SINCE 1999 A LIVE REVIEW SITE FOR OPERA, BALLET, CONCERTS, BROADCASTS, AND THEATRE
You have to be forty-one at least, to make an impression as the dotty old woman on screen. That was Margaret Rutherford’s age when she began her film career. She said in a BBC television interview that she was puzzled why so many people found her films comic. Solving crime is a serious business, she added. Coming from her lips, we find that comic too.
Hymns and Suchlike
Or Emblaze Vulnerable Across Your Chest
It’s astonishing how tunes of the past well up unsolicited in moments of quiet, such as the bad old songs of yesteryear or rumbustious hymn tunes. They invariably bring a smile on the face if not outright laughter. My own repertory is sometimes evoked from the Music Hall – thanks to my grandpa who used to sing these numbers under his breath continuously. School assembly hymns of course. Whoever sang Guide me O thou great Jehovah to the rousing tune of Cwm Rhondda will never forget it. No one gave much for the words, but John Hughes’s tune is indelibly memorised.
United Kingdom Bach, Schumann, Albéniz, Stravinsky: Beatrice Rana (piano). Wigmore Hall, London, 7.2.2020. (JB)
United Kingdom Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (from the Watermill Theatre and directed by Paul Hart): Wilton’s Music Hall, London, 29.1.2020. (JB)
United Kingdom Mozart: Christian Blackshaw (piano). Wigmore Hall, London, 27.1.2020. (JB)
United Kingdom The Strange Tale of Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel (created by Told by an idiot with Theatre Royal Plymouth, from an idea by Irene Cotton and written and directed by Paul Hunter): Wilton’s Music Hall, London, 15.1.2020. (JB)
United Kingdom Cinderella (pantomime written for the stage by Will Brenton and directed by George Wood): Phoenix Concert Hall, Fairfield Halls, Croydon, 14.12.2019. (JB)
United Kingdom Ravel, Chopin: Beatrice Rana (piano), Wigmore Hall, London, 1.12.2019. (JB)
