tricky, to say the least," she says. She feels alienated by the "crazy Stock Exchange way" our theatre operates, and by the growth of sponsorship. "I don't think it's the thin end of the wedge.

I think it's three quarters of the way up the wedge." She's unhappy with prevalent working methods too: "It's soul destroying when on the first day of rehearsals you're presented with a model of the set and drawings of the costumes, put together by a team of people you've never met." Not suprisingly, then, Tilda Swinton's spell with the RSC early in her career was a relatively brief one. She has done no commerial work; and her association with the National Theatre has been with their Studio, working in hermetic, laboratory conditions on a play by the Austrian writer Peter Handke, The Long Way Round. She counts herself lucky to have been able to do the kind of projects she believes in non-naturalistic work that "stretches the elastic" of both spectator and performer; work that knows which medium it's for highly theatrical stage work, intensely cinematic film, work that, as she puts it "charges the space feeds the She has had a long working relationship with stage director Stephen Unwin, which dates back to Cambridge University nine years ago, and with filmmaker Derek Jarman, whose magnificent War Requiem to be screened on BBC on Good Friday. "There's a terrible snobbishness about film acting. People seem to think it's not real acting.

Well, they should see the armpits of the dress I wore in War Requiem. Swinton likes to be involved in the "seeding stage" of projects and in the creation of roles, and she shows no eagerness to be this year's umpteenth Hedda Gabler, fodder for the chattering classes to compare with Juliette Stevenson and Lindsay Duncan. "It's such a redundant and lifeless line of inquiry, to compare actors in the same role. Is it interesting? No. Full stop.

It means you aren't talking about the play. And the pressure it puts on actors, it's ridiculous." Swinton may not be drawn to powerhouse revivals of the classics, but she doesn't recoil from looking into the past. Of War Requiem, she says: "It should be possible to accept not Tilda Swinton: "I'm not interested in doing something beautifully that I don't care about." W. J. Weatherby in New York THE reception in America for James Ivory's Slaves Of New York shows the danger of filming with-it bestsellers.

Ivory made his reputation with scrupulously accurate adaptations of such classics as Henry James's The Bostonians and E. M. Forster's A Room With A View. His subjects were all safely in the past But Tama Janowitz's controversial, trendy novel about the downtown New York art scene is set in the present, and the risks are much greater. Newsweek decided Ivory seemed "totally adrift" and the New York Times suggested it was possible Ivory "would have been less at home making a film about life on the moon, but it isn't likely." Andy Warhol first bought the film rights but died before he could make the film.

He would have been filming a story set in the Warhol world whereas Ivory was very much an outsider. There may be a warning here for Brian de Palma, who is to film Tom Wolfe's equally trendy bestseller The Bonfire Of The Vanities later this yean don't depend too much on the book reputation when it is a contemporary subject Fantasticks sticks THE British musical The Fantasticks will celebrate its 30th anniversary in May. It made its New York debut at Barnard college in 1959 and then settled down in a small Greenwich Village theatre for what seems to be an endless run. Black Menagerie THE first professional all-black production of Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie starring Josephine Premice will open on April 4 at the Cleveland Playhouse. Perhaps soon we will see a production of A Streetcar Named Desire with a black Stanley Kowalski, the role that made Marlon Brando famous.

Vanessa Redgrave's perfor mance as a Williams heroine in Peter Hall's production of Orpheus Descending received raves from New York critics who went to London to see it syncratic singing has grown to fill the house, and his acting has persuasive style and egocentric flair. Richard Van Allan's veteran Leporello is immaculately crafted, full of business I don't recall from Miller's original such as his continuing intrusion in the initial action between Anna and Giovanni (which takes some of the fun out of the mimed serenading of Elvira in the second act). Rita Cullis has stature and a thrilling timbre, though she should command her scenes more aggressively. And Lesley Garrett is a spunky Zerlina, full of bubble and well tuned. Jane Glover's conducting is energetic and sensible.

What the opera really wants, though, is class, a feeling that precision matters, that things are on the edge. St Luke's, Chelsea Frank Barker Part's Passion PREDICTING who might be the next cult figure in contemporary music is a tricky business. Who would have thought, for instance, that such status would come the way of Arvo Part, the Estonian exile, all of whose works are inspired by his religious faith, most of them PHOTOGRAPH: SEAN SMITH and that rhythm is there to be rendered. To impose a style on it I consider cowardice, and it's sad because if you feel you need to do that, why did you want to do the play in the first place? It's that syndrome of: 'Oh God. I've got to do As You Like It in two days.

Haven't time to read the play. Let's see (Swinton eyes the lunch she's been too animated to finish) I'll have a half-eaten salad on one side of the stage and people dressed up in Gauloises packets No, that word really is the death of theatre." Mozart And Salieri, Almeida Theatre. Almeida Street. London Nl April 415 and April 24-May 6. mode, she's also, as I crudely put it to her, in gender-bending mode again after her immensely successful portrayal of the crane operator's widow who impersonates her husband in Karge's Man To Man, seen at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, in 1987 and at the Royal Court the following year.

Swinton seems surprised that I make an issue of the fact that Mozart and Salieri are played by women. "It was something we never really discussed," she says. "Manfred just thought we were right for the parts; and he thought women were particularly suitable to play artists weibliche Sensibilitat." German words and phrases pepper Swinton's speech; and her syntax was occasionally skew-whiff as if she had only just returned when we met She is no stranger to Germany. Though born in Scotland, she was brought up there on Army bases. Now, after three months away, she regards Britain with almost a foreigner's puzzled objectivity.

On the Continent, she tells me, artists do not have to justify themselves as they do here. "They stand firm there, with both feet on the pavement." While abroad, Swinton found it refreshing to have a break from the word "A written text has a rhythm of its own Goodbye Mr Chips THE movie is accurate," said Joe Clark. "The things happened." As Lean On Me is based on Clark's experiences as the tough principal of Easiside High school in Paterson, Jersey, his approval was mwirial His efforts to teach discipline were given national publicity and the film was the result His pupils those who were left after he expelled more than 300 approved of the film too, at a special screening. They even liked Morgan Freeman's portrayal of their prinripaL The only criticism came from someone who thought the film-makers John D. Avildsen was the director "exaggerated a bit" Clark hoped the film would "prick the conscience of the nation" and show that inner-city kids can overcome "seemingly insurmountable obstacles." As for Clark himself, at 49 he has bad enough of playing a Mr Chips with a baseball bat combatting the drug generation and has retired.

Lewd and clear SINCE the unexpected success of the movie Dirty Dancing, the humorous title has become a cliche in describing the work of many of the younger American entertainers who combine singing and what they call realistic dancing. Bobby Brown, whose music combines traditional soul and contemporary rap styles, was recently arrested for his dancing in the middle of a performance in Columbus, Georgia. He had to pay a $642 fine for "lewd conduct on stage." Brown said he not only paid his fine at the police precinct, but signed a few autographs. Ghetto blaster EFFORTS have failed to persuade Eddie Murphy to film his next production Harlem Nights in Harlem. Assembly-.

woman Geraldine Daniels even listed Harlem locations suitable, for his story set in the black ghetto of the Thirties. But Murphy's company replied that unfortunately it was cheaper to recreate the Harlem of that time in Hollywood than to try to depict it in the real Harlem of today. designed specifically for the rites of the Church. Yet the audience of enthusiasts who packed St Luke's Church, Chelsea, for the composer's St John Passion gave the occasion the sense of a musical pilgrimage. This Passion is austere both in vocal line, setting the Latin text on principles involving plainsong and monody, and in the sparing use of instrumental forces, reduced here to violin, cello, oboe, bassoon and organ.

Paul Hillier conducted the Hilliard Ensemble, augmented also by the Western Wind Choir, in a ritualistic performance of which not a note was wasted. The concentration and perfect precision of the singing gave an impression of remarkable sincerity and richness of expression. A highly unusual feature of the setting is Part's giving the role of the narrator-evangelist to a quartet of voices to produce a sound at once other-wordly and intensely direct, and which contrasted here most effectively with the eloquent Christ of Richard Jackson. The composer's use of few notes and constant repetition produce a hypnotic effect which the Ensemble's fastidious style fully realised. The whole performance communicated on such a level of immediacy that any pre-con-ceived ideas of the music's archaism on the one hand or minimalism on the other were swept away by the feeling of a shared experience.

(subject to booking fee) The principles of ballet prano Elizabeth Hynes as Donna Elvira. Ms Hynes, far from being set to pursue the Don like a frenzy on her first entrance, took in the entire Coliseum audience with a friendly smile as if to say, "Well, I'm here, and this is it." Whatever it was, it had little to do with the Miller staging which Karen Stone was reviving for the second time. Hynes's Elivira sang with impact if insufficient focus, but created a sense of being in another production altogether. All those ham gestures and that meaningful acting out of the rests in her first aria made an Elvira just too camp. And the scream when she met the stone guest at the end was positively polite and ladylike.

The main virtue in this ENO Giovanni is the emphasis on ensemble. Philip Prowse's pirouetting ruins seldom keep the energy of scenes tight, so it's up to the performers who mostly work at the front of the stage. Words are clear: "The highest common factor is the girl who's still intacta Leporello's line gets a good laugh, and the Holdens translation is a hardworking attempt to modernise the language without committing too many solecisms. However, period sexy jokes like the Don's "I would spend all for your satisfaction" to Donna Anna fall flat. With four strong principal performances, the production will probably get livelier as it works in.

Steven Page's idio- Lesley Garrett and Steven Page in Don Giovanni at the Coliseum photograph: douglas jeffery only white poppies for the future but also red poppies for the past." Also, she points out that right now she's 'In classic mode" playing the part of Mozart. Salieri is played by Lore Brunner, wife of the play's director and designer, Manfred Karge. who made the German translation of Pushkin's rarely-performed play for the runs in Vienna and Berlin. Brunner and Swinton made the painstakingly faithful translation for the Almeida performances. There is talk of the production going to Paris, but which language will be chosen for the tour has yet to be decided.

If Swinton is in classical Barbican Gerald Larner CBSORattle WHEN a composer like Heinz Holliger talks about making another composer's music "resonate through a dream filter" ou would expect a fairly radical transcription. So the first British performance of his Two Liszt Transcriptions, by Simon Rattle and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in the Barbican Hall, was an occasion for much speculation. In fact, although Holliger's orchestral versions of Nuages Gris and Unstern could scarcely be considered literal, there is no distortion. Nor, on the other hand, are there many sounds which Liszt would have imagined if he had thought of orchestrating them himself. The first of the two transcriptions, of the pre-impressionist Nuages Gris, is particularly successful.

It is all darkness and uncertainty bass flute, double-bass harmonics, muffled brass until a solo violin ascends the famous intimation of the whole-tone scale at the end. The second piece, however, seems to transcribe Unstern not so much into Holliger's "own way of speaking and thinking" as Messiaen's, at least in the clanging percussion sounds near the beginning. After that, Holliger makes surprisingly little of what could be very painful harmonies and clothes them in late-romantic colours, which suit the piece very well but without actually illuminating it. Both transcriptions were thoughtfully and sensitively performed and, whatever else, they made a fascinating start to a programme in no other way out of the ordinary. Not that Lynn Harrell offered an ordinary interpretation of Dvorak's Cello Concerto: it was beautifully played and, though without a hint of contrived sentiment, with the evident purpose of presenting the final nostalgic memory as the long-prepared climax of the work rather then the after-though it actually is.

Simon Rattle's interpretation of Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony was less convincing. It has become more assured since he conducted it in Birmingham last week and, indeed, it is developing into something of a CBSO showpiece, in spite of one or two discrepancies in ensemble and tuning in the Barbican performance. But, though he has got well inside the first three movements and some might say that is all that mat Giovanni, where the prevailing concern (I feel) was a sexy relishable Don. Miller's opera productions, for all his brainy reputation, have mostly aimed at brawn that is, entertainment and theatricality with few pretensions. He did not make a sharp-edged Don Giovanni.

But it's an appealing, accessible, rather homely version which the public can safely flock to, and which ENO can play another 18 times before the season ends in June. Things weren't helped by the appearance of American so ters his treatment of the problematic finale, economising on the tempo changes and avoiding the structural risks, is more for effect than for real. Coliseum Tom Sutcliffe Don Giovanni THERE are two catches, if you're producing the Mozart Da Ponte operas: familiarity and the fun quotient. Both take over in Jonathan Miller's Don HARVEY in the midst of this sea of nations who are sacrificing their lives for the sake of this truth. They may get sent to camps, to the firing line, but they still keep proclaiming what's right." Is the character of Petrushka, then, the spirit of Mikhail Gorbachev and his desires for reform and expansion? "No.

My Petrushka is definitely just an ordinary man, honest, intelligent, who longs only to see the state of his nation orderly and thus great." In Vinogradov's version, the rainbow richness of Alexander Benois' original fairground costumes have no place. Dancers are now dressed drabbly, each character in what Vinogradov calls "international ideological clothing" representing radio, TV, newspapers, political posters: the trappings of state ideology. Petrushka does not want to wear these To free himself, he takes them off. The other characters are shocked, but he calls on them to follow his example. For this he perishes, yet his death slowly awakens human conscience to take a stand; at the end of the ballet, everyone is seen shedding their own layers of ideological clothing.

Vinogradov's journey to Scotland began last summer when the Kirov was on tour in Dublin. Peter Kyle, chief executive of Scottish Ballet, approached him about staging a work in Glasgow. Vinogradov agreed. The partnership has worked so well that they intend to collaborate again soon. "Our dancers responded enthusiastically and warmly to Vinogradov," says Kyle.

"They have great respect for his creative abilities and for the quality he demands." Vinogradov plans to take Petrushka into the Kirov repertoire. How will Soviet audiences respond to something so close to their own situation? Vinogradov admits it will cause a stir, as most of his ballets have. "I don't create ballets just for entertainment," he says. "I want to make the public think. Who wants, will.

Who doesn't is angry, and that happens often. Those who don't understand today will understand later." The Oedipus RexIPetrushka double bill is at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow, tomorrow night. Margaret Willis ANEW public statement about the meaning of Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost has been made on a ballet stage in Glasgow. In a coup for British dance, the Scottish Ballet has drawn one of the world's most prominent directors, Oleg Vinogradov, from the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad to Glasgow's Theatre Royal. The result is a radically new treatment of the Michel Fokine ballet Petrushka, which Scottish Ballet premiered last night in a Stravinsky double bill with Scottish Opera's Oedipus Rex.

There are plans for a British tour in the autumn. The traditional Petrushka is a Punch-like puppet with an embryonic soul. He is usually presented as an object of pity and ridicule. A cruel Magician brings him to life with two other puppets, the Ballerina and the Moor, to perform for fairground crowds. He is miserable and dreams only of his unattainable love for the Ballerina.

She rejects him for the Moor, who kills him. Yet Petrushka has the last word, as his spirit appears, shrieking defiance at the Magician. To Vinogradov, he is a Petrushka of perestroika; a little man struggling for freedom from an oppressive environment. The scenario is now completely new. The Ballerina and the Moor are discarded, and the focus is on Petrushka.

It's as though Punch And Judy had suddenly become contemporary figures, mirroring British politics. Petrushka has leaped from fantasy to reality. Vinogradov says his hallet is "about truth and the human conscience the problem of unrest which is going on everywhere, not only in Russia but also in Latvia, Georgia, Armenia, Nagorny Karabakh, in fact in every area of the world too. Someone has to tell the people that they are being deceived; and that person has to call upon the people's conscience. That's what's going on today in our country "We must never allow fanatics like Stalin, Brezhnev, Hitler to happen again.

People should understand the truth, and it is the individuals like Petrushka GOLDSMITH AND MARK H. McCORMACK FOR CLASSICAL PRODUCTIONS Promt GEORGES BIZET'S IN THE ROUND AT EARLS COURT JUNE 5th to JUNE 11th STEVEN PIMLOTT STEFANOS LAZARIDIS DiucU" DAVTD HERSEY DaiS" Lighting CAST OF 500 INTERNATIONAL OPERA STARS NATIONAL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA CMuforJACQUES DELACOTE AMBROSIAN OPERA CHORUS PACO PENA FIESTA FLAMENCA COMPANY ALL SEATS TIERED AND CUSHIONED TICKETS 45 35 25 available with no booking fee from THE CARMEN HOTLINES 01-240 7200 01-379 6131 01-7418989 and from A. T. Mays and W. H.

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