Month: September 2024

John Dowland And His Cheery Pals, Tim Mead & Sergio Bucheli, Wigmore Hall, 16 September 2024

John Dowland, CC BY-SA 4.0 click here for details

OK, I have a confession to make. The Wigmore Hall did not title this concert “John Dowland And His Cheery Pals”; it merely promised us the superb countertenor Tim Mead and the also excellent lutenist/theorboist Sergio Bucheli.

On arrival, I made a bee-line to the desk where a young woman was handing out programmes. I told Janie that the programme was bound to include a lyric sheet so we all could sing along.

Don’t be ridiculous…

…said Janie.

Have fun…

…said the far more open-minded young lady.

We found ourselves sitting next to a Scottish woman named Fiona, who had sung in her youth and was clearly a huge fan of Tim Mead. She said she might inadvertently sing along, which Janie tells me Fiona sort-of did – under her breath. I chose not to sing along, partly because Tim Mead sings in the wrong pitch for me. I might have tried singing a whole octave down, but wouldn’t have wanted to upstage Tim that way.

More seriously, it was a truly lovely concert. Here is a link to that very programme and song sheet if you want to see what the whole thing contained.

I was familiar with many of the John Dowland songs and lute fantasias, whereas some of the material by other composers was new to me.

We were particularly taken with John Danyel’s three part song, “Mrs M E her funeral tears for the death of her husband”…

…did those guys compete for maximum misery in the subject matter of their songs in those days?…

…a truly beautiful sound that has made me seek out some more John Danyel to hear after the concert.

Here is a link to the first part of the Mrs ME song – don’t be put off if you see a line through the link – it should work for you even if you are not a YouTube Music subscriber.

Tim Mead does a lot of his work with La Nuova Musica – in fact Janie and I didn’t realise that we had seen Tim sing before at one of their concerts – at St John’s Smith Square in 2015:

La Nuova Musica, St John’s Smith Square, 20 March 2015

We had seen Sergio Bucheli several times before, most recently at Wigmore Hall just a few months ago:

All The Bs: Biber, Benjamin, Byrd, Bach…& Brett – Brett Dean Concert, Wigmore Hall, 20 April 2024

We enjoyed every bit of the Dowland and Pals concert, despite the downcast subject matter. With Dowland you can be pretty sure about what you are going to get. Otherwise it would be a bit like going to a Leonard Cohen concert and complaining that the songs are miserable.

Tim Mead and Sergio Bucheli seemed very much at home in this late Renaissance space, although my guess is that home base for them is Baroque music from 70 to 100 years later than the works we heard. I cannot find a sample of these two performing late Renaissance works, but this sampler from their recent album about Purcell And His Perky Pals (OK, it’s actually named Beauteous Softness)…

… has inspired me to stream that album as soon as I have some proper listening time…which might be as soon as 24 hours after the Dowland & Pals concert.

Here In America by David Edgar, Orange Tree Theatre, 14 September 2024

Imagine politics in the USA embroiled in weird paranoia, obsessing about enemies within, making counterfactual accusations directed primarily towards people from migrant communities, with freedoms consequently being eroded by egotistical politicians.

But this isn’t a play about the Trumpian era; the play is about the Second Red Scare in the 1950s and the impact it had on the friendship between playwright Arthur Miller and director Elia Kazan.

I have been a fan of David Edgar’s plays since the mid 1980s, when I got busy reading every play I could get my hands on. In those days I was able to get my hands on a lot of David Edgar’s plays.

In the 80s and 90s I got to see several David Edgar plays performed, but he is not so prolific these days and not often revived in places that Janie and I tend to visit.

Still, like London buses, after a dearth of Edgars for several years, two new ones have come along at the same time: this one and The New Real, which we have booked to see in Stratford-Upon-Avon next month.

This one, Here In America, is just our sort of play – and this production at The Orange Tree is just our sort of production – we loved it.

I have long been fascinated by the phenomenon that became known as McCarthyism and in particular the impact it had on the performing arts. In 1952 Elia Kazan eventually agreed to name names rather than jeopardise his career, whereas Arthur Miller risked jail by refusing to name names when he was summoned to the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1954, around the time that Kazan was enhancing his career with films such as On The Waterfront:

In David Edgar’s hands, this story fizzes with political and interpersonal energy. The play is mostly dialogue between Kazan and Miller, with Kazan’s wife, Molly Day in a great many of the scenes. Several scenes also include Marilyn Monroe, who appears in Milleresque fashion, perhaps as flashbacks, perhaps as unreliable memories or perhaps as imaginings. Very reminiscent of such scenes in Miller plays, e.g. Death Of A Salesman. Very well done.

All the actors played their parts well: Michael Aloni (who struck us as very Arthur Miller-like), Jasmine Blackborow, Faye Castelow and Shaun Evans. Director James Dacre is also to be congratulated for making this multi-faceted play work extremely well within the limits of The Orange Tree’s small in-the-round space.

Janie and I left The Orange Tree with lots to discuss; many big-picture political matters, questions around loyalty to friends and also loyalty to loved ones. Both Kazan and Miller betrayed their wives with Marilyn Monroe and later, arguably, jointly betrayed Monroe’s memory through their work.

But before we left the auditorium, or rather as we were leaving, I was able to congratulate David Edgar in person. We were there on the first preview night for this show so it was hardly a surprise to spot him there. I asked him if Here In America and the forthcoming play The New Real are companion pieces.

Didn’t really think about it that way…but there are two lines that appear in both plays,

he said. I promised to form my own opinion on that question. I’m glad I had the opportunity to speak with David Edgar, albeit very briefly, having followed his work for so many decades.

The evening even generated a memory flash from 50 years ago, which I have written up in a separate Ogblog piece:

Tomorrow, Tomorrow, I’ll Name Names, Tomorrow…Playing Call My Bluff In An English Class, Was It 1S Or 2AK? 1974 or 1975

It was a very memorable preview night in the theatre. I’ll add a review link once the play has been formally reviewed. It is running at The Orange Tree until 19 October. Highly recommended by both me and Janie.