Pacific Overtures - The Union Theatre

FOUR STARS

STEPHEN Sondheim's Pacific Overtures is not often performed but thanks to a beautifully presented production at the Union Theatre I was left wondering why.

The story is set in 1850s Japan where a community fears the colonial ambitions and influences of the West and America in particular.

Having dispatched the Dutch some years earlier, Japan has now banished any foreigner entering its shores because they fear their culture and sovereignty will be eroded if not.

This splendid isolationism extends to anyone leaving the country and it is enforced particularly harshly.

But when an American warship looms over the horizon a lowly fishermen is sent to urge them to turn round and go home. But they don't listen.

An invasion brings treachery, deception, murder, Samurai revolts and ultimately social change.

Michael's Strassen's production is made up of an all male cast clad in next to nothing and with white face paint.

The story is interesting and well told and although the score is clearly not easy it is performed well by the on-stage musicians.

Many of the cast play multiple roles and there are some fine performances from all involved particularly Ian Mowat as the Old Madam, Emmauel Alba as Manjiro the fisherman, Ken Christiansen as the Reciter and Oli Reynolds as the chief Samurai.

It is an incredibly entertaining piece of theatre, beautifully staged and well choreographed and proves once again that you don't need to go to the West End to see a musical done brilliantly.

The Union has clearly not lost its golden touch.

Pacific Overtures is on at the Union Theatre, Union Street, until August 2. Tickets cost £20. Visit www.uniontheatre.biz or call the box office on 020 7261 9876.

Love Mowtown - Royal Festival Hall

FANS of Tamla Motown are in for a treat this weekend with a concert devoted to some of the best love songs from the iconic American record label.

Love Motown! will feature South London singer, songwriter and musician Noel McKoy at the Royal Festival Hall (RFH) performing a selection of the songs for one night only on Saturday, July 19.

The 52-year-old will be joined on stage by Southbank Centre's 200-voice Voicelab choir, singer Beverley Skeete, the Jazz Jamaica All Stars and Urban Soul Orchestra.

The concert will be a celebration of the great love songs from the extensive back catalogue of hits and among the highlights will be new arrangements of classics including Marvin Gaye's Let's Get It On, The Jackson 5's I'll Be There, The Supremes’ Can't Hurry Love, The Commodores’ Easy and The Isley Brothers’ This Old Heart of Mine.

It has been put together by Jazz Jamaica’s founder and leader, Gary Crosby especially for Southbank Centre's Festival of Love.

And while Noel says he can't wait to be back on the RFH stage, he does admit to a few nerves.

"I have known Gary for quite a while and over the years I have guested with Jazz Jamaica so I was really pleased to be asked to do this gig," he says.

"I have done the Festival Hall before many times but not for a while so it will be great to be back although I am quite nervous," he adds.

"I've got good memories of performing there though. It's a great stage and you can connect with the audience really well. It's also got great sound and acoustics and I'm looking forward to it - it's going to be mega!"

And he says it's just the sort of music he loves to perform.

"You can tell a story with music and for me I think I express myself better with love songs. It's how you view love and how you feel it. Music definitely touches the soul and you feel love through it.

"I loved being in the James Taylor Quartet which was more acid jazz but I'm a ballard singer really. I love crooning," he laughs. "So this festival is right up my street!"

We chat as Noel is playing guitar and composing songs for a new album.

"Music is key for me - it's my life and my passion and I've always got lots of projects on the go.

"Over the past three months I've been busy in the studio doing stuff including for the new album but I've always been like this," he says warmly.

"I am writing a song for Kool and the Gang at the moment too. I supported them the year before last when they played in Brixton.

"And I'm obviously also thinking about the up coming gig and practising for that.

"It's very exciting," he adds. "We will be performing all the classic songs but with different arrangements. My favourite is Marvin Gaye's What's Going On but there are so many others I love - the Isley Brothers and Stevie Wonder - we will be playing them all.

"We've got a huge orchestra and choir so it will be quite something - I've certainly never done anything on this scale before and I'm sure it will be very moving."

That Noel's passion is music should not come as a surprise. Born and raised in Clapham and Battersea he was surrounded by various musical influences as he was growing up.

His mum and aunt were both singers and he learned to play several instruments at school where a discipline and strong work ethic was drilled into him.

He also spent much of his teenage years listening to a wide variety of music as well as working at recording studios.

"South London was an amazing place to be in the 1970s and really informed and influenced me and my music," he says.

"I grew up in Battersea and spent a lot of time in Brixton and there was all sorts of different but great music everywhere - from Bowie to T Rex, jazz to reggae and everything in between.

"Now I enjoy an array of musical styles - roots reggae, classical, lovers rock, blues, jazz, rock and soul...and everything else that's called music."

"But it was an amazing time and really set me on my path."

And what a path it's been. After he left school he formed bands such as the Albians, Impak and then McKoy with his sister and two brothers, before fronting the James Taylor Quartet in the 1990s.

He has also released numerous albums, is working on a film - in which he is also composing the score - and has worked with the likes of Juliet Roberts, Mica Paris, Beverley Knight and has even jammed with Stevie Wonder.

"One of my best memories was at the Rotterdam Jazz Festival playing for 30,000 people with James Turner Quartet. And jamming backstage with Stevie Wonder was a personal highlight!" he laughs.

"I'm very lucky," he adds. "I don't really consider this a job because it's something I love so much and get a great deal out of.

"I've done so many things and met so many amazing people. It's a blessing."

Love Motown is at Royal Festival Hall on Saturday July 19. Tickets from £17.50. Visit www.southbankcentre.co.uk or call the box office on 0844 875 0073.

Review - Julius Caesar, The Globe

FOUR STARS

THE stage at the Globe is beginning to take on a reddish hue this year thanks to the amount of blood being spilled on it.

So far copious amounts have been shed in productions of Titus Andronicus and Anthony and Cleopatra but this is being added to thanks to Julius Caesar which has just opened at the Bankside theatre.

Directed by Dominic Dromgoole the action starts way before the bell goes thanks to Roman musicians and entertainers who mill about outside the theatre. The audience even gets a chance to see Mark Anthony run a circuit of the courtyard before the curtain goes up.

It all sets the scene for a brilliant and hugely entertaining production of Shakespeare's political play which charts the rise of Mark Anthony and the fall of Julius Caesar and all the bickering and political posturing in between.

The quality of the production stems from the brilliance of the actors and the way they deliver the text.

However, credit too to the stage itself - the Globe is the perfect place for this play - it has the space for the actors to roam around and it allows for both Mark Anthony and Brutus to deliver their addresses after the assassination of Caesar to the Roman people - us, the audience, most of whom are looking up at them from the yard.

Tom McKay gives an assured performance as the smug and self assured Brutus - the man who thinks is arrogant enough to believe he is right all the time yet makes the wrong decision at every turn.

George Irving gives Caesar a steely arrogance and with just enough arrogance and menace.

Luke Thompson is great as Mark Anthony - initially seen as drunk after a night on the tiles, but transforming into an impressive orator.

Elsewhere Christopher Logan as the somewhat camp, gossipy Casca was a joy and Katy Stephens was brilliant as both Calpurnia and one of the citizens who heckles from amongst the groundlings.

Julius Caesar is on at the Globe, Bankside until October 11. Tickets from £5. Visit www.shakespearesglobe.com or call the box office on 020 7401 9919

Resonance Festival - Bedford pub, Balham

TWENTY years ago Mike Morton played his first gig at the Bedford pub in Balham. Now the 52-year-old is back with his band The Gift to host a four-day music festival which will also act as a fundraiser for cancer charity Macmillan.The idea for the event which takes place between Thursday, July 31 and Sunday, August 3 came about after Mike and band mate David Lloyd were travelling back from a festival last year.

"We started talking about the music and discussed setting something up ourselves so we could feature the music we wanted," says Mike.

"Prog rock and classical rock bands don't get the audiences they used back in the 70s when they were more in fashion but there is still an appetite for it so it seemed a good thing to do."

But the idea really gained momentum when Mike lost his mother Marion to cancer in September.

"Mum had bowel cancer and at one stage we thought she'd beaten it but then it came back and eventually it took her life," says Mike.

"She was 79 and it was a shock because she was always so full of hope and positivity.

"I wanted to do something to remember her and Dave and I had a chat and decided that a music festival featuring adventurous guitar bands would be the perfect opportunity to do that and raise money for Macmillan in the process."

"Macmillan was great and provided my family with so much help and support towards the end of mum's life and I couldn't think of a better charity to raise funds for."

The Resonance Festival will feature an eclectic mix of national and international bands and genres from prog rock, hard rock, metal, punk and avant-garde.

Among those appearing will be Also Eden, Mostly Autumn, The Enid, Big Elf and Anglagard.

"We have described it as music without boundaries," explains Mike. "We had a wish list of bands we wanted but it took a good few months to get the final line up.

"There are lots of up and coming bands included - those who have taken inspiration from the great bands of the 70s - which we are really excited about and they were really keen to be part of this.

"It was more tricky to get the established bands - some had other commitments and for others they need a bigger space - but we have been really lucky because Anglagard is coming over from Sweden especially for the festival and Bigelf is flying in from California so there has been a lot of good will."

And he hints that there may be a few other famous faces popping in throughout the four days.

What was never in doubt was the choice of venue. This was partly because Mike lives in Balham, but also because the Bedford has a well-deserved reputation for hosting other festivals including the Comedy and Folk Fest.

"It is such a great venue with three amazing rooms which are so full of character and are actually quite intimate so it's the perfect environment," says Mike.

"I played my first gig there so it has special memories for me.

"It's also a great area generally - there's always so much going on and there's a real earthiness to it. I grew up in Streatham and in those days Balham was always considered to be quite gritty.

"Now it's a bit more gentrified with lots of young people moving in and it's got a really bohemian atmosphere with a great cultural and ethnic mix.

"Growing up in Streatham in the 70s, groups like ELO, Yes, Queen and Genesis were very much my diet and they really informed and influenced my musical tastes," he adds.

"The South London music scene in those days was brilliant and full of budding musicians. There were loads of opportunities for us back then and lots of places like the basements of pubs in Tooting, Streatham and Balham where we would play and rehearse.

"The 70s was a very fertile time when it was great to be young and into music."

But he insists there is still a place for prog and classical rock and says he hopes the festival will prove a success.

"I want to raise at least £15,000 for Macmillan because the work they do is fantastic but I also hope the festival will be popular enough that we can make it an annual event!" he says.

The Resonance Festival takes place at the Bedford pub, Bedford Hill between Thursday, July 31 and Sunday, August 3. Visit www.resonance-festival.com for full line up and tickets.

Love Poems at the Southbank Centre

SOME of the greatest love poems ever written will feature in a special celebratory performance as part of a summer festival.

The 50 Greatest Love Poems of the Last 50 Years will see poems from 30 different countries read by actors and poets on the Royal Festival Hall stage on Sunday, July 20.

It is part of the Southbank Centre's Festival Of Love and the biennial Poetry International Festival which was set up by poet Ted Hughes in 1967.

Among those being performed will include Celia, Celia read by the subject of the poem, Adrian Mitchell’s second wife and widow Celia Hewitt, and The Present read by Michael Donaghy’s widow Maddy Paxman.

Elsewhere actress Harriet Walter will read Margaret Atwood’s Variations on the Word Love, her husband Guy Paul will read Philippe Jaccottet’s Distances, Siobhan Redmond will read Edwin Morgan’s Strawberries and Don Paterson will read his poem My Love.

The evening will close with one of the greatest love poems of all time – Derek Walcott’s iconic Love After Love.

The poems have been selected from 30 countries across the world, from Saint Lucia to Iraqi Kurdistan and there will be readings in Arabic, Turkish, Macedonian and Tamil, with English translations.

They have been chosen by a team headed up by Southbank Centre’s head of literature and spoken word, James Runcie.

He said: "We have drawn on the expertise of our Saison Poetry Library to curate a truly international and stylistically diverse selection of what we see as the best 50 love poems of the past 50 years – from young poets such as the first Young Poet Laureate for London, Warsan Shire, to world greats such as Chinua Achebe and Ted Hughes.

"It was tough restricting ourselves to just 50 poems, but I think we’ve come up with a wonderfully rich and varied offering of some of the world’s greatest love poems, which, read by some of our finest readers will be an one-off evening to remember."

During the same weekend the Southbank Centre will also present a dramatised reading of some of the most beautiful and heartbreaking poets’ letters ever written.

These readings will take place on Saturday, July 19 and will be performed by actors and poets including wife and husband Harriet Walter and Guy Paul who will read the letters between Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb, Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Rilke and Marina Tsvetaeva.

Ben Lamb will read love letters by Keats and Rupert Brooke, Susannah Fielding will read Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath and Pablo Neruda and actor Jason Hughes will read one of Dylan Thomas’s last letters to his wife Caitlin, as well as poems by Ted Hughes, Wilfred Owen and Russell Edson.

Tickets for Saturday's event cost £10 and for Sunday cost from £12. Visit www.southbankcentre.co.uk/love or ring the box office on 0844 847 9910.