Bronchia

Catherine Tate and David Tennant are currently starring in Much Ado About Nothing at the Wyndham’s Theatre in London (until October). A cast recording of the in the ’80s-inspired production, including the couple of songs  Tennant and Tate sing, has been made available on iTunes. Well, Doctor Who fans will buy anything…

One of the songs has made it onto YouTube already. Erm… If you’re familiar with the play, you’ve probably not quite heard it like this before. Good ol’ Shakespeare with a dodgy sax solo.

Costiness: £7.99, Much Ado About Nothing – Original London Cast Recording (iTunes)

I took part in this short film about the Howard Assembly Room in Leeds, which is a really lovely venue to which I was proud to lend my support. It’s funny, I wore a beret because it was windy that day and my hair was everywhere, but in the video I look like an authentic artponce as a result.

So, my first full proper opera in the flesh, thanks to Opera North and The Culture Vulture running a bloggers’ night for Carmen at The Grand in Leeds.

I still don’t know why the first part was set in a picnic area in front of an empty lock-up, why the translation was so dry that it made me laugh inappropriately in parts or what the woman in the swimming costume was meant to be, despite a couple of people trying to explain these to me. But never mind.

I knew I liked the music from Carmen, but lots of it was cut, including one of my favourites – the smugglers’ quintet – and the conducting was rather flat, so I got nothing from the orchestra when normally live music moves the air to the point where it moves me at least a little, even when it’s not my cup of tea. Buckets of dialogue went out of the window too, so I struggled to know what was happening at points, and faced with an American setting that made little sense, so many unsympathetic characters and a Jose who was kitted out as Ranger Smith, I found my mind wandering rather more than it might. I understand that the cuts (at least 45 minutes, I think) put the opera into a more accessible format of three 40 minute sections, with intervals, but since so many people did not come back after the second interval (mostly the regular audience, not the bloggers on the whole), it obviously failed to keep the crowd satisfied.

The adult nature of the production, so hyped before the performance, seems to come from the tits and arses (which brought more laughs than racing pulses) rather than any threat of real sex and violence. Opera North have now apparently given the show a 12 certificate. Most kids have probably seen worse on the internet, and even if they live sheltered lives, on X Factor. OK, maybe not nips.

Still, on to the positives. I thought Escamillo and Zuniga were played brilliantly, I liked some of what was hinted at behind the hard-to-like character of Carmen, and some of the lighting work was excellent, especially in the final section. Would I go to the opera again? I’d give it another go, but probably not Carmen again and I’d probably try a more traditional production.

I saw Edward Bennett as Hamlet a couple of years ago as we had tickets for David Tennant’s RSC performance in the London run, and unfortunately David only came back from his bad back a couple of days AFTER we were due to see him. Thankfully his understudy, Bennett, was excellent in his own right and I felt privileged to see a rising star in such a large role and as part of a great production. He was also very good as Laertes, the role in which he was originally cast, when I finally got to see Tennant’s Hamlet in the BBC/RSC’s filmed version last year.

Ed is currently finishing off a run in The Tempest and As You Like It (as Ferdinand and Oliver) for Sam Mendes’ Bridge Project, another high profile project, and my friend Miriam Zendle interviewed him for the Ideastap website. Nip along to their site and see the video.