Stage: Speed
Holiday on Ice comes to The Brighton Centre for a short pre-Christmas season
There will be some of you who are reeling at the news that Holiday on Ice are not doing their usual Christmas season at the Brighton Centre. But never fear, they are here before Christmas for an ice spectacular that sees the traditional form raise the game and kick the format clearly into a new era.
Don’t panic though, there is still lots of glamour and glitz in amongst the Mad Max-esque theme and colossal machine staging. We caught the show earlier this year in Lille and were massively impressed on several levels. The staging is magnificent, the stunts more exciting than ever and the choreography is certainly of the moment. What we really loved though was the specially commissioned score – great music that truly gives you the sensation of speed. A short, not-to-be-missed season for fans of great ice dance and family spectaculars.
Speed, The Brighton Centre, 22 – 25 November, Box office 0844 847 1515,
www.brightoncentre.co.uk
STAGE: Caruso and the Monkey House Trial
The tenor Enrico Caruso was the first celebrity of the modern age. His recordings of opera arias were the first discs to sell over a million copies, bringing him an unprecedented level of fame, riches and interest from the public. At the top of his career he was singing for the King of Britain, the Kaiser, the Tzar of Russia and the President of the United States…
then Caruso was humiliated when charged with pinching ladies’ bottoms in Central Park Zoo’s Monkey House in New York.
“The parallels with the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case are extraordinary,” says Andrew G Marshall, the writer of the play, “even the language of Strauss-Kahn’s defence – ‘these claims are not credible’ – and the prosecution lawyers – ‘all his power and influence will not stop the truth coming out’ – are straight from Caruso’s 1906 trial. It really does seem the more the world changes, the more it stays the same.”
The play also puts the role of newspaper reporters under the spotlight. “Caruso is driven to the edge of madness by reporters listening at the door, bribing people and using other underhand means to gain even more damning evidence – which isn’t presented to the court but printed daily in the papers under the humiliating and provoking title, ‘The Monkey House Trial’.”
“To give this story yet another modern twist, the police are accused by Caruso’s attorney of organising a cover-up of evidence that places them in an embarrassing light,” explains Ignacio Jarquin, singer-performer who impersonates the famous tenor.
Marshall has used original newspaper reports and Caruso’s version of events from his son’s and his wife’s biographies to lay out all the evidence. “It’s really complex,” says Marshall, “because on one hand Caruso was indeed a notorious womaniser, but on the other the police case did not really add up. The prosecution even resorted to making racist slurs against Italians who at that point were amongst the most recent arrivals in New York.”
In Caruso and The Monkey House Trial, the audience are the jury and vote on whether he is guilty or innocent – with two different ends depending on the result. “We’re rehearsing both versions as we have no idea how people will vote,” says Marshall.
Ropetackle Arts Centre, Little High Street, Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex, BN43 5EG, Box Office
01273 464440
