Category: Review

Never Meet Your Heroes; You’ll Only Disappoint Them

Kirsty MorganLeave a comment

Earlier this month, I was in Edinburgh to review Company Wayne MacGregor’s production, Autobiography, for Bachtrack. This post isn’t about that. Rather, it’s about an incident that took place earlier that day, where I, by chance, got the opportunity to meet my favourite living children’s author, Theresa Breslin, at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

A little backstory. I’ve loved Theresa Breslin’s books since I was in primary school. I enjoyed the Dream Master series because it reminded me of E. Nesbit, Enid Blyton and Edgar Eager. Her book Remembrance taught me about pacifism during the First World War. I learned about how awful dyslexia was for children in the past from Whispers In the Graveyard. And, although Marcus Sedgewick is a writer I also enjoy, I’m still slightly disappointed that the Booktrust Teenage Prize opted for his book, My Swordhand Is Singing, over Breslin’s The Medici Seal…

(although, at least the Booktrust had the decency to choose a more than halfway decent book as its winner, unlike SOME competitions I could name *cough*Carnegie*cough*…seriously, Just In Case was the actual worst.)

My point is I’ve been a Theresa Breslin fan for a while, so when, a couple of years ago, I saw that she was signing books at the Edinburgh Book Festival on a day that I happened to be there, you’d have thought I’d jump at the opportunity to meet her and get a book signed. And, I almost did, I swear… but I chickened out. It felt too weird for a 20-odd year old to be standing in line alongside a bunch of kids to get a book signed by a children’s author.

And then I forever felt bad about not having met Theresa Breslin when I had the chance. I was even lamenting about it to one of my work colleagues less than a month ago.

But then, earlier this month, I was in Edinburgh for a Bachtrack review, and I had time to burn. So my best friend Calum and I went to the book festival, where Theresa Breslin, coincidentally, was signing books again. Would you hate me if I told you I almost chickened out a second time? I am, undoubtedly, my own worst enemy.

But I didn’t chicken out, because Calum was there and he convinced me to go through with it. I was still a little nervous, but I bought a copy of Spy for the Queen of Scots and waited in a fairly short line.

And, unsurprisingly, Theresa Breslin was super nice. She asked whether I’d been at the talk that she and Holly Webb had given earlier that day… which I hadn’t. I managed to babble something about just having seen she was signing books and that I’d really liked her when I was wee. I didn’t say that she was still one of my favourite authors and that the last time I read one of her books was this year. That would have been weird.

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Look at the pretty title page!

The meeting was a blur. She signed and dedicated the book to me, and then it was over. I was in a slight state of shock for about fifteen minutes after the signing and I kept asking Calum whether it had gone okay and checking I hadn’t made a fool of myself. I think it’s the most fan-girly I’ve ever been in my entire life. (Oh my gosh, what would happen if I, in some weird turn of unlikely events, were to meet Julie Andrews?! Would I faint? Or cry? Or cry and then faint?!)

All things considered, although I was nervous, it could have gone a lot worse. And now I have a book signed by Theresa Breslin, which I am extremely ecstatic about! I’ve even wrapped the book in some laminate casing to keep it nice. And it was an awesome extra add-on to a fun day out with my friend and then a not-so-fun dance show in the evening. And two out of three ain’t bad – I count that as a really good day!

Vikingdom Coming

Kirsty MorganLeave a comment

Last weekend my parents and I attended Largs’s annual Viking Festival. The weather was fantastically sunny, the best they’d had all week, and I want to tell you about this really fun day.

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Arkansas Ramblers

We woke unreasonably early, about half past nine in the morning (the horror!), and drove for an hour and a half to arrive in time to see my mother’s friends from work performing on the music stage. These friends were members of the recently established, Glasgow-based band the Arkansas Ramblers, a group of ten musicians who perform Old Time Americana, Country and Bluegrass music. I really enjoyed the performance; there was a nice mixture of older music, such as the pro-unionist, Civil-War tune ‘Kingdom Coming’ to more recent compositions like ‘Ashokan Farewell’, which was written in 1982 but still fit the overall tone with its mellow traditional sound.

The stand-out section for me was the fantastic duet, ‘Tennessee Waltz’, between Bernadette Collier and Sandy Semeonoff. The harmonies during the chorus are spine-tinglingly rustic, with Collier taking the tune while Semeonoff offers a simple tenor accompaniment that hangs very close to the melody and makes heavy use of third and sixth intervals. The sound is very characteristic of the genre and the voices blend together splendidly. It was fantastic.

It wasn’t even entirely out of place to have traditional American music playing at a Viking festival. After all, the Vikings reached the Americas centuries before Christopher Columbus was born – and towards the end Bill Macaulay, the founder of the group, had even donned a knitted Viking helmet!

After the performance was over, I explored the rest of the festival. There were myriad stalls selling a variety of crafts, lotions, foods, and souvenirs. There were also several fairground attractions, but more fun, for me, was the Viking Village.

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Doctor’s manual (made from vellum). Also plastic amputations, because medicine was horrible back then.

The Viking Village was like an outdoor museum, with wicker huts, old-fashioned stalls, and experts dressed in old Norse outfits who were eager to tell you about their specific roles in the village. There was a fletcher making arrows, a doctor who told us about ancient Norse medicine, a couple of metal workers using traditional Norse tools to shape souvenir coins, and a variety of traders selling furs, bracelets, candles and (harmless) weapons. The candle seller talked about how the keepers of bees were particularly well regarded in old Norse society – they would make mead from the honey, which pleased the locals, and the leftover beeswax would be donated to the churches and made into candles. Meanwhile, the book crafter was showing some children the animal-skin vellum that was used for paper and the children took turns trying (and failing) to rip the tough material.

I got my runes read by a very nice rune reader. She had a bag of tokens and I picked one blind. I drew the “prosperity” token, which looked like a wonky F. Although somewhat fitting given I start my new job tomorrow, I imagine all of the other tokens would have been equally vaguely relevant, too. It was still fun and interesting to experience the ancient Norse superstition, although at the same time it did feel a little uncomfortably New Age-y. That said, I did receive a pretty card and got to keep the token, which was a nice souvenir.

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My favourite hut was the one with the Norse musical instruments. It was really great to see so many ancient instruments; there was an ancient Norse lyre, some ancient panpipes, a type of drum called a bodhrán (which is technically Irish, but oh well), and a bukkehorn made from an animal horn. The man in the hut was playing a tiny harp called a clarsach, which is mainly associated with Celtic origins, but was also played by the Norse people. It was a pretty tune – I didn’t recognise it, but it was soft and atmospheric. I liked it.
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After the Viking Village, my parents and I went to an ice-cream parlour on the beach and had gigantic sundaes. I could only eat about a quarter of my Marshmallow Heaven – vanilla and raspberry ice-cream, with a mountain of cream, and marshmallows, and several wafers, and marshmallow sauce! It was amazing, but it was also huge.

Later that evening, we also got a traditional fish and chip supper (although mine was a smoked sausage, because fish in batter is gross). We were staying out late in order to attend the Festival of Fire, but the restaurant was so understaffed, it took forty minutes for the food to come. It was a bit nerve-wracking – I was worried we’d miss the parade! Luckily, crisis was averted and we arrived just as the parade was starting.

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There were all sorts of characters wandering around, but by far the best costume goes to this guy, who had a clockpunk metal dragon draped around his neck!

The Festival of Fire, was pretty rad; the parade gave everyone who had dressed up the opportunity to show off their amazing costumes. I particularly enjoyed the burly man who, trying to get past a huge crowd of bystanders, called out, “I have an axe, and I’m not afraid to use it!”

I was sceptical that it would get dark in time for the fire in the Festival of Fire to really make an impact, but pleasingly I was proved wrong. As we followed the burning torches through the stalls, and anachronistically through the funfair, the evening light dimmed into nighttime darkness.

We reached the sea, where a Viking longboat was set aflame. It was spectacular, but there were so many people it was difficult to get a good view. Even harder to see, though, was the short re-enactment battle. I didn’t especially mind; there were a lot of children, and it made sense to let them get the better view. My parents and I (along with a lot of other people) were up on a nearby hill where it was a bit dark to see the fighting, but the fantastic fire dancer who followed was very visible. He spun the flames around him in loops and juggled burning torches to the accompanying theatrical Norse music.

The evening ended with a pretty impressive fireworks display. I’ve never been so close to fireworks – it was like they were exploding directly above me! It was very loud, and I had to cover my ears for most of it, but the cost/benefit of the proximity still ultimately landed on the good side!

All in all, it was a very enjoyable day, and driving home listening to the CD of Icelandic singer, Hafdís Huld, was an appropriate end to a lovely Nordic-inspired experience.

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Burn, boaty, burn (Viking Inferno!)

Feature: Echo Chamber

Kirsty MorganLeave a comment

Imagine sitting on a couch next to a stranger, surrounded by arcade games and Nintendo wall decorations, staring into the face of a paper mâché mounted smilodon head, while a string quartet plays a mashup of medieval chant and Jimi Hendrix. This was the unique musical experience that the Mancunian string quartet Echo Chamber offered four nights ago (Monday 6th) at the MegaBYTE cafe in Glasgow.

An arcade cafe might, on the surface, seem an odd choice of venue for a classical music concert. Similarly, Jimi Hendrix and Kanye West are not necessarily the most intuitive musical companions to Franz Schubert, Arvo Pärt, or Pérotin. But Echo Chamber, although still very new on the music scene, is eager to challenge some of the social mores that have sprouted up around classical music.

The choice of venue was a result of the quartet’s association with the company Groupmuse, an organisation that provides a platform for people to set up classical music concerts in small, unlikely venues. Quite often, that even involves a member of the public arranging a concert in their own living room! The idea, which has already taken off in the States, is to build a community of like-minded people who really enjoy classical music and listening to it in unexpected places. As violinist Stephen Bradshaw put it when we talked after the concert:

Chamber music is very much a tradition of friends coming together to play music. It is often described as being like a conversation. As soon as you take that out of a small room and put it in a big concert hall, some of the more salient elements of that are lost.

This is very true. Although a concert hall’s acoustics may be better, this particular experience really invokes the salons of, say, Haydn and Mozart, friends who occasionally met to play string quartets together, or the 19th-century Viennese parlours that Franz Schubert gathered in with his circle. Although, perhaps an even more fitting analogue there would be the Schubertiads, established after Schubert’s death, which often involved fans of Schubert coming together in drawing rooms to celebrate the music they loved in an informal setting in the company of others who shared their passion. This practice fell out of fashion eventually; even as early as 1946, the music critic Alec Robertson was bemoaning the loss of these cosy gatherings. But perhaps Groupmuse’s house concerts will inspire a resurgence.

If such a renewal is to take place, Echo Chamber’s unique style is perfect for the situation. Their repetoire, inspired by listening to songs on shuffle in Spotify and the Radio 3 show Late Junction, is vibrantly innovative. As Bradshaw pointed out, there’s no rule that says you can’t pair 13th-century music with Kanye West, so if it sounds good together, why not go for it? The unconventional musical juxtapositions are interesting and engaging and during each performance there’s a sense of a shared joke between the players and the audience, which is enhanced by how close everyone is gathered. The cello was less than an arm’s length away from where I was sitting.

This was an unforeseen addition to this particular evening’s arrangement (even for the players!). After the first piece, the quartet’s artistic director, Leo Mercer, suggested we all moved to sit around one table with each member of the quartet situated at one of the four corners. Personally, my initial reaction was intrigued bemusement, but I was pleasantly surprised by how relaxed the rest of the concert turned out to be, given its intimate nature.

I think also, this was a really positive inclusion for a concert of this style, where the individuality and variation from concert to concert is a big attraction. The quartet also includes improvisation for the musical transitions, and these are completely different each performance. For example, Monday night’s transition between Pérotin’s Viderunt Omnes and Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze featured a lot of powerful, dramatic tremolo that was fantastic, and all the more impressive for having been made up on the spot. During the interval, when the performers came and chatted with the audience, Sophia Dignam (viola) was laughing about how she started the tremolo, unsure whether it would work out well, and the others followed her lead and they just went for it – and I have to say, it worked brilliantly! Mercer, the artistic director, even mentioned that he thought it was their best transition to date! It was lovely that all of the group were so open and willing to talk about the performance; they were all really friendly and it enhanced the whole atmosphere.

It’s a somewhat unusual setup for a string quartet to have an artistic director, most quartets operate as a purely democratic unit, but here Mercer is very much an asset to the group, always coming up with new ideas to encourage both the audience and the players to experience and think about the music in new ways. Bradshaw described to me the group’s rehearsal process. Generally they will spend about forty-five minutes rehearsing the music, then Mercer will come in and “do his artistic directing thing”, for example:

He might get us to think about different lines of music as different characters in a play, or get us to move around the room, sit in different parts of the room, try and experience the music in a different way in order to get us to play in more kind of fresh and exciting ways. […] He has a very unique style of artistic direction, and he’s constantly trying to take us out of our comfort zone, which is a really good thing. Classical musicians have the worst comfort zones, and we’re just used to doing a very specific thing within a certain set of confined rules. And Leo’s all about taking us out of those comfort zones, taking us out of those “echo chambers” and getting us to try out new stuff all the time.

Echo Chamber’s house concerts are not Mercer’s only out-of-the-box production. He’s written an opera called The Marriage of Kim K, based on Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. Again combining classical and contemporary, the opera will feature reality-TV style aspects alongside music from Figaro as well as newly composed material. Echo Chamber will actually be providing the music for the production at the Edinburgh Fringe in August. It’s an intriguing idea, and judging by the surprises of Monday’s concert, I’m not sure what to expect, but I imagine it will be distinctively special.

Bradshaw told me about what the quartet hoped to achieve with their concerts:

We really want people to experience classical music in a non-pretentious way, and that’s probably one of the biggest features that we do as a quartet. Making classical music less about turning up, smartly dressed, and not clapping between movements and more about just coming and enjoying the music you like, with a drink in hand, with friends. That’s what we want people to take away from this. Yes, a sense of community, a sense of – not necessarily classical music being cool – but making it something accessible, something you enjoy going to listen to. Have fun, have fun going to a house party but one where you listen to your friends playing classical music! Simple as that really!

I think they have accomplished that goal. Everything about Monday’s concert was crafted to make the experience as unique, friendly and hospitable as possible. It was a relaxed and enjoyable evening, with very talented, thoughtful musicians and their beautiful music in a small retro cafe. And although the word is frightfully overused, I’d go as far as to say the evening was “hygge”.

Echo Chamber Quartet
From the left: Chris Terepin (cello), Stephen Bradshaw (violin), Sophia Dignam (viola) & Rebekah Reid (violin).

Echo Chamber’s Facebook: www.facebook.com/musicechochamber
Echo Chamber’s Twitter: twitter.com/_echochamber
Echo Chamber’s Instagram: www.instagram.com/echochambermusic
Groupmuse’s Website: www.groupmuse.com

Dance Review: Moscow City Ballet’s “Sleeping Beauty”

Kirsty MorganLeave a comment
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The Evil Fairy, Carabosse

Recently, my best friend and I saw Moscow City Ballet’s spectacular performance of Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty, at the Edinburgh Playhouse. The website I work for, Bachtrack, had asked me to write a review of the production – and I’m really pleased they did because it was a marvelous evening, packed with fairy tales and music. It also gave me the opportunity to visit my friend, which is always really fun.

The review, if you want to read it, is here. This article’s drawing is of the evil fairy, Carabosse, played by Kiril Kasatkin.

Opera Anti-Review: Scottish Opera’s “The Trial”

Kirsty MorganLeave a comment

Towards the end of last month, my father and I went to see Scottish Opera’s production of The Trial – a Philip Glass opera based on the Franz Kafka novel of the same name. I meant to write a review of the magnificent performance, but time passed and instead I decided to draw the following comic about my lack of review writing and inability to understand the precise meaning of the word “Kafkaesque”.

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Theatre Review: Frank Wildhorn’s “Wonderland”

Kirsty MorganLeave a comment

Last Wednesday (25th January), my best friend and I went to see a performance of Frank Wildhorn’s Wonderland at the Edinburgh Playhouse. Loosely based on the two Lewis Carroll books about Alice (in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass), the performance had all the odds stacked in its favour for being absolutely terrific: Wonderland aesthetic with Frank Wildhorn (composer of Jekyll and Hyde) music – what’s not to love?!

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Adorable Dormouse costume

With appearances from the Caterpillar, Queen of Hearts and Cheshire Cat from ‘Alice in Wonderland’, and the Tweedle twins and Humpty Dumpty from ‘Through the Looking Glass’, the aesthetic of Wonderland was certainly present, and at times very enjoyable. I thought the Dormouse, who carried a pillow with her at all times like a satchel, was adorable. The set-design was fantastic, with oppressive grey apartment buildings in the real world and clever uses of perspective to make the Mad Tea Table, in Wonderland, seem to extend backwards forever. Even the romantic sub-plot between the March Hare and the Mad Hatter, although not necessarily a required addition, was sweetly acted and became somewhat plot-relevant by the end.

The overall ambiance, however, was unfortunately marred by audio problems – in particular the number where Alice, her neighbour Jack, and her daughter Ellie, first appear in Wonderland. What ought to have been an immersive introduction to Wonderland’s craziness, was drowned out by the drumkit, so the audience was kept guessing what the end of each line of singing contained:

“Welcome to Wonder-CRASH
My God, it’s half-past-CRASH
Who cares if you came CRASH
We don’t care where CRASH CRASH
You’re gonna fit right CRASH
A little fun de-CRASH
A little crazy CRASH
Don’t get all in CRASH CRASH!”

I’d listened to the soundtrack several times beforehand, and I still struggled to work out what the missing words were. I imagine it would have been even more difficult for a first-time listener. It’s a real shame because some of Frank Wildhorn’s music is very clever and many of the lyrics are amusing. For example, there is a recurring motif for the songs sung by Wonderland characters where the music tumbles chromatically downwards, invoking the fall down the rabbit hole and descent into madness. However, this can only be appreciated if you aren’t distracted trying to block out the instrumental accompaniments in order to pick up the lyrics being sung. It’s such a pity, because ordinarily the music would definitely be the best aspect of this musical.

The plot itself is somewhat formulaic, all about accepting who you are and finding yourself. Once in Wonderland, Alice, Jack and Ellie come across a magic Looking Glass that, when entered, flips a person’s personality traits, revealing the “you that you have been suppressing”. Alice’s daughter, Ellie, who has had to grow up too fast, enters the mirror and emerges as a petulant teenager; while the shy neighbour, Jack, transforms into a confident Elvis-style swinger, acquires a set of backup singers from somewhere, and finally admits to Alice that he has a crush on her.

The delightfully sarcastic Looking Glass, naturally, has a habit of reflecting the characters’ dialogue back at them, making for some of the funniest moments in the entire production:

Alice: Do you think this is a good idea?
Looking Glass: Do you think this is a good idea?
Alice: I don’t know!
Looking Glass: Then I don’t know either.

That said, the inclusion of the Looking Glass did cheapen any development the characters underwent as a result of passing through it. This wasn’t a particular problem for the examples mentioned above, which were mostly played for comedy, but the entire conflict of the first act centred around Alice’s inability to move on from her abusive ex-husband. Because in actuality this can be a serious problem that’s very difficult to overcome, the sequence where Alice enters a mirror and is suddenly miraculously cured of her trauma felt unearned and a little disrespectful.

Also, given that the character-altering Looking Glass exists in this setting, it was strange that the evil Queen of Hearts was neither forced nor convinced to enter the Looking Glass at any point and actually remained a tyrannical dictator after Alice, Jack and Ellie had returned to the real world. This seemed oddly inconsistent with the overarching theme of overthrowing tyranny.

Weirdly, given the inclusion of a past-abuse subplot and a series of dance numbers set in the Mad Hatter’s sweatshop-style hat factory, I feel the production somewhat struggled to portray the darker version of Wonderland that it seemed to be trying to create. Part of this could have been improved by making the resolutions to the problems less simplistic than going through a magic Looking Glass, but I also felt the Mad Hatter was too endearing in her altered evil form. The main villain number ‘I Will Prevail’ is a menacing threat that simply doesn’t fit with the incompetent, bossy madam that the Hatter becomes after her transformation.

Nonetheless, I really enjoyed the sweatshop number, where tap shoes were used to symbolise the grueling labour that the Wonderland folk were being forced to endure. The fact that the Hatter actually lampshaded this, demanding her workers wear quieter shoes, was a very nice touch. I liked the Dormouse here who, of course, kept falling asleep on the job, lying on her pillow and tap dancing from the floor as the others lined up around her. When the March Hare, trying to convince the Hatter that the workers needed a break, admits that he thinks the Dormouse might be dying, I was disappointingly underwhelmed. Part of this could be put down to confusion – it had earlier been established that Wonderland folk can’t die – but I was also painfully aware that in a darker production with higher stakes this could have been a genuinely poignant moment.

Still, I agreed with the Hatter when she exclaimed, “I love that cute little Dormouse!” The Dormouse was definitely the sweetest character (and, of course, doesn’t die in the end!).

Overall, I’m conflicted about this production of Wonderland. The sections that were good were extremely enjoyable, but there were several major problems that, sadly, prevented it from being a truly satisfying experience.

Dance Review: Ballet West’s “Swan Lake”

Kirsty MorganLeave a comment

Hey folks,

I wrote a dance review for the website Bachtrack. It’s about Ballet West’s production of Swan Lake at the MacRobert Arts Centre in Stirling. You can read it here.

In the meantime, because I wanted to make this more than a self-promotion link to a different website, enjoy this exclusive-to-here picture I drew of Natasha Watson, who plays Odette.

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