Local Guides World
Stephen Gard
1 reviews on 1 places
'Master Class' is a stunner. Lucia Mastrantone as that troubling flame Maria Callas will knock your operatic socks off. I think the word 'dynamo' might just do it; 'diva' might be nearer. We wait for Callas to stop prancing and preening and sing, and then...
'I'm a singer, not an actress,' simpers a terrified ingenue to Callas, and the whole audience chuckles. The cast apart from Mastrantone are clearly musicians, and we appreciate this dramatic device and truth; they are believable as advanced students, each a fine performer of their art. And we the audience double as the assembled Master Class, each quaking at the thought that Callas might choose us next to publicly flay alive.
‘Age rebuking youth’ could serve as a trite summing-up of the play. But like the best drama, the resonances of ‘Master Class’ are many and profound.
I was an Ensembler in my student days, when its ancestry as a boat-shed was still evident. The last production I saw there was 'The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds'. Always a taste of Off-Broadway in those Hayes Gordon days. 'We Bombed in New Haven', Joseph Heller's 'Catch 22' epigone. 'Goldilocks and the Four Bears.' Fine nights in-the-round.
The Ensemble has grown in girth since then. It's now part North Shore harbour-side bar ('Cards only' snarled a bald beer-pourer at my cash) and restaurant, the type with ambience, meaning a view of the water. I came for the play alone.
As an ageing curmudgeon, I'm miffed with any entertainment venue that allows people to bring refreshments to their seat. Rather vulgar, methinks. The local flea-pit cinema. Bread and circuses, all that. But they put down their paper cups and gave Lucia Mastrantone - and Maria Callas - and those fine young musicians (soprani, a tenor, cello, piano, and a clarinet too) a thunderous standing and stamping ovation.
And no doubt a little of the applause was for the dear old Ensemble herself.
'I'm a singer, not an actress,' simpers a terrified ingenue to Callas, and the whole audience chuckles. The cast apart from Mastrantone are clearly musicians, and we appreciate this dramatic device and truth; they are believable as advanced students, each a fine performer of their art. And we the audience double as the assembled Master Class, each quaking at the thought that Callas might choose us next to publicly flay alive.
‘Age rebuking youth’ could serve as a trite summing-up of the play. But like the best drama, the resonances of ‘Master Class’ are many and profound.
I was an Ensembler in my student days, when its ancestry as a boat-shed was still evident. The last production I saw there was 'The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds'. Always a taste of Off-Broadway in those Hayes Gordon days. 'We Bombed in New Haven', Joseph Heller's 'Catch 22' epigone. 'Goldilocks and the Four Bears.' Fine nights in-the-round.
The Ensemble has grown in girth since then. It's now part North Shore harbour-side bar ('Cards only' snarled a bald beer-pourer at my cash) and restaurant, the type with ambience, meaning a view of the water. I came for the play alone.
As an ageing curmudgeon, I'm miffed with any entertainment venue that allows people to bring refreshments to their seat. Rather vulgar, methinks. The local flea-pit cinema. Bread and circuses, all that. But they put down their paper cups and gave Lucia Mastrantone - and Maria Callas - and those fine young musicians (soprani, a tenor, cello, piano, and a clarinet too) a thunderous standing and stamping ovation.
And no doubt a little of the applause was for the dear old Ensemble herself.