Imagine you’re going to bring a musical set in a mystical, and misty, Scottish village, so far up in the Highlands that it might not even really exist on earth, to a gorgeous theatre immersed in a lush, tree-filled park.
What I’ve seen
How, then, will you design the set? Give it a naturalistic backdrop, maybe a rocky, heather-covered crag? Or a damp, deep-scented forest of Scots pines? Or how about making it look like a three-star chalet in an unfashionable part of the Lake District?
Brigadoon, running now at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre (the first production in London for about 35 years, possibly for Reasons), is one of the weirdest musicals I’ve ever seen. Scottish writer Rona Munroe’s new adaptation sticks fairly closely to Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s original preposterous romance inserted into a frankly very disquieting tale of the supernatural, with another far darker love story running alongside it, but simplifies some things and tweaks others.
It has immensely pretty music but as a romance it’s unsatisfying, leaving more questions than answers. As a parable of survivor’s guilt, which feels a bit like where Munroe is going with it, it makes more sense of its nonsense but doesn’t quite land.
In this version, two crashed American WWII fighter pilots, Tommy and Jeff (Louis Gaunt and Cavan Clarke), find themselves wandering, injured, through the Highlands, when they stumble upon Brigadoon, a village not marked on their map, where the charming, slightly oddly-dressed citizens are preparing for the wedding between Jean Maclaren and Charlie Dalrymple (adorable Jasmine Jules Andrews and Gilli Jones, who are totally convincing as giddy young lovers who absolutely cannot wait to be married to each other).
They are welcomed, given food and drink, and invited to stay for the wedding, and Tommy inevitably falls head over heels for Jean’s elder sister Fiona, played on the night I saw it by Georgina Onuorah (she shares the role with Danielle Fiamanya). Onuorah stole the show in the theatre’s last production, Shucked, in the secondary, more interesting female role of Lulu, and her immense charisma is a bit wasted here, though her fabulous singing voice still makes an impact, and you can see her star quality even though Fiona doesn’t have a lot to do but gather heather and fall implausibly in love.
But what does Charlie mean when he gives thanks that “the miracle” was postponed for his wedding? Why is Jean’s neighbour Harry so angry at everyone? And why is the village so endlessly shrouded in mist?
Well, it isn’t, which is one problem, since they keep going on about the mist (there’s even a song about it), and yet the village and its environs remain resolutely dry and clear (no dry ice? not even a puff?). The fact that the village is clinging to a hillside is indicated by making the cast tramp up and down a zigzag ramp in tasteful timber that is less craggy precipice and more Centre Parcs wheelchair access. And the prominent tree trunk lying on the stage has a very visible seam in it which is so glaring that once you’ve seen it you can’t stop looking at it. One of the actors actually covered it with his foot at one point, in what appeared to be an unconscious act of pain management.
Anyway, the music is, as I said, delightful. Almost Like Being in Love is probably the most famous number, and I loved Charlie’s song I’ll Go Home with Bonnie Jean, and Entrance of the Clans/Wedding Ceremony. My Mother’s Wedding Day, sung by lustful milkmaid Meg (Nic Myers, owning the tart part with vivacious aplomb), is very funny, as is her recounting of her colourful relationship history, The Love of My Life, though I’m not sure why Jeff is quite so frightened at the prospect of a roll in the heather with this delightful young woman.
The dancing is energetic, though sometimes the additional choreography could be dispensed with (in a love scene between Tommy and Fiona, the pack of purple-clad men prancing around them are irritatingly distracting). Still, in the heartbreaking funeral late on in the show, in which Chrissy Brooke, dancing as local girl Maggie Anderson, wordlessly expresses her anguish at the terrible loss of her love, it’s beautiful and genuinely moving. I’m really not sure about the ‘hunt the incel’ scene that precedes it, that was pretty alarming.
I’m glad I saw it. Not sure I ever need to see it again.
I saw a couple of great Proms this week. On Tuesday, the first couple of pieces in the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s programme led by Eva Ollikainen were, if I’m honest, a bit challenging – Intégrales by Edgard Varèse was 12 mins of noise, to my tired ears, and the UK premiere of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s avant-garde cello concerto, Before We Fall, was tough to get into, though it was played brilliantly by soloist Johannes Moser.
Fortunately they picked things up before the interval with the absolute banger that is Maurice Ravel’s Boléro – 13 minutes of tension that pings around the orchestra like an ever-springing elastic band and building up to a crashing finale that had the whole Royal Albert Hall whooping. The second half was Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, which is thrilling and never stays still.
On Saturday I had the joy of taking my Dad to see my faves, the Aurora Orchestra (the ones who do everything from memory) for the first time. They often do a bit of talking or dramatising to open up their pieces for people who aren’t so familiar with the music (me and Dad), and their explanation of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, demonstrating how, after he had been denounced by Stalin’s murderous regime for his (wildly popular) opera Lady Macbeth of Mtensk, he wrote something that could be interpreted as both the ultimate Soviet Symphony and a bitterly sardonic takedown of its tropes and arbitrary musical demands, was fascinating. The insertion of contemporary dance – Max Revell played the role of Stravinsky with lots of jerky movements and being thrown around by other cast members – was slightly awkward but in and of itself quite expressive.
The playing was, of course, superb, full of life and energy and passion. We loved it, and it turned out to be Dad’s first time in the Royal Albert Hall which was a treat.
Though I was cursing TFL by the time I got there (and again all the way home), I still went to Bethlem Museum of the Mind this week, in Beckenham (which is usually quite easy to get to) to review their new show, Between Sleeping and Waking: Hospital Dreams and Visions.
It’s a look at the various types of dreams that we all share, remarkably – being chased, falling, arriving late, floating through the air, sexual experiences. The museum is a fascinating little institution based in the handsome 1930s administration building of Bethlem Royal Hospital, which is a working psychiatric hospital, and has a collection of artworks, many of which have been made by former patients, including Charlotte Johnson-Wahl, George Harding, and the 19th-century artist/arsonist Jonathan Martin, who set fire to York Minster.
I reviewed the show in The Times, here, but it’s rather interesting, even if the works on display are sometimes only tenuously connected to dreams. I would combine visiting with a look at the main collection – the museum, which records the lives and experience and celebrates the achievements of people with mental health problems, often through art, is really great and is certainly worth a trip.
Also on
It’s quiet for new things in London this month (and this is quite short partly for that reason, and partly because it’s late and I’m in a flap) but there are a few bits and pieces to catch. The Cartier exhibition at the V&A is still on for ages, until November 16, but I’d hate you to forget about it, it’s well worth checking out if you like shiny things. Though the first room is fascinating, outlining the international influences that the Maison Cartier drew on in its earliest days and continues to take inspiration from, the whole thing gets progressively more dramatic. I loved it.
If you’re looking for something to entertain children (6+, probably up to young teenagers), the touring musical and dance production of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe coming to Sadler’s Wells from August 20 to September 7 is pretty magical, as it should be, with incredible puppets for the various weird creatures that Lucy and her siblings encounter through the wardrobe. I’d quite like to go myself, if I wasn’t panicking to get everything finished before I go on holiday at the end of the month.
Book now
Readers of a certain vintage will be intrigued to know that Charles Dance, Geraldine James, and Nicholas Farrell are reuniting for the first time since they appeared together in The Jewel in the Crown, for August Strindberg’s ‘tragicomedy’ Creditors, coming to the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond from September 6 to October 11.
It’s a very Richmond play, about marriage, manipulation and the destructive power of jealousy, AKA men being idiots and a woman being stuck in the middle of it (I mean she’s not perfect by any means, but really, there’s no need) and a very Richmond cast, and none the worse for that. Three very good actors in one of the Swedish playwright’s most powerful works feels like worth booking for.
Though they’re terrible at marketing it, it turns out Open House Festival is on again, from September 13-21. The full programme opens for bookings on August 20, and it’s really worth snapping up tickets to some of the most popular buildings now.
Highlights range from the Argentine Ambassador’s residence or the RIBA 2024 House of the Year Six Columns, to the London Film School in Covent Garden or a maisonette on the Golden Lane estate. You could get a sneak peek at the new Olympia development, a tour of English National Ballet’s award-winning east London space, or the artist Rana Begum’s incredible studio and home, tucked away in Stoke Newington.
Some of the most sought after (10 Downing Street, for example, or the BT Tower) are only available by public ballot, so absolutely get on that right away, they book up in a day or so usually.
I’m very much looking forward to Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World, coming up at the National Portrait Gallery and the first exhibition dedicated solely to his immense contribution to fashion and portrait photography.
Showcasing Beaton in his pomp, from the Jazz Age and the Bright Young Things, to the high fashion Fifties and the Oscar-winning success of My Fair Lady, for which he designed the fantastic costumes, it’ll include more than 200 items, including photographs, letters, portrait sketches, fashion illustration and costume, with sitters you could easily describe as icons of the 20th century – Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando; Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret; as well as Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and Salvador Dalí. It opens on October 9 and runs to January 11.
Further ahead
It’s just been announced that the Theatre Royal Bath’s production of David Hare’s new play Grace Pervades, starring Ralph Fiennes as the great Victorian actor and impresario Henry Irving, and Miranda Raison as the luminous actress Ellen Terry, Irving’s leading lady and, she admitted after his death, lover, is coming to the West End at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in April next year.
It’s classic TRH – exactly the sort of production that does well there, with a big name older male actor and period costume – but I haven’t seen Raison on stage for a long time, so that feels like a special treat. It goes on sale in mid-September, but you can sign up now for priority booking.
Also worth booking ahead for is Halloween at the Museum, on the night itself, among the skeletons and specimens of the Natural History Museum, which does sound pretty creepy. Adults only, it sold out last year, and you get to explore the Museum’s galleries and exhibitions after hours, as the sun sets and the skeletons cast their shadows beneath the ghostly figure of Hope the Whale.
There’s a live band and a silent disco, you can chat to the NHM’s scientists as they showcase their spooky specimens, and there’s some sort of new “immersive story element”, with vampiric characters emerging from the Museum’s crevices (which could go either way, let’s be honest), trails to follow and a vampire ball.
There’s also the option of an add-on of a Tank Room tour, what they call their “spirit collection”, ie weird things preserved in jars. One of them is an 8-metre-long giant squid named Archie. What’s not to like?
I love the sound of the Fantasia Orchestra. They’ve been going for years but I wasn’t really aware of them until recently – they’re an orchestra made up of some of the UK’s most promising young musicians, and they made their Proms debut last year.
Their new season has just been announced, and I’m particularly taken with the idea of their November 23 concert at Smith Square Hall near Millbank, a programme of birdsong in music from Vivaldi to Gershwin, the dynamic young composer Blasio Kavuma to anonymous traditional songs, with the appropriately named soprano Lucy Crowe. Gorgeous.
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