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Saturday, March 26, 2016
Saturday, March 26, 2016
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I've always gone to bat for Zack Snyder, often despite my misgivings. Sure, 300 was queasily fascistic, but it was visual dynamite. Watchman was flawed, yet studded with nuggets of brilliance, the Dr Manhattan origin sequence alone making the whole affair worthwhile. I even gave him the benefit of the doubt on Sucker Punch - sure it looked like a creepy fetishistic wet dream, but it's really a commentary on action film sexism..... right?
So it was with Man of Steel. It's by no means a great film but there's enough interesting stuff going on in there that you felt he was on the cusp of an artistic breakthrough. And now, with millions of dollars of studio money behind him and two of the biggest cultural icons of the 20th century meeting for the first time on screen, I figured Batman v Superman was going to be that breakthrough.
Christ almighty. What the hell was I thinking? Zack Snyder is a fucking hack.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is a misjudged calamity of a film with ideas embarrassingly far above its station. Boiled down, it's trying to do two things. The first is to launch the DC equivalent of Marvel's cinematic universe. So we get shoehorned in cameos from characters we know (and care) nothing about, together with ominous rumblings of the 'real' bad guy to come. The second is a high-minded philosophical exploration of the relationship between man and god, via examining the psychological effects of the 9/11.
This is all told by a convoluted story pieced together from, among others, clandestine CIA gun-running to African warlords, people smuggling, high-level Washington political machinations, and Frankenstein-like genetic meddling. The aim of this incomprehensible narrative is, as the title of the film suggests, to get Batman (Ben Affleck) and Superman (Henry Cavill) into a scrap.
Simmering away in the background is a barmier than usual Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg), a personality free Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), the perpetually concerned looking Lois Lane ( Amy Adams) and a smattering of supporting talent (Lawrence Fishburne, Jeremy Irons, Diane Lane, Holly Hunter), all of whom desperately try to salvage some semblence of character from a script that has none.
The film lumbers from set piece to set piece, tosses in half-baked moral queries, constantly spouts cringeworthy dialogue and has some serious performance deficits, mainly from Cavill's charmless Superman. But I think the core problem, the thing that makes the film so astonishingly unbearable, is a surreal lack of humanity.
Batman and Superman are essentially reduced to embodiments of philosophical posturing draining humanity from a film that already looks glossily CG sterilised. On top of that, Snyder is utterly self-serious about superheroes. Sure, they can be used to convey complex, mature ideas - but you need a dose of self-awareness that they're essentially there to amuse children. Even Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, despite its reputation for maturity, still recognised the basic ludicrousness of it's core concept.
So Batman v Superman has a comical lack of self-awareness of how ridiculous it is, perhaps best demonstrated so than in a pivotal scene where Superman portentously strides through the US Capitol building in Washington to deliver evidence to a Senate Hearing. Serious looking man in suits turn in slow motion to regard coolly regard Superman's presence, as if a man in a skin-tight primary coloured jumpsuit and cape just fits smoothly into The West Wing like it's no big deal.
This certitude that superheroes are serious business for serious grown-ups poisons every part of the film. Batman now sadistically stabs, shoots and brands criminals while rescuing/terrifying a prison cell of sex-trafficked women, Superman sports a constant miserable glower and spends his time joylessly floating around looking like he wishes he was anywhere else. The rest embody a low-level misery; Irons' Alfred clearly not giving a shit anymore, Fishburne's Perry Mason fruitlessly watches his newspaper go down the tubes and Lois sitting naked in her bathtub traumatised by guilt.
The nadir is the treatment doled out to Superman's Mum. She's kidnapped by Lex Luthor, who taunts Superman by scattering torture porn polaroids of her at his feet. These show a terrified, gagged woman with 'WITCH' scrawled on her forehead, shot in sickly pale snuff film lighting. It's tone deaf - and powerfully unfun.
No film has an obligation to be 'fun', but perhaps a summer superhero blockbuster should be, at minimum, enjoyable. The film isn't even an interesting fuckup; theoretically a superhero film with a stick shoved this far up it's ass should be interesting if only in its peculiarity. Yet, the predominant emotion experienced here is boredom - boredom with the lumbering narrative, the dull as dishwater characters and the ominous sense that they're setting us up for countless more servings of this tripe.
It's perhaps appropriate that the film ends on a vague promise of nihilistic horror to come. Just before the climax, Wonder Woman opens her laptop and stops the narrative in order for us to watch three teaser-trailers for The Flash, Cyborg and (god help us) Aquaman. This isn't even the most blatant sequel hook in the film - that comes when, apropos of nothing, a man rips a hole in space and time to yell confusing gibberish about the sequel at aperplexed Batman.
I can't quite believe I'm saying this, but Batman v Superman made me appreciate the dull competence of the Marvel films. Sure they're content with averageness, but at least they achieve that with broad professionalism. And, mercifully, at least there we're spared ridiculous intellectual pretensions that mercilessly eradicate any pleasure from the simple concept of strongman in silly costumes doing outrageous things.
What's that Zack Snyder? You're currently developing an adaptation of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead? Of course you are.
What's that Zack Snyder? You're currently developing an adaptation of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead? Of course you are.
★
Friday, March 25, 2016
Friday, March 25, 2016
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If you've ever wondered what'd be like to watch the 1968 Elvis Comeback Special while dosed to the gills on ketamine, this is the show for you. Four years ago Greg Wohead watched the 1968 Elvis Comeback Special and apparently suffered some kind of minor nervous breakdown. According to the programme he's subsequently watched it over a hundred times since: "I haven't had this kind of relationship with a video since Pee-wee's Big Adventure in 1989".
The obsession now manifests in a one man theatre piece that, at its most basic level, is an attempt to reenact the Comeback Special to understand and tap into its latent power. Perhaps most notable is the show's extreme myopia. Not only content with zeroing in on the Comeback Special, the entire show is about one section of it. Eventually we zero down to the the microscopic: Wohead spending a huge chunk of the show repetitively cycling through a couple of seconds of interaction where Elvis gets a piece of lint taken off his face.
Perhaps it's down to Wohead's quietly intense stage presence or the woozily looping Elvis sampled soundscape that loops over and over, but things get awfully trippy fast. To get an idea of the general mood, check out this quote from the programme: (from Rebecca Schneider's Performing Remains) "to suggest time may be touched, cross, visited or revisited, that time is transitive and flexible, that time may reoccur in time, that time is not one - never only one - is to court the ancient (and tired) Western anxiety over ideality and originality."
So you're probably falling into one of two camps right about now. Some of you are no doubt rolling your eyes and writing this off as a load of pretentious bollocks. The rest of you are curious as to what the hell Wohead's trying to achieve. Frankly, I'm tempted to sign myself up to the 'pretentious bollocks' camp - after all reading the explanation of the show sounds like you're locked in with a heavy stoner.
Having said that, it's at least consistently interesting bollocks. Underneath the philosophising is a palpable and much-need sincerity. Sincerity goes an awfully long way - however odd the conclusions, you can tell that Wohead is emotionally, physically (and probably financially) committed to this strange idea.
The sincerity proves infectious, especially when a decent slice of the audience is roped into reenacting a few brief seconds of the show. People are instructed to stand to attention, reach out in orgasmic pleasure, furtively fiddle with their handbags and play Elvis' lint-pickin' guitarist. This is the best bit, the tableaux slowly taking form until we feel like we've gained some kind of understanding of the heightened emotion of this tiny moment.
It's a fuzzy understanding, but then Wohead's trying to communicate some pretty out-there ideas. There's a couple more emotional tugs - when we finally see Elvis' face projected all around us, when we listen to Wohead awkwardly narrate what's 'really' happening in Elvis' mind during the Heartbreak Hotel sequence and when he finally sings his way through an Elvis song.
It's safe to say that Wohead isn't going to win any Elvis impersonation contests anytime soon, but there's an earnestness to his singing that tugs at the heartstrings. He layers his own vulnerability onto Elvis' macho manliness, neatly contrasting the two.
On the walk home I tried to unpack what I'd just seen. Concrete meaning seems far away, but there's something obviously powerful and significant in exploring Elvis' gravitational pull. His undying global popularity must say something important about the human condition, but what? You're not going to get the answers in Comeback Special, but you are going at least get some interesting questions.
God only knows what your average Elvis fan will make of it though.
★★★
Comeback Special is at Shoreditch Town Hall until 26th March 2016. Tickets here.
Pictures courtesy of Richard Eaton.
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
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I don't know much about ballet, but I know what I like. And I like Ballet Black. Founded by Cassa Pancho, the company's goal is to grant black and Asian dancers an opportunity to shine. Sadly, black and Asian dancers are overlooked for major roles, Carlos Acosta perhaps putting it best: "There is this mentality, especially with directors, that a black ballerina in the middle of a flock of white swans would somehow alter the harmony."
Ballet Black not only tours shows that showcase their extraordinarily talented dancers but run the popular Ballet Black Junior School and an Associate Programme (with 400 members), in the hope that they can inspire a new generation of dancers.
I know all this because I attended an open rehearsal for the show. There I got to know the dancers as human beings rather than as unapproachable epitomes of physical perfection, got to see the construction of the choreography and heard explanations of pretty much everything they was going on on stage. This is invaluable for a neophyte like me - ballet's always seemed like a world where everyone assumes you know your arrière from your sissonne fermée (thanks Google).
After very much enjoying the rehearsal I was eager how the sketch I'd seen would translate to a full picture. Divided into three separate pieces, two short/one long, the show is constructed on the basis of 'something for everyone'. Indeed, each segment was markedly different from the others, offering a mixture of populist theatre and the avant-garde.
First up was Arthur Pita's Cristaux. I'd thought that Ballet Black would ease us in with something warm and personable, but Cristaux quickly proves anything but. Soundtracked by the jangling glockenspiel loops of Steve Reich's Drumming Part III, this is a coolly minimalist, almost mechanically precise demonstration of what the company is capable of.
Dancer Cira Robinson emerges in a crystal festooned tutu and tiara, the spotlight casting rays of light from it that gently discoball their way across the awed audience. It's an impressively attention grabbing introduction, only equalled by the moment when a gigantic crystal pendulum dramatically whooshes across the stage, apparently threatening to decapitate the dancers below. Robinson eventually intertwines with Mthuthuzeli November, the two mesmerisingly falling in and out of synchronisation - their motions occasionally giving the illusion that the two somehow physically meld.
As it ends it feels as if the audience collectively exhales - there's a general sense of "wow". Christopher Marney's To Begin, Begin has big shoes to fill. This is anchored by two elements, a large sheet of cobalt silk that weightlessly flutters around the stage and the magnetic stage presence of Sayaka Ichikawa. The two work through a series of eye-catching configurations; ranging from a costume to bondage to scenery. Contrasting the loose chaos of the silk with the precision of the dancers is effective, but lacks some of the oomph of the preceding piece.
After the internal is the main course: Christopher Hampson's Storyville. It tells the story of Nola (Cira Robinson) a young girl lost in New Orleans. She's a talented and natural dancer, but falls under the sway of salubrious nightclub owners Lulu and Mack. Gradually she sinks into a life of vice, the only ray of light in her life the love of an honest sailor.
Using a variety of Kurt Weill songs, there's a Cabaret-esque seedy tinge throughout, with Nola's plunge into the metaphorical (and later literal) underworld ably conveyed by smart choreography and a carefully chosen group of symbolic props. Highlights are when Nola's childhood doll is used to puppeteer her, voodoo style. As it's dropped Robinson perfectly and dramatically collapses onto the stage. Also impressive is a later scene of drunken hedonism, in which we see the interesting juxtaposition of drunken clumsiness and ballet, the dancers obviously relishing the challenge.
That said, though Storyville is an excellent showcase for the company and oozes style, I didn't feel half the emotional heft that I felt from the earlier conceptual pieces. The sustained focus on narrative didn't quite pay off, and despite a downer ending I didn't particularly feel the tang of tragedy that I'd anticipated.
Nitpicking? Perhaps. It's difficult for me to criticise performers this skilled - they left me thoroughly gobsmacked from start to finish. As promised, there's something for everyone here, though for me it's the boldly experimental modernist thrills of Cristaux that will stay with me the longest.
After very much enjoying the rehearsal I was eager how the sketch I'd seen would translate to a full picture. Divided into three separate pieces, two short/one long, the show is constructed on the basis of 'something for everyone'. Indeed, each segment was markedly different from the others, offering a mixture of populist theatre and the avant-garde.
First up was Arthur Pita's Cristaux. I'd thought that Ballet Black would ease us in with something warm and personable, but Cristaux quickly proves anything but. Soundtracked by the jangling glockenspiel loops of Steve Reich's Drumming Part III, this is a coolly minimalist, almost mechanically precise demonstration of what the company is capable of.
Dancer Cira Robinson emerges in a crystal festooned tutu and tiara, the spotlight casting rays of light from it that gently discoball their way across the awed audience. It's an impressively attention grabbing introduction, only equalled by the moment when a gigantic crystal pendulum dramatically whooshes across the stage, apparently threatening to decapitate the dancers below. Robinson eventually intertwines with Mthuthuzeli November, the two mesmerisingly falling in and out of synchronisation - their motions occasionally giving the illusion that the two somehow physically meld.
As it ends it feels as if the audience collectively exhales - there's a general sense of "wow". Christopher Marney's To Begin, Begin has big shoes to fill. This is anchored by two elements, a large sheet of cobalt silk that weightlessly flutters around the stage and the magnetic stage presence of Sayaka Ichikawa. The two work through a series of eye-catching configurations; ranging from a costume to bondage to scenery. Contrasting the loose chaos of the silk with the precision of the dancers is effective, but lacks some of the oomph of the preceding piece.
After the internal is the main course: Christopher Hampson's Storyville. It tells the story of Nola (Cira Robinson) a young girl lost in New Orleans. She's a talented and natural dancer, but falls under the sway of salubrious nightclub owners Lulu and Mack. Gradually she sinks into a life of vice, the only ray of light in her life the love of an honest sailor.
Using a variety of Kurt Weill songs, there's a Cabaret-esque seedy tinge throughout, with Nola's plunge into the metaphorical (and later literal) underworld ably conveyed by smart choreography and a carefully chosen group of symbolic props. Highlights are when Nola's childhood doll is used to puppeteer her, voodoo style. As it's dropped Robinson perfectly and dramatically collapses onto the stage. Also impressive is a later scene of drunken hedonism, in which we see the interesting juxtaposition of drunken clumsiness and ballet, the dancers obviously relishing the challenge.
That said, though Storyville is an excellent showcase for the company and oozes style, I didn't feel half the emotional heft that I felt from the earlier conceptual pieces. The sustained focus on narrative didn't quite pay off, and despite a downer ending I didn't particularly feel the tang of tragedy that I'd anticipated.
Nitpicking? Perhaps. It's difficult for me to criticise performers this skilled - they left me thoroughly gobsmacked from start to finish. As promised, there's something for everyone here, though for me it's the boldly experimental modernist thrills of Cristaux that will stay with me the longest.
★★★★
Ballet Black's Triple Bill is on tour throughout 2016. Tickets and info here.
Monday, March 21, 2016
Monday, March 21, 2016
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Grandiose apocalyptic disaster used to feel like the stuff of fiction. Now, 15 years on from the Roland Emmerich nightmare theatre of 9/11, it feels increasingly like we're living in a bad disaster film. As atrocities tick by like clockwork; the carnage begins to seem less like an aberration and more like an inevitability. This is the meat of Stuart Slade's BU21, which explores the psychological impact of a jumbo jet being shot down over London by terrorists.
Primarily inspired by the 2014 MH17 crash over the Ukraine, spliced with 9/11 and 7/7 DNA, the play is set in a support group and follows six young Londoners as they struggle to cope with the magnitude of their experiences. Each has their own horror story: bubbly student Floss witnesses a passenger plummet into her back garden from 4500 feet; office worker Thalissa's mother is bisected by a jet engine; banker Alex's home, best friend and girlfriend are reduced to ash; and Ana, a young Romanian, suffers horrible full-body burns.
Sounds like a downer right? Well, it often is. BU21 is studded with grief, betrayal, misery, deformity and trauma - not quite a recipe for a delightful night out in the theatre. Fortunately (and kinda miraculously), BU21 is serious and moving, yet also absolutely hilarious. The ability to combine comedy and tragedy so deftly is an envious skill for a playwright to possess; one Slade previously deployed so thrillingly in 2014's Cans, which dealt with British celebrity paedophilia.
For my money BU21 succeeds because, above all else, it's honest. Slade's characters are all flawed; most at least somewhat unlikeable before metal, fire and corpses rain into their lives. Experiencing brainmelting tragedy does not miraculously transform people into saints; for example, Alex is an arsehole before the disaster and remains an arsehole after it, albeit one with deep mental scars. Eventually, the character's vanity and propensity for tasteless jokes (Floss can't help but think "It's raining men!" upon seeing a passenger crater into her lawn) function as a way to up the contrast - the presence of light making the darks feel so much darker.
Slade also frequently breaks the fourth wall, at one point berating the audience: "As far as I can tell this is essentially a financial exchange where you've paid money to be entertained by a bunch of human suffering - which - if you think about it, is kind of weird." It's a well he returns to time and again; his characters commenting on the play's dramatic structure; conversing with (and insulting!) the audience; and generally fostering an awkwardly adversarial relationship between audience and performers.
Theoretically, if you're trying to sincerely analyse tragedy the last thing you want to do is futz around with metatextual diversions. Yet, again, Slade pulls it off. What happens is that the fourth wall busting accentuated the honesty of the characters; their asides are tinged of verisimilitude and gradually draw the audience into a conspiratorial frame of mind. Characters and audience end up examining events from precisely the same place, the alignment making the big emotional moments a straight-up slam dunk.
And, of course, we're in Theatre503, so the actors are the best in town. Perhaps it goes without saying at this point, but when it comes to straightforwardly talented performers, this particular theatre rarely (if ever) puts a foot wrong. The entire cast, Alex Forsyth, Roxana Lupu, Clive Keene, Florence Roberts, Graham O'Mara and Thalissa Teixera, are all worthy of the highest praise.
Personal highlights were Graham O'Mara; whose frazzled self confidence gradually erodes over the course of the evening. There's an almost imperceptible dramatic shift in the character, beginning from surefooted forthrightness and ending at faking surefooted forthrightness. Technically there's a fag paper's thickness between the two states, but O'Mara carefully and recognisably distinguishes between them.
Somewhat more unsubtle is Alex Forsyth's preeningly hedonistic banker. With one foot in and one foot out of the fiction he's a kind of ersatz compere. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment is making this openly manipulative, misogynist, rapaciously capitalistic sleazebag somehow likeable. God only knows what kind of weird alchemy Forsyth is working with to make us like him (I suspect brute force charisma?) but it works, and the performances provides an acerbic, bristly heart to the piece.
After a streamlined hour and a half we're done, Slade having constructed an equall parts intellectual and emotional thought experiment into how exposure to atrocity affects the soul. Though brief, the ground covered is exhaustive, touching on questions of belief, community, class and politics - all with a touch so light it's easy to miss just how damn rigorous Slade is being. It's a fantastic show and one that deserves to be seen.
So see it!
★★★★
BU21 is at Theatre503 until 9th April. Tickets here.
Wednesday, March 16, 2016
Wednesday, March 16, 2016
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Adapting Philip K Dick usually requires cutting edge special effects wizardry. The cinematic reworkings of his stories Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, They Can Remember it For You Wholesale and A Scanner Darkly are all visually stunning, relying on complex modelwork and/or CGI to translate Dick's dense, imaginative and philosophical prose to the screen.
LoneTree Theatre Project's The Skull makes to do with a disassembled clothes drying rack, a spraypainted Supersoaker and and a toy steering wheel. Dick's sprawling speculative futures of Martian colonies, time machines and tyrannical neo-religions successfully crammed onto a sparsely furnished room above a pub on the Old Brompton Road.
The Skull is one of Dick's lesser known short stories, yet still encapsulates much of what makes him a science fiction titan. We open in the year 2152 and meet our Martian colonist and hunter protagonist Omar Conger (Itai Leigh). He's currently incarcerated in a reeducation centre; but promised a reprieve if he will travel 200 years back in time and assassinate 'the Founder' of the antiwar religious movement that's taken over the world. The only clue to his identity the future has is the Founder's weathered skull, reverently handed to Conger to guide him to his destiny.
In a crystal time machine and wielding a powerful 'Slem-gun' he's zapped back to 1950s Cooper Creek, Colorado. Unfortunately, with his beard, strange future accent and eccentric behaviour, the townspeople suspect him of being a bomb-wielding Communist spy. He wishes to escape, yet is determined to fulfil his mission of killing the mysterious man who set the whole dark future in motion.
If you've seen any time travel story in the last fifty years you can probably figure out where this yarn is heading. You have to bear in mind that on publication there wasn't a dearth of time travel fiction, the notion of temporal paradoxes still fertile and promising sci-fi territory. Despite this; Dick's exploration of the origins of religions, Red paranoia and the merits of pacifism remain incisive. And, obviously, the writing is top-notch:
"What action would not be futile, when a man could look upon his own aged, yellowed skull? Better they should enjoy their temporary lives, while they still had them to enjoy. A man who could hold his own skull in his hands would believe in few causes, few movements. Rather, he would preach the opposite..."
Smartly, LoneTree Theatre Project brings Dick's text to the forefront of their adaptation. The characters narrate their own actions and thoughts; the act of reading aloud Dick's words making the show feel, appropriately, like a parable. Given the text's preoccupations with Messiah-dom this is bang on the money, not to mention neatly papering over any problems with the sparse pound-shop props.
It's also pretty richly performed play. Supporting cast Gabriella Shillingford, Megan Blowey, Neo Mothola and Rory Keys, quickly delineate their many roles, making what could be a difficult to follow story easily comprehensible. Itai Leigh is a cut above, binding together a time traveller's snootiness, egotism and confidence that's undercut by the growing realisation of his destiny, aided by an Israeli accent that nicely conveys Conger's future dialect.
The only place the show really stumbles is in some unneeded comedy additions. When miming a trip in a flying car, the cast makes whizzy noises with the mouths and jerks left and right, and a chase scene is played for broad laughs. These moments are bizarrely out-of-place and belie a reluctance to treat Dick's writing with the sincerity it deserves. Sure, at times it's bit cheesy, but if you're doing a straight adaptation of early 50s science fiction then cheesy is part of the territory whether you like it or not.
It's not as if Dick is being entirely po-faced; there's a couple of decent gags in the short story - the best being a suspicion that Conger's beard indicates that he's trying to visually emulate Karl Marx, who one of the townspeople has seen in a book somewhere (even that is regarded with deep suspicion).
Still, the added gags come uncomfortably close to laughing at Philip K Dick rather than with him, which feels a bit unfair. If his work sounds cliched and his twists obvious that's because he invented the cliches. These moments ultimately prevent the audience from fully engaging with the intellectual message of the text which, with its scepticism towards religion and musings on mortality, remains relevant.
It's refreshing seeing Philip K Dick on stage and I can't fault the company for their ambition, I just wish they'd cut the slapstick.
★★★
The Skull is at the Drayton Arms Theatre until 2nd April. Tickets here.
Saturday, March 12, 2016
Saturday, March 12, 2016
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Hackney Wick is under a death sentence. You might not have heard about it; but the grit, grime and graffiti is on the way out and these beautiful post-industrial warehouses are scheduled to be bulldozed. In their place will rise columns of steel and glass; beehive-sterile luxury living for the well-to-do, the streets dotted with corporate commercial opportunities.
Perhaps this is just the inevitable next step in the neighbourhood's gentrification, but you only have to look at the drab, depopulated and wind-blasted misery of the neighbouring Olympic Park to feel a deep shudder of dread.
So it's prime time for arebyte Gallery to host The Wick in Layers, a project from Masters students at the RCA studying Information Experience Design and Visual Communication. The starting point for the project is Josephine Berry's Autonomous Art in the Neoliberal City.
"If one takes the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park as a prime example of the neoliberal city's attempts to marry economics, control and happiness, its crisis of political ideology and aesthetic form becomes quickly apparent. In this disarticulated space of planting and place branding, art and athletics, picnicking and policing, entered through the Westfield shopping mall, the triumph of biopolitical economics over civic values and municipal idealism is all too evident." (Preview here)
The objective of the exercise is to "investigate the systems and networks of arebyte's local area ... creating a space of fluid meaning and connections that reflect the everchanging narratives surrounding the area." What this boils down to is an exhibition that distills the atmosphere and mood of Hackney Wick to an easily identifiable core.
Most immediately eye-catching is Yinan Song's video that juxtaposes graffitied walls, the forbidding green fence that encircles the Olympic Park and the Overground station. The graffiti leaps out as bright bursts of primary colour, overlapping images bristling with communal creativity. It's a neat metaphor for the artist population; all working on their own themes yet all gently overlapping and contributing to a tapestry of sorts. Meanwhile the jagged metal angles of the Olympic stadium squat, spider-like, over the top, squeezing out the energy through sheer mass.
At the centre is Georgia Ward Dyer's table, constructed from found materials around Hackney Wick. Whereas Song explores iconography, Ward Dyer delves into the web of interpersonal connections that comprise the area. This table was used to serve a dinner last night, to which Hackney Wick residents were invited; from her fellow artists to Olympic Park advisors to the landlord that owns the arebyte building.
I've always been a big fan of any installation that combines meaning with a slap-up dinner; so I was a bit gutted I missed it. Still, it works as an easily understandable, friendly and community orientated exercise that cuts through an awful lot of conceptual art bullshit. After all, what's the point in trying to communicate something about a community when you suffocate it underneath strained pretension?
Similarly clear-minded is Wei Lun Chang's exploration of the bylaws that govern behaviour in the Olympic Park. These are a byzantine tangle of small-print that dictate everything from how many dogs you're allowed to walk at once to the circumstances in which you can fire a bow and arrow. The small print density is overwhelming; the overall impression a disquieting authoritarian thicket.
This contrast between self-governing public urban space and strictly controlled private space is a pressing issue (especially with the debate surrounding Boris' pet 'Garden Bridge'. Annelise Keestra and Franziska Hatton explore it further in their audio/video piece, mirroring footage from the two places to a soundtrack of conversations with residents and workers. Unfortunately, due to the fact that this was a bustling and chatty Friday night private view, I couldn't hear the audio.
I could, however, appreciate the care that's gone into presenting the work, projecting the video onto a suspended screen that can be watched from both sides. I'd have loved to have been able to get the full picture with the audio, but the video at least contrasted the two very differing environments well.
Finally, quiet and minimalist, was Jordan Gamble's look into the 'hackney candle'. Wax drips down into a jar filled with brick, silk and the detritus of Hackney Wick's history. Maps on the wall next to it show us the changes this land has seen in just 200 years. Bucolic agriculture gives way to heavy industry gives way to fashionable, forwarding thinking art. The place has been in flux for generations, this piece explaining that any changes will, someday, be changed themselves as the accreted drip drip of history proceeds towards the infinite.
The Wick in Layers is one of the most impressive exhibitions I've seen lately; combining intelligence, artistry and politics to zero in on the psychogeographical state of Hackney Wick. It's a bit of a shame that it's only running for this weekend - but if you're a resident of the area or at all concerned with gentrification and development I'd highly recommend paying arebyte a visit!
The Wick in Layers is on until the 13 March. Details here.
Friday, March 11, 2016
Friday, March 11, 2016
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Modern Warfare strides across the gaming landscape like a colossus. The games allow players to simulate war, either engaging in Michael Bay-esque single player campaigns or the (far more popular) online multiplayer, where a global community headshots, grenades and teabags each other in an endless whirlpool of violence and sexually explicit vocal abuse.
Their popularity is unnerving; they glamourise and trivialise war, indoctrinating consumers with a steady drip of jingoistic propaganda. Employing convicted war criminals like Oliver North to advise and promote them doesn't exactly help matters.
Lucinda Burnett's Correspondence explores the games; contrasting the sleek sterility of the games with the emotional realities of violent social unrest. Set primarily in 2011, we focus on awkward Stockport teenager Ben (Joe Attewell), editor of the school newspaper and avid gamer, as he converses over Xbox Live with his Syrian friend Jibreel (Ali Ariaie).
With the Arab Spring steadily picking up steam, Ben is eager to interview an uncomfortable Jibreel on his opinions of the government, revolution and politics. As they dodge bullets in the digital battlefield, the two boys maintain an uneasy relationship: Ben using Jibreel for journalistic insights, Jibreel using Ben to practice his English in preparation for university studies in London. Until one day, Jibreel abruptly disappears.
His head full of disturbing stories of teenagers detained by the Assad regime, Ben panics. In a manic fit, he steals his Dad's wallet and heads to Syria. He's accompanied by gin-swigging schoolgirl delinquent Harriet (Jill McAusland), who threatens to expose him if he doesn't take her with him. Yet when confronted by the realities of Syria, Ben's incipient mental health problems come to the fore.
There's a lot to admire in Correspondence. Joe Attewell is a convincingly frayed teenager; touchingly falling apart as his journalistic fantasies clash with the reality of actually being in the thick of it. Jill Ausland provides some much needed texture; her pragmatism eventually proving incredibly useful (as well as providing the lion's share of the laughs).
Bethany Well's set design is also a cut above. I deeply dug her work in My Eyes Went Dark and Wink, where, as here, she demonstrates a knack for melding technology and psychology into a pleasing whole. Here the set subtly recalls the curves and lighting of the Xbox aesthetic; white curves and glowing LEDS that focus audience gaze in on the player. Cleverly, the game controller is visible at all times; reminding us of the gulf between Ben's absolute digital control in the game world and the unmanageable chaos of reality.
There's also a couple of gently moving writing flourishes. As the situation worsens in Syria, Ben can't quite grasp why Jibreel has abandoned Modern Warfare for the resolutely apolitical FIFA. Each character has clearly been comprehensively thought through; providing various viewpoints from which we can view Ben's behaviour.
Sadly, things aren't all sunshine and roses. The root of the play's problems is flabby writing: the narrative objective of individual scenes is generally achieved within a couple of minutes (Ben is having a nervous breakdown/Harriet is attention starved/Ben's parents are at loggerheads etc), but then they drag on and on without giving us any new information. There's a disconnect between the quality of the performances and the writing; as if Burnett doesn't quite have faith that a cast can clearly communicate her characters - resulting in her retreading their personality traits ad nauseum.
I found myself silently urging Correspondence to get the hell on with it. There's no one scene that slams the brakes on, just a slackening of pace that drains tension and interest. Even more frustratingly; the play abruptly terminates just as things are about to get interesting, leaving us a little unfulfilled.
As it stands, Correspondence could use some corrective surgery: liposuction on the bulbous middle and reshaping of the malformed climax. The performances, aesthetic and core ideas are all ace, yet the play is ultimately hobbled by the loss of momentum. If this were pared down to an hour it'd be a punchy, streamlined and hard-hitting production, but in its current form it doesn't quite work.
★★
Correspondence is at the Old Red Lion until 2nd April. Tickets here.
Monday, March 7, 2016
Monday, March 7, 2016
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As a boy I was taken aside by the school choir teacher and gently told that it would be better that I mime rather than sing. Friends and family will attest that my vocal skills have not improved with age. So I find some sympathy in the eponymous Marguerite, a woman whose gap between her self-perceived and actual singing talent is of Grand Canyon proportions.
Loosely inspired by similarly tin-eared American soprano Florence Foster Jenkins (who is getting her own biopic starring Meryl Streep later this year), director Xavier Gianolli sets his tale in early 1920s France. This is a fractured country in recovery from the hell of the Great War, one that's beginning to question the ideals of nationalism, patriotism and calcified class structures.
We open at the country estate of the Dumonts, who're hosting a recital by the hoity-toity 'Amadeus Society' in aid of war orphans. We're led into this world by young singing talent Hazel (Christa Theret), who's ushered through a series of luxurious parlours, speckled with photographs of the lady of the house in various operatic costumes. This is Marguerite Dumont (Catherine Frot): spoken of with the utmost respect and consideration.
The crowd falls into a reverent hush as she enters the room, looking every inch the performance diva in an elaborate gown and a jaunty peacock feather head-dress. The full he orchestra strikes up behind her, launching into Mozart's notoriously difficult Queen of the Night from The Magic Flute.
She takes a deep breath and... what emerges is an utterly bizarre collection of strangled squeaks, off-key caterwauling and deformed notes. It's excruciating. The crowd collectively winces, politely suffering through their hosts demented warbling.
Yet at the back of the room, Lucien (Sylvain Dieuaide) and Kyrill (Aubert Fenoy) react somewhat differently. They're gatecrashers, eager to milk the rich for funds to launch an avant-garde art space - and they see Marguerite and her delusion as the perfect vehicle with which to expose the hypocrisies of the bourgeoisie.
The bedrock of Marguerite is a re-imagining of The Emperor's New Clothes; nobody has the guts to sit Marguerite down and candidly explain to her that she's incredibly untalented. Her husband, friends and professionals quickly realise that it's easier to support her delusion, fearing that a dose of reality might irrevocably hurt her feelings or, worse, interfere with her considerable financial bestowments.
Pretty much everyone in the film exploits Marguerite's in one form or another; be it her husband who needs her title and inherited wealth to maintain his business; the young artists who use her to make a political point; the music teachers who see her as a way of paying their debts and; the general public, for whom Marguerite is a wince-inducing freakshow.
The most fascinating of the exploiters is Marguerite's taciturn manservant Madelbos (Denis Mpunga). At first he appears intensely loyal to his Mistress, indulging her fantasies by shooting and developing endless soft-porny vanity shots of her. You initially assume that he's miserably going through the motions - yet there's gradual hints that he's the one orchestrating Marguerite's surreal journey to the limelight.
Madelbos is a striking character in a film layered with umpteen layers of political and artistic meaning. While it never really trips over its own feet on these, there comes a moment where you wish Gianolli had a smidge more focus. The various threads of Dadaist philosophy, French national character, class warfare, ponderings of what objective artistic skill is and explorations of mental illness (etc etc etc) never quite coalesce into a coherent statement.
This leaves a satisfying, ornate and well-performed film, yet one that's also a bit overlong and undisciplined. Side characters like introductory ingenue Hazel or avant-garde journo Lucien wander in and out of the narrative, leaving unresolved subplots dangling forlornly in the wind. The film even ends on a enigmatic note, refusing to neatly resolve the story we've watched. I don't want to criticise the film for prioritising message over narrative (and it is tres arthouse), but I'm a bit perplexed as to what the precise message is.
Despite those grumblings, the film is anchored by Catherine Frot's sterling central performance. She's infused with cool serenity, making it all too easy to understand why nobody can bring themselves to shatter her illusions. Frot understands that though Marguerite's delusion is unrelatable, her heartbreak, fears, hopes and passions are not, making her easy to root for.
Though not half as gut-bustingly funny as was promised by the advertising, Marguerite is an interesting and enjoyable watch. Giannoli successfully allows us to both laugh at his heroine and feel sorry for her - having his cake and eating it by gently implicating us in her delusion. It's a sturdy, good-hearted piece of cinema and worth a watch.
★★★★
Marguerite is on general release from 18 March.
Sunday, March 6, 2016
Sunday, March 6, 2016
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London's major art galleries are usually hubs of respectable, hushed appreciation. Visitors travel from around the world to silently gawp at Great Britain's dead luminaries, imperiously peering down the centuries through gilded frames. This most stuffy of stuffy environments gently nudges the viewer to see history as permanent and unchanging: this is the official version of events.
Enter Mel Adam's Lenard Pink. Originating as a YouTube sensation, Pink graduated to the London stage last year. Smartly suited with a smattering of hot pink highlights, a wig that's half Warhol/half Ecclestone and a campness that's not so much performed as it is ingrained in his DNA, he takes audiences on a whistlestop tour through a couple of hundred years of 'secret' history.
Beginning with the Wars of the Roses and ending sometime in the late Georgian period, Pink nimbly skips down the years, illuminating his audience on what was really going on underneath the ermine gowns of the men and women who claimed that God himself installed them as ruler over the British Isles.
What transpires a hugely enjoyable tangle of conspiracy theories. Was Henry VIII really brain-damaged to the point of murderous paranoia? Was Queen Anne actually a secret lesbian? Do the hand positions in the paintings of the Kit-Cat club really indicate their membership of the illuminati? Most shockingly, was one of the most iconic women in British history, Queen Elizabeth I, secretly a man!?
They're outrageous claims and frankly I'm sceptical of most of them. But, crucially, they're fun and Pink's explanations are downright hilarious. There's the old maxim (which comes via Jimmy Stewart) that if you have a choice between dull truth and an entertaining legend, always print the legend. Pink takes that and runs with it: even if his arguments are largely unsubstantiated they provide a perspective that encourages us to query established fact.
Though Pink is irreverent from tip to toe, there's a serious political point to reinterpreting history like this. The past is inherently politicised; each generation using the stories of those that came before to buttress contemporary power structures. This means that alternate views on history; based on economic, class, gender, racial or sexuality; are neatly swept under the rug so as not to confuse bright young GCSE students.
Pink's historical viewpoint is deeply grounded in his own sexuality, his explanations that this King or that Queen were gay not quite authoritative commandments, but more an imploring "what if?". Prejudice has ensured that gay history has been confined to the margins and only whispered of. When so much has been scrubbed from the record, what's the harm in theorising a bit. Though audiences will most likely find some (most?) of Pink's idea far-fetched, they will at least leave us primed to examine the the past through new eyes.
Aside from the theorising, Pink also has a knack for explaining history from unique perspectives. Most enjoyable was his aside as to how miserable life was for Georgian women; their lives a miserable gamut of dressy balls, sexual subjugation and soap made primarily of piss. Pink's language doesn't beat around the bush (and from his descriptions god knows how anyone ever plucked up the courage), but sometimes you've got to be vulgar to explain vulgar things.
The only point where things become a little unstuck is when he questions the provenance of Shakespeare's plays. This particular conspiracy theory has always annoyed me, particularly the part of the argument that claims that Shakespeare's relatively brief schooling wouldn't have granted him the intellect or imagination to devise, say, Hamlet. The theory then states that it's far more likely an esteemed Cambridge alumni like Marlowe would have written such masterpieces. Aside from being a bit tired as far as conspiracy theories go, it's the one point in the tour when the establishment feels reinforced rather than eroded, and is the only real blemish on an otherwise stellar experience.
Aside from that I had a deeply enjoyable and memorable night out. Pink is a fantastic guide through the seamy underbelly of British history, introducing his audiences (and the inevitable gaggle of freeloading hangers-on) to theories so bizarre they might just be true. Highly recommended.
★★★★
Lenard Pink's History Tours take place throughout the year. For more information visit www.facebook.com/lenard.pink or email lenardpink@gmail.com.
Thursday, March 3, 2016
Thursday, March 3, 2016
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All Your Wants and Needs Fulfilled Forever opens with a gag about how brilliantly relatable Simon, the show's white, male, hetero protagonist is. He's also a long distance runner, wears glasses, enjoys videogames and writes for culture websites. Very soon I was starting to feel that he a little too relatable. Thank god I don't own pet rats or things would have started to get really weird.
Set in Wellington, New Zealand, we follow Simon (Eli Kent, writing and performing) as he navigates some tricky life challenges. His father has recently died after suffering a debilitating illness; his girlfriend is about to move to Sydney and his mother plans to move to Geneva "to find out who she really is". So far, so typical - were this an ordinary show you'd buckle in for an hour or so of twee indie dramedy that'd culminate with bittersweet tears and, I dunno, probably a Coldplay song or something.
But All Your Wants... isn't an ordinary show. For one it's narrated by an omniscient lightbulb who speaks through a speech synthesiser, for another the core drama takes place within a fourth wall busting framework in which we watch the 'backstage' team (Victoria Abbott, Hamish Parkinson and Joel Baxendale) frantically supplying props, voiceover and music in order to keep the audience entertained and keep Simon on course through a strictly Campbellian hero narrative.
The meta-narrative puts Simon in incredibly strange dramatic situations. His girlfriend is represented by a naked, bald mannequin that he gently caresses, his mother by a pair of red rubber gloves poking through a slit in the stage and his best friend through a digitally slurred teddy bear. The set, a large box composed of sterile white plastic sheeting, begins to look like a laboratory and our hero its experimental subject.
Gradually we understand the show's layered cosmology. Simon has a cage of pet rats yet, unbeknownst to him, he is also a rat in a cage. Around him scurry the stressed, bickering architects of his world. Above them sits the anonymous god-figure that's running the whole affair and imposing dramatic structure on everything beneath it.
Along the way the show alludes to various other metanarratives. Simon is compared to reality TV prisoner Truman Burbank (his girlfriend is auditioning for a television miniseries adaptation of The Truman Show), Shakespeare's dabblings in Hamlet and the capability of Super Mario to bust through the brick ceiling of his world and explore hidden rooms beyond the scoreboard. We get asides to countless other fictional works, usually dealing with the same issues: Arnie's Total Recall brain-trip, the bounded Pac-Man endlessly fleeing from ghosts and, to my eyes anyway, the cruel science-chic aesthetic of the Portal games.
The fourth wall isn't so much broken as vaporised, and, predictably we conclude with a narrative collapse. It's here that All Your Wants... finally stumbles, descending into a maelstrom of flashing lights, loud bangs and mimed action sequences. These bits make their point effectively, but they're not particularly interesting to watch and frankly, go on a bit.
The show's best moments come when it's being subtle. Though Simon may be living in a carefully constructed fiction, his interactions with his mother, girlfriend, best friend and, later, a lamp (bear with me) are particularly well-observed. The girlfriend is literally a prop, but she still gets a neat bit of characterisation in arguing that taking a facial isn't inherently anti-feminist and complaining about being sidelined in the plot.
His mother also manages to be both fussily attentive of her son and an individual in her own right. Interestingly, the side characters gradually fold into the personalities of the backstage crew, meaning that we're getting characterisation on them even as they 'play' other characters.
All Your Wants... also boasts a solid set of performances, a highlight being Kent's expertly poised body language and energy: jogging about and expertly miming his away around the sparse stage. Victoria Abbott also impresses with her vocal contortions, shuffling characters like playing cards and later displaying a knack for impish videogame character dancing.
It's a success, and a funny one at that. All Your Wants... brims over with creativity, throwing so many ideas at the wall that, while some of them flop, lots are bound to resonate. There's an argument that it runs the risk of incoherency, especially in the closing scenes, but I'd much rather an ambitious mess than ordered boringitude. Individual mileage may vary, but as far as I'm concerned this show is a winner.
★★★★
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