Very pleased that the The El Train opened this week at Hoxton Hall to some wonderful five star reviews. I’ve written music and created the sound design for the collection of three one act Eugene O’Neil plays directed by Sam Yates and Ruth Wilson – Before Breakfast, The Web and The Dreamy Kid. Ruth Wilson (who has two Olivier awards including last year’s best actress for Anna Christie) also stars in two of the plays.
The score features a live seven-piece jazz band led by vocalist Nicola Hughes linking each of the three plays.
The reviews so far have been fantastic, with the Telegraph writing –
“..the staging is bleakly beautiful, the original score by Alex Baranowski sensational, the performances brutally truthful.” ****
Michael Billington in the Guardian –
“..a spellbinding 90-minute evening… the atmospheric power of Alex Baranowski’s prefatory jazz music and the resonant singing of Nicola Hughes, who sombrely tells us that “death is slow, death is sure” ****
And Kate Kellaway in the Observer –
“The joint is jumping.. to the ecstatic sound of virtuoso jazz trumpeter Mark Kavuma and company. The magnificent Nicola Hughes – velvet-voiced – seals each play with a song… a pitch-perfect sense of O’Neill’s prose and of theatrical sound: the thunder of train and storm.” *****
The show is running up until the end of December at Hoxton Hall. For more information and to book tickets, go to the El Train website here.
