Category Archives: 3*

‘Elon Musk: Lost in Space’ (Venue 53, until AUG 23rd)

Posted in *EdFestivals 2025, 3*, Rated: Nae Bad by

“The word ‘populist’ is today deployed with the same offhanded disdain as many (if not most) 18th and 19th-century scholars used when discussing ‘democracy’.”

Editorial Rating: 3 Stars (Nae Bad)

Alexander Hamilton (of musical fame) once (allegedly) wrote, “Your people, sir, is a great beast.” At the heart of the Great American Republic is a great experiment in democratic self-rule, untried anywhere else in the human story. For obvious reasons, those at the top, the cultural, economic, and social elites, have had one or six problems with the notion that everybody gets a say. The word ‘populist’ is today deployed with the same offhanded disdain as many (if not most) 18th and 19th-century scholars used when discussing ‘democracy’.

The people should collectively decide things. The things they decide should have broad, popular support. It’s amazing how many intelligent people down the years have struggled (and are struggling) to get their heads around these notions.

The first great (but was he good?) populist leader of a democracy was Cleon of 5th-century Athens. We know as much about him as we do thanks to the fierce criticism of him by the playwright Aristophanes. Arstophanes’ loathing of Cleon is a recurring theme in his comedies – in ‘The Acharnians’ (425 BC, written soon after Cleon sued Aristophanes for his satiric portrait in a previous work); in ‘The Knights’ (424 BC, in which Aristophanes acted the part of Cleon because no one else dared to); in ‘The Wasps’ (422 BC); and in ‘Peace’ (421 BC, written after Cleon was dead). 10 years later Athens’ democracy would be interrupted in the first of the several stallings that would lead to its final falling. 

Will David Morley’s satire of Donald Trump and Elon Musk have the same impact or legacy? Glass coffin / remains to be seen. At 70 minutes long, it fatally breaks one of the taboos of Edinburgh’s own August Lenaia by flabbily overrunning. Morley is perhaps best known as the writer of radio plays, and frankly, it is impossible to pretend that there is much of anything visual to see on stage in the course of his occasionally comic drama.

We enter to find ourselves aboard the ‘Heart of Gold’ – Morley co-produced ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy’ national tour, 2010-13 and spotting the Adamsages is one recommended way to pass the time. Celebrated voice actor Ben Whitehead (as Elon Musk) is jockishly playing a video game on a large screen while Sarah Lawrie (as his matriarchal robot pal who’s fun to be with) preps for the flight to Mars. As things go up and then come crashing down, there’s some ego jousting with Donald Trump in the White House, a slightly peculiar section with a woke AI Sir Patrick Moore, some not very illuminating interjections by Professor Brian Cox, and that’s about it. There is a really interesting bit with AI Arthur C. Clarke that never quite lassos the wormhole.

The scifi content of this show is so light it would struggle to stay put on the surface of Kepler-10c. It is unfair to compare and contrast relatively low-budget apples and multi-million dollar pears, but let’s do it anyway. This show is not Apple TV’s ‘For All Mankind’ not because of a lack of cashish, but because it’s so unabitious. This isn’t a deep-dive into the science of spaceflight or meditation on what becoming a multi-planetary species might mean for humanity’s humanity. Neither is it an especially strong piece of psycho-portraiture. Musk is written as a caricature of a caricature. It’s not biting satire of its subject, more sucking very hard on it, nibbling it in an unaffectionate kind of a way.

This is a show title and a poster all but guaranteed to get the bums of a very particular section of society into seats. If the aim was to satirise the audience, this show is a triumph. As a take-down of the powerful egos (mis)managing our chaotic present, it’s about as successful as Aristophanes, who could successfully heckle Cleon but never unshackle Athens from his sway.

There is a good play in there. What’s on stage right now is just too long and says too little. It panders like a bear eating bamboo all day. Come for two excellent performances. Stay for the air conditioning. Get your flight suits on and go see this if you have time and space.

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‘Dream Space’ (Venue 8, until AUG 24th)

Posted in *EdFestivals 2025, 3*, Rated: Outstanding, Theatre by

“Director Jin-young Son has lost nothing in translation. This is the show that a mummy babel fish would take her fry to.”

Editorial Rating: 3 Stars (Outstanding)

Three stories. A young wizard dreaming of greater powers. Two castaways dreaming of release. A young girl dreaming of swimming with whales and experiencing the world from their perspective. Three stories, each told with dynamic precision by a company of puppeteers who genuinely conjure a truly immersive experience… so long as you aren’t in the wrong seat.

It’s not often that I see the same show in the space of 24hrs in two such very different venues. The day before, I had seen the third half performed in the Ballroom at the Assembly Rooms as part of the Korean Season showcase. It’s fair to say that something of the nuance was lost in the grand unintimacy of John Henderson’s 342m² space. The Crate George Sq., by contrast, is too constricted. The performers are too far forward for punters in the far edge seats of the semi-circle to actually see what is happening. EdFringe tickets are not getting any cheaper, and with children’s tickets being discounted by just £1, producers and promoters urgently need to consider family value for money alongside artistic excellence – which this exquisite production has by the undeniable bucketload.

In three unrelated but totally relatable stories, director Jin-young Son has lost nothing in translation. This is the show that a mummy babel fish would take her fry to. There is a prop gag in the Castaways chapter which flies over the heads of the little ones like a standard size 5 leather indoor volleyball, but which definitely lands with us oldies of a certain vintage. Any show that starts with bubbles is going to be a winner. A show that can go on to be so very chuffing poignant that it has your (not especially) humble correspondent in floods of tears deserves to be lauded with every laurel. There are deep moral lessons in each of the stories, reflections on wants and needs, maturity and growth, loss and discovery.

I’m not going to lie, I was worried about Daughter 2.0 (7yrs)’s reaction. She’s not the best at sitting still in every circumstance, but Dream Space had her truly enchanted right up until the end. She likes logic, and the internal logic of the Dream Space vision had her attention hooked all the way through. The show is promoted to ages 5+, which, for British kids, is too big a stretch. In a better-fitting space, with wiggle room for those whose grip on concentration is prone to lapse, this show would be perfection itself. It might also be kinder to allow the kinder space to rest and draw breath between the intensity of each marvelously meticulous monograph. Shows for kids need to be designed in every detail for kids. The creative content was astounding, the framing… not so much.

Like Goldilocks, this production needs – this production deserves – a venue space that is neither too big nor too small but one that is just right with space and permission for young minds and little bodies to dip in and out, especially if it is being sold to the very young.

Come for an all-star team delivering touchdown after touchdown. Stay if you’re in a good seat. Get your Joseon-era gwanboks on and go see this!

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‘I’d Like a Job Please’ (Venue 45, until Aug 10)

Posted in 3*, EdFestivals 2024, Rated: Nae Bad by

“Satire so biting it’s like dipping your toes in a paddling pool of cartoon piranhas.”

Editorial Rating: 3 (Outstanding)

Is it me or is there a dearth of jobs suitable for the graduates we produce? Clearly, it’s not just me since there is a show on this EdFringe that hits the nail squarely on the head. Here is a script that skewers the contemporary employment market with a satire so biting it’s like dipping your toes in a paddling pool of cartoon piranhas.

Sarah is a recent graduate, living at home, looking for a job. There isn’t much out there as the void said to the encompassing empty space an hour or two before the big bang. ‘Vacuous’ that is the word which springs to mind about the work available at the fuzzy end of the employment lollipop. BUT! Joy of joys, there’s an opening in an office (or is it a cult) pushing crappy products. There are downsides like terrible pay, life-sucking hours, and the nagging certainty that all you are doing is enriching crappy people sitting at the top of a broken pyramid. It’s a job doing zero social good and much societal harm.

Sarah hasn’t got much ambition beyond amassing a scintilla of self-respect. She shares existence with a cast of well-dodgy characters including toxic macho-hustler podcasters, carbon-copy women sapping the joy out of life with their singsong voices, and colleagues with less personality than the inside of a wet cardboard box. The only bright spot is Sarah’s mum whose sunny disposition is either totally naive or a lesson to us all.

Serious Billy Productions was founded three years ago by a group of University of Warwick students. Following sold-out productions at Warwick they have teamed up with Oxford Revue Alumni to develop ‘I’d Like A Job Please’. It’s obvious from the getgo that there is some serious talent under the hood of this Caterham Roadsport which, like its road-going automotive counterpart, is light, fast and occasionally furious.

There are some real highlights including the bizarre company away day as well as Sarah’s posh-adjacent friend’s horrible relationship with her horrible mother. This young company does grotesqueness like Gilray although not always with his joie de vivre. Fine satire admits the truth while seeing the possibilities however dim and uncertain. This is a generation with every reason to be angry that the economy is not simply a mess, it’s a beached, very dead whale carcass riddled with self-important wormish bloviators left high and dry by the tides of analogue, digital, and now AI-enhanced rushing up and down a polluted foreshore.

This is why there’s every reason to be positive, especially if you’re a supermart, superbright Russell Group graduate with a collective flair for real-world fantasy. Knowing that the rat race is a con is the first step on the road to a happy life. This is a cast-heavy production with a surprising lack of off-stage production going on. Where is the website? Where is the front of house work before curtain up? Where are the nuts and bolts a well-scaffolded production cannot do without? What’s on stage shows so much promise, but this unstretched canvas needs a frame and a focus so as to stand out from another very crowded market. It will be interesting to read their #EdFringeTalk25 10 months from now.

I hope that Serious Billy Productions will be returning and reflecting after this short run. They are ones to watch and they have something to say. Get your off-the-peg Next Sale work coats on and go see this!

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‘Aaaand Now for Something Completely Improvised’ (Venue 17, Aug 9-11)

Posted in 3*, EdFestivals 2024, Rated: Nae Bad by

“This is a fun show by fun people for folks who aren’t minded to splash all their Fringe cash on dead parent, my house was bombed by moomins, what’s the point of existence? serious and sombre stuff.”

Editorial Rating: 3 Stars (Nae Bad)

We enter to find the troupe dishing out Opal Fruits, interacting with the audience, and getting the energy levels up. It’s a very welcoming space. You can feel the energy crackling. It’s obvious that the chaps on stage really enjoy working together and we’re all invited to share the bromance. An absent-minded grandparent is about to tell a story to his grandlings, but what story? Any suggestions?

What follows is an entirely unpredictable series of vignettes, sidebars, and recurring characters. When the chaps ask if anyone has ever heard of Sunderland Footballer Len Shackleton, not actually the brother of Earnest, it’s all I can do to stop my Geordie GetYourCoatsOn colleague, the one with a still unwritten play about Colin Veitch, from launching into his favourite before, during, and after dinner lecture – luckily he’s busy chewing on an Opal Fruit.

Over the course of the hour we’re in the sea. We’re on an island. We’re on a rollercoaster of madcappery and bonkersosity that provides much merriment. This is a fun show by fun people for folks who aren’t minded to splash all their Fringe cash on dead parent, my house was bombed by moomins, what’s the point of existence? serious and sombre stuff.

I have to admit I raised an eyebrow when I read the show’s listing at EdFringe.com – “Improv Legends” is a strong sell. It’s also an admission that the show is not new. So is it still fresh? Is it still quick-witted? Certainly, these Oxford Imps almuns have appeared (and are appearing) in some of the best-known improv shows at the festival including ‘Austentatious’ and ‘Adventures of the Improvised Sherlock Holmes’. Definitely, they are good at what they do. However, undeniably, there is a flatness and a whiff of complacency. Like an undergased, overpriced pint in a plastic glass from a popup bar there’s something there that’s missing. At several points, when the ball slips into dead air, I find myself wishing Len Shackleton would give the boys a talking-to in the dressing room about the importance of possession and positioning.

I would like to see this show getting back to basics and resting on a few fewer laurels. The best thing about improv is that it exists only in the moment, so the moment matters more than anything before or after. There’s plenty more Fringe in the sea lads, so stop treading water. This improv needs improving if the best days are still ahead.

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Beryl Cook: A Private View at Venue 33 until 25th AUG (not 12th or 19th)

Posted in 3*, Pleasance, Pleasance, Potterrow & Teviot, Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre by

“Well written and immaculately performed and produced”

Editorial Rating: 3 Stars (Nae Bad )

The name of the late Beryl Cook (1926-2008) will be familiar to many people of a certain age. Labelled as a “naive” artist by the British art establishment, she was very well known for her works depicting plump, extrovert ladies and gentlemen enjoying themselves in pubs, at picnics, or on hen nights and the like. Her instantly recognisable personal style was so popular that she made a fortune in reproduction rights from greetings cards. A shy and private woman who shunned publicity, Cook had no formal training in art and took up the brush in her thirties and was entirely self-taught.

Cook is played by the veteran TV, film, and theatre actress Kara Wilson, who also wrote the script. Wilson met members of Cook’s family whilst researching her subject to shed light on this intriguing and enigmatic figure. No mean artist herself, this is Wilson’s fifth “painter play” as a writer, and she skilfully portrays Cook creating one of her most famous works Ladies’ Night whilst siting at a table full of paint pots and brushes.

The show successfully previewed twice earlier this year at the King Alfred Phoenix Theatre in Hampstead. As Cook/Wilson paints, she regales us with amusing anecdotes arising from the artist’s personal world: for all her shyness, Cook enjoyed a drink or two in the pubs of Plymouth, amidst their often rowdy clientele of hen nights, male strippers, and the drunken, tattooed sailors of the Royal Navy. Such a play clearly appeals to a certain demographic and looking around me, I spotted a number of ladies and gents who might well have been escapees from one of Cook’s wryly observational works. Performed in the Attic auditorium at the Pleasance Courtyard added an air of authenticity to the show, creating as it did the ambience of an artist’s studio.

There is, perhaps, a PhD thesis waiting to be written by some postgraduate Theatre Studies student on the subject of One-hour One-woman Shows at the Edinburgh Fringe; nowadays surely a major genre all of its own in the Festival calendar? This show was a fine example: well-written and immaculately performed and produced. It differs from many in this category in that it features a painter, rather than the ever-popular 19th century lady novelist, or the contemporary angst-ridden sex confessional. However, it’s a rather sedentary production; albeit necessarily so, as its protagonist paints whilst we watch and listen to her talk. One hesitates to opt for some cheap shot about “watching paint dry”, but apart from the visual aspect of the developing canvas, there isn’t much to see here. Script-wise, it is more of a radio play than a theatrical drama.

That being said, its target audience lapped it up and shows such as this are an agreeable way to spend an hour on a weekday afternoon. The paintings created live by Wilson during each performance are all on sale, with contact details available upon leaving the auditorium at the end of the show.

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‘Ancient Coins of Forgotten Kingdoms’ (Venue 605, until AUG 27th)

Posted in *Written Interviews, 3*, EdFestivals 2023, Rated: Nae Bad by

“A masterclass in infotainment done right.”

Editorial Rating: 3 Stars (Nae Bad)

Hands up. I picked this one. Hammered coins are beautiful and children should be supported to see their artistry and know something of their history. Few everyday objects have such capacity to give one chronological vertigo. Time bends around them. Lost voices. Lost stories. Lost lives. To hold one is to form one link in a chain of transactions that might have bought a horse in a steppe-side community long ago, been plundered from a burning city, lost on the Spanish Main or been used to illustrate a parable about what does (and does not) belong to Caesar.

Mark Saltveit is a stand-up comedian (of which there are many) and prominent palindromist (of which there are fewer). He’s also a collector of ancient coins. In this cute little show, performed in the Fringiest of Fringe venues, his enthusiasm is enthralling and (I’m so glad to say) contagious. His description of how the design of the tetradrachm of Philip of Macedon – with which Alexander the Great’s father paid his Celtic mercenaries – morphed and adapted down the centuries is a masterclass in infotainment done right.

Less successful is his reference to Celtic FC as an “English” club, which he almost compounded into a spontaneous lynching, “but surely when they get good enough they can get promoted to the premier league?” Also, don’t forget your laptop charger.

Daughter 1.0 (8 years) wrote this in her notebook, the one with a tetradrachm on which the obverse horse has morphed into a unicorn on the cover: “I went to The Roman coins show. When I whent in I saw lots of chairs and a man talking. He talked about Roman coins and what they had on the front. Then he made a place for children to make play-doue coins. And a place to look and hold the coins. I like the bit where we got to hold the coins.”

Saltveit did exactly what he promised on the tin and I could not be more grateful. He has planted a seed which an over-produced public museum event would never have germinated. Like a bag of recently minted silver Gloucester half pennies carefully buried in the fens to appropriately age, this production needs a little TLC to be shown off to best effect. But this is the real deal. Authenticity guaranteed. In what other show can children handle authentic pirate’s treasure?

Come for the open window into eons passed. Stay for passion as performance art. Get your coats on and go see this!

 

‘Edgar Allan Poe: The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ (Venue 53, until AUG 26th)

Posted in 3*, EdFestivals 2023, Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre by

“…a slick performance in which his character exudes the gravitas required of a predecessor to Sherlock Holmes, often giving light relief with heavily-accented asides that veer towards the comic buffoonery of Inspector Clouseau.”

Editorial Rating: 3 Stars (Nae Bad)

Often described as the first modern detective story, Edgar Allan Poe’s 1841 classic overlaps with the horror genre as the mystery at its heart unfolds. This is a welcome stage adaptation of the tale that introduced the world to the French sleuth Auguste Dupin.

Actors Darren Haywood and James Nicholas present us with a straightforward two-hander in a black box setup with minimal scenery. Haywood as Dupin delivers a slick performance in which his character exudes the gravitas required of a predecessor to Sherlock Holmes, often giving light relief with heavily-accented asides that veer towards the comic buffoonery of Inspector Clouseau. For such a dark tale, there were often moments when the audience chuckled at episodes of quickfire banter onstage. One such particularly engaging passage portrayed a police officer interviewing a succession of witnesses to the eponymous murders. In a cross-channel double act of gallic repartee, Nicholas played the investigating gendarme, while the elastic-faced Haywood adopted a lively comic sequence of caricatures of low-life Parisians.

Nonetheless, I’m afraid I struggle to give this production and its cast the four-star review that parts of it deserve. Overall the play depended rather too heavily on narration and exposition, such as the reading aloud of an explanatory newspaper article. Stage adaptations of literary works can be very engrossing, but to avoid the feel of a radio play this show needs a little more physicality, business with props and costumes, and more imaginative use of the set, however basic it may be. Leaving the denouement to narration backed by sound effects rather emphasises the audio character of this production.

The performance I saw was the first of a month-long run, which I hope will give the cast the opportunity to work up a little more visual action into what is a potentially gripping drama.
That said, both cast members are appearing in other shows at the Fringe this year, including an adaptation of a Conan Doyle story featuring Dupin’s immortal literary successor: Sherlock Holmes, in The Speckled Band. Coming down at well under an hour, this show is suited to those who like their entertainment traditional and on the literary side. So get your coats on and go see this. Come for the classic detective tale that fired the starting gun for a whole genre. Stay for the gallic repartee. Leave to investigate clues in the Fringe brochure that will lead you to discover The Speckled Band!

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‘Simon Munnery: Trials and Tribulations’ (Bedfringe, 23 July 2022)

Posted in 3*, Bedfringe 2022 by

“Simon has a definite comical genius way of telling his stories.”

Editorial Rating: 3 Stars (Nae Bad)

Simon’s show at The Bedford Fringe was based on the turmoil of his life. For reasons that soon become clear, one of these stories, from his youth, was never going to be told until now, some twenty years later.

It all started on the last night of the Edinburgh Fringe. Simon had been tasked by his friend and fellow comic, Arthur Smith, to heckle him under the guise of being a German Tourist. Unfortunately, Simon got caught up a the situation which led to his arrest for assaulting a Police officer – although at the following court case he was found not guilty. Simon has a definite comical genius way of telling his stories. They were each cleverly portrayed to the audience giving us much laughter.

Another story followed on how a parking ticket machine in Leeds didn’t accept his money resulting in no payment being made and returning to his car to find a ticket had been issued. The years of refusing to pay the rising fine resulted in another court case. SPOILER ALERT: Another case he won. Simon also got mugged some three times up and these were further stories told in Simon’s own proficient way.

Simon certainly has a way with portraying his own true life stories and they was good to hear. The attention to detail made each an interesting listen. As an audience, you do laugh along the way. What this show lacks though is continuity. The flow between stories didn’t seem to work .There was parts of the show to which the audience didn’t seem to react. The format needs tiding up, but that’s why it’s a work in progress. We all have off days, and this seemed to be one for Simon.

I would give this show a rating of 3 out of 5 as seen. It was definitely Nae Bad. Being a Bedfringe event the ticket price was acceptable. It would be good to revisit this show once it’s been polished off.

 

This review was authored by Graeme Scott.

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‘The Bobby Kennedy Experience’ (Town and Gown, 7-8 April)

Posted in 3*, The Town and Gown, Theatre by

“…the biggest, boldest, and most successful choice – to revel unashamedly in the chaos and frantic pace of RFK’s final days.”

Editorial Rating: 3 Stars (Nae Bad)

The chroniclers of other people’s lives set out on their journeys to answer one question – who was so and so? Who was Robert F Kennedy, for example? There are several plausible answers. Politician. Younger brother. Junior partner. Unlikely folk hero. Trailblazer. True believer. Martyr.

In ‘The Bobby Kennedy Experience’ Russell Lucas (directed by Sarah-Louise Young) brings together (some of) these threads which made up the life of the most famous man not to be elected US President. The threads of Robert Kennedy’s life were violently cut short by an assassin in June 1968, a low watermark in that decade of high profile murder.

We enter to find the disorderly detritus of a campaign stop. The floor is scattered with red, white, and blue balloons. Quotations about the man himself -from luminaries including Bono, Carlin, and Obama – are projected onto the back wall. It’s been nine years since Russell Lucas played RFK in the National Geographic documentary, ‘JFK: Seven Days That Made a President.’ The look is there. The stump speaker in shirtsleeves. The slight figure struggling to fill big shoes. The occasional glimpse of a perfectly tailored US Naval Reservist echoing the pomp and circumstance which immediately followed the President’s death in Dallas.

This is still a very raw production, or rather preview of the production possibly to come. The big and little choices are still stark and unrefined. The slips into freeform dancing, for instance, do not work. RFK was in the sixties but he was arguably not of the sixties as remembered by the people who, ip so facto, could not have been there. It detracts from the biggest, boldest, and most successful choice – to revel unashamedly in the chaos and frantic pace of RFK’s final days. To see the good the bad and the ugly from inside the subject’s head as a cacophony of noise and motion.

Sometimes the presentation meanders, other times it skips. It skips over RFK the hater of LBJ, over Robert Francis Kennedy the devout Roman Catholic, past Bobby Kennedy the one-time thorn in Jimmy Hoffa’s side. Lucas, as a paid-up Kennedy nerd, needs to slaughter a few more sacred cows and beef up the content to match his insight and commentary.

In these pages, when interviewing authors of biographies, I often ask “when” a hero or villain was to be found in their lifespan. When did the individual most resemble our lasting impression of them? No person lives entirely static. We experience life as a series of transitions from being one thing to being another. ‘The Bobby Kennedy Experience’ breaks the mould of one-person shows to be more Plutarchian than Suetonian. It is as much an inquiry into the internal mind as it is a portrait of the external man.

Get your coats on. Come for the honest homage to a great man. Stay for the drama. Come away with a sense of the possibilities.

Reviewer: Dan Lentell

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ASMF: BELL: USHER HALL: 19 JAN 20

Posted in 3*, Music, Usher Hall by

Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, with Joshua Bell, center, in a dual role on Wednesday at Avery Fisher Hall.

“Oh glorious 1713 Huberman Stradivarius in the hands of Joshua Bell”

Editorial Rating: 3 Stars Nae Bad

The Usher Hall have done a great feat of marketing with their Sunday Classics International Concert Series.  It utilises concert downtime, offers below premium rates to hirers and audiences alike, and thereby enables second tier orchestras from around the world to perform in a city with the musical cachet of Edinburgh.  And by second rank I am not being pejorative.  How often do you get to hear the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Philharmonia, or St Petersburg Symphony (not Philharmonic)?

Moreover, the repertoire offered is accessible, and as a consequence of all of the above the Hall is usually sold out except for the Gods, mostly by the elderly not especially musically literate or regular concert goers, and, by the sound of things, after a good lunch.  The queues from the Box Office tailed back into the cold January air. There was a real buzz.

On the question of sound of the non-musical variety I again criticise the audience for their indiscriminate coughing.  January and February concerts are of course the worst for this, and I have again asked the Usher Hall to put a note in the programme such as do the Royal Festival Hall advising patrons to cover their mouth with a hankie when coughing is inevitable as it reduces the sound by 90%.  Compared with the discipline of the audience last night in Berlin who remained silent throughout and for 20 seconds after the conclusion of the BPO’s Bruckner 4, this lot were an ill-behaved bunch that would have got chucked out of any self-respecting German or Austrian concert hall.

End of rant.

In the context of the above, to have perform on a Sunday afternoon the Academy of Saint Martin’s in the Fields, undoubtedly one of the finest chamber orchestras in the world with probably the longest pedigree, alongside top soloist and their Music Director for over eight years, Joshua Bell, the mould was truly broken and I felt we were in for a real treat.

Only so-so.  The playing throughout was technically perfect, but the works were not over demanding.  The tempi were fast, not uncommonly so, but particularly in the two Bach pieces there was no time for the emotion to come through. You have to work to get the emotion in Bach, but it is surely there.  Both the Violin Concerto in A Minor and Brandenburg Concerto No 3 showed a pleasing brilliance of tone – oh glorious 1713 Huberman Stradivarius in the hands of Joshua Bell, what a privilege to hear its singing, pure, transcendent tone – but both were textbook readings of these pleasant pieces you could have found on a budget price label.

It was the glorious Mahler arrangement of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden Quartet No 14 in D minor that made the case for the band.  Whether Schubert or Bach is spiritually deeper would keep musicologists arguing for days, but the combination of Schubert and Mahler was formidable.  From the opening bars it was immediately obvious that we had gone up several notches in terms of interpretation, even allowing for, once again, the tempo being slightly on the fast side.

Why Astor Piazzolla’s (1921-1992) Four Seasons of Buenos Aries was chosen as the final and part of the programme beats me, other than for its superficial entertainment value.  A selection of tango inspired pieces with some virtuoso violin playing but in the the-dansant style delighted the audience, but classical music it was not, nor meant to be.

The overall impression of the afternoon was of a top-class band entertaining us, but without unduly stretching our critical faculties.  As such it was hugely popular with the audience.

nae bad_blue

Star (blue)Star (blue)Star (blue)

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Reviewer: Charles Stokes (Seen 19 January 2020)

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