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Friday, July 31, 2015
Friday, July 31, 2015
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It takes a lot to impress me. Gigantic, expensive sets? Lavish costuming? Pyrotechnics? Lots of flashing lights? Pfft, whatever, any rich old sod can chuck a bunch of money onstage. What really pushes my buttons is genuine talent: theatre that requires everyone involved to be at the absolute top of their game and permits no slackness.
Operation Crucible is a perfect example: thrumming like the engine of a supercar and ticking with the precise rhythms of an atomic clock. Set in Sheffield around 12 December 1940, we experience the Blitz from the perspective of four steelworkers. They are Arthur (James Wallwork), Bob (Salvatore D'Aquilla), Tommy (playwright Kieran Knowles) and Phil (Paul Tino). All four are distinctive in their own right, their personalities running the gamut from brash confidence to social awkwardness. Yet it's as a unit that they shine, moving in mechanical synchronicity as they work lumps of red hot metal, completing each others sentences and winding around one another like birds in flight.
From the first minutes, their fierce civic pride shines brightly. These men have the grit of Sheffield stamped into their bones, they work the same industrial jobs as their fathers and see the fruits of their sweat in every inch of the city's architecture. During wartime their efforts are even more vital, creating the cogs of the Allied force that'll beat back the Nazi war machine.
But tonight it's the Nazi's turn to strike. As air raid sirens change from yellow (bombers spotted) to red (bombers bombing) the men scramble to safety. They find it in a shelter at the Marples Hotel. But with a crashing boom and a blast of hot, dusty air they find themselves in total darkness. The other people in the shelter are killed as the ceiling collapses, and the four are left buried alive, awaiting rescue or death.
This is conveyed with blank concrete walls and four stools. Everything else exists in the mind of the audience and the words of Kieran Knowles. Fortunately this language is so evocative that you practically hear the hiss of the glowing metal and taste the acrid dust hanging in the air. There's a breathless, excited quality to the delivery, as if the dialogue is tumbling unedited from the character's minds.
Achieving this speed and precision looks hard. The rat-a-tat rhythm leaves no room for mistakes, the narrative thread bouncing between all four performers at tremendous speed. Merely to recite this play would be a challenge, yet these four imbue each miniature line with character development. By the end, though the men are dressed identically, speak with one voice and have similar personalities - they're all individuals.
These are four actors at the very top of their game, all equally talented and able to draw us into their world. In the buzz of their steelwork you taste the thrill of heavy industry, workers wrenching girders and plates from raw elements. In the fragments of their home lives we feel a familial love, the men simultaneously respectful sons and loving fathers. By the time they're trapped we know them so well there's an intense dread - the low lighting and growing desperation inducing a suffocating claustrophobia as their situation worsens.
Yet they persevere, drawing strength from their unity and mutual respect. We gradually understand that the men's relationship is a microcosm of British life during the Blitz, the citizenry drawing support from one another in a situation where death can arrive at any moment.
Most strikingly of all, it gives what feels like a credible window into the past. The fingerprints of historical research are all over the dialogue, meticulous research supporting the emotional story like a scaffold. We can get a sense of what it was like to be there, to see the world through these eyes. From a contemporary perspective we also feel a sense of loss, that Thatcher's closure of Sheffield's steel industry robbed the city of identity, purpose and pride.
After premiering at this theatre in 2013, Operation Crucible has subsequently toured the nation to much acclaim, now returning to Finborough Road for a victory lap of sorts. It's well earned. Highly recommended.
★★★★
Operation Crucible is at the Finborough Theatre until 22 August. Tickets here.
Thursday, July 30, 2015
Thursday, July 30, 2015
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Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a surprisingly tricky work to adapt. The core concept of split personalities and grotesque physical transformations is malleable, but the original work comes burdened with the milquetoast protagonist Gabriel Utterson, through whose eyes we investigate what's going on with the mysterious doctor and his violent relative.
As a loose rule, productions that focus on the titular Doctor tend to work, those that focus Utterson end up suffocated by stuffy Victorian melodrama. Ominously, Chung Ying's production, directed by Jonathan Holloway, features great heaping lumps of Utterson. But there's a twist. See, Dr Jekyll is a woman and Mr Hyde is a man.
A dollop of genderfuckery tossed into the story makes for a tantalising prospect. The conceit is that Jekyll (Olivia Winteringham) is an Eastern European genius scientist. After experiencing horrific trauma during a distant war she escapes to London, vowing that she will never experience such atrocity again. To this end she begins a series of self-administered chemical and surgical treatments designed to banish her femininity and replace it with thrusting, forthright and rapacious masculinity. Enter Mr Hyde. What follows is a warped love affair between the eccentric Jekyll and somewhat short-sighted Utterson (Michael Edwards). As the months tick by the mental and physical transformations grow ever more severe, the crazed alpha male Hyde running rampant.
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| The 'mad scientist' brand of lab coat. |
You'd be forgiven for assuming that this sounds pretty goddamn awesome. And it is. Sometimes. There's a lot to enjoy about Jekyll & Hyde; bizarre dialogue, bonkers physical performances, excellent costumes, a great set, striking makeup, a couple of seriously cool lighting cues and a pleasingly sincere embrace of grand guignol.
So it's frustrating that all that is hamstrung by a dull (and pointless) framing story and achingly long set-up. Though just an hour and half long, there are some interminable sequences where top-hatted men wander about the stage doing very little of interest. You can almost feel the energy drain from the audience, the stilted dialogue and mannered performances inducing a general doziness.
Things improve at precisely the same time as Olivia Winteringham takes the stage. Her performance is worth the price of admission alone; at times a gloriously unhinged B-movie mad scientist, then a hypersexed femme fatale, then a megabarmy super manly serial killer pervert. She literally throws herself into the role, careering around the set and off the other actors like a demented pinball.
Highlights include a deliciously kinky monologue about her fleshy flower being penetrated, writhing around in quasi-orgasmic bliss as she transforms and quasi-Victorian constrictive costume with more than a sniff of bondage to it. Best of all is the finale, in which Hyde is finally revealed as a grimy Marilyn Manson analogue who proceeds to try and fuck Utterson up the arse.
I'm fully aware that I'm selling this show pretty hard right now - what kind of bozo wouldn't want to see that stuff live? These bits are great fun, though admittedly pretty far from the sober exploration of transgenderism, wartime sexual violence and feminism in Victorian England I'd anticipated.
But be warned, sprinkled amongst some genuinely dizzy highs are some crushingly dull lows. A classic mixed bag.
★★★
Jekyll & Hyde is at the Platform Theatre until 8 August. Tickets here.
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
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There is a spectre haunting Labour. And it's got a truly magnificent beard.
I turned 18 a couple of days after the 2001 General Election. Had I been able to vote it would have been the only time I could have voted Labour without holding my nose. After the disaster of the Iraq War, the crackdown on civil liberties and the party gradually slinking towards the centre right the only reason to vote Labour became "well, at least they're not the Tories".
Now they are. In 2015 the differences between the two parties are minute; both advocate the discredited economic dogma of austerity; both treat heavy cuts to public services as a necessity; both are in thrall to the false narrative of 'strivers and scroungers' and, most disturbingly, both are eager to pile any blame on those in society least able to defend themselves. After Harriet Harman's disturbing edict that MPs to abstain on the Welfare Bill, you can't help but wonder... What's the point of the Labour Party?
That question was on the tip of everyone's tongue at the Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church last night. This was a joint meeting hosted by two candidates who hope to shape the future of Labour; Diane Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn. Abbott has designs on becoming the next Mayor of London, Corbyn on being the leader of the party and next Prime Minister. Joining them were a smattering of personalities from the Labour left, Clive Webb MP, Councillor Claudia Webb, Christine Shawcroft of the Labour Party NEC, Andrew Berry from UNISON and Siddo Dwyer, Young Labour BME rep.
The atmosphere was electric. Queues snaked around the block, the hall rapidly filling to standing room only. Organisers urged the 800 strong crowd to "share like good socialists" and squeeze together to fit more in. Even after this a sizeable number were pressed against the back wall, sitting on the steps between rows - or relegated to an overspill room where the speeches were televised. The source of all this excitement? The MP for Islington North, Jeremy Corbyn.
Corbyn has electrified this leadership contest, throwing the qualities (or lack of) his three opponents into sharp relief. Andy Burnham, previous the de facto 'left' candidate has proved to lack any political credibility whatsoever, abstaining from the Welfare Bill then criticising it. Yvette Cooper is... I don't know.. her campaign seems largely predicated on her gender rather than any discernible political stance. And then there's Liz Kendall. At least she's got principles. The problem is they're the principles of a middle-of-the-road Tory MP. Perhaps most telling is that in a poisonous sea of anti-Corbyn sentiment, none of them has managed to articulate any coherent argument either against Corbyn's politics or for their own.
In this field of non-entities, Corbyn stands out a mile. Rather than some freshly birthed, Ozwald Boateng-clad PPE mannequin, he's a backbencher of more than thirty years experience, an iron clad set of principles, a powerful sense of justice, an almost surreal humility and a truly excellent beard. I'd first met him during the election campaign at a housing hustings organised by Islington Private Tenants, and before all this leadership hoo-ha he impressed me as an intelligent, practical man who genuinely cares about his constituents.
He would be an excellent party leader; able to counter Cameron's slick n' heartless positioning with integrity and compassion. He recognises that at the heart of Britain's problems is social inequality. As he spoke, there was palpable anger in his voice at the notion of London being filled with uninhabited luxury flats while homeless people scratch out a life in the gutter below. When he straightforwardly decries benefits systems under which people suffering from obvious disabilities are pronounced 'fit for work', driving some to suicide, he doesn't sugarcoat it. When he berates those who'd sell council houses to private landlords, renting the state's property back to the tenants whopaid for their construction, you feel a weird excited thrill. He means what he says.
All other candidates are engaged in the triangulation game - desperately trying to position their views to appeal to vacillating Tory voters. They squabble amongst each other to be 'tough on immigration' or 'willing to make the difficult cuts': their views an amorphous, shifting entity apparently dictated by the whims of the right-wing press. This inevitably leads to our homogenous politics where parties quibble over minute policy differences. Their intellectually bankrupt position can be boiled down thusly: the Tories won, maybe if Labour is Tory they will win too.
Then there are those within the party intent on smearing Corbyn; denouncing him as unelectable and treating his supporters like infants. "Now now" they condescend, "we know you're disgusted by politicians who abandon their principles to seize power, but we're never going to seize power if you don't abandon your principles." Bollocks to that! I gritted my teeth and voted for Labour's neoliberal rubbish in 2010 and 2015, and what did that achieve? Two crushing defeats! Creeping ever more towards the right is not the answer.
Corbyn's runaway success in the polls, gathering more volunteers and donations than his campaign knows what to do with, amassing crowds of energetic supporters who cram themselves into last night's speech, prove that there's a burning need for socialism in this age of economic Darwinism, where a person's value is dictated by their bank balance.
Doomsayers predict the end of the Labour Party in the event of a Corbyn victory. Apparently the party will split, fundraising will dry up, voters will disappear into the ether and the party will become a mainstream laughing stock. But what if the other three win? Their slow transformation into a Diet Tory party squashes political debate - what's the point of democracy when the opposition party is in ideological lockstep with the government?
Last night's speeches were delivered to an intelligent, active audience hungry for political change. These have been taking place up and down the country; rooms packed full of those ecstatic that a politician with unimpeachable socialist convictions is primed for success. The idea of Burnham, Kendall or Cooper filling a hall to bursting point is laughable (I doubt they could fill a phonebox) - theirs is a cynical brand of politics that's proved to have gossamer thin credibility.
Labour shouldn't be terrified of a Corbyn victory. Rather, they should be thankful they have men and women of Corbyn's calibre in their back benches. He should win this election. He must win this election.
He will win this election.
Friday, July 24, 2015
Friday, July 24, 2015
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A music festival is a deeply strange place. For a couple of days a community forms with collective aim of drinking themselves senseless, gobbling drugs and dancing like morons. The rules of polite society are suspended; everyone is filthy, drunk, dressed weirdly and extremely sleep-deprived. Far from home, with phone batteries failing and increasingly bruised psyches, these places are pressure kegs of heightened emotion.
This makes it all the more surprising that hardly anyone has exploited it as a dramatic setting. In terms of documentary there's Michael Wadleigh's excellent Woodstock - but after 45 years it's more historical document than a reflection of a modern festival. A much more contemporary take is 2011's You, Instead, shot at T in the Park - but unfortunately it's a crap film.
Enter Festivus. This production ambitiously seeks to recreate the music festival vibe on stage - dishing up a tragic-comic tale of four pricks having an absolutely awful time. They are: Nathan (Sami Larabi), laddish and violent; Tom (Jamie O'Neill), smugly condescending; Laura (Sally Horwill), a ditzy emotional vacuum; and Danielle (Rosie Porter), a bit vain (but actually not so bad). As they took the stage I sensed a collective crawling of skin in the audience - these are the worst kind of festival-goers.
Arrogant and posh, they wobble about the place in an amphetamine haze chucking plastic bags full of shit into people's tents, knocking over pints and wallowing in their own hedonism. It's bad enough when these people pitch up camp near you, but to be trapped in a play with them for 90 minutes? Annoyance beckons. Then everything starts goes wrong. As the narcotics scour away their inhibitions, secrets and lies surface. Under heaping dollops of schadenfreuden, misery reigns.
The characters' transformations dramatise the idea of the festival environment revealing your 'true self'. After all, with the bondage of society temporarily loosened you can play at who you really are. For many this means dressing like a twat and falling face down into mud, but for others it's a genuinely transformative experience. At a festival you don't have to worry about how you're perceived, you can take as many illicit substances as you can handle and you're surrounded by thousands of other hedonists. After all, Glastonbury Bestival et al are distant echoes of the ur-festival experiences: Bronze Age gatherings for the Solstice, the Viking festival of Mabon or the Roman Bacchanalia.
It's the last that's most relevant here, where half the characters are dressed in Roman Centurion armour, the other in Greek Togas. It underlines the play's point of modern festival as Bacchanalia, that ancient quasi-religious miasma of "wine-fueled violence and violent sexual promiscuity, in which the screams of the abused were drowned out by the din of drums and cymbals". Festivus subtly dwells on these dark Roman origins, showing us that freedom to 'do what thou wilt' can rapidly descend into blood-red nightmares.
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| Sally Horwill as Laura |
Writing like this can only be borne of direct experience, which this script has in spades. A cool naturalism runs through almost every interaction, the best (and funniest) moments being when Tom and Laura go through the motions of an argument, the bored Tom cycling through platitudes until he hits the right combination and Laura instantly cheers up. The darker moments also impress, particularly Sam Larabi's descent into the red mist.
Then there's the well observed nuances of festival life. The difficulties in finding your friends, rummaging through a messy tent, getting used to chugging down neat vodka, people doing bumps of MDMA off their housekeys, fretting over phone batteries and the distant bassy beat of the dance tent. These moments are part of the fabric the experience, familiar to millions yet all too rarely seen on stage or screen.
Festivus does quite a bit right, making its flaws that much more disappointing. Prime among them is the lack of an ending. The narrative structure revolves around revelations - everyone betrays everyone else to one extent or another. We're primed for the fallout of all this - but never get to see it. Characters reaching the pinnacle of their dramatic arcs just disappear off stage, never to return. Perhaps there's an argument that missing important moments is appropriate to a festival, but it robs us of emotional catharsis. When the lights go up at the end there's a feeling of "oh, that's it?".
But Festivus inarguably succeeds in bottling that strange, intense festival atmosphere. There's a sense of barely-controllable chaos sweeping across the stage, heralded by rustling waves of trash and booming bass. Okay, so there's the occasional duff line, the characters sometimes tip over into the genuinely infuriating and narrative is a bit stunted, but the spirit of the piece shines through. This alone makes it worth a watch; the show a kaleidoscope of frazzled memories that neatly captures a very particular kind of contemporary experience.
Also worthy of mention is a short, experimental film shown on an Oculus Rift VR set. This complements the main production well, and works as a decent proof-of-concept for VR cinema. If you go to Festivus be sure to check it out.
★★★★
Festivus is at C. Nova, Edinburgh August 5-16, 18-31. Tickets here.
Monday, July 20, 2015
Monday, July 20, 2015
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I've only ever been to one pole dancing club - part of a depressing stag do. The place was a grubby upstairs in Manchester's Chinatown, where damp walls and stained floors were masked by strobes and neon lights. It was awful; zombified women mechanically grinding away to an audience that looked like they'd stepped out of a Daniel Clowes illustration. The experience was about as erotic as feeding time at a hyena enclosure, confirming pretty much everything I'd suspected about these places.
Pole gets elbow deep in the what, why and how of these clubs, as well as exploring the various ways in which pole dancing is perceived. As an exercise class, pole dancing is bordering on de rigueur, a conspicuous and commercially cheeky activity for bored housewives to rekindle some lost spark of sexiness. Then there's the enthusiasm for pole as a gymnastic and dance discipline; an aesthetic appreciation of the impressive human pretzels the best performers contort themselves into. Finally, ominously, comes the salubrious strip clubs where trafficked women are ritually humiliated in front of braying men.
The three performers, Amy Bellwood, Anais Alvarado and Lyndal Marwick, adopt broadly sketched roles - each of which acts as a vehicle for the various perspectives on pole. As verbatim theatre, we should assume that the stories we hear are, in one way or another, true. This is underlined by three extremely sincere, naturalistic performances that give the show a firm emotional and intellectual core.
I know what you're thinking, right? Sure, a pole dancing show with a firm intellectual core - pull the other one. Well I'm not kidding, Pole really is firmly targeted at the head rather than the crotch. Then again I can't reasonably ignore the intense eroticism throughout. After all, these are three extremely attractive women in revealing skintight outfits pulling sexy poses. I try my best to remain objective, but a shapely butt provocatively wiggling in my general direction bypasses almost all of my critical faculties.
But Pole makes no bones about being erotic - indeed, the company has fashioned eroticism into a weapon with which to needle the audience. Though we begin with the world of fun, naughty pole dancing workouts, we gradually descend into human trafficking, eventually arriving at a hellish world of imprisoned women being gang-raped to keep them in line.
This portion of the show is bleak as hell: the details of the dancer's treatment, environments and mental health soberly laid out in evocative, precise language. These are the dark consequences of 'a bit of cheeky leching'; the endpoint of lust for women objectifying themselves. We come to see the disjunct between audience and performer, one able to enjoy a no strings attached erotic experience, the other locked into personal, financial and often literal bondage.
This is powerful stuff - so powerful that it obscures the stated message of pole dancing being a way for a woman to 'safely and joyfully express her sensuality and femininity'. By the end I couldn't help but see the pole as an enormous metallic phallus; a prison cell composed of a single iron bar. Though the poses are smoothly held with easy smiles, there's an inescapable tinge of submission to them; the dancer in thrall to a symbol of immovable masculinity.
Pole is powerful stuff, perhaps a bit too powerful. There's a thread of evangelism for pole dancing as a fun, empowering pursuit throughout most of the piece - and if you ignore the sex trafficking section this would be a fine advertisement for the art as a fun hobby. Yet dark clouds are never far offstage; a miasma of oppression, dehumanisation and objectification that engulfs the positive aspects we hear.
This theatre, fascinatingly combines social activism, gymnastics and forthright eroticism. All three performers impress, the bandages and plasters that adorn their limbs standing as testament to their skill and commitment. Pole is intelligent, ambitious and exhausting to watch - but don't go if you're after cheap titillation. You'll end up (quite rightly) feeling like shit.
★★★★
Pole is at Cowgate, Edinburgh Fringe from 7-31st August 2015. Tickets here.
Friday, July 17, 2015
Friday, July 17, 2015
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I've got to hand it to Another Soup - staging a musical of the tale of Sweeney Todd is ballsy. Though the murderous barber has been around in one form or another since the 1846 penny dreadful The String of Pearls, it's Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's 1979 musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet that rules the roost in the public consciousness. It's arguable that a new Todd musical is equivalent to coming up with a bold new show about teenagers in a 1950s high school, tragic French revolutionaries or some kind of mysterious masked, deformed.. uh.. ballet dancer or something.
But Sondheim doesn't have a monopoly on Sweeney Todd, and though that production may be monolithic there's certainly more than one way to skin a cat. Or for that matter, a baby. You see, Lovett + Todd jettisons all notions of operatic doomed romance, substituting psychopathically sadistic pitch-black comedy. To wit, the show stakes out its territory early on with a song about killing, dismembering and cooking newborn babies.
Staged with consummate glee, the cast frolic around the stage holding realistic fake infants, smothering them and carting their bodies towards their temporary pastry graves. This many dead baby jokes this early on is quite the statement of intent, the song neatly dividing the audience. Half were wearing masks of frozen shock, the other half suppressing giggles at the audacity of it all. I'm a child of Chris Morris, Lars von Trier and Michael Haneke - putting me very much in the latter camp.
Another Soup's reimagining switches focus from barber to pie-maker, exploring how this gruesome business partnership came to be. Our dark antiheroine is Cornelia Lovett (Louise Torres-Ryan), who we first meet living outside London with her sister Amelia (Rachael Garnett). They're cheerily engaged in a plot where Amelia promises to raise the babies of the poor (for a nominal fee), but instead kills them and supplies the bodies to Cornelia, who bakes them into pies. Equally monstrous and lucrative, everything is great for a time (well, except for the babies.. and I guess the unwitting baby-eaters...).
Then calamity occurs and the sisters flee to new lives in Fleet Street. Recognising that they can't continue in this vein, they dissolve their partnership and explore new avenues of business. Mrs Lovett promptly opens a pie shop in Bell Yard, though has trouble affording the trumped up prices at Smithfields Meat Market. Where oh where can she find a steady supply of cheap meat? Enter nebbish, socially awkward barber Sweeney Todd (Daniel Collard).
Here, Todd becomes a patsy, snared in the calculating seduction of Mrs Lovett. She wraps him around her little finger, gently drawing him into her world of stoved in skulls, throat-slashing and casual cannibalism. It's a fine twist on affairs - the question of the what the hell is going on in the head of a woman who processes corpses into meat pies is juicy dramatic territory.
Torres-Ryan excels as Lovett, taking a character with zero positive qualities and boundless cruelty and making her weirdly charismatic. Sure she's crazy, but she's also the smartest person in the room, running rings around her dullard Londoner neighbours. Underneath the sharklike smiles and maniacal stares you can practically hear the cogs of her mind ticking away, calculating the precise way in which she can maximise her profits while minimising her involvement.
When she's not doing that, she's singing with a demented chirpiness, particularly in the centrepiece Pies, So Many Pies where she twirls around the room, cheekily pestering those in the front row of audience while extolling the virtues of her terrible wares. It's a barnstorming performance, succeeding in making the character's base amorality not a hurdle to clear but a boon.
Everyone else is somewhat dimmed in comparison, though far from bad. The supporting cast, particularly a game Andy Watkins and Sarah Shelton, approach their various roles with with lusty gumption. Collard's Todd is of slightly lesser quality, largely unable to draw out the pathos that this 'awkward loser' incarnation of Todd requires to work.
Torres-Ryan's outstanding Mrs Lovett is worth the price of admission alone; a hugely fun portrait of how much fun it can be being bad (really really really bad). That aside, there are a couple of nagging flaws; in the big ensemble pieces the lyrics become incomprehensible and the show is light on characterisation and plot (and, sadly, stage blood). But there's something authentically trashy in the show's prurient, naked obsession with grisly murder, making it feel like a contemporary take on the penny dreadful (a feel it shares with Another Soup's very enjoyable Dorian Gray).
This production shares a stage with the excellent Noonday Demons, a double bill that makes the King's Head Theatre probably the best place to be in London fringe theatre right now.
Thursday, July 16, 2015
Thursday, July 16, 2015
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Premièring in 1979, Thomas Babe's Taken in Marriage is a bit of an odd duck. Primarily famous for a performance by Meryl Streep in the original off-Broadway production, it's since sunk into obscurity. I can see why.
Set in the basement of a New Hampshire church, the women of a rich New York family have gathered for a wedding. They are: Annie (Alex Critoph), the bride-to-be; her older sister Andy (Liane Grant); her mother Ruth (Jeryl Burgess); and her spinster aunt Helen (Joan Plunkett). All four have different perspectives on marriage; ranging from Ruth's strict loyalty to the vows, to the serial bride Andy, now on her fifth husband.
As you can reasonably predict, this is going to be the theatre of dramatic revelations, copious tears, bitter recriminations and lots of hugging. The catalyst for all this is Dixie, a good ol' working class country singer in tight jeans whose earthy, honest femininity gradually scours away the secrets and lies plaguing the family.
On paper this all sounds promising: these women are all fine actors, and there's even a couple of LAMDA alumni thrown into the mix (always a good sign of quality). Each of them approaches their role sensitively, understanding and accentuating their personalities and histories throughout the performance. Each woman gets a moment in the spotlight; usually a mini-monologue about their marital woes. In isolation they'd be nice showcases of talent, with the highlight Jbeing oan Plunkett's touching confession on lost love.
Problem is, Taken in Marriage is, well... Let's not mince words; it's boring. For vast swathes of the first act nothing of note is happening. That isn't a death knell for excitement, the absence of propulsive narrative can usually be made up for by interesting character moments or humour, but even those are few and far between. Contributing to this staidness is a weird lack of tension - though presumably there's guests gathering upstairs as wedding preparations swings into gear - but no-one seems overly stressed or busy. This lack of pre-wedding hum suggests that whatever happens is a foregone conclusion i.e. not exactly storytelling dynamite.
Hardly helping matters is the flat lighting and dowdy set design. Granted, the action is set in the ratty basement of a church and this is naturalistic drama, so flights of theatrical flair aren't on the cards. However, plays set in single locations provide opportunities for intricate, detail-orientated realistic set design. There's elements of this; the noticeboard on the rear wall is covered in church literature for example, but by and large stagecraft consists of a couple of tables, chairs and paper bunting thrown over a plain black stage.
The upshot of all that is when the juicy accusations finally begin flying the audience is mentally checked out. I confess I was struggling to stay awake for the latter half of the first act, having to make an emergency interval trip for a can of energy drink to see the thing through. As the second act started there was the telltale aroma of coffee in the air, hinting that I wasn't alone in needing a jolt of caffeine to power on.
There are many flaws a play can overcome; iffy production values can be saved by a bold performance; you can paper over underdeveloped characters with smart costuming and so on and so forth. But for this production a deeply dull text is too high a hurdle to clear, even for a cast with obvious talents.
★★
Taken in Marriage is at the Waterloo East Theatre until 18 July. Tickets here.
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
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In 1953's Duck Amuck, Daffy Duck is tormented by an offscreen animator, his physical appearance, clothing and voice are sadistically screwed with. The duck collides, violently, with his limitations as a fictional character, despairing as he realises he cannot escape his creator. In Peter Barnes' Noonday Demons a similar process occurs.
Standing in for Daffy is St Eusebius (Jordan Mallory-Skinner), a medieval holy man who's spent the last 13 years living in a dank cave, subsisting on a daily handful of olives and sips of stagnant water. He lives a life of lonely torment; spending his time contemplating his own misery as rotting skin peels from his emaciated flesh. Theoretically, by rejecting every single comfort, his intense asceticism will bring him closer to the suffering of Christ, and therefore closer to God.
For the most part, his only company has been a steadily growing heap of accreted human waste, yet he's soon spiritually attacked by the devil (taking the form of a mischievous vaudevillian dramatist) and later physically battled by rival ascetic. This develops into a classically sitcom-ish scenario, the new spiritual recluse Pior (Jake Curran) and Eusebius trying to undermine each other's miracles to gain control of this shit-caked cavern.
Both Curran and Mallor-Skinner are top notch, their eyes glistening with demented fervour as they repeatedly debase themselves. With their matted hair, filthy loincloths and diseased looking skin, they emanate a real aura of religious intensity, even when they're being ridiculous you can sense their sincerity. Their Gollum-ish body language gives them a bestial intensity, their sinews straining as they try their best to escape their sinful flesh.
This is all accentuated by some wonderfully textured stage design. With the only piece of scenery a disgusting looking heap of shit, it's down to a large bag of dust, dry ice and lighting to convey a sense of place. At times it's almost choking how thick the fog gets, which, in combination with spotlights at the sides of the stage casts jagged shadows on the men, leaving them looking increasingly skeletal. Even better, in the moments of genuine transcendence, where Eusebius is backlit by a spotlight, the arcs the shadows of his arms make through the mist begin to look eerily like angelic wings.
Though this is broad farce and slapstick, there's a core of existential misery to the whole affair. Though about two would-be holy men, Barnes' play is written from a materialist, atheistic perspective. The misery of these men becomes a cosmic punchline, the external force they're humiliating themselves for isn't God, it's us. This makes their ordeal a a trial by theatre, with the playwright as cruel interrogator and audience as jury.
Highlights are when, to the Eusebia's dismay, Barnes (taking the form of Peter-Cook-as-Satan) assumes control of his body, tempting him with a multitude of sins - eventually demonstrating his power by putting the two men through a surreal soft-shoe-shuffle song and dance hall. Though Eusebius claims to be spiritually tough enough to withstand any demonic revelation, not even he can cope with the suspicion that he's a fictional puppet designed to entertain a modern audience.
This eventually comes to a head as two saints compete to have out of body experiences. Pior pretends to fly over the desert and witness the sinner's city of Alexandria, breathlessly describing the crimes against God going on under his eyes. Not to be beaten, Eusebius undergoes his own vision. He also flies to Alexandria; but our Alexandria. With horror he regards a world of municipal parks and general godlessness; eventually swooping over the terrifying neo-Babylons of London and New York. True horror comes not from his observing open sinning, but from a sedate, uncaring areligiousness: nobody cares enough about God to consciously disobey him.
Eventually the wool completely falls from Eusebius' eyes, resulting in him being granted the spiritual ascension he desperately craved. But in a cruel twist, all this does is propel him into being a member of the audience, staring in traumatised disbelief as his doppelganger soaks up the applause and leaves the stage.
It's a pretty marvellous night at the theatre; spinning some impressively powerful comic gears, the minimal staging used to fullest effect and the whole production infused with an earthy physicality that perfectly complements the themes throughout. Colour me impressed.
★★★★
Noonday Demons is at the King's Head Theatre until 2 August. Tickets here.
Monday, July 13, 2015
Monday, July 13, 2015
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In Still Ill Morrissey sang, "Does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body?". Inside Out asks the same question, an animated summer blockbuster entirely about a 12 year old girl's fears. The twist is that we experience them from inside her head, as the personifications of her emotions bicker amongst each other for control.
They are Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black) and Disgust (Mindy Kaling); miniature primary coloured cartoon figures that embody each emotion. Their HQ is in the centre of the brain, and they jockey for position in an effort to influence the girl's behaviour. The actions they nudge her towards result in new memories, which appear as glowing bowling ball sized spheres, which roll down ramps and end up lodged deep within the mind. This inner world is precisely what Pixar's famed for; a fantastical scenario that's instantly comprehensible.
The narrative it's in service of is almost brutal in its straightforwardness. Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) is a happy young girl who enjoys ice hockey, acting silly and hanging out with her friends. But change comes a-knockin', her family upping sticks from snowy Minnesota to San Francisco. Lonely and isolated in her new environment Riley gradually becomes homesick and miserable. Within her mind this is shown as 'Joy' being accidentally jettisoned from the mind, with Sadness in tow. Disgust, Fear and Anger are left to take the controls, while Joy and Sadness battle their way back to primacy and come to terms with each other's existence.
Adaptation to changes in personal circumstances run right through Pixar's oeuvre, from Andy moving house in Toy Story to Ratatouille's Remy navigating life alone in the big city to Carl's disquiet at the skyscrapers sprouting up around his suburban home in Up. Though the particulars of each story are surreal (talking toys/rats, flying houses etc) the emotions are instantly relatable.
Inside Out takes these underlying themes to their logical conclusion. This makes for an intensely focussed children's film; one without an antagonist, pop culture references and even the traditional comedy sidekick (well, sorta). The eventual thrust of all this is a fable that encourages its audience to be in touch with sadness and understand that it's perfectly natural to feel blue once in a while.
This is a pleasantly emotionally mature message, Inside Out's conceit giving us a scaffold upon which we can imagine their own emotions competing for control. It's also a view of human nature where the individual is entirely a product of their environment and memories. This determinism stands at odds with the typically Manichean Disney fare of pure-hearted hero/ines and irredeemably evil villains. Inside Out isn't exactly radical cinema, but still, this mechanical psychology separates it from the subliminal Judeo-Christian value systems that lie at the heart of most children's (and lets face it, most adult's) mainstream cinema fare.
It's a credit to the writers and directors that Inside Out is such an intellectually satisfying film. If it were to that standard in every way it'd be up there with Pixar's best; but in places, sadly, it comes slightly unstuck. In a rare mis-step, the character design is a smidge unimaginative, with the 'heroine' emotion, Joy looking rather like a young Marge Simpson and the rest of the emotions broadly descriptive designs that lack that special Pixar pop.
This feeds into an ever-so-slightly safe aesthetic. It's as though the high narrative concept requires the environment design to be predictable in order to let us comprehend it. I can understand that, but I'd rather have seen the Pixar animators/designers let off the leash in creating a world purely of the imagination.
Admittedly there is the odd visual flourish, specifically a battle through the land of abstract thought that twists and flattens the characters, or a sequence where a 'dream movie studio' is hijacked to create bizarre imagery to wake Riley up. Unfortunately these are the exception rather than the rule; the later action sequences serviceable yet uninspired.
Nitpicking aside, Inside Out is an excellent piece of cinema. After the triple blows of the awful Cars 2, the disappointing Brave and the mediocre Monsters University I feared that Pixar had lost their golden touch - by my money their last inarguably excellent film was Toy Story 3, five long years ago. Inside Out restores the studio's lustre, underlining their status as a powerhouse of imaginative, emotionally satisfying cinema.
★★★★
Inside Out is on general release from 24 July 2015
Saturday, July 11, 2015
Saturday, July 11, 2015
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What the fuck is this shite? Gigantic alarm bells were blaring out from minute one, as director Rocky Rodriguez took to the stage to encourage us to drop the masks of adulthood and put on the masks of childhood. Hearing this self help guru rubbish made my stomach churn, correctly figuring it as an terrible omen of what was to come. I'd had my doubts about coming here at all. I hated Craft Theatre's Dante's Inferno with every fibre of my being, but had been assured that their latest production was a step away from their usual fare.
And after all, everyone deserves a second chance right? Right?
Well, chalk this up as a painful lesson in trusting my instincts.
Well, chalk this up as a painful lesson in trusting my instincts.
The Diver is a solo show by Helen Foster, directed by Craft Theatre impresario Rocky Rodriguez Jr. It's the story of adventurer Kate Plank, who's attempting to walk across the ocean floor from Land's End to New York City. This is, of course, an extended metaphor about the travails of solo performance. Helen as Kate must draw up the confidence to hurl herself into the unknown, trust in the advice of others, draw on reserves of inner strength and deal with the high expectations of those supporting her.
God I wish she hadn't. The Diver is one of the most embarrassing things I've seen on a stage in years. The deep sea adventuring lark quickly proves to be the vehicle for a parable about self-worth and a personal artistic journey, a painful public confession of the performer's deep rooted fears of inadequacy and doubt in her expressive abilities. Problem is, judging by The Diver, those fears are entirely justified.
What you're left with is a woman clowning about on stage with cheap props, a desperate rictus grin and a largely disinterested audience. I'm guessing that the intended effect was to create adorable ramshackleness, giving the show a no frills honesty. Foster spends much of the show apologising for the quality of what we're seeing, making light of the fact that she has no production budget and assuring us that though she may look like she's awkwardly floundering, it's actually all part of the show.
But there's a razor thin line between the cutely ramshackle and the just plain crap, and The Diver falls squarely in the latter. You can poke fun at yourself all you like for your production shortcomings, but that's not a get out of jail free card. Then again, it's not as if a massive budget would be a panacea. You'd still have to sit through the excruciatingly annoying sequences in which Foster talks to her animal sidekicks. They speak in grating comedy foreign accents ("WHAT EES THEES MEESES PLANK?!?") and never shut up. As the show creaked past the hour mark I felt my very soul beginning to curdle - occupying myself by trying to figure who I should hate most.
For all that she was pissing me off at that precise moment, I can't hate Helen Foster. Rather I feel a deep pity for her having to trudge through this bilge night after awful night, but I can't hate her. Therefore, blame must lie in those who've enabled her.
After all, what kind of sick bastard would let a performer go on stage with this act? Surely someone, somewhere should have sat Foster down and explained: 'sure you might have doubts about your talent, but the stage is not the place to work them out - at least not like this'. This feeds into what I've now concluded about Craft Theatre: their raison d'être is the inflation of their performer's egos.
Therapy through performance is a perfectly valid way of working through your woes, but for god's sake don't do it front of a crowd that's paid £12 a pop to get in. If you are going to make people pay to see your personal catharsis it'd better be bloody amazing. The Diver is not amazing. And it's not just regularly bad either. It's really, really fucking terrible.
Charging people to see this is insulting.
★
The Diver is at the Rag Factory until 2nd August. Don't go and see it.
Thursday, July 9, 2015
Thursday, July 9, 2015
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With George Osborne's post budget cackling still echoing down Whitehall and 'No Cuts' protesters gathering in Trafalgar Square, what better time for some 'austerity busting' comedy? Boy oh boy do we need it; rents are climbing, pay is stagnating - my poor wallet's being squeezed ever tighter! I need guidance! I want to wring every last drop of value from my pounds, to find out where the most useful freebies are, to exploit every damn inch of this system.
Ably informing mea re Flick (Beth Granville) and Julie (Mercedes Benson) a double act so classical it borders on the vaudevillian: Julie is the working class straightwoman, Flic is the upper class twit. We meet them in prison; Julie on a six month sentence for stalking 'MoneySavingExpert' Martin Lewis and Flick down for six weeks after ending up as the scapegoat for tax evasion in a swanky company.
After getting out of prison the two have neither money nor jobs. With the stigma of prison dangling over them and long-term unemployment looming, the two decide to take up the cause of Martin Lewis and run 'Pop-Up Penny Pinchers' seminars, doling out their best tips on how to survive with under a torrent of suspended phone contracts, overdraft charges and upset landlords.
This boils down to a series of sketches themed around being poor, offering advice both ludicrous and useful. My favourite was a sequence in which Julie demonstrates practical alternatives to owning an expensive smartphone. This begins with her producing a complex letter-writing kit in order to answer a message, producing a shredder to dispose of an old document and, the punchline, dropping sweets all over the table and smashing them with a club.
Similar highlights are some pleasantly absurd phone conversations where the two make ridiculous complaints about products. A receptionist at Right Guard is hectored for their "72 hour protection" promise leading to an unwashed and stinking Julie causing a date to run for the hills. In the best, Flick complains about some Prosecco, explaining that it's left her nauseous, with a headache and diarrhoea. And after only three bottles...
It doesn't take long to realise that these two are onto a good thing. They confidently bounce off one another, each and possesses an enviable sense of comic timing. Despite that, there's often the sense that these situations haven't been fully mined for comic potential. The audience chuckles rather than guffaws; the gags sharp but not honed to a razor edge. There's also a few marginally questionable decisions: primarily whether Pulp's Common People, a song about taking a rich girl to a supermarket, needs to be rewritten with new lyrics about taking a rich girl to a supermarket.
Thing is, these are two extremely likeable performers, the audience wants them to succeed, but that dam-breaking moment where we collapse into uncontrollable giggles never quite comes. This is salved somewhat by their politics being on point; their 'act' slightly slips every so often as we get a glimpse of their sincere indignation with the awful way things are these days.
This is a show devoid of clangingly obvious low points, yet right now it's lacking that certain something that'd propel it towards true excellence. Perhaps it's the pace, perhaps it's the writing, maybe something in performance. Whatever it is I hope they work it out, I'd love to see them again.
★★★
Flick and Julie: Pop-Up Penny Pinchers is next on Friday 24th July at the Old Joint Stock, Birmingham then at 10th-30th August at Cowheadgate Space 9 (Venue 32) during the Edinburgh Fringe.
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