Author: The Reviews Hub - London

Writers: Yuvraj Bhatia, Irina Ivanova and William Shakespeare Director: Yuvraj Bhatia Last year, Reverie Theatre presented With You, a short one-act play about two strangers trapped together in a bunker after some sort of cataclysmic event. That same piece returns in Fragments, where it is joined by two other pieces of similar length. Promotional materials suggest that the triptych of plays exists in “interwoven worlds,” but while that could be true, there’s scant evidence in the pieces themselves. There are emotional connections between the pieces, though, so the combination of the three short pieces does at least feel coherent. With…

 Conductor: Robert Ames Creative Directors: Robert Ames and John Gosling Multitudes, the multi-arts festival powered by orchestral music,  is part of the Southbank Centre’s 75th celebrations and has brought together some of the world’s finest classical music ensembles – including six Resident Orchestras – to collaborate with other artists, spanning singers, dancers, poets and visual artists. Mark Ball, Artistic Director of Southbank Centre, seeks to create a fertile, acoustic space and multi-sensorial experience for new audiences. Unnatural Harmony: Sounds of Lee Alexander McQueen is brought to you by The London Contemporary Orchestra. An evening of style,  fashion, film, song, dance,…

Composers: Franz Liszt, Fiona Brice and others Conductor: Jérôme Kuhn Film Director: Mat Collishaw To frame “descent into hell” as a theme for this night at the South Bank Centre’s Multitudes festival could be seen as tempting fate.  This newly annual exercise in engaging new audiences for classical music through daring collaborations with other disciplines polarises audiences.  Purists decry it as dumbing down, while, beyond spectacle, newcomers risk becoming overwhelmed by layers of artistic intentions. Placing Liszt’s Dante Symphony as the fulcrum of the evening, composer Fiona Brice, visual artist Mat Collishaw and BBC Concert Orchestra conductor Jérôme Kuhn build…

Book, Music, Lyrics and Director: Chris Burgess Is murder entertaining?  The curious title of this new show at Upstairs at the Gatehouse bills it as a murder mystery musical. While this sounds like a much-needed mash-up of genres, it is, in fact, a marketing misstep that serves this strong show poorly. Entertaining Murder is not a murder mystery in the Agatha Christie sense, but a re-telling of the real-life case of what became known as ‘The Ilford Murders’.  This story, in particular, the role of Edith Thompson in the murder of her husband, gripped the general public in 1922. The…

Writer and Director: Emma Bailey Emma is as much of a mess as her bedroom when we first meet them. On the morning of their 23rd birthday, we witness them struggle to get out of bed, dress, undress and dress again in anticipation of the party they’ll be hosting, and hand out party hats to the first rows of the audience. As a queer, non-binary autistic performer, writer/director Emma Bailey is clearly playing a version of themselves. They are also aiming for extreme verisimilitude – much of their party prep involves no narration and just a series of mutterings that…

Writer: David Pearson Director: Alice Hamilton A gentle play about photography and feckless fathers, perhaps, isn’t what we need right now. Although finely acted by Gerard Horan and Charlie Beck, Firewing, named after a rare Siberian bird, is pretty low-stakes, and the discussions on the ethical role of the photographer are overly familiar. Horan is ageing nature photographer Tim, who now seems to spend most of his time in a bird hide overlooking a lake. Beck is 22-year-old Marcus who’s successfully applied to spend a weekend with Tim to learn some photography skills. From the many applications that Tim received,…

Director: Yi Tang Composer: Ding Mingyu Yi Tang brings The Face Within The Face to the Etcetera theatre, delivering a powerful afternoon of groundbreaking dance and innovation. Chinese mask-wearing originally came about from travellers trying to prevent wild animals from attacking them at night, so the story goes. The bright, unnatural faces would help intimidate potential predators. It developed through religious practices and folklore into a well-respected art form in Chinese theatre and opera. Face-changing, or bian lian, is an evolution of this, developed through Sichuan opera. It involves the rapid changing of the mask to show sudden emotional shifts.…

Composer: Alban Berg Conductor: Edward Gardner As part of Southbank Centre’s 75th year celebrations, it has curated the Multitudes Festival, a multi-arts festival centred around orchestral music. It’s a bold way of bringing artists from different art forms together and inviting new audiences to classical music. London Philharmonic Orchestra’s offering within the festival is a semi-staged performance of Alban Berg’s opera Wozzeck, combining orchestral music, operatic singing, choirs and video art. Premiering in 1925, 11 years after beginning the composition, Berg’s three-act opera is a scorching work. Musically, the piece is predominantly atonal. It is not an easy listen but…