Barbican Car Park Hosts Bassline, Guard at Tower
One of the more off-beat venues
audiences can take in a performance this month is the Barbican
Centre car park, where next week (9 July) a new installation opens
showcasing the work of theatre-maker Graeme Miller.
London is a free multi-screen video and sound installation
which aims to present “a new awareness of the city’s landscape by
exposing London’s psychogeography”. Situated in the “hidden
spaces” of the Barbican Centre’s car park five, audiences can see
and hear a series of recorded testimonies contributed by participants
in a hour-long walk led by Miller last month, taking in the Barbican and surrounding area.
Those who took part included an
84-year-old writer and poet and his eight-year-old grandson, an
Iranian performance student, and a ‘visionary gardener’. Miller is
collaborating on the project with double-bassist Tim Harries, who
provides a soundtrack comprised of a solo bassline based on a piece
by Henry Purcell (to mark the 350th anniversary of the birth of the
composer).
Miller’s previous projects include
Bassline: Vienna in 2004, which took place in a
tunnel between two of the city’s underground stations.
Bassline:
London runs as part of the bite09 festival,
and is one of several outdoor events being staged by the Barbican
this summer. Several installations commissioned as part of
its Radical Nature art exhibition (19 – 18
October) can currently be seen in and around the venue, and Dancing in the Square is being held in Dalston’s Gillett
Square on 11 July, a free daytime event featuring a vibrant range of
dance and music groups.
Staying with the theme of alternative
outdoor venues, Carl Rosa Opera is presenting a production of
Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Yeoman of the Guard at
the Tower of London on 13 and 15 September, the first time a
performance of the comic opera has been staged there in over 30 years.
Directed by Peter Mulloy and featuring
a cast led by Paul Nicholas, Susan Gordon, Donald Maxwell and
Charlotte Page, it will be performed in the Tower’s moat
accompanied by the full Carl Rosa Orchestra conducted by Wyn Davies.
Set in the Tower during the 16th
Century, The Yeoman of the Guard is a tale of
ill-fated love, intrigue and escape in Tudor England, chronicling the
events in the life of one Colonel Fairfax during the last days of his
imprisonment in the Tower. It was first presented at the Savoy
Theatre in 1888 and is considered the darkest of the Savoy operas.
– by Theo Bosanquet
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