Adelphi, London
Rating: *****
We don't know if Harvey chose the band or not, but tempers are definitely fraying. The curtain has gone up, we've all settled back expecting the great man to walk on stage, and instead this band appears and start singing deeply gloomy songs with lyrics like "We're running, we're running round our own devices". The audience is getting restless, to say the least, talking, laughing out loud at some of the worst lines, and cheering when they announce that this will be their last song.
And then there's an interval. What on earth's going on? Where's Harvey? Huddled outside with cigarettes, everyone bitches about the band and acts disgruntled. We walk back into the theatre with a small backlog of resentment. And then Harvey Fierstein, wearing black, grey and a pair of Marigold gloves, bounds on stage, and everything is immediately forgiven.
He's put on weight since he knocked us all flying with the wonderful Torch Song Trilogy. (His play about his search for love with three different men was fantastic sob-stuff as well as being killingly funny: best seen when you've just broken up with someone and are cradling a box of kleenex and a huge pot of Ben 'n' Jerry's). His hair has got a lot greyer, but apart from that nothing, it seems, has changed, thank god. He's still outrageously camp and calls us all Cookie, his voice still sounds like it's being sent out through gravel, he is still scathingly funny - no sign of mellowing here - and he still knows how to make us cry, because he knows about love. "Oh, you look so gay," he says coming on stage, raising a cheer straight away. This man has worked stage audiences for decades, there's nothing he doesn't know about how to keep us going.
"I will only be delicate in the first few jokes," he promises us, proceeding to tell a series of the kind of joke your worst great-uncle tells at Christmas after too many whiskies. They're absolutely terrible, and we all laugh till our stomachs hurt. We laugh like hyenas at "hand-job", and "ooh, serviced!".
He tweaks his eyebrow, and flaps his hand, and we'd laugh if he read out the Bognor Regis tourist brochure. Fierstein, who, apart from writing two of the handful of plays about homosexuality that have successfully broken through to the mainstream (most people will find, without realising, that they know at least one song from La Cage Aux Folles) has been a fierce gay rights activist from the moment he could walk, and is revered by the homosexual community as someone who speaks out for them and makes them laugh at the same time. He even chucks in a couple of jokes for heterosexuals: "they need them too," as he points out.
Besides the dreadful, wonderful jokes, there are the songs, (Nina Simone, a song from Hair, and tear-jerker supreme I am what I am, from La Cage aux Folles) and two monologues, both from plays about Aids, when we remember why we cried all the way through Torch Song Trilogy. "I love you," he says quietly to us, to himself. The comedy and flapping is slipped aside for a moment while the audience think with him of people they've loved and lost.
And then a standing ovation or three seems the most natural way to demonstrate our appreciation. When will he be back?
Proms
Fireworks and passion
Maxim Vengerov Royal Albert Hall ****
"Happy birthday, dear Maxim, happy birthday to you" the audience sang to celebrate Maxim Vengerov's 25th - a few days late, but the fact that a near-capacity audience in such a large venue can feel on first-name terms with a performer is testimony to the rapport Vengerov generates with his audiences.
Watching Vengerov perform is mesmerising. During expansive melodies he leans back, seeming to project his sound by sheer will. In lighter pieces he plays with a beatific smile, visibly and audibly enjoying himself - but without quite letting his personality supersede the music.
The first half of his programme was devoted to Brahms, beginning with the youthful Scherzo in C minor. This is a striking concert opener, and Vengerov revelled in the passionate, broad sweep of the melodies.
The Sonata in D was a welcome heavyweight work on an otherwise light programme, but it suffered in this hall, the piano carrying more easily through the vast auditorium than the higher frequencies of the violin. Pianist Vag Papian had to allow for this, and although he thundered in all the right places, he had to subdue his tone and could never let go with the same bravura as Vengerov. Although the pacing was right, the melodies expansive and the tension palpable, the sense of the work as a dialogue between two equal instruments was impossible to generate.
Witty and virtuosic accounts of three of Brahms's Hungarian Dances prepared us for the lighter fare of the second half - the pretty, intricate Rondo in A major by Schubert, and the gasp-inducing variations of Sarasate's Caprice basque. Then followed the Vocalise by Rachmaninov. The fireworks of Ravel's great showpiece Tzigane had Vengerov returning to the gypsy spirit of the Hungarian Dances, to dazzling effect.
After this the audience would not let him go - not that he showed any signs of reluctance to return for any of his four encores. Waxman's Carmen Fantasy was as lengthy, demanding and brilliantly executed as any of the pieces in his main programme.
Next came a poised account of the Meditation from Massenet's Thaïs, an eccentric unaccompanied piece entitled Balalaika in which the violin is plucked, mostly on the knee, and an astounding technical display in Bazzini's Round of the Goblins, which brought the concert to a close with a standing ovation.
"Bravo, Maxim" read a banner, written in Cyrillic script, waved by two adoring teenage girls seated high behind the stage. Bravo indeed.
Jazz
Homage to the Duke
Brecon Jazz Festival ****
For aficionados of jazz, 1999 is perhaps the most significant year of a century that has seen the genre move from music at rent parties to the splendour of Carnegie Hall.
Edward Kennedy Ellington was born one hundred years ago in Washington DC. It was entirely appropriate, therefore, that the 16th Brecon Jazz Festival should pay homage to the Duke. Three of the festival's headline concerts focused on his works. And there were echoes of Ellingtonia in several of the other 80-odd gigs that drew an estimated 50,000 enthusiasts to the town to enjoy two rip-roaring days.
The coolest passages paying respect to the Duke were performed on keyboards. In the relaxed surroundings of Christ College Stan Tracey worked his way through the classics. In the town's vast market hall Benny Green's interpretation of Sophisticated Lady caused the hair at the back of older necks to stand up in salute.
Authenticity informs the Echoes of Ellington, a 17-piece band with a repertoire stretching from Ellington classics like Mood Indigo to the jazzed-up Nutcracker Suite. Echoes came close to recreating the power of live gigs that held audiences the world over during the vintage years. Just where to place the David Murray Big Band in the temple of Ellington worship is sure to exercise minds. The band is stuffed with enthusiastic and dexterous musicians. Murray himself, a tenor saxophonist of awesome power from California, started out in church music and arrived at jazz via R&B.
His Ellington project is barely three years old. It highlights the lesser known works of the great man and those of his gifted arranger, Billy Strayhorne, who died in 1967, seven years before the master himself. The addition of instruments like bass clarinet and flute added intriguing flavours to the well-remembered swelling reed passages of the classics.
Trombonist Craig Harris's affinity for the wow-wow mute and the brass section's stunning passages of growl sounded unmistakable notes of continuity. Hilton Ruiz attacked the piano with demonic frenzy, a marked contrast to the Duke's own touch with the instrument.
A temperature raising performance of Blood Count epitomised a concert that left the distinct feeling that some expeditions into the wonderful world of Duke Ellington may be a rather acquired taste for some. For others it will prove a revelation.
