Author: The Reviews Hub - London

Composers: Lotta Wennäkoska and Jean Sibelius Conductor: Robin Ticciati Voices from Finland, performed by the LPO under the baton of Robin Ticciati, is an imaginatively curated programme. Fresh light is cast on Sibelius’s choral symphony, Kullervo, by a new work, Zelo, by young Finnish composer, Lotta Wennäkoska, specially commissioned by the LPO and receiving its world premiere at this performance. Sibelius’s symphonic work taps deeply into the great national epic of Finnish literature, Kalevala. Compiled in the nineteenth century from Finnish folklore and mythology, it celebrates the Finnish nation and its unique language. Kullervo is Sibelius’s setting of five episodes…

Writer: Brian Friel Director: Allan Hart Overall, this is a pretty pleasing, thought-provoking take on a play which has acquired near classic status in the 46 years since it premiered. Translations is set in Ireland in the 1830s where the colonising British are constructing an ordnance survey map, Anglicising (“standardising”) place names and setting up National Schools where attendance will be compulsory and everything will be taught in English. Friel is clearly linking the annexing of his country by the British with later “Troubles” which were rife in 1980 when the play was written. The setting is a “hedge school”…

Writer: David Hare Director: Daniel Raggett Some good things, some bad things in David Hare’s old play, celebrating its 50th anniversary. Unfortunately, the bad things are the moments when the actor-musicians throw rock’n’roll shapes, and the lead singer Maggie expounds on her existential angst, which is the play’s u.s.p. The good bits are band-mates being silly, a bass player in a ball gown, games involving spouting facts without a scintilla of interest, with bonus points for boredom. And Rebecca Lucy Taylor singing a song of her own composition with sketchy but lovely self-accompaniment on her acoustic guitar. It’s 1969, the…

Artistic Director: Tristen ZiJuin The show blurb for The Fever Kinetic Theatre company’s Bayangkan Bayang (Imagine a Shadow) suggests that around 25 million people worldwide are stateless, including up to 300,000 in Malaysia. Mostly undocumented, they face intense hurdles accessing education, ID cards, driving licences and even healthcare. Artistic Director Tristen ZiJuin’s interdisciplinary ensemble of cast and creatives, from seven nationalities, shines a light on one Malaysian family’s experience of statelessness through a co-operatively developed fusion of dance, animated projections, verse, music, and verbatim dialogue. The result is a raw and visually haunting piece that draws on and celebrates a…

Writer: Karis Kelly Director: Katie Posner A dismal birthday party and a dreadful family secret take hold in Karis Kelly’s darkly gripping focus on female and familial trauma. It is Granny Eileen’s (Julia Dearden) 90th birthday, and the acid-tongued nonagenarian is fiercely critical of all of those around her, especially daughter Gilly (Andrea Irvine), whose doting, caring ways appear to disguise something much darker. The relationship and the birthday celebrations are complicated with the arrival of Gilly’s daughter (Caoimhe Farren), quizzing her mother about her absent father, and Jenny’s daughter, Muireann (Muireann Ní Fhaogáin). Consumed starts as a typically awkward…

Book, Music and Lyrics: Carmel Owen  Director: Christian Durham It may seem like a good idea to make a musical about Claude Monet’s early life, but unfortunately, Charing Cross Theatre’s new production is a turgid affair. To reflect the shock to society of Monet’s work in the late 1800s, the songs should shock too. However, Carmel Owen’s show relies too much on insipid musical theatre songs, mainly sung as duets. In Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George, about artist Seurat, the late American composer matched the pointillist style with short notes and swift refrains, but there is no…

Writer: Azaelia Slade Director: Jess Gough Azaelia Slade’s deftly characterised one-woman dramedy This Is How I Got Arrested… After Smuggling Drugs Across The Border, But Never Actually Getting Caught With Any Drugs, promises to reveal how Sophie, the damaged, drug-addled protagonist, finds herself detained on holiday. We do not, at least on the night of this review, get the promised answer. This is because, at the opening, Sophie asks an audience member to set a strict 75-minute phone timer so she will not miss her flight home (she is seemingly being deported). Once the timer is up, the piece ends,…

Writer: Stoness Verda Director: Kerensa Diball As the show starts, Stoness Verda parades around a stage flooded in red light, wearing a see-through top and vinyl fetish gear and brandishing a whip. It’s a stereotypical portrayal of a dominatrix sex worker, but it doesn’t last for long. As the first of several audio interviews plays with subtitles projected onto the back of the stage, Verda changes into loose-fitting clothes. They talk about taking the bus back from a job and imagining how many other passengers have a tote bag full of sex toys, and about how they attend eviction resistance…