ROTHKO CHAPEL

St John’s Church, Waterloo

★★★★

“an excellent evening of chamber music in a beautiful setting”

St John’s Church at Waterloo, a nineteenth-century Greek Revival style building with white plaster walls and golden detailing, falls silent in expectation for start of the first piece. The three musicians that will play the first selection, Andrew Norman’s The Companion Guide to Rome, sit beneath the large image of the crucifixion, flanked by two murals painted in 1950 by Jewish German artist Hans Feibusch, depicting parables in views from Waterloo Bridge, which form the centrepiece of the beautiful and sonorous church space.

Suddenly, the string trio erupts into dissonant glissandos that interweave one another, creating a dense tapestry of sound that envelops the space. Over the thirty-minute duration of the first piece, which was a finalist of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for music, Norman responds to nine churches within Rome, channelling the art, architecture, tiling and spatial quality of these places of worship within the ancient city. The musicianship of violinist Tania Mazzetti, cellist Kristina Blaumane, and viola player Scott Dickinson, all members of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, is of the very highest standard. This is especially evidenced in the third movement, where Dickinson stands to take a solo lead, beginning in an almost-imperceptible pianissimo with a humming, scraping tone before building in a long, slow crescendo towards the climax of the movement. Likewise, Mazzetti’s solo, performed with her back to the audience, offers her a space to demonstrate her consummate ability.

l: Morton Feldman (photo by Rob Bogaerts) r: Andrew Morton (photo by Craig T Matthew)

The Companion Guide to Rome is a thrilling and experimental opener to a programme of works inspired by places of worship. Full of juxtapositions, it is both fizzing with life and replete with silent spaces for reflection and is chosen to complement Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel – written as a tribute to the artist to be performed at the eponymous chapel in Houston, Texas, which is decorated with fourteen large Mark Rothko canvases. The selection of Rothko Chapel also elaborates on the twentieth-century dialogue established by the altar pieces of St John’s between Jewish artists (both Rothko and Feldman were Jewish Americans) and Christian spaces of worship.

The pairing is fascinating and daring, following the arresting and often fast and chaotic composition by Norman, comes Feldman’s quieter and more contemplative work, scored for choir (performed by the New London Chamber Choir), viola (Scott Dickinson returns), percussion (Andrew Barclay, LPO) and celeste (Catherine Edwards, LPO). Contrasting with Norman’s self-expressed interest in narrative, Feldman responds to Rothko’s abstract expressionism: in a move that echoes the artist’s eschewing of the figurative, the choir vocalises, producing a wordless melody of mesmerising beauty. The interplay between the choir and the musicians is faultless, and the final two sections of the pieces are sublime, with soprano solo Lucy Humphris taking a leading role in the penultimate section before moving into a final led by Dickinson and Barclay, playing the vibraphone, who are then joined by the choir in an arresting denouement. Conductor Charlotte Corderoy is also fantastic. As she guides the ensemble through the piece, she brings in sections with a placing movement of the hand that invites an exactitude to which the choir respond with exquisite delicacy.

Both Rothko Chapel and A Companion Guide to Rome are beautiful, and thought-provoking pieces. In the case of the first, giving space for meditative thought within a rich polyphonic sound texture, and in the case of the second an alternately reflective and enlivening piece. They combine for an excellent evening of chamber music in a beautiful setting.

ROTHKO CHAPEL

St John’s Church, Waterloo

Reviewed on 22nd February 2025

by Rob Tomlinson

Previously reviewed by Rob:

HAUNTED SHADOWS: THE GOTHIC TALES OF EDITH NESBIT | ★★★ | January 2025

THE LONELY LONDONERS | ★★★★ | January 2025

NOBODADDY (TRÍD AN BPOLL GAN BUN) | ★★★★ | November 2024

SEVEN DAYS IN THE LIFE OF SIMON LABROSSE | ★★★½ | October 2024

JULIUS CAESAR | ★★★ | September 2024

THE SANDS OF TIME | ★★★½ | September 2024

NOOK | ★★½ | August 2024

DEPTFORD BABY | ★★★ | July 2024

CARMEN | ★★★★ | July 2024

THE BECKETT TRILOGY | ★★★★★ | June 2024

ROTHKO CHAPEL

★★★

“Claire Louise Amias delivers a committed central performance, commanding the space”

Great for cold and dark winter nights, Haunted Shadows brings three Victorian and early-twentieth-century gothic tales to life, thanks to stage adaptations by performer Claire Louise Amias and director Jonathan Rigby, supported by research associate Elliott Amias. More famous for The Railway Children, mentioned in a comedic passing reference, Edith Nesbit also penned a great many horror stories, three of which are presented here.

Leaning into the spookiness of the source material, the show is replete with eerie coloured lighting changes, designed by Steve Lowe, that mimic the descent of darkness or the breaking of dawn, or to evoke the distressed mental state of the narrators of the stories. The lighting occasionally has the feel of a torch held under the chin – characteristic of many a campfire ghost storytelling – and works extremely well in this context. In combination with the grisly sound effects (knives, demonic breathing), the work of sound designer Keri Chesser, these elements add to the over-the-top theatre of the performance, eliciting thrilled laughter the audience.

Claire Louise Amias delivers a committed central performance, commanding the space around the spare staging consisting of a chair with dolls and a trunk from which she takes the props – a shawl, a decorative ribbon – that serve to accessorise her austere black dress, the work of costume designer Anna Sorensen Sargent. Using little more that these props, she brings to life the narrators of three tales, as well as Edith Nesbit herself who is the storyteller of the framing narrative. While perhaps appearing a little under-rehearsed at times, she is nevertheless a compelling narrator and completely in-tune with the nature of the performance, complete with gasps and wide-eyed gazes of fright directed at the audience. Her delivery is strong, and her physical performance is also convincing. She embodies various characters as she relates with terror the events of the tales, recoiling at bodies and barely daring to look at apparitions.

The three tales themselves are interesting, as well as the stories from Edith’s youth which are presented as catalysing her interest in the macabre. To my mind the third story and final memory from childhood were the strongest, relying on the depravity committed by humans, rather than the malign supernatural forces that may or may not be the antagonists of other episodes. The final movement of the play also made some of the best use of the lighting design, with the flickering of a fire a particularly effective device to draw in the audience. I felt, however, that the payoff for the first tale could have been stronger, despite being aided the amusing use of caricatured evil of the ‘shadow sighs’.

Haunted Shadows is worth seeing for its Victorian atmosphere, played-for-comedy horror, and for its ability to return us to the ghost stories of childhood sleepovers.

ROTHKO CHAPEL

St John’s Church, Waterloo

★★★★

“an excellent evening of chamber music in a beautiful setting”

ROTHKO CHAPEL

St John’s Church, Waterloo

Reviewed on 22nd February 2025

by Rob Tomlinson

Previously reviewed by Rob:

ROTHKO CHAPEL

ROTHKO CHAPEL

ROTHKO CHAPEL

HAUNTED SHADOWS

White Bear Theatre

★★★

“Claire Louise Amias delivers a committed central performance, commanding the space”

HAUNTED SHADOWS

White Bear Theatre

Reviewed on 29th January 2025

by Rob Tomlinson

Previously reviewed at this venue:

HAUNTED SHADOWS

HAUNTED SHADOWS

HAUNTED SHADOWS