Aspects of Englishness

David Eldridge’s new play “End”, at the National’s Dorfman Theatre, is simply a single uninterrupted 95-minute scene for a man and a woman. Part of its charm is how clearly Eldridge locates Alfie and Julie as Londoners, specifically as residents of North London. Julie (Saskia Reeves) and Alfie (Clive Owen) have spent thirty-odd years of their lives together, never marrying, but having one child who is now an independent adult. Ten years ago, Alfie was involved in one adulterous affair that they both knew about, but some aspects of which they now talk about for the first time. 

Far more serious, Alfie has terminal cancer. He tells Julie, early on, his decision not to pursue chemotherapy or radiotherapy any further. Hence the play’s title, “End” - though the play’s continuing conversation casts some uncertainty on Alfie’s decision. Eldridge has also written “Beginning” (2017) and “Middle” (2022), about male-female couples at the start and midpoint of their relationships: the three were commissioned for the Dorfman by Rufus Norris . I hope the three are now presented as a trilogy, but I testify that “End” stands excellently as an independent play. Everything - the director is Rachel O’Riordan - hangs on Reeves and Owen, actors of great experience whose stage style is wonderfully open and direct. With complete naturalness, the play brings them to both laughter and tears.

       II. 

Friends and colleagues had told me that “Paddington, the musical” - the production that has just opened at the Savoy Theatre, directed by Luke Sheppard, with original music and lyrics by Tom Fletcher, and book by Olivier Award-winner Jessica Swale - was a wonderful show. There are spoken passages about Paddington and the Brown family that certainly touch the spot, and scenic sequences that celebrate London and its skyline appealingly. 

But most of this production feels like a musical composed by AI, wholly synthetic in reminding you of a hundred other musicals and in tweaking its London-tourism factor. The biggest number - join in, everybody - is an oompah waltz, celebrating “Ma, mama mama, mama mamarmalade”. (It sticks in your head like glue.) 

       III. 

There’s an element of English tourism written into most Gilbert and Sullivan operas.“HMS Pinafore”, currently revived by English National Opera at the London Coliseum and in repertory till February 7, ends with the refrain “But in spite of all temptations

To belong to other nations

He remains an Englishman!” How much do we - should we - laugh at this? Although love and duty are important themes in every G&S opera, so is absurdity, not least the joint absurdities of the English establishment and of opera itself. 

For forty years or more, directors have been varying the degrees of seriousness and absurdity in productions of the G&S repertory. Since I’m among those who loved the inventive surrealism of Cal McCrystal’s English National Opera “Iolanthe” (2018), I’m shocked by the coarse vulgarity of his “Pinafore”. New in 2019 but only new to me this week, it keeps plunging beneath “Carry On” levels of daft vulgarity. 

      IV.

At the Royal Festival Hall on Sunday 30 November, there were many cheers for the British premiere of “Mother Earth”, a piano concerto by the Turkish pianist-composer Fazil Say. This, played by Say and the Philharmonia Orchestra, was energetic, surprising, inventive, exuberant, enjoyable, unpredictable, and dreadful. Say loves unusual percussion effects, both by plucking piano strings and by employing unusual persuasion instruments: all of which I relished. The overall impressions his music leaves, however, is one of superficiality and sensationalism. Although the title “Mother Earth” and the seven-part structure refer to global aspects of climate change, the music sounds chiefly concerned with effects. Nature itself doesn’t enter into Say’s sound world.

The conductor was Santtu-Mathias Rouvali. At short notice, Sibelius’s “En Saga” (1892) replaced de Falla’s “El Amor Brujo” as the concert’s opener - a big jump from Spanish Mediterranean to wintry Scandinavia, but wonderfully absorbing in atmosphere. After the interval, Rouvali’s account of Dvořák’s eighth symphony exemplified this conductor’s gift of exhilarating immediacy. This composer’s, too: here is Bohemian lyricism at its most intoxicating.

       V.

At Covent Garden, the Royal Ballet’s triple bill for November consisted of three pure-dance works: George Balanchine’s “Serenade” (Tchaikovsky), Cathy Marston’s “Against the Tide” (Britten), and Justin Peck’s “Everywhere We Go” (Sufjan Stevens). “Serenade” (1934, to Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings) is the single most rewatchable of all ballets; “Against the Tide”, a premiere, is a moody response to Britten’s marvellous violin concerto; and “Everywhere We Go” is a choreographic cornucopia to a commissioned score. 

All of which should have added up to more than it proved. I’ve seen “Everywhere We Go” often since its New York City Ballet premiere. Although it shows Peck’s exceptional gifts in terms of kaleidoscopic choreographic virtuosity, too many parts of its Stevens score prove insufferable on repeated hearings. Still, at least Peck responds closely to his music, whereas Marston’s response to the Britten violin concerto is vague and half-hearted. In terms of composing even a basic dance phrase, let alone in building phrases into dance structures, Marston is feeble. 

You could analyse “Serenade” to show what it has in common with “Everywhere We Go”. It, too, is kaleidoscopic, it too shows how many different numbers and formations its torrrential sequence contains, and more. Yet “Serenade” is an incomparably deeper wor as k: its tapestry abounds with threads suggesting fate, love, community, and transcendence. These meanings, unfortunately, are hard to sense in the Royal Ballet’s staging. The British company is wrongly keen to colour Balanchine with bright facial expressions (smiles here, woebegone looks there) but contained dancing. Balanchine asked his dancers to simplify any qualities acting or presentation because he wanted the movement itself to communicate. The Royal Ballet, a company of dance-actors, has never found it easy to perform Balanchine stylishly. Under Kevin O’Hare, its artistic director since 2012, its dependence on strong facial expressions has grown only stronger.