St John The Baptist Church
St John The Baptist Church Actor/pianist Michael Lunts has made a profession performing solo, salon-sized reveals concerning the lives and music of nice composers and songwriters. He’s a captivating, charismatic presence, with an admirable fluidity on the piano. His performances of flamboyant characters like Chopin, George Sand, or Noel Coward should delight an intimate viewers. In The Enigma of Edward Elgar Lunts is pushing his boundaries as author and performer: the melancholy, widowed Elgar is a tougher promote than Coward’s fizzy pleasure. Whereas the manufacturing requires some reimagining, there’s a lot about it to suggest. Lunts, portraying Elgar…
Ranking
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Regardless of a captivating, charismatic efficiency by Michael Lunts as Edward Elgar, this one-man present does not fairly combine its two storytelling units.
Actor/pianist Michael Lunts has made a profession performing solo, salon-sized reveals concerning the lives and music of nice composers and songwriters. He’s a captivating, charismatic presence, with an admirable fluidity on the piano. His performances of flamboyant characters like Chopin, George Sand, or Noel Coward should delight an intimate viewers. In The Enigma of Edward Elgar Lunts is pushing his boundaries as author and performer: the melancholy, widowed Elgar is a tougher promote than Coward’s fizzy pleasure. Whereas the manufacturing requires some reimagining, there’s a lot about it to suggest.
Lunts, portraying Elgar with tweed and a walrus-y moustache, alternates between two storytelling worlds. The primary is a straight-to-the-audience monologue about Elgar’s life and household, his relationship to class, and, most significantly, his deceased spouse. The second is on the piano, as Lunts (nonetheless as Elgar) leads us by way of the “Enigma Variations” (with bits of the cello concerto and “Salut d’Amour” thrown in to elicit appreciative nods from the Elgar superfans).
Each components of the present have their strengths, however they continue to be frustratingly segregated. The monologue is an efficient portrait of an outsider who abruptly finds himself widowed, older, and remoted. Lunts is a wonderful storyteller, and his plummy voice, considerate line deliveries, and some sound design methods preserve us engaged. But the story he tells lacks structure, inner battle, and catharsis. Lunts’ Elgar begins the night morose and finishes extra so, with out having come to phrases together with his points; in a single scene, Elgar defends his extra-marital affairs as “needed for the creative muse” – a feeble justification for the ache it brought about his spouse, and one the manufacturing doesn’t probe deeper.
When Lunts is on the piano, the present turns into a form of costumed pre-concert lecture. Every of Elgar’s variations is a portrait (or parody) of somebody near him, and the depth and poetry Lunts finds within the monologue are largely absent from these summaries, that are trivia-stuffed and Wikipedia-thin by comparability. The result’s that the piano sections really feel dutiful somewhat than inevitable, with a palpable “nicely, let’s keep it up!” vitality as he reaches the double-digit variations.
Probably the most cohesive second comes with the “Dorabella” variation, a portrait of a captivating, stuttering woman who would dance in Elgar’s studio. It is a wealthy, touching portrayal of an effervescent determine, and Lunts’ description of the variation reveals Elgar each musicologically and psychologically. The second is transporting, alive with the complexity and fantastic thing about Elgar’s reminiscence and artistry. (It doesn’t harm that “Dorabella” follows a reminder of Elgar’s infidelities, creating an electrical undercurrent of sexual stress.) These moments of narrative and musical concord are uncommon. The ultimate variation, a heroic portrait of the composer himself, appears a great alternative to distinction the previous and current Elgar, however the piece merely…occurs (loudly).
The present would profit from paring down within the descriptions of every variation to one thing nearer to the intimacy and significance Lunts finds in “Dorabella.” Hopefully, he will even deliver the piano downstage in order that the viewers isn’t gazing his again.
Performing the variations is a significant endeavor, and after I attended Lunts was nonetheless getting his fingers round them. He could finally play them admirably, however this made it onerous to know if he had something *musical* to say. His “Salut d’Amour,” whereas completely beautiful, felt superficial following the superb recording of it broadcast throughout intermission. Even the well-known “Nimrod” variation got here and went. I nearly arrived on the conclusion that Lunts was intentionally adopting the emotional distance some composers preserve when performing their very own music.
One hopes that Lunts will proceed to evolve this materials, which has the potential to inform a shifting, satisfying portrait of a posh man and artist.
Written, Directed and Produced by Michael Lunts
The Enigma of Edward Elgar has accomplished its run at Brighton Fringe. Test Michael Lunts web site right here for additional data.
