8 1GT Monday August 10 2020 | the times
arts
I
t’s a neat consolation prize of the
coronavirus to have online
versions of the plays you can no
longer go to see, even if one
medium sometimes struggles to
translate to another. This half-hour
film by Hope Dickson Leach for the
National Theatre of Scotland takes a
different tack. It celebrates theatre, on
what should have been the first week
of the Edinburgh International
Festival, with a dozen extracts of
shows the NTS has done already or is
yet to do. And it positions its large cast
on stage and backstage in the dormant
Festival Theatre.
Crucially, though, it embraces the
fluid intimacy of film to offer its vivid
sense of theatre. It starts with Afton
Moran, on stage alone in Peter Pan
costume, playing the section of JM
Barrie’s 1904 play in which Peter tries
to get the boys and girls to believe in
fairies and bring Tinkerbell back to
life. It’s a call to arms and a paean to
the power of pretending.
After that the camera glides
backstage, taking Steadicam trips
down corridors to go from the film’s
oldest work to one of its new ones.
Thierry Mabonga performs Ghosts of
the Future by May Sumbwanyambe,
which makes you want to see more
from this Edinburgh writer. James
McArdle appears in a dressing room to
muse on Scotland in an extract from
one of the NTS’s biggest hits, James I
from Rona Munro’s The James Plays.
And after that these mostly solitary
figures offer extracts by writers such as
John McGrath, Kieran Hurley, Jenni
Fagan and Frances Poet. With its ideas
about identity and even diversity — in
a jokey, but deft new piece — Ghost
Light feels like a piece in itself as well
as a variety pack. It ends back on the
dark stage, with an actor creating an
image of the moon with a wet mop. It
would be exaggerating to say this
piece makes up for what we are
missing. What it manages, terrifically
well, is to give a glimpse of how
theatre feels and why it matters.
Dominic Maxwell
eif.co.uk, to Aug 28The 2020 Edinburgh
International Festival
may have been cancelled,
but its digital musical
offerings are a treat,
says Richard Morrison
W
e can’t go to the
Edinburgh
International Festival
this year, so the EIF
has come to us. Onwhat should have been the opening
weekend of the 2020 jamboree, it
has released a bunch of specially
commissioned films, free to view on
YouTube and featuring many of
Scotland’s top arts companies.
The best of the music offerings is
also the smallest. Just 25 minutes and
involving only two singers on camera,
Scottish Opera’s production of Gian
Carlo Menotti’s The Telephone is a
little comic gem. It also has a real
Edinburgh feel because the director
Daisy Evans filmed it in and around
the bar of King’s Theatre, where Ben
(Jonathan McGovern) is desperately
trying to get the attention of his
girlfriend (Sorayi Mafi) off her mobile
phone so that he can propose to her
before his train leaves for London.
Of course, when the Italian-
American Menotti wrote the piece, in
New York in 1947, the eponymous
telephone was a clumpy black object
attached by wires to a wall. It’s
reassuring, in a funny sort of way,
to know that it exerted the same
tyrannical control over people 70 years
ago as our smartphones do today. And
although Evans slightly updates the
concept, with text messages flashing
on screen, the conceit remains solid.
What hasn’t worn so well — despite
delectable singing and acting from
Mafi and McGovern — is the typically
1940s American characterisation of
the woman as a ditzy, gossip-obsessed
scatterbrain, and the man as a
dependable, patient rock. Menotti’s
score, however, is well worth revival.
Pungent, witty and almost indecently
tuneful, it was superbly played here by
the Scottish Opera Orchestra under
Stuart Stratford.
When Scottish Opera gets properly
back in business it should think about
revisiting some of Menotti’s 27 other
Theatre
Ghost Light
{{{{(A sparkling comic gem
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The Telephone
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RSNO/
Sondergard
{{{{(operas, many of which were big hits in
the 1940s and 1950s. After all, he
practically reinvented himself, late in
life, as a Scottish laird, moving to an
18th-century mansion in East Lothian
and restyling himself Mr McNotti.
Slightly disappointingly the EIF’s
streamed concerts from the Festival
Theatre had not a whiff of local colour
about them — apart from being
performed by Scottish musicians, of
course. A missed opportunity,
considering how many world-class
composers Scotland can field at
present. Instead, the Scottish Chamber
Orchestra presented Beethoven’s
Piano Concerto No 2, directed from
the keyboard by Paul Lewis. Although
vibrant and cogent, the performance
was never really surprising — exceptthat the piano sounded as if it hadn’t
been tuned properly since before
lockdown.
At least the Royal Scottish National
Orchestra and Thomas Sondergard
offered something rarer, although it
was hardly festive. It was Mahler’s
Symphony No 7, the most hard-to-love
of the ten, in a newish reduced
orchestration by Klaus Simon that,
among many other ingenuities,
replaces the mandolin with a prepared
piano. The RSNO violins had some
perilous moments, but otherwise this
was a spirited performance. Even
better was the peerless Karen Cargill,
singing three of Mahler’s Rückert-
Lieder with ravishing tone.
All available throughout August on
the EIF’s YouTube channelJonathan
McGovern and
Sorayi Mafi in
The Telephone