writer . alan harris   composer . Harry Blake design . Will Holt   choreographer . Jennifer Fletcher lx design . Christina Smith 

video design  . Adam Young sound design  . Tom Gibbons photography . Elisa Terren

 

Liveartshow (whose previous production was pleasingly described as “batshit mental”), operating in a deadzone scrapyard theatre jammed between the Olympic pack and Hackney, answered with a hallucinonightmare vision in 50 minutes, with sampled leitmotifs, pre-recorded sobbing, a cheesy ballad for Alberich and ripped-out tongues replacing the gold. Writer Alan Harris, composer Harry Blake and director Martin Constantine cooked up a dreamy meditation on it which wound up with bloody bodies literring the floor and the side-wall of the theatre open to the gusty Lee Valley weather to mark the Valhalla ribbon-cutting. I was particularly mesmerised by Virginia Scudeletti’s Woglinde. A strangely wonderful short evening. 

OPERA NOW

 

Off the back of some deservedly breathless reviews for last year’s Manga Sister - also at The Yard - Liveartshow have delivered another googly with their take on the first instalment of Wagner’s epic opera series. The increasingly remarkable trio of writer/librettist Alan Harris, composer Harry Blake and director Martin Constantine blow the door wide open for their completely original take. Liveartshow promise to ‘explore the boundaries of theatre, music, live art dance and opera’ and they certainly do. Their trademark, multi-disciplinary approach seems fitting, especially seeing as Wagner’s masterpiece itself was a giant, creative ‘what if?’. This is bloody exciting stuff. 

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