Out & About March 2017

March dates for your diary

Arts editor Trish Lee picks four of the best of what’s coming up on the arts scene in March. Reviews of all of these events – and for more arts news – see N2 in the Newbury Weekly News each week

A fair and thoroughly-modern Rosalind

Don’t mess with the devil

Lust… sacrifice… regret… all hit The Watermill in a world premiere on March 2. Faust x2 is a thrilling, atmospheric and moving reinvention of a timeless tale. Inspired by Philip Wayne’s translation of Goethe’s dramatic poem, British screen and stage star Ian McDiarmid presents his own adaptation with humour and a sense of danger. Famed for his role as Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars , the Tony and Olivier award-winning actor plays the titular role of

Since winning the inaugural New Adventures Choreographer Award in 2011, Old Parkonian James Cousins has quickly made his mark on the dance world; recognised by Time Out magazine as one of the future faces of dance, with a string of high-profile international commissions already to his name and described by the great Matthew Bourne as ‘one of the UK’s most promising choreographic talents’. Last summer, over a period of seven weeks in South Korea, he created a new dance piece – in collaboration with four dancers, three local to Seoul. Four hundred years after Shakespeare wrote As You like It , Cousins has taken inspiration from the headstrong and independent heroine Rosalind to develop a contemporary work. On Wednesday, March 29 (7.45pm), following its UK premiere he returns with his company to the Corn Exchange to perform his modern dance that asks if women need to emulate masculinity to find equality; Rosalind . www.cornexchangenew.com

Faust, a disillusioned academic who makes a deal with the devil, selling his soul for a chance of a different life. Two young people – a teenage girl and a former student – both encourage and frustrate his newly awakened sensual desires and emotional needs. For Faust, to be young again is ‘very heaven’ – but only hell awaits. Ideally suited to The Watermill’s intimate space, the production includes music and features projection by acclaimed animation and video designer Zsolt Balogh. The production runs to March 25. www.watermill.org.uk

Blast of the blues

The story of Modernism

If Chicago blues is your bag, catch Mud Morganfield, eldest son of undisputed king of the blues Muddy Waters, at Arlington Arts on Thursday, March 16 (8pm).

A fabulous new exhibition, Degas to Picasso – Creating Modernism in France , has just opened at the Ashmolean, Oxford. The rise of Modernism is a compelling story, played out in France from the early 19th century to the middle of the 20th, where international artists were drawn to Paris by salons and dealers, the creative exchange between poets and painters, and the bohemian atmosphere of places like Montparnasse and Montmartre. The exhibition plots a course from the Romantics through Impressionists and Post-Impressionists to the groundbreaking experimentation of Picasso, Braque and Léger, but it shows there was no straight line leading from tradition to the shock of abstraction. The story is more fascinating – as academic artists and members of the avant-garde exchanged ideas and rivalries developed between the different schools and powerful characters. The exhibition, which runs to May, explores the artists who created Modernism and how they did it, through works by Manet, Pisarro, Cézanne, Degas and Picasso. Visit www.ashmolean.org

Only after Muddy Waters’ death in 1983 did Mud consider a career in music and he soon made up for lost time, cutting his teeth in the southside Chicago clubs, where he fast became a popular draw on the circuit; mixing original songs and Muddy Waters classics into his live sets. He possesses the same quality baritone voice and stage presence that made Muddy such an icon of the blues. His 2014 album For Pops: A Tribute to Muddy Waters won a Blues Blast Award for Best Traditional Album. He’s performed on Later Live with Jools Holland on the BBC and performed at some of the world’s leading festivals, from the North Sea Jazz Festival and the Cambridge Folk Festival to the Chicago Blues Festival, taking blues music to almost every

continent on the globe. www.arlingtonarts.co.uk

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