Reviews

To encourage the toe-tapping that usually goes along with folk music, Ensemble Q called their latest gig Boots & All, and attired themselves in lumberjack shirts, village green frocks, lederhosen, and stomping boots! And it was a pleasure to see musicians at the top of their game, taking obvious delight in presenting some old and new works to spotlight the folk tradition that has imbued many a composition – classical and modern.

The Importance of Being Earnest’s original opening in 1895 was well received. Unfortunately, it was caught up with Oscar Wilde’s arrest and imprisonment for homosexuality and soon closed.  But the play’s farcical inventiveness and wordy joy has stood as a theatrical beacon and has been performed almost continually since then. This version introduces some background material in extra dialogue and embraces a much more overtly sexual tone with cucumbers and bread rolls delivering rousing performances.

The State presents – in a wildly hilarious, allegorical form - a dystopian state of things uncannily much too much like our current reality.  This black-as-black comedy and its icy, sharp-edged satire cuts close to the bone.  We quickly recognise what underlies the comedy and we might wince as we laugh at its inescapable accuracy.

And just so we do not miss a word of the mad-as-hell, heightened, nasty, funny text, it is projected in surtitles – in perfect sync with the spoken words on stage.

Mozart’s risqué tale of two soldiers who place bets that their fiancées are forever faithful is, in this revived production, aptly set in Naples. The weather is hot and steamy, the Mediterranean laps beyond the balcony and locals speak endlessly of love. Promiscuity here in louche Naples seems an easier option than in Vienna where Così fan tutte premiered in 1790.