VICTORIAN pub theatre The Rosemary Branch will be transformed into a concert hall for the next three weeks for the Big Music-Small Space festival. James Young, pianist and composer with the Charles Court Opera company, has prepared a veritable smorgasbord of delights, from Shostakovich to dirty pop and everything in between.
The inaugural festival, which runs from April 15 to May 7, includes the acclaimed Doric String Quartet, hilarious pop cabaret duo Frisky and Mannish, authentic period performers the Chiaroscuro Quartet, Indian Classical from James Barralet and Sankar Chowdhury, and Japanese Contemporary with electronics and visuals from Hiroaki Takenouchi.
There’s the diminutive series of Six Word Operas from The Warehouse Ensemble, and the mammoth Mahler/Zemlinsky Sixth Symphony performed by the Eaton-Young piano duo.
Newly-devised local children’s musical theatre, Hot Tin Roof, will kickstart proceedings with This is Hell! Get Me Out of Here, a reality TV musical version of Dante’s Inferno.
Full details of all the acts can be found online at www.rosemarybranch. co.uk
Also starting this week, a reprise for Deborah Espect’s dark comedy about the true meaning of madness, Calling. In a London psychiatric hospital, three different, troubled lives come together.
Directed by William Edelsten, Calling is at the King’s Head Theatre in Islington from April 15-19 at 1pm.