It’s a bumper month at the Grand Opera House, with no fewer than three shows crying out to be visited. Top of the heap is the touring version of West End smash-hit musical Singin’ in the Rain, based on the legendary film starring Gene Kelly, with Nacio Herb Brown’s music. James Leece plays the Kelly part for the two-week run in Belfast, and the production reputedly requires 12,000 litres of water to make its sumptuous sets as realistic as possible. The London reviews of this show have been uniformly excellent, and if you like musicals, buying a ticket for this one is a no-brainer. 06-17 May.
Fans of dance will be equally excited by the arrival of the Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre in the city, for a single performance of a Stravinsky double-bill dubbed “glorious” by the Independent newspaper. The works in question are The Rite of Spring, still the most explosively influential work in classical music history, and the brightly effervescent Petrushka. The Rite looks particularly interesting for local audiences, re-casting Stravinsky’s tale of pagan Russia in an Irish peasant community, in what the Financial Times called “a brilliant response to Stravinsky’s dramatic programme”. Irish choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan shapes the dancing, and the scores are played in piano duet arrangements. 19 April.
In the Baby Grand, the Grand Opera House’s smaller performing area, there’s an intriguing trio of new plays staged by the Green Shoot Productions company, which specialises in content of relevance to local audiences. Flesh and Blood Women tells the stories of three separate women – one a tale of forbidden love from the 1970s, another about a woman who had eleven children by a man who lived with his own family round the corner, and a third focusing on two friends who remember a crucial incident from their childhood differently. Dawn Purvis, ex-PUP leader and now director of the Marie Stopes clinic in Belfast, Brenda “A Night with George” Murphy, and Jo Egan are the playwrights. Green Shoot is billing this as “the first play in the history of Ulster theatre to have a completely all-female production team”. It should be an interesting evening. 07-24 May – goh.co.uk for all three
On the classical front, there’s an easy winner for this month’s must-see happening – a production of Purcell’s King Arthur by Sestina, a vocal ensemble of young local singers whose staging of the same composer’s The Fairy Queen was one of last year’s operatic highlights. The new King Arthur is Purcell with a difference, updating the Arthurian legends used by the composer in his original 1691 production to the First World War period, and drawing on the extensive collection of war memorabilia belonging to local collector Davey McCallion. Top period instrumentalists from the English Baroque Soloists, the Irish Baroque Orchestra, and the Gabrieli Consort will ensure there’s an authentic tang to Purcell’s wonderfully colourful music. Renowned counter-tenor Mark Chambers conducts, and director Thomas Guthrie frames the action in the evocative atrium of the Ulster Museum. 25 April, nmni.com
Arts Rundown...
Date: 14/04/2014
