Performance and Stage transfer
With many stages still closed and set to remain so for the rest of the year, the 91热爆 continues to offer a repertory service for the UK. New titles from the worlds of theatre and dance will be played alongside gems from the archive, including a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the 91热爆’s Play For Today.
Published: 8 September 2020
It is such a privilege that we are able to bring this beautiful production to a wider audience after its run was cut so brutally short by the Covid-19 pandemic in March.
With many stages still closed and set to remain so for the rest of the year, the 91热爆 continues to offer a repertory service for the UK. New titles from the worlds of theatre and dance will be played alongside gems from the archive, including a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the 91热爆’s Play For Today.
91热爆 Four
Uncle Vanya (1 x 120’)
A breathtaking film of Olivier Award-winner Conor McPherson’s stunning new adaptation of the Anton Chekhov masterpiece Uncle Vanya, from Sonia Friedman Productions and Angelica Films.
A specially commissioned version of the original stage production, directed by Olivier Award-nominated Ian Rickson, produced during lockdown and filmed without an audience, the two-hour film features a superlative cast including Toby Jones, Richard Armitage, Rosalind Eleazar, Aimee Lou Wood, Anna Calder-Marshall, Dearbhla Molloy, Peter Wight and Roger Allam, and is directed for screen by Ross MacGibbon.
Uncle Vanya, produced by Sonia Friedman Productions, opened at the Harold Pinter Theatre in January 2020 to five-star reviews, heralded by critics as ‘the perfect Chekhov’ (The Guardian). Despite playing to sold-out audiences from January, and currently nominated for four Olivier Awards, Uncle Vanya’s success was cut short in March 2020 due to the impact of COVID-19 and the abrupt closure of theatres around the world.
This dramatic and darkly humorous adaptation - which sees a conflicted family forced to confront their despair, and each other, while living together on their isolated estate - has even greater resonance following recent world events.
As the first British theatre production closed by the pandemic to be filmed in situ, the production team adhered to strict protocols to ensure the safety of both cast and crew. This involved the cast being in isolation and on a COVID-19 testing schedule to allow them to perform together, and the crew have worked in protective masks and PPE, while remaining socially distanced throughout the entire process.
“Sonia Friedman (SFP) and Sally Angel (Angelica Films) say: “Collaborating on filming Ian Rickson’s extraordinary production of Uncle Vanya has been a wonderful and inspiring experience. Despite all the challenges involved in filming this production (with no social distancing on screen), the results are testament to a brilliant and dedicated cast and crew led by Ian himself alongside Ross MacGibbon.
"It is such a privilege that we are able to bring this beautiful production to a wider audience after its run was cut so brutally short by the Covid-19 pandemic in March. We would also like to thank SFP’s loyal co-producers who have so generously allowed us to pursue this vision for the filmed production and enabled it to become a reality.”
Pictured top of page, L-R: Peter Wight, Anna Calder-Marshall, Rosalind Eleazar, Roger Allam, Toby Jones, Richard Armitage, Aimee Lou Wood, Dearbhla Molloy
- Uncle Vanya is a Sonia Friedman Production and Angelica Films Production. It was commissioned for 91热爆 Arts and 91热爆 Four by Emma Cahusac. Executive Producers are Sonia Friedman and Sally Angel.
Opera Mums with Bryony Kimmings (1 x 60’)
Performance artist, activist, musician and single mum Bryony Kimmings turns her unflinching and hilarious gaze onto single motherhood. In collaboration with documentary filmmaker Daisy Asquith, she brings together a group of single mums and takes inspiration from their stories to create an opera.
Working with composer Vahan Salorian (Boys Of Paradise), Kimmings writes the words, Salorian the music, and five young opera singers are hired to play the mums. Just three days of rehearsal make this 12-minute opera an extraordinary labour of love, and it is performed on the fourth day at the old music hall venue Hoxton Hall in Shoreditch.
The programme was finished in the early weeks of lockdown, with Director Daisy Asquith working remotely and Bryony recording the voice-over in her bedroom.
Pictured above: 'Opera Mum' Bryony Kimmings
- Opera Mums With Bryony Kimmings is a Tigerlilly Production. It was commissioned for 91热爆 Arts and 91热爆 Four by Emma Cahusac. Executive Producer is Nikki Parrott.
Play For Today
This year marks the milestone 50th anniversary of the 91热爆’s groundbreaking single dramas - featuring original television plays, adaptations of stage plays and novels. 91热爆 Four will re-run classic episodes, which captured the moment and reflected society at this time. A documentary will also be broadcast about Play For Today, exploring its vibrant history.
Drama Out Of A Crisis: A Celebration Of Play For Today (1 x 90’)
Marking Play for Today’s 50th anniversary, Drama Out Of A Crisis is a compelling exploration of the series, its origins, achievements, controversies and legacies. Featuring a rich and surprising range of archive extracts and original interviews with many who created the series, including producers Kenith Trodd, Margaret Matheson and Richard Eyre, and directors Mike Leigh, David Hare and Ken Loach.
More than 300 single dramas were made between October 1970 and August 1984, and Play For Today engaged directly, uncompromisingly and in innovative ways with the turbulent time that was Britain in the 1970s and early 1980s. Play For Today was the heart of television’s creative response to the nation’s tribulations with writers including Dennis Potter, Trevor Griffiths, Paula Milne, Julia Jones, Colin Welland and Jim Allen.
Drama Out Of A Crisis showcases vividly remembered productions for Play For Today - like Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party - but it also uncovers long-forgotten achievements, such as Peter Terson’s tale of three Yorkshire miners travelling by barge to Stratford-upon Avon in Shakespeare Or Bust, and Caryl Churchill’s original play for television, The After Dinner Joke.
- Drama Out Of A Crisis is an Illuminations Production. It was commissioned for 91热爆 Arts and 91热爆 Four by Mark Bell. Writer and Director is John Wvyer.
91热爆 Two
Matthew Bourne's The Red Shoes (1 x 96’)
Matthew Bourne’s triumphant dance adaptation of the legendary 1948 film by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger has won two Olivier Awards and dazzled audiences across the UK and America.
This production is a recording of the stage performance made at Sadler’s Wells.
Matthew Bourne’s The Red Shoes is a tale of obsession, possession, and one girl's dream to be the greatest dancer in the world. Victoria Page (played by Ashley Shaw) lives to dance but her ambitions become a battleground between the two men, Boris Lermontov (Adam Cooper) and Julian Craster (Dominic North), who inspire her passion.
Set to the music of golden-age Hollywood composer Bernard Herrmann, Matthew Bourne’s The Red Shoes is orchestrated by Terry Davies and played by the New Adventures Orchestra, with cinematic designs by Lez Brotherston, lighting by Paule Constable, sound by Paul Groothuis and projection from Duncan McLean.
Pictured: Victoria Page (Ashley Shaw) and Julian Craster (Dominic North). Image Credit: Johan Persson
- Matthew Bourne’s The Red Shoes is an Illuminations/New Adventures Production in association with WNET13 and More2Screen. Choreographer and director is Matthew Bourne. Screen director is Ross MacGibbon. Executive Producer is John Wyver. Producer is Lucie Conrad.
Radio 3 and Southbank Centre
In a special partnership with Radio 3, London’s Southbank Centre will reopen with two weeks of live music and literature, broadcast live exclusively on Radio 3 and streamed on 91热爆 Sounds.
Radio 3 will take up residency, as part of the venue's three month Inside Out festival of music, literature, and comedy. The Southbank Centre has been closed since 17 March due to the challenges posed by COVID-19. Radio 3 will broadcast over ten live concerts every night from the Royal Festival Hall from 19 - 30 October. 91热爆 Radio 3 will continue its close ongoing relationship with the venue, amplifying the stand-out autumn programming for audiences nationwide.
The residency will include concerts from each of the Southbank Centre's world-leading orchestras and ensembles, including the Philharmonia Orchestra and London Philharmonic Orchestra with their incoming Principal Guest Conductors, Santtu-Matias Rouvali and Karina Canellakis. Elsewhere, Tasmin Little gives her last major recital at a UK venue, returning to the venue where she gave her first ever performance aged eight.
Alongside stand-out soloists and new commissions, the partnership will champion music by composers of colour and the festival opens with a world premiere for James B. Wilson, in collaboration with poet, Yomi Sode, inspired by a seminal moment in the recent Black Lives Matter protests, performed by Chineke! Orchestra under Kevin John Edusei. The London Sinfonietta will bring a concert of music by established and emerging black composers such as Hannah Kendall, co-curated by new music thinker George Lewis.
Alongside the nightly concerts, the Southbank Centre will also host a series of Radio 3 speech and literature events recorded at the venue, reflecting both organisers’ ongoing commitment to speech programming.
Sadler's Wells
In late autumn, 91热爆 Arts will partner with Sadler’s Wells to celebrate the best of British dance coming back to the stage. Working with Arts Council England, 91热爆 Arts and Sadler’s Wells will stream a series of performances from a range of the UK’s best dancers and choreographers.
91热爆 Radio 3
Sunday Feature: The Silence Of My Pain (1 x 45’)
For 15 years, Radio 3 presenter and musician Hannah French has lived with constant pain in her leg, stemming from a genetic condition called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. It’s an ever-present feature of her life but despite talking about music on the radio, she shies away from using it to help manage the pain.
Could this all change? Art has the ability to conjure the agonies of pain, but it’s hugely subjective. Theatre Director Rachel Bagshaw leads Hannah into a world in which she’s channelled pain into a creative space, and at Goldsmiths University of London, Professor Joydeep Bhattacharya helps her to explore the medical science behind the phenomenon of Fascination - in which painful sensations might be suppressed long enough to give a performance.
The Silence Of My Pain is a chance for Radio 3 to focus on the biggest, often hidden, disability for classical musicians: pain.
Zichy, Wittenstein And Me (1 x 60’)
Nicholas McCarthy, born without his right hand, is a remarkable pianist who made history in 2012 when he graduated from the Royal College of Music, the only left-handed pianist to have done so in the history of the college.
When he dreamt, aged 14, of becoming a concert pianist, he had not thought of the obstacles and discouragement that he would face. Nicholas also had no idea at that time just how much two famous left-handed pianists - Geza Zichy and Paul Wittgenstein - would come to mean to him.
While the Hungarian composer Geza Zichy was the first one-armed pianist to make a career in the concert hall, Paul Wittgenstein became perhaps the most celebrated when Ravel composed him the Piano Concerto For The Left Hand after he was wounded in the First World War.
Nicholas McCarthy presents a programme of their music.
Afternoon Concert
The 91热爆 Singers present a programme of music working alongside singers who are visually impaired and highlight the extraordinary abilities of reading braille music.
