June is fast approaching and, as ever, it’s one of the odder months in the performance calendar. Here’s what has caught my eye (so far).
The Chinese Lady by Lloyd Suh and directed by Marjorie Chan opened at Crow’s Theatre on Friday. It’s a presentation of Studio 180 Theatre and features Rosie Simon and John Ng. It’s playing in the very intimate Studio Theatre at Crow’s.
True Crime, a Castleton Massive production, by Torquil Campbell and Chris Abraham opened at Crow’s Theatre last night. It’s essentially a one man show featuring Campbell (not quite… composer Julian Brown provides musical backing throughout). It’s certainly a tour de force by Campbell who is on stage continually for 90 minutes and it’s hard to tell when he’s on script and when he’s improvising. He plays a raft of characters from himself, to his father and wife, an imprisoned con man, several dogs and a bunch of others. And he does it very well. He also sings (and barks).
New announcements about 2023/24 seasons have been coming in. Perhaps the most interesting (unsurprisingly) comes from Crow’s Theatre which has become a “go to” destination in the last few years. Highlights include:
MixTape opened at Crow’s Theatre last night. It’s a one woman show conceived, written and performed by Zorana Sadiq. It’s a complex show and I describe it with some trepidation a i think the whole is considerably greater than the sum of the parts into which I must decompose it. Structurally it’s a mixture of story telling, stand up comedy, recital and recorded music facilitated by Sadiq’s training as a classical singer; Master of Music as she half proudly, half tongue in cheek informs us at one point. The music is eclectic; ranging from Neil Diamond and Michael Jackson to Messiaen and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. It all points to life stages and life events and to a growing realisation that music, and indeed sound, can be much more than we imagine in our first explorations of it. Some of the music is recorded but much is performed, expertly, by Sadiq. There are also, of course, references to the infamous “mx tape” and the limitations of cassette tape technology.
operaramblings 