Riot Ensemble at The Music Room, Liverpool
A fascinating group of musicians led by Aaron Holloway-Nahum (when required). Music for bass clarinet (Ausias Garrigos Morant) alongside fellow musicians on baritone saxophone, accordian, bass flute, cello and violin. Works by Lee Hyla, Luciano Berio, Rebecca Saunders, Marc Mellits, Isabel Mundry and Bernhard Gander. The Saunders piece Flesh involved the solo accordianist shouting random extracts from Homer's Odessey while playing dramatically loud chords on the accordian. More accessible was the saxophone and clarinet frenetic syncopated duo session Black by Mellits. Good to see contemporary music continuing to get a hearing in Liverpool. ❤❤❤❤
Rinaldo, an opera by Handel performed by Glyndebourne Touring Opera, Empire Theatre, Liverpool
This is an astonishing production by Robert Carsen of an opera that suffers, like many 18th century operas, from a particularly silly plot, involving, in its original form, Saracens, Crusaders, mermaids, sorceresses, etc. All of this is transformed here into a 6th form history lesson come alive, in which the schoolboys play the part of the Crusaders, but remain cowardly and incompetent, associated schoolgirls play the part of the Sorceress's assistants and the teachers play the role of villains. As there is no chorus as such, many of the cast are actors and ham up their roles with great comic effect; notable are the mer-maidens tempting the hero into their makeshift sailing boat. And how often do you hear an exsquisitely sung aria performed by a schoolboy while fixing a puncture on his bike?
Despite all this ribaldry, the singing by the principals is superb, particularly that of countertenor Jake Arditti as Rinaldo and soprano Jacquelyn Stucker as Armida, both of whom engage with the required comic (over)acting to full effect. Whether the final battle scene (the Crusaders won, of course) was converted into a football match purely for Liverpool audiences is unclear, but it worked.
An amazing achievement to present a 3.5-hour Italian opera without a dull moment. ❤❤❤❤❤
Gwen, a film by William McGregor at Curzon Home Cinema
If you're looking for something to cheer you up on a Saturday night by the fire, this is not for you. The plot is relentlessly grim from beginning to end. It tells the story of an impoverished mother and two daughters (Gwen is the older, teenage, daughter) struggling to manage a farm on a bleak site in Wales in the 1850s. They have no support, the husband having been killed in a European war. Their farm is under siege by local landowners who want the land for more lucrative slate quarrying and they are prepared to adopt any means, including violent murder, to evict the faming community who get in their way. And of course these three women are particularly vulnerable, particularly as the mother is dying from an unspecified disorder (brain tumour?) that causes her to have seizures -- seen at the time as an indication of some evil influences. I won't give away the outcome but it's as bad as it could possibly be.
The Welsh Tourist Board is unlikely to be promoting the film as an incentive to visit the country, but it is an intersting attempt to portray the reality of rural povery at that time. ❤❤❤
Jeremy Huw Williams (baritone) and Paula Fan (piano) at University of Liverpool
The Welsh baritone has a reputation for his operatic roles and this shows in his performance where his expressive gestures would be visible from the seat in the upper circle. However, in the intimate setting of the Leggate Lecture Theatre this detracted somewhat from the otherwise fine singing. Their Schumann Dichterliebe was sound, although lacking in delicacy. But the highlight was a contemporary piece for baritone, piano and oboe by the American-based Welsh composer Hilary Tann Melangell Variations in which words and music are beautifully matched. And a nice set of Welsh folk songs set by Grace Williams ended the programme. ❤❤❤❤
The Good Liar, a film by Bill Condon at Light Cinema, New Brighton
Despite the positive ratings from the media, this was awful. The film is based on a well received 2015 novel by then unknown author Nicholas Searle. The plot is halfway between a not very exciting spy thriller and a not very funny British comedy. The storyline is complex: a double deception that starts to reveal itself fully about two thirds of the way through. Once that happens you start to think that the total implausability of the script up to that point is a result of this complexity but as the story develops you realise that there is no excuse; further elaboration only makes the story more absurd and no amount of retrograde explanation can excuse the completely ridiculous plot. You would think actors of the calibre of Helen Mirren and even Ian McKellern would be able to choose a better medium to show their considerable acting skills. A slight element of suspense at one point in the film allows me to grudgingly give it ❤.
Ensemble 10/10 at St. George's Hall Concert Room, Liverpool
First of the 10/10 series for 2019/20 with a great variety of pieces. Highlights: Robert Buckland playing Iris for Saxophone and ensemble by Tansy Davies; Dobrinka Tabakova's atmospheric Bell Tower in the Clouds; Steve Martland's amazingly rhythmically complex Tiger Dancing for Strings. All played to perfection under the direction of Clark Rundell. ❤❤❤❤❤
Sorry We Missed You, a film by Ken Loach at The Light Cinema, New Brighton
Another comment by Loach on British society, following his excellent I, Daniel Blake. This time the target is not welfare benefits but the gig economy that now affects 4.7 million British people. The cast is small and intimate as we see how a family struggles to survive in this working environment. Ricky is forced to take a job as a delivery driver on a spurious 'self-employed' basis and has to work punishing hours to earn a reasonable wage, while his wife Abby has a typical zero-hours contract as a home care assistant, paid only for the hours she is in contact with her clients (but not her travel between clients, which she has to pay for herself). The family has two bright and clever children but the teenage boy is disillusioned with education and is expressing this in rebellious behaviour.
The film describes how a family in this position -- 'just about managing' (the people that Teresa May lied would be at the heart of her party's policies in the 2017 election) -- can only cope as long as there are no unforeseen occurrences. In the case of Ricky and Abby, their son's behaviour at school, a criminal attack and the young daughter's ill-judged attempt to remedy the family's problems -- all plausible -- led to the family's very fragile existence descending into a state of collapse. No resolution to the family's problems is offered; in the current political climate, there is none. ❤❤❤❤❤
Judy, a film directed by Rupert Goold at Everyman Cinema, Reigate
Much is already written about Renee Zellweger's performance as Judy Garland and she is certainly persuasive as the character. The storyline is approximately true, portraying Garland in the period 6 months before her death (aged 47) in London where she appears for 5 weeks in cabaret in order to raise enough money to fight a legal battle for custody of her children in the US. She was seriously damaged by drink and drugs by that time and her performances were unstable, although apparently not quite as unpredictable as portrayed in the film. Obviously a good plot for a Hollywood-style movie and an opportunity to have celebrities play some of the other roles. So, as expected, improbable sub-plots were introduced to add additional sentimentality to the story -- in particular the gay couple (one of whom had, of course, been in prison before homosexuality reform two years earlier) who led the singing from the audience of Over the Rainbow when Judy broke down and was unable to continue. And you really have to suspend any sense of reality when she walks on to stage after refusing to rehearse her act and yet the band immediately plays the introduction to the song she starts to sing without having been told what it's going to be. Could have been a better film if it had not been trying so hard to get an Oscar. ❤❤
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic orchestral concert, Liverpool
A programme of largely Russian works conducted by Vasily Petrenko and including a splendid Shostakovitch Violin Concerto no. 1 with Sergej Krylov as soloist. And an amazing encore from the soloist: no less than the famous and technically extraordinarily demanding Paganini Caprice no. 24. Of equal note was Stravinsky's Symphony in 3 Movements (I don't think I've heard that live before), beautifully played. I love the section for the weird combination of trombone piano and harp. ❤❤❤❤❤
Simon Armitage at the Williamson Art Gallery
The Poet Laureate allegedly does not enjoy reading his own work and initially seemed reluctant to engage either with the audience or the other performers (Oxton's own Orange Zebra). This reluctance may have partly been induced by the lack of adequate audio facilities and unstable equipment, but it was more apparent than real and he quickly directed the occasion with a fine selection of sometimes moving, sometimes witty, often topical poems, all very expertly presented. Orange Zebra were up to scratch. ❤❤❤❤❤
Bait, a film by Mark Jenkins at Picturehouse at FACT, Liverpool
Shot on clockwork hand-held camera in black-and-white, the relatively short film presents a tale of the conflict between the struggling traditional fishermen of a Cornish village and the London second homeowners who appear at weekends. Tensions arise over parking and over the antisocial behaviour of the teenage visitors and their relationships with locals; these are the outward signs of the struggle to survive in a dying industry. The film has little dialogue and relies for its effectiveness on long shots of facial expressions (sometimes a few too many) and on the naturalness of the script. The storyline is deliberately and frustatingly obscure in places (was there a murder or not?) but as an experience it is a return to the simplicity of the 70s arthouse film -- an antidote to the current Hollywood Oscar-seeking star-studded movie. ❤❤❤❤
Mrs Lowry and Son, a film by Adrian Noble at the Light Cinema, New Brighton
The film is almost entirely set in a bedroom of the artist LS Lowry's house, where his mother is bedridden and is dependent on her son for her livelihood and survival. Their relationship has become, and in the few flashbacks portrayed seems always to have been, disastrous for the well-being of Lowry at both a personal and professional level. His desire to please his manipulative mother is such that he is prepared to destroy his own work to satisfy her. The film presents only a snapshot of this interaction; the viewer does not see any resolution but is informed at the end that Lowry's subsequent fame occurred only after his mother's death.
This should be a one-act chamber play, not a mainstream movie. The screenplay and script are inevitably limited by the minimal plot and very soon become repetitive and dull. So, while both of the only two significant characters (Timothy Spall and Vanessa Redgrave) act to the best of their significant ability, they fail to bring any life to the script. Maybe Mike Leigh, who directed Timothy Spall as JMW Turner in Mr Turner, could have made something more interesting of the plot but the Director, who is much better known for his theatre work, has not managed to make a credible film of it. Stayed to the end, but only just. ❤