The Guardian - 30.08.2019

• The Guardian
  16 Friday 30 August 2019
  Live reviews

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energetic arm swaying to These

Words, miming record scratching

to a lyric about “hip-hop beats”.

While singing about “free-fall” in the

jingle-like Roller Skate, she arches

her back like a Goop loyalist during

pilates. Covers of Purple Rain and

Coldplay’s The Scientist are better

saved for the neighbouring karaoke

joint, but a partial rendition of her

brother Daniel’s UK garage-pop

classic Gotta Get Thru This is fun,

unexpected – and crowd dynamite.

Aside from the raucously

received Unwritten, the set’s quieter

moments are the most memorable.

At a vulnerable-feeling rendition

of I Bruise Easily , a couple wearing

matching Bedingfi eld merch

clasp hands and gaze into each

other’s eyes. Better still is Wild

Horses, performed with piano

accompaniment. “This song was

just my heart crying out to be free,”

she says. Less cartoonish pomp, and

Bedingfi eld’s own performances

could feel just as liberated.

Owen Myers

★★★★☆

Royal Albert Hall, London Pop

Natasha

Bedingfi eld

Pop

Edwyn Collins

T

he late-noughties

reality phenomenon

The Hills is back,

and so is the woman

who wrote its theme

song : Natasha

Bedingfi eld. Back then, Haywards

Heath’s least off ensive musical

scion struck commercial gold with

a smattering of breezily uncynical

self-affi rmations-as-songs. At the

end of music’s lucrative CD era, that

was enough to rack up a startling

10m album sales, as well as a

Grammy nomination for her wide-

eyed gap-year anthem Unwritten.

Bedingfi eld has teamed up with

Linda Perry for her fi rst album in

eight years, Roll With Me. Going

by Bedingfi eld’s live return , the

infl uence of Perry, who’s made

rockers out of Christina Aguilera

and Pink, has stuck. It’s a decisive

left-turn from the Radio 2-friendly

sound perhaps expected of

Bedingfi eld, and one she seems to

relish. Backed by a fi ve-piece band,

she wears a black velvet jumpsuit

and spiked boots, a Boo hoo Chrissie

Hynde. She goes hell for leather on

phones-aloft rock ballad Wishful

Thinking and shows off her vocal

grit in Real Love. There’s a whiff of

the jukebox musical to Bedingfi eld’s

headbanging and hair-tossing,

though. She talks of her “crazy idea”

to spin a microphone in her hand; as

far as rock’n’roll misdemeanours go ,

it’s not quite pounding an eight ball

and trashing your hotel room.

At other times, Bedingfi eld

brings to mind the happily naff

ease of a Butlin’s Redcoat. She leads

I

t has been 14 years since

Edwyn Collins – the former

Orange Juice frontman

turned suave solo star

• suff ered two cerebral
  haemorrhages, a near-
  death experience that scrambled
  his language skills and left him
  physically impaired. In the years
  since, his determination to make
  new music has been an inspiring
  example of grit and wit. He turned
  60 last week , but rather than taking
  his foot off the gas, Collins and his
  six-piece band are off around the UK
  in support of Badbea , his ruminative
  but often frisky new record.

One of the creative sparks behind

Badbea, his ninth solo album, was

repurposing lyrics that Collins

had written before his brush

with mortality. Similarly, this gig

straddles the past and present,

interlacing recent material with

beloved classics. In Glasgow, it is a

particularly supportive home town

crowd – a buoyant throng dotted

with vintage quiff s – and the energy

levels crackle with every Orange

Juice track, from the loping funk of

I Guess I’m Just a Little Too Sensitive

to the chiming guitars of Dying Day.

The new songs sound resonant,

too: the strident fuzzbox riff of

It’s All About You has the feel of

some lost 1960s TV series, while

the plaintive It All Makes Sense to

Me has an appealing sway and a

righteous sax solo (from veteran

Dexys member Sean Read).

Rocking a Verve Records T-shirt and

occasionally brandishing his walking

stick like a conductor’s baton,

Collins can still hold court even

while seated. The between-song

banter is sometimes a little halting

but always emphatic; his singing

voice, however, remains remarkable,

a soulful, weathered baritone.

A duet with his son William for

In Your Eyes is a mid-set highlight

but Collins saves the best until

last. The rapid-fi re deployment of

squelchy-bass classic Rip It Up , the

raucous Don’t Shilly Shally – which

sees him up on his feet – and sultry

mid-1990s earworm A Girl Like You

is a remarkable career triptych. An

emotional encore that climaxes with

the vintage Postcard cut Blue Boy is

just the cherry on top.

Graeme Virtue

L

ess than 24 hours after

conducting the fi nal

chorus of Mozart’s

Die Zauberfl öte on

Glyndebourne’s annual

visit to the Proms, Ryan

Wigglesworth was back in front of

an orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall.

This time it was the Britten Sinfonia ,

with Wigglesworth featuring not

only as a conductor, but also as

composer and pianist, in a neat

programme that led from Mozart

to Stravinsky via Tchaikovsky , and

included the fi rst performance

of his own Piano Concerto,

co-commissioned by the BBC.

The composer’s own, rather dry,

description did the piece no favours.

It’s a much more attractive, vividly

inventive piece than he implied,

perhaps his most eff ective orchestral

score to date. The neoclassical-

sounding movement titles – Arioso,

Scherzo, Notturno and Gigue

• belie music that is constantly
  changing mood and direction, and
  engages the solo piano in intricate,
  beautifully coloured dialogues with
  the orchestra. Marc-André Hamelin
  typically made light of all the
  challenges of the piano writing.
  The premiere was followed by
  the Divertimento from The Fairy’s
  Kiss, Stravinsky’s concert suite
  from his 1928 ballet score. It’s based
  on music by Tchaikovsky, but the
  assimilation is so seamless it’s
  hard to tell where the Tchaikovsky
  ends and Stravinsky begins, and
  Wigglesworth and the Britten
  Sinfonia balanced its rhythmic
  punch with luscious string lines and
  deft woodwind solos.
  It fi nished the concert on an
  upbeat note, but the fi rst half was
  less convincing. Mozart’s Concerto
  for two piano K365, with Hamelin
  and Wigglesworth (directing from
  the keyboard) as the soloists, had
  made an uncertain opening, not
  helped by the fuzziness of the Albert
  Hall acoustics, while Tchaikovsky’s
  Mozartiana didn’t really justify the
  musical logic of its inclusion.
  Andrew Clements

★★★☆☆

Islington Assembly Hall, London

★★★★☆

Queen Margaret Union, Glasgow

Touring until 17 September

D

ael Orlandersmith’s

play both is and

isn’t about the 2014

shooting of black

teenager Michael

Brown by white

police offi cer Darren Wilson. This

event is the catalyst for Until the

Flood, which digs into the aftermath

of the shooting and unearths ugly

truths about race in the United States.

Until the Flood follows in the

footsteps of The Laramie Project

and Anna Deveare Smith’s verbatim

shows , bearing more than a passing

resemblance to the latter. The play

is based on interviews with people

in St Louis, but – unlike Smith –

Orlandersmith has turned these real

people into fi ctionalised composites.

In front of a candle-fi lled memorial

to Brown, each speaker is fully

inhabited and dispassionately held

up for inspection. Orlandersmith

transforms into her characters one

by one. There’s the young black man

who jitters with fear, praying he will

escape Brown’s fate; the racist who

leans into the audience as he spits out

the N-word; the white woman who

fi ddles nervously with her wine glass

as she tries to see both sides.

Race comes in and out of focus.

Orlandersmith allows her characters

to be more than their politics or

prejudices, a choice that can make

the racism even more horrifying

when it rears its head. We get a

glimpse of these people’s lives,

their struggles and dreams, making

it harder to dismiss them when

they utter something abhorrent.

No matter how educated the white

speakers, what’s striking is their

failure to grasp structural racism and

to appreciate their own privilege.

There’s an implicit statement in

the delivery of these monologues by

Orlandersmith as a woman of colour,

but she doesn’t let even a fl icker

of her own judg ment about the

characters infl ect her performance.

Only at the very end does she

step into her own skin and deliver

a spare, ambiguous poem, hinting

at both hope and despair for the

future of her country.

Catherine Love

Proms

Britten

Sinfonia/

Wigglesworth A Boohoo Chrissie Hynde ...

Natasha Bedingfi eld

Tireless ...

Ryan Wigg lesworth

Race in focus ...

Dael Orlandersmith

Remarkable ...

Edwyn Collins

Theatre

Until the Flood

★★★★☆

Traverse, Edinburgh

At Arcola, London, 4-28 September

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