The Guardian - 27.08.2019

Section:GDN 12 PaGe:13 Edition Date:190827 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 26/8/2019 15:58 cYanmaGentaYellowbl

• The Guardian
  Tuesday 27 August 2019 13
  Live reviews

PHOTOGRAPHS: GETTY IMAGES; RYAN BUCHANAN PHOTOGRAPHY; MURDO MACLEOD/GUARDIAN; MAT SMITH PHOTOGRAPHY

from the marriage are harrowing.

A woman gets up from the

audience to thank Brown for

championing LGBT rights and

proposes to her girlfriend on stage,

and we haven’t even reached the

interval yet. Second- half subjects

career from suicide attempts to how

her father’s death gave her the push

to fi nally leave Belafonte. She

discusses her televised claim to

Piers Morgan that she once had sex

with Geri Horner (which Ginger

Spice denies), explains why she

bought a goat and howls: “Stop

stealing my show!” at Cookie,

who is dancing on hind legs.

The show ends with Brown

bickering comically with “Mother”

(“What’s this about us buying

chickens?”) and dancing with

her family to I Will Survive. It’s

far too long, but somewhere in

the chaos is a powerful insight into

superstardom’s human cost and

what it means to gain, surrender and

determinedly rediscover girl power.

Dave Simpson

★★★★☆

Presteigne festival

Stage

Mel B

Theatre

The Patient

Gloria

T

his show is billed as

“brutally honest” so

let’s be brutally

honest. Mel B’s

audience isn’t full –

although neither is it

the sales disaster that supports

tabloid speculation that two

spoken-word performances will

lose her £57,000. She also denies

press reports that she is “unemployed

and broke”. However, there’s

certainly a story in how working-

class teenager Melanie Brown

became a Spice Girls superstar and is

now a 44-year-old mother back

home in Leeds, living with her mum.

Grilled on a union jack sofa by

“celebrity journalist”/biographer

Louise Gannon , Brown reveals the

fi ve hours of hair -weaving and

vocal warm- ups that turn her into

Scary Spice. She talks about her

mixed-race childhood and

bisexuality, hints that the Spice

Girls will play Glastonbury in 2020

and is joined by her dog, Cookie,

who promptly pees on stage.

Things turn from surreal to

compelling when Brown discusses

her 10-year marriage, which she

claims was “coercive, abusive and

violent”. (Her former husband,

Stephen Belafonte, disputes her

allegations.) She is incisive on

the incremental power of a

controlling man and talks about

why she had a tattoo of her

ex-husband’s name physically

cut from her body (she keeps it

in a jar). Her tearful video diaries

I

f you search online for

Three Approaches to

Psychotherapy , you’ll

fi nd a set of 1965 recordings

in which a patient,

Gloria Szymanski , goes

through sessions with three

psychotherapists. By rights, you

shouldn’t be able to see them at

all: the single mother had consented

for the fi lms to be shown to students

but was reportedly taken aback

when they wound up in cinemas

and even on television.

The story echoes the tale of

Henrietta Lacks, dramatised by

Adura Onashile in HeLa in 2013.

Lacks’s cell samples were taken

without her knowledge and, as

it turned out, became an invaluable

medical resource. For playwright

Gina Moxley, the casual exploitation

of a woman’s private life,

combined with a male-dominated

psychotherapeutic profession,

is symptomatic of a society in

which women exist to be framed,

examined and exploited by

men (who themselves are not

short of psychological quirks).

If that sounds heavy going, it

is anything but in John McIlduff ’s

waywardly funny production for

Dublin’s Abbey theatre. Moxley

herself cross-dresses as the three

psychotherapists, presenting them

as smug egotists taking voyeuristic

pleasure in their subject’s

revelations. There’s a pantomimic

quality to her performance, as if the

more seriously she plays each role,

the more ridiculous she becomes.

Played with period poise by

Li v O’Donoghue, Gloria seems more

troubled by the cross-questioning

than by the consequences of her

sexually liberated lifestyle. The

more the pressure mounts, the

more she fl ops across the furniture,

a writhing specimen robbed of her

independence.

While Jane Deasy accompanies

on grungy bass guitar, the actors

are joined on the couch by a group

of modern-day women, looking

on at Moxley’s men in a way that

makes their behaviour seem more

peculiar still.

Mark Fisher

Opera

Götter–

dämmerung

D

istinctive titles are

a feature of Cheryl

Frances-Hoad ’s

music, The Madness

Industry and My

Day in Hell among

them. Her new clarinet quintet –

commissioned by the Presteigne

festival where she is a composer-in-

residence this year – is Tales of the

Invisible. Not so obviously quirky,

Frances-Hoad’s title signals a piece

that explores liminal territory.

The sense is of the clarinet as

an outsider , a wind instrument

set among strings, a potentially

threatening presence. Their

exchanges take place outside the

comfort zone, an environment

bordering on hostile. Thus, the

opening Andante marks the

tentative approaches of clarinet to

the fi erce strings, the instrument

both withdrawn and assertive, and

the fi nale progresses to more lively,

if occasionally grudging, gestures

of acceptance. It is in the central

Largo espressivo, from the clarinet’s

fi rst utterance of a simple plaintive

melodies to its later impassioned

declamatory lines, that the music

speaks most persuasively. Rozenn

Le Trionnaire and the Albion Quartet

played it with much sensitivity.

This premiere was framed by

string quartets by Dvořák and

Walton. The Albion brought a gently

intimate and introspective quality

to Dvořák’s American quartet,

usually treated more robustly,

but here the understated and

unsentimental factor also helped

set the stage for Frances-Hoad’s

clarinet quintet, which has the chill

of unspoken hostility as well as a

certain humanity. The quartet were

at their most convincing in Walton’s

Quartet in A minor (now called the

second after the rediscovery of an

early quartet). Colours and textures

were beautifully judged, from

febrile to mercurial and fi nally

spiky. The writing favours the viola

throughout and Ann Beilby’s amber

tone made the contemplative Lento

particularly eloquent.

Rian Evans

★★★☆☆

Grand theatre, Leeds

At the Savoy theatre, London ,

1 September

★★★★☆

Traverse, Edinburgh

★★★★★

Usher Hall, Edinburgh

T

his was the culmination

of Edinburgh

international festival’s

four-year Ring cycle in

concert and one of the

hottest tickets. Such

anticipation can lead to disappoint-

ment, but this event lived up to its

hype. Andrew Davis and the Royal

Scottish National Orchestra , the

partnership of the lauded Walküre at

the 2017 festival, took to the Usher

Hall stage for the fi nal instalment of

Wagner’s epic music drama.

No one was more central to the

success of the performance than

soprano Christine Goerke. Her

luminous soprano has the vocal

strength to surmount the mighty

Wagnerian orchestra without

sounding forced or harsh. Allied

with genuine dramatic capabilities,

hers is an all-too-human account

of the warrior goddess, a seductive

combination of pathos and power.

There was plenty of interest

elsewhere, particularly Ain Anger ’s

splendidly world-weary, implacable

Hagen and Karen Cargill in the du al

roles of Waltraute and Second Norn.

Greek soprano Danae Kontora, who

made an impression as a last-minute

stand-in Woodbird in Siegfried,

returned in her own right as an

equally fl irtatious Rhinemaiden.

Burkhard Fritz , a new addition to

the cast , was a solid although rather

soft-toned Siegfried.

Wagner in the concert hall can be

as much symphony as opera but

Andrew Davis’s coolly measured

controlled approach ensured that the

performance was never static or self-

indulgent. It might have been too

restrained for those who like their

Wagner swooning and swooping, but

its elegant pacing brought life to the

light and shade of the music; the

ecstatic outpourings sudden and

exciting. Under his direction a vibrant,

energised RSNO gave a burnished,

nuanced account of the score.

At the close of the EIF, it was a

timely reminder that festivals can

foster artistic partnerships to create

something truly outstanding.

Rowena Smith

Classical

Albion Quartet/

Le Trionnaire

Pathos and

power ...

Christine Goerke

as Brunnhilde

From surreal

to compelling

... Mel B

Exploring

liminal territory

... Cheryl

Frances-Hoad

Period poise ...

Liv O’Donoghue

and Gina Moxley

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