It’s a hard life at coalface of popular entertainment
Theatre Tom: A Story of Tom Jones – The Musical
Festival Theatre, Edinburgh
Neil Cooper
A FLAT-capped miners’ choir isn’t the most obvious opening gambit for what looks increasingly like a new wave of rock and roll musicals. That’s exactly what you get, however, in the South Walesbased Theatr na Nog’s dramatic love letter to Pontypridd’s most famous singing son. This is how it should be, because, despite the mixed messages sent out by the show’s rather cumbersome title, Geinor Styles’ production of Mike James’ script is a more grown up look at life behind the scenes of Jones’ rocky road to success than one might initially expect.
As the artist formerly known as Tom Woodward moves from singing in his local, the Wheatsheaf Arms, through the cabaret circuit, sharing a London dive with his backing band, he also has to face up to life as a parent away from his teenage bride Linda. The all-singing, all-playing cast led by a hip-thrusting Kit Orton as Jones don’t make heavy weather of this, and there is an unpretentious honesty at the heart of a show still finding its dramatic feet.
While much of Wednesday night’s audience was made up of ladies of a certain age who gamely stepped up to the mini greatest hits finale with unabashed glee, a younger generation of X-Factor weaned would-be superstars would benefit from seeing what it really means to graft at the coalface of popular entertainment. The show ends with Jones’ breakout hit, the build-up to which is a tease, despite there being nary a pair of knickers in sight. Given the show’s subject, that really is unusual.
Music
Ellie Goulding
SSE Hydro, Glasgow
Jonathan Geddes ONLY when Ellie Goulding stopped being a pop star did her appeal really come through. When she sat down around the halfway mark of this set and reeled off a few impressively sweeping ballads, including the grab your pal arm-waving of Army and the torch song Explosions, she seemed at her most comfortable.
She wasn’t always as poised, especially when required to parade around in an outfit borrowed from Tron early on. Goulding instead seemed a shy figure, even apologising for a “boring” anecdote about an interest in Scottish history, but there was something quite charming about the sheer politeness, especially compared with the overt bravado that usually dominates arena pop. When she asked the crowd to put their phones away before Burn it was like a gentle school teacher lecturing errant pupils.
Yet too many tracks from her third album Delirium, which this tour is supporting, came across like a lightweight pick and mix raid on a pop factory, all relentless beats and whizzing synths clearly and safely designed for arenas. Whether on Holding On For Life’s handclaps, the generic Codes or her two Calvin Harris team-ups, Outside and I Need Your Love, there was little sense of Goulding having her own pop personality.
There were some dancefloor successes, though, namely Keep On Dancin’ possessing a beat to justify the title and the encore’s exuberant Anything Could Happen. Goulding herself abandoned any shiny choreography there, instead wildly jumping up and down and goofily dancing, again cutting a more likeable figure through being natural than in the overly slick moments that otherwise peppered the set.
Music
RSNO
Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
Michael Tumelty AT some point during the RSNO’s concert on Thursday night – and I’m not quite sure when it struck me – I suddenly felt as though I was in the grip of a multi-faceted musical fantasy. Nothing was orthodox. Nothing was foursquare. Nothing was as expected according to any rules or convention.
It was as though all the music in the programme, conducted by music director Peter Oundjian, had broken free of its composer’s moorings and was liberated from the bar-line, the constraints of the beat and harmonic progression, and all regular, familiar musical structures.
As the beguiling RSNO Junior Chorus unleashed itself on James MacMillan’s Little Mass – not so little at half an hour – the air rang and the concert hall sang with the young choristers soaring, sighing and chattering through the very demanding score, blurring conventional edges of definition, while conjuring sacred sentiments and seductive sonorities from MacMillan’s beautiful writing, with some ravishing orchestral tones adding depth and colour.
And after being entranced by that, I was comprehensively bewitched by the mystical, magical and torrential outpouring of Szymanowski’s Second Violin Concerto, where soloist Nicola Benedetti, giving the luscious music all the air it needed to stretch its gorgeous limbs, actually created the impression that it was pouring forth from her Stradivarius as though being improvised. The piece, always side-lined, needs a champion. And it’s found one.
And completing the fantasy of the night, with a dreamy, heady, erotic and frankly ghoulish series of scenes, was the King of Bonkers himself, Hector Berlioz.
His Symphonie Fantastique enjoyed a tremendous performance by the RSNO players, with Oundjian letting the music off the leash and into realms of wild fantasy in the Witches’ Sabbath.
Comedy
Greg Proops
Glasgow Comedy Festival Saint Luke’s, Glasgow
Marianne Gunn ALTHOUGH Greg Proops played a more established venue on Saturday night, his Friday evening podcast show in the “emerging” east end (otherwise known as the Calton) sounded far more interesting. His self-proclaimed title of smartest man in the world was certainly backed up by his quick-fire wit and extensive vocabulary for the majority of his long set. A somewhat obvious gag about an enormous purple organ (Saint Luke’s is a former space of faith) set the tone, as Proops set out his manifesto to be the “fresh piece of plaice” in the sea of chip shops surrounding the Barrowland-famed area.
The podcast was being recorded (available Easter Monday) and the format welcomes audience members to shower gifts upon the comedic host. These included home-made tablet and rock-hard macaroon while the more cerebral offerings of a Marlon Brando autobiography and the best of William McGonagall lent themselves to some expert excerpt readings – an audience member was even invited up on stage to deliver some doggerel, much to the terror of any health and safety watchdogs.
“A drunk comedian, and no stairs or lights...” Proops quipped, as he took Kirsten’s arm in a gentlemanly fashion. Vodka on ice was being drunk liberally, and he developed a penchant for the vodka shots also bestowed upon him. Up to this point, he had mentioned Chekhov, Aristotle, Stoker and Confucius; his descriptions embodied the swallowing of a dictionary; he had even defused an awkward situation with a female Finnish heckler. Yet it was here he got serious. Talking American politics got him all riled up. If Hillary Clinton needs a new speechwriter, she should give Proops a call.
Omid Djalili Glasgow Comedy Festival King’s Theatre, Glasgow
Keith Bruce
IT is a bold and confident stand-up who can transform a cavernous venue like the King’s into a club-like venue for experiment, yet that was what Djalili appeared to do on Saturday night. If his routine began on terrain he has clearly trod carefully before, it ended in an encore that seemed very fresh indeed, even if there was an element of set-up with his technician in its execution. For once the cliché about an act taking the audience on a journey was actually true, and you could feel it in the theatre.
It would be wrong to give away the ending, although I am not so familiar with his work to know how new it is, but there was certainly a palpable sense that it was a confidence in his relationship with the audience – and by extension with Glasgow and Scotland – that took him there, with all of us happily tagging along for the ride. Comparison with the sometimes controversial work of Stewart Lee would not be inappropriate.
The main difference is that Djalili combines that edginess – daring to make jokes that are entirely at odds with the mocking of lazy preconceptions about race and religion that is central to his whole comedic persona – with a thoroughly showbiz front, namedropping with impunity and referencing his celebrity lifestyle as a Holywood actor. There are African-American stars who have careers that are built on the same combination of skills, but it is most unusual in a British performer.
As his warm-up man, Boothby Graffoe both knew his place and took full advantage of it, with a pithy set that featured a version of the familiar reprise-for-latecomers schtick that should prohibit any imitation.
Music
SCO
City Hall, Glasgow
Michael Tumelty
GOOD Lord. They were dropping almost like flies at the weekend. At one point before Peter Oundjian’s RSNO concert on Thursday, the orchestra was being prepared by assistant Jean-Claude Picard, in case Oundjian, suffering from an old football injury (he was a Chelsea target when young) didn’t make it. Some hours before the concert, he was still on crutches.
On Friday it was the SCO’s turn. With Robin Ticciati out of commission, a replacement conductor, Dutchman Ed Spanjaard, was brought in to accompany baritone Matthias Goerne and Kate Royal in Brahms’ Requiem. Then, at the 11th hour, Goerne fell off his perch and was replaced by baritone Roland Wood, who we know from his earlier Scottish Opera days as a company principal. As it turned out, it was a very fine concert, though I wasn’t entirely convinced that the SCO was at ease with Spanjaard in his direction of Haydn’s 102nd Symphony, served up, a bit po-faced, as an aperitif to the Brahms. I wasn’t sure that Spanjaard got the jokes in one of the funniest finales in all Haydn’s symphonies.
All was well, however, for a profoundly-moving performance of Brahms’ Requiem, with the SCO Chorus celebrating its 25th anniversary with noble and accurate singing, and only that perennial choral concern, the strength of the tenor section, marring the final return of the Selig sind theme in the last movement. Elsewhere, with the SCO Chorus as solid as a rock, Kate Royal’s richly-beautiful soprano releasing tears with her gorgeous singing, and Roland Wood’s bronzed baritone adding real calibre to the texture, it was a deep and sensitive German Requiem.