THEATRE PREVIEW
V NEWS
I Open Audition tor Men If you fancy your chances as a dancer with the Featherstonehaughs (the brother company to the Cholmondeleys) you should call 071 383 3231 and then make your way down to London , on Thursday 28 May (bringing a photo and a CV), where there‘s an open audition to find a male dancer/performer from 11am—3pm at Danceworks, 16 Balderton Street, London W1.
I Fringe poster Yes it‘s that time again. This year‘s poster for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe has been selected from 3680 contributions by children throughout Scotland. The winner is 12-year-old Andy Rae of Glenwood School. Glenrothes, who if past experience is anything to
‘2: ' ‘
go by, might well end up
as Rock Editor on The
List, our own Alastair
Mabbott having designed
the winning poster several
years ago. Copies of the poster are on sale at the
Fringe Office, 180 High
Street, Edinburgh, and
this year‘s festival runs
Sunday 16 Aug—Sat 5
Sept.
I Royal Lyceum Open Days Edinburgh‘s Royal Lyceum is giving people the chance to see behind the scenes in the recently refurbished theatre every Saturday at 11am. You can get on stage, into the dressing rooms and behind the sound and lighting controls, while being given historical details about the theatre. The hour-long tour costs £1 (50p) and advanced
' booking on 031 229 7404 is advisable.
I Theatre Royal Open Day Meanwhile, Glasgow‘s Theatre Royal is opening its back doors to the public on Saturday 6 June when Scottish Opera's team of technicians, make-up artists, costumicrs, musicians and producers will be on hand to give you an insight to their work. The morning session (9.45am—1.30pm) is aimed at 7—14-year-olds, then after 2pm adults are welcome. Entrance is £2.50 for adults and free for children. Book in advance on 041 332 9000.
amen-l Baehtothe
fllfilll‘ét’ __ ,1:
The Scottish Ballet’s Troy Game, one at two i companion pieces to Amanda Miller’s Briei
In 1990 Amanda Miller and The Scottish Ballet won a Scotland On Sunday Paper Boat Award tor her choreography in Pretty Ugly. Miller‘s new work lorthe company, Briei, will be pertormed at Tramway, an unusual venue tor a conventional group. But Miller, Resident Choreographerwith the Frankfurt Ballet, sees no reason to alter her piece tor this space. ‘I love the Tramway,‘ she says, ‘but every space I ' work in is dilterent, the only thing that affects us is that the-audience expects something.‘
Although Miller had a predominantly
classical training in the USA, she was also introduced to the more radical Limon and Cunningham techniques. Thus, she has the credentials iorThe Scottish Ballet, with something just a little challenging thrown in. ‘I work totally ott-balance,’ she says, ‘with risk but not violence, which is a big dilierence.’ She explains what working with traditionally trained dancers is like - ’lt’s fun, it’s challenging, it’s like an education’ - and she is sensitive enough to sympathise with their problems - ‘lt’s hard to give up everything you’ve been taught, to try something else’.
Briei is set to Bach’s cannons, each ol them no more than BOsecs long, and created as academic studies using the eight notes irom the Goldberg Variations. ’It was a research within himselt,’ she says about Bach, “about how to take something, go lorwards or backwards, or invert or reverse the inversion.’ This is her inspiration for the movement. ‘You could say it’s narrative because it travels parallel to the music, but it does not interpret it.’
Like so many choreographers, Miller does not sell her work well. ‘People can see what they wanna see,’ she says modestly. ’lt’s not my idea to say you have to look at this, and look at it this way. You can decide ilyou like it or not.’ (Tamsin Grainger)
Briei, Tramway, Glasgow, Wed 27—Thurs 28 May.
The Scottish Ballet, Tramway, Glasgow, Wed 27—Sat 30 May.
I‘MMMMEI Skm deep
Entre la Piel y el Alma - Between Skin and Soul - is an ambitious musical play written by GP. Cribari, a postgraduate student at the RSAMO, inspired by the : romantic liaison oi would-be ' revolutionaries Luis Carlos Prestes and Olga Bennario. He was a Brazilian idealist who amassed an army 013000 men and marched them 25,000 kilometres around Brazil drumming up support tor a coup that would never
take place. She was a committed communist, German by birth, and on the run lrom the authorities. The couple met in Russia, where Prestes convinced Benario to return with him to Brazil and his imminent revolution and, although their husband-and-wite image was originally intended as a toll, they were soon to tail in love in the best revolutionary tradition.
Later, though, Prestes would be arrested and imprisoned for eleven years and the pregnant Benario sent back to Germany as a ‘giit’ to Hitler. She was gassed, but her baby, born in prison, survived. Their story, and the story oi Prestes’s mother’s eilorts to tree her son and daughter-in-iaw, is lmmortallsed in an eiegyto Benario written by the Nobel prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. And it is Neruda’s poem, together with the text ol Benarlo’s last letter to her husband, that provide the Spanish lyrics to Cribari’s music.
Oulte apart lrom its intriguing subject matter, Entre la Piel y el Alma is
G.P. Cribari: ambitious musicl play
interesting because it is the lirst iruit oi a new course in music composition at RSAMO, and it is the longest piece written by Cribari, a Los Angeles-born music student with more on his mind than the riots back home. ‘This is the first opportunity that i’ve had to get excited about it,’ he says. ’The writing oi It has almost been secondary to the business oi producing it.’
On top oi composing the score, Cribari has had to organise the nineteen students and graduates involved in the show, but has tound the RSAMO very supportive ol his venture. ‘It really takes a lot at initiative to do something like this, but everyone was very enthusiastic. The willingness is certainly there.’ Cribari hopes to stage the production at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe and has already planned another project in the autumn. (Miranda France)
Entre la Piel y el Alma, RSAMO, Glasgow, Fri 22 May.
I Farr enough
iJ
For an actor on a lightning visit to promote his starring role in My Fair Lady, Edward Fox is disarmineg candid. ‘l‘m not sure that I really like musicals,‘ he says, admitting that he much prefers Shaw‘s Pygmalion to Lerner and Loewe‘s reworking of it. This is not the sort of the thing actors are meant to say, but Fox, a man very much at home with himself, is not one to play by the book. ‘I‘m enjoying being in this one,‘ he concedes, as I imagine his publicist‘s relief, ‘I like the newness ofit and the challenge of it, but it doesn‘t make me want to rush into another one.‘ Oh dear, and he was doing so well. Fox is, however, much enamoured of his role, that of speech-specialist Professor Higgins which he says has stayed with him since he once played it in Pygmalion. And the fact that Rex Harrision is so much associated with the part doesn‘t trouble him. ‘The part of Higgins is so good,‘ he says, flopping comfortably on the couch opposite me in the Edinburgh Playhouse reception suite, ‘it offers so much to the actor, that the fact of one actor playing it in his own uniquely brilliant way doesn‘t stop it being open to another interpretation. What Rex did with it was to marry the part of Higgins to his own pesonality. Actors whose style that is do something remarkable, but there are other ways. I think I‘ve tried to make it more Shavian in intention, which is what I‘d always wanted to do.‘ Taking its lead from the original 50s production which had costumes designed by Cecil Beaton, this latest incarnation of My Fair Lady boasts a wardrobe created by style-guru Jasper Conran. Add to the equation Simon Callow, the actor/director who recently won an Olivier Award for his production of Carmen Jones, and you have one of the more promising musical propositions on the pre-London touring circuit. Aside from his love of musicals, Callow‘s on-stage background makes him a ‘very agreeable‘ director. ‘It makes him aware of what an actor‘s needs are,‘ says Fox, ‘what his fears and foibles are, and that makes him extremely sympathetic.‘ (Mark Fisher) My Fair Lady, Playhouse, Edinburgh, Tue 2—Sat 13 June.
42 The List 22 May - 4 June 1992