by Small and yet ambitious in its intended effect: The description fits the Spitalfields Music Festival, just as it covers it, one of two new music theaters that led the audience in two of the Schwarzbox performance rooms in East London this year.
Composed by Litha Efthymiou and staged in SHOREDITCH, she takes two stories into account: the Christian martyr of the 3rd century St. Eulalia, and a woman who today said against the man who abused her 30 years earlier. Eulalia was represented by the urgent, liquid dance by Harriet Parker-Beldeau and by the soprano Keren Moteri, who described her story as described in a contemporary Latin poem. The actor, director and screenwriter Jenny Ayres played the modern woman.
Language, song, dance and an instrumental score for percussion, cello and harp were inseparably merged with each other. Sometimes Parker-Beldeau’s arm gestures were reflected from everyone on the stage, even the instrumentalist who caused a visual unit and a feeling of the ritual. Efthymous music also had a forbidden ritual celebration thanks to the bells and dangerously cressed Tam-Tam-Tam-Tam-TaM-Taum-underpinning the chant-like introduction of Motseri. Later, the Solo -Cello was used with an exaggerated vibrato that was used as an effect and used by eruptions by glittering, mixed percussion and harp. The movements of Parker-Beldeaus worked as one with the music to inappropriate the torture scene. At the end, at the end, in a white chiffon corner towel and holding lights in her hand, she turned into the view of a plaster -part. In the meantime, between Eulalia’s episodes, the testimony of the modern woman from one-word answers built up in a kind of “I have a dream”.
So here were two mighty stories of 13-year-old girls who were put in impossible situations by the men around them-but other parallels were open to interpretation. Ultimately, the combination of the stories felt just too arbitrary, whatever the performance was woven.
Related: Dylan Thomas Under Milchwood invites us to laugh at ourselves – I wanted my music to make the same ninfea cruttwell reade
Scenes by Under Milk Wood, which were listed in metronome in Whitechapel, was a less ambitious undertaking, whereby Ninfea Cuttwell-Reade’s music spoke a light version of Dylan Thomas’ fear game underlined, but partly sung. The six-strong Nova music ensemble led by George Vass with a striking touch of harp and vibraphone reinforced the lively, chatting musical rhythms by Thomas’ lines without excessive focus. Perhaps it could have been done more with the staging: an illuminated red sign suggested an recording studio, and the hairstyles and outfits of the four singers suggested the 1950s, but with all behind music stands that were pressed about as far as possible.
David Princes narrative, read from the side, did not have the authority that Thomas’ an eye of an all-accessible eye ideally needs, but the four singing actors brought their many characters into the colorful life, with Rebecca Afonwy-Jones first spiked out as the awkward Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard as a polly garden that sang a bitter lament lament.
• Spitalfield’s music festival ends on July 9th
