The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 36

THE GUARDIAN Friday July 13 1990 Will Melody Radio's wall-to-wall golden oldies The RSC's ground-breaking production at Stratford is an exhilarating start to the year of the Lear, writes Michael Billington The sanity of madness keep the over-35s awake, asks Brian Hayes Turn on, tune in, drop off 36 ARTS TL HAT is happening in six minutes each hour compared with nine minutes on most other commercial stations); there are no station jingles and the announcers have pleasant radio voices. But on the minus side, those same pleasant voices don't seem quite right reading the news. THE year of the Lear starts officially with the unveiling of Nicholas Hytner's Stratford production starring John Wood. To cut the cackle and come to the 'osses, I would describe it as an immensely intelligent production with a brilliantly idiosyncratic performance from Mr Wood. Clearly there has been much throwing about of brains: all the evening lacks as yet is the ability to shatter one's emotional defences.

Confronted by this vast, unwieldy play, Mr Hytner is too wily to offer a confining concept. I do, however, see a consistent idea running through his production: an exploration of the insane contradictions of a world where the gods are seen as both just and wantonly cruel, where Nature is both purifying and destructive. The whole production is about contradictions: about the strange surreality of a world in which prankish jokers get blinded and old sweats shoved in the stocks. This element of paradox also applies to Estelle Kohler's Goneril and Sally Dexter's Regan who are less embodiments of evil than two neglected daughters (Alex Kingston's Cordelia is obviously dad's pet) who find themselves almost stumbling into gross cruelty. The one dubious stroke is the casting of Linda Kerr Scott as the Fool whom she plays as an asexual, black-capped figure reminiscent of the ventriloquist's dummy she played in Ghetto.

Ms Scott is caperingly comic in a Scottish accent but you lose any sense of the Fool as simultaneously Lear's external critic and inner conscience. But this is one of the few lapses in a richly intelligent production. It aims not at mythic grandeur but at absurd moral fluctation. And in Mr Wood's Lear it sweeps away barnacled tradition to offer us not some Blakeian ancient but a man who is an anthology of warring emotions. It is such an immense play you cannot get it right in one go but this RSC production offers an exhilarating, mind-expanding start to the Lear festivities.

And the same pattern is visible in erratic human behaviour. Lear, having cursed Goneril with sterility, rushes back to embrace her. Astonishingly, Regan first conspires in the blinding of Gloucester and then tenderly asks him, rather than her wounded husband, "How dost my lord?" Mr Hytner ushers us into a morally topsyturvy universe in which good and evil frequently cohabit within the same person. I take this to be the clue to John Wood's ground-breaking Lear. He does not offer a simple linear reading in which folly leads to madness and thence to moral regeneration: Wood's Lear exists in a permanent state of spiritual schizophrenia.

You see this in the brilliantly played first scene where he enters clutching the trisected map like a berserk geography master and then drifts into aphasia. Equally powerful is the way his rage against Cordelia is short-circuited by his love: "Better thou hadst not been born" he ferociously cries and then chokes, unable to finish the sentence. As you would expect from Mr Wood, it is a highly original reading that notches up point after point In the hovel scenes, he has a crazed sprightliness pursuing Poor Tom art the thing itself) with the ecstasy of a scientist making a Eureka-like discovery. But perhaps his best moment comes when he promises the imprisoned Cordelia that they will take upon them "the mystery of It is a performance that destroys the barrier between madness and sanity: this Lear occupies both territories at once. What for me excludes it, as yet, from the select club of great Lears is that it wants the gift of pathos.

It is an intriguing, daring, pioneering performance but also one that is somewhat over-calculated. Mr Wood at the moment is superbly playing Lear. What he has to learn to do is to let Lear play him. But this is anything but a one-man show. Amongst a host of good supporting performances, I was very taken with Norman Rodway's Gloucester: not the usual dour old duffer but a jokey, credulous sport who initially treats Edgar's fake letter as a lark and who gets his astrological opinions from the local paper.

In a Lear that starts surprisingly light in tone, David Troughton's disguised Kent offers a very funny parody of the loyal old soldier marching up and down outside Albany's palace. But then the John Wood as Lear schizophrenia in a permanent state of moral PHOTOGRAPH: DOUGLAS JEFFERY Why Erik's happy mm radio at the moment? A new station every month it seems should have happened, years ago. In 1S73 for instance, when the lirst of the new commercial (or independent local) radio stations, LBC and Capital, came on air. We've just got used to the idea of a jazz-only station, and along comes Melody Radio 104.9 FM. It is rather like an American or Australian "easy-listening" station, but with a wider format.

Apparently, the music is intended to cover a very wide range, from pop to light classical, from jazz to show music. What it must have to qualify is This must be a difficult judgment to make because it could he said that Dirty Cash by Ste-vie and others from the current chart have melody. Perhaps old "jingles" like Hit The Road Jack are more acceptable simply because they are old. There are some new records played (Elton John's Sacrifice) but the overall impression is of wall-to-wall golden oldies. Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Barbra Streisand, Perry Como, and lots of saccharine string arrangements of the standards.

Who is going to listen to this slush? Lard Hanson and his radio professionals expect the over-35 ABC1 gang to consume the product. And I suppose the predominance of old music will bring in the wrinklies, but I'm not sure the affluent section of that group will be able to stay awake to get on with making their money. There are some notable differences to this radio station, differences that will certainly attract disenchanted listeners from elsewhere. The lack of hyp. DJs, for instance.

On Melody Radio, they would be best described as announcers, and what's more they consign themselves to simple information about the music and simple slogans about the station. Other pluses include the policy of fewer commercials (only FRI 7.30 SAT 2.00 7.30 BARBICAN THEATRE 071 638 8891 07 1 497 9977 with a dog's life When reporting the boring to- mg anu lro-mg ot international leaders and London's interminable traffic problems they're fine, but I cannot hear them telling me about a transport tragedy or an earthquake. There is or should be room in a market like London for this kind of station. And I am sure there is enough money behind this venture to sustain it for a long enough period to prove it one way or another. It is possible to detect a mellowing of popular radio.

Observe the success of Pete Murray on London Talkback, not to mention Douglas Cameron on the same channel, the signing of Michael Parkinson to my old slot on LBC Newstalk and the continuing attraction of Jimmy Young, John Dunne and Gloria Hunniford on Radio 2. If you're looking for veteran (a kind word) DJs, you'll find them all on Capital Gold, from Tony Blackburn to Kenny Everett. Over at Jazz FM there is more than just a nod in the direction of the mellower end of jazz: Benny Goodman and Dave Brubeck. All these stations are obvi ously looking at the demographics which tell them of an ageing audience. I wouldn want to take this argument too far, but it does seem that I am the one who's out of step.

hirty minutes ot Melody Radio is enough. And that goes for other soft radio. I need and enjoy something more in tune with 1990 and a busy city. uive me a stimulating mix ot Capital FM, LBC Newstalk (for information) and a regular in jection of Steve Wright. It you want to listen to hit music on Melody Radio, that's up to you.

Brian Hayes left LBC New stalk two weeks ago. I74H! KG C(E) Jl fashionable view is that King Lear is an essay Beckettes-que nihilism. Mr Hytner. to his credit, treats it as a tragicomedy full of turbulent paradox. You see this in David Fielding's excellent set reminiscent of that for ENO's Masked Ball: a revolving, open-sided cube that during the storm scene gives on to a dizzying skyscape.

Order opens up to reveal chaos. Queen Elizabeth Hall Edward Greenfield DanielSCO Joan Rodgers EVER since she scored her first international success as Pamina in The Magic Flute at Aix-en-Provence in 1982, Joan Rodgers has been a soprano to watch out for. Last year at Glyndebourne, again in Mozart, as Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro, she was the natural star. With a voice at once golden and brilliant, sensuous as well as agile, she was the perfect choice of soloist, adding sparkle to an already effervescent concert from Paul Daniel and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. More Mozart, Fiordiligi's ach-ingly beautiful "Per pieta" from Act 2 of Cosi fan tutte, was aptly preceded by two concert arias written at that same inspired period.

Though Rodgers' chest tones are as yet rather thin to convey the full defiance of Fiordiligi in the lower regis- ter, the heartfelt intensity and the fearlessness of her attack on the widest vocal leaps was thrilling. One longs to hear her tackle the role on stage. The brilliance and sureness of the SNO's playing under Daniel added to that, not least the vulnerable two-horn obbli-gato in the Cosi aria. Paul Daniel, about to take up his new post as music director of Opera North, was both positive and imaginative. If in Wolfs Italian Serenade with Catherine Mar-wood a rich-toned viola soloist he had the guitar-inspired rhythms lolloping engagingly at an easy tempo, he challenged his players to the limit in the outer movements of a dazzling account of Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony.

With string and wind articulation of diamond clarity, his hectic speeds went with a rhythmic resilience. i ne vortex John Fordham Oliver Jones LEONARD Feather has described Oliver Jones as "Cana- da's greatest gift to jazz since Peterson himself." The connections don't stop at Jones being a black Canadian piano virtuoso making his way on a world stage not over-populated with performers from such a background. From the first pounding left-hand figures and silvery appegios he revealed himself to be a man straight out of the Oscar Peterson stable. Jones, it transpires, lived next door to Peterson and had the same teacher the maestro's sister Daisy. The fact that Jones didn't make any kind of world impact until 1980 indicates that climbing out from under the substantial shadow of his mentor has been his biggest problem.

Jones appeared at The Vortex in Stoke Newington with a local trio featuring Spike Heatley (bass) and Malcolm Mortimer (drums). His performance was in many respects less exasperating than many of Peterson's because he shows more restraint and resists the temptation to jam his foot down on the throttle in virtually every tune, regardless of mood. The contrast between the frills and flounces of Jones' melody lines and the rugged David Newnham RIK ZIMEN is not a dog of this I am almost certain. To begin with, he wears trousers, walks on his hind legs and sports a wnst watch. But and I say this not to be unkind think Erik would very much like to be a dog.

He would undoubtedly be good at it. Julian Pettiter won ever tor- get his encounter with the Swedish zoologist on ITV's Na ture Watch. That is the one other thing of which I can be sure. Beyond that, everything becomes terribly ambiguous. Barking mad, in fact.

To begin with, there was the matter of the shampoo. It began like any other interview, Erik and Julian sitting on a dry-stone wall surrounded by wolves. Julian asked the questions, the bearded Erik answered in an accent reminiscent of Hans unt Lotte Hass. Julian, not surprisingly per haps, was asking about the wolves, and Erik was ready with the answers. Which also wasn't surprising since the wolves were old chums of his.

At this juncture I should tell you a little about our friend. As a boy, Erik always wanted a dog. It took him three years to persuade mamma and papa to insistence of the left hand gives his music an attractive balance of delicacy and rhythmic force. On funky pieces his restless low-register figures tug and jostle the upper line rather than simply rotate a riff under it, and at times the power of the left hand overwhelmed the right, chords careering around the keyboard like stock-cars against an amiably sustained trebled trill. On such familiar works as a fast, choppy Green Dolphin Street and a florid, appeggio-packed Round Midnight, Jones mingled playful teases (rumbling, almost purely rhythmic passages from which the inevitable scorching treble burst would be tantalisingly delayed) with thumping block chords and scything double-time passages.

Every note is hit with fastidious precision. As with Peterson, though, the sheer inevitability packed into such a style, its tendency even at its most virtuosic to give you a sense of deja vu, and in this case the solid, rather catalytic qualities of the rhythm section all conspired to make Jones' performance less of a compelling business than it might have been. Exclusive Classic children's stories 4.99. (With lots of pictures.) buy him an Airdale terrier, which he promptly, if unimaginatively, christened Bonzo. After university, Erik decided to mix pleasure with business and began studying dogs.

wolves and mixtures of the two. Over the years he has kept 40 wolves at his home, and they have accepted him as a friend. Which is just as well, if you think about it. But back to the interview. It started going wrong when one of the wolves took a shine to Julian's hair.

"They smell the shampoo," said Erik, as fur and Pettifer become inseparable. "Is that it?" replied Julian, face red, eyes bulging as he throttled a fit of giggles. "That is a male, you know," said Erik as the rubbing became frenzied. "If I'd known that," Julian replied, "I might have been more apprehensive." We left them then, their merriment all out in the open, and cut to an African village. Erik and Julian, deep in conversation, provided the commentary.

Tribesmen, Erik was saying, have no time for four-legged friends. In Africa it is the tri-beswomen and tribeschildren who are the real dog-lovers. "And do you know what the dogs are doing?" asked Erik. "It's beautiful. They are cleaning the, what do you call it, the poo poo?" "Backside," prompted Julian.

"Yes, they are cleaning the backside of the babies when they have had er, shit." "The dogs are doing that?" "Ya. That is one of the first functions of a dog in human society as a sort of napkin. The baby makes its, er, skat somewhere and the woman makes this 'tshh tshh And immediately the dog Knows: un nun, another opportunity to And he rushes in there and cleans up everything very neatly, beautifully." And sure enough, there on our screens, this beautiful act was being performed. Cut! This time, to Cruris dog show in London. Julian was there, taking Erik for walk.

Could it really be true, asked Julian, visibly shaken, that every dog from the tiniest toy poodle to the greatest Great Dane was the result of man's selective breeding of the wolf? 'Ya. Of all mammals, the wolf has the largest natural range. Except for people." "Ana what sort ot job do you think we've done?" Erik sadly surveyed the ca nine exhibits much as Moses might have surveyed the Israelites in these are supposed to be animals, but sometimes you wonder. Many of these dogs here, they can't copulate right." Then he perked up. All the traits in all the dogs we have are in some way in the wolt, you know.

Julian approached a supine Pekinese whose owner was brushing its tummy. Beside it on the table was a half-used roll of toilet paper (even dogs aren't immune from new technology). "How do you relate this little Pekinese to a wolf then?" he asked. "It looks like a young puppy, said Erik, "its mother being there licking its stomach to attend for it and to get it urinating." (iuite so, Erik; quite so. The talk turned to Rottweillers, Pit Bulls and the like.

"I think you have a bit of a negative attitude right now," lata true accusingly. Yes. slightly," said Julian. Erik's attitude is more posi tive. He is currently breeding the ideal family pet a doE he hopes will be "healthy, friendly and energetic with no bizarre or unsociable characteristics." Exclusive $i5p Tf DDV RUXPUi'S MRTHOAV NOW SHOWING IBCANMOHI SHAFTESBURY AVE PANTON STREET (071-836 6279) 071-930 0631) ODBON ODION fScSMHokl KENSINGTON SWISS COTTAGE CHELSEA (071-602 6644) (OT 1-722 SSOS) (071-3S2 SOS6) THE SCREEN ON CORONET UCI WHITELEYS CINEMA ISLINGTON GREEN NOTTING HILL OF BAYSWATER GREENWICH (071-225 3520) (071-727 8700) (071-702 3332) (0426-927799) AND ACROSS LONDON AND THE COUNTRY Exclusive Exclusive 15 Great Children's videos.

9 exclusive to Woolworths. 4-99 each. Should be interesting, ya?.