Concert Review: Spiers and Boden and Chris T-T (QEH, 10/05/2012)

John Spiers and Jon Boden performed a highly entertaining set at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 10th May. Celebrating over ten years of live performance as a duo, the pair structured the interval-less concert as something of a whistlestop tour through the folk traditions of the British Isles, with songs and tunes drawn from everywhere from Essex to Ireland. The warmth and sympathy of their interplay – Boden on fiddle; Spiers on accordion - emerged at its strongest on the crowd-pleasing instrumental pieces, especially the inimitable “Sloe Gin Set,” while a thrilling “Captain Ward,” and a captivating, tender “The Birth of Robin Hood” were among the highlights in terms of the songs, Boden’s distinctive, keening vocal style giving the material customary drama and drive.

Still, as accomplished as the two Jo(h)ns were, the highlight of the evening, for me, turned out to be the support set by Chris T-T, who - taking a break from his usual persona as a self-described “sweary, shouty folk-singer” - performed a selection of A. A Milne’s poems arranged for guitar and piano. The premise may have made you fear the worst (I certainly did), but the performance proved totally disarming: funny, charming and touching by turns. One moment the persuasive Mr. T-T had the audience enthusiastically pretending to be elephants; the next we were weeping at an extraordinarily moving rendition of “Binker,” Milne’s paean to a child’s imaginary friend. I’m all for “sweary, shouty” folk-singers, but the talented Mr. T-T might consider keeping up his generation-spanning collaboration with Mr. Milne, since it yields such good results. He's also a fine Twitterer: @christt.

Spiers and Boden tour dates here; Chris T-T dates here.

Concert Review: Mike Greene Trio (Club Mandala, Łódź, 19/05/2012)

It was a pleasure, during my recent visit to Łódź for a conference, to also have the opportunity to see the Mike Greene Trio perform at Club Mandala on the penultimate night of their current tour. Comprising Greene on guitar and vocals, David Price on fetching aluminium double bass [see here] and Łukasz Wiśniewski on harmonica, the group delivered an assured and entertaining performance – tight and focused but with space for spontaneity - for the very eager crowd. The Trio’s approach to their classic blues and country material is traditional, in the main, but Greene’s appealing vocals, Price’s supple bass and Wiśniewski's superb, dynamic harmonica-playing added some fresh textures to even the most familiar songs. Highlights of the well-structured set included an innovatively-arranged “Smokestack Lightning” and an intense “Back Door Man,” as well as very pleasing takes on such staples as “Sixteen Tons,” “Poor Boy Blues,” “Hellhound on my Trail,” and “Nobody’s Fault But Mine.”

A warm and affable front-man, Greene kept the mood relaxed and intimate throughout the evening, while the enthusiasm of the crowd resulted in an impromptu extended coda to the proper set including “She Belongs to Me,” “Bright Lights Big City,” and Greene’s lovely original song “Souls in the Rain.” The Trio have further shows planned for Poland in September and October: keep an eye on Mr. Greene's Facebook page.  

Theatre Review: Steel Magnolias (Richmond Theatre, & touring)

Soap queens and theatre grande dames constitute the astutely-assembled cast of David Gilmore’s engaging revival of Steel Magnolias, Robert Harling’s 1987 talk-fest about the lives, loves and losses of six Louisiana women. Best known in its 1989 film adaptation directed by Herbert Ross, Harling’s play is a slight but affectionate and heartfelt affair. Written following the untimely death of the playwright’s sister, the piece unabashedly celebrates the humour, supportiveness and fortitude of a group of (mostly wealthy and all white) Southern women, whose mixture of strength and fragility provides the piece with its title.

Harling’s sharply-drawn crew of characters comprise the widowed Clairee Belcher (Cherie Lunghi) and her sparring partner, the batty curmudgeon Quiser Boudreaux (Cheryl Campbell); the new-to-town Annelle (Kacey Ainsworth); and mother and daughter M’Lynn and Shelby Eatenton (Isla Blair and Sadie Pickering), who gather in the beauty shop owned and run by Truvy Jones (Denise Welch) to gossip, confess and “crack wise.” The piece unfolds over several years, and the main thrust of the plot reveals around the diabetic Shelby’s determination to have a child against doctors’ advice and her mother’s wishes, the fallout from which decision motivates the drama’s inevitable tragic turn.

As with David Esbjornson’s West End production of Driving Miss Daisy last year, fans of Ross’s film may miss the additional scenes and characters that added texture and nuance to the movie, and find the play to be a little thin and static by comparison, the obviousness of the material accentuated. At the same time, the single salon setting - nicely designed here by Helen Goddard - brings a distilled, sharp focus to the piece, and the play seems more convincing, lively and inhabited than did Driving Miss Daisy, as well as a good deal less calculating in its effects than the obnoxious Calendar Girls, a production whose “demographic” this one would seem to target.

Gilmore’s direction can’t be called inspired - proceedings come to a dead halt during what feel like bewilderingly lengthy scene changes - but the actresses keep things as buoyant and as truthful as they can. Responsible for one of the least-heralded great stage performances of recent years as the MND-afflicted matriarch in The Company Man at the Orange Tree a few years ago, Isla Blair gives an understated, moving performance here as M’Lynn. Carefully communicating the character’s concern for her daughter as she takes her first steps into an independent life, Blair brings a wry humour and captivating stillness to the stage, making M’Lynn’s final outburst of anger and grief all the more affecting.

Cherie Lunghi does a witty, elegant job of work as Clairee, and Kacey Ainsworth is funny and touching as she charts Annelle’s shift from timid new recruit to voracious bible-thumper. Denise Welch, better known these days for her appearances in tabloids and on Loose Women than her acting roles, subverts expectations with a warm and endearing performance as Truvy, the role amply filled by Dolly Parton in the film. And an unrecognisable Cheryl Campbell does a full-on comic turn as a squawking, highly-strung Ouiser, moving from what feels like broad caricature into genuine eccentricity; at one priceless moment, she cackles with glee at her own reflection. As Shelby, Sadie Pickering struggles by comparison, hampered by a studied-sounding Southern drawl, but she manages a couple of affecting moments.

Ultimately, Gilmore’s production doesn’t match Ross’s film for emotional impact. But, attuned to the play’s combination of sharp humour and sentiment, it generates its laughs and tears on cue.

 
At Richmond until 19th May. Full tour dates and details here.  

Reviewed for The Public Reviews.

 
 

Film Review: Beloved (Les Bien-aimés) (Honoré, 2011)

Following his unforeseen foray into porn-ish experimenta with the intriguing oddity that was Homme au bain (2010), the prolific Christophe Honoré returns to more expected territory with Beloved (Les Bien-aimés) (2011), which was the closing night film of Cannes 2011 and gets its UK release on 11 May. More expected territory, perhaps, but hardly predictable. Contrasting with Homme au bain’s low-key approach, the new film is, in fact, Honoré’s largest-scaled, most ambitious work to date. Disappointingly for those anticipating a Toni Morrison adaptation, it’s a decades-spanning, city-hopping musical (not that the director wants the film labelled as such) that teams the director with his star muses Chiara Mastroianni, Louis Garrel and Ludivine Sagnier and also reunites him with the composer Alex Beaupain who wrote the score to Honoré’s first musical, the lovely Love Songs (2007). There’s a crucial new addition to Camp Christophe this time, though. And that’s Catherine Deneuve, who’s paired here with her real-life fille Mastroianni for a film that sometimes suggests Terms of Endearment (1983) shorn of sitcom and sentiment (and with songs!) as it chronicles and contrasts the amorous adventures of its mother/daughter protagonists over 40 years.

A foot fetishist’s wet dream, the film’s lively, skittish opening follows a young Parisian shop-girl, Madeleine (Sagnier, perky and peroxide blonde), in 1964, as she steals a pair of shoes from her workplace and slips them on on her way home. With an insouciance that’s a trademark of certain Honoré characters, Madeleine is happy enough to be mistaken for a hooker, which brings her into contact with a Czech doctor, Jaromil (Rasha Bukvic), whom she marries, has a child by and accompanies to Prague. But Jaromil’s philandering results in the end of the marriage, and Madeleine returns to Paris with their daughter, Vera. Jaromil remains a presence in the women’s lives, however, continuing a sexual relationship with Madeleine even into the latter’s remarriage. As Vera grows up (to be played by Mastroianni, as Denueve takes over from Sagnier as Madeleine), the movie’s scope broadens further, following Vera as she travels to London, where she meets and falls for a gay American drummer, Henderson (Paul Schneider), whose (apparent) inability to requite her affections is mirrored in the predicament of Vera’s ex, Clement (Louis Garrel), who’s still frustratedly in love with her.

By turns playful and ponderous, sexy and sad, exultant and reflective, Beloved zips through moods with extraordinary dexterity, making light work of its generous 138 minute running time. The central dialectic that the movie is based around - '60s free love contrasted with Age of AIDS uncertainties - sounds banal. But the complexity of Honoré’s approach means that the contrast doesn’t come off as glib, nor does the disparity between libertine mother and angsty commitment-phobe daughter feel too stressed. As his earlier work has shown, Honoré has a knack for writing edgy, funky, spontaneous scenes that seldom progress as one expects, and his sharp dialogue surprises, delights and unnerves in equal measure. Riffing on French film history in  a way that manages to delicately evoke rather than slavishly replicate, Honoré’s work retains a fresh, airy vibrancy. And no contemporary writer-director I know is better at presenting the kind of messy, unresolved relationships that both frustrate and sustain us.

Honoré's appetite for unpredictability extends to his use of the locations here, which scrupulously avoid touristy landmarks, whether in Paris, Prague or London. Some may take issue with the way in which socio-political events serve as a mere sketchy backdrop to the characters' emotional problems. And yet the film takes you by surprise even here, notably in the memorable way it catches the mood of post-9/11 Montreal, where the darkest, most painful section of the movie unfolds.

Indeed, like Honoré’s 2009 film, Making Plans for Lena (2009), Beloved develops a novelistic richness of texture as it progresses, and Beaupain’s songs - simply staged and adroitly employed at moments of crisis or decision for the characters - form part of that richness here. (The translation of the lyrics isn’t always so inspired, sadly.) Mixing buoyant pop and tender piano laments, the songs allow genuinely complicated emotions into them and underscore some of the movie’s most indelibly beautiful moments, from the wonderful transition scene that ushers Mastroianni and Denueve into the movie to Henderson and Vera’s shared expression of alienation and unbelonging on “Ici Londres.” And sequences that should by rights be the height of kitsch - Sagnier singing her romantic disillusionment as the tanks roll into Prague in ‘68, for example - win their way through to a surprising amount of emotion.

Honoré seems to have learnt something from his filming of the sex scenes in Homme au bain, too. His style here is more sensuous and tactile than ever, with the actors often filmed in swooningly intimate close-up. The cast withstand the scrutiny, thankfully. Mastroianni delivers a performance to match her star turn in Lena for bravery and emotional insight. In a cheeky move, Honoré keeps us waiting quite a while for Deneuve’s first appearance but our patience is rewarded by the witty, elegant and finally moving performance that she gives. The greatest revelation, perhaps, is Schneider, terrifically strong and touching as Henderson, but there’s also a super turn from Milos Forman as the older Jaromil, who's granted an amazing exit sequence that's haunted me in the several weeks since I saw the movie. A few characters do get short shrift, notably Michel Delpech as Madeleine’s second husband, and - a brilliant sequence set in London's Institut Français notwithstanding - Garrel’s role doesn’t quite take off either; he’s also saddled with the movie’s least distinguished song in “Reims.”

Beloved’s overall trajectory from light-hearted frivolity to chilly melancholia won’t suit viewers who like their movies to announce their identities early on, and its final developments may strike even those who don’t as unnecessarily harsh. Still, even when the film falters, it’s never less than engrossing, and its stylistic brio, emotional honesty and audacity in moving the movie musical into fresh, distinctive terrain won me over at pretty much every turn. Honoré’s last few films weren’t granted a UK cinema release; Deneuve’s presence has ensured that this one has been, so make it your mission to catch it where you can.

The soundtrack can be listened to here.

CD Review: In the Time of Gods (Dar Williams, 2012)

For an album that, in the words of its creator, boasts “an epic setting” and that draws upon Greek mythology in order to explore contemporary political, social and moral issues, Dar Williams’s In the Time of Gods strikes as a decidedly modest, low-key listening experience overall. No towering, large-scale American Doll Posse-esque opus, this (disappointing, perhaps, for those of us who were kind of hoping to see Dar don a selection of wigs and outfits for this venture). Rather, Williams offers a distilled (just 32 minutes) set of ten short songs that initially feels like one of her slightest releases to date.

Read the full review at PopMatters.

Theatre Review: Oedipussy (Lyric Hammersmith)

A whole heap of soul-satisfying silliness is offered at Oedipussy, the latest show by the celebrated comedy troupe Spymonkey. The group - comprising Brits Toby Park and Petra Massey, German Stephan Kreiss and Spaniard Aitor Basauri - have teamed up with members of another venerable theatre company for this particular venture, collaborating with Emma Rice and Carl Grose of Kneehigh to create a rather spectacular, scattershot spoof of Greek tragedy.

Read the full review at OneStopArts.

Film Review: The Kid With A Bike (Dardenne, 2011)

“Maybe that is the mirror of the art of cinema … To perceive … in the cinematic projection the Other that is yourself and that your daily life occults.” (Luc Dardenne)

There isn’t a great deal of violence in Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s latest Seraing-set exercise in empathy, The Kid With a Bike (2011). But what there is - a lunge with a knife; a second, surprise swing of a baseball bat - hurts like hell. The reason must be that the filmmakers’ celebrated style - nicely defined by Joseph Mai as “sensuous realism” - pulls the viewer into such intense intimacy with their characters that to see them do violence - or to see violence done to them - is incredibly painful. Art-house darlings they may be, but the Dardennes favour no arty distancing in their approach. Rather, theirs is a cinema of close contact and present-tense immediacy (a flashback in a Dardenne film is unthinkable), one based around the viewer’s response to the bodies in the frame. The episodes that I recall most in the brothers’ work are such intensely physical moments: the heroine’s tortuous journey with that gas canister at the end of Rosetta (1999); Bruno in The Child (2005) dropping to his knees and clinging to the legs of the woman who now despises him; Lorna in The Silence of Lorna (2008) bashing her head against a hospital wall as part of her steadfast route to a “better” life.

Indeed, the Dardennes have been famed for putting their characters through a school of hard knocks (often literally) and they’re at it again with The Kid With a Bike. The titular kid is 12-year-old Cyril (a remarkable debut performance by Thomas Doret). Carrot-topped, sad-eyed yet determined, he’s “in care” when we meet him: and his idée fixe is a reunion with his errant father Guy (Jérémie Renier) who’s dumped him there. Cyril has what many a Dardenne protagonist has possessed: namely, an always-on-the-move doggedness. One of his breaks for freedom leads him into contact with the kindly Samantha (Cécile de France), a hairdresser who agrees to take care of him at the weekends, and with whom he gradually forms a bond. But waiting in the wings is another father figure, Wes (Egon di Mateo), a young hoodlum eager to lure Cyril into a life of crime.

In a great review for The New Yorker (which I thank the marvellous Michal Oleszczyk for providing for me), Anthony Lane identifies some of The Kid With a Bike’s antecedents, from Oliver Twist to Bicycle Thieves and The 400 Blows. The Dickens connection seems especially apt: the opening chapters of David Copperfield, as described by Claire Tomalin in her recent Dickens biography, fit The Kid With a Bike precisely. “They show with a delicate intensity the pain of a child,” Tomalin writes, “[and] how someone who offers love to a neglected child becomes all important.”

That’s what the Dardennes show too: their movie conveys Cyril’s toughness and his vulnerability with incredible poignancy, albeit without recourse to Dickensian sentimentality, and his relationship with Samantha is beautifully portrayed. The redemptive impulse that has often been at the heart of the Dardennes' cinema - its tendency to edge  disenfranchised protagonists towards a moment of connection or recognition or atonement - is extended in The Kid With a Bike, a film that the brothers apparently toyed with calling “A Fairytale for Our Times.”

Still, the great gift of the Dardennes' cinema has always been its ability to make us care for characters who might be considered our daily “Others” and who very often inflict as much damage as they suffer. With character back-story elided we’re once again drawn into a fundamentally physical, present-tense relationship with the protagonists here, one in which their gestures and movements and sounds are invested with incredible emotional and psychological weight. It’s through these gestures, indeed, that we get to know them. Note Cyril's desperate clinging to Samantha in the scene in which they meet. Or the eagerness with which Cyril follows his father around in one sequence. Or Samantha’s whimpering cry as she makes a phone-call that she doesn’t want to make.

For some critics, it seems, the brothers’ tactics have become overly-familiar and formulaic. And yet such a stance doesn’t really account for the freshness and vibrancy of The Kid with a Bike as it plays out. For me, the film takes its place alongside Rosetta and The Child as one of the Dardennes’s finest works, its presentation of Cyril’s growth in awareness - his gradual realisation that he must accept affection where it is offered, rather than pursue it where it is denied - constituting as moving a trajectory as any in their cinema. The tears that you just might shed at the end - and I found myself racked with sobs as the credits rolled - are tears of sorrow and hope combined. They’re also tears of gratitude, for such a compassionate, tender and restorative movie.