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Edward Seckerson
Writer and broadcaster Edward Seckerson is chief classical music and opera critic for The Independent. He wrote and presented the long-running BBC Radio 3 series Stage & Screen, in which he interviewed many of the most prominent writers and stars of musical theatre. He appears regularly on BBC Radio 3 and 4. On television, he has commentated a number of times at the Cardiff Singer of the World competition. He has published books on Mahler and the conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, and has been on Gramophone Magazine's review panel for many years. Edward presented the 2007 series of the Radio 4 music quiz Counterpoint. He has interviewed everyone from Leonard Bernstein to Liza Minelli; from Paul McCartney to Pavarotti: from Julie Andrews to Jessye Norman.
Imagine this: the title song of a new musical set in the Warsaw Ghetto without a single Jewish inflection. And the composer’s name is Shuki Levy? If ever a show cried out for a Klezmer band this is it. Remember that marvellous National Theatre piece from a decade or more ago – Ghetto? Now there was a show born of a peoples’ music. Whatever happened to the indigenous musical score? Whatever happened to songs that were – in style and character – thoroughly integral to the subject matter? I can think of only a handful in recent times: Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins, Jonathan Larson’s Rent, and Adam Guettel’s miraculous Bluegrass inflected Floyd Collins. We can probably blame the worldwide cult of Les Miserables for what I would describe as the “Europop power score” – nothing wrong with it in itself (there are some rather terrific numbers in Les Miz) other than the fact that its colossal success has spawned a whole generation of clones – the generic musical theatre score.
So should we be retitling the newly unveiled Imagine This: Les Schmiz? This is a show with a sound idea and lots of good intentions. But it has a dreadful first act and the real inspiration, the real kicker to the solar plexus, comes too late in the second. Interestingly enough, the turning point, the moment that my level of engagement dramatically shifted, was the principal character Eleazar’s Tevye-like moment of truth – beautifully played by Peter Polycarpou. Ok, so it was straight out of Fiddler on the Roof but at least it bore more than a passing allusion to Jewishness. Plenty of Jewish jokes in this show but what about Jewish songs?
( Read more... )
So should we be retitling the newly unveiled Imagine This: Les Schmiz? This is a show with a sound idea and lots of good intentions. But it has a dreadful first act and the real inspiration, the real kicker to the solar plexus, comes too late in the second. Interestingly enough, the turning point, the moment that my level of engagement dramatically shifted, was the principal character Eleazar’s Tevye-like moment of truth – beautifully played by Peter Polycarpou. Ok, so it was straight out of Fiddler on the Roof but at least it bore more than a passing allusion to Jewishness. Plenty of Jewish jokes in this show but what about Jewish songs?
( Read more... )
