Tag Archives: Tête à Tête Opera Festival

Rune

★★★

Round Chapel

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

 

www.tete-a-tete.org.uk

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

 

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Bread & Circuses

★★½

Online

Bread and Circuses

Bread and Circuses

Tête à Tête Opera Festival 2020 available online

Reviewed – 25th September 2020

★★½

 

“It risks spiraling out of control with so many disparate elements”

 

Bread and Circuses is part of a socially distanced live performance series at the Cockpit Theatre brought together by the Tête á Tête Opera Festival. But if you missed the September 20th performance in house, or the September 24th interactive broadcast online, don’t worry. A recording of the interactive broadcast is available, also online, for 28 days.

Bread and Circuses is many things. Perhaps too many. Described as “an opera in two acts and a wrestling show”, this creation (concept by Mark Johnson, with story by Charles Ogilvie, and music by Liam Wade) is much more than that simple description. It’s also an opera with a video game played in real time, a wannabe revenge drama, a history play, and a musical. The title Bread and Circuses is apt, however. It’s a reference to the Roman gladiatorial games, which were often staged as shallow entertainments to distract the masses. Johnson, Ogilvie and Wade’s Bread and Circuses takes its inspiration from a modern equivalent—World Wide Wrestling. In particular, the occasion during the 2007 Wrestlemania, when a certain Donald John Trump won a bet with WWW owner Vince McMahon. This is the moment, allegedly, where Trump first realized the power of the crowd’s roar of approval as he shaved McMahon’s head live on stage. But the origin story of Bread and Circuses is not the problem. The problem is trying to knit these elements together into a coherent performance piece.

A wrestling event starring Trump is an unusual origin story for any drama, let alone an opera. But we are definitely in “truth is stranger than fiction” territory these days, so “unusual” is somehow appropriate. It’s also difficult to tell what an opera in two acts might look like, when we can only sample three excerpts in thirty minutes. COVID-19 restrictions mean that there are a maximum of two performers on stage, with a pianist. There is a screen above the performers to add context. The story seems to be about wrestling rivalries on and off the stage. Also a murder that female wrestler Shawnee feels she has to avenge. It’s about values, strangely enough. But for unclear reasons, the creators of Bread and Circuses decided that a 90s style video game of wrestlers, complete with electronic sound effects, was the way to add context. Don’t get me wrong. It’s beautifully and authentically designed (congratulations to Dev Bye-a-Jee and his talented team at Ravensbourne University). The video game device does allow for the compression of characterization and plot points into some pithy subtitles flashing above the wrestlers. But in opera, pixels are a poor substitute for singers on stage.

It’s possible to see Bread and Circuses becoming a layered, even subtle, work of irony in its final version. One could also see it as a leveller in the culture wars struggle—a “low art” “high art” mashup. Or, if you prefer, low blows alongside high notes. But it’s asking a lot of an audience to get on board with the version presented at the Cockpit Theatre on September 20th 2020. And when the performers morph from what sounds suspiciously like musical theatre to opera (and soprano Camilla Kerslake shines as female wrestler Shawnee) it’s not unfair to wonder where we’re going to end up. I get that Bread and Circuses is a satire—and there was more than a bit in the excerpts, of John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera, musically speaking. But this work hasn’t yet found its centre. It risks spiraling out of control with so many disparate elements.

 

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Claire Shovelton

 

Tete a Tete


Bread and Circuses

Tête à Tête Opera Festival 2020 available online

Previously reviewed by Dominica:
Jason Kravits – Off The Top | ★★★★★ | Live At Zédel | January 2020
Us Two | ★★★ | The Space | January 2020
Crybabies: Danger Brigade | ★★★ | The Vaults | March 2020
Fireworks | ★★★ | The Vaults | March 2020
Luna | ★★ | The Vaults | March 2020
Our Man In Havana | ★★★★ | The Vaults | March 2020
Revisor | ★★★★★ | Sadler’s Wells Theatre | March 2020
Sky In The Pie | ★★★ | The Vaults | March 2020
The Revenger’s Tragedy (La Tragedia Del Vendicatore) | ★★★★★ | Barbican | March 2020
The Tempest | ★★★★ | Jermyn Street Theatre | March 2020

 

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