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An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
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Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Barry Millington's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Edward Gardner (cond), Daniel Kramer (dir), Michael Keegan-Dolan (dir).
Cast: Clive Bayley (Duke Bluebeard), Michaela Martens (judith), Fabulous Beast
Description: Edward Gardner conducts a double bill of opera and ballet, featuring Bartok's only opera, directed by Daniel Kramer and Stravinsky's dark ballet directed by Michael Keegan-Dolan and performed by Fabulous Beast.
Times: Nov 10, 12, 20, 25, 7.30pm, Nov 14, 28, 6.30pm
Price: £10-£87, concs available
Trains: Tube: Leicester Square/Charing Cross 
, Tube / Bus: 3, 6, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 23, 24, 29, 53, 77a, 88, 91, 139 
Phone: 0871911 0200
Website: www.eno.org
Email: access@eno.org
Fritzl parallels: Michaela Martens and Clive Bayley in Béla Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle
ENO’s coupling of Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring is unconventional but inspired.
Where Bluebeard throbs darkly with a slow-burning fuse, the Rite pulsates with instinctual life (enhanced here by the physicality of Michael Keegan-Dolan’s choreography). Yet the works have much in common too: barbaric and primeval, both plumb the brutish wellsprings of human nature.
Daniel Kramer’s sinister production of Bluebeard, designed by Giles Cadle, gradually reveals the secretive nobleman to be an obsessive sex-killer, perhaps a Sutcliffe or a West. The fifth door, rather than opening onto expansive domains, is unlocked to expose a dysfunctional Josef Fritzl-like family, fathered by Bluebeard.
There are two problems with the production, however. One is that some of Bluebeard’s gesturing is frankly naff. The other is that his representation as a psychotic serial killer limits the universal resonances of the work: Bluebeard’s dark secrets symbolise the emotional and psychological barriers erected by all men in their relationships with women.
The saturnine presence of the central character is evoked by the aptly sepulchral tones of Clive Bayley, while Michaela Martens is an engaging Judith. Edward Gardner’s conducting of both scores is alert and forceful.
To 28 November. Information: 0871 911 0200; www.eno.org
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
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