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Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
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Danny DeVito is intrinsically funny. He’s a guy so expressive he can even get a laugh with the back of his head. So, It’s a hell of an accomplishment for the Savoy Theatre to cast DeVito as Willy Clark, the irascible, run down ex-vaudevillian Willie Clark in the Savoy Theatre’s production of Neil Simons “the Sunshine Boys”.
The show, written in 1972, shows us the troubled reunion of two vaudeville partners who have spent the last 11 years hating each other's guts. This revival, starring Danny DeVito and Richard Griffiths is ostensibly billed as a double-act, but DeVito gets far more stage time and focus.
Not that this is a bad thing at all, watching DeVito’s Willie Clark huff and puff grumpily around the stage is so compelling you start to think he could pull off an entire production on his own. His baseline emotion seems to be festering resentment towards the world, and as the heat is cranked up he transforms into a blistering whirlwind of rage. In terms of petty resentment he reaches almost operatic heights. It’s an impressively cantankerous performance, yet one which manages to keep the audience on side throughout. Even when he’s menacing Richard Griffiths with a kitchen knife, the audience still laughs along with him.
However, underneath Willie Clark’s furious exterior is an entirely sympathetic and downtrodden character. The core of the character’s resentment for the world is what he sees as his forcible retirement when his partner quit. He has pretty much given up, spending his days watching daytime TV and reading obituaries of his former showbiz acquaintances. He’s not the kind of deluded Sunset Boulevard style star who believes they’re going to be back on top one day, he’s resigned to his lonely life. He talks about doing adverts for AlkaSeltzer and Frito-Lay, but never with any great conviction.
The majority of the production takes place in Clark’s apartment, which looks appropriately run-down and dingy. DeVito looks entirely in tune with his surroundings, wearing striped pyjamas and seemingly melding into his favourite recliner. We hear later in the play how this was once a large suite which has been shrunken over the years with landlord squeezing in extra rooms to rent out. This sense of a slowly shrinking world, both physically and in regards to the opportunities available to the character adds just the right amount of pathos without becoming overly maudlin.
Much of the play focuses on DeVito, and even though they have equal billing, we see far less of Richard Griffiths than I had expected. As a result, we are somewhat less invested in his character, Al Lewis. The play does attempt to pull the old trick of spending much of the first act talking about just how annoying and rude the character is, thus building up the audience’s expectation. The trouble here is that the DeVito character is so entertaining that we can sense that no matter what Griffiths is going to be like, he’s not going to be quite as fun.
Simply by necessity of time on stage, the character of Al Lewis is a bit fuzzily defined. We hear of why he quit showbiz to become a stockbroker, and that he is now living in his daughter’s spare room. It is not difficult to imagine a slow burning failure, reduced to the charity of family. No wonder he wants to ‘get the band back together’. Griffiths moves with a careful, dignified grace and physically resembles a slightly downtrodden Alfred Hitchcock.
It’s bit of an anticlimax when we finally meet him. We expect fireworks between the two from the off, but while DeVito is combative, Griffiths is passive and seems almost oddly reserved, as if the vigour has been sucked out of him. He seems to be running at a different speed to the rest of the case, talking much slower and more deliberately (and with a slightly shaky NY accent) than DeVito. There’s an odd contrast between the two men, and although we are told that they worked together for 43 years we never see them functioning entirely as a single entity. This should happen when they’re performing together in the second act, but somehow they don’t gel quite as they should.
The narrative bridge between the two characters is Willie Clark’s nephew, Ben (Adam Levy). He plays an agent who seems to care deeply about his uncle, trying his best to get him work. His taking on of this Sisyphean task demonstrates his deep and abiding love for his uncle, as does his weekly visits with cigars and variety. Apart from his role in propelling the narrative, he seems to otherwise serve as the receiver of abuse from DeVito. It is a somewhat thankless role as the two stars eclipse almost every funny line that he has. Additionally he seems at times somewhat out of sync with the tone of the play. His body language seems too expressive and ‘stage-y’ compared to the rest of the cast. It’s an annoying thing to notice, but you see him moving from pose to pose in an overly mannered way. In a lesser production this would go un-noticed, but both DeVito and Griffiths have such an expertly tight control over their body language that in contrast, his overtly theatrical movements stand out.
Undoubtedly the funniest scene in the play is the Doctor’s Sketch that opens the second half. We hear a lot about this sketch in the first half, and it is built up to be the pinnacle of comedic achievement. With such a build-up I was half expecting never to actually see it. Sometime’s it’s best to have something built up so much to exist only in the minds of the audience, and only show the events and reactions surrounding it. So, it’s almost a shock when the curtain rises and we see the set all ready to go. This is really the lynchpin of the show. We have been told how funny Lewis and Clark were and how brilliant this sketch is – if this were to fall flat, then the entire narrative would fall apart.
Fortunately it actually manages to exceed expectations. Suddenly we see what all the hype was about, and why a TV company would want to invite these two back after a decade apart. It’s a fairly typical classic comedy setup, DeVito plays a quack doctor, and Griffiths his patient. The humour reminded of the Marx Brothers’ ‘Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel’ radio show, with the quick one-liners, ridiculous situations and the constant never-too-serious air. There is a glaring problem with this scene though. DeVito is too funny. It’s an odd criticism I know, but throughout the first act we are told that Lewis is nothing with Clark. Yet for the first half of the sketch, Lewis performs with other people and is absolutely sparkling. It’s not exactly highbrow humour, but DeVito’s lascivious ogling of his pneumatic nurse is probably the single funniest scene in the play – and he does it without Lewis!
The Doctor’s sketch is a play-within-a-play, and therefore we the audience are in a sense playing the audience of the TV show. Throughout we’re laughing uproariously, and it makes you wonder why DeVito’s character is so washed up in the first place. I suppose it’s a battle between narrative, and entertaining an audience. It would probably have a greater dramatic impact for the start of the sketch to be unfunny, and then become hilarious when the Griffith’s character enters. We’d know then why it was so important they get together. But there are two problems with this. The first is that this is a comedy, and intentionally being unfunny isn’t what a paying audience comes to see. The second is that DeVito is seemingly utterly incapable of being unfunny. It’s an interesting conflict, and I suppose the director has to choose between a dramatic and comedic production. It is admittedly pretty damn hard to argue that the single funniest sequence in the show should be toned down.
The ‘Doctor’s sketch’ scene seems like it should be the climax to the play, and the narrative runs out of steam a bit after this. For much of the 4th act, DeVito is confined to a bed, and by necessity of plot is subdued and unable to get angry. It seems somewhat of a waste, and I found myself missing the physicality and intensity of the character, but it does inject a certain elegiac tone to the final scenes. The ‘let’s get the band back together’ plotline is a little hackneyed, but it’s cliche for a reason. I’m not the type that begs for a happy ending and everything to be tied up, but the play literally fades out mid-conversation. With a performance as enjoyable as DeVito’s I wanted one last explosion of riotous fury before the curtain! Oh well.
Despite some narrative concerns I thoroughly enjoyed myself tonight, and an awful lot of that was down to DeVito’s performance. It is worth seeing purely to watch his ball of rage unravelling itself into various contortions as the night goes on. Richard Griffiths is a great actor, and a hilarious comedian, but he pales on comparison to DeVito’s charisma here. At the end of the show, the audience gave the cast a standing ovation – I think we all knew who we were applauding loudest.
Monday, May 28, 2012
Monday, May 28, 2012
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| (from left to right, Charlotte McKinney, Daniel Simpson, Zazie Smuts, Lesley Wilson) |
How do you truly terrify a modern audience? Vampires, zombies, ghosts, aliens – all of these have been tamed. ‘Infinite Riches’ is a play that knows how to truly scare an audience – how to give them stomach-twisting, back-sweating, dry-mouthed terror.
An unknown number flashes up on your phone, you answer it and…
“Excuse me Miss, there seems to be some kind of problem with your direct debit this month.”
This is the kind of fear that Catherine Harvey’s ‘Infinite Riches’ exploits. It’s a sobering thought to those of us who consider our existences fairly comfortable, but are really only 2 or 3 missed paycheques away from being completely fucked. ‘Infinite Riches’ is a modern morality play about the dangers of indebtedness, consumerism and greed.
The narrative is the downward spiral of an individual frantically fighting off creditors and seeking the validation in materialism. As the play begins he is desperately seeking a way to pay off his credit card and utility bills. He makes a Faustian deal with an unlikely loan shark – an elderly lady, but finds himself sucked into a world of skyrocketing interest and broken fingers.
The play begins with ‘Nan’ (Lesley Wilson), a mysterious punky, elderly woman telling us the story of Icarus. She is who other characters revolve around, a foul-mouthed, charismatic woman with shades of Vivienne Westwood and Germaine Greer. She generally sits in a wheelchair decorated with a skull motif, and the image of skulls and death seems to surround her. She treats her wheelchair as a throne rather than as a nuisance, and tends to dominate every scene she’s in. As the play goes on, there are repeated diabolical hints as to her true identity. She tempts, she coerces – there is an unmistakable toughness and omniscience to her throughout the production. Lesley Wilson does a great job in this role – there are two archetypes at work here, the eccentric older ‘cool’ grandmother, and the outwardly friendly, but secretly vicious loan shark. She does a great job of balancing them both, and tends to get a lot of the best lines.
Acting as a kind of lieutenant or saleswoman for Nan is her granddaughter, Julie (Zazie Smuts). She is by far the most dynamic and intelligent character in the play, running rings around the poor couple she ensnares. Smuts is great here, tormenting the other characters with a kind of impish glee. Julie is the most overtly diabolical of characters, souring milk and withering plants with just her presence. Her body language is taut and expressive, perching on the edge of chairs, wrapping herself around the bewildered Phil’ or cheerily threatening violence through a letterbox. She has an aggressive, wiry sexuality, tempting, yet as clearly dangerous as a poison arrow frog. Her language is full of fascinating contradictions, she frequently uses “ Am I bothered, yeah?” modern vernacular, but will effortlessly slip into Latin or Greek. She seems obsessed with etymology, wondering out loud what the root language of words like ‘skimped’ is (her guess at Norse seems to be accurate). It’s a great character, simultaneously showing a vast knowledge and education, as well as a hard-edged modern sensibility.
On the other side of the equation we have the unsuspecting couple, Phil (Daniel Simpson) and Linda (Charlotte McKinney).
Phil is our protagonist, but a more pathetic and unlikable hero I haven’t seen in a long time. We meet him sitting, sniffling and coughing on a park bench. He is a truly feeble character, in cheap clothes, with flat, style-less greasy hair. He is so deeply pitiful that even though his situation of debt and over-spending is familiar, it is hard not to feel contempt for him. He works in a fairly undefined middle management job and seems to be dull enough to suit it well. As the plot develops he is sucked into Nan and Julie’s world, borrowing a large sum of money from Nan and being seduced by Julie. He seems almost wilfully stupid. He repeatedly lies to his wife about his finances, doesn’t see anything particularly untoward about borrowing tens of thousands of pounds from a clearly hard as nails loan shark (even if she is an old woman), he skips his payments on this, causing more trouble. Everything about him screams spinelessness, from his unkempt appearance to his stooped, submissive body language. As things get worse and worse for him, he becomes increasingly pathetic and desperate, and it is hard to conjure up much sympathy for him.
Joining Phil on the axis of uselessness is his wife, Linda. She is slightly more sympathetic, but only because of her obliviousness to the situation she’s in. She is portrayed as a somewhat woolly housewife, someone who cares for her houseplants too much, talking to them, getting frustrated if people treat them badly. She’s a bit of a ditz, never fully knowing what’s going on. It is intimated fairly early on that Phil and Linda are unable to conceive, which I suppose is why she has sublimated her maternal instincts into her plants. Her biggest flaw is her consumerism. She longs for material possessions, and it is implied that this is what has run up the couple’s debts. Certainly Phil doesn’t seem to have much desire for expensive clothes and houseware. Following the loan from Nan, the house becomes full of shopping bags as she gleefully gives in to every buying impulse she has. It is not too hard to pity Linda, who just wants the kind of home designer lifestyle that blares from newspaper weekend supplements.
Production wise this is a fairly small-scale production. The Old Red Lion Theatre is above a pub, and seats around 50 people (although for the first half I was perched on a step rather than in a seat). The scenery is more suggested than shown, for example in the initial scenes we know we are in the park because a piece of blue crepe paper and a rubber duck acts as a pond. The difference between Nan’s chaotic house and Phil and Linda’s cosy domesticity is shown by lighting changes, and draping Halloween style netting over the furniture. It’s effectively small scale, and considering the cast doubles up as the stage crew, quickly and efficiently put together scene to scene.
I enjoyed the use of music to hint at the devilish themes, both the Rolling Stones’ ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ and “Under my Thumb, and the Velvet Underground’s “Waiting for the Man” are Satanic style tunes. I also particularly enjoyed the use of Lady Gaga’s ‘Poker Face’ which was played repeatedly as a song of temptation by Julie. The Greek chorus of call-centre jockeys politely but firmly asking for payment, using the clinical language of debt is also very well-realised, anyone who’s had bill collectors chasing them will feel a cold shiver of recognition.
As for the play itself, on a purely visceral level, it is entertaining and fast-paced. All of the characters have various complexities and secrets that are teased out of them. I was sitting in the front row, with the action taking place fight in front of my nose. During the more threatening, violent scenes it was remarkably intense, while still remaining darkly comedic. The circumstances faced by Phil are those which could easily befall any of us – sinking inexorably into the quicksand of unpaid debt. It seems a little odd then, that such effort is made to make Phil and Linda such unsympathetic characters. His responsibility for their downfall is never in question, and he doesn’t seem to take any actions which could reasonably extricate himself from his situation. Possibly he is meant as an example of how not to behave, but it is somewhat remarkable that the audience’s sympathies end up with Nan and Julie – and they’re portrayed as the devil! It may be that having a relatable character be exploited by these two would rob the play of some of its comedic nature – on some level we need to be able to laugh with Nan and Julie, but it puts the audience in some rather cruel company in making us find humour in this poor loser’s downfall. Even the slight glimmer of hope at the end is cruelly stamped on in the closing lines.
It’s very much a play worth seeing, and in these credit-poor times, a relevant one to boot. It’s got four taut, lively central performances and the small performance space lets the cast get right up in the audience’s face. Though I do wonder that if, by spending our time enjoying this poor schmuck’s torture and downfall we are not sacrificing a bit of our own souls in return. It’s always good to keep in mind that:
“There but for the grace of God, go I.”
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Saturday, May 26, 2012
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Having seen 'Aesop's Fables' I've managed to 'complete the set' of the Isango Ensemble's residence at the Hackney Empire. It's nice to be able to compare them, and I've now got a lot of respect of their versatility. After 'La boheme' and 'the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists' this was a nice change of pace. Both of the other productions seem to have been aimed at seasoned theatre-goers, 'Aesop's Fables' was more for children, and was cheery and upbeat.
I saw it on a hot and sunny Saturday afternoon. I have to admit that the prospect of spending a few hours of a beautiful day in a theatre was ever-so-slightly off putting. On the way there I saw friends lounging around on the grass sipping ice cold, perspiring beers, and was sorely tempted to join them. If this wasn't the only production I hadn't seen out of a set of three, I may have been won over by the sunshine. So I entered the cool and dark theatre maybe slightly out of a sense of duty rather than unbridled enthusiasm.
Missing the sunshine was the least of my worries - this was in every sense of the word a sunny and happy production. There was an atmosphere of playfulness in the performance that was absent from the seriousness of 'La boheme' and 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists'. The mood throughout was enhanced by the fact that there were lots of children in the audience. I don't really go to that many plays aimed at children, and their smiles and laughs were a big change from the self conscious clipped laughs and polite applause of the adult audience at, say La boheme.
This was a far more flamboyant show than the previous Isango productions. The characters in those were poor, desperate and portrayed semi-realistically while the Aesop's Fables animals are essentially symbols of various impulses and positive and negative human traits. Their symbolic representation allows for a lot of flexibility in the costuming. Some highlights were the Rastafarian goat, the lycra-clad fitness fanatic hare and the glam-rock, futurepunk cockerel.
My two favourites, which stood out for sheer physicality were the wolf and the tortoise. The tortoise was imagined as a kind of chilled out hippy, with a painted shell, round sunglasses and waistcoat. The bright yellow colours and body language seemed to perfectly encapsulate the philosophy of doing things at your own pace that the tortoise represents. Characters would frequently come down and walk amongst the audience during the action, so I got to see the tortoises costume close-up a few times. It was covered in intricate graffiti and 60s designs, a lovely piece of costuming. The tortoise was played by Noluthando Bogwana, who I also singled out in Philanthropists as being expertly expressive with her body language. Her slow, shuffling tortoise walk is frequently played for laughs to great effect, particularly when she wins the race against the hare.
The other favourite was the wolf. The wolf was realised as a big, fat boxer. Everything about the costume screamed false bravado. The wolf is one of the 'bad guys' (such as they are) in this. The character manages to be simultaneously scary and a figure of fun. It's a nice tightrope to walk down, and the sheer physicality of the actor really helps. Zamile Gantana is quite the imposing stage presence. The guy is enormous, and the way his huge belly pokes out from under his overly tight athletic gear accentuates the theme of greed that his character represents, while also making his movements humorously clumsy.
I also have to mention the 'lion'. It makes a very brief appearance, but in its brief moment on stage is utterly awe-inspiring. It comes at the end of a rhythmic dance number, and violently thrashes its straw mane violently around. It then runs down the central aisle of the theatre. I was sitting on this aisle, and there was a fantastic rush of wind and swoosh of straw as it flew past me. It was a sudden, shocking tactile sensation that I wasn't expecting in the slightest.
Every Isango Ensemble production has had extremely strong African themes running through it. The instrumentation here was provided by xylophones and percussion was from upturned steel bins. Part of the performance was in an African language, and I'm ashamed to say that I don't know what it was (possibly Zulu?). Even though I'm ignorant as to what was being said, the shift in language did a great deal for the production. While the origins of Aesop's Fables is Greek, the African cultural influences made it feel more like these were extensions of the Anansi tales. I always feel a little culturally illiterate when I'm confronted with influences outside of my cultural sphere, but if nothing else, it gives me the impetus to expand my horizons.
All three Isango productions have focussed on the downtrodden and dispossessed in society. La boheme looked at starving artists, Philanthropists was about exploited workers and Aesop's Fables is no different. The overall plot is about a slave trying to free himself from his master. This production may be targeted towards children, but explaining why freedom is important and the knowledge one must gain in order to be truly free is something adults and children alike can learn. I really liked the themes of forgiveness too - when Aesop, the slave is finally free, he stops to emancipate his master who has been put in literal chains by his greed and hubris. The dissolving of the boundaries between protagonist and antagonist reminded me of a Studio Ghibli film. I think Disneyesque representations of black and white morality are a slightly dangerous lesson to drum into children, so teaching them that even the worst people can be redeemed and learn their lesson is a noble thing.
I've really enjoyed all of these productions, and I hope I can see them again at some point. I've watched this company perform for maybe six hours in total over the last three weeks, and I've gained a great deal of respect for their talent, versatility and charisma. They shook the audiences hands at the end of the performance, and I get a real sense of their warmth and enthusiasm for their art. My hat goes off to them.
Friday, May 25, 2012
Friday, May 25, 2012
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I was a bit surprised to find an Edinburgh comedy preview on at King’s Place. The place is ultra classy, all pine, neat sculptures and £4 bottles of beer. They have Dyson Airblades in the toilets which, while they have become slightly more ubiquitous, are still my benchmark for an upmarket establishment. I’ve only been there before for classical music and I always feel a bit out of place there. I'm just waiting for a security guard’s hand to gently but firmly land on my shoulder and ask me to “please leave now sir, quietly, and without a fuss”. I don’t know how these acts managed to wangle their way into here, but it’s nice to see comedy in such a deadly serious venue.
Max and Ivan are… Con Artists
I don’t want to beat around the bush, this was wonderful stuff. 'Max and Ivan' are Max Olesker and Ivan Gonzalez, and they play every role in a complex Oceans 11 style heist thriller. It satirises nearly every trope of the genre, and manages to pull off giant action set pieces with just two chairs and two guys. The tone of the humour reminded me of Hot Fuzz or the golden age of the Simpsons in that while it pokes fun at the ridiculous aspects what it is satirising, it still, on some level, takes its own narrative vaguely seriously.
Watching what is essentially an ensemble piece with 7 main characters performed by two people does require that you pay attention. It’s a bit like being thrown into the deep end of a pool to begin with, but each character has a distinct body language and accent, so you learn fairly fast who’s who. 20 minutes into it you can easily tell who’s ‘on camera’ just by body language, let alone accent. I haven’t seen any of their other productions, so I don’t know if this kind of complex, multi-character narrative is anything out of the ordinary, but it’s a credit that even as the plot twists into unlikely contortions, we can still follow what is going on. Each of the main characters is quickly and efficiently sketched out. The characterisation is by necessity, fairly broad (the sinister Russian oligarch, the jaded, upper-class female hacker, etc) but even through all the jokes, and even though the fourth wall was comprehensively demolished I surprised myself by actually caring what was going to happen to them. Now, I wouldn’t exactly go so far as to say I was emotionally invested in these characters, but most of them have little mini-arcs within the narrative that pay off pretty satisfyingly and you find yourself caring when they are placed in danger.
This was the premiere performance, and things were a little rough around the edges. The second half was largely performed with scripts, but the charisma of the performers carried them through. They hit just the right balance between chatting to the audience and getting on with the performance. It was almost scary how quickly they built up a rapport with everyone there, and the audience was consistently enjoying themselves even through the occasional forgotten line or missed cue. In fact, the scrappy nature of the performance probably added to the enjoyment, and some of the biggest laughs were as a result of adlibbing.
The structure of the humour seems influenced in some way by the ‘cut away gag’ nature of animated shows like Family Guy. We repeatedly ‘cut away’ to say, films that the characters appeared in, or a previous heist. Unlike Family Guy though where the cutaways don’t forward the plot, and just serve to reference some random piece of 80s pop culture, all of these filled in a nice bit of backstory and added to the characterisation. There are some inspired bits of writing in this, which I don’t want to spoil. My favourite however, was the “that’s not a con!” sequence, which just kept piling on the ludicrousness to great heights.
I would love to see this again towards the end of their Edinburgh run to compare the difference in performance. I’m curious to see whether the off-the-cuff nature of the adlibs and the close camaraderie with the audience survive a month long run.I’d like to think it will. I also want to see how Ivan looks after doing the toothpaste gag for a month (he's right, that can't be healthy). But I loved the rough edges of last night, and even with missed lighting cues, scripts on stage and forgotten lines wouldn’t have had it any other way.
The Three Englishmen: SQUARES
The Three Englishmen are Ben Cottam, Nick Hall, Tom Hensby and Jack Hartnell. It’s much harder to write about their set than it is Max and Ivan, mainly because of slightly subjective factors that stopped this being quite as funny as it should be. The format is relatively quick-fire sketches covering pretty disparate ground. It ranges from straightforward parody to the surreal.
Technically there is not much wrong with the show. The costuming is quick, simple and effective and the characters within the sketches are, like Max and Ivan, quickly and efficiently defined. We can usually tell what stock character is being used from the first line said. The jokes are original and fairly creative – there were very few times where I thought that something missed the mark completely, and yet somehow the show felt lacking. It was loose and ponderous where it should have been razor-wire taut.
The annoying thing is that there are lots and lots of excellent jokes in this show, but the energy frequently dips, or the show lingers on a particular sketch past the punchline. The most funniest sketches were the shortest, the two involving boys/buoys were straightforward and funny without outstaying their welcome. Some just didn't work, for example, the Juliet Binoche joke just went on and on and on with no clear punchline in sight other than copious mugging to the audience.
It’s even worse when the concept of the sketch is pretty good, and would work if it was half as long (the Wine Shop sketch particularly) but it gets bogged down in repeating what the audience knows over and over again. If the joke is (and sorry for spoiling this one) that the guys running the wine shop are hopeless alcoholics, it doesn’t get any funnier after the second or third time you’ve shown us this. 3 or 4 minutes later the same joke was still being made and was rapidly getting unfunnier.
Towards the middle, the show began to fall into what I call the Whirlpool of Sympathy. This is when something happens that makes you feel sorry for the performers on stage. This happened during a song towards the middle where we were exhulted to sing along - “come on, you know the words!”. Apparently not. No-one sang along. In that instant there is an immediate disconnection between performer and audience. The audience feels a sense of group self-consciousness and you can’t help but think “why is no-one singing along?”. A frisson of discontent spreads through the crowd, suddenly there is a dividing line between the act and us. We are now not on the same page. I don’t know what the performer must think in that moment, confronted by a sea of silent, uncomfortable faces, but I’m betting it’s not good. I find myself feeling a bit sorry for the people on stage– it’s got to be a horrible feeling when people apparently aren’t having a good enough time to sing along with you. It’s hard to laugh at someone when you’re feeling a bit sorry for them. At this point we are both are trapped in the Whirlpool of Sympathy, it’s not a funny place, and it's damn hard to get out.
It feels a bit callous to be so critical, really. It’s clear to everyone watching that everyone on stage is funny in their own right, and that this is material that’s been worked on quite a bit. There are outstanding moments, for example a sketch where animal behaviour is acted out to the narration of David Attenborough – a concept that’s probably good enough to sustain an entire show on its own. The low points are the one-joke sketches that go on too long where the one-joke isn’t even particularly funny, like the Chris de Burgh sketch.
Towards the end there is a colossally unfunny celebrity chef song that lands like a lead balloon on the stage. It just keeps going and going. And I suppose it’s funny in a way that the audience can’t even recognise the chefs in question without being told who they are (if you think about it a bit harder you realise that probably means this bit isn’t working very well). We’re asked to sing along again. Silence. I feel more sympathy for the performers, who are trying so very, very hard to entertain us.
Sympathy should not be the emotion that comedians engender in their audience. I’m convinced there’s a great, lean, punchy 45 minute show here. They’ve just got to trim the fat out.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Thursday, May 24, 2012
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Burlesque is a tricky one. On one hand I like the retro aesthetics, the playfulness, the subversion and satire. On the other hand, for all that is trumpeted about female empowerment it is still women taking their clothes off in front of a whooping crowd.
The London Wonderground is part of the ‘Udderbelly’ temporary area near the London Eye on the South Bank. It’s quite nice down there, at least on a Wednesday night anyway (I suspect it might be a bit more crowded on a Friday). The Wonderland area is decked out in wood in a sort of Americana themed way. Customers can sit in model dodgem cars, sipping their drinks from plastic cups surrounded by cheesecakey retro 50s pinup pictures. The stage area seems to be a cross between a circus tent and an old Western saloon. For a temporary setup it’s pretty impressive, although on a night like this, hot, sticky and humid. But, if you’re going to sit around watching girls dance about with very little on it seems strangely appropriate for it to be all steamy and hot under the collar.
I’ve been to a few burlesque shows before, but this was probably the most professional and elaborate. Of the two I’ve seen before, one took place in a working men’s club, and the other in a burlesque club called 'Volupte' in the City. This was more of a corporate, slick affair. This company, “the House of Burlesque” has toured the world, and won prizes at the Edinburgh Festival. Its members have performed with burlesque legend Dita von Teese. It is, as far as burlesque companies go, one of the big fish.
The individual performances were pretty varied. There was the expected 20s/30s style retro feather waving stripteases, but there were also circus acts involving ten hulahoops spun at once, a woman acrobatically swinging out over the audience, there were comedy numbers – a sort of quasi-mime strip, and a magic act. There is no denying that these women are talented. All of them were enjoyable to watch, and in all of the performances the personality (or the stage persona at any rate) of the performer was accentuated. I can’t deny that I was entertained the whole time.
But I find certain elements of burlesque problematic. From what I gather, feminist arguments for burlesque are along the lines that it is a celebration of the female body rather than an exploitation of it. The ‘tease’ subverts and satirises cultural expectations of how women ‘should’ act. Additionally, within burlesque a wide range of body types are celebrated and the stick-thin waifish body type prevalent in the media supposedly has little sway here: burlesque is portrayed as age and weight inclusive. The fact that burlesque is performed to the ‘male gaze’ does not, as such, imply that the woman is exploiting her body, rather that the performer is in control of the reactions of the audience. It is a way in which women can behave in an overtly aggressive and sexual manner in a public arena.
I can sympathise with nearly all these arguments. There is nothing remotely wrong with celebrating the female body. Societies that seek to repress female bodily imagery tend to be repressive theocracies. The fact that the current cultural model of attractiveness is the skinny waif is actively harmful in terms of encouraging eating disorders. Burlesque has its roots in satirising the behaviour of the upper-class, so it has a good pedigree in subversion. The creative director of ‘House of Burlesque”, Tempest Rose, says she “strongly believes in the empowerment of women worldwide to be free to express their creativity and personality without fear, judgment or oppression”. Who can argue with that?
Despite all this I can’t help but shake the feeling that burlesque does more reinforcing of gender roles than subverting them. The vast majority of performers at the Wonderground were slim and conventionally attractive. I think it is extremely telling that the only performer that didn’t do some kind of striptease was a woman of size, who kept her clothes on and did a mock magic comedy routine. Why is this? It seems to me that there is a very narrow line of between satirising the male gaze, and pandering to it. Even though the entire tone of the act is that the girls are in charge, they only have as much power as has been granted to them by their audience. How would the audience have reacted if the fat performer had been aggressively sexual towards them? I don’t know, because it didn’t happen. If it had happened that would have been genuinely subversive, and would have actually pushed some boundaries. It seems a bit shallow to promote diversity, and then have all of your stripteases being performed by women occupying a very narrow definition of conventional attractiveness.
It is interesting that the audience seemed to be fairly equally split along gender lines. It wasn’t even the case that the women were there with male companions – there were groups of women there together to watch it. I have never been to a dedicated strip club, but I’d hazard a guess that you don’t get too many groups of women in there. Burlesque has managed to gain a certain level of acceptability in society. When my colleagues at work asked me what I’d done with my night I didn’t feel any shame at all telling them I’d been to a burlesque show, and they took it in stride as if I’d been out to see a musical or concert. What if I’d told them I’d spent the night in a strip club? Would they have been so blasé? Why is one category of women taking their clothes off in public to music socially acceptable and one isn’t?
I suspect the acceptability of burlesque boils down to class. Burlesque is also something seen as being done “for fun”, while being straightforward stripping is something that society sees as shameful, as a last resort for purely economic reasons. Modern burlesque is safely middle-class, a way for people to dip their toe into the waters of experimental sexuality without immersing themselves in it or making any kind of commitment. It is possible to enjoy burlesque at an ironic distance. A pole-dancing club is more overtly sleazy, they don’t slather on the irony when it comes to the female body. In many ways it’s more honest in its titillation.
So I’m torn. On one hand I had a genuinely fun night watching talented girls performing highly skilled and imaginative acts. On the other hand, I find modern burlesque somewhat hypocritical in its philosophy. This performance did not practise what it preached. It offered a shrink-wrapped, easily consumable form of safe and socially acceptable transgression. It pushes far too weakly against mainstream gender roles. The burlesque philosophy of female empowerment via celebrating the physical body seems shallow and plays right into the patriarchal notion that the primary indicator of a woman’s worth is her appearance. Somehow, it feels like true empowerment should be based on character and personal achievements rather than getting a roomful of people to hoot and holler while nipple tassels are shaken.
I should add that I don't think it is impossible to put on a burlesque performance that is genuinely subversive and explores interesting themes, but this wasn't it.
But I was determined to go. The previous lecture in the series, “Sex in Space” by Dr Saralyn Mark was fascinating. The concept of the lecture series is to examine “astrophysics for the five senses”, namely touch, taste, sight, hearing and smell. The two lectures so far have pretty pop sci sounding titles, but theseare more of a framework on which to hang up-to-date space science from top astrophysicists (and astrochemists and astrobiologists). Additionally, at the first lecture in the series, there was a wine and nibbles party afterwards with absolutely colossalglasses of wine and big bowls pretzels. Clearly, astrophysicists know how to party.
Fortunately, the lecture hall did eventually fill up a bit more, and after a decent amount of people had filed in, the lecture began. While the topic ostensibly was whether it would be possible to make beer from interstellar chemicals, it was actually the principles of star formation. My understanding of this was extremely vague, I think almost entirely based on watching Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, which, while amazing, is about 20-30 years out of date. I love getting a bit out of my depth in lectures like this, and Dr Mohanty didn’t shy away from using slides with structural formalae and displayed formulae, as well as using fairly complex specialist language.
It’s very easy if you’re doing an open lecture to dumb things down too far, and it’s very frustrating if lecturers assume that any members of the public attending are complete morons. I always figure that if someone attends a lecture about space, then chances are they’ll at least have a basic ‘popular science’ knowledge of the subject. Fortunately, in this lecture, a nice balance was struck, everything was explained clearly and precisely without lapsing into overly obscure terminology. I feel pretty confident that I understood the majority of what was said, and if I had to explain the basics of star formation to someone I’d be able to give it a good shot.
Two highlights of the lecture were the slides on the ‘Hubble Deep Field’ and the Kepler Orrery. I’ve seen the Hubble Deep Field before, but I always underestimate just how spectacular it is when explained properly. If you’re not actively learning about space, it’s very easy to forget just how mind bogglingly big it is. The Deep Field image shows a tiny portion of the night sky, and peers deep into space and time. We can see thousands of blobs of light. Each one of these blobs is a galaxy, and each galaxy contains billions of stars. I love a good explanation of the ‘Deep Field’ image as when done well it simultaneously makes you feel very insignificant, and also full of wonder. It’s impossible not to be instantly curious about what is going on out there.
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The Kepler Orrery I hadn’t seen before, at least not in this form. It shows various planetary systems without the stars. It’s impressive enough as a still image, but here it was shown animated. Just as a visual it’s brilliant, hundreds of planets, some big, some small, some slow, some fast all revolving around their stars. It makes you consider the universe as a giant piece of clockwork, ticking away. I like that it helps get away from a ‘Solar System-centric’ view of planetary systems, for example showing us that it’s relatively common to have gas giants in near orbit of their stars.
I only have two extremely minor criticisms of the night. The first was the lighting. The slides, were, unsurprisingly, mainly of space. Space is dark, and the slides looked much better under low light. I think the lecture was being filmed, and unfortunately the cameraman kept wanting the light to be turned up, which made the slides a bit harder to see. I figure that the people who actually made the effort to show up should be catered for, not those watching it later. The only other extremely minor annoyance was that throughout the presentation the font used on the slides was Comic Sans. This is obviously a personal annoyance, but it somewhat undermines the majesty of space when such an ugly, annoying and ubiquitous font is used. I, mean, I don’t want that much even Arial or Times New Roman would be fine, I’d be happy with that. Just… no Comic Sans.. please.
These are extremely minor annoyances though and I thoroughly enjoyed the lecture. One of my favourite things about astrophysics is that enormous scales involved. For example, when astrophysicists talk about things being ‘close’, the actual distance is inconceivable. So when I asked “You say these clouds of dust are ‘thick’, what do you mean by ‘thick’?” and Dr Mohanty answered “Well by that I mean not thick at all”. That is, as far as I’m concerned, the perfect astrophysicist answer.
I’ve really enjoyed this lecture series, and I was looking forward to hearing about the next one in the series which I had assumed would be in June. Disappointingly it’s now been bumped until autumn. I hope this doesn’t kill off the momentum, it’s nice to have one of these a month to look forward to.
Oh yeah, and it turns out you can make beer in space, although it probably won’t smell so great.
I always wondered exactly what the title to this film meant. I’d picked up from somewhere that it was about a titanic, vicious and drunken battle between a married couple, but I could never figure out how Virginia Woolf related to the story. What I did know was the film’s reputation as a hard, fierce grudge match, Richard Burton v Elizabeth Taylor. A spectacular gladiatorial free-for-all, starring the most famous couple in Hollywood at the time.
“George: You're a monster - You are.
Martha: I'm loud and I'm vulgar, and I wear the pants in the house because somebody's got
to, but I am not a monster. I'm not.
George: You're a spoiled, self-indulgent, willful, dirty-minded, liquor-ridden...”
Based on the hit Broadway play by Edward Albee, the film chronicles one night in the lives of Martha and her lecturer husband George (Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton) and their guests a younger married couple, Nick and Honey (George Segal and Sandy Dennis). Martha and George return home drunk from a party to their home, having invited Nick and Honey over to continue drinking. As various bottles of booze get consumed, the mood turns ever sourer and the verbal sparring becomes ever more caustic.
“George: Be careful Martha. I'll rip you to pieces.
Martha: You're not man enough. You haven't the guts.”
Elizabeth Taylor’s Martha is outstanding. She acts like every bit of love and tenderness has been expelled from her blackened heart. As the film opens she strides into the house, saying “what a dump” before opening the fridge, tearing off a leg of chicken and attacking it with relish, a lit cigarette in her other hand. We are thus primed that we are in store for not the most glamorous of performances. Martha swears, she drinks, she smokes, she screams at the top of her lungs, she throws calculated insults at everyone in the vicinity. Early in the film she changes into a tight and revealing outfit, seemingly purely to taunt her husband and tease her guest. She seems irredeemably vicious. Initially we have no idea why, but certain asides throughout the film start to build up an fuzzy picture of why she is so miserable.
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Martha’s psychological arsenal consists of grating down everyone else through sheer persistence. She will be as rude as possible in order to get what she wants. As the film progresses we learn that she is the daughter of the President of the university, and that her husband George hasn’t reached the professional heights expected of him. We also pick up hints that there are deeper issues, a son mentioned in extremely vague and nasty tones and mention of him seems to deeply affect both her and her husband.
George, played by Richard Burton, is a different kind of monster. Like Martha, he is also worn down and vicious, but in a different way. His speech is flowery and poetic, as if he is constantly trying prove his intelligence. His body language is less stiff than his wife’s. He wearily sprawls over chairs and sofas. He wears an unstylish cardigan through most of the film, like a man who has embraced middle-age without too much trouble. He is more than a match for Martha’s jibes and insults, but seems wearier than her, as if he has had to adapt himself to life with her, to harden himself to her yells and behaviour. It’s not that he is a necessarily the submissive partner, they both seem to relish their emotional sadism. It is George, for example, who invents a series of cruel parlour games, the film working its way through ‘Humiliate the Host’, ‘Get the Guests’ and ‘Hump the Hostess’.
We only see these two characters in different states of drunkenness – it is genuinely hard to imagine George sober and lecturing about history. Everything about him seems geared towards deterioration. His hair hangs floppily and sweatily over his head, and his cardigan and tie grow ever more rumpled. Compared to Martha, who looks sharp and hard in her rage, he seems to be coming apart.
There is a great fake-out sequence relatively early in the film. Martha is telling the guests an emasculating anecdote about how she managed to knock down George in a faux boxing match. As the story is drunkenly told, we follow George out into a closet. Martha’s voice gets muffled and seems slightly distorted as we see George reach up and grab a rifle. The audience assumes that George has been finally pushed over the edge. Seemingly in a trance, he walks stiffly back to the living room, aims the gun at Martha’s head and…
Pow! It’s a joke gun, an umbrella comes out of the barrel. Leaving aside for a moment the question of why he owns such an elaborate joke rifle (did he make it specially to do this?), it is notable that after a moment of shock, how quickly everyone begins laughing at the joke. In some respects they’re laughing at the audience, this isn’t a film full of easy answers and definite conclusions. You begin to feel like this is merely one night of many for these characters, and you can imagine rows like this stretching back into the past, and forward into the future.
Speaking of stand-ins for the audience, the two guests, Nick and Honey seem to begin as a kind of audience stand in. Two hours locked in a room with George and Martha could get a little claustrophobic without them, and we see them pair off with each other to gossip about their significant others. The film portrays this young, relatively newly married couple as what George and Martha may have been like soon after getting married. Like Martha, Honey is richer than her husband, and like George, Nick is a lecturer with aspirations. The central couple almost function as a kind of warning to them not to go down this path. They also function as a whirlpool, sucking the happy and seemingly stable couple into their world of recriminations and drunken rows.
As they enter George and Martha’s house and see the first shots across the bow of the argument, Nick and Honey glance nervously at each other, and try to make excuses and leave. But as the booze flows, the two get more “into the spirit” of things. Martha flirts outrageously with Nick, while Honey, increasingly drunk on rum remains somewhat innocent and oblivious. It’s a nice dynamic that the further and further Nick gets sucked into the mind games of George and Martha, that the drunker and more oblivious Honey becomes.
There are only four characters in the film, and three major sets. We move from George 7and Martha’s cluttered, claustrophobic house to their garden, out to a bar and back home. Nicholls moves in and around the house, and by the end of the film we have a pretty good idea of the geography of the place. He also tends to place characters appropriately in the frame depending on who has the upper hand. Frequently we see Martha in the dead centre of the frame, the centre of attention, while George prowls in the background. If a character is being disparaged or mocked, then they occupy the periphery of the screen. A good example is when Martha is overtly flirting with Nick – she rubs his leg suggestively as George and Honey sit awkwardly at the edges of the frame.
An important theme running through the narrative is that of fiction. At about the midway point, Nick escapes the house to find George sitting drunkenly on a child’s swing in the garden. George begins to tell Nick a story about a friend of his who accidentally killed both his parents. Nick pays attention, and the story is quite compelling. It is later revealed that this is the plot of George’s book, and is a complete fiction. In return, Nick explains the circumstances of how he got married to Honey. Honey had an ectopic pregnancy, and it was only after George married her that they realised it was ectopic.
It is these fictions that help keep the miserable characters of this film going. Despite the cruel, foul-mouthed barbs they constantly fire at each other, we slowly learn that the two do have a deep affection for the other. It is a strange version of love, conducted at gunpoint rather than romantically, but I think it’s love nonetheless. These are two people who need an outlet to act out their masochistic and sadistic desires, and have found no better victims than themselves. You see hints in the relish with which Martha acts out in front of George, and how he returns with the most cutting put downs. These are two people that need each other. We eventually find out the truth about Martha and George’s child: he doesn’t exist. For whatever reason they can’t have children, and it seems they’ve subsumed their child-rearing emotions into red hot pokers to jab each other with. Their ‘son’, for the purposes of the film is a shared fiction of the two, a cudgel with which to bludgeon each other with.
“Our son was born in a September night, a night not unlike tonight, though tomorrow, and sixteen years ago...It was an easy birth, once it had been accepted, and I was young...and he was healthy, a red, bawling child...with slippery firm limbs and a full head of black, fine, fine hair which, oh, later, later, became blond as the sun, our son...And I had wanted a child...oh, I had wanted a child...And I had my child...Our child. And we raised him...and he had green eyes...and he loved the sun...and he was tan before and after everyone and in the sun his hair became fleece...beautiful, beautiful boy...So beautiful, so wise...Beautiful, wise, perfect.”
This is Martha’s fantasy, the fiction that she would like to have lived, and in her drunkeness may have even briefly convinced herself of. This fictive son is the gaping hole in her emotional armour, the one thing she clings to as a lifeline out of her misery.
“Of course, his perfection could not last...not with George around....A drowning man takes down those nearest. And he tried, and oh God how I fought him...the one thing I tried to carry pure and unscathed in the sewer of our marriage, through the sick nights and the pathetic stupid days, through the derision and the laughter...God, the laughter, through one failure after another, each attempt more numbing, more sickening than the one before; the one thing, the one person I tried to protect, to raise above the mire of this vile, crushing marriage, the one light in all this hopeless darkness - OUR SON.”
Meanwhile, George is chanting a latin mass of the dead– spinning a mock funeral service behind her frantic fantasising. The game is up for their “little sonny-jim”, and in the climactic moments of the film, George ‘kills’ off the son. Everything is demystified, and as dawn breaks and sunlight begins to finally fill the house we finally see Martha emotionally naked, without any witty barbs to disguise her feelings. The ghost son has temporarily been exorcised.
It’s interesting that to dispel the illusion of the son,that George plays along with the fiction. Rather than rely on reality he fights fire with fire, spinning another fiction where their son drove into a tree to avoid a porcupine and died in the impact. Martha even half-heartedly plays along with the fiction, asking George if she can see the telegram saying this. George says he ate it.
Sanity is restored, and all the characters are emotionally and physically spent. Nick and Honey quietly leave, sobered up by the early morning revelations. As George and Martha are left alone, George tenderly strokes Martha’s hair and the two converse in clipped, monosyllabic phrases. All the theatricality of their cruelty is thrown into context as a production for the benefit of Nick and Honey.
We can find a slight glimmer of hope in this scene. Have Martha and George turned a corner, found a new sense of understanding and compassion? Is this the point where they face up to reality honestly? Or is this just another in a long line of reconciliations and inevitably sour once more?
I don’t think two characters with as many flaws as these two can find lasting tranquillity so easily. They’ve blown themselves out here, finally worked out and used up all their anger. Maybe, subconsciously reaching this point in the night was why they were tearing lumps out of each other to begin with. I see the entire process of anger, hate, betrayal and finally calm as the points of a cycle. The problems in George and Martha’s marriage build up pressure like magma in a volcano, and eventually it will erupt – a cathartic release of destructive energy.
When this film was released, US divorce rates were beginning a skyrocket that wouldn’t peak until the early 80s. While it isn’t particularly difficult to imagine a modern married couple arguing like this, it is difficult to conceive of a marriage lasting this long without divorce. The end of the film is faintly, exhaustingly, optimistic. Despite all of the fury and bile the two throw at each other, they still know what it takes to comfort the other, and I think there is a positive example in that.
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