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Elephant Steps – 4 Stars

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elephant

Elephant Steps

Arcola Theatre

Reviewed – 20th August 2018

★★★★

“Kennedy has created something quite spectacular. His directorial decisions are often as surreal as the source material.”

 

Grimeborn is the annual East London opera festival which coincides with the world-famous Glyndebourne Festival. Founded by Mehmet Ergen in 2007, the festival held at the Arcola Theatre is considered a dynamic alternative to the traditional ‘summer season’. And, try as you might, I’m pretty sure you can’t get more ‘alternative’ than “Elephant Steps”. Written fifty years ago by Grammy winning and Tony nominated composer Stanley Silverman and American avant garde pioneer Richard Foreman, this show still feels outlandishly experimental.

Aptly subtitled ‘A Fearful Radio Show’, it is like randomly turning the dial of an old transistor radio. An eclectic (aka ‘chaotic’) cruise through a mix of renaissance, ragtime and rock; picking up on its way scraps of madrigal, tribal and incidental; a pinch of electronica and a nod to the Beatles and Bernstein. Oh, and Stockhausen, Kirchner, John Cage and Frank Zappa and… you get the idea.

The plot is as strange as the music. I’m often sceptical about programme notes that try to shape an audience’s interpretation of the show, but in this case, director Patrick Kennedy’s advice is spot on: “don’t try to understand”. At just over an hour long, it is as futile to waste time working out what is going on as it is to attempt to interpret dreams. The trick is to enjoy the limitless possibilities. And with his top-notch cast of eight blending the beauty of opera with the grit of rock, supported by a ten-piece band playing twice that number of instruments; Kennedy has created something quite spectacular. His directorial decisions are often as surreal as the source material. But like the source material, there is no real theme throughout – musically and textually. Without a solid frame, it is all too easy to lose focus, and interest. The score shifts from harmony to discord in a beat; from the relative accessibility of the pop and rock numbers to the atonal dissonance of the more unusual songs. And in between is the whole gamut of modern music.

Perhaps there is too much variety. It is very much a lucky dip, but if you keep turning the radio dial you will undoubtedly come across a station that appeals to your taste. This is a show that is in equal parts genius yet maddening too. It requires a stretch of the imagination but stretches your patience. It is exhilarating and powerful, but underlying it is a whiff of ‘the emperor’s new clothes’ and we occasionally wonder if we are being taken for a ride. Perhaps the cacophony of thoughts it leaves you with is intentional. Whatever the answer, and I suspect there is none, it is a quite unmissable production. Especially as each performance in this all too short run at the Arcola is followed by the chance to meet the composer Stanley Silverman in person.

 

Reviewed by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Alessia Chinazzo 

 


Elephant Steps

Arcola Theatre until 22nd August

 

Related
Other Grimeborn shows reviewed
The Rape of Lucretia | ★★★★ | July 2018
Greek | ★★★★ | August 2018

 

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Greek – 4 Stars

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Greek

Greek

Arcola Theatre

Reviewed – 10th August 2018

★★★★

“the characters are pretty grotesque, but the cast still manage to earn our sympathy to a degree“

 

Mark-Anthony Turnage’s first opera, “Greek”, first performed in 1988, established his reputation as a unique composer, blending jazz and classical styles of music, shifting between modernism and tradition. Like Steven Berkoff, who wrote the libretto and on whose play of the same title this is based, he deliberately eschews mainstream aspirations. Consequently, this is not going to be to everyone’s taste, but the combination yields an intensely thrilling experience in this new production as part of the Grimeborn Opera Festival at the Arcola Theatre.

It is an incisive retelling of the Oedipus myth, relocating Sophocle’s play to North London in a Thatcherite Britain. Oedipus is now an angry young man, Eddy, who breaks away from his pernicious yet affectionate parents. He doesn’t know he’s adopted. We do. As we also know that the greasy-spoon café owner he kills in a brawl is his biological father. It is quite hard to swallow, especially the speed with which he shacks up with the dead man’s wife, aka his mother, as her husband is still lying bleeding on the ground.

The eighteen-piece orchestra pounds through the austere and often atonal score complementing the four singers’ performance which shares the same mix of lyricism and brutality. Sung in a cockney twang the narrative is clear, despite combining street talk with classical diction, and director Jonathan Moore’s uncomplicated staging amplifies the effect. Edmund Danon packs his rags-to-riches rise with coarse humour as he encounters love, wealth and finally his true identity. Eddy’s keening cry on discovering that his wife is his mother is chilling, if short lived. Tragedy is averted, in true Berkoff style: “Bollocks to all that” Eddy pronounces with rebellious bravado.

Richard Morrison, as the racist, working-class Dad manages to gain sympathy by being as much a victim as a symptom of the society he is trapped in: the “plague”, as it is referred to, of poverty blamed on Thatcher austerity. Philippa Boyle, as Mum, also multi-roles, infusing much needed comedy into the social commentary, while Laura Woods as the widow/wife lends her self-serving materialism a tenderness. In short, the characters are pretty grotesque, but the cast still manage to earn our sympathy to a degree.

The performances are consistently and superbly strong, but the overall effect is slightly tainted by Berkoff glaringly using the characters, especially Eddy, to use his own voice to speak against society. But although this occasionally detracts from the emotive performances, this is an enthralling, challenging production. A bit of an onslaught, admittedly, yet powerfully compelling

 

Reviewed by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Lidia Crisafulli

 


Greek

Arcola Theatre until 18th August

 

 

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