View from the Green Room: The Good, the Bad and the Forgettable
The Ennio Morricone Experience quartet.
There’s a full house for this show but I leave with the impression that this audience has been short-changed.
The epic cinematic scope of Morricone’s music is never going to be sustained on a band of a piano quartet and a soprano. A single fiddle, a viola and a cello was never going to be enough – despite their heroic efforts. Added to that, the piano in the lower registers regularly drowns out the strings.
This is a show that needs a good, hard look by a director. Referring an audience to a Facebook page for a playlist just isn’t good enough.
E-programmes are always visible on theatre walls at the Foyer and the script that is shared by the players is pretty thin.
I did expect but failed to hear much of the life story of the man who had sold over seventy million albums worldwide, collected multiple awards – two Oscars, six more Oscar nominations, three Grammys, three Golden Globes, six BAFTAs, 10 David di Donatello, 11 Nastro d'Argento, two European Film Awards, the Golden Lion Honorary Award, and the Polar Music Prize in 2010.
The Mission’s soundtrack (1986) went gold in the United States and The album “Yo-Yo Ma Plays Ennio Morricone” remained for 105 weeks on the Billboard Top Classical Albums.
Hugo Montenegro’s version of the theme to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly topped the charts in the UK for four weeks in 1968. It was whistled everywhere.
The opportunity for a rear-screen projection that would have boosted the experience is sadly missed. Pictures of this prolific and ground-breaking composer along with footage of his concerts, the films he collaborated on, record sleeves and anecdotal life experiences – he was a brilliant chess player and played chess with many big names, including GMs Garry Kasparov, Anatoly Karpov, Judit Polgar and even managed a draw with World Champion Borris Spassky – are replaced by the rear wall of the stage.
Many of the favourites are played. Ground-breaking spaghetti western duels with operatic soundtracks are here but lose their impact without the footage that should have supported them. Gabriel’s Oboe, minus the oboe, proves a hit with the audience and I loved the Cinema Paradiso section – one of my favourite films –with Annalisa Montecelli’s gentle piano underscoring that marvellous nostalgic theme from the strings.
This production needs a good hard look at it. And…yes…I do know that the sell-out audience stood up and applauded. BUT…more players are needed along with rear screen projections to vary the presentation and a professional script writer to tell the story of Ennio Morricone’s musical odyssey. A piano quartet just isn’t enough.
