Skip to main content

Larmes de Couteau/Full Moon in March review – two supremely weird operas

Linbury theatre, London
Bohuslav Martinů’s 1928 work is a strip-lighted nightmare whirlwind, while Harbison’s is highly stylised post-tonal sitcom unfolding around a four-poster bed

In an evening where little was obvious, it was definitely a bad night for teddies. One had its head torn off as the violent accompaniment to a coloratura tour-de-force. Moments earlier, the backdrop had parted to reveal an entire wall of mutilated bears, clumsily taped back together. And, in one of the most disturbing moments of all, a human-scale teddy wandered on playing an accordion like a cameo in a horror film, before eventually removing its own oversized head to pick a fight with one of the singers.

Confused? I was, repeatedly, in these extraordinary performances of two supremely weird operas. The bears themselves were the work of directors Eleanor Burke and Harriet Taylor, who staged Bohuslav Martinů’s 1928 Larmes de Couteau and John Harbison’s 1977 Full Moon in March – the former as a kind of strip-lighted nightmare whirlwind of wedding cake, mannequins and that bear-accordionist; the latter as a differently nightmarish, highly stylised post-tonal sitcom unfolding around a four-poster bed.

Continue reading...

from The Guardian https://ift.tt/u3ig1QO

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

England booed off after failing against Iceland once more in Euros warm-up

It was a long way from being the triumphant Euro 2024 send-off for Gareth Southgate and his England players at a sold-out and increasingly fretful Wembley. Never mind the result because it was not the main thing, however much it stirred memories of you-know-when against Iceland. It was the performance that raised the difficult questions, the worst one for quite some time and at exactly the wrong time. The home fans, thousands of whom made for the exits before the end, were forced to watch the second half – from about minute 55 onwards – through the gaps between their fingers. And it had not been great before that. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/4ndfQL0
Post a Comment
Read more

Bodies of Men: the love story taking on toxic masculinity in a time of war

Nigel Featherstone’s new novel tackles traditional conservatism and patriarchy through an unconventional romance How can you be a man and be anti-war? This is the question that Sydney-born novelist Nigel Featherstone, who is a pacifist, considered while he took up a three-month writing residency in a military library. He set out to discover what happens to very different expressions of masculinity placed under military pressure. “Australia does have a very defined, toxic brand of masculinity,” says the bespectacled Featherstone, seated by the window at his local pub facing the railway station at Goulburn, north of Canberra, while men on stools at the nearby bar sink beers and televisions on the walls screen horse racing results. Continue reading... from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2N8piOc
Post a Comment
Read more

Coronavirus live news: California sees record daily cases as global infections top 15m

California Covid-19 cases pass New York’s after record day ; WHO emergencies chief says vaccinations unlikely before 2021; global cases pass 15m. Follow the latest updates US daily coronavirus deaths surpass 1,000 for first time since June California surpasses New York as state with most coronavirus cases after record day Nearly a quarter of people in Delhi have had coronavirus, study finds See all our coronavirus coverage 12.54am BST South Africa on Wednesday announced a record 24-hour increase of 572 coronavirus deaths, bringing its total number of fatalities to 5,940, AFP reports. The country is the worst-affected in Africa and among the top five in the world in terms of confirmed cases, with 394,948 infections reported to date. 12.33am BST Dr Deborah Birx, the chief medical officer on the White House’s coronavirus task force, has called the surge in infections across the United States, “a very different epidemic than we had in March and April”. Speaking on Fox news, Bir...
Post a Comment
Read more