Good morning and welcome to Theatrewise.
Tony Awards season is over in New York and, for a wonder, this year all the right shows won.
Not nearly as much fun is that it’s election season on both sides of the Atlantic and elsewhere too.
I care about the future of both my two home countries. I can’t think offhand of a greater disaster for the United States than to re-elect Donald Trump, and, after the past 14 Tory years in the UK, I’m ready for a change. But, please, don’t think we’re hoodwinked by all this campaign flim-flam or the lies or the promises or the insults. Every grown-up knows the problems are intractable and we know that the solutions, if there are any, are not to be found in a party ‘manifesto’ or a ‘debate’.
I turn on the news for headlines in case something great or something awful has happened. Usually, nothing has. A much better bet is to luxuriate in the wonderful arts programmes which are everywhere if you know where to look.
For example, here on Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise this week there’s a delicious summer concert of French music from the beautiful Schonnbrunn Palace in Vienna with the Vienna Philharmonic and Elina Garanca.
A new play from the National Theatre has a brilliant cast in a most unusual production. The always surprising director Emma Rice has produced a fabulous show about Marc Chagall and his wife Bella. And no fewer than seven significant international choreographers have each made a new dance based on one of the Seven Deadly Sins.
And we bid goodbye to Francoise Hardy (and perhaps our youth) with one of her signature songs.
There was universal approval from all of you who got back to me about this new format for Ruth Leon’s Theatrewise where the Newsletter is directly below this introduction but, if you didn’t get a chance to weigh in with your opinion, do go ahead and let me know what you think.
There’ll be more arts online next week and we’ll be one week closer to the end of the general election campaigns, which can only be good news.
All good wishes,
Ruth.
THIS WEEK IN THE ARTS ONLINE - JUNE 17-24
The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk - Digital Theatre
Click here to rent
Perhaps you’ve seen them floating over a Russian village? Or perhaps you’ve seen her toppling forward, arms full of wildflowers, as he arches above her head and steals an airborne kiss.
Partners in life and on canvas, Marc and Bella Chagall are immortalised as the picture of romance. But whilst on canvas they flew, in life, they walked through some of the most devastating times in history.
Daniel Jamieson’s The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk traces this young couple as they navigate the Pogroms, the Russian Revolution, and each other.
Emma Rice’s sumptuous co-production for the Bristol Old Vic, Kneehigh and Wise Children is drawn in a theatrical language as fluid as Chagall’s paintings and woven throughout with music and dance inspired by Russian Jewish traditions.
Rent £7.99 for 48hrs
Summer Night Concert - Vienna Philharmonic
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This anticipated annual event in the gardens of Schönbrunn Palace draws up to 100,000 spectators to see the world-renowned Vienna Philharmonic. Every year, as the days grow longer, Austria gets ready for one of the classical calendar’s highlights: the Vienna Philharmonic’s Summer Night Concert. This event, inaugurated in 2004, brings the prestigious orchestra together with some of the world’s most illustrious soloists—in front of an audience that regularly numbers more than 100,000—in the gardens of Vienna’s world-famous Schönbrunn Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
In the 2023 edition, the Vienna Philharmonic welcomed Canadian maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Latvian mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča to an all-French evening of Romanticism and Impressionism.
The program includes highlights from Bizet's Carmen and the Summer Night debut of Lili Boulanger, whose moving D'un matin de printemps is performed in honor of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed 75 years ago—as well as arias and orchestral favorites by Berlioz, Gounod, Saint-Saëns, and Ravel, culminating in the irresistible Boléro.
You will need to subscribe to watch.
Till the Stars Come Down – National Theatre
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Everyone loves a wedding…
It’s Sylvia and Marek’s wedding and we are all invited.
Over the course of a hot summer’s day, a family gathers to welcome a newcomer into their midst. But as the vodka flows and dances are shared, passions boil over and the limits of love are tested.
What happens when the happiest day of your life opens the door to a new, frightening and uncertain future?
This is a passionate, heartbreaking and hilarious portrayal of a larger-than-life family struggling to come to terms with a changing world. English audiences will recognise this family – its ambiance, its context, its place in British society - instantly but it might be a stretch for an international audience.
Directed by Bijan Sheibani who directed A Taste of Honey last season, this Olivier-nominated play by former National Theatre writer-in-residence Beth Steel was nominated for two Olivier Awards – for Best Play and Best Actress.
The Seven Sins - Gautier Dance
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(Marquee.tv is currently offering 10 months for the price of 12 on its annual subscription of £89.99).
Explore the seven sins through dance - envy, greed, gluttony, anger, lust, sloth, and pride.
This ambitious project, put together by Eric Gauthier, brings together seven A-list choreographers of worldwide fame. Each of them transforms a mortal sin into a short work for Gauthier Dance// Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart.
The result: seven fiercely moving premieres from Aszure Barton, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Sharon Eyal, Marcos Morau, Sasha Waltz, and the two Gauthier Dance//Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart artists in residence: Marco Goecke and Hofesh Shechter.
Inevitably, the quality is uneven and some of the dances will appeal to you more than others but it is a brave and fascinating look at the work of some of the most significant contemporary choreographers when they are not limited in their choices.
Programme:
Greed - Sidi Larbi Cherkoui
Sloth - Aszure Barton
Pride - Marcos Morau
Gluttony - Marco Goecke
Lust - Hofesh Shechter
Wrath - Sasha Waltz
Envy - Sharon Eyal
Francoise Hardy- All Over The World
Click here to watch
I am sad today because Francoise Hardy died this week aged 80. Eighty! How could she have been 80 when, for me and countless others who remember the 1960s she is just 20 with soulful eyes and a fabulous fringe that I and all my friends (boys as well as girls) were trying, and failing, to copy?
She sang about loneliness and her search for love but we teenagers knew that nobody who looked and sounded like her could possibly be sad or lonely. She sang to me on my tiny transistor radio under the covers and I yearned to be beautiful and successful and French. Like Francoise Hardy.
“Others are sad tonight” is a line from the lyrics of this not-very-distinguished pop song from 1966, made important only because it was sung by Francoise Hardy, whose smoky, sultry voice beguiled the British into making her one of the major stars of the ‘60s. Here she is against an improbable background of London sights on the back of an open-top car, wearing what looks like pyjamas.
All it takes for my generation is a few notes of the introduction and nostalgia does the rest. We were young then and the sound of Francoise Hardy makes us young again for all of two minutes and 27 seconds. And how great is that?
There’ll be more arts online next week and we’ll be one week closer to the end of the general election campaigns, which can only be good news.
All good wishes,
Ruth.
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