Naked truth of Lucy’s needs
All dressed up: Lucy Frederick bares her soul relationships and the hole in her heart created by the death of her mother. We consider Maslow’s Pyramid of Need and the place of cake and gin therein and now Frederick calms down and hits her stride. When we get to the lake with the naked couples swimming underwater we pretty much know we are getting full-on personal, but we are now held tight in the moment of the show. There is a palpable tension in the room, which is a powerful thing in comedy. And the tension is not released in any predictable way.
Back, naked, in front of the TV mirrors and Gok Wan, we get to the dark heart of the show. It is an oddly compelling hour with a wholly engaging performer. Sometimes the light and shade of the piece switch so fast it is like a strobe effect. But go with it.
KATE COPSTICK
Until 26 August. Today 2:50pm. The Space @ Surgeon’s Hall (Venue 53)
JJJJ
Take 14 of Russia’s finest young string players, directed by their engagingly gruff and avuncular conductor, Misha Rachlevsky, and give them a programme of pieces written by famous composers when still in their teenage prodigy years. The Gang simply grab the ball and do they run with it!
This Fountain of Youth programme proved both dazzlingly impressive and heart-warming, as the young musicians ranged through works by Rossini, Shostakovich, Mendelssohn and Britten – early compositions all, but far from juvenile in their complexity and potency. And in this intimate space the youngsters performed them with meticulous attention and infectious energy.
They kicked off with Rossini’s little-heard Sonata for Strings No 3, a very different form from the opera with which we usually associate him, with a solemn middle movement contrasting with the vivacious string cascades with which it ended. A prelude and scherzo from the 19-year-old Shostakovich – edgy music with its melancholy drifts and an intensely visceral conclusion – was brought off superbly by the players, who were similarly deft with Mendelssohn’s bustling Octet for Strings. “Might it not have been a little faster?” observed Rachlevsky drolly, following the scurrying energy of its finale.
They followed that with the stately yet warm-hearted sarabande from Britten’s Simple Symphony, and concluded – we thought – with a short, sharp burst of Astor Piazzolla’s popular Libertango by way of a “lollipop”. To cram in an encore of Flight of the Bumble Bee after that was probably over-egging the pudding.
JIM GILCHRIST
Until 25 August. Today 3pm.