“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls”.
Pablo Picasso
There have been years – probably too many in all honesty – in which the winter and early spring months have seen life’s dust accumulate upon our souls just that little bit too briskly.
Exposure to the arts may not truly require that much of an effort, but those of us of ‘un certain âge‘ are doubtless sometimes guilty of hibernational tendencies when is comes to our artistic intake during these dark months.
Not so this year! We have already been out and about a fair bit – and the dust of daily life has been well and truly disturbed.
Herewith a few highlights:
The threatre season at The Belfry started in February with Tawiah M’Carthy and Brad Cook’s excellent ‘Maanomaa, My Brother’. The Belfry’s notes reveals this:
“Childhood friends Kwame and Will reunite in Ghana for the funeral of a loved one, and discover how much has changed since they separated 25 years earlier. Telling their story in a beautiful combination of dialogue and movement, the play is both fiercely personal and curiously abstract. It’s a meditation on grief and diaspora starring playwrights M’Carthy and Cook“.
This is an extraordinarily beautiful and moving piece of writing, brought fiercely to life by its authors. The writing and performance are excellent and I for one was delighted that the production did not shy away from the theatrical – something that to my mind is all too prevalent these days.
Neither The Girl nor I care for the west coast habit of leaping to one’s feet at the end of a show to award a generous ovation. We cleave to the British view that standing ovations should be reserved for the truly exceptional.
In this case, however, we were both on our feet!
At the opposite end of the theatrical scale The Girl and I travelled with dear friends, one weekend in March, to the mainland for the ‘Broadway Across Canada‘ touring production of ‘Les Misérables‘ at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver.
Now, The Girl and I – separately and together – have both seen ‘Les Mis‘ on many occasions, stretching right back to the show’s transfer to the West End in London from the RSC’s home at the Barbican in 1985.
That we have done so should not be taken as a sign of obsessive reverence for the piece – though we have always enjoyed it. The reality is more prosaic. In the decade that we lived together in the UK we were visited on a pleasing number of occasions by travellers from Canada. When asked what they would like to see in London, ‘a musical‘ was always near the top of the list. ‘Les Mis‘ proved to be a reliably satisfactory way of fulfilling that desire.
With regard to the Vancouver touring production – the show provided its accustomed magic, but we did miss the full-stage revolve that had been such a integral and bold feature of the original show’s staging.
On the other hand – it was good to hear a full 16 piece orchestra featured in this production. Many modern presentations save money by utilising a heavily stripped down pit band.
On which subject – next time, music!
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