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Post by tonyloco on Oct 1, 2020 11:43:26 GMT
I saw the report of Helen Reddy's death and remembered her from my time at EMI as a Capitol recording artist.
I had no idea she was Australian, but good on her for making such a successful career, mainly in the USA.
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Post by tonyloco on Apr 2, 2020 16:49:47 GMT
Sorry...I forgot the thread was about Shakespeare productions when I got side-tracked with A Flea in Her Ear.
And I will take this opportunity to say that I saw Gielgud doing his readings from Shakespeare called The Ages of Man which was brilliant.
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Post by tonyloco on Apr 2, 2020 16:26:13 GMT
Here comes the tonyloco anecdote, just a quickie in this case.
My oldest memory of a Shakespeare play in London is a strong if rather general recollection of the Zeffirelli Romeo and Juliet at the Old Vic in 1960 with Judi Dench and John Stride. I remember the production being full of life, the crowd scenes being particularly vivid, and the young principals giving superb performances.
The funniest play I ever saw was the Old Vic's A Flea in Her Ear in 1966 with Geraldine McEwan and Albert Finney where the audience was literally rolling in the aisles. Finney was a particularly effective stage actor although over the years I also saw some amazing performances by top class actors like John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Laurence Olivier, Alec Guinness and other great thespians.
And I have to give a special shout to the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park for a succession of magical productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream over more than half-a-century which have never disappointed, despite the vagaries of the weather!
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 22, 2020 19:31:39 GMT
I wasn't going to post on this thread but Xanady on the 'Happiest musical memories' thread has invited me to continue with my recollections so....
OK. Here's the view from the other end of the telescope. As I recently related on another thread I have been going to the theatre for more than 70 years and it still remains a unique and magical experience....well, most of the time!
I have talked about the first musicals I saw in Sydney, with Annie Get Your Gun as the clincher in 1947/48.
As for plays, I realised early on since I was about 10 or 11 that I loved the theatre in all its forms. I had seen the so-called 'West End' comedies that were regularly toured in Australia (Worm's Eye View and Sailor Beware! were examples) but they were frivolous lightweight vehicles for comic actors and made little impression on me. I have also spoken about how I enjoyed seeing Robert Helpmann and Katherine Hepburn in 1955 leading a company from the Old Vic playing The Taming of the Shrew, Measure for Measure and The Merchant of Venice, but they were more occasions to see legendary film stars on stage in very lavish productions that were more celebrity occasions than great performances of the plays, although those two stars were no slouches when it came to acting.
I had also seen that excellent Australian play The Summer of the Seventh Doll as well as Judith Anderson in Medea, and various other things in the small professional theatres around Sydney. And I recall a wonderful production in 1958 of The Chalk Garden with Dame Sybil Thorndyke and Sir Lewis Casson that was funny and moving and totally brilliant, as indeed was the revival at the Donmar a few years ago.
But the play that I saw in June 1959 that really showed me how powerful theatre could be was Long Day's Journey into Night, with a cast of Australia's leading actors including Ron Haddrick, Dinah Shearing and Frank Waters. The laying bare of the raw emotions of the Tyrone family was a harrowing experience and none of the productions I have seen more recently in London have seemed as good.
And as an extra bonus, after the performance my colleague from Sydney University, Clive James, walked back with me the 20 minutes or so from the suburban Elizabethan Theatre in Newtown to the transport hub at Railway Square. Clive, who was already a very bright and well-informed young man, discussed the play in detail with me and especially alerted me to the poetry quotations in the last act which, sadly, are generally cut from modern productions to reduce the running time.
The O'Neill play certainly consolidated my love of straight theatre, but I have to admit that I have had similar 'Road to Damascus' moments as regards opera, ballet and symphony concerts so I guess I just subscribe to the dictum that there's no business like show business!
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 22, 2020 13:58:31 GMT
My single happiest musical memory is the first time I sat in the front row of the stalls for a stage musical. It was about five years ago for a very high quality amateur production of My Fair Lady at the Bristol Hippodrome and started off my long-term love for that particular show and for amateur and college musicals generally. I had booked that front row seat simply because it was cheaper than elsewhere - the look up to the stage is particularly high there. I'd never been so close to the action before and I recall a lovely Eliza singing like an angel and a superb Alfie Doolittle.I was totally entranced and from that day onwards I've always booked a centre front row stalls seat whenever I can. I love venues where there are only inches between the audience feet and the performers so Menier, Southwark Playhouse, Upstairs at The Gatehouse and the Union Theatre to name a few are places where I spend my happiest theatre-going times. Missing it all soooo much just now. If I may just expand on this idea for a moment, as much as I love sitting in the front row for musicals, I have also had the great pleasure in actually being onstage with the performers when I was playing for the many music hall and variety shows that I have accompanied over the years. One of the beauties of this arrangement is that not only could I see and enjoy what the artistes were doing close up, but I could also see the reaction of the entire audience, which could sometimes be amazing with a really effective stand-up comic as well as certain singers who could totally take-over an audience with their communicative power.
To cite just one special example, I remember when Wayne Sleep was first moving from dancing with the Royal Ballet to going into variety, and at an annual gala at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park he sang and danced to 'Yankee Doodle Dandy' The audience of around 1,200 people went crazy and yelled for more but we had no encore prepared so we just did the whole number again to an even wilder reaction!
My avatar shows the view I had from the regular position of my piano on the stage of the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, for the many variety shows I played for there over the years.
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 20, 2020 15:26:30 GMT
Of course...! But how could you bear to part with them?
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 20, 2020 13:22:38 GMT
I have to say the longer i've been going to the theatre the less of an event or special occasion it's become. I still absolutely love it obviously and it's my main hobby but it feels a bit run of the mill now and it feels sometimes a bit like just ticking things of a list. I love thinking back to a few years ago when i'd be excited about seeing something for weeks and it felt special, especially if it meant a London trip, and they are the shows and trips that still stand out. (is it just me who feels that way btw?) I often wish i could get that feeling back and funnily enough having this imposed theatre break for the next few months might do it! I completely agree with you, I'd been feeling the same about my theatre-going turning into a list-ticking exercise, and I hope that this downtime makes the flame reignite once we can jump back into that world again! Gosh, that surprises me. Looking back over a period of some 70 years of theatre-going, albeit with long gaps when I was playing piano most nights, I don't think I ever felt it became routine. If I wasn't enjoying a show I would leave in the interval, but for those that I did enjoy it always remained a special experience and I would try to go back and see my favourite shows more than once, although this was often not possible at places like Chichester, Wimbledon or Richmond.
And my many visits to 42nd Street recently just confirmed that my love for musicals hadn't diminished and I was still getting plenty of bang for my buck night after night at Drury Lane!
But maybe it is the more frequent going to the theatre just to tick off seeing the latest shows that may become routine, and as I got quite aged I was no longer able to do this anyway.
However, each to their own and that's the fascination of a forum like this where we can all express our differing views!
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 20, 2020 12:03:54 GMT
I'll never forget the night he played the Scottish King. We made him a present of Mornington Crescent… we threw it a brick at a time... It's not just his talent, it's all his memories and vital library link to our variety and music hall past. Sleep well, sweet King. Yes, I was there that night too. What a reception!
They threw nuts and sultanas, fried eggs and bananas...!
And that was just at the end of Act I...
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 20, 2020 11:26:02 GMT
Horton asks 'Who has the longest musical memory?' and regular readers will know it is probably me, with my frequent references to being knocked out by 'Annie Get Your Gun' in Sydney in 1947/48 starring Evie Hayes. I was all of 11 years old but I can still see and hear the whole show in my mind's eye, although I did see it about six times – my theatre-loving mother was very accommodating about taking me to see shows like that!
Before that, I have vague memories of the wonderful variety shows at the Tivoli with jugglers, acrobats, comics, singers and a line of Tivoli chorus girls who seemed like wondrous, glamourous creatures from some magic land of singing and dancing. And before 'Annie Get Your Gun' I still have clear memories of seeing 'The Desert Song' and 'White Horse Inn', the latter with its revolving stage that presented four or five separate scenes and then revolved at the end of the performance to show each of the sets in turn. There was also a rain storm where water fell just behind the footlights into a gutter across the stage. This seemed like pure theatrical magic to a small child aged about 9 or 10 – not to mention the cast singing and dancing behind the rain while holding up umbrellas!
After 'Annie' the most memorable musicals in Sydney during the 1950s were 'Call Me Madam' with Evie Hayes and 'Kiss Me, Kate' with Hayes Gordon and Maggie Fitzgibbon.
Well, I was asked!
PS We will never get a chance to see the version of 'Annie Get Your Gun' that so bedazzled me because it is now politically very incorrect and has been sanitised to remove songs like 'I'm an Indian Too' which seemed a lot of innocent fun back in 1948, when small children played 'Cowboys and Indians', and 'Red Indians' were the villains in so many Hollywood Westerns and serials.
Sorry for rambling, but it gives me something to do while I am self-isolating.
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 18, 2020 16:16:29 GMT
I'm trying to keep up but I'm still thinking about Dame Nellie Melba busking on the District Line and BurlyBear doing strange things so most of the recent posts have thoroughly confused me.
But I do want to remind players that Mary-le-Bone should be pronounced Marrabn (not a lot of people know that) and St John's Wood is Sinjin Bois, so I suppose my next move would have to be:
Neasden, pronounced Kneesdn.
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 17, 2020 20:12:47 GMT
And in 2010/11 he appeared in a wonderful production of Priestley's When We Are Married at the Garrick with a starry cast including Michele Dottrice, Simon Rouse, Sam Kelly, Maureen Lipman, Rosemary Ashe, Lynda Baron and Susie Blake. It was hilarious from start to finish and nobody in the large cast put a foot wrong.
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 17, 2020 14:30:03 GMT
Oh gosh, the monkey has just made the move I was about to make.
I thought I was the only one old enough to remember the Angel when it was a life-endangering experience to walk along that extremely narrow underground central platform between the two tracks, but one had to get to Sadler's Wells somehow to see all those Australian opera singers singing in very clear English.
In which case, despite my semi-self-isolation, I have no option but to offer my now local station, which brings a smile to my face (the name, not the station):
Upney
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 16, 2020 14:31:15 GMT
It was my privilege some years ago to play piano for a music hall tour with the Hiss and Boo company starring Roy Hudd. He was a real star and fully understood what music hall was about and yet kept it current with his humour and personality as well as his accomplished singing.
The tour included a couple of shows in the Fairfield Hall, Croydon, and when I saw how large the venue was I wondered how we would ever fill it. I needn't have worried: it turned out that Roy was a local Croydon lad and the shows were filled to capacity, in fact I do believe people were hanging from the rafters! And Roy didn't disappoint.
Goodbye Roy: a lovely man who brought much joy and pleasure to many people through his brilliant performances as an actor, singer, comedian and all-round entertainer.
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 11, 2020 13:45:43 GMT
I've only seen straight plays here, mostly STC productions. I've seen a few cabaret style shows next door in the smaller Studio (where Six played recently). Perhaps with the Concert Hall closed for renovations this was the best available? And the Theatre Royal definitely won't be opening any time soon. I walk past most days and it's still a bomb site. Many thanks, mistressjojo. That's rather what I thought about the regular use of the Drama Theatre.
Still, I suppose a 'new' smallish venue in Sydney for musicals is to be welcomed. I wish them well!
I presume you will be attending and I look forward to your review, including some comments as to how suitable the venue proves to be for this kind of show.
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 11, 2020 11:50:10 GMT
Everybody's Talking About Jamie will have it's Australian premiere at the Sydney Opera House from 18th July. Playing till 30th August, it will then tour the state capitals. Newcomer James Majoos has been cast as Jamie, supported by Simon Burke AO, Helen Dallimore, Elise McCann and Shubshri Kandiah. Tickets on sale 17th March. When I got the promotional material from the Sydney Opera House about this I was surprised to see that Jamie will be playing in the Drama Theatre. I don't know whether this has been used before for musicals, but it is a 'shoe-box' shape auditorium which seats 544 people on a single level in roughly 20 rows of 30 seats according to the seating plan and I thought was intended for straight plays.
I can understand that Sydney's two main musical houses, the Lyric and the Capitol, are probably too big and may be already booked for other big musicals and it does not look like the Theatre Royal has yet re-opened.
Does mistressjojo or anybody else know whether the Drama Theatre has been used for musicals before? I see on the website that the Bangarra Dance Theatre performs there as well as various Drama companies, but no musicals are mentioned.
I will be very interested if anybody can fill me in further on this.
Thanks.
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 10, 2020 13:30:52 GMT
No Leonora No. 3 last night Tony (it's a wonderful overture!) I too cherished my classic vinyl recording of the Klemperer/Philharmonia Fidelio* which as well as the wonderful Vickers has the peerless Christa Ludwig as Leonora (unlike Davidsen much warmth in her performance.) *I'm fairly sure there's no overture interpolation in this recording but I've heard other conductors include it at The Garden and ENO. Yes, there is no Leonore No.3 Overture in the EMI recording of Fidelio under Klemperer but it is included in the Testament release of a live performance by Klemperer at the ROH from February 1961. There is online a detailed review of both recordings by KM.
As another TL anecdote, the chairman of EMI in the 1960s, Sir Joseph Lockwood knew nothing about opera but was stung by the great success Decca was having with its very vivid recordings of opera under producer Jphn Culshaw. The most spectacular example of this was Culshaw's Rheingold with its amazing sonic effects including the anvils in Niebelheim, the change in voice of Alberich when he put on the Tarnhelm and of course the crack of thunder and lightning when Thor swings his hammer towards the end. This recording sold like a pop album and people bought it in vast quantities to demonstrate the hi-fi equipment they had all been investing in since the advent of stereo! Lockwood was particularly annoyed that the principal producer of opera at EMI, Walter Legge, did not even like stereo and totally avoided any sound effects in his recordings.
When Lockwood heard that Legge was recording Fidelio at Kingsway Hall, he brought in a second team of recording engineers from Abbey Road who proceeded to add Decca-like sound effects to their tapes. The most spectacular of these occurred in the dungeon scene with creaking doors, clanking chains and plenty of echo. Lockwood had a test pressing made of this part of the opera and sent it to the principal London critics, who thought it was ludicrous and sounded more like a night in a haunted house than Beethoven's great opera. I suspect their replies to Lockwood were more temperate than that, but they all said tactfully that the sound effects were not really appropriate for this opera.
In relating this story many years later, Lockwood says he does not know whether any of his version of the master tapes were used in the final release, but there is no doubt that Legge would never have agreed to that and fortunately Lockwood was not able to ruin one of EMI's best and most iconic opera recordings.
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 10, 2020 10:44:11 GMT
tmesis said:
"Fidelio is a difficult opera to pull off in many ways, not helped by Beethoven, who begins in the world of Die Zauberflote but ends it closer to the Missa Solemnis. Along the way is some of the most sublime music written by any composer."
Following up tmesis's comments about Bethoven's changing musical style throughout Fidelio, I don't suppose Pappano does what Klemperer did in his Fidelio, which was to throw in a performance of the Leonore No.3 Overture. This rather disrupted the dramatic flow of the piece but, hey, Klemperer conducting the Leonore No.3 was a glorious bonus.
Is the Leonore No.3 Overture heard in the current production?
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 9, 2020 16:45:24 GMT
If memory serves me correctly, Clive Rowe as the Dame got a big laugh in a previous production of this panto at Hackney when, while attempting to climb up the beanstalk, he launched into a few lines of 'Defying Gravity'!
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 9, 2020 11:28:48 GMT
Hmmm, how would Kerry Ellis and Charlie Stemp sound for this? I would love to see how this would work in the Menier, it seems like a perfect winter warmer Not Charlie Stemp...he is much too wholesome! Joey is a seedy little heel, despite his physical attractions!
And probably too tall. Vera describes him as a 'half-pint imitation' and later sings:
'Wise at last, my eyes at last Are cutting you down to your size at last"
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 8, 2020 14:52:01 GMT
3 stars is incredibly generous. It’s one of the worst directed amateurish messes I’ve ever seen. Absolutely shocking. Dreadful design, an insipid leading man and horrible songs. Oh, shall I take that to mean you didn't think much of the show, mrbarnaby?
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 8, 2020 10:44:36 GMT
Thanks tmesis for the musical analysis of 'Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered' as well as reminding us of some of Hart's clever if naughty lyrics.
One aspect of Pal Joey is that, like Cabaret, a significant number of the songs are performed in a nightclub setting and the contrast between these and the story songs is striking, especially in the musical writing by Richard Rodgers.
When I played piano for the bar entertainment at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, I sometimes had the wonderful Toni Palmer sitting by the piano leading the singing. Toni, as a young dancer, had been in the 1954 London production of Pal Joey and one of the songs we both enjoyed performing was 'That Terrific Rainbow'. Hart's lyrics are ingenious but Rodgers's 'bump and grind' belt music from 1940 is perfect for the style and could hardly be further away from the music he was about to write with Oscar Hammerstein starting with Oklahoma! in 1943.
This new production of Pal Joey is going to have a lot to live up to...!
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 8, 2020 3:17:56 GMT
Checking it must have been 1981 when it knocked me sideways. Today on here it's hard to appreciate just how 'unhip' a classic musical was. With friends I'd been going to see David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Dammed, Elvis Costello, Queen etc etc etc But if I had a time machine this is what I'd go back to see. A year later there was a production of another R&H show, On Your Toes and I'd discovered Opera. Still go to the occasional 'rock' concert but as far as I'm concerned, I've never looked back. And of course that production of On Your Toes introduced Tim Flavin to London audiences and starred the brilliant ballerina Natalia Makarova, whose Swan Lake and Giselle with the Kirov Ballet Company were the greatest performances of those two classic roles I have ever seen. So, Mr Snow, with those memorable productions of Pal Joey and On your Toes you couldn't have had a better introduction to top class musical theatre IMHO. And as for opera....well let's not go into that on this thread!
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 7, 2020 20:13:49 GMT
For the younger generation I can make a few comments, but a look at Wikipedia will supply plenty of information about Pal Joey.
Firstly, the 1940 show by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart starred Vivienne Segal, by then a Broadway and Hollywood veteran, and a young Gene Kelly playing his first leading role. In those days Broadway original cast recordings were a rarity and nothing was recorded, but in 1950 Goddard Lieberson at CBS made a sort of 'original cast' LP with Vivienne Segal and Harold Lang (who had taken over the role of Joey). This led to a revival of the show on Broadway in 1952 when Capitol made a studio cast album featuring some of the members of the Broadway revival cast but not the leads who were replaced by Jane Froman and Dick Beavers. It was these two wonderful LPs that introduced me to the show and I can recommend both of them without reservation. The London revival cast with Sian Phillips and Denis Lawson was also recorded and is worth checking out.
The original show has some of Larry Hart's most overtly sexual lyrics and the songs were banned from radio broadcast in their original form although a sanitised version of 'Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered' was recorded by a number of performers and became a big hit in 1950. The film version made in 1957 with Frank Sinatra, Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak was also watered down and does not represent the original stage show with any accuracy.
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 7, 2020 11:18:45 GMT
That's interesting. Eyre's been wanting to do this show for DECADES, and once had Diana Rigg in mind to play Vera -- who, like Dee, has played Phyllis in FOLLIES. Robbie Fairchild would be a great co-star if he feels like returning to London. Oh, wow! Robert Fairchild and Janie Dee in Pal Joey might even coax me back to visiting the theatre again at my advanced age!
I expect the older folk among us remember the wonderful production in the West End in 1980 with Sian Phillips and Denis Lawson and all those clever sexy songs! But whoever plays Joey, I expect the show will still work if it is done well.
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 6, 2020 11:45:26 GMT
Since the theatremonkey has condoned my going off in a different direction in the thread about Tracey Ann Oberman as Shylock, I am going to do it again here in talking about when an audience is so moved by something that they fail to applaud.
It concerns the production of Side by Side by Sondheim at The Venue in Leicester Square in 2007 with Josie Walker and Abbie Osmon:
"Sadly the theatre was half empty, but those hardy souls who did turn up were extremely appreciative and received all the songs with great enthusiasm, except the powerful duet ‘A boy like that’ from West Side Story which was done with such emotional strength that the audience sat in stunned silence at the end for quite a long time before applauding, which was the biggest compliment they could have paid the two singers."
And of course at a good performance of Tosca there should be no applause after the aria 'Vissi d'arte' in Act II if the soprano is dramatically convincing in her singing and acting of Tosca's situation at that moment.
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 6, 2020 10:55:12 GMT
Yes. It was in 1955 …… ….. In the 1950s the professional theatre in Sydney did very few productions of Shakespeare or the classics so this visit of the Old Vic with three Shakespeare Plays was a major theatrical event Have you read "Inside Trader" by Trader Faulkner (Australian actor born 1927) ? He reports on the visit by Tyrone Guthrie to Australia in 1949 to advise them on setting up a National Theatre - his report was rather disobliging ! "At that time Tyrone Guthrie was visiting Australia to advise on the possibility of forming an Australian National Theatre. In Britain, Guthrie had directed all the greats – Olivier, Guinness, Gielgud, and Richardson – in some of the most famous productions of the 1930s and 40s. In Australia, however, he was intensely disliked for having candidly told his hosts, ‘Well, ladies and gentlemen, as regards an Australian national theatre, you’re simply not yet ready. So you’d better put that idea down the lavatory and pull the chain.’ This was said at a reception in his honour, after his having seen what Australia had to offer theatrically." Brilliant! No, I am not familiar with "Inside Trader" but I will look it out I think Guthrie was talking sense, but he might have expressed it a bit more politely. In fact, in 1954 the Elizabethan Theatre Trust was established as a kind of Australian National Theatre but as well as drama they also supported opera and ballet in which they were more successful than drama. But before I left Australia in 1960, the Trust had put on, amongst other plays, a production of Medea starring Judith Anderson, Julius Caesar (Shakespeare), Ray Lawler's Australian play The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll and a memorable version of Long Day's Journey into Night which was quite overwhelming. But in 1949 the commercial theatre, certainly in Sydney, was putting on only the latest American musical comedies, usually with imported stars, and the flimsiest West End comedies so I can imagine how Guthrie felt after he saw the state of commercial theatre there at that time. But in defence of my Aussie pals, I should say that there were some outstandingly good local actors and actresses who worked on the radio and Guthrie may not have been aware of this. Sorry but I seem to have hijacked this thread away from Tracy Ann Oberman as Shylock!
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 5, 2020 22:53:36 GMT
Katharine Hepburn as Portia And yet again our beloved tonyloco drops a jealousy bomb on us all from on high... oh wow, Tony, just, wow! Yes. It was in 1955 and a complete company from the Old Vic toured Australia with rather lavish traditional productions of The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure and The Taming of the Shrew. Robert Helpmann and Katharine Hepburn played the leads in all three plays and they were directed by Michael Benthall. It was a six-month tour of all the capital cities. As a wide-eyed 18-year-old I saw all three productions and was blown away by the magnificence of it all. In the 1950s the professional theatre in Sydney did very few productions of Shakespeare or the classics so this visit of the Old Vic with three Shakespeare Plays was a major theatrical event and to get to see Helpmann and especially Hepburn in those iconic roles was something really special – and they didn't disappoint. In those days nobody worried about the morality of these particular plays regarding their treatment of women or Jews – they were just plays for entertainment – and the season was warmly welcomed by the critics and the public alike and my memories of seeing the plays remain vivid some 65 years later.
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 5, 2020 11:55:37 GMT
Thinking about The Merchant of Venice, I saw a totally traditional production in Sydney in the late 1950s starring Robert Helpmann as Shylock and Katharine Hepburn as Portia.
These days I expect Hepburn would play Shylock, but would Helpmann play Portia? Probably!
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 5, 2020 11:37:08 GMT
I saw Louis Smith in the two versions of Rip It Up (the 1960s and the 1970s) and he was excellent.
He has a strong stage presence and one is drawn to look at him when he is on stage. As far as I remember, his singing was OK and his dancing, as we know from Strictly, is first class and includes acrobatics as well as traditional steps. One of his most impressive numbers was a slow adagio routine in which he really excelled with smouldering passion as well as great finish – really classy! I can't speak for his acting, but 'two out of three ain't bad'!
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 5, 2020 11:19:10 GMT
Saw this on Sunday I kind of understand the lack of appreciation for the production and for Kauf's Dunkel hier aria he was clearly not at his best. However, I was completely baffled by the lack of applause for the Quartet song in Act 1 which was sung impressively by the singers albeit not at the level of Gundula Janowitz et El in Vienna but still very good. Maybe most of the people who could afford to pay the astronomical prices for this Fidelio were not true opera aficionados and were there to see Kaufmann rather than Fidelio and of course he is not in the first Act.
Or the performance of the quartet was so good that the audience was carried away and did not want to break the spell by applauding. That is a great compliment to the performers if it is a genuine reaction for the right reason, but not if it happens from ignorance!
And now I have to throw in one of my usual anecdotes and say that to hear Jon Vickers sing Florestan, which I did a number of times (including under Klemperer) remains one of my greatest opera-going memories – and that was at prices that we all could afford!
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