The first night closed with the multi-talented classical composer and singer-songwriter Errollyn Wallen playing a selection from her ‘Songbook’ at the piano. In a smouldering jazzy voice and with lightning fingers, she whisked us through her witty and wacky world. She even had a special guest to play the cello sonata she wrote for him – that’s right, the ubiquitous Matthew Sharp.
Time Out London Jonathan Lennie 31/07/2008
The evening closed with songs composed and sung, to her own piano accompaniment, by Errollyn Wallen, whose fractured sense of rhythm, harmony and melody ensured that the results never coalesced into merely easy listening. Titles such as My Hitler and Magritte Man provide a hint of her verbal imagination.
Evening Standard Nick Kimberley 01/08/2008
The week's second premiere was Shobana Jeyasingh's Faultline, which from its opening - a choppy back-projection of Asian youths engaged in enigmatic street business - seems to shudder with tension. Its creative starting point was Gautam Malkani's 2006 novel Londonstani, whose characters communicate in a blurred patois of text-speak and Punjabi, and Jeyasingh's danced exchanges clearly reflect these mixed influences.
As her eight dancers stalk and prowl, they intercut the hand gestures of hip hop with challenging finger clicks and the lotus and butterfly spreads of bharat natyam. The vocabulary of martial arts is also in evidence, but this is less combative than self-assertive; a community under scrutiny, Jeyasingh seems to be saying, cannot afford to let its guard down. This watchfulness extends to the duets, whose potential for tenderness is repeatedly undercut by macho ritual.
Over this, Jeyasingh draws an extraordinary score. Soprano Patricia Rosario appears, singing material composed by Errollyn Wallen alongside a manipulated recording of Rosario's voice by Scanner. This lends further layers of incident and complexity, skilfully drawn together in the final passage, a thrilling ensemble statement of rhythm and order contained in a single off-centre square of light. In synthesis, Faultline tells us, is resolution.
The Observer 11/03/2007
4 Stars Almeida, London
George Hall
Tuesday July 10 2007
Drawn from Marjorie Wallace's book of the same title, April de Angelis's libretto for Errollyn Wallen's new opera tells the enigmatic story of identical twins June and Jennifer Gibbons. Born in 1963 in Barbados but brought up in south Wales, their intense relationship separated them from their parents and community, and eventually saw them incarcerated in Broadmoor in 1982 following a chaotic and seemingly exhibitionistic crime spree. It ended within hours of their release 11 years later, when June, the elder of the two, suddenly and mysteriously died. In between, it consisted of love, rivalry and hatred.
The twins not only baffled their parents, but also various schools, social agencies and eventually psychiatrists. Declining to speak to others, they focused exclusively on each other. Their self-published teenage literary productions were prodigious.
Wallen's score seizes the opportunity of defining the twins' isolated, self-created world through music that is immediate without being obvious. She is aided by two remarkable performances from Alison Crookendale as Jennifer and Talise Trevigne as June. Not only do they resemble twins, but their body language is eerily suggestive of mutual identification as well as mutual mistrust.
The alternately florid and frenetic instrumental writing - vividly performed by the Almeida Ensemble under conductor Tim Murray - is perfectly complemented by vocal lines that impress with their sharply etched character. There are deft parodies of 1970s pop styles in scenes that celebrate the hectic imagination of the twins' literary creations, full of edgy behaviour and disco-dancing. Wallen revels in the possibilities here, with a mock-Saturday Night Fever sequence in which the absurdly sensational aspects of the twins' fantasies are almost redeemed by their sheer energy. Their ghastly attempt to win affection from a couple of boys by having sex with them in a church is realised in another tragicomic episode.
Five other singers share a dozen supporting roles. La Verne Williams offers a sumptuous voice and infinite concern as the twins' mother, Gloria. Devon Harrison is priceless as Mark, Jennifer's tongue-tied pen pal, whose arioso, I Live in Wokingham, is a gem. Throughout, the composer and librettist pull off a feat of ambiguity by combining comedy with desperation while avoiding sentimentality; the scenes in Broadmoor are painfully funny.
Martin Constantine's production, visualised in Peter McKintosh's straightforward designs, is assured. The show's weak point is diction, which is ironic given that the piece is all about communication. The opera itself is an unequivocal hit.
The Guardian
Four Stars
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