Moscow
Uncle Vanya/Three Sisters, Wyndham's TheatreFriday, 25 April 2014
London has had its fair share recently of Chekhov productions from Russia, though none anywhere near as quietly truthful as these from Moscow's Mossovet State Academic Theatre. Veteran film and theatre director-designer Andrey Konchalovsky... Read more... |
10 Questions for Director Dmitry KrymovThursday, 17 April 2014
Dmitry Krymov (b 1954) is one of Russia’s most groundbreaking and celebrated contemporary theatre directors and set designers. Performances by his “Theatre Laboratory” are renowned for combining multimedia with art installation techniques to... Read more... |
Prince Igor, Novaya Opera, London ColiseumWednesday, 02 April 2014
Had this Moscow production any serious ideas in its head until its suddenly effective epilogue, much might have been pertinently said about an opera in which an imperialistic campaign ends in disaster, and where the Polovtsian “enemy” shows far more... Read more... |
Britten 100: Death in MoscowMonday, 16 December 2013
“A cold coming we had of it,” grumble the three kings in T S Eliot’s poem “The Journey of the Magi” later set by Britten as his Canticle IV. “Just the worst time of year for a journey,” they complain, carried onwards by the ungulate bass notes of... Read more... |
Opinion: How can the Bolshoi rise again?Wednesday, 04 December 2013
Money, love, professional jealousy - the three undying motives for personal crime, and all three were present in the Bolshoi Ballet acid trial. An international public that scoffed happily at the OTT ballet horror-show that was the film Black Swan... Read more... |
DVD: Pussy Riot - A Punk PrayerTuesday, 26 November 2013
Access and trust are the key issues facing any documentary director, especially when the film concerned touches on questions that arouse controversy in society. It’s a long time since I've seen a work that achieved so much on those two fronts as... Read more... |
The Flames of Paris, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera HouseMonday, 19 August 2013
The Bolshoi left it till last to be most itself, to dance a ballet that is truly of its blood, its seed - its closing on Alexei Ratmansky's The Flames of Paris will leave much happiness in the memory to override the problematic productions of... Read more... |
The Sleeping Beauty, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera HouseTuesday, 06 August 2013
The Bolshoi Theatre reopened in late autumn 2011 after a problematic six-year refurbishment said to have cost a tidy billion dollars, many times its original estimate thanks to corruption - it needed a corker of a ballet premiere to pop the eyes of... Read more... |
La Bayadère, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera HouseSunday, 04 August 2013
It’s unspeakably bad for so many reasons that the injured Bolshoi Ballet director Sergei Filin cannot be in London to see his company perform, and one is that he can’t see his protegée Olga Smirnova revealing herself to us as destined to be one of... Read more... |
Swan Lake, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera HouseTuesday, 30 July 2013
Everyone must be wishing the Bolshoi Ballet a swift return to company health after the tragic events of this year, as well as a return to physical health by their horribly injured artistic director - in the circumstances it’s heroic that they have... Read more... |
Coppélia, Stanislavsky Ballet, London ColiseumFriday, 12 July 2013
When a person is happy in his work, he does his best. So best ignore what Sergei Polunin says on the page of a newspaper and look at what he does on stage. Now there’s a happy boy. Polunin is the one reason to see the Stanislavsky Ballet at the... Read more... |
Bolshoi storms continue with loss of chief execTuesday, 09 July 2013
Just a fortnight before Russia's great Bolshoi Ballet lands in London for its splendid summer tour, it has now added a lost chief executive to its tally of a blinded ballet director, an arrested dancer, and a sacked star.The Russian press reports... Read more... |
