Partnership rises to the challenge of perfect piece
Music
students, each to his/her own part, delivered a glorious, wonderfully-characterised performance from an indivisible ensemble.
The Serenade is a demanding piece in every respect.
It is, I have always felt in my gut since I got to know it as a lad, perhaps the most perfect piece of music ever written.
It is utterly flawless on every front, from conception to instrumentation, from texturing to colouring, from pacing to structuring.
Across the widest range of styles from graceful elegance to dynamite animation, it has a broad palette of emotional states, from the heartbreak of the third movement with oboist Robin Williams’ aching solo, to the ensemble hilarity of the finale and the warm humour of Alison Green’s matchless timing on the contrabassoon.
Natural horns blended effortlessly with valve horns, and the gentle murmuring of basset horns and clarinets was unforgettable; a magnificent tour de force from all 13 players. Mary Brennan THE pints are being pulled to order. The Scotch pies are being lined up, piping hot, as is the quiche that caters for those of a vegetarian disposition.
It’s lunchtime theatre at Oran Mor and our appetites are suitably whetted for Snout, produced in association with the Sherman Theatre in Wales.
Mere minutes in, and the play has started warping time: the cast of three are going all out to inject pace and vitality into Kelly Jones’s lines but to no avail – those minutes are dragging by at the speed of a sedated sloth.
Onstage, in a grim box-set representing the back of a livestock lorry, are Sally Reid (Viv), Claire Cage (Coco) and Michele Gallagher (Lacey), three little pigs who gradually realise that they are not going on a jaunt to the summer fete (pronounced “fate”, of course) but to the slaughterhouse. Jones, intent on making us care, has been at pains to give them each everyday individuality. Viv is a tad frumpy but kind-hearted and religious with it. Coco is bolshie with the leather jacket, ripped jeans and fags. Lacey in her body-con LBD is a self-styled TV star – she’s been in a short film that was probably about animal rights, but being a bit of an air-head, she probably didn’t notice.
Kenny Miller is the director tasked with making a silk purse out of this sow’s ear. The text, and concept, stymie him. Cartoons can get away with anthropomorphic tropes because the animals aren’t so obviously flesh and blood humans.
On-stage, with only the occasional oink amid references to farmyard life – where blissful ignorance of the meat trade apparently goes hand in trotter with an existence akin to soap opera plot-lines – there’s no discomfiting sense that what we’re hearing is the bacon bringing home unpalatable facts about meat as murder. Sponsored by Heineken
Theatre