The Guardian - 03.08.2019

Saturday 3 August 2019 The Guardian •

53

At the Bolshoi, size matters.
The company’s name means “big”
in Russian, and the Muscovites
open their London summer season
with a ballet that lives up to it.
Yuri Grigorovich’s Soviet-era slave
rebellion story is a signature work of
the Bolshoi, and they are one of the
few companies that could off er such
an army of identically drilled dancers.
It is one of ballet’s more masculine
outings and men dominate the
stage. Slaves and soldiers thrust
forth limbs in tight unison, straight
as their swords, and Denis Rodkin ’s
Spartacus takes on Roman consul
Crassus ( Artemy Belyakov ). Rodkin
makes a lukewarm entrance.
Anastasia Denisova as his lover
Phrygia has the idea, the tilt of her
neck expressing a deep lament.
Rodkin grows into the role though,

his  leaps becoming higher and wilder,

his power and presence revving up.

It’s a marathon of a show over three

acts, and the length and scale are not

always at the service of the drama.

Crassus and Spartacus spend a long

time not fi ghting each other, then

climactic moments pass in a fl ash.

Anyway, it’s clear who should be

ruling in Rome: Svetlana Zakharova ’s

Aegina, Crassus’s courtesan. She is

pure steel; wily and merciless. Her

arms snake and curl luxuriously , her

fi ngers so long it takes an extra bar

for them to catch up with the curve.

Grigorovich’s choreography comes

in statements. He uses blocks of

dancers in perfect accord, such as the

hypnotic, ice-cold courtesans. Act

two’s shepherds and shepherdesses

are the only characters truly free,

and dance with an almost vaudeville

fl air from the men and an incredible

lightness from the women.

The best thing about the ballet is

Khachaturian ’s driving, cinematic

score, with its mighty percussion,

swooning love theme and touches

of jazz. It’s the music that makes this

period piece come alive.

Lyndsey Winship

Ballet

Spartacus

Royal Opera House, London

★★★☆☆

Bolshoi army

leaps to it

from slaves

to the rhythm

“Here’s a song from the 1920s – just

before Led Zeppelin were formed,”

announces Robert Plant as he

leads his new semi-acoustic band,

Saving Grace, into Cindy I’ll Marry

You Someday. It’s late on Sunday

night: Orbital are on the main stage,

while Plant and singer Suzi Dian

make a modest festival debut with a

classy set of old favourites, backed

by drums, guitars, mandolin and

banjo. They include Doc Watson’s

Your Long Journey , Ray Charles’s

stomping Leave My Woman

Alone , Donovan’s Season of the

Witch and then fi nish with I Bid

You Goodnight, in which they all

huddle around one microphone. It

is low-key but enormous fun.

This was the 38th Womad

festival, held in an increasingly

crowded festival calendar and

made all the more diffi cult by visa

restrictions. But there was still

a varied global line up, featuring

everything from Macha y El Bloque

Depresivo ’s tragic Chilean ballads

to the emotional soul classics of

Macy Gray; BaBa Zu La’ s wild and

angry Turkish psychedelia, and the

extraordinary voice of Ustad Saami ,

Pakistan’s 75-year-old master of

a haunting microtonal style that

pre dates Islam.

It was a great year for

veterans. Calypso Rose, now

79, is feisty on the cheerfully

risqu e Young Boy , and Africa’s

fi nest male singer Salif Keita

is in distinctive, soaring voice

on an upbeat set that includes

a powerful revival of M’Bemba

Music

Womad festival

Charlton Park, Wiltshire

★★★★☆

Polyphony

and politics

in a global

soundclash

and just one – exquisite – acoustic

song, Awa. Behind him, a sign

announces he is “celebrating 50

years of music in 70 years”. If he’s

on a farewell tour, it doesn’t feel

like it.

The best newcomers include

Jamaican soloist Brushy One String

(below), whose song Chicken in the

Corn has been viewed 24m times on

YouTube, and who really does play

a guitar with just one string, to back

up his growling, soulful voice. With

Brexit threatening, there is also an

appropriate emphasis on Europeans:

San Salvador , from the French

Massif Central, are a slick, rousing

young six-piece whose thrilling

polyphonic harmony singing is

backed by pounding percussion.

And Ukraine’s glorious DakhaBrakha

returned, sporting tall fur hats and

quirky, compelling songs.

There are reminders of the

British multicultural scene too,

from the adventurous soul-jazz-rap

reworking of civil rights classics

by A Change Is Gonna Come, to

the angry political songs of Nadine

Shah. In our era of walls and vocal

bigots, Womad is more important

than ever.

Robin Denselow

The new BBC/FX miniseries Fosse/

Verdon dramatises the toxic

marriage and thrilling creative

partnership that spanned fi ve

decades between choreographer

and fi lm-maker Bob Fosse (Sam

Rockwell) and Broadway star

and fellow choreographer Gwen

Verdon (Michelle Williams) – an

extraordinary dancer whose star

was in the ascendant when she

met and married Fosse. Together

they worked on such infl uential

masterpieces as Cabaret and

Chicago , but Verdon’s dancing

career faltered after she had their

daughter, and she shored up her

serially unfaithful husband as he

became increasingly unstable and

addicted to pills.

Their story plays out over eight

very oddly structured hours.

Overall, it’s a countdown to Fosse’s

death , but we move back and

forth so quickly, in and out of real

and imagined scenes and across

so many timelines and locations

that any sense of a narrative arc,

or any concomitant dread, sorrow

or suspense, is dissipated. We

repeatedly cut away from events

before they resolve. An early scene

emblematic of Fosse’s endless

adultery , which begins with

Verdon knocking on his door after

he has failed to get rid of his latest

mistress as promised, is split and

referenced so many times that it

becomes redundant.

It makes the story impressionistic

at best, hopelessly muddled at

worst. And because we don’t see the

evolution of their relationship, but

only fragments of diff erent stages

of it, it is hard to understand what

kept drawing Verdon back to Fosse.

The few glimpses we do get of why

the couple worked so well together,

however, are worth the price of

admission alone. Rockwell and

Williams’ chemistry is undeniable,

and every ounce of work they’ve

put into the dance sequences

(especially in Williams’ case) is up

there on screen. They move and

banter deliciously, while even in the

earliest stages letting you see how

the seeds of bitterness will be sown.

Within a few scenes they will

remind you of Kenneth Tynan’s

description of his marriage to

Elaine Dundy – “each with its teeth

sunk deep in the other’s neck and

reluctant to break the clinch for

fear of bleeding to death” – though

in Fosse/Verdon’s case it would

have been both a romantic and

creative exsanguination.

Lucy Mangan

What we learned

Woodstock remains a one-off

Woodstock 50, a three-day music

festival planned for 16-18 August

to mark the 50th anniversary of

the famed 1969 event, has been

cancelled. Organisers blamed

a series of “unforeseen setbacks”

and an “unfortunate dispute” with

a fi nancial partner.

Mid-morning is the new breakfast

Listening fi gures from the

second quarter of 2019 reveal that

Radio 2’s breakfast show, which has

been presented by Zoe Ball (right)

since January, is no longer the UK’s

most popular radio programme.

That honour now goes to Ken Bruce,

whose mid-morning Radio 2 show has

8.49 million listeners.

Old Town Road breaks new ground

US rapper Lil Nas X has broken Mariah

Carey’s 23-year-old record for most

weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot

100 chart. Old Town Road has now

spent 17 weeks at No 1. The country-

rap track was fi rst released on video

sharing app TikTok in February, and

banned from Billboard’s country

charts for not being country enough.

▲ Higher and wilder ... Denis Rodkin

PHOTOGRAPH: TRISTRAM KENTON/GUARDIAN

What others said

“Spartacus wears its Soviet-era

convictions on its sleeve. From the

blare of the score to the corps de ballet

moving in massed ranks, it’s all broad

brush strokes and gusto.”

Zoë Anderson Independent.co.uk

What others said

“The most popular band of

the weekend were probably

DakhaBrakha, a quartet from

Ukraine, performing what they

describe as ‘ethno-chaos’ in their

trademark oversized Cossack hats.”

Simon Broughton Evening Standard

Friends in low

places and

a quarterlife

crisis

Emma Jane Unsworth has

adapted her 2014 novel for the

screen, and the resulting movie,

directed by the Australian fi lm-

maker Sophie Hyde, is fl awed

but interesting, kept upright

by the steely core of Holliday

Grainger’s performance. It is a

subdued drama about the mortality

of friendships and relationships,

and there is also, as with so many

other semi-autobiographical

fi ctions, a subsidiary pleasure in

wondering which elements are

based on truth.

Laura ( Grainger ) and Tyler

( Alia Shawkat , from TV’s Arrested

Development) are best friends

who live in Dublin. They’re single,

Film

Animals

Cert 15

★★★☆☆

Last night’s TV

Fosse/Verdon

BBC2

★★★☆☆

Sam Rockwell and Michelle

Williams do a complicated

dance in these scenes from

a toxic marriage of equals

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But it isn’t just Tyler who is

thrown into turmoil. With her

novel showing no sign of being

published, Laura is left to wonder

whether marriage – a convention

to whose trappings she has been

fundamentally indiff erent – has

turned out to be the endpoint

of her whole existence. Will any

defi ant moments of singledom or

hedonism endanger this precious

new future, or would they be the

last hurrah of youth?

Some of the wisecracking

dialogue falls a bit fl at and the

narrative line is occasionally

uncertain, but Grainger creates

a watchable quarterlife crisis.

Peter Bradshaw

they love going out for cocktails,

and they have developed a kind

of sub-Holly Golightly private

language about the ironic

sophistication of it all. Laura is

a would-be writer who has been

working on a novel for almost

10 years, while Tyler has a dead-

end job. The approaching trauma

of being in their 30 s is worsened

when Laura meets an impossibly

handsome man called Jim (Fra

Fee), who is a talented classical

pianist. This creates a Withnail- like

loyalty crisis with Tyler, who acidly

condemns the outrageously nice

and well turned-out Jim as someone

with the “shoes of an undertaker

and the smile of a despot ”.

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