Tag Archives: Dominica Plummer

Rune

★★★

Round Chapel

ReviewsAlastair White, Ben Smith, Dominica Plummer, Gemma A. Williams, Jarno Leppanen, Joseph Havlat, Ka Wa Key, Max Gershon, Patricia Auchterlonie, Rune, Ryan Appiah-Sarpong, Shakeel Kimotho, Simone Ibbett-Brown, Siwan Rhys, Tête à Tête Opera Festival, Thomas Pagethespyinthestalls

RUNE

Round Chapel, Hackney

Reviewed – 17th August 2021

★★★

“like earlier work, delights in pushing boundaries”

RUNE, Alastair White’s latest “fashion opera”, has just premiered as part of the Tête à Tête’s 2021 feast of contemporary, experimental operas. And as we navigate this second year of socially distanced performances during the COVID pandemic, Tête à Tête have also ensured that this performance can be viewed at a later date. If you missed last night’s live performance at the Round Chapel in Hackney—you will have another opportunity to catch up with it online on September 17th.

Fans of White’s previous fashion operas ROBE and WEAR will welcome RUNE. It has the familiar hallmarks of atonal music; a metaphorically dense, lyrical libretto, together with performers dressed in extraordinary costumes that heighten the settings of otherworldliness and dissonance that White is known for. If there’s one problem with last night’s performance at the Round Chapel, it is that the singers, dancers and musicians were simply lost in the space. Even the three grand pianos on stage failed to tame it. And that’s a pity, because the space is quite remarkable, (a sensitively restored Victorian chapel with elegant ironwork arches) and the acoustics good. If the sixty minute performance of RUNE that audiences saw last night is the complete work, it might be better to use more intimate spaces in future.

RUNE is described as a story on a planet “where history is forbidden.” In the opening moments, we are introduced to Kes’Cha’Au “ a young girl who dares to tell her story.” The description suggests an intriguing tale full of references to sea journeys to other cultures, but a story that seems to exist apart from any history that audiences would recognize. Is White’s point is that to escape history, we have to live exclusively in the world of the imagination? At any rate, White’s libretto is part Scandinavian sea saga in style, and also reminiscent of modernist poets from the early twentieth century. The company has been thoughtful enough to provide a copy in the programme, and it’s a dense read.

White is clever at finding gifted collaborators to work with, and his singers and musicians in particular serve his work well in RUNE. Soprano Patricia Auchterlonie (Kes’Cha’Au) and mezzo soprano Simone Ibbett Brown as Khye-Rell show great musicality in their challenging roles, all the while encased from head to toe in visually arresting costumes. The day-glo enhanced creations of Ka Wa Key Chow and Jarno Leppanen, also known as the Ka Wa Key fashion house, are the artists who created the fashion element of RUNE, and their work is memorable both for the look and the construction. The pair favour bold colours and shapes contrasted with more earthy shades, and some of the fabrics that Ka Wa Key uses are particularly appropriate to RUNE’s world. These reflect an intimate knowledge of animal given materials such as mohair, and the human technologies (knitting) that shape them. The pianists, Ben Smith (also musical director), Siwan Rhys and Joseph Havlat are technically accomplished and pleasurable to watch, especially in the moments where their fingers leave the keyboards behind, and boldly pluck at the strings instead of striking them. The dancers, (aka The Waters) Ryan Appiah-Sarpong, Max Gershon, Shakeel Kimotho and Thomas Page, are elegant and eye catching in their Ka Wa Key Chow outfits. If you’ve never seen the drape and swirl of mohair knits in action—again, you’re in for a treat. Nevertheless, the staging and the choreography of RUNE are the weak spots of an otherwise intriguing evening. The movements of the dancers are lost not just in the vast space of the Round Chapel, but in the sight lines if you happen to be sitting at certain places in the gallery. The use of a small sculpture on stage (by Sid the Salmon), does not help with the feeling of alienation from the action. If anything, it just adds to the overload of stimuli that the socially distanced audience struggle to connect with.

If RUNE as a whole fails to connect in live performance, it is because each disparate part of the event commands the whole attention, whether it’s the singing, the playing, the dancing, and yes, the fashion. It’s a challenge to take in so much in one gestalt. Nevertheless, Alastair White’s work is all about discovering how to use familiar spaces in innovative ways. RUNE, like earlier work, delights in pushing boundaries. This newest piece intrigues while it baffles, and beckons as it sails to unimagined lands. Follow if you can.

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

RUNE

Catch up online via Tête à Tête until 15th October

Previously reviewed this year by Dominica:

Adventurous | ★★½ | Online | March 2021

Doctor Who Time Fracture | ★★★★ | Unit HQ | June 2021

In My Own Footsteps | ★★★★★ | Book Review | June 2021

L’Egisto | ★★★ | Cockpit Theatre | June 2021

Luck be a Lady | ★★★ | White Bear Theatre | June 2021

Overflow | ★★★★★ | Sadler’s Wells Theatre | May 2021

Public Domain | ★★★★ | Online | January 2021

Stags | ★★★★ | Network Theatre | May 2021

Starting Here, Starting Now | ★★★★★ | Waterloo East Theatre | July 2021

The Game Of Love And Chance | ★★★★ | Arcola Theatre | July 2021

The Ladybird Heard | ★★★★ | Palace Theatre | July 2021

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice | ★★★ | Online | February 2021

Tarantula | ★★★★ | Online | April 2021

Wild Card | ★★★★ | Sadler’s Wells Theatre | June 2021

Rune | ★★★★★ | Round Chapel | August 2021

Click here to see our most recent reviews

The Game of Love and Chance

★★★★

Arcola Theatre

ReviewsAlex Brenner, Ammar Duffus, Arcola Theatre, Beth Lilly, David Acton, Didi Hopkins, Dominica Plummer, Ellie Nunn, Geoff Hense, George Kemp, Jack Gamble, Louie Whitemore, Michael Lyle, Natasha Harrison, Pierre de Marivaux, Quentin Beroud, The Game of Love and Chance, Tom Attwoodthespyinthestalls

The Game of Love and Chance

Arcola Theatre

Reviewed – 19th July 2021

★★★★

“The Arcola Theatre continues its well deserved reputation for offering quality theatre with this show”

Pierre de Marivaux’s classic comedy The Game of Love and Chance has just opened in a sparkling revival at the Arcola Theatre in Hackney. The eighteenth century script is newly adapted by Quentin Beroud and Jack Gamble (who also directed) and brought up to date in a modern dress production. Staged outdoors (a blessing on a hot and sticky July night) there is a lot to enjoy in this show, and the energetic performances of the cast of six.

The plot of The Game of Love and Chance is simple enough. It’s a classic because of the way in which Marivaux sets it up, and then turns the screws by introducing complication after complication. Sylvia, a wealthy and aristocratic young woman, is expecting a visit from her betrothed, Dorante, whom she has never met. Sylvia begs her father for an opportunity to get to know him without his knowledge of who she really is. She wants to change places with her maid Lisette. She is a typical Enlightenment woman, more afraid of a man’s mind (or lack of it) than his heart. Her father Orgon readily agrees, having just received a letter from Dorante’s father proposing that Dorante woo Sylvia, also dressed in a servant’s disguise. Both fathers want to give their children the chance to fall in love without the distraction of wealth or family position. Of course it all gets hilariously convoluted before Dorante and Sylvia (and their servants Lisette and Harlequin) are happily, and appropriately, mated in their “game of love and chance.”

The Game of Love and Chance owes a lot to the Italian tradition of commedia dell’arte, and despite the modernized setting, adaptors Beroud and Gamble have remained true to that. There are multiple opportunities for lazzi, or comic routines, both on and off stage. The set, designed by Louie Whitemore, and tucked into a corner of the Arcola Outside, is the perfect space for all the comic business that must enacted before the lovers are finally united. “Marivaudage “ or the banter that Marivaux’s dramas are famous for, is also present, not only on stage, but also in the delicious back and forth that Lisette (played by Beth Lilly) engages in with the audience. The script keeps the audience laughing with a lively mix of rhymes (“humble crumble”), seemingly on the spot improvisation, and opportunities for sight gags. The actors are clearly enjoying themselves performing it, and spread that joy around the auditorium.

And it is the performances that really make this revival shine. Updating dramas from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries can always be problematic in that they seem just modern enough for us to understand intuitively, but then there is all that class warfare business and discomfort with the idea of arranged marriages to overcome, before we can truly relax and enjoy the situation. Beroud and Gamble’s modernization of The Game of Love and Chance is not immune from the dilemmas of translating the eighteenth century to the twenty-first. Some of the solutions do seem a bit trite. Fortunately for us, however, the cast of this adaptation of The Game of Love and Chance know just how to settle us down. The whole cast works well as an ensemble, but the couple who really hold the whole thing together are the boisterously funny Ellie Nunn as Sylvia and Ammar Duffus as her lover Dorante, or, as the hilariously and spontaneously named Catflap, in his servant disguise. (You have to be paying attention to the set to see how this comes about.) Nunn and Duffus play effortlessly off one another, but it’s Duffus’ intense sincerity that keeps the whole situation grounded when the comic complications threaten to get out of hand. Beth Lilly and Michael Lyle (as Harlequin) are the other pair of seemingly mismatched lovers, and manage their lazzi (and Marivaudage) with confidence and flair. David Acton, as Sylvia’s genial father Orgon, and George Kemp as her annoying brother Marius, complete the energetic team.

The Arcola Theatre continues its well deserved reputation for offering quality theatre with this show, and it’s always worth the journey to see what they are producing. The Game of Love and Chance could be seen as a bit of an outlier in their repertoire, but if you’ve never seen Marivaux’s work, and are curious, this is a decent introduction. Just remember to take cold water with you if it’s a hot night. Laughter is thirsty work.

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Alex Brenner

The Game of Love and Chance

Arcola Theatre until 7th August

Previously reviewed at this venue:

The Narcissist | ★★★ | Arcola Theatre | July 2021

Click here to see our most recent reviews