The Finborough Theatre presents
Live Canon: The Pre-Raphaelites
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A review by Marion Drew for EXTRA! EXTRA!
There comes a murmur from the shore… another evening of beautiful verse, this time firmly in the pre-Raphaelite tradition, and thus full of the sweetness, poignancy and at times a little melancholic, passion of love. There were poems replete with exquisite descriptive detail … I saw my love lean over my sad bed, pale as the duskiest lily’s leaf or head, smooth-skinned and dark, with throat made to bite, too wan for blushing, and too warm for white … (Love and Sleep by Algernon Charles Swinburne) and those of passion … I saw Beauty enthroned; and though her gaze struck awe, I drew it in as simple as my breath. … (‘Soul’s Beauty’ by Dante Gabriel Rossetti), all things we expect of this tradition. But there was humour too … you like not that French novel? Tell me why. You think it quite unnatural. Let us see. The actors are, it seems, the usual three: Husband, and wife, and lover. She -- but fie! In England we’ll not hear of it. … (Modern Love XXV You Like Not That French Novel by George Meredith). Lyric poems had a strong presence, performed with a fine ear for the beautiful cadence and sound of spoken language. Four poems were set to music, one the well known In the Bleak Mid Winter (Christina Rossetti with music by Gustav Holst) and two William Morris poems, Our hands have met and Love’s Gleaning Tide with music by Live Canon’s Jerome de Bromhead. Sung a capello and rich in harmony, they were arranged almost as rounds, giving a distinct medieval flavour to the evening. In the hands of Live Canon, poetry written in the 19th century has a freshness that makes it seem as if it has just been penned. Performers Anthony Shuster, Charles de Bromhead and Curtis Jordan with just a touch of an inflection, a look across the room, a smile, manage to convey humour, sorrow, passion so eloquently. It is a fine line they tread in a performance of this nature, creating a balance between words, actions and in this case music and they tread it well, always allowing the poems themselves to dominate. This studied, quiet but intensely engaging performance reminds us that poetry is indeed written to be spoken aloud, and can be a living thing in the hands of wordsmiths and performers that … strive to build a shadowy isle of bliss … for us. The evening as a whole lent considerable weight to the plea of Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, who has said that he thinks that poems should be learned by heart and recited, and that the pleasure of hearing poems through another voice is a special one. Live Canon show just how special this can be, and deserve as wide an audience as possible, so keep an ear out for their next poetry performance.
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