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| | | Serse review – new ensemble bring circus, and scissors, to Handel's Persian opera | | by Erica Jeal Jul 1, 2022 | | Opera Holland Park, London
Period instrument ensemble Figure’s semi-staging of an abridged version of Serse was full of good ideas and strong singing This was the first opera from the new period-instrument ensemble Figure, and it was billed as a semi-staging, a description that did no justice to Sam Rayner’s production. Who needed sets, when Rayner effectively had six pieces of human scenery to play with? And play is the word: these six actors and acrobats moved in often mischievous ways, constantly changing the space and the energy around the singers. One moment they were obsequious courtiers, then they were forming themselves into a horse on which King Xerxes went riding, then they climbed on each other’s shoulders to become the plane tree, the unlikely subject of the king’s glorious first aria. Later, out came a unicycle and a tightrope, and they were a private circus representing the desperation with which he was trying to impress poor Romilda. It was fantastically detailed stuff, intrinsic to the storytelling. This wasn’t a full performance of Serse: a lot had been cut, including the subplot involving the jilted Amastre, and while most Handel operas thrive on a degree of red pencil this felt a little drastic, adding glitches into the musical flow and presenting an even slighter story than the one Handel set, and one that needed its ending tweaked to couple Xerxes up with a different woman. And so the Xerxes of the impressively secure-sounding, mellow-toned US mezzo-soprano Cecelia Hall ended up not with the absent Amastre but with Anna Cavaliero’s sweet-voiced but scheming Atalanta. Meanwhile, Sarah Tynan and James Laing made stirring and at times touching work of the music for the “genuine” couple, Romilda and Arsamene. Continue reading... | | | | | Stranger Things season 4 finale review – so perfectly judged it could be the ending for the entire show | | by Jack Seale Jul 1, 2022 | | This crazily luxurious, firework-packed double-bill makes so many impeccable choices that it would be the ideal way to end the franchise. How will it follow it for season five?
Stranger Things season four was already bigger and better than anything the show had done before. It was clearly more expensively produced, with a larger cast and a surer sense of why all the monsters, heroes and hangers-on were there. The double-bill denouement – held back for a month by Netflix to allow hype to build – is more expansive still. It’s crazily, luxuriously sprawling, running to nearly four hours, and does everything fans could have expected plus several dollops more. But if it hasn’t quite overstretched itself yet, you do wonder where Stranger Things can possibly go from here. Where were we? In Hawkins, Indiana, in 1986, waiting for a gang of plucky teens to mount a final assault on Vecna, the demon who roams a dank dimension beneath the town. Psychic superheroine Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) has unlocked memories from a childhood spent in a secure facility for kids with strange powers, revealing that she opened up the interdimensional portal while confronting One, a murderous fellow inmate, thus turning him into the vengeful Vecna. A group of sympathetic adults, meanwhile, are stuck in a grimy Soviet Union prison, battling a creature left over from a previous season. Continue reading... | | | | | Access all areas: the creatives opening theatre up to disabled audiences | | by Caroline Butterwick Jul 1, 2022 | | An audio describer, a creative captioner and an access consultant explain how their work is becoming integral to the theatre industry “I think a lot of people view me as just a bit of an angry disabled audience member,” says Shona Louise. “And that’s definitely not the case at all – we have something of value to give.” Louise’s lived experience of being a disabled person is at the heart of her work as an access consultant. Continue reading... | | | | | |
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