The Guardian - 06.09.2019

Section:GDN 12 PaGe:17 Edition Date:190906 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 5/9/2019 16:09 cYanmaGentaYellowbla

• The Guardian
  Friday 6 September 2019 17
  Live reviews

PHOTOGRAPHS: DOUGLAS MCBRIDE; ROBERT WORKMAN; MIHAELA BODLOVIC; GUS STEWART/REDFERNS

As Margaret, an exceptionally

good Claire Dargo is similarly torn

between the prudish assumptions

of her class and the evidence of

exploitation and hunger before her.

Empathetic and quick-witted, she

has a bird-like alertness, as if forever

checking her own instincts, making

her at once bold and questioning.

It’s hard to keep your eyes off her ,

although she has strong support

from Wendy Paver’s no-nonsense

servant Dixon.

Margaret and John’s will-they-

won’t-they romance gives the play

its emotional shape and makes us

willing to accept its neat happy

ending, but they also exemplify

the political forces that spill out

into the auditorium in Elizabeth

Newman’s production. In our

polarised era of ideological echo

chambers, it becomes a story of

injustice exacerbated by poor

communication. The presence of

large numbers on stage – and in the

aisles – turns it from a story of olden-

days strife into a living discussion.

Rarely has this theatre seemed so

much part of the public sphere.

Mark Fisher

★★★★☆

Dundee Rep

Until 21 September

Theatre

North and

South

Pop

Cam

T

here is a thrilling

transition three scenes

into this adaptation of

the Elizabeth Gaskell

novel. So far, it’s been

idyllic. Then, in an

instant, the colour scheme switches

from spring green to industrial grey,

and th e trees on Amanda Stoodley’s

set become chimneys billowing

smoke over the town of Milton. The

community cast has swollen to fi ll

the stage, the embodiment of urban

overpopulation. You’d think you

were in a diff erent play.

The contrast gets to the heart of

Gaskell’s 1854 novel, a culture-clash

drama in which the genteel values of

the upper-crust south rub up against

the hard-as-nails pragmatism of

the working-class north. It’s a clash

that adapts electrically to the stage,

where the opposing forces battle it

out in tense confrontations. Fighting

one corner is minister’s daughter

Margaret, whose snobby distaste for

those who have to work for a living

turns out to be less defi ning than

her natural sense of justice. In the

opposite corner is mill owner John

Thornton, who – like a 19th-century

Sajid Javid – seems to think his rise

to riches from a humble background

gives him moral authority.

Together, they are a double

act creating the romantic heart

of Janys Chambers ’s crisp and

theatrical adaptation. Thornton

might be an arrogant arriviste with

a cruel disregard for his workforce

but – played by Harry Long as a

man not quite comfortable in his

establishment skin – he repeatedly

elicits sympathetic sighs from an

audience sorry to see him unlucky

in love.

‘I

apologise for saying

fuck so many times,”

says Camaron Ochs.

“It’s like when you guys

say bollocks .” If you

hadn’t known before

her show that Cam was an advocate

for diversity and free speech, you did

by the end. She’s one of Nashville’s

most potent truth-tellers, and if

she is less recognisable than fellow

travellers Kacey Musgraves and

Maren Morris , it is probably because

she hasn’t released new music

since her 2015 major-label debut,

Untamed, which yielded the hit

Burning House.

That will be rectifi ed this autumn,

she informs us, to which one can

only respond: bring it on. California-

born, she does a remarkable job of

fusing west coast liberalism and

traditional country tropes during

the show. There is a banjo player

on stage, and Ochs’s clear, true

voice twangs in the right aching

places while wearing a silver dress

that Dolly Parton would envy.

Contrastingly, the warm, engaging

set is underpinned by modern

dictates: don’t slut-shame, she

tells us on the country-pop bop

My Mistake, that hails a girl who

enjoys every minute of a one-night

stand. Introducing it, she says: “I’ve

been called ‘sex positive’, but guys

can sing about sex and nobody

labels them.”

On the furiously percussive

Diane , a married man’s girlfriend

apologises to his wife. “Sing this

extra loud so those women get the

apology they deserve,” she directs

the crowd. Later she duets with

opening act Sam Williams, grandson

of Hank, on the song that inspired it,

Parton’s Jolene. Before performing a

crushingly tender version of Palace ,

co-written with Sam Smith , she

chortles that she and Smith were

a modern-day Romeo and Juliet

• “a straight woman and a gorgeous
  gay man”. Everything about Cam
  rings true, and that will stand her
  in good stead.
  Caroline Sullivan

Opera

Scoring a

Century

P

eter Arnott has written

enough plays to know

you’re not supposed

to structure them like

this. The conventional

way to tell the story

of the rail bridge disaster of 1879 ,

when 75 people lost their lives on the

crossing from Wormit to Dundee,

would be to dramatise the facts

of the case: engineer Sir Thomas

Bouch, the grieving relatives, the

public inquiry and the compellingly

terrible poem by William

McGonagall. (“It must have been an

awful sight / To witness in the dusky

moonlight.”)

Arnott has none of that. Instead,

he imagines a kind of ghost-train-

in-waiting and presents a sequence

of vignettes about passengers who

have nothing in common but their

fate. By rights, such a theatrical

collage could come across as

fragmentary, but he pulls it off

brilliantly thanks to vivid writing,

political nous and thematic unity.

As is the nature of journeys,

the passengers are in transition,

changing jobs, beginning new

lives, reinventing themselves, and

yet already they seem stalked by

death. They’re like a congregation

refl ecting on the journey of life, with

Dundee as heaven and the Tay as a

watery purgatory.

The journey is made smooth

by Andrew Panton’s excellent

production, kicking off a double-

anniversary season to mark 80

years of the theatre and 20 years

of the permanent ensemble. With

strong performances all around,

the cast seem to haunt the broken

carriage of designer Emily James’s

rotating set as it mutates into

pubs, classrooms and tenements

with dream-like fl uidity. Simon

Wilkinson’s ominous lighting and

MJ McCarthy’s rib-shaking sound

design build to the closing moments

when the inevitable ending

gives shape and force to Arnott’s

adventurous structure.

Mark Fisher

★★★★☆

Pitlochry Festival theatre,

Port Na Craig

Until 25 September

★★★★☆

Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London

At Manchester Academy tonight

★★☆☆☆

Peacock theatre, London

Until tomorrow

A

prominent fi gure in

British contemporary

music in the 70s and

80s, David Blake, now

83, hasn’t stopped

composing and the

fi rst London performances of Scoring

a Century, which he categorises as

“musical entertainment”, are part of

British Youth Opera’s season.

With a libretto by Keith Warner ,

who also directs , the production is

cast in 20 “panels”, which tell the

story of the Jedermanns, a husband-

and-wife variety act who sing and

dance their way through the 20th

century with naivety and dauntless

optimism. Never ageing, they have

the knack of fi nding themselves in

the wrong places at the wrong time,

whether that’s Berlin during the

Nazi persecution of Jews in 1938,

the Soviet show trials of the 50s, or

among the student protests of the

60s. A series of four “mini-operas”,

written by their composer friend

Berthold, portrays the full horror

of the ways in which the century

is  unfolding.

It’s a kind of Singspiel, like Kurt

Weill’s Mahagonny or Happy End,

but with more dialogue than music.

The best of the score does hark back

to that Weimar era, but there’s too

little of that, and more that could

have come from any unsuccessful

Broadway musical. And the

stilted dialogue trips over some

embarrassingly bad jokes. What just

might have been a sharply focussed

satire is too long and uneven.

The Jedermanns are sung

enthusiastically by Holly Marie

Bingham and Hugo Herman-Wilson,

and the rest of the cast take on

cameo roles with more gusto than

the piece deserves. Lionel Friend

conducts the Southbank Sinfonia;

he also conducted the work at

Birmingham Conservatoire in 2010 –

so surely should have known better

than to revive it.

Andrew Clements

Theatre

Tay Bridge

Electrically battling it

it out ... North and South

Theatrical collage ...

Tay Bridge

Enthusiastic ...

Holly Marie Bingham

and Hugo Herman-Wilson

Crushingly tender ...

Cam

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