Sunday Telegraph from London, Greater London, England • 44

THE SUNDAY REVIEW Arts THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH SEPTEMBER 13 1998 10 Diva among the music-stands ALASTAIR MUm Theatre Irving Wardle Via Dolorosa Crave Phfcdre Music I an actor David Hare as himself in Via Dolorosa a record of experience packed with facts which mistrusts imagination Pen and pilgrim in a battleground of beliefs WHY should a vastly suc-c 1 titled 50-year-old playwright who could summon up any company he cared to name take the risk of exposing himself as an actor in a one-man show? David Hare answers the question in mind in the first line of Via Dolorosa (Royal Court): he says just want to see what like the last time I acted was when I was As it turns out he proves to be an eloquent and graceful performer apart from a habit of launching into emphatic gestures and then cutting them short But his real reason has nothing to do with personal curiosity or ambition It arises from his subject-matter: Israel Throughout the play the question keeps recurring: how dare anyone write a play about Israel? Why complicate an already labyrinthine theme with fictional complexities? Why dramatise when the average Israeli undergoes daily emotions would keep a Swede going for a Why fabulate when the Jewish tradition itself has been to study the work of the original fabulist the creator of the world? Art is superfluous like the paintings in the Holocaust museum it is facts that matter Testimony not fiction Hare visited the country for the first time last year and saw what one of his interlocutors calls the of hedonism austerity and madness His record of this experience is packed with facts but for all its mistrust of imagination it is a play in the sense that it features a protagonist and a quest And in Stephen production featuring a flying model of the holy city it is articulated just enough to dispel any lecture-hall associations point of departure is that of a writer from a land where faith is in decline visiting a land that is still a battleground of beliefs He is at once an innocent Isherwood-like observer am a and a pilgrim pursuing his own via dolorosa through the stations of Tel Aviv stage politics West Bank frontier mentality Palestinian dispossession before returning to the spiritual desert of Hampstead The effect is theatrical rather than journalistic because the characters are as A FESTIVAL should provide artistic experiences which come our way in the routine course of events Salzburg at present signally fails to do that whereas Edinburgh has under Brian McMaster regained its touch at any rate musically for on the drama side it seems there is less for the administrator to be complacent about concentration in its last week on Czech music represented principally by Smetana was as successful as it was instructive Chances to hear his operas Dalibor and are rare in Britain The former as I wrote last week was staged by Scottish Opera and will reappear in Glasgow next month Libuse was an Usher Hall concert performance a good idea when one considers its plot LibuSe was the mythical founder of Prague and mother of the Czech royal dynasty In the first act she arbitrates unsuccessfully in a dispute between brothers She then chooses a peasant as a husband and sends for him In Act 3 he arrives and helps to solve more disputes The opera ends with a selective and patriotic series of prophecies by Libuse Compared with this Dalibor is action-packed and to see Libuse staged must be a trial of patience Oddly it worked extremely well in concert performance One was even tempted to think it a better work than Dalibor but this was only because the performance was electric For all its faults Dalibor is better theatre and better music too although LibuSe is crammed full of glorious melodies enchantingly scored But the singers in Libuse were all from Prague This music is in their bones and they sang it as if they believed in every note and word as perhaps they do In the pit of the Festival Theatre was the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra playing as if granted Czech citizenship for the occasion and conducted with passion and finesse by Oliver von Only the Festival Chorus far too large for the work sounded less than idiomatic The role of Libuse was sung by Eva Urbanova already an international Tosca and Norma While her seven colleagues had scores and music-stands she spurned them and stood in the middle like a The Cunning Little Vixen another example of ideal collaboration between conductor and orchestra The last Hall morning concert at Edinburgh was a performance of Schwanengesang by the tenor Ian Bostridge marvellously accompanied by Julius Drake Bostridge has become to British tenors what Bryn Terfel is to baritones and the admiration for him could be felt in the excitement of the packed hall One fears for a young artist when such popularity is so quickly achieved but Bostridge can surely cope with it Already though some dissident voices are being raised about his dramatic style of Lieder-singing in which his physical gestures match the text He would not have pleased Neville Cardus who once rebuked Kathleen Fer-rier for glancing at her hand as she sang of the ring on her finger in Frauen-liebe und Leben But Cardus would surely have responded to wonderfully eloquent delivery of the texts and his identification with every nuance of phrasing as did I As one discerning listener remarked afterwards mannered have more of voice is sometimes compared with that of Peter Pears but it is much more beautiful and is growing in richness and range particularly in the lower register I cannot remember having been more moved by In der Feme than I was last Saturday morning when it was sung with such aching poignancy that it seemed almost too painful in expression for human ears Similarly in Die Stadt Yet the lighter style for Das Fischermadchen and Stdndchen was equally apposite Truly memorable May I draw attention to the Wigmore Hall recital on Sunday fortnight (Sep 27) by Roland Glassl German winner of last Lionel Tertis Viola Competition The viola largely owes its prominence as a solo instrument to Tertis who died in 1975 and six international workshops and competitions in his memory have been held since 1980 on the Isle of Man widow is a driving-force behind the competition Tertis would be disappointed that no Briton has yet won first prize but the existence is important and perhaps insufficiently recognised Michael Kennedy LibuSe Czech Philharmonic Ian Bostridge Briinnhilde completely lost in the music and singing it with commanding authority and a tone that remained pure even at its strongest As her husband Premysl the baritone Ivan Kusnjer also dominated his music not as excitingly as Urbanova but with considerable power I liked the tenor Stefan Margita as one of the feuding brothers and the soprano Helena Kaupova was another superb voice Patriotic themes from both operas recur in the cycle of six tone-poems Ma Vlast which was played magnificently in the Usher Hall by the Czech Philharmonic under Sir Charles Mackerras whose understanding and knowledge of Czech music has rightly earned him a special place in Czech esteem The music is in the bones and they sang it as if they believe in every word The sweetness of the strings mellowness of the brass and piquant timbre of the woodwind give this orchestra its unmistakeable sound Undoubtedly the first four tone-poems are the finest but it was a measure of the quality of this performance that the final two the blatantly jingoistic Tabor and Blantk instead of being an anti-climax became a thrilling and convincing peroration Because of Libuse I missed the first concert at which it played First Symphony (including the discarded Blumine movement) but courtesy of Radio 3 caught up with it from the Proms on Monday and am able to confirm the enthusiasm of colleagues for a highly charged and beautifully graded performance Mahler can with some justification be claimed as a Czech composer after all What Edinburgh did not hear was the suite from speeches combining aggression with resonant gutter-poetry which echo overlap and chime in Vicky musically disciplined production It runs to barely 45 minutes so forget the obscurities and surrender to a commanding talent IF YOU were asked to concoct a dose of infallible box-office poison the winning recipe until recently would have been a West End repertoire season of Racine in English The fact that the Almeida Theatre Company have just opened such a season at the Albery strikingly demonstrates the headway we have been making with French classical tragedy thanks largely to the work of outfits like Cheek by Jowl and the Almeida itself Their strategy has been to acknowledge the poetry as untranslatable and to concentrate instead on character and dramatic struc- ture This can work extremely well with the point-blank realism and nuanced delivery of studio performance But judging from Jonathan production of Phedre its success on larger stages is problematic The text by Ted Hughes is in the same unrhymed ruggedly muscular vein as his Ovid translations But in dialogue this yields a tone that is neither naturalistic nor poetic but merely elevated Minus the formality of French verse what is left is an emotional blueprint inviting actors to generate a line of feeling at the expense of a ferociously accelerated text actors are too good to resort to gabbling but what you receive from them is a highly charged outline of the play shorn of its mythological content The most we see of the gods are the statue of Venus and the storm-lashed windows of Maria set This could have had a dev- Peter Reed Peony Pavilion and the ear scarcely know what to focus on next His most significant step in helping us grasp this mythic story with its shades of Orpheus and Romeo and Juliet is to have the part of the girl Du Liniang played by three women a traditional Chinese opera singer actress a young actress and a Western-style opera-singer And it is here that concept falls short The young actress (Lauren Tom) portrays Du Liniang as a pouting why-is-this-happening-to-me babe familiar from American TV and not remotely sympathetic the soprano (Ying Huang) who dominates the second half sings Tan music beautifully but the music itself is not especially memorable important as the argument and because Hare brings them ferociously to life without passing judgment When he evokes a settler family rowing over some microscopic Biblical detail it is up to you to disentangle the farcical from the awesome What Hare adds as a performer as much as a writer is the ability to switch instantaneously between the tragic and the trivial He gives his prophetic figures Begin and Haider Abdel Shafi breath-stifling authority but at the next moment he breaks the spell and is dancing away from them This is not a simple matter of manufacturing anti-climaxes Rather it arises directly from this discovery of Israel as a mosaic of mutually exclusive certainties As Hare moves between them he finds down-to-earth comedy as well as grand-scale corruption and nobility The sheer energy of the debates also creates a sense of movement But the one phrase that re-echoes through them is question the way At which even the most voluble of his companions fall silent Via Dolorosa may have nothing new to tell Israel-watchers but for any spectator it confers flesh and blood existence on Jews and Arabs alike and makes their business our business Sarah Crave (Theatre Upstairs) a co-production of the Royal Court and Paines Plough is a one-man show for four voices Two men and two women sit on swivel chairs sometimes facing us sometimes facing each other and engage in apparent exchanges that are really cries of pain from the solitary confinement of the Self Varying the metaphor it is like walking through a hall of distorting mirrors where the same basic image becomes a focus for desire fear and disgust Aside from one tremendous love tirade (from the superb Alan Williams) the text consists mainly of one-line astating effect on Phedre herself of whom it is vital to know that she is simultaneously a child of the sun and of Minos judge of the Underworld Psychologically however this is fully explicit in Diana performance which agonisingly combines forbidden lust with pitiless self-condemnation I have seldom seen a performance that conveys such a sense of being physically torn apart Otherwise the only casting weakness is Toby wall-clutching Hippolytus who too often changes up into hysterical overdrive and gets stuck there A measure of the quality is the independent vitality of the two confidantes David Bradley and a magnificent Barbara Jefford Julian Theseus is definitive: a homecoming hero discovering with enraged despair that he is still lost in the labyrinth John Gross is away This leaves the traditional Chinese actress Hua Wenyi and she completely steals the show One turn of the head or arm gesture is so eloquent as to make all the paraphernalia on stage redundant And the traditional music that the two women sing while it may sometimes sound like the Clangers with added helium is strange and un Western and immensely expressive and reminds us that the world is a big place that foreign cultures can speak for themselves So what is the point of trying to jiff it up with this sort of cultural synthesis? The full version of Peony Pavilion is in 55 scenes and could take up to a week to perform Peter version lasts nearly four hours at the end of which my chrysanthemum seat in the stalls was beginning to feel decidedly lumpy But do see it for the marvellous Hua Wenyi she is spellbinding Just a babe in a video world AMING dynasty opera written in China in 1598 has been reinterpreted for the global village of the 1990s by the American director Peter Sellars and was unveiled at the Barbican Theatre last week as part of the series You might think that the story of Peony Pa vilion a young girl dies for love of a student she has only dreamed about and is brought back from the dead by his love for her is strong enough to stand on its own Death rebirth growth into consciousness are fundamental themes that have driven story-telling since story-telling began But Sellars has thrown it into the multi-media mincer banks of video screens modish perspex scenery a score from composer Tan Dun that ranges from 16th-century Chinese to fullblown rock musical the eye Broken battered and raw Dance SPECIAL Easy installation inside minutes years of savings to come! 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Yes it does work given a sample a 'road Perfect Home QNow after 12 months the immersion heater element is clean The torchlight inspection revealed no build-up on the indirect cylinder coif Home Building and Decorating Magazine I have been using a Scalewatcher in my house since January 1993 and i can confirm that does work in accordance with the cioim Roger Bisby Product Editor Professional Builder Magazine their heads They would have looked exceptionally robust even in opera As if to reinforce this impression of matriarchy the male dancers consisted of one boy who appeared to be in his teens and two for whom puberty must still surely be a distant horizon Since much of the appeal of flamenco is based on sexual attraction this element was in the nature of things much diminished The dance itself while skilled was more athletic than graceful forgetting that flamenco too has its noble style as well as energy and muscle A not very informative programme gave us a family tree for the dancers with one forebear appearing to have lived nearly three and a half centuries (which although gipsies are prone to exaggerate is surely pushing credibility a bit far!) but made up for that by trying to persuade us that one of the performers had apparently been dead for two years THE Lady Boys of Bangkok at the Theatre banished the whole idea of matriarchy unless imitation is the sincer-est form of flattery Here in what is essentially a cabaret performance Thai men dress up as women and look very seductive and believable in the process They dance a lot but nothing too strenuous and certainly nothing very inventive much of it perhaps reflecting Thai dance traditions and moving the arms rather more than the legs Happily there are comedians also in drag whose glorious sense of fun make it very clear that Thailand and ourselves share the same sense of humour The send-up of a Japanese geisha was a joy to behold It was equalled if not surpassed by a demented opera diva who alone was worth the ticket PERHAPS the words that best describes the immensely enjoyable Cool Heat Urban Beat at the Peacock Theatre are Three dancers representing modern tap competed against eight dancers who represent rap break-dancing and hip-hop Wildly percussive music was provided on stage by Daniel Moreno with an array of percussive instruments on one side and DJ Signify at the other an exponent of the difficult art of turntablism using a turntable as a musical instrument and he is clearly a virtuoso of the battered disc The performers seemed incredibly fit quite remarkably adept and much of what they did simply took the breath away by the sheer dazzling virtuosity of their physical skills A predominantly young audience gave them a deserved ovation and it was good to see youth enthusiasm and theatre dance all coming together so vociferously I could have done without the unduly sententious monologues that punctuated the dance from time to time Where these were intelligible they seemed to be claiming the forms of dance on show for some kind of black radical identity Ragtime jazz and hip-hop and the dance forms associated with them would not have happened without black musical culture but they would not have happened without European musical culture either It was the coming together of two different musical and dance cultures that sparked off something fresh Happily the dance and music rose above such pettiness and was so exciting the audience was prepared to forgive them everything There are obvious similarities between flamenco and American jazz Both emerged from an oppressed minority both are an affirmation of life in the face Nicholas Dromgoole Cool Heat Urban Beat Raices Flamencas The Lady Boys of Bangkok of poverty and privation There are obvious similarities too between tap and the drumming zapateado of the flamenco male percussive feet Generally for me flamenco can generate much the same kind of dance energy and enjoyment as Cool Heat Urban Beat undoubtedly did Sadly Raices Flamencas left me both irritated and dissatisfied To start with the lighting was to say the least eccentric I have never known a show where the lighting seemed to be doing its best to spoil rather than enhance the dance Much of the stage including the singers and guitarists seemed shrouded in darkness Indeed only when all the house lights came on somewhat unpredictably for the final item could we actually see what singers and guitarists looked like The dancers were not much better off Pools of light kept appearing where the dancers were not while they perforce performed in shadow For some reason a very long item was performed with a strong light shining directly at the audience Alas it was a good deal more dazzling than the dances One expects a certain amateurish air about gipsy flamenco performed by individualists unused to the disciplines of the theatre But large matronly women hogged much of the limelight their success seemingly having gone as much to their waistlines as to i i i 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