DICKENS IN RIOTOUS RHYME AND BAGPIPES – ON TOUR
Wouldn’t be proper to get by December with out Dickens, would it not? But I’ve seen the magnificent Old Vic adaptation by Jack Thorne 3 times now, and don’t appear to search out Simon Callow on rumbling by the story wherever. So I crept by sodden lanes in a gale to drop in on Chris Green and Sophie Matthews, whose leftie Good King Wenceslas I so accepted a 12 months or two again (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/we-need-more-than-good-king-wenceslases-c07knplnb).
For it’s a giant tour, and , accompanied by Jude Rees and her melodiously beautiful oboe, they suggest to sing the entire thing at us: Scrooge, Marley, back-story, triple-ghosting and a Fezziwig get together so festive it concerned two separate bagpipe assaults from Sophie. All in 55 spirited minutes after the break.
But the truth that it’s a beautiful present is just not least as a result of a primary half beforehand presents Christmas songs which Dickens himself would have identified: with musette pipes, melodion, flute, oboe, guitar and keyboard we hear amongst different songs a wassail, a fascinatingly totally different Holly and Ivy, the Sans Day Carol, a coyly naughty music-hall track about mistletoe behaviour, and better of all a wonderful “Time to Remember the Poor” , from the 17c collector Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould, creator of Onward Christian Soldiers.
They all sing, Green performs guitar, keyboard and a giant fats factor apparently known as a mandocello; Matthews has her flute and varied bagpipes, and Jude Rees the oboe (least duck-squeaky oboe I’ve ever heard, very lovely) and picks up an occasional melodeon.
The Dickens story itself is neatly rendered into rhyme, utilizing carol tunes (a variety of God Rest Ye Merry, since that’s the one the boy sang outdoors Scrooge’s home) and acquainted folktunes, with beautiful woodwind interludes for the poor outdated miser’s sleep, and a mournful oboe carrying his nostalgic recollections of a extra harmless youth. It is properly paced on the entire – good musical shocks, transitions to match the story – and Green makes use of all of the eloquebt Dickens phrases which match greatest into the fast-moving narrative. A easy factor, and somewhat beautiful. Even in case you suppose you’re not a folkie… Happy Christmas all.
On tour until 23/ 12 – LINK BELOW
(Leicester tonight, then Wallasey, Sale, IoW, Southampton and others until 23/ 12 )
