The Times – 12 September 2017

the times | Tuesday September 12 2017 1GT 11 BARRY RIVETT artsfirst night

Pop Pop Festival No 6 Dave Stewart and Friends Portmeirion, Gwynedd O2 Empire, W12 {{{{( {{{{( f spending a weekend roaming iven the who’s who of around a Welsh model village built luminaries with whom the to resemble the Italian Riviera Eurythmics maestro Dave were not weird enough, watching Stewart has collaborated, the former snooker world a 65th birthday gig Ichampion Steve Davis discuss his love Gpromising special guests from his of psychedelic rock in a grand piazza four-decade career certainly had tipped the experience into the surreal. compelling potential. Could there be For six years Festival No 6 has had a Jagger, a Petty, a Nicks, surely a bills as bizarre and inventive as its Lennox in the lineup? Ah, well, all too location, Portmeirion, best known much to ask, but this rock’n’roll circus as the set for the 1960s TV series of an evening wasn’t without its The Prisoner. Acclaim and awards surprises and classy cameos. were quick to come, but flooding Stewart’s glittery guitar strap last year and complaints about embossed with “Ringmaster” seemed overcrowding forced an overhaul. The an apt description of this mercurial good news was that a cut in capacity figure, his first trick simply being to from 15,000 to 12,000 resulted in free remind everyone that, yes, he does flow through the village, while tonnes Nick Devlin as Vladimir, Patrick O’Donnell as Estragon and Paul Kealyn as Pozzo acquit themselves well sing. A succession of mid-tempo, of wood chip in the fields prevented warm-up rockers, taken from his mud becoming a problem, despite the recent musical forays in Nashville, downpours on Saturday. Festival No 6 were performed with relaxed elan was back to its bonkers best. by his band, Stewart nonchalantly Davis DJ’ed on Friday evening. In A masterpiece no more showcasing his guitar chops from truth, he twiddled a few knobs while a under his brown trilby. sidekick did the real work. Elsewhere, Yet the undoubted highlights came serious men made serious music — This landmark hen you go to the Estragon (Patrick O’Donnell) and when his team-mates shared the among them an emotionally charged theatre, it’s possible Vladimir (Nick Devlin), hover about spotlight. An almighty Here Comes Steve Mason and the headliners drama by to get a double dose on a stage filled only with a rock the Rain Again, featuring some Mogwai — but it was Charlotte Samuel Beckett of having a bad time. downstage and a hatstand-sized tree powerhouse wailing from the backing Church, in a leotard and a floral First you find yourself upstage. They are waiting for the singer Holly Quin Ankrah, finally got headdress, who got the party started doesn’t stand Wthoroughly uninterested in what unseen titular character — God? the attention of punters apparently with a raucous set of singalong the test of time, you’ve paid good money to see. Death? Insert own interpretation here more interested in socialising at the karaoke covers that for many says Dominic Second you feel that you have failed — who, not-much-of-a-spoiler alert, bar, while Candy Dulfer’s sultry turn remained the weekend’s highlight. in some way by feeling like that doesn’t arrive. Twice. Along the way on the 1990 instrumental Lily Was The biggest crowds after dark were Maxwell about a show that may — like Samuel they are waylaid by the arrival of Here was a masterclass in sassy sax. back in the piazza for the 60-strong Beckett’s breakthrough play, back Pozzo (a bravura, country squire-ish A more audible raconteur than Brythoniaid Male Voice Choir, whose at this theatre for the first time since Paul Kealyn) pulling the albino Lucky Stewart was Bob Geldof, who sumptuous covers included Elbow’s Theatre Peter Hall gave it its English-language (Paul Elliot) on a rope. explained why he is dubbed One Day Like This and Rag’n’Bone Waiting for premiere here in 1955 — be a It all perks up a little when the “Raymond Doom” to Stewart’s “Dick Man’s Skin and whose conductor, John Godot cornerstone of our culture. “I’m bored emphasis is on the tramps’ characters Doom” between their minor 1986 hit Eifion Jones, could have doubled as a and I’m thick,” you think, wondering rather than their situation. The second This is the World Calling (“a No 1 in stand-up act. He was certainly more Arts Theatre, why you didn’t stay home and watch act, in which O’Donnell and Devlin Denmark!” Geldof quipped) and entertaining than the pretentious WC2 Doctor Foster on iPlayer instead. have space to develop a rapport, a transcendent Don’t Come Around poets who were mostly ignored during {{((( There’s nothing wrong with theatre moves a bit faster than the more Here No More (co-written by Stewart the day. Ditto some of the street that asks you to do some work, but crowded first act. And any critique for Tom Petty). Diane Birch and the entertainers, although a torch parade I’ve always felt that Waiting for Godot the nonplussed Becketeer may have London Community Gospel Choir and human log flume were fun. is plenty of work for little reward. It’s is parried by the characters’ witty helped the heavenly chorus of There On Saturday we saw Manchester’s my least favourite masterpiece. And comments on the pointlessness of Must Be an Angel to soar, reminding Cabbage cause pogoing chaos and the while there is nothing wildly wrong it all. “That passed the time,” says us of the sheer quality of Stewart’s 20-year-old Ten Tonnes coax out the with this revival from the director Devlin’s hale Vladimir. “It would have songwriting at its best, while sun with a superb set that suggested Peter Reid for the Irish company passed in any case,” says O’Donnell’s Missionary Man, sung by the steel- he could follow in the footsteps of his AC Productions, it’s accomplished more whimsical Estragon. lunged Australian Jon Stevens, was famous big brother, George Ezra. Yet rather than distinguished. All its parts Yet all the form-bending in this offered further might by the Blondie nothing was as bewitching as watching are in decent working order. Everyone meditation on meaning has now drummer Clem Burke. two men in a tent at lunchtime play acquits themselves well. Yet only permeated so deep into the culture But no Annie Lennox for the Sweet the soundtrack to a 45-minute-long occasionally do its characters spring that the original is hard to endure. Dreams encore? If that felt like a Moomins film live. Armed with Tate Britain into enough life that you think of them Its modernism has become moribund. birthday cake missing some crucial whistles, keyboards, a mini accordion as, well, characters rather than pawns Other Becketts (Happy Days, Krapp’s icing, the audience didn’t seem to mind and an iPad-turned-theremin, they celebrates the on Beckett’s absurdist chessboard. Last Tape, Endgame) retain more as the talent crowded on stage led a beautifully captured the maverick sculptor Rachel Godot is a play in which “nothing allure, while this demolition job on rousing singalong of the immortal hit. spirit of a festival that desperately happens, twice”, as the Irish literary convention has nothing solid left Which only leaves room to say one deserves better weather. Whiteread critic Vivian Mercier so unimprovably to smash. Or am I just a bit thick? thing: happy birthday, Mr Stewart. Lisa Verrico First Night, main paper put it. Our bowler-hatted tramps, Box office: 020 7836 8463, to Sept 23 James Jackson

have never been to the Bahamas March has been interested in However, that, I think, is one of the — I don’t have that kind of bank photography since the age of 12. interesting things about these images. Visual art balance — so the sheer eye- He was an apprentice to Stanley By eschewing the clarity associated Charles March: popping vivid insanity of the Kubrick then worked for 20 years with high-definition, they evoke a sort Seascape colours of the sea and sky photographing advertising campaigns of nostalgia, a visual narrative that Icaptured by Charles March’s large- for companies such as Benson & owes much to the language of cinema. Hamilton’s scale photographs are, frankly, slightly Hedges and Levi’s. In some of the moodier images you do Gallery, W1 unbelievable. Pinks in the sand? His recent work has focused on slightly find yourself scanning the {{{{( Turquoise skies? Yet they’re not, landscapes — noirish, blurry images shoreline for a body. apparently, mucked about with at all. of trees that you might fancy you I would like to see March try this In this series of seascapes, taken were seeing through the window of Charles March’s 2015-03-31 14:20:04 with a less dramatic, less highly over a period of four years on one a moving car. He uses the same coloured seascape — Margate, say, short stretch of the Atlantic coast off technique here, extending the work of the impressionists that March whose skies Turner claimed were the the Bahamian island of Eleuthera, exposure to a few seconds and claims are his inspiration for these most beautiful in Europe. In the March attempts to capture not just the moving the camera with a short, photographs, but also (and this may meantime, if you need me I’ll be sea, but also the experience of seeing fluid sweep to soften the picture and be my age) I couldn’t help, in the face online hunting for cheap flights to it. The sea is always moving, changing heighten the sense of movement. of some of the sunnier scenes, but be the Bahamas. colour, darkening and lightening the I found echoes of abstract reminded of what my brain dimly Nancy Durrant sand as it shifts up and down it. expressionism almost as much as the tells me are 1980s Martini adverts. The exhibition runs to Saturday