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Wednesday, July 10, 2019
Wednesday, July 10, 2019
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The first time I saw Silvia Ziranek perform was in front of a garage behind some flats in Bethnal Green. She was clearly a cut above the rest: my conclusion was that she was brilliant and that "It's a difficult thing to look classy with a panettone balanced on your head, but she effortlessly manages it."
Now she's the subject of an exhibition in the lobby of One Canada Square. This monolithic skyscraper is one of the primary symbols of capitalist Britain: a giant glass and steel obelisk penetrating the docklands sky, capped by a glass pyramid with a blinking eye on top. The symbolism kinda writes itself. In and around it lie the lairs of big finance: Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Citi, HSBC, Deutsche Bank and so on. So how does Ziranek's playful, feminine and enigmatic perspective fit into this pin-striped world?
As it turns out, it doesn't. And that's why the exhibition works. The lobby of One Canada Square is a cavernous, marbled place designed to impress and intimidate - to instil in visitors the notion that this is where very important things happen.
IT IS IS IT subverts that. Most eye-catching are the selection of sloganeering badges ("ANYONE CAN APRON", "IT'S ME OR NEVER", "NOT UNDIRTY") that have been distributed throughout the years at her performances - blown up to fifty times their original size and pasted onto the walls. Seeing them festooned on the walls (and on Ziranek herself) makes the building (or at least its lobby) feel like an extension of the artist herself. Accompanying them are various messages, prose that agonisingly teeters on the edge of comprehension:
"ONLY POLITICS ARE REQUIRED TO MAKE THIS BEAUTIFUL BRICKWORK COMPLETE OR DID YOU WANT TO MARRY A BOOKEND? MARRY AN OAK: FOLK MAY ENJOY DEBATING YOUR NO-RUST POTENTIAL AS AN OCCASIONAL MUST-HAVE"
In addition to the badges, there are various paraphernalia from her archive: outfits, photographs, jewellery, leaflets and an extremely fetching collection of tiaras. There are also several life-size photographs pasted onto the walls. These show Ziranek in an appropriately regal-looking gold and purple outfit, hand on cocked hip, haughtily staring down the hordes of bankers that will pass by her each day.
The bits of the exhibition that emphasise the contrast between these two worlds are what made it fizz for me. I loved the austere white exhibition cases lined with pink fur, official-looking perspex boxes full of poppy and disposable stickers and sculptures made from children's lettering or safety scissors.
The biggest risk that this exhibition is running is that Ziranek's best work over the years is herself. Billed as "one of Britain's foremost Performance Artists", it'd be all too easy for this exhibition to lack a lodestar without the artist herself being present - how are you supposed to place this stuff in context without actually seeing her perform?
It's an impossible question for me to answer given that I'm familiar with her work, though there's such a strong sense of her personality in this art that any viewer should be able to quite accurately infer who Silvia Ziranek is and what she represents.
I can't quite get over how surreal it is to see an artist I'm familiar with in such intensely corporate surroundings. This is the kind of setting that would steamroller most artists into fine dust, but IT IS IS IT succeeds as a distillation of Ziranek's work to date and mischievously tweaks the nose of the patrician class this building caters for.
IT IS IS IT is at One Canada Square, Canary Wharf until 16 August.
Wednesday, July 3, 2019
Wednesday, July 3, 2019
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Unrequited love is slow-burning torture. Whether because of circumstances, sexual preference or simply a lack of social awkwardness - a person can end up spending hours in the company of someone who could provide everything they want but never will. Beyond that, there's the quiet desperation of sitting on the sidelines as the object of your desire pairs up, settles down and begins a future without you. All the while you observe mournfully as a potential future recedes into the distance.
Before Morrissey turned into a fascist, he sang "I want the one I can't have / And it's driving me mad / It's written all over my face". He knew the score. And so does Want the Moon Theatre's Shadows.
Nat (Madeline Hatt) does too - painfully so. She's caught in a romantic no-man's land with her co-worker James (Ross White). The play follows their relationship as they work in a pub, with the majority of the action taking place in the cellar amidst kegs of beer and crates of bottles. It's not the most satisfying job, with Nat summarising it as something you do for a while and move on. James doesn't necessarily agree.
Playwright Dan Sareen then works through an intriguing split narrative. We see each scene twice; once in the imagination of Nat in which she and James gradually grow closer and form a romantic bond; and once in cold reality, in which two co-workers put together by circumstance realise they don't have as much in common as they thought they did.
On paper, showing each scene twice sounds pretty terrible - why do I want to see a variation on something I've just watched? In practice it works very well, with the direction, writing and performances doing more than enough to make the contrast between the two versions of each scene interesting.
This narrative structure feeds back into some of the plays other elements. Throughout Shadows the characters discuss music: Nat is a classically trained pianist and James prefers rock music - with moments where they attempt to connect with one another through pieces of music they love. This is echoed in the structure of the play, in which the repetition creates a narrative melody that's gradually iterated on as the relationship evolves.
It's clever stuff and exactly the kind of experimentation that I look for in fringe theatre. This sense of ambition extends to the direction and set design. Initially, things look rather plain, the selection of white props creating a sense of place rather than a simulation of it. But these props are also used as a background for digital projection mapping in which we see fantasies of Nat and James' imagined perfect lives play out between scenes. Throughout the play, these surfaces are continually reconfigured, with the actors having to put props in exactly the right place to show the projections. It looks complicated and time-consuming, but the effect is well worth it.
Cementing all this into place are two great performances from Hatt and White, who are directed very well by Jess Williams. They nail the change in tone between the two versions of scenes, and for the audience it's painfully easy to spot parts of yourselves in each of them. Though there's a profound sense of melancholy running throughout Shadows, Hatt and White nail the funnier parts, and have a genuine chemistry without which the play wouldn't work half as well.
Shadows is a fine bit of drama. It's got a clear dramatic objective that everyone involved understands, meaning that cast and crew are all pulling in the same direction. This purity of focus and narrative discipline is surprisingly rare on stage - making this a tight and effective show.
Shadows is at the Tristan Bates Theatre until 6th July (tickets here), then at the Edinburgh Fringe from August 2nd - 26th (tickets here).
Saturday, June 29, 2019
Saturday, June 29, 2019
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Reviewed by David James
Rating:
The late 1970s and early 1980s were a golden age for British TV science fiction. Tom Baker was deep into his tenure on Doctor Who, while shows like Quatermass, Blake's 7 and Space: 1999 were cementing themselves in popular culture. What they lacked in budget they made up for with ideas, building passionate fanbases that persist to this day. But there's one show you won't have heard of: Dark Sublime.
It tells the tale of Captain Vykar and plucky crew of the space Skelder, who seek to prevent villainous interdimensional space queen Ragana from breaking through to our universe. All she needs is the Shadow Ruby and we will be doomed to slavery under her sadistic rule.
But that's not what Dark Sublime is about. Set in the present day, we follow Marianne (Marina Sirtis), who played Ragana. It's now been 35 years since Dark Sublime aired and for her, the show is a hazy memory amidst many other roles. That all changes when Oli (Kwaku Mills) enters her life.
But that's not what Dark Sublime is about. Set in the present day, we follow Marianne (Marina Sirtis), who played Ragana. It's now been 35 years since Dark Sublime aired and for her, the show is a hazy memory amidst many other roles. That all changes when Oli (Kwaku Mills) enters her life.
He's a cult TV superfan, having latched on to some grainy bootleg DVDs of the show and discovered something wonderful. He's on a campaign to bring the show back into the public eye, campaigning for a re-release and organising the inaugural Dark Sublime fan convention, at which Marianne will be the star attraction.
Though Marianne is appreciative of Oli's attention, his adulation makes her feel vaguely fraudulent. She simply cannot understand what they are seeing in a silly and dated show that was just another job for her.
Bubbling away in the background (and often in the foreground) is Marianne's relationship with Kate (Jacqueline King). The pair have previously been romantically entangled, though that has runs its course. Now they've settled into a close friendship, though there's still a lingering (and unreciprocated) desire. Anyway, Kate is now in a new relationship with Suzanne (Sophie Ward) and life has moved on.
Writer Michael Dennis (making his debut) has found a decent seam of drama in the world of cult TV fandom, conventions and actors living off their past roles. Most fan conventions any contain rows of desks populated by washed-up actors who once appeared in cult shows and a pile of glossy headshots ready to be signed. What does the man who once played Stormtrooper #14 really think of the people who turn up at his desk?
Casting Marina Sirtis as the lead makes this material fizz. She played Betazoid empath Deanna Troi on Star Trek: The Next Generation, which means she has first-hand experience with dealing with fans at conventions and knows what it's like to be best known for a role she hasn't played in years. Sirtis' experience in dealing with fans shows in her performance, it's easy to surmise that Marianne isn't a million miles away from Sirtis herself.
Dark Sublime is at its best when it's getting under Marianne's skin and exploring her lopsided friendship with Oli. Unfortunately, the play also deals with a tonne of other, much less interesting stuff. For example, there's an interminable scene in which side characters Kate and Suzanne lie on the grass outside Alexandra Palace and idly chat about their jobs.
It means that large portions of the play are, to be brutally honest, very boring. This is particularly evident in the first act, in which the characters and their relationships are established at a glacial pace. By contrast, the second act starts with an energetic bang, with Oli excitedly introducing his convention and what we can expect.
This going to sound extreme, Dark Sublime would improve by leaps and bounds if the entire first act was cut. The fan convention is where the show's themes are strongest, it's where we get to meet big personalities, it's where the funniest gags happen and where there is genuine tension between the fans and the stars. By comparison, much of the first act is people sitting around in a living room having circular, meandering conversations studded with mediocre jokes.
All that's a pity, because Dark Sublime has clearly had a lot of love poured into it. The programme cover is a beautifully designed rendition of The Dark Sublime Annual 1982, and the interior contains tie-in books featuring the cast and TV Times cover stories (all by the obviously talented Clayton Hickman). The general design of the show is also pretty spiffy too - even though I didn't think much of the show I considered buying a t-shirt just because the logo was so cool.
Plus I can't pick any holes in the cast. Sirtis is great, but Kwaku Mills sometimes seems on a one-man mission to entertain us, and pretty much every moment Oli is on stage he's doing something interesting. Also great is Simon Thorp's brief appearances as Vykar, in which he neatly skewers the Shakespearian actor 'lowering' himself to run around with a toy raygun.
It's frustrating that Dark Sublime contains all these objectively great elements, as they end up diluted by so much unnecessary material that even they get washed away in a wave of ennui.
Dark Sublime is at Trafalgar Studios until 2nd August. Tickets here.
Review is of the 27th June preview rather than the 28th June press night.
Thursday, June 27, 2019
Thursday, June 27, 2019
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Reviewed by David James
Rating:
Panic attacks suck. The common experience is an overwhelming feeling of doom and fear, that all but immobilises you. Sufferers think they're having a heart attack, or that they're being suffocated, or that they're about to vomit. Basically, it isn't fun. At all.
Tom Kelsey's Tiger Under the Skin tries to communicate what it's like living with anxiety and the fear of suffering panic attacks. Based on his personal experiences, we follow a fictionalised Tom as he struggles through an average day. We soon gather that he's in recovery after an unspecified spell at a mental health facility. He lives with his worried mother, rarely leaves the house and his closest companion is his dog, Digby.
We follow Tom as he walks Digby in the park, with even this wholesome and straightforward exercise fraught with tension. Then the day takes an unexpected twist when Tom is invited on a night out in town. Ordinarily, he'd make an excuse and cancel but today, for some reason, he accepts. His friends are as surprised as he is, but though going to a loud, busy nightclub is full of triggers for his attacks, he vows to make the trip. Maybe he's recovered enough to deal with this environment. Maybe not.
Tiger Under the Skin vividly communicates how anxiety manifests. There's a great moment early in the production where Tom's pessimism is characterised as a grumpy old Scotsman whinging away in the background: "it's pissing it down outside, you're staying in today", "you don't have friends any more", "you look terrible, and no-one is ever going to want you".
There's also a wonderful scene in which a simple tube ride becomes an odyssey of pain. Being enclosed in a cramped metal tube deep underground sets off Tom's paranoia, making him convinced a bomb is going to go off, or the tunnel will slowly flood, or that a fire will inexorably burn its way down the carriage. He feels a sudden terrifying certainty that he's going to die here. The fog of a panic attack begins to seep in at the corners, and the only thing that can stave it off is nervously drumming on the back of his hand and humming the Star Wars theme.
All this is imaginatively staged and performed, with much credit due to Kelsey and the backstage crew for synchronising the performance so well with many lighting changes and sound cues. It culminates in an ending where the Tiger Under the Skin becomes literal, in which Kelsey really gets to show off his physical performance skills.
But while the ending is visually striking, the descent into more abstract action overwhelms the small-scale personal story that's worked so well up to this point. The majority of the show feels small, personal and intricate detailed, so a finale that's full of broad strokes and dramatic twists didn't sit well. I get that there needs to be a sense of escalation, but the climactic scene felt a bit Hollywood (possibly because it ends by quoting David Fincher's Fight Club).
There was one other mild annoyance: every single word Tom utters (and sometimes each syllable) is accompanied by its own gesticulation. It makes things feel weirdly artificial: the character is supposed to be introverted and anxious, yet he slices the air with his palms like a CEO delivering a keynote speech. I get that against an empty stage in a one-man play a performer needs to ensure they're visually engaging, but I wish it this was toned down a bit.
Those criticisms don't stop Tiger Under the Skin achieving its goals. A lot of thought has gone into the best way to convey to the audience what anxiety and panic attacks are like, and by the time we're applauding it's done that a few times over.
There was one other mild annoyance: every single word Tom utters (and sometimes each syllable) is accompanied by its own gesticulation. It makes things feel weirdly artificial: the character is supposed to be introverted and anxious, yet he slices the air with his palms like a CEO delivering a keynote speech. I get that against an empty stage in a one-man play a performer needs to ensure they're visually engaging, but I wish it this was toned down a bit.
Those criticisms don't stop Tiger Under the Skin achieving its goals. A lot of thought has gone into the best way to convey to the audience what anxiety and panic attacks are like, and by the time we're applauding it's done that a few times over.
Sunday, June 23, 2019
Sunday, June 23, 2019
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We are currently living through the Holocene extinction event - the sixth and most dramatic mass extinction that has ever taken place on Earth. Previous mass extinctions, most famously the massive comet or asteroid impact that killed off the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous era, are thought of as quick cataclysmic events. Yet the extinction of the dinosaurs took place over a period of 10,000 years.
In the current extinction, humanity is the deadly asteroid smashing into the Earth - and we're doing a far more efficient job than some lousy space rock ever could. Overhunting, habitat destruction, disease, deforestation, global warming and pollution are decimating life on this planet at an ever-accelerating rate. One shocking piece of research claims that by 2050 there could be, by weight, more plastic than fish in the ocean.
All this brings us neatly to Xavier Velastin and Hannah Mook's Me And My Whale. This is an abstract, experimental piece of theatre that tells the story of a submarine captain falling in love with a lonely whale. While exploring the depths, she discovers the moving sound of his song and seeks to join him.
On paper, that story sounds twee as hell, but the narrative quickly proves to be more a vehicle for a series of auditory and visual experiments. Staged in traverse, the performance space is bookended by two enormous sheets of gossamer-thin plastic sheeting. Between these lie a series of objects that are more art installation than set. Between them are three dangling bowls of liquid, an overhead projector with liquid on top beams rippling waves on to the walls and a big bowl in which Mook dips her face into and sings through the bubbles.
Velastin and Mook use the stage as a giant musical instrument, combining the pleasingly low-tech (the old style overhead projector gave me flashbacks to school assemblies) with what I'm assuming is live digital audio manipulation. I don't know precisely how they're producing this soundscape, but it appears that their interactions and movements through the set become translated into sound. This creates a unique hour-long piece of music that's different every time its performed.
This music is variously dreamy, meditative, funny and horrifying. The long stretches without dialogue give time to lose yourself in the soundscape, realising that the stage is a microcosm of the wider ocean: an ecosystem hemmed in with plastic and gradually chemically polluted as time goes on. This is complemented by long, low synthetic wails, which take on a morbid quality, as if we're hearing the dying gasps of the sea. We also get an idea of sonic pollution, with simulated and disorientating radar pings and drilling encroaching on a natural peace.
Horror aside, there's also a scene where a woman has passionate sex with a whale, so the show is never in danger of becoming truly miserablist.
Me And My Whale isn't for everyone. You're going to have to come with this with a high tolerance for arty shit, combined with the ability trust that all this abstract noise and odd behaviour has a point. But I kinda loved it: it takes gumption to try and capture on stage the destruction of the oceans and the environmental calamity that mankind has wrought. Perhaps the only way to manage to communicate the sheer existential terror of what is happening right now is through arty shit.
Here's hoping Me And My Whale is performed more in future: we need more shows like this ready to push the boat (or submarine) out.
Further performances of Me And My Whale will be announced on their website.
Friday, June 21, 2019
Friday, June 21, 2019
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It's true you know. About the diamonds anyway. Atmospheric data for Jupiter indicates that lightning storms in the Jovian atmosphere turn methane into soot. Said soot hardens into lumps of graphite which in turn become diamonds that endlessly rain into the liquid sea of the planet's hot core.
What that has to do with the story of a woman dealing with her sex worker past beats me, but it's certainly a striking title. Written by Eleanor Ross and directed by Anastasia Bruce-Jones, It Rains Diamonds on Jupiter tells the story of Olivia (Rosanna Suppa). We meet Olivia as a 20-year-old student who has decided to make some extra money by working as what's billed as an 'escort', but is actually just plain old sex work. Her clients seem happy enough, her boss Bill (Jacob Melling) takes his cut and she gets paid.
The meat of the story takes place a few years later, with Olivia now established as a journalist. Despite her efforts to maintain a low profile she ends up working on television news. Bill spots her, and suddenly her past threatens to ruin the present. Can her career, relationships and sense of self survive the intense stigma that society places on sex workers?
It's a good question, and Ross (and everyone involved with this production) has clearly spent a long time thinking and arguing about it. Throughout the play we see various perspectives on sex work: ranging from a self-professed feminist accusing Liv of betraying women by confirming men's misogynistic fantasies, through to sex work being a way for women to achieve financial independence. There's also a strong sense of class consciousness in the piece, with the script at pains to contrast Olivia's financial needs in comparison with her privileged colleagues (who can afford to take unpaid internships and so on).
What our heroine Olivia thinks is somewhat murkier. Her battle isn't about whether what she did was right, but dealing with intense fear and paranoia of how everyone will perceive her if they knew the truth about her past. While there is a growing movement to destigmatise sex work (impressively staged in the Bunker Theatre's recent Fuck You Pay Me), activists face a long uphill climb. Even in our theoretically liberated times, former and active sex workers are widely considered desperate, immoral and innately unclean, and that's unlikely to change anytime soon.
Suppa does a great job of filtering all this through Olivia: an honest, personable character who gradually unravels as she struggles to reconcile her present with her past. There are a lot of perceptively written and performed passages in which she teeters on the edge of a panic attack, her terror at being exposed visceral and touching.
Though Suppa knocks it out of the park, the play is studded with smaller performances worthy of note. Duncan Hess' older client is an obvious highlight, rambling on and clearly nervous at what's expected of him. Jacob Melling's Bill is also interestingly complex, putting up an aggressive front to conceal an obvious shame burning at his core.
But for all these positives, It Rains Diamonds On Jupiter really feels like it needs a few more drafts. While I have no idea as to the play's production, it feels as if it arose from some intense group discussions about what sex work means, with the eventual narrative stretching to accommodate many points of view. This results in a loss of focus that muddies what's trying to be communicated.
It means that, particularly in the back half, there are narrative strands that simply don't go anywhere. Theoretically, the drama is powered by Olivia being blackmailed by Bill, though this quietly fizzles out as he apparently just decides to... stop? Similarly, there are extraneous (though still well written) scenes in which Olivia encounters a fellow sex worker, a bizarre non-sequitur involving a man whose wife is in labour and an ending that doesn't resolve anything. All of the above scenes tell us something about Liv, though Suppa's performance is good enough that she could be trusted to tell us them through her acting skill alone rather than didactic writing.
This might be why a play billed in advance as 1 hr 15 mins long actually comes closer to 1hr 45mins. A pair of sharpened editing scissors and a 'kill your darlings' approach would work wonders here - if some of the more meandering elements were snipped away this would be a powerful and memorable hour of theatre.
The moment-to-moment writing is great, I have nothing but nice things to say about Suppa's central performance and the playwright clearly has her priorities in the right places. It's so close to being great, but some storytelling discipline would go a long, long way here.
It Rains Diamonds on Jupiter is at the Drayton Arms Theatre until 22nd June. Tickets here.
Thursday, June 13, 2019
Thursday, June 13, 2019
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She's there for me last thing at night and first thing in the morning. Throughout the day she's got my back, and ensures there's never a dull moment. She knows all my deepest secrets and darkest desires, has infinite patience to deal with the dull minutia of day-to-day life and knows the answer to every question. She even comes to the bathroom with me, where I can idly play Sonic the Hedgehog on her glistening glass face.
You've probably worked out by now that I don't have some creepy mechanical slave-woman tending to my every need: I'm talking about my phone. Much has been made of our increasing reliance to technology, and now Michael Ellis' To Drone In The Rain takes it to the creepy logical conclusion.
Set in a near future "where phones, laptops and all other technological services have become obsolete", we meet Tom (Michael Benbaruk). He's socially anxious to the point where the notion of human interaction makes him vomit into a bucket and appears to have some kind of psychosomatic condition that confines him to a wheelchair. He spends his days inside a Kubrickian monochrome studio apartment, delivering bespoke adventures to anonymous clients via a webcam.
He's taken care of by Drone Girl 9.1.13 (Nell Hardy), who is a combination of best friend, nurse, secretary, therapist and mother. We understand that this state of affairs is the norm, human beings retreating to isolation in favour of letting their android assistants interact with the world on their behalf. This extends as far as sending your Drone out to flirt with other Drones in the hope of finding love - presumably the understanding is that if two Drones get along then their owners will too.
Within this setup 9.1.13 realises that despite being programmed to care for Tom, her round-the-clock care is gradually infantilising him. He's increasingly childlike and demanding, relying on her for the simplest tasks and refusing to take responsibility for his actions. Plus there's the hunky and rebellious Drone Boy (Lino Facioli), who is offering 9.1.13 freedom from Tom and a new life where she calls the shots.
By far the most compelling part of the play is watching Tom slowly descend into helplessness as 9.1.13 struggles to work out what to do. We sense that Tom's social anxiety is a product of the insular society he lives in: he's perfectly capable of imagining detailed flights of fancy outside his apartment but utterly incapable of living them himself. And the more he's indulged by 9.1.13 the further he slides into helplessness. Michael Benbaruk plays this downward spiral very nicely, gradually minimising Tom's positive points and accentuating his flaws. This eventually leaves him as a pathetic caricature of a man - a mewling, diaper-shitting, alcoholic monster.
But the real heart of the play is Nell Hardy's 9.1.13. I've long been a fan of the laser-focused physical and psychological intensity Hardy brings to her roles and she doesn't disappoint here. The smartest decision the play makes is avoiding making this android character a sci-fi stereotype. The traditional way to write this type of character would be to focus on her grappling with strange human emotions and acting stiffly and awkwardly, like Data from Star Trek.
But, perhaps with the Tyrell Corporation slogan "More Human Than Human" in mind, 9.1.13 is totally emotionally literate and fully capable of philosophically comprehending her place in the world. Hardy plays this very nicely, threading the needle of her character realising her devotion might be poisonous. That's not to say that this character is indistinguishable from a human: Hardy moves with precision and power, striking stylised poses that reminded me of catwalk models.
But 9.1.13 being by far the interesting character in the play is the root of my problem with it. Beyond the science fiction trappings, you can understand this is the story of a man and a woman. As such, it's more than a bit regressive to see a story about a loser guy dragging down a woman concluding with the woman sacrificing herself for his benefit. By this point in the story our sympathy for Tom has evaporated - so seeing him shuffle off into the sunset wearing a cowboy hat leaves a sour taste in the mouth.
I guess the fact that I cared about these characters fates means that something is working here: though I suspect it's the strength of the performances rather than some woolly writing. To Drone In The Rain is a smart bit of science fiction and has a neat hook, but could use a bit of editing and tweaking to accentuate its positive qualities.
To Drone In The Rain is at the Tristan Bates Theatre until 15th June. Tickets here.
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