Cynics point out that summer is the time producers trot out tried-and-true favorites, with an eye toward pleasing crowds rather than critics. Very occasionally, though, mass appeal doesn’t mean banality. In London, the smash hit of the summer is Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, a stage adaptation of the 1968 children’s movie about the adventures of a magnificent flying car. In Adrian Noble’s $9 million production, Chitty hovers above the stalls, the terrifying Child Catcher of the fascistic kingdom of Vulgaria draws boos and the songs are as smooth as the staging. The result: a slick revamp of a classic British children’s book. Ian Fleming, creator of Chitty as well as James Bond, would have approved.
Nostalgia of a different sort will be on show in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new musical, Bombay Dreams. The show–the first Bollywood extravaganza ever to appear in London’s West End–is essentially about what Nabokov called “nostalgia in reverse, the longing for yet another strange land.” A love story set against Bombay’s film industry, the show explores those age-old themes of ambition and tinsel, reality and fantasy. With music by India’s master songwriter A. R. Rahman, direction by Shekhar Kapur (of “Bandit Queen” and “Elizabeth”) and a script by the multitalented comedienne Meera Syal, the show promises glitz on a subcontinental scale.
Exotic nostalgia will also be on display across the Channel in France. Among the offerings at Avignon’s 56th annual theater festival in July will be a stage adaptation of Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet, the purple-prosed tome of love among decadent expats in 1940s Egypt. And recasting a slightly older story set on the Mediterranean, the Argentine author Rodrigo Garcia has adapted the ancient myth of Prometheus into a stage play, Prometeo. The production uses Mozart’s music to emphasize the brutality, violence and tenderness of the story about the Titan who stole fire from the gods.
Not surprisingly, Greek classics also feature at the Hellenic Festival, Greece’s annual international celebration of dance, opera, theater and music. This year the Herodian, a 1,800-year-old open marble theater at the foot of the Acropolis, in Athens, will be the site of a staging of Medea. Staged by the Spanish troupe Rosa de Otono and directed by Greece’s Michael Cacoyannis, Euripides’ chilling tale of a mother who murders her children will be performed on June 30. The Herodian will also host the Bolshoi Ballet, dancing Spartacus and Giselle, as well as the Strasbourg Harmonic Orchestra. At the fourth-century outdoor amphitheater of Epidaurus, Greek and foreign theater troupes will present 13 ancient tragedies, including Oedipus Rex, Antigone and Lysistrata, as well as the Bacchae, Euripides’ meditation on man’s quest for faith, directed by the gifted English director Sir Peter Hall.
The outdoors also provides shelter for various Continental concerts, among them the Nice Jazz Festival in July. The annual gathering in the south of France takes a catholic view of jazz, defining the genre as anything from New Orleans jazz to urban funk. The Italian singer Lucio Dalla injects black soul with Mediterranean intensity, while the magnificent Cassandra Wilson will use her only French festival appearance to display her smoky contralto. And the legendary B. B. King will be performing as well.
The Italians’ answer to Nice and Avignon is Spoleto. The young Spanish flamenco star Rafael Amargo and the Indian theater company Samundra offer electric live performances. If it rains, there are films: a Claudia Cardinale retrospective, Martin Scorsese’s documentary about Italian neorealism and a classic documentary on Picasso by Luciano Emmer, the noted Italian director. Those in search of innocent pleasures should head out to see the Colla Marionette Company perform Sleeping Beauty and Puss in Boots.
If Spoleto, with its household names and chamber music, is the granddaddy of European arts festivals, Berlin’s Tanzfest is the rebel adolescent. Running in August, it features two weeks of cutting-edge performance theater from around the world. This year’s highlights include Luminous, the newest piece by Saburo Techigawara, the athletic dancer known as the Japanese Baryshnikov, and Meg Stuart’s Alibi, a raw and anarchic study of violence and obsession inspired by September 11.
Coincidentally, the theme of this year’s Grec Festival in Spain is “Barcelona Loves New York.” The music, dance and theater celebration–which runs until early August–will feature Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed and Philip Glass. The American diva Barbara Hendricks will sing Gershwin, and there’ll be a staging of Homebody/Kabul, the play by Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner, currently running in London. In July, musical gourmands may head out to Andalusia for the deliciously named Festival Internacional Esparrago, or the International Asparagus Festival. Iggy Pop and the group Garbage will be doing the same. Those looking for the company of a classic roue should go to Aix-en-Provence in France, where Peter Brooks will revive his staging of Don Giovanni.
As Dionysus no doubt chided his drinking cronies, culture without wine is decidedly drab. Germany’s Rheingau music festival sets classical-music concerts in vineyards, ancient wine-making monasteries and castles on the Rhine. This year’s standout performers include Anne-Sophie Mutter, Andre Previn and Carl Orff’s spine-chilling Carmina Burana choir work, sung in the ancient vaults of the Eberbach monastery, atop a hill overlooking Germany’s best Riesling vineyards. A less merry Greek than Dionysus, the didactic writer Hesiod would never have approved of all this outdoor cavorting. “It will not always be summer,” he scolded some eight centuries before Christ. “Build barns.” Bah, humbug. Forget the hammers. If you don’t head out and see Europe’s spectacles this summer, what will you have to dream about in the winter?
