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metromagazine27/ 1/2006
IT would be fair to say that you know what you're getting when
you buy a ticket to a Lipservice performance.
Maggie Fox and Sue Ryding, aka Lipservice, have made a critically
acclaimed career out of corny jokes and visual pastiche of the
stiff upper lips that dominate classic British theatre.
Withering Looks, Very Little Women and Knit One, Murder One all
gently poke fun at those who deserve it most.
Sadly their latest offering fails to reach the heights of previous
efforts, let down badly by a weak script which demands that they
spend more time fiddling with the scenery than delivering what
jokes there are.
Nerdy Keith - Fox looking remarkably like a very young Eric
Morecombe - buys a new all-singing, all-dancing, all-consuming TV
set and pops a DVD of a 1950s horror movie in which the
protagonists have just bought a new TV and are watching a 1930s
horror movie - you get the idea.
Poltergeist, The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby and finally - when Keith
is swallowed by the TV and transferred finds himself in the film he
was watching - the Twilight Zone. With the switches from live
action to filmed segments it all made for a messy mish-mash,
especially after the interval.
There are some genuinely funny moments - a black and white TV spoof
of Watch with Mother and the surprise appearance of Chester the
guinea pig - but this is not one of the duo's finest offerings.
Horror for Wimps is on at the Library Theatre until February 4.
ONE thing which the publicity has somewhat underplayed becomes
obvious when you look at the "Shostakovich and his Heroes" concerts
as a whole: this is very much Vassily Sinaisky's show.
The BBC Philharmonic's chief guest conductor is in charge of five
of the concerts: the most anyone else gets is two, and Gianandrea
Noseda only one.
It puts a rightful spotlight on Sinaisky, now celebrating 10 years
in his post.
He is Russian and has a natural authority in his native repertoire
- but he has also given some of the most acute and memorable
performances of British works I can remember over the past
decade.
The Shostakovich series began, just over a week ago, with music by
Britten: the violin concerto, premiered by Barbirolli in New York
in 1940. Sinaisky brought great awareness of the tension and logic
in Britten's writing, and conveyed the sense of desperation and
anguish in it - a piece very much of its time. And the same was
true of the Shostakovich fourth.
It's a good place to start, if approaching the art by matching
it to the life, as this was the one the composer "withdrew", hiding
it away, for 25 years as it turned out, because of the Stalinist
onslaught on his work.
Mahlerian in its length and extravagance, it is also perhaps the
last expressionist symphony, full of exciting ideas and effects.
The huge finale was imaginatively treated by Sinaisky, bringing out
the gleam of humanity in the violins' treatment of the funeral
march theme, and moving effortlessly from grim to satiric in the
episodes which follow.
What did it all mean? We ask that now of Shostakovich, as the 19th
century used to of Beethoven. In his case, the attempt to find
words to "translate" the music failed: he meant what he said. The
same is true of those works where you feel sure Shostakovich is
sending something up, but at the same time being serious.
And the fifth symphony, which was conducted by Gianandrea Noseda,
is surely one of those. It clearly represents a change of musical
language: it's also the point at which Shostakovich completely
mastered the art of saying a vast amount by superficially simple
means.
Noseda and the Philharmonic's account was stunningly brilliant,
but I found it one-dimensional - the music of the fifth seen
through the lens of later history, so that every statement was an
exaggeration, every gesture mocking.
The scherzo theme was flat-footed and grotesque, its trio
hard-edged and ungraceful, and the slow movement unalloyed misery.
All intended, no doubt, but rather unsubtle.
The other major work on Friday was one the composer's last works,
the Suite On Verses Of Michelangelo Buonarroti. With a masterful
soloist in Ildar Abradazakov, this was powerful and moving, like a
voice from beyond the grave. Saturday's concert saw one of the few
living conductors who knew Shostakovich well, Stanislaw
Skrowaczewski himself, conducting the 11th symphony. It uses old
revolutionary songs to commemorate the events of January, 1905, and
if there's any symphony where "what does it mean?" can be answered,
this evocation of a spirit of hope dashed against the reality of
history is it.
The Hallé played it with some panache, despite wobbly moments here
and there (and particularly in the third movement), and the
spiritual authority of the veteran conductor was its justification
and crowning glory.
And the first three concerts of this great festival came
full-circle with Skrowaczewski's account of Britten's Sinfonia Da
Requiem - another Barbirolli premiere, back in 1941. It was played
with skill, affection and tenderness.
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