… A FINALE SIGN-OFF FROM THEATRECAT.COM AFTER 13 YEARS
This, written largely on a diverted 453 bus on the night of the Regent St lights switch-on, is the last review on this theatrecat.com site.
It has been fun, and interesting, and wonderfully supported with press seats for which I am grateful. But being free -to-air it has become hideously expensive in travel – – I live 100 miles from London and still further from other centres of the art – and expensive in time and energy too.
So alas, no more: because if a site is going to be worth doing and respectful of readers , productions and actors, it has to be done properly, and not as a capricious me-blog , bagging tickets but only doing the lollipops. I shall still be a paying, appreciative audience quite often.
And so to TOSCA: I had planned to stop after the RSC Middlemarch (below) if only to make terrible Mao-miaow jokes about The Long Middlemarch To Freedom. But ENO has been good to me, recognizing perhaps that even a musical ignoramus can judge the purely dramatic qualities of its work. And this is drama – melodrama – at a glorious extreme.
Some jibbed at the setting of Puccini’s masterpiece in a curiously bland modernish church atrium, and at the symbolically philistine way Scarpia and his fascisti smash up the piano , bash a violin to bits and pile broken instruments up near the end. And admittedly in the early scenes there is something alarmingly unreal and preposterous – even for Puccini – about Axelle Fanyo’s vast- voiced and overbearing Tosca (Chaz’men Williams-Ali looks frankly terrified as Cavarodossi even while he is swearing undying love for her). But once Christopher Purves’ Scarpia appears in military rig and deploying an even more terrifying voice, it falls into place : he is her perfect and ultimate adversary. And you gasp when his voice soars in triumphantly vicious hatred from a gallery while the Latin chorale of a chanting congregation rises below. That chorale includes real children (Marlborough Primary School, whose freshness and natural frolics while being ushered around the stage in gaggles create a surprising, welcome edge of contrast to the thuggish horror of Scarpia ‘s men.
The latter got a boo at the curtain call, as did Scarpia himself once Purves, grinning, signalled for it: why not, there is no finer villain anywhere). Heartfelt cheers met Williams-Ali too, since his tormented Cavarodossi redeemed his early slight absurdity with magnificent final arias. As for Fanyo, Tosca’s own immortal Vissi d’arte was unforgettably strong, a moment to remember.
So I loved Annilese Miskimmon‘s production, different from the last ROH interpretation, wilder and in its terrifying new finale definitely unforgettable (spoilers are banned).
And this feels no bad way to sign off, and bid theatrecat.com farewell. Nice to book-end the site with contrasts: from its first review in 2013 being of a pub-monologue about the Wolfenden Report, its last is grand opera. We’ve done everything in between, and I’ve loved the thirteen hears since I left the Times-critic role and wrote the “manifesto”page in a spirit of gaiety, curiosity and tribute to British theatre. Which has been and remains on a roll, from pub to Palladium and all stations on the way.
So no more alerts, just civilian ticket-buying for me, and ordinary applause. Or boos. I’ll leave the archive up for a while, for interest. Thank you for reading.
TOSCA tickets – Eno.org.uk to 11 dec
Rating 4.
