Opera Review: The Magic Flute

Plot: Mozart’s final masterpiece is the story of a terrifying and joyful journey in pursuit of love, wisdom and happiness. From the stratospheric arias of the Queen of the Night, through the jolly folk tunes of Papageno the Birdcatcher to the profound music of Sarastro, leader of the enlightened ones, it is a full expression of Mozart’s musical and dramatic genius.

This is a restaging of Nicholas Hytner’s 1988 production and having missed it at the ENO last year I didnt want to pass up the chance. Fellow opera fan Abigail has already given it a thumbs up so I was quite looking forward to it. This is somewhat my introduction to Mozart’s work and by the time the overture has finished I knew I would have one helluva time, and then there’s Papageno! Oh I just loved him! Roderick Williams did a really winning performance. With his melodious baritone voice and his comic timing in full gear. Maybe it’s just me but I really couldnt care less about Tamino and Pamina. The most interesting characters were really Papageno and the Queen of the Night, okay, maybe Sarastro even.

I am really tempted now to catch the ETO’s version that will play at the Hackney Empire next week.

The Magic Flute: 4/5

Theatre Review: Burnt by the Sun

Plot: Colonel Kotov (Ciaran Hinds), decorated hero of the Russian Revolution, is spending an idyllic summer in the country with his beloved young wife Maroussia (Michelle Dockery) and family. But on one glorious sunny morning in 1936, his wife’s former lover Mitya (Rory Kinnear) returns from a long and unexplained absence. Amidst a tangle of sexual jealousy, retribution and remorseless political backstabbing, Kotov feels the full, horrifying reach of Stalin’s rule.

The main reason why I wanted to see this play was because of Ciaran Hinds whom I have seen in a number of films and made for tv movies. But it was his role as Captain Wentworth in the BBC adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion that I fell for him hook line and sinker. Tonight was the play’s first preview and it was nice to also be in the company of fellow theatre trotters Phil, Tim of LondonTheatreGoer, Andrew/Phil of the West End Whingers fame still flying high from their recent success after their blog was named as one of the 100 best blogs in the Performing Arts by the Times. YEY!

Tonight is the first preview so expectations are not very high. Saying that, I am amazed at the bevy of talent in this production with Hinds, Rory Kinnear and Michelle Dockery. Please dont shoot me for this confession, but as I am a late bloomer for theatre, I didnt really understood the magnitude of Kinnear’s talent until I saw him in the BBC’s The Long Walk to Finchley where he played Denis Thatcher opposite to an equally effervescent Andrea Riseborough as Margaret. No, I did not see him in The Man of Mode, The Revenger’s Tragey or Philistines. I am playing catch up here alright? As for Dockery, I saw her in Pillars of the Community and last year’s Pygmalion as Eliza Doolittle at The Old Vic.

It took a while for me to get into grips with the play, it wasnt until halfway to the interval that it really got me itching to see Act 2. For a while I even thought, but this is just my type of plot, as I do love anything that has to with espionage when reading or when watching a film. So what was really going on in my head was how good must the film be and how I can get my hand on a copy to see it. Altogether, it was brave attempt to do a stage adaptation. I am not a big fan of films being translated into stage plays but the effort was there – a revolving dacha courtesy of Vicki Mortimer, melodious singing which has now become a staple fare at the National, and a superb performance from the cast, particularly Hinds and Kinnear. I thought Dockery was given too little to play with. She is more than a pretty face, saying that I couldnt help but notice her beatifully trimmed eyebrows! So yes, I’d like to see more of Dockery act; I was mulling over the thought that she could have played a better Barbara Undershaft than Hayley Atwell, although I meant no disrespect there of course.

The highlight of the evening was really my chance meeting with Mr. Hinds who was ever so accommodating when Andrew and I approached him. And our conversation went something like this:

Simone: Hi, I am Simone, I have loved your work since Persuasion, and I really enjoyed your performance tonight.
Ciaran: Really? Thank you!
Andrew: (Sorting out the iPhone to take a photo) Be still as this doesn’t have flash.
Simone & Ciaran poses

Simone: Well,my sister is surely going to be jealous now.
Ciaran: We dont really want her to be jealous now, do we?
Simone: Well, she went and saw Al Pacino whom I love in L.A., we both love you but I am the one here, so bad for her!
Ciaran: Oh right! (He was about to sign my programme then asks) So is Simone spelled with an e in the end? (Brownie points for asking!)

Altogether a wonderful evening at the theatre!

Burnt by the Sun: 3/5
Playing at the Lyttelton, National Theatre until 21 May

Are You a Reader?

Instructions:

1) Look at the list and highlight those you have read.
2) Put a % after those you’ve read a portion of.
3) Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE. (Maybe a – by the ones you really hated.)
4) Star (*) those you plan on reading.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen +
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien +
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte *
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee *
6 The Bible +
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte *
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell *
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens *
11 Little Women – LouisaMay Alcott *
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare % *
15 Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier *
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien +
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger *
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – *
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot *
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald *
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens *
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams*
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky *
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck *
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens*
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis +
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen +
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis +
37 Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini *
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown –
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez *
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – by Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery *
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy *
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel +
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen +
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens *
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley S
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez +
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck *
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold %
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas *
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac X
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy *
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens *
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath *
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt *
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert *
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery +
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks *
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Toole
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare %
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Filmstalker at the BAFTAs

My good friend Richard Brunton, owner of Filmstalker, whose excellent blog is the only film blog I visit, will be at the BAFTAs tonight to cover the event live.

So follow the BAFTAs on telly and then join us for the live blogging at Filmstalker.

Fearless forecast: Big winners for tonight will be Slumdog Millionaire and Kate Winslet.

Facebook Turns 5

Has it really been 5 years that Facebook’s been online and changed the way we connected with family and friends? I remember opening an account in late 2006 after being prodded by fellow filmstalker Ramchandra, but didnt really use it to the full until mid-2007. I have always liked Facebook’s interface and the ease of use, not to mention the glut of applications which at the time really kept my hands full. Nowadays it’s no longer the norm asking people what their mobile phone number is, but what you have probably done like myself was to ask them, are you on Facebook? and hope that you will be added as their friend.

To Facebook, thanks for making social networking as fun and as creative, and here’s to another 10 years!