12 Friday March 18 2022 | the timesfirst night
ANDREW BILLINGTONmaking occasional appearances as he
swaps notes with Jones. Heskins’s
production takes that self-referential
aspect a step further. On a bare, in-
the-round space, we are confronted
with several versions of our hero, the
multitasking cast burrowing into
different aspects of his character.
Michael Hugo, who begins the
evening sitting in the stalls, enters the
fray to give what he believes is the
definitive version.
The script — a collaboration
between Heskins and Baldwin —
nimbly juggles perspectives.
Sometimes, the narrative is almost as
broad as a panto; sometimes the actors
quibble over phrases like “narrative
ownership”. Amid the laughter, there
are passages of raw emotion. The
death of Neil’s mother (winningly
played by Suzanne Ahmet) who
watches over her son until she is well
into old age, is marked by a tender
four-voice arrangement of the hymn
How Great Thou Art.
Gareth Cassidy adds a string of
sharp impersonations of the
luminaries who have succumbed to
Neil’s charms, from the football
legends Lou Macari and George
Eastham to Tony Benn. James Earls-
Davis’s sound design paints detailed
sonic pictures. Daniel Murphy, Jerone
Marsh-Reid, Charlie Bence and Alex
Frost slip effortlessly from one role to
another. Apart from an over-extended
bout of slapstick cuisine in the second
half, the pace never flags.
In another life, Baldwin might easily
have been a conman. A churchgoer, he
dons a dog-collar on a whim and
seems capable of swearing eternal
friendship with every stranger he
meets. He does not even acknowledge
that he suffers from any kind of
disability. Like a cleric, he sees
goodness in everyone. No wonder
people love him.
To Apr 9, newvictheatre.org.ukworking-class family, he overcame
learning difficulties to find a place at
the heart of the community. As well as
working as a clown at a circus, he
became a mascot to students at Keele
University and footballers at Stoke
City. His list of VIP contacts includes
no end of Church of England bishops.
If he wasn’t so childishly
unselfconscious, you’d be tempted to
call him a ruthless networker.
The screen account of his life has
lots of charm, with Baldwin himselfY
ou might have thought that
Toby Jones had the last
word when he played Neil
“Nello” Baldwin in a Bafta-
winning BBC version of his
autobiography eight years ago. Well,
not quite. Theresa Heskins’s gently
humorous stage adaptation adds a
playful, meta spin to a story which, in
the wrong hands, could easily turn
cloyingly sentimental.
Now in his seventies, Baldwin is a
celebrity in the Potteries. Born into aT
hree consecutive evenings of
Russian music could have
been more fortuitously
scheduled, some might say.
This Russian music, however,
is Shostakovich: the start of the
Emerson String Quartet’s cycle of his
15 string quartets. They are works that
are not only dissonant harmonically,
but also dissident politically and in
terms of what they say about the
composer’s inner anguish.
If any music without words can send
out a specific message, these pieces
express the suffering and horror of
a man who lived through just about
every form of inhumanity in his own
country, and across Europe too.
Shostakovich would surely not have
been surprised if someone had told
him that, nearly 50 years after his
death, Russia would still be in thrall
to brutality. And his musical response
to the atrocities of his era, these
wordless screams of protest erupting
from the supposedly refined and
genteel string-quartet medium, might
not have been very different if he had
composed them today.
The Emersons, who are disbanding
in October 2023 after 47 years of
magnificent music-making, are
performing the quartets in
chronological order, with the final sixdeferred. So in this opening recital we
heard three of the least often played.
The First (from 1938) is a curiously
enigmatic work and I don’t think
the players got properly into it until
the finale. The Second and Third,
however, written in 1944 and 1946
respectively, are masterpieces,
deploying unmistakable Shostakovich
fingerprints — machinegun
rhythms; apparently artless folk-like
melodies that get increasingly
embroiled in disquieting counterpoint;
and eerie slow movements that speak
of a bleakness beyond redemption
or consolation.
For these pieces the Emersons —
swapping first and second violins from
work to work — produced not only
volcanic flows of energy but also
miracles of phrasing and tempo
fluctuation. Yes, there were a few
moments when the balance between
the four instruments wasn’t quite right,
but also heartstopping passages when
it felt as if an entire string orchestra
had been summoned into battle, or
when a solo instrument took on the
persona of a singer delivering some
beautiful but lonely lament.
The viola player of the Beethoven
Quartet, which premiered many of
Shostakovich’s quartets, recalled the
composer sitting “like a wounded bird,
tears streaming down his face” after
a rehearsal of the Third Quartet.
The Emersons showed us why that
might have been.
Richard Morrison
Cycle ends tonight,
southbankcentre.co.ukMichael Hugo as Neil “Nello” Baldwin and Suzanne Ahmet as his mother in Theresa Heskins’s playHe’s simply irresistible
The story of Neil ‘Nello’ Baldwin — clown, football mascot and a
celebrity in the Potteries — is now a charming play, says Clive Davis
appearance from the Cure frontman
Robert Smith transformed this
concert from solid comeback to
electro-goth triumph.
As ever, Mayberry’s forceful,
piercing, trebly voice and dynamic,
sky-punching stage charisma were
key selling points, especially on
roaringly melodramatic numbers such
as Violent Delights and Good Girls.
The band’s core musical duo, Iain
Cook and Martin Doherty, spent
much of the show indulging their
closet rock-star urges, switching from
electronic instruments to guitars for
heavier tracks such as Forever and
California. Even so, the narrowbandwidth of Chvrches’ shiny, steely
electro-pop formula began to feel
limited over the long haul.
Energy levels picked up again when
Mayberry disappeared for a brief
costume change, returning in shorts
and T-shirt emblazoned with the
words Final Girl, a song title that refers
to the horror film trope identified by
Carol J Clover in her celebrated book
Men, Women and Chainsaws. These
teasing hints of performance art and
feminist theory added spice to
proceedings. Chvrches should do more
of this, highlighting the intellectual
hinterland behind songs that
sometimes risk sounding like pure
retro pastiche.
Thankfully, Smith’s extended encore
cameo elevated this show from good
to great. He began by trading lead
vocals with Mayberry on their joint
single How Not to Drown. Mayberry
then returned the favour by duetting
on the classic 1987 Cure song Just Like
Heaven, its galloping romantic
euphoria here beefed up with
doom-rock synthesizer trimmings.
Smith stayed to add heft and harmony
to two of the biggest anthems in the
Chvrches canon, The Mother We Share
and Clearest Blue. His chromatic guitar
splashes and sulky sobs underscored
a majestic pan-generational
collaboration, two alternative visions
of the post-punk Eighties in fruitful
dialogue with one another.
Stephen Dalton
O2 Academy Birmingham, tonight;
O2 Apollo Manchester, tomorrowE
merging from an extended
pandemic layoff with all guns
blazing, the Scottish synth-
rock trio Chvrches came to
party like it was 1985 at their
first London show in three years.
Indeed, the performance was rich in
knowing homage to the Glasgow
band’s favourite decade, the Eighties,
from the vintage VHS slasher-movie
motifs of the tracks off their latest
album, Screen Violence, to the singer
Lauren Mayberry’s bright red
glam-vamp dress with exaggerated
power-dressing shoulders, which made
her look like Lady Gaga channelling
Bonnie Tyler. A knockout guestChvrches’ Lauren Mayberry on stage at their first London show for three yearsMARILYN KINGWILLChvrches
O2 Academy Brixton, SW9
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Queen Elizabeth Hall
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theatre
classical
This is music
that is dissonant
harmonically
and politically