© Ismael Lorenzo

What a marvellous way to open Basel Theatre’s ballet season. This is one of the most stunning performances I have seen yet by Basel Ballet. An evening of three very different ballets by three choreographers:  Rebus by Basel’s ballet director Richard Wherlock, followed by two ballets by guest choreographers, Rain Dogs by Johan Inger, and Cantata by Mauro Bigonzetti.

Wherlock is the first choreographer to stage the ballet Rébus by Russian composer Igor Markevitsch, bringing a new interpretation to the dance. He brings his dancers to achieve an all-time high in technical and physical achievement. Impressionistic, at times the dance includes gymnastics and elaborate throws and turns. The staging makes clever use of lighting and contrast, and there is a nice effect when a frosted screen drops down centre-stage cutting the women off from the men, so we see them as ghostly outlines and shadows. The composer’s rhythmic two-time beat remains a constant throughout the piece, but changes from menacing to triumphant driving the dancers on in a breath-taking tempo.

Performed to the melancholy music of Tom Waits, Rain Dogs is the title Tom Waits gives his album and by which he means hobos, prostitutes, and people in need. Inger transforms this menagerie into a quirky study of what it is to be human. Opening with a solo dancer and his ghetto blaster, whose exaggerated mime conjures up a range of street people from tramp to young street dancer, Inger parodies their foibles in an amusing fashion, impressing us with the acuteness of his observation. Each song from Waits’ album brings another scene, not linked narratively, but through movement, music and costume. He plays with the boundaries between graceful suppleness and grotesque dislocated movement, and the stereotypical barriers between men and women.  This world premiere was greeted with rapturous applause.

 In Cantata, Bigonzetti draws on his experiences of everyday life in Southern Italy. The stage becomes a village square, with vibrant music, traditional song and peasant costume. Bigonzetti captures everything from the joie de vivre to the heated arguments of the Italian villagers. In a fast-paced intensive dance, there is some marvellous ensemble work which ranges from witty to serious. It is completely mesmerizing and the audience showed their profound admiration for this outstanding performance at curtain call with calls of bravo and prolonged applause.  

All in all, a performance not to be missed!

Next Performances: Oct. 8/11/16/21/23/24; Nov. 2/4/6/11/13/20/24; Dec.1/16/22/28

Tickets from www.theater-basel.ch, Tel. 061 295 1133

The knights of the Holy Grail are in mourning. The sacred spear which pierced Christ’s side has been stolen by the magician Klingsor, when Amfortas, the keeper of the Grail, succumbed to Kundry’s seduction. Kundry bathes Amfortas’ never healing wound, sustained when Klingsor struck him with the Holy Spear. Amfortas is tormented by guilt for his failure and love for Kundry; a love he knows is doomed. The knights bring in a boy who has just killed a swan. Gurnemanz suspects he fits the prophecy that ‘a pure fool made wise through pity’ will become the new king of the Grail. However, the boy fails to show pity to Amfortas and he is banished. Kundry is ordered by the magician to ensnare the boy. In Kingsor’s magic castle he resists the alluring flower-maidens, but is transfixed when Kundry calls him by the name given him by his mother – Parsifal. When Kundry kisses him, he understands the consequences of lust and pities Amfortas. Defeating Klingsor, Parsifal finally enables Amfortas’ salvation by returning the Holy Spear.

Parsifal is Wagner’s last and most contentious opera. Wagner saw the work as a quasi-religious ritual of absolution and stipulated that it should never be performed anywhere other than his theatre in Bayreuth. The Met set the precedence for defying his wish in 1903; and the controversy has since continued with widely diverse interpretations by those opera houses capable of staging it. A grotesque subtext adds to the polemic: in conjunction with the opera, Wagner published a demented anti-Semitic essay.  Consequently, Nietzsche dammed Parsifal as ‘an outrage on morality’.  

Nonetheless, the opera offers us music of extra-ordinary beauty. Powerfully emotive, you cannot help being moved by it, irregardless of the staging or underlying philosophy. In the Basel opera, a brilliant line-up of soloists, whose stage presence and vocal prowess were faultless; together with the Symphony-Orchestra, really did the work justice. Particularly impressing were Ursula Füri-Bernhard (Kundry), and the prize-winning Chinese Bass, Liang Li (Gurnemanz). Somewhat less appealing was staging by director Benedict von Peter. Taking Wagner’s theme of redemption and the search for self, he presents a visual metaphor of doppelgänger or twins. He interprets the search for one’s double as the search for a more primitive state of innate goodness. Hence numerous Extras are doubled on stage – which is faintly amusing, and somewhat specious. Moreover, he encumbers the work with his idea that the ‘author’ should be present on stage through-out; an author who is also the alter-ego of Amfortas. Fortunately, this role is taken by Allan Evans, whose performing talent and voice are exemplary. While Benedict von Peter’s ideas are interesting, he has not really been able to portray them convincingly in performance. Furthermore, the staging of scaffolding turrets replete with floodlights, and trash of compost-flowers left over from Act II, doesn’t do this magnificent opera justice. Hence, at curtain-call, there was a mix of booing for the production team and resounding cheers for soloists and orchestra.

Performances: May 6/14/17/28; June 2/19. Running time 5 hours incl. two half-hour intervals - check site for start-times: www.theater-basel.ch/spielplan

Beachy Head is a notorious suicide spot on the English south coast. Centre-stage is a film-screen showing black swirling clouds. We hear the eerie sound of howling wind and crashing waves. The spot-light turns on a wooden chair, where a woman is sitting with her back to us. Her face is projected in close-up on the screen and she tells us ‘People are dying constantly; one in every 9000 deaths is a suicide’. She  goes on to explain, ‘Pathology is an investigation into what turns life into death – not into the reasons why somebody jumped’.

We then see a woman who appears to be lying on a white autopsy table, but the white screen reverts to swirling black clouds. It is Amy, standing on the cliff top, staring over the edge into the darkness. She is struggling to cope with the recent death of her husband, who chose to end it all here. Two documentary filmmakers have caught blurred footage of a man jumping from a cliff. Their film takes a startling direction when they decide to meet Amy. The play charts the ripple effects of one man’s decision to take his life, as those left behind search for answers.

This play by Analogue is well acted and well staged, creating vivid images, and food for thought. I particularly liked the almost magical transformation of stage props, one image blurring and becoming another. It produces an uncanny parallel to the business of the documentary filmmakers, who manipulate their content to ‘get a good shot with something to focus on’ and make a story. The pathologist explains she must perform an autopsy on the body in order to determine the cause of the suicide’s death, but she must stop seeing the body as anything other than an object. Likewise the filmmakers’ shooting is another form of anatomy on a human life. Here tension arises between the two young men as one becomes emotionally involved in the tragedy of the woman left behind, while the other remains coolly objective - their personal goal taking precedence over honesty. It provides an interesting reflection on our society where everything is filmed, irregardless of privacy or human empathy.

The story is sensitively told and convincing, with ironic touches which add an element of humour; providing the audience some respite from a difficult subject. The staging is intentionally self-conscious; we see the wind whipping round the cliff is created by a man waiving a board, and the torn pages carried on the wind are held up by a man with two long sticks. This is beautifully done and adds to the poetry of the piece.

Beachy Head is the follow up to Analogue’s award winning Edinburgh Theatre Festival 2007 debut Mile End. It was written by Dan Reballato, Emma Jowett and Lewis Hetherington. I hope there will be the opportunity to see more of their work at Basel Theatre. Sadly, I fear we are unlikely to have the pleasure of more English plays next year, in view of the funding cuts following the recent ‘no-vote’ for funding by Basel-Land.

• The Basel Theatre is now desperately looking for an alternative solution:

It is collecting signatures for a letter to be sent to the Basel Government. Please sign the letter to express your solidarity: http://www.theater-basel.ch/offenerBrief.cfm .

Theatre is important to our culture: it holds a mirror up to society, more so than any other form of art, thus it provides a critical analysis of how society is working, and ooks to the future critically. In comparison museums look to the past.

What is the purpose of a theatre nowadays in a town like Basel? Is it part of the marketing of Basel as a cultural city to attract visitors, or is it to provide culture to its inhabitants? Is this either/or, or really both?

For the 35, 000 English-speaking inhabitants that live in Basel due to the international companies based here, the Theatre Basel is one of the things that makes Basel attractive as a place to live.

• SHOW YOUR SOLIDARITY – sign the ‘open letter’ published on the website, and send it to Basel Theatre/or give it in at the box office..
   
• Spendenaktion «BaZ unterstützt das Theater» Basler Zeitung, Hochbergerstrasse 15, 4002 Basel 

Basler Kantonalbank
PC-Kto.: 40-61-4
KTO. Nr.: 2520.0388.2006
IBAN Nr.: CH58 0077 0252 0038 8200 6

Basellandschaftliche Kantonalbank
PC-Kto.: 40-44-0
Kto. Nr.: 0551.3765.2001
IBAN Nr.: CH82 0076 9055 1376 5200 1

Sources: http://bazonline.ch/kultur/theater/Unterstuetzt-das-Theater-Basel/story/28436250

c.Simon Hallström

Three gigantic mirrors centre-stage show a reflection of the audience, who are seated in the round, and the three fleeing protagonists. Jasper spins the mirrors and tells his story. Passionate and convincing, ‘Put-options’ and ‘Calls’; we feel the thrill of high-finance and risk-taking along with him. In another corner of the stage, Meike is trying to set up her new home; poor, scatter-brained and quirky; the opposite of Jasper. She panics when she realises Henry’s disappearance means she’s lost her only source of income. In search of Henry, she meets Jasper, and through her, Jasper meets Henry; who has just what he needs – money.

This highly entertaining play is a real treat; fast moving and extremely witty, with splendid performances by all three actors. Based on the book by German author Kristof Magnusson, this Basel premiere is performed on Basel theatre’s ‘Kleine Bühne’ in an intimate atmosphere creating a sense of immediacy. The actors make the most of the small space, engaging with the audience in a humorous manner. While the use of props is minimal, it is inspired: mounting furniture creates a marvellous image of the precarious nature of mounting debts; and an overhead screen projecting back-office staff and bosses at the Bank creates a sense of the inhuman impersonality of these monolithic institutions.

The play is highly recommended, one of the funniest I’ve seen in a long time. It requires a fairly good command of German, but even if you don’t quite get all the witticisms, the actors’ performances will entertain you and the highly visual performance gives plenty to watch.

 Future performances: 1/6/13^th Mar. 2011.

Tickets: www.theater-basel.ch. Tel: 061 295 1133

© Ismael Lorenzo

Instead of suffering a premature death followed by a dance with female spirits from the underworld, Wherlock’s Giselle runs off to a nunnery, when she’s torn between her two suitors. In the first Act Giselle dances back and forth between her fiancé, the rustic gamekeeper Hilarion, and the disguised aristocratic Albrecht. Seemingly in love with her, Albrecht then rejects her and returns to his betrothed. Distraught, Giselle turns her back on the world. In the second act, both men visit in the cloister, where Albrecht begs forgiveness and she happily leaves the cloister behind for her new love.

The opening scenes set in the woods are light-hearted. Giselle, danced by Debora Maiques Marin, is charmingly naïve and child-like. She plays and flirts impishly in the forests with her father and friends. This lovely dancer gives us a sense Giselle’s freedom and innocence. There some delightfully comic moments in the pas de deux of her fiancé Hilarion, and his friend. Once the city dwellers, among them Albrecht, appear we see a marked contrast in style of dance and costume; the elegance and proud bearing of the aristocracy emphasizing the simplicity and naivety of the country-folk.

In the second act, we are transported to the Cloister. The costumes are dramatic, flowing and black, but also provocative, which combined with a sense of something menacing in the dance, makes the Abbess and her priests seem more akin to sorcerers than nuns. The dance and costume of Ayako Nakano as Abbess in particular is seductive, erotic, at odds with her supposed role. While the staging in the second Act is fascinating with its use of colour and costume in combination with the dance of the Abbess and her nuns, it seemed somewhat incongruous.

As a whole, given it is a modern version of Giselle, I’d have liked the ballet to have more narrative drive, rather than what seemed to be a continuation of the dilemma posed in the first act; alternatively, something more surprising in the dance.

Next Performances: 5/11/20/27 March, running till 6. June 2011.

Tickets: www.theater-basel.ch. Tel: 061 295 1133

Of all George Bernard Shaw’s 60-plus plays and very passable journalism, Pygmalion was the single-most important event that made his simple by-line, ‘GBS’, instantly recognizable to literature lovers the world over. Shaw was yet another product of that prolific crucible of English language giants - Ireland - and although an anglophile himself, the weapon Pygmalion uses to correct the England of his time is the one he knows best: language, in particular diction, a fad that remains oh-so popular in Britain to this day as a means of pigeon-holing one’s social class. With biting humour (surely the satirist’s sharpest weapon) over five acts, the audience sees a merciless lampooning of the middle-class values that had risen to such powerful heights in the Victorian and Edwardian societies immediately preceding the play’s publication in 1912, and it’s first curtain-up (curiously in Vienna) the following year.

Pygmalion has ever been popular with schoolchildren, keen to improve their English skills. And they would need to be keen to grasp the subtleties of 100-year old language. “Shied,” in the sense of thrown, is one such. Still Eliza, frequently described by her mentor as a slut, can console herself that an audience in pre-World War I Britain would think her guilty of nothing more than a little untidiness that maybe a quick bath and face-polish would put right. Sadly in these less innocent times, when many words are now press-ganged into carrying smutty sexual overtones in addition to, or instead of, their original, it is to be hoped that the flower of Basel’s youth will know the difference.

However, the fact that large chunks of the audience was made up of local youngsters only partly explains the sell-out of all seats fully two weeks before the 30 January performance. The truth of the matter is that this classic made only the briefest of one-day stops, presented as one of a number of English language dramas this year at the ever-cosy Schauspielhaus. This latest production came courtesy of the American Drama Group Europe, with their visit to Basel coming about one third the way into a punishing, 80 performance/6 country schedule.

Peter Joucla’s adaptation for just five players is masterful, as is the skill in creating so many scenes and effects with just a handful of props and a set comprising nothing more than a few semi-transparent white panels. Gabrielle Douglas, playing the role of Eliza, was captivating. Her performance, and that of her fellow players, had no difficulty in thrusting the enraptured audience “...into the Jaws of Middle Class Morality.”

One would think it a little anachronistic in the 21^st Century for a person’s education, veracity and social standing to be affected by the way they speak. Not a bit of it. And I don’t think Shaw had any illusions either that his most popular play would present a serious threat to society. Certainly, if fresh, dedicated theatre companies continue to perform with as much charm and wit as the American Drama Group Europe, Pygmalion will continue to capture the imagination of audiences the world over for many years to come. Don’t leave it too long before you come back to Basel.

Andrew Craven



Elenor and Mike, show hopefuls

Part I auditions 15 Jan 11

Live auditions are terrifying.. and I was only reporting behind the scenes!  Semi-Circle kindly let me take a sneak preview what is going on in their up and coming production RENT.

Elenor and Mike were two of the hopefuls who were there auditioning for parts. I loved how ‘behind the scenes’ I was able to see breaths taken from a portable oxygen canister, voice warming (very loud) and the abundance of love that is in the air, so lovely.

 Even from street level entry Semi-Circle provide a military type operation of scheduling to allow the auditionees to be seen at their allocated time points. It was amazing to be part of this very special ‘exhausting’ day.

 
Part I auditions 15 Jan 11

Julian David came all the way from Munich to audition for the part of ‘Angel’ a drag queen (listen to his interview on the home page 18Jan11 show).

Whilst sitting with the Semi-Circle panel, Director(s), Producer, Choreographer and the President  (scary stuff) he acted out a scene that brought huge goose bumps, he stripped off into a little skirt and danced around the room (whilst singing beautifully) to the finale…the splits...open mouths all round ‘bravo bravo’…he certainly nailed his audition! 

Part II auditions 30 Jan 11

Call-back names announced from Part I (whoop whoop), Part II auditions enable the panel to see visually who fits together.  As RENT is mainly a male cast duets were sung together and routines switched. Testosterone in abundance these guys were true professionals, many laughs were had and I could see relationships forming (no rivalry at all).    

The ‘Tango’ next. The choreographer along with her 13 year old talented daughter showed male/female couples a dance routine which was very difficult to follow and ended up with body parts wrapped around each other. I loved the sheer energy and effort and believe me lots of people were observing.   It seemed to be getting very hot in the room and it was not even close to lunch. There is such a huge program to fit into one day (8am to 6pm) it is incredible that Semi-Circle were ahead of schedule. But this is down to the most amazing volunteers and dedicated staff they have. June is coming soon you have been pre-warned!

The sheer mix of kicking off with a live band (featuring the President of Semi Circle) and a beautiful blond singer straight to the fairy (who had lost her marbles) were truly delightful. Characters included female black long coated baddies (I was scared) and a horn rimmed nerdy hopeless romantic who thought his bride was Daisy the cow. Anecdotes using Basel/local Swiss lingo (Bider and Tanner, Mont Blonc etc) kept you listening and of course laughing.

I loved the setting of the Scala Theatre (nice bar) and the songs/voices carried well (even over the talkative plethora of excited kids).

Oh I forgot to say…’he’s behind you’…the cow that was, there was a lot of this which is a must in any pantomime.  Check out what's coming next at the Basel English Panto Group.

Following its success at the New York international Fringe Festival, this play was performed last Saturday at Basel Theatre Schauspielhaus.

Review follows:

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I was pleased to gain a seat at the recent performance of by the Theater of Eternal Value of "Eternity in an Hour"  - a tribute to the life and art of William Blake drawn heavily from Blakes' Songs of Innocence and Experience.  Blake was a multi-facted talent - and somewhat underappreciated in current times.  I was quite looking forward to seeing and hearing a live performance of his works.

Tim Bruce was indeed as fabulous as rated - in the space of an hour he believably wandered forward and backward along  the time line of Blake's life - although it helped quite a bit, especially for my German companion who was new to Blake, to have read the program first. Nonetheless, the staging and performance were clever enough that one was never lost during the performance.

The evening was strongest when Blake's poetry was recited.   Angels figured heavily in the Blake universe,  he communed with them regularly, and felt he was guided  by them. The angles in this production were presented as Grecian goddesses of the dance - a clever idea but badly executed. In the end the dance sections were distracting, amatuerish and  too large a component of the whole. Further, my non- native English speaking friends had difficulting understanding some of the slavic accents of some of the players; this last was a bit mystifying to me, as speaking with any accent should be within a professional actresses' toolkit.

The production fared better on the musical front. Blake was a radical in his way, and the musical accompaniment I liked best were the first few pieces the bongo drum (if Blake had been born in the 20^th century, he would definitely have been a member of the Beats) .  The soft guitar backdrop to the later songs was a  bit 1970's  bland for me - maybe better to have the same tune on a mandolin, or better yet, a more intricate melody.

Overall, it was a mixed production. I applaud the decision to  include an entry from the world of Fringe theater in the English Abonnament. One of the things I admire about the Basel Theater is their willingness to take chances.   And definitely, the Theater Basel should continue to look for works such as these to bring into their schedule.