EIF theatre and music reviews: Hamlet | Edinburgh Festival Chorus | The Alehouse Sessions + more

Hamlet | Jess Shurte

Hamlet ★★★★★

Lyceum Theatre  Until 17 August

If I say that there’s a truly special theatre event on stage at the Lyceum Theatre this weekend, the wonderful actors of the Teatro la Plaza company, from Lima in Peru, will laugh at me. 

“Special”, after all, is one of those weasel words often directed at people with what we call disabilities; and it can bring with it a whole barrage of negative assumptions and prejudices.

Yet La Plaza’s version of Hamlet is nothing if not special; not only because it is performed by a brilliant company of eight adult actors with Down’s syndrome, but because the ferocious, left-field freshness of its approach to this most familiar of classics offers a non-stop feast of new insights both into the lives of people with Down’s syndrome today, and into Shakespeare’s text, which is shaken up, translated, fragmented, relived and reconstructed in spectacular style - although always with a profound respect for the shape and poetry of the original play.  

So on an open stage backed by a large screen, and often magnificently lit by Jesus Reyes, we see a range of actors take on the role of the troubled prince, identifying strongly with Hamlet’s near-suicidal rebellion against a corrupt world, and its many cruelties.

On the screen, meanwhile, we see everything from chapter headings and surtitles to images of the actors studying their lines in their bedrooms at home, and a recorded Skype conversation in which the lead “Hamlet” actor, Jaime Cruz, seeks advice on the role from a brilliantly co-operative Sir Ian McKellen.

There’s even a hilarious confrontation with Sir Laurence Olivier’s famous film performance of To Be Or Not To Be, which ends with the audience cheering the company on, as they decide to imitate no one, but to produce their own Hamlet, in their own way.  

There follows a brilliant play scene involving a touch of audience participation, some exquisite lyrical handling of the story of Ophelia’s death by the three women in the company, and a few final blasts of pure defiant rap, emphasising this young company’s determination to celebrate their difference, rather than suppress it.

And although, as the company points out, everyone dies in the end except Lucas Demarchi’s beautiful dancing Horatio, the show still ends with an exhilarated audience leaping up to dance onstage with the company; thrilled by the joy, the irreverence, the profound insight, and the deep sense of human solidarity of a company whose radical message and presence, in these harsh times, seems both welcome, and absolutely necessary. 

Joyce McMillan                        

Edinburgh Festival Chorus ★★★★

Usher Hall

The thing about beanbags is that they’re just not very comfortable to sit on – certainly for extended periods, like the hour-long duration of Alexander Grechaninov’s 1912 choral work Passion Week.

When they’re used in concerts by the Budapest Festival Orchestra – from whose 2023 Edinburgh performances the International Festival has rather shamelessly pilfered the idea – at least there’s a specific purpose: they allow audience members to sit unobtrusively in among the orchestral musicians, with all the musical immediacy that brings.

Simply replacing conventional stalls seating with beanbags is a colourful gimmick, sure, but all it brings to a traditional concert with performers on stage is a painful back – and a wash of shingle sound as uncomfortable listeners constantly adjust their positions.

It’s a great shame, because the Edinburgh Festival Chorus’s performance was powerful, focused and breathtakingly detailed, especially as Chorus Director/Conductor James Grossmith highlighted the subtly contrasting choral textures and layers of sound in Grechaninov’s opulent, deeply felt music.

Ensemble was immaculate, blend was velvety when needed, and there was no doubting the love and conviction all the on-stage performers felt towards the piece.

It’s another shame, therefore, that listeners were encouraged to ‘lose yourself in the hypnotic sound’ by the Festival’s bare-bones programme, when the performance offered so much more passion and drama than a late-night chill-out zone.

David Kettle

The Alehouse Sessions ★★★★

Usher Hall, Edinburgh

One of the most popular rituals that unites us is going to the pub. In The Alehouse Sessions Bjarte Eike, violinist and director of Barokksolistene, transported us to a 17th century one with its rowdy mix of music, dance and storytelling. Cromwell is closing theatres amidst political chaos in times, Eike hints, that are not so distant.

With violins, viola, double bass, baroque guitars, a harmonium, percussion and a charango - small Andean lute - Eike’s nine-strong band of merry men strolled and danced their way through irresistible foot-stomping sets. 

Many tunes came from the English Dancing Master, including ‘Twas a furlough from Edinburgh Town and the audience were invited to sing along in Haul Away. Tom Guthrie’s laidback account of Johnny Faa, The Raggle Taggle Gypsy, was amusingly enacted by dancer Steven Player searching among the audience for his wayward wife.

In the quieter moments, Per Buhre gave a heart-rending account of Burns’s My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose while Guthrie’s lullaby from Purcell’s Fairy Queen almost stopped time.

The obligatory pub brawl was delivered by the ensemble in comic slow-motion followed by a virtuosic dual between violinists Eike and Milos Valent with everyone dancing like it was 1699.

Susan Nickalls

Takács Quartet ★★★★

Queen’s Hall

The Takács Quartet have been International Festival stalwarts for years, and their 2024 concert undoubtedly reflected their evident pedigree.

There was almost a seen-it-all-before nonchalance about their opening, Haydn’s ‘Sunrise’ Quartet, for example - nothing here to shock or alarm, let alone carve out a distinctively provocative niche with a deeply personal interpretation. Instead, it was airy and elegant, convincingly argued and performed with warmth and assurance.

Their closing Schubert G major Quartet, D887 - the composer’s epic final quartet - was similarly shot through with restrained nobility: the tense central episodes of its slow movement, for instance, felt worked into a beautifully threaded tapestry of colours, ideas and moods, rather than the awkward, stand-out screams of horror into which other quartets transform them.

It might have been a wasted opportunity for drama, but it served to foreground a sense of calm acceptance of the inevitable.

In between, however, came a performance altogether more sparky, unpredictable and volatile. Nokuthula Ngwenyama’s Flow - getting its European premiere - challenged the players to conjure iridescent soundscapes and even groove their way through 70s-style pop (was that really a quote from Always On My Mind?).

It fairly zipped through moods and themes, with a free-flowing, organic sense of development that wasn’t always entirely convincing, but the Takács responded with a vivid, incisive account whose sheer heart-on-sleeve elan set their other more considered performances into stark relief.

David Kettle