SATYAGRAHA at the London Coliseum - Sing Out Mahatma!

Amazingly it was 31 years ago that Andrew got me a free ticket to see the English National Opera production of Philip Glass' AKHNATEN at the London Coliseum.  Andrew had been singing it's praises so as it was free I thought I would give it a go... it was one of the most mesmerizing productions I had ever seen and I reeled from the theatre with my senses all a-whirl.  Sadly their 2016 revival I found annoying thanks to the distracting "Director Theatre" tropes of Phelim McDermott.

The good news is that the ENO have revived Glass' earlier installment in his "Portrait Trilogy" SATYAGRAHA.  The bad news is it's directed by Phelim McDermott.  He's not really got any better.

All I knew of the opera was it was based on the life of Mahatma Gandhi - but no, not the famous bit... SATYAGRAHA focuses on his years working as a lawyer in South Africa, from 1910 to 1913.  This saw the beginning of his idea of non-violent protest or 'Satyagraha' as he confronted the ruling powers in their racist persecution of the Indian community.

The libretto is convoluted and even frantic reading between the acts didn't help either - it doesn't help that the opera is sung in Sanskrit and that the sur-titles weren't on.  It later turned out that the phrases that appeared on the back wall were what was being sung.. who knew.  Three incidents are referenced: Gandhi setting up a communal farm named after his literary hero Tolstoy; Gandhi setting up the campaigning newspaper Indian Opinion; Gandhi leading a march of miners and their families to the Transvaal.

As with AKHNATEN, Glass' music is hypnotic and draws you into it's depths, swirling and eddying around until you are swept along again by a shift in the notes.  What annoyed me so much about McDermott's direction was the ball-aching movement he grafts on his performers.  All the singers m-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-v-e at a glacial pace - yes, Glass' music is minimal but hows about moving to the fast-moving beats within it occasionally?  Imagine how exciting that would be Mr McDermott?

The music certainly sounded great, conductor Karen Kamensek was also in the pit for AKHNATEN and again, under her baton, the orchestra made Glass' score glow.  However one feels that McDermott has concentrated all his efforts onto the visuals, especially Julian Crouch's design.  There are certainly no stand-out performances per se, although Toby Spence impressed in the last act where his singing is musically the only game in town.  Snaps too for the sumptuous lighting, originally by Paule Constable and recreated for this revival by Kevin Sleep.

Everything is thrown at the visuals: scenic effects, video projection, large-scale puppetry, fire, flying on wires... the whole mishpocha.  But here, the visuals tend to be stand-alone effects... they do not illuminate what one is hearing or understanding: the start of the third act is mostly taken up with the ensemble SLOWLY crossing from left to right, both upstage and downstage, pulling sellotape across the stage at various heights... this goes on forever and for the wont of an OH WOW stage image - shimmering strands marking the march of the miners - the mind is distracted from the music and what is being told.

There were arresting stage images: a huge living ball of newspapers seeming coming to life at the back of the stage for Gandhi to enter it and emerge in the persona the world was to grow to know;  waving waves of newsprint;  giant warriors fighting each other in the opening scene based on the Mahabharata; a giant fire pit surrounded by Gandhi's acolytes... but the last stage image really irked me... a figure is on a tall podium at the back of the stage obviously giving a loooong speech while Gandhi sings "(God) comes into being age after age" and slowly (everything is done slowly as I said) wanders to the back of the stage to rest his hand on the podium by way of benediction... yes it's supposed to be Martin Luther King.  All very hokey... you can tell it's written by an American!

Oh and one last thing... in these days of both non-traditionalist and strict ethnic casting - when did you last see a white Othello? - why were all the singers white?  In these production photos, the cast looks more like the local operatic society from MIDSOMER MURDERS, in fact Toby Spence looks more like John Crippin than Mahatma Gandhi.

If this was a West End show there would be woolly liberal protesters around the theatre!

AKHNATEN at English National Opera - Egyptian Glass Work...

29 years ago, Andrew - in another attempt to introduce me to opera - got me a standing ticket for Philip Glass' AKHNATEN which was receiving it's UK debut at the Coliseum by the English National Opera.  He had praised it to the skies and, well, there was nothing on the telly... and it *was* a free ticket!  I had no idea what I was going to see as the lights went down...

About three hours later I literally staggered out of the Coliseum with my mind spun-round by Glass' swirling, repetitive, hypnotic score which has looped and re-looped in my mind down the years.  This hit it's apogee when, visiting the Temple at Karnak in the 2000s, we found we were practically the only ones in the awesome Hypostyle Hall during the intense mid-day sun.  I parked myself at the foot of one of the massive pillars in the shade and, while Owen wandered about taking photos, I sat quite happily listening to the AKHNATEN finale on my mini-disc.  To this day I am sure I saw shadows dancing....

And now, 29 years after that premiere, English National Opera have staged a new production, well I had to go didn't I?

Sadly whereas the first production directed by Keith Warner did everything it could to frame the music, Phelim McDermott's production does all it can to stand in it's way.

Tom Pye's design was an immediate cause for concern - I could see he was probably going for the tiered design of a wall of hieroglyphics but sadly more often that not it looked like the rebel Pharaoh's story was being acted out on the scaffolding of a building site.  The palace which featured on the stage level did not so much suggest the palace of a King as a pop-up Hoxton bar with it's clear corrugated walls and strip-lighting.

Only once did we get a break from this set-up which was when the set split in two for Akhnaten's Hymn to his beloved Sun or Aten.  Sadly this reminded me more of a mash-up of WEST SIDE STORY's tenements splitting aside for the "Somewhere" dream ballet and revisiting Olafur Eliasson's Weather Project at Tate Modern - maybe they should have asked Eliasson to do it? !  I did like Bruno Poet's lighting however.

Again and again, one was distracted by the LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME design choices: the daughters of Nefertiti and Akhnaten resembled a Divine tribute act while, as Andrew has suggested, it was intriguing that the inspiration for Nefertiti's look was Marge Simpson.  Oh and Queen Tye, Akhnaten's supportive mother, was modeled on Queen Mary.  Go fuckin' figure..  Akhnaten death is still shrouded in mystery but I - no Egyptian scholar admittedly - don't believe he met his death in a volumous plastic tarpaulin.  I am happy to be pursuaded otherwise...

McDermott's biggest artistic choice was to include his company Improbable in the production... this meant that every scene involved most of the company juggling.  McDermott is happy to show in the programme an Egyptian tomb painting of a troupe of girls juggling to justify this but again it distratcted attention from the score as you waited in each act for the juggling to begin.  Don't get me wrong, sometimes it made for interesting viewing but if it went on for too long it just felt like being in the audience for BRITAIN'S GOT TALENT.  I have to report getting an attack of the church giggles when the acrobats came running out with large beach ball-type sphericals... I was so hoping they would break into "Sur Le Plage" from THE BOYFRIEND.

Not so much Improbable as Inevitable.

The lead performances were by Anthony Roth Costanzo as Akhnaten, the Pharoah who attempted to jolt Ancient Egypt into having a monotheistic religion and failed disasterously, Emma Carrington as Queen Nefertiti, Rebecca Bottone as Queen Tye and Zachary James as the narrator Scribe but to be honest, their performances seemed to take second place to being careful not to be whonged over the head by a flying candlestick or ball.

Luckily the evening was saved by the ENO chorus who sounded quite wonderful - and well done on the resolution of their pay dispute - and the orchestra under the baton of Karen Kamensek who made Philip Glass' monumental score the real star of the show.  Hypnotic threads of repetitive music swirled around the auditorium and swept me away again to a different headspace.

Despite the clunking production I am glad to have experienced AKHNATEN again - now where the HELL has my cd of it gone?

On the holiday we left two theatre slots free to see what we could pick up while there and owing to the lack of any BOOK OF MORMON tickets, we plumped instead for a Saturday matinee of THE ADDAMS FAMILY.

On the whole I should have opted for banging my head repeatedly with the hotel door. It would have been less painful. Yes Constant Reader, I come not to praise THE ADDAMS FAMILY but to bury it. And hopefully they will stay there.

I had an inkling of how things would pan out when looking around the audience - mostly families who looked like they were taking a break from shopping or sightseeing for a few hours by sitting in the dark. Large shopping bags had to be negotiated at every turn. I suspect they would have been happy to have the tabs raise on an empty stage and they wouldn't have minded.

I suspect the actors have a similar feeling of going through the motions. By the look of things THE ADDAMS FAMILY is the 'big' show you get tickets for when you can't get into the more popular 'big' shows and there was a real air of forced jollity among the cast. The reason I wanted to see the show was so I could see Bebe Neuwirth on stage for the first time. She gave us a nice star turn but the show sells her short - and she knows it. The best the creators can come up with for Moticia is that she is upset that Gomez might be thinking she is too old. Oh do come on.

The cast has recently changed so they should feel anything but tired. Don't get me wrong, there are actors giving the best performances they can - Brad Oscar as Fester, Jackie Hoffman as Granny, and now Nathan Lane has left the role of Gomez is played by Roger Rees - yes you read that right. They all give charming performances - but are fighting a losing battle against Marshall Brickman (he co-wrote ANNIE HALL you know) and Rick Elice's lame book and Andrew Lippa's uninspired score.The plot, such as it is, revolves around Wednesday falling in love and the lad's conformist parents coming to spend the night at the Addams mansion. There, you didn't see that coming eh? How about the biggest kick in the pants... the parents discover 'themselves' through exposure to the Addams' way of life! The show is yet another product of Oy Gevalt Productions (Hi Suzanne!)

The show was originally directed and designed by Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch (of SHOCKHEADED PETER fame) but was re-directed by Jerry Zaks after a troublesome out-of-town tryout. This messy birth has not helped the show. So... I also enjoyed Brad Oscar's song about his love for the moon performed in a Black Theatre of Prague style, Bebe Neuwirth and Roger Rees' second act tango was very well done... oh and the heavy swagged red curtains were luscious. And that's about it. Oh and I can mark off the Lunt-Fontanne theatre as visited.

It's the kind of show where you sit wondering when it will take off - as the ushers are sweeping the rows for sweet wrappers.

It's the kind of show that I suspect is put on for no other reason than their hadn't been an ADDAMS FAMILY musical before. It's the kind of show that I can imagine would turn non-theatre going people off the theatre - "What? You want to see a Broadway show?? We saw that ADDAMS FAMILY musical remember???"

Although isn't it odd... people will happily sit through any amount of shite films but they never say "What?? Go to the cinema? We saw that Danny Dyer film remember?" But one duff show and some people refuse to set foot in a theatre again.

It's the kind of show where these things occupy your mind as there is nothing else to engage the mind. Yes, a worse experience than SPIDER-MOOSE.