EIF reviews: Please Right Back | Grupo Corpo | Yuja Wang | Soumik Datta: Mone Rekho | Leonore Piano Trio

THEATRE

Please Right Back ★★★★

The Studio, until 11 August

It's an astonishing 17 years since the artists known as 1927 first exploded onto the Edinburgh Fringe; and in that time, their unique and mind-blowing brand of visual theatre - combining a nostalgic silent-movie aesthetic with state-of-the-art animation and sound - has stormed the world of art theatre, across Europe and beyond.

In their latest show Please Right Back, co-produced with the Vienna Burgtheater, their powers of fantasy and dream-making soar to new heights, as two children exchange letters with their mysteriously absent father, Mr. E., about his thrilling adventures, which - according to his letters - involve a quest to recover a very important lost briefcase, and an epic journey through strange landscapes, intoxicating temptations, the belly of a whale, and a strange parody of the Engish justice system.

Meanwhile back home, his children Kim and little Davie are facing tough times, bullied by junior gangsters at school, and harassed at home by a patronising social worker with Thatcherite views; and if the images of Mr. E’s journey are spectacular, and brilliantly integrated with the show’s live action, those of the family’s home life are drawn with such wit and poignancy that the animated figure of little Davie receives an ovation all of his own, as the company take their bows.

In the end, the show’s dialogue begins to lose impetus, flattening into an unnecessarily wordy argument between the children’s mother and the social worker about the harsh class attitudes that distort the justice system, and stigmatise the families of those in prison.

If the final message is familiar, though, the visual dimension of the show is never less than thrilling. And once again, writer and co-director Susan Andrade and film and animation designer Paul Barritt - with their fine creative team and wonderful cast of four - have created a world of pure imagination that both captures the storytelling magic that binds the children to their absent dad; and also makes us see our familiar world afresh, in all its grotesque, touching and sometimes beautiful reality.

Joyce McMillan

DANCE

Grupo Corpo ★★★★★

Playhouse, until 7 August

When something wonderful looks truly effortless, you know it’s backed by hours of hard work. The dancers of Brazil’s Grupo Corpo are perfect examples of the ‘making it look easy’ approach. Gliding onto the stage for Gil Refazendo, swaying gently with loose hips and a genuine spring in their step, they are masters of their demain. Adding to the relaxed vibe is costuming reminiscent of comfy pyjamas, long-legs for the men, shorts for the women.

Most importantly of all, perhaps, their movement and sensibility is intrinsically linked to the music - a potpourri of tunes by Brazilian singer-songwriter, Gilberto Gil. Also known for his activism, Gil was once exiled from his homeland, later returning to become Minister of Culture. While this piece is in no way biographical, the short solos, duets and ensemble sections (including a brief moment of obvious tension), are open to interpretation. And the backdrop, a slow-motion film of flora taking 40 minutes to bloom and grow, could be seen as Gil’s long, impactful career.

Retaining the fluidity that typifies the Grupo Corpo style, but taking the hard work up a notch, is Gira. Inspired by the little-known Umbanda religion and its various rites, the dancers arrive in long white skirts, their necks covered in a flash of bright red paint. Here, hints of the melting pot that makes up Brazilian society (and Umbanda itself) are evident, with choreographer Rodrigo Pederneiras injecting African dance moves into the mix. Set to the music of Brazilian trio Metá Metá, chosen by the company because they ‘defy categorisation’, the piece has a theatricality often seen in religious ritual. If they’re not dancing, the performers disappear inside black curtained seats until it’s time to reappear. When they do, and all 22 of them come together in one united whole, it’s nothing short of glorious.

Kelly Apter

MUSIC

Yuja Wang ★★★★

Usher Hall

Yuja Wang’s recital was one of two different halves. Chopin’s Ballades 1 and 2 both started well enough with the pianist pulling us into a dream-like trance. But once the tempo and note count increased the music’s lyrical qualities were overwhelmed by Wang’s phenomenal technical virtuosity – too much splash and little emotional expression.

Wang seemed to have more affinity with Shostakovich’s short, quirky Prelude and Fugues but although she played seven preludes, only two were paired with fugues. It was like asking a question and not getting an answer.

After the interval, Wang moved into overdrive. Her spellbinding reading of Barber’s tricky Piano Sonata Op 26 was dazzling, especially the way she made the notes dance like flickering lights in the scherzo. Chopin’s Ballades 3 and 4 were better too, with the latter, full of tenderness and delivered with panache.

Having hit her stride, Wang showed her eclectic brilliance in a concert of encores. These included Philip Glass’s punchy Etude No.6, Prokofiev’s rock’n’roll finale of his seventh piano sonata and Earl Wild’s glittering arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s Dance of the Four Swans. The talented Wang can play anything she likes but is at her best when she plays what she loves.

Susan Nickalls

MUSIC

Soumik Datta: Mone Rekho ★★★★

The Hub

Soumik Datta is an award-winning London-based Bengali virtuoso on the sarod, a metal-necked instrument somewhere between a lute and a slide guitar. This intriguing and ultimately moving Hub performance with tabla player Gurdain Rayatt was, however, much more than a recital but an immersive, multimedia disquisition into memory, personal and intergenerational.

Originating in Datta’s work with care homes and Alzheimer’s research, it combined performance with background visual collage, snippets of recorded speech of his guru, the late Buddhadev Das Gupta, Datta’s own anecdotes and not a little humour – not to mention superb playing.

There was a timelessness to the plangent, microtonal notes hanging in the air before they developed into the full-blown raga. Here, however, this was further informed by memory as Datta recalled his guru’s strict teaching but also his phrase “mone rekho”, Bengali for “remember” but, he added, more accurately “hold it in your heart”.

These ragas had been passed down through many generations, and as Datta played them, working up intensity and excitement as Rayatt rattled and thwacked the essential tala or time cycle, he describe each as “a human message” . Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, they titled their last piece Time Machine.

Jim Gilchrist

MUSIC

Leonore Piano Trio ★★★

Queen’s Hall

It took a while - the encore, no less - for the Leonore Piano Trio to reveal what it was really capable of. This was the whirlwind presto finale from Haydn’s Trio in C, that special moment when everything truly came together - vitality, wit, a truly persuasive togetherness and instinctive evenness across the ensemble. 

Immediately prior to that Dvorak’s substantial Piano Trio No 3 had come so close to perfection, its congenial slow movement growing in poignancy towards the magical stillness of its denouement, the ensuing finale feeding off that self-belief. 

But where the earlier movements also recognised Dvorak’s buoyant spirit - a dramatically discursive opening Allegro and rustic Allegretto - the same momentary glitches in rhythmic and musical unanimity that had peppered the concert’s opening half hovered frustratingly.

That’s not to say that Helen Grime’s The Brook Sings Loud - frenetically resourceful, virtuosic variations based on Scots pibroch - lacked thrill and imagination. The performance certainly embraced these, though some choppiness from the string players frequently hardened its edges. And where there was enchantment and poetry aplenty in Clara Schumann’s Piano Trio, violinist Benjamin Nabarro and cellist Gemma Rosefield didn’t always align with pianist Tim Horton’s ringing tonal precision.  

Ken Walton