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June 23, 2017July 27, 2017

BPREVIEW: An Evening with Jackson Browne @ Symphony Hall 27.06.17

Words by Ed King

On Tuesday 27^th June, An Evening with Jackson Browne comes to the Symphony Hall.

Doors open at 7:30pm, with tickets priced between £42.50 – £49 plus booking fee. For direct gig info, including full venue details and online ticket sales, click here.

N.B. At the time of writing this event was near to being SOLD OUT – please check availability directly with the Symphony Hall or reputable ticket outlets.

“They sell us the president the same way; they sell us our clothes and our cars. They sell us everything from youth to religion the same time they sell us our wars.”

Jackson Browne released his eponymous debut album back 1972, following a pretty revered string of songs written for other artists – including Nico, Joni Mitchell, Eagles and The Byrds. Signing to Asylum Records in 1971 Browne’s five albums would build a steady commercial success story, consolidating his place in the spotlight and making him a lauded contributor to the American country and folk music scenes.

But to a child of the 80’s, growing up with Marty McFly and the Reagan administration, it was Jackson Browne’s 1986 album, Lives in the Balance, that would leave its mark above all else. As the de facto soundtrack to any long distance car journey with my mum, Lives in the Balance would be the first album I learned to sing along too – embracing the questions, accusations and declarations that Browne threw at America’s aggressive foreign policy, even if only initially by proxy. I was eight.

As my understanding of the world grew, and my frightening realisation that the game is indeed rigged, the track ‘Lives in the Balance’ itself would become the painful reference point and retort of so many frustrated discussions. I owe a lot of my perspective, political and otherwise, to the words that run though this album.

What is happening today happened yesterday, and was carved from the foundations of every day before that. We are ruled not governed.

Lives in the Balance was also Jackson Browne’s last release though Asylum – the label launched by his then manager David Geffen – with Browne signing to Electra for his subsequent four LPs. Jackson Browne would go on to form Inside Recordings in 1999, releasing his last two studio albums on the imprint – Time the Conqueror (2008) and Standing in the Breach (2014).

An Evening with… denotes music, stories and on stage anecdotes with the suffix – so considering the relentless tour schedules, rock, roll and public domain relationships that Jackson Browne has accrued in his fifty professional years, this could be more colourful than most. No offence Neil. Joining Jackson Browne on stage at the Symphony Hall will be Val McCallum (guitar), Mauricio Lewak (drums), Jeff Young (keyboards), Bob Glaub (bass), Alethea Mills (vocals) and Greg Leisz (lap steel, pedal steel).

Tickets from this Jackson Browne tour are also being sold to in aid of the Guacamole Fund, a ‘tax exempt, public charity’ that has been ‘supporting grass roots activities, with education, outreach, networking and funding, in the areas of the environment and wildlife, social change, peace with justice, energy and a non nuclear future’. To learn more about the Guacamole Fund, click here.

‘Lives in the Balance’ – Jackson Browne

An Evening with Jackson Browne is coming to the Symphony Hall on 27^th June. For direct event info, including venue details and online ticket sales, click here.

For more on Jackson Browne, visit www.jacksonbrowne.com

For more from Inside Recordings, visit www.insiderecordings.com

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For more on the Guacamole Fund, visit www.guacfund.org

For more from the Town & Symphony Halls, visit www.thsh.co.uk

June 22, 2017July 27, 2017

BREVIEW: The Play That Goes Wrong @ REP (House stage) 19-24.06.17

Words by Lucy Mounfield / Production pics by Helen Murray

On those occasions when a comedic play enters a theatrical program, it’s always a pleasure to know I don’t have to sit up straight, hold my serious-yet-intrigued face and attempt to think too hard about the plot and what it might mean in the larger context of today’s messed up society. And in today’s post- referendum, post-election but not-quite-the-formation-of-Parliament, now is surely the best time for comedy to lift and carry us over this wall of insanity.

The Play That Goes Wrong does exactly what it sets out to do – it tells the story of amateur actors trying to bundle their way through mishap after mishap on stage. Written by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields, The Play That Goes Wrong shows The Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society going through the motions of putting on a clichéd ridden 1920’s murder mystery called Murder at Haversham Manor. This is the play within a play bit; you don’t watch The Play That Goes Wrong to find out ‘who done it’.

Even from the beginning the actors break the fourth wall and talk to the audience, asking if we know where their missing props are. This immediately makes it inclusive. Before the curtain rises we are introduced to the director of Murder at Haversham Manor, who also is doubling as Inspector Carter (Chris Bean) a pompous wannabe thespian who is embarrassed by the previous shows put on by the Cornley Drama Society. These include ‘Cat’ and ‘Ugly and the Beast’.

Chris Bean is excellent as the eager director who halfway through the performance breaks down when he can’t find a ledger, which quickly prompts the audience to shout its whereabouts (an audience plant?) making the scene even more hilarious as the ever-professional director tells the excitable audience to be quiet as “it’s not a pantomime”. This obviously incites the audience into a bout of “oh yes, it is” which is then jousted back and forth; this surprise element heightened the fun and made it feel spontaneous.

However The Play That Goes Wrong didn’t make me laugh as much as I thought I would. The title forewarns us about the disasters that befall the amateur acting troupe, and consequently I was waiting for the merriment rather than surprised by it. Indeed everything that can go wrong does and by the end of the play it’s just the actors left standing (though barely) with the set giving up entirely.

The pace of the extended joke is relentless – one thing after another – but as each physical joke occurs I laughed a little less and by the end I was wanting less and less of it. Sure I laughed and so did everyone else, The Play That Goes Wrong can be very funny, but with two acts I felt it was getting strained rather than leading me excitably to the crescendo of the entire set collapsing. The jokes about the door slamming open and knocking out Florence Collymore (Sandra Wilkinson) and the alcohol replacement forcing Thomas Colleymore (Robert Grove) to spit it out repeatedly became a little laboured.

When The Play That Goes Wrong first premiered at the Old Red Lion pub theatre it was just one act running at under an hour, now it is two acts (and an interval) that hits the two hour mark. I think after the interval was the point I began to realise that of course the hilarity is planned; after that I struggled to enjoy it with the same zeal.

The set design by Nigel Hook is incredible, it moves like an actor constantly aware of its surroundings and nimble on its feet. The set has perfect comedy timing; moving, falling and collapsing in just the right way as to squeeze out as much comedy value as possible. Most of all it does create that camp 1920’s murder mystery vibe: the grandfather clock not chiming, long velvet curtains that someone can hide behind, leather armchairs and wood flooring that make that perfect echo which in turn creates the perfect murder mansion feeling.

The costumes are bang on too: 1920’s flapper dresses and headdress for the Florence, tweed jackets, the ubiquitous velvet smoking jacket for the middle-aged gentleman, and the even more ubiquitous pin-stripe cricket outfit complete with jumper for the young fool. This combines to heighten the fun we are at first presented with, something The Mousetrap would be proud of until it all gets a bit wobbly and starts falling to pieces.

The Play That Goes Wrong is a light-hearted show that just wants to make people laugh in the crudest way possible. In my opinion, it goes a little too far and our laughter peaks before the end of the show (or at least mine did). But all in all The Play That Goes Wrong is a respite from the chaos of our current situation; it will take you away from the misery going on in the real world, let you release your clenched jaw, form a smile and laugh… a lot.

The Play That Goes Wrong – Mischief Theatre

The Play That Goes Wrong will be running daily at the Birmingham REP (except Sundays) until Saturday 24^th June. Matinee performances will be held on Thursdays and Saturdays at 2pm. For direct event info and online tickets sales, click here.

For more on Mischief Theatre, visit www.mischieftheatre.co.uk

For more from the Birmingham REP, including full event listing and online ticket sales, visit www.birmingham-rep.co.uk

June 17, 2017July 27, 2017

BREVIEW: Kyla La Grange @ Mama Roux’s 12.07.16

Words by Ed King / Pics by Aatish Ramchurn

Monday nights. As our focal point would later surmise, “…the worst of all nights”.

But I’ve had some happy Mondays in my time: bank holidays before self employment, teacher’s strikes at primary school, waking up to another week with Lucy. They all involve extra time in bed but they are there to be had. And tonight is another notch on the post, so to speak, as Kyla La Grange and a colleague’s ninja illness have brought me unexpectedly out to play.

A relatively healthy crowd seems to be embracing this school night optimism too; Mama Roux’s is comfortably full. As the three metre gap between us and the support band, an indie pop dance hybrid called FOURS, gets gradually swallowed up there’s just enough room to wind your way to the bar. In Birmingham, fifteen minutes outside of the city centre, two weeks after payday, this is a solid result.

FOURS should receive a special commendation, not only for the lead singer’s vocals – restrained, powerful, all that you’d want and want to be jealous of – but for being amongst the most engaged of Kyla La Grange’s audience during her headline set. Albeit dressed like a child sacrifice at the Summer Solstice, FOURS were full force support both on stage and off; noted, revered, reported.

Kyla La Grange sneaks on stage with ‘Hummingbird’ – one of the anthemic pop tinged singles she has released recently instead of album #3. Ah… album #3. The opening/title track to La Grange’s superb sophomore, Cut Your Teeth, rolls out like heavy skies, before the brooding accusations of ‘Justify’ round off tonight’s speak for itself introduction. A gut punch of a song, again from her bevy of stand alone singles.

Kicking off a six date stint across Albion with tonight’s gig at Mama Roux’s (kudos Birmingham Promoters) any rehearsal room cobwebs are deftly, quickly swept away. From the embroidery to the side profile, there’s thought on stage tonight – an arena presentation in a Monday night music venue. And despite Kyla La Grange’s last LP coming out in 2014 (a fact that must have challenged the Sony A&R involved) there’s enough of an addictive undercurrent to her two albums, along with a suitably track marked crowd, that won’t let her go unnoticed. Even in Birmingham on a Monday.

Two more of the ‘higher octane’ album tracks from Cut Your Teeth, alongside an ethereal dig at detachment from her debut, introduce La Grange’s 2015 single, ‘So Sweet’. An unashamed (who was even accusing) pop predator, I shouldn’t like this song; everything the hatchling arrogance, peer pressure and recreational drug use of my teens pushed me to declare… but God help me I do. And performed live on stage it’s even better.

But it is this guilty pleasure/dichotomy that sums up fevered little ego when it comes to Kyla La Grange. Sugar, spice, are all things nice? There’s an Indie rawness to Ashes, which evolves into the darker electro edged pop of Cut Your Teeth – tie that in with some pretty stunning photo shoots and masquerade make up, and you’ve got an artist who can command some attention. Plus I’m a sucker for putting out 14 tracks through a major label; I can almost hear the phone conversation, the dialing tone and silent annunciation of combative swearwords.

So where do you go when the Katy Perry through a Ketamine haze doesn’t shift enough units, how do you silence the paymasters that put your there? And this is Sony remember. As more and more calypso samples shake themselves free my cynical crystal ball starts to mutter and curse.

(Ed’s Note… Kyla La Grange gave us a quick rib dig once we’d published this BREVIEW – she’s no longer on Sony, all the recent singles have been independent releases. Which kind of throws more spotlight culpability at this concern, as well at my lack of research. After much deliberation… watch out for our follow up review of Kyla La Grange’s next single. Conversation TBC)

Then ‘Cannibals’ comes to march us to the end of the set; possibly my favourite track off Cut Your Teeth, delivered so absurdly perfect I have to watch the veins on La Grange’s neck to be sure. My friend and I nod, smile and mouth ‘…she good’ in over accentuated head movements. The rest of the crowd are clearly already there, and would possibly hang me up by my unbranded belt if they felt I wasn’t behind them. Never poke a hipster.

And perhaps I shouldn’t worry about the rest of world either; perhaps I should trust that a redbrick philosophy graduate who can cohesively argue the case for Miley Cyrus being ‘self possessed and fiercely confident’ has a strategy at play. Or perhaps we’ll lose something special to a sink hole of adulation, quarterlies and online trend predictions. All I know is my framing technique now requires a joke about Mondays, so here’s a link to some Garfield cartoons.

Go and see Kyla La Grange; this gig was awesome. And buy both of her albums, they’re awesome too. What happens tomorrow…

For more on Kyla La Grange, visit www.kylalagrange.com

For more on FOURS, visit www.soundcloud.com/itsfours

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For more from Mama Roux’s, including full event listing and online ticket sales, visit www.therainbowvenues.co.uk/venues/mama-rouxs

For more from Birmingham Promoters, visit www.birminghampromoters.com

June 16, 2017July 27, 2017

BPREVIEW: Supersonic Festival @ Various 16-18.06.17

Words by Charlotte Heap

Back after a brief hiatus, Supersonic Festival is returning with its trademark artistically adventurous programme – promising a weekend of experimental experiences across Birmingham.

Launched in 2003, this established festival has a reputation as one of the UK’s most anticipated avante garde music and arts events. Utilising some of Birmingham’s best performance spaces, Capsule (the self-proclaimed ‘cultural alchemist’) have curated a schedule which is bursting with cutting edge artists.

Organist Anna Von Hausswolff opens the festival at the Town Hall: her gothic style complements the concert hall’s magnificent architecture, fusing live electronics and a traditional guitar band with the huge sound of the historic organ installed in 1834.

Capsule have incorporated Lucy McLauchlan’s large scale street art in and around the Digbeth based festival hub, hoping that her monochromatic explorations of Birmingham’s waterways – displayed along the canalside – will entice the viewer to McLauchlan‘s residency within Centrala (Minerva Works) and Boxxed (Floodgate Street).

Committed to bringing challenging cultural experiences to the masses, Supersonic even has a child-focused performance: Melt Banana, a Japanese band, are bringing a somewhat intimidating described “riot of sound and fury” to Symphony Hall’s exalted stage. For Birmingham’s younger audience it should be a memorable musical moment in one of the country’s best concert venues.

An important part of the Brummie cultural calendar, Supersonic needed to come back with a bang after it’s break in 2016. With workshops, talks, film showings and more, the festival’s 2017 line-up is a welcome return for Birmingham’s culture vultures. Ticket prices for Supersonic events will vary across the weekend’s programme, depending on how much you want to do and where you want to be.

Supersonic Festival comes to various venues across Birmingham, running from 16^th to 18^th June. For direct festival info and online tickets sales, visit www.supersonicfestival.com

June 14, 2017July 27, 2017

BPREVIEW: The Play That Goes Wrong @ REP (House stage) 19-24.06.17

Words by Lucy Mounfield / Production pics by Helen Murray

On Monday 19^th June, The Play That Goes Wrong will bring theatrical disaster to Birmingham REP’s House stage – as produced and performed by the Mischief Theatre Company. The Play That Goes Wrong will be running daily (except Sundays) until Saturday 24^th June. Matinee performances will be held on Thursday 22^nd and Saturday 24^th June at 2pm.

Standard tickets start from £15 with matinees from £10. For direct event information, including venue details and online ticket sales, click here.

The Play That Goes Wrong is written by co-authors Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields, whose first production, Let’s See What Happens, was devised by the former LAMDA students in 2008. The Play That Goes Wrong depicts the very opposite to the multi-award-winning trajectory that Mischief Theatre have taken.

This meta-theatrical experience of a play within a play has been running for five years (on the West End since 2014) and builds upon the tradition of turning amateur performance disaster into comic triumph. The premise is simple: The Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society are putting on a 1920’s murder mystery, but as the title suggests this does not go to plan. Think Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap meets Fawlty Towers, as the wannabe thespians cringingly carry on ‘against all the odds to reach their final curtain call, hilarious results ensue!’

But this well received farce is certainly this is no amateur production; Mischief Theatre are getting it wrong perfectly. This comes in many forms: slapstick, travesty, set malfunctions and miss-communications between the actors of the drama society who really are learning on the job. The Play That Goes Wrong promises physical humor such as planks of wood knocking out actors, but will this get too much for the real audience watching a play that is depicting another play going wrong? Does this kind of farce have to be believable, or is it simply about the hi-jinks?

What springs to mind when thinking about a play within a play genre is the ridiculous Michael Frayn play Noises Off – considered by many the greatest of all backstage farces. Noises Off manages to create nuanced characters and personality conflicts to explain away the comic failings of their play, thereby producing something akin to the believable. The National Theatre’s One Man Two Guvnors (which in my opinion was the funniest play I have ever seen) may not be a backstage based narrative, but utilises the artistic components of slapstick to full effect – by setting up a story and the characters motivation, the chaos that ensued was far funnier and quite often surprising.

The Play That Goes Wrong surely further takes influence from Morecambe and Wise’s Play’s Wot Erne Wrote, in which Morecambe and Wise invite a celebrity guest to star in one of Ernie’s plays (of course, it goes wrong as its badly written, badly acted and no one has a clue what is going on). But the play within a play tradition works well here because of the unsuspecting guest’s attempt to act whilst the others don’t, in turn making them look ever more the fool.

The Play That Goes Wrong has been running solidly in London’s West End and on Broadway, winning a slew of awards including an Olivier for Best New Comedy. So once more we tread the precarious boards of a play within a play, one that promises to push the boundaries of this genre even further and I suspect my laughter even louder.

The Play That Goes Wrong – Mischief Theatre

The Play That Goes Wrong runs at the Birmingham REP from 19^th to 24^th June – on the theatre’s House stage. For direct event info and online tickets sales, click here.

For more on Mischief Theatre, visit www.mischieftheatre.co.uk

For more from the Birmingham REP, including full event listing and online ticket sales, visit www.birmingham-rep.co.uk