Small but deadly - Lautrec at the Courtauld

A summer gem glinting in the London galleries this season is the excellent Toulouse-Lautrec / Jane Avril exhibition at the Courtauld...

This small top-floor show (tip - pack extra oxygen and wear flats, or prepare to join a long queue for the lift!) focuses on the painter's works featuring Moulin Rouge muse, dancer Avril - notorious for her skeletal frame and erratic bird-like movements.

Of Lautrec, Avril said "Without a doubt I owed him the fame I enjoyed from that very first moment his poster of me appeared."

Lautrec's intense, studied and vibrant works absorb the viewer into the skewed, bohemian world of 1890's Paris.

The exhibition includes sketches and studies for some of Lautrec's most famous paintings and poster-works, giving an insight into his creative energy and composition process.

A major highlight is his iconic 'At the Moulin Rouge' group portrait - on special loan from the Art Institute of Chicago - a dynamically composed homage to the major players in his Montmartre circle.

Speaking of Lautrec's unique rapport with his female models, which shines through in these works, Avril commented "They were his friends as well as his models. He in turn had an uplifting effect on them. In his presence they were just women, and he treated them as equals. When he ate with them, often bringing a party of friends, they held their knives and forks daintily, restrained their conversation, had the feeling of being women of some standing. Lautrec's almost womanly intuition and sympathy shone like a light for them."

There is also a portrait of Avril dancing made by her eventual painter husband Maurice Biais. This offers a fascinating contrast in view of this otherwise familiar subject - a rare and somehow strangely inauthentic glimpse of Avril smiling.

Many historical documents accompany the exhibition (including photographs, playbills and letters) which follow Avril from the genesis of her erratic style - discovered whilst incarcerated in a mental hospital, at the bizarrely conceived 'Madwoman's Ball' - through her rise to fame at the Moulin and subsequent London tour.

To read more about the exhibition click here. To read more about the life of Jane Avril click here.

The show runs until 18 September 2011. Entry: £6 (£4.50 concessions) but admission is FREE on Mondays 10am-2pm.

King Henry's single handed band-aid for Salthouse

Last weekend St. Nicholas's Church Salthouse was crammed with 'krummhorns', 'nakers' and 'sorduns' in the name of charity, as mad-early-music-minstrel Robert Fitzgerald brought King Henry's Band to town.

As the concert began, it occurred to the uninitiated in the audience that Ye Olde Facebook could be called for, since the 'Band' consists of Fitzgerald plus four 'missing members' (variously dismissed for a string of historic misdemeanours involving excessive imbibing, unseemly lustiness and generally ill-considered merry making).

The ensemble sound is achieved by the layered use of pre-recorded backing tracks (in which Fitzgerald plays each individual instrument) augmented with his live performance of a 'missing' instrument.

Between tunes, Kelling-dweller Fitzgerald waxed lyrical about the history, pedigree and construction of the many wind, string and percussion instruments presented including the bizarre 'gemshorn' crafted from an exotic-looking animal's horn.

The concert continued for a marathon three hours on a revolving come-and-go-as-you-please programme and raised over £400 towards church funds through contributions and CD sales.

Afterwards, Fitzgerald still had enough puff left - incredibly - to furnish groupies with tales of construction ups and downs.

We left with extensive programme notes and a CD, desperate for a peek into his garden shed!

Triple encore as 'the Ukes' get plucky in Lynn

On Wednesday, anarchy hit the UK as the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain rolled into King's Lynn...

The melee in the foyer of the Corn Exchange was testament to the diverse crossover audiences which pool to form the Ukes fanbase - everything from mad-keen junior school children to pashmina-porting 'prommers' to aged rockers.

It is rare to find a band who can demonstrate classical skill and sophistication without the stuffiness; who can entertain and enthrall as well as excite; who can make the old seem new and the new seem old: that is the magic formula captured by the seven friends and 28 strings of The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.

With an inventive repertoire which included everything from a 'happy' version of Anarchy in the UK to a 'Cossack' slowed-down version of Formby's legendary Leaning on a Lampost to 'simul-segues' of threads of six different classic rock tunes woven into the fabric of Bowie's Life on Mars, to Teenage Dirtbag sung as a down-tempo, sentimental ballad - there was wall-to-wall delight, suprise and inspiration.

Quite simply, the best £21.50 I have spent in many a long while, and the 'Live' CD of their 16 most popular performance tracks is a bargain at £10. If you get the chance to see them - go!

Face Fits...doppelganger drama in 'The Ugly One'

In an era dominated by PR and the attainment of physical perfection, Marius von Mayenburg's pacey four-hander slashes across the cult of beauty and lifts the concept of identity to the flourescent glare.

Designer Richard Matthews has crafted a Godot-like, monochrome, minimal set of over-exaggerated perspective. Through an electronic fog of white noise, strip lights punctuate a ceiling-grid of white rope. Beneath the harsh glare, fabric panels - stitched in a mosaic of seams - stretch down a corridor which flexes between the environs of a component factory and a hospital. The effect is one of a shattered mirror, a mesh of windows or a web of bandages.

Like the set, the work plays with powerful contrasts. The play opens when Lette (a gifted engineer) is to be excluded by Scheffler (his boss) - in favour of Karlmann (his junior and a much younger man) - from fronting his own invention at a sales convention. This leads Lette to confront the harsh realization - in the words of Fanny, his own beautiful wife, that he is 'unspeakably ugly'.

Sensing the demise of his career, Lette opts for transformative surgery at the hands of a second Scheffler - a materialistic plastic surgeon. Von Mayenburg plays with the unforseen consequences of this operation, as Lette revives to discover he has become physically irresistible.

The naturalistic, and comedic dialogue of the work leads to an initial delusion of accessibility. As the play unfolds, the audience is moved imaginitely through a series of increasingly demanding levels: actors take on and switch between their primary and secondary characters without devices of set, prop or costume to orientate them.

The technique builds incredible pace, as interacting characters switch more rapidly - often mid-gesture, to comedic effect. This is achieved with greater proficiency by Hastings, Marsden and Pryal in the characters of Lette, Fanny and Karlmann.

The play is both powerful and thought-provoking, both because of and in spite of its unexpectedly happy ending.

The Ugly One runs at Norwich Playhouse until 6th June 2009.

Tickets £12 available here.

Roll-up, roll-up for Cromer 'Big Bang' 2009

10,000 North Norfolk locals and holiday-makers packed Cromer seafront shoulder-to-shoulder on New Year's Day for the town's 10th annual Torchlight Procession and Fireworks Spectacular.

The evening fundraising event - initially conceived as a 'one-off' to commemorate the millennium - proved such a big hit that the Town Council decided to make it a regular feature.

Each year over £5,000 is raised in bucket-rattling donations. The cash goes to local good causes - last year the Seaview Playgroup got £1000 towards a new heating system - plus a contribution goes towards the cost of staging the following year's display.

This year's show - masterminded by Clive Casburn (who had thoughtfully booked a clear night, so as to avoid soggy spectators!) - began with the North Norfolk Beach Runners Fun Run along the Prom, followed by a Torchlit Procession led from the churchyard by the liveried Town Crier.

The awesome 15-minute pyrotechnic display kicked off at 5pm, with 10 rockets fired from the pier in a single symbolic shot, to commemorate the 10th Anniversary.

Despite huge crowds, the atmosphere was at all times warm, friendly and festive: the seafront provides so many excellent vantage points from which to view the display - reflected dramatically in the waves along the shoreline - that there are plenty to go round.

There was also the credit-crunching bonus that car parking in the town was made free-of-charge from 2pm, thanks to the Council.

Click the Play button below for 'live' footage of the sights (and sounds!) of the event - as seen from our viewpoint up on Runton Road. Look out particularly for the amazing 'Olympic Hoops'!

Here come the Pearls - a Ladies' Nite 1950s Style

Sheringham Little Theatre is calling all local 'Desperate Housewives' for a ladies' night with a difference next week...

Not so long ago housewives had a number of very good reasons to be desperate. Not only did they have to look after their families in an age of depression, war and austerity, but they did so without the consumer durables that we now consider essential.

With humour frequently in its sights, Archive Film: Housewife’s Choice (U) is a programme of films from the BFI National Archive that explores the lives of British housewives from the 1920s to the 1950s. The programme includes documentaries, cinemagazines, propaganda films and adverts. It also features films by two of the women who helped to shape the British documentary movement of the 1930s and 40s – Ruby Grierson (1904-40) and Kay Mander (1915).

The film will be introduced by film historian Stewart Orr.

Event Date: Fri 14th Nov 2008, 8.00pm Tickets £5.00

Reader's Wives - 50s Style...(what our grannies really got up to)

To get you in the party mood, here's a 'Good Wife's Guide' appetiser from Housekeeping Monthly, published 13th May 1955, to give you some handy tips on how to (really) please your man...:

1. Over the cooler months of the year prepare and light a fire for him to unwind by. Catering for his comfort will provide you with immense personal satisfaction.

2. Prepare yourself. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh-looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people.

3. Prepare the children. Take a few minutes to wash hands and faces, comb their hair and, if necessary, change their clothes. They are little treasures and he would like to see them playing the part.

4. Make the evening his. Never complain if he comes home late or goes out to dinner, or other places of entertainment, without you. Instead try to understand his world of strain and pressure.

5. Don’t complain even if he stays out all night. Count this as minor compared to what he might have gone through that day.

6. Listen to him. Let him talk first – remember, his topics of conversation are more important than yours.

7. Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low, soothing and pleasant voice.

8. Don’t ask questions about his actions or question his judgement or integrity. Remember, he is master of the house and as such will always exercise his will with fairness and truthfulness. You have no right to question him.

9. Remember: A good wife always knows her place...

It's a shard life - the perils of Paris a La Boheme

Norwich was transported back to 1830s 'Garret Paris' last night in Ellen Kent's latest touring production of Puccini's La Boheme.

Set against a classical amphitheatre backdrop, the opera follows the love lives of Rodolfo - a penniless poet - and Marcello - a struggling artist, who eke out their creative crust in a Montparnasse studio along with friends Colline - a philosopher - and Schaunard - a composer. As Rodolfo falls for neighbour Mimi - a sickly seamstress who drops by to borrow a light - so Marcello rekindles old flame Musetta - now mistress of rich diplomat Alcindoro.

The Eastern European soloists gave bravura performances, especially Ruslan Zinevych as Rodolfo. His diminutive stature (he still fell a matchbox short of Mimi despite stonking 2.5" cuban heels) belied a tremendous, warm, emotional voice which captivated the audience. Also noteworthy were the sonorous Petru Racovita as Marcello and Maria Tsonina as Musetta. Tsonina's wholehearted physical acting, which included table dancing, chair-toppling and plate smashing (shards of which flew down over the edge of the stage into a very startled string section of the orchestra - perhaps payback for a slightly off-key harp performance during Act I...) was a perfect balance for Mimi's poignant, more sombre scenes.

Taken from the stories of Henri Murger, Puccini's characters are based on real-life inhabitants of the Latin Quarter: Rodolfo on Murger himself, Musetta on Mariette, a popular artist's model (whom Murger described as having 'a neat figure, plenty of coquettishness, a dash of ambition and hardly any education') and Mimi on a young, pale, sickly girl called Lucile. While Murger's Mimi was a small, delicate-yet-mercenary 22 year old, whose blue eyes contained 'an expression of almost savage brutality,' Puccini's Mimi is - rather - a tragically doomed, saintly beauty.

The audience - which gradually succumbed to Mimi's contagious, consumptive cough - were also gripped by this production, enriched by smoke effects, snow and fire.

To see venues and book tickets for this touring production, click on the link below:

Full Diary

Bourne dancer: local lad spotlights in Dorian Gray

This week, a dark myth of 'celeb' culture exploded onstage at Norwich's Theatre Royal, in Matthew Bourne's latest dance spectacle: the ultra-stylish black-and-white fairy-tale, Dorian Gray.

The production (based loosely on the 1890s gothic masterpiece which finally did for Oscar Wilde) - sees Dorian reinvented for the noughties as a fame-hungry waiter-on-the-make.

Discovered by fashionista Lady H. (Bourne's vampification of Wilde's corrupting mentor, Lord Henry Wotton) and top photographer Basil (played by Taverham's own Aaron Sillis), Dorian is catapulted to fame amidst the glitterati as poster-boy for new men's frangrance 'Immortal'.

As Gray's billboard image (which replaces the portrait in the original tale) becomes an icon of youth and purity, celebrity snares him in a fraught bisexual triangle. This plays out through a revolving set which carries the audience on an odyssey from bedroom to bathroom, from gallery to studio and from opera house to posh party. As Gray's fame grows, his poster crystalizes into an evil doppelganger and the stud-made-good embarks on a one-way journey of debauchery, drug-fuelled excess, and murderous rampage.

Bourne, in his 21st year in the business, admits that this unsympathetic piece - which has met with much negativity from reviewers - is 'different' to his usual productions - including the celebrated all-male Swan Lake and double Olivier-winning Play Without Words.

However, audiences have disagreed with the critics in their droves: August's sell-out premiere performances in Edinburgh made Dorian the biggest dance hit in the Festival's history. In Norwich's smash run, the audience - which included comedian Stephen Fry - was similarly enthralled, as the Calvin-Klein-clad company of 11 played out their homoerotic horror-story of vanity, violence and serial-killing. Definitely not one for the squeamish!

Click on the link below for a full-length audio interview with Adam Sillis:

Listen: Feature-length interview with Aaron Sillis