Opera Room, a company that is dedicated to writing and producing new operatic works whilst maintaining a classical flair, presents a new “classically modern” opera by Richard Knight and Norman Welch in the studio space of the Arcola Theatre.
Opera Room, a company that is dedicated to writing and producing new operatic works whilst maintaining a classical flair, presents a new “classically modern” opera by Richard Knight and Norman Welch in the studio space of the Arcola Theatre.
It is a wonderful thing to have the inadvertently selective seats of an Opera performance made available and potentially appealing to a general audience. The availability side of things has been tackled by the Arcola’s Grimeborn Festival, which for nine years has been opening its doors to a wide range of more experimental Opera shows for a refreshingly accessible price. The appealing side has to then be ingeniously approached by the varied selection of Opera makers using the Arcola’s studio spaces, the performers and their wits as vessels. With a performance of Richard Strauss’s Daphne (and a libretto written by Joseph Gregor), it is Jose Gandia as the director and conductor that puts on an enjoyable but in no way extraordinary performance that I have had the chance to see.
How to review a play that dictates reality so thoroughly on its own terms? Marsha: A girl Who Does Bad Things invites us into a claustrophobic world where logic does not obtain and reason has no purchase. In so doing, the operetta offers a palpable experience of mental disturbance and some rather oblique insights into the topic…It also offers, a headache to any reviewer trying to describe the experience!
For an onlooker to observe a piece of art and to recognise the artist at the blink of an eye is testament to that artists contribution to their field. The Persistance of Memory is notably, if not Salvador Dali‘s most famous work, a portrait depicting a number of melting clocks in a barren landscape renders a series of question marks. The man behind the portrait is celebrated for his contribution to the surrealist movement, however many may not be as aware about his wife and muse, Gala Dali.
The Grimeborn Festival at the Arcola Theatre is back for its ninth year. Offering reimagined classics, obscure masterpieces, and interesting new work, Grimeborn is one of the summer festival highlights in London, taking opera aficionados on a journey of discovery. One of the productions definitely worth seeing is Gariné by Dikran Tchouhadjian, the first opera composer of the Ottoman Empire and known during his lifetime as “the Armenian Verdi” and “the Oriental Offenbach”.
The Clown of Clown‘s is part of The Arcola‘s annual Grimeborn Festival, a series that showcases some of the more experimental offerings from the world of classical opera and ballet. Historically, the clown and the melancholic have always been close relations, particularly in literature. Whether Shakespeare’s fool, hounding Lear with intimations of mortality or Heinrich Böll’s clown, an alcoholic squandering his talents and pining after his ex wife, the jester has often been deployed as a powerful, ironic symbol for the unattainability of human happiness. Constella Ballet & Orchestra‘s production taps into this dark heritage, exploring the sinister side of the mythical fool, their experimental approach yields thrilling results.
Rose Lewenstein’s new play, premiering at the Arcola, is a well-achieved reflection on the importance of legacy, of our memories and stories that are passed through generations until one day “nobody can remember” them anymore.
It’s been two decades since Philip Ridley’s Ghost From A Perfect Place first debuted to a vastly divided critical reception at Hampstead theatre. Called “A masterpiece” in The Spectator and “Pornographic” in the Guardian, Ridley’s vicious and violently dark comedy depicting the gangs and families of a fictional East London caused a storm in the mid-nineties. The Arcola is now running the first revival of the play since its initial, fateful run, and is garnering a large and diverse audience (a much younger, more artfully bedraggled bunch than you might expect). On arrival, it’s difficult not to wonder if the ticket sales are due to the controversy surrounding play and author rather than any substance or quality. This is an undue worry. Here’s a list of reasons why you have to see this play.
That ideal we call ‘privacy’ appears to now, more than ever to be a thing of myth. If you’re not being filmed by CCTV cameras then you’re having to reply to a barrage of work related emails. Those quiet, unassuming moments are a luxury, a means to recuperate and prepare for the following days obstacles. We’re taught to build up a wall, to keep problems and concerns to ourselves, but what happens when everything gets too much, and you need somebody to talk to?