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New Moon is nothing if not an international advertisement for the hungry virtues of virginity and young people can’t get enough of it
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Theatre
A smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion
Cock
Restaurants
Kitchen W8 is a bargain for this area, if such sophistication is what you crave
Kitchen W8
Too long and drawn out but very entertaining with excellent special effects
This is a peculiar play and does not work for me. Some of it is very funny but there are real flaws
Alex has a strong powerful voice and was faultless, she is far better now than she was on the X-Factor
London,
Barry Millington's rating
Reader rating
The 62nd Aldeburgh Festival is the first under the artistic directorship of Pierre-Laurent Aimard. Its opening event nevertheless inhabited familiar territory: Harrison Birtwistle revisiting (yet again) the Orpheus myth. The Corridor focuses on the moment when Orpheus turns to look at Eurydice, condemning her to hell and himself to dismemberment by the Maenads.
In David Harsent’s poetic demythologisation, Eurydice steps out of character to question Orpheus’s love. Recrimination and regret afford Birtwistle ample opportunities for dramatic engagement and plaintive utterance. His word-setting is expressionistic rather than text-sensitive but Elizabeth Atherton did well to make as much audible as she did. Spoken passages had even greater clarity, Mark Padmore’s incomparably eloquent Orpheus was no less telling. Six members of the London Sinfonietta under Ryan Wigglesworth faithfully delivered an acerbically expressive instrumental commentary.
A companion piece, Semper Dowland, Semper Dolens, set the mood with Birtwistle’s elegiac recasting of seven pavanes by the Elizabethan composer. The minimal choreography allowed the dancers, comely and fluent as they were, tested one’s forbearance, as I’m afraid did the unvaried pace and mood of this 40-minute sequence.
www.aldeburgh.co.uk
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