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Showing posts with label communism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label communism. Show all posts
Thursday, October 27, 2016
Thursday, October 27, 2016
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I consider myself pretty politically engaged. I volunteer on political campaigns. I attend marches. I help out with advocacy groups. I work in law reform. But would I pick up a rifle, head overseas and shoot fascists? In my romantic fantasies I'd like to think so, but in reality I probably don't have the guts. But, in the mid 1930s 2,500 men and women did. These were the men and women who formed the British Battalion of the International Brigades.
They were ordinary people, often with no military experience. Yet they recognised the evils of fascism, left their jobs and families behind and many ended up making the ultimate sacrifice in an attempt to stop Franco in his tracks. Somewhat overshadowed by World War II, the Brigades are an unjustly overlooked part of Britain's history, an inspirational lesson in the common man's willingness to stand up to evil at great personal risk.
Neil Gore's Dare Devil Rides to Jarama follows two such volunteers, speedway champion / dare devil Clem Beckett and milquetoast Pimlico writer Chris Caudwell. Were it not for the war its unlikely that the two would ever have crossed paths, one being a grease-smeared Mancunian and the other an earnest yet nervy London writer. Yet they found common ground in their anger at social injustice and corruption, each sincerely believing in the powerful transformative power of socialism.
Gore begins in the twenties, laying out the early speedway career of Beckett. As he rises through the ranks and achieves a modicum of celebrity he begins to rail against the exploitative treatment of racers. While he and his friends are out risking life and limb, the suits at the top pocket the profits while pushing for faster and more dangerous racing to draw in the crowds. Soon he's a proud member of the Young Communist League, gradually making his way through the party system until he's travelling the world as a sporting emissary of the British Communist Party.
It's just as he's settling down with a new wife and business that the call to arms comes. The mid 30s are dark times in Europe - Hitler, Mussolini and Franco all ascendant and Britain's Oswald Mosley eager to emulate their successes. For Beckett it's a no-brainer to heed the call to defend Spain from fascism and try to turn back the tide.
Caudwell is a different story - a slightly camp, bourgeois sounding intellectual, preferring to bury himself in party organisation and literature rather than engage in direct combat. Yet the argument that bullets are more effective that ink in defending Spain is difficult to refute, and soon the unlikely pair are off to the front, and eventually to the Battle of Jarama - one of the bloodiest conflicts the Brigades ever faced.
Split into two distinct halves, the first is a chirpy music hall biography of Clem Beckett. Played by David Heywood, Beckett is the epitome of the cheeky, cheery Northern lad, always ready with a wink and a smile. He's a dynamic, fun and easy to like character, simultaneously irreverent and sincere. Heywood infuses his every action with energetic life, grinning with happiness as he tackles motorbike stunts while doing his best to live his motto: "forever forward".
Post interval we're in Spain and the tone shifts considerably. Gone are the banjo and music hall trappings, replaced by a poetic seriousness. Clem Beckett's problems have progressed from motorbike accidents to worrying about his malfunctioning machine gun, a lack of ammunition, fighting with untrained and demoralised soldiers and a daredevil dealing with his own fears. Though not devoid of laughs, there's a poignancy and finality to these scenes as the soldiers realise that, despite all their bravery, they're militarily outmatched.
Dare Devil to Jarama often feels like a history lesson. There's a lot of necessary exposition to chew through; whether it's something as expansive as the history of socialism and antifascism in Britain or the politics of the Spanish Civil War; or as particular as the shoddy design and firing techniques of the Chauchat rifle ("the worst machine gun ever"). Working in Gore's favour is that the history is a) really interesting and b) he never once loses sight of his characters.
This makes the dense history navigable: we care about these charismatic characters and their political enthusiasm is infectious. In Beckett's voice, the dusty old anthems of the Young Communist League are infused with new vigour and life. Gore (playing every character other than Beckett) has a neat line in mimicry, excellently delivering the inspirational speeches that drive men like Beckett towards combat. A Peckham theatre in 2016 is a long way from the Spanish Civil War, but we feel like we have a glimmer of how these men might have flt.
Helping out with that is a generous smattering of audience participation. Heywood and Gore are constantly making eye contact with us and gently prodding the fourth wall. We're also provided with Unite branded plastic rattles to wave at key points, allowing us to create the din of the speedway and the enthusiasm of a much bigger crowd. We're also invited to sing along to the songs and, best of all, boo the hell out of Oswald Mosley (if only they'd supplied rotten tomatoes...).
By the time the play ends (to extremely enthusiastic applause) it's more than done its job. Gore has successfully interwoven history and politics, as well as doing justice to Clem Beckett and Chris Caudwell's lives. Dare Devil Rides to Jarama left me feeling inspired and informed, yet also slightly guilty. Would I do there the same if I were in their shoes? Just how many men and women of the International Brigade's calibre are around today?
The only contemporary parallel is extraordinarily depressing - the current people inspired to leave their country and take up arms for their beliefs are would be ISIS soldiers, eager to spread religious fundamentalism, mindless violence and oppression across desperate communities. (Man, maybe things really are just getting shitter and shitter.)
Let's leave that aside for now. Neil Gore's play is a great piece of drama and a worthy tribute to the men and women of the International Brigade. If you have the slightest bit of interest in history and politics it's a fascinating watch.
★★★★
Dare Devil Rides to Jarama is at the Bussey Building until Oct 29th, then on tour. Tickets here.
Photographs by Daniella Beattie
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
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Finally a genuinely lefty action flick! Elysium is an unapologetically blunt political allegory, designed from the ground up to showcase inequality, cruelty and economic enslavement. But the politics are just the jam stuffed deep inside a delicious cinematic doughnut. The dough surrounding this tasty socialist jam is a visceral science fiction survival story with astonishing special effects, cool as hell future technology and several great performances.
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Sunday, February 3, 2013
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When does the past become myth? While it's easy to relate to life in say, the 1960s, events further back become blurred, a sense of how things really were becomes difficult to grasp. Out of this historical fog strides Woody Guthrie, carrying a guitar immortally emblazoned "THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS". Though he died in 1967 he's a man of the 30s and 40s, a man of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, discrimination against 'Okies' and vicious attacks on unionised labour. He's very much a man of his time, a hitchhiking troubadour with an acoustic guitar and a head full of songs to lift the spirits of desperate migrant workers. I think Steve Earle described Woody Guthrie best:
"He was the living embodiment of everything a people's revolution is supposed to be about: that working people have dignity, intelligence and value above and beyond the market's demand for their labour"
'Woody Sez' is a biography of Woody Guthrie, telling the man's life story using his songs. I was a little curious when I heard about this musical, Woody's humble style doesn't seem to lend itself to a stage production. There's zero bombast and a total lack of ego in his songs, and I had vague nightmares of jazzed up chorus lines singing along to 'This Land is Your Land'. Thankfully there's none of that here, this is a stripped down show, austere in its staging and intelligent in design.
Woody's story is told by four outstanding performers, as skilled in acting as they are musically talented. David M. Lutken plays Woody, and Ruth Clarke-Irons, Helen J Russell and William Wolfe Hogan play various characters in Woody's life. As I entered the theatre, the four were sitting relaxed at the front of the stage, chatting with the audience and playing instrumental Woody Guthrie songs. This breaks down the barriers between the cast and audience right away, allowing us to view the myriad characters we meet as familiar friends. Furthering this demolition of the barrier between performers and audience is the total lack of any amplification from the stage. Everything is played acoustically, with no microphones.
It's a shock to the system at first. I'm accustomed to concerts and plays blaring music as loud as is legally permissible, initially everything seems quiet and muted. Very quickly you become attuned to it, and I was surprised how effective simply hearing the music directly from the guitar or singer was in creating authenticity. A lack of electrification makes sense for multiple reasons, firstly and most obviously because it's period appropriate. It also gently prods the audience into shutting up and paying attention to the music rather than chatting to each other. But most importantly, and what this tactic adds up to is a definite connection of the life and philosophy of Woody Guthrie to a modern audience.
Before the financial crash of 2008 'Woody Sez' may have felt slightly quaint. The fire in songs like 'Jolly Banker' and 'I Ain't Got No Home' can never go out, but still, they speak of a battle long since passed. But now, as global capitalism convulses these words regain the immediacy they had when Woody sang them in the 30s and 40s. Woody Guthrie's condemnation of the victimisation of the poor rings as clear as bell in a country where the government is doubling down on austerity. Seeing a show like this is a useful reminder that the rich blaming the poor for the poverty inflicted upon them is not a new thing. Bankers and politicians gamble the livelihoods and dignity of the working class away just as easily now as they did in the 30s and 40s.
All of these performers are fantastic musicians, and all get their individual chances to shine. Considering that pretty much all the songs are led by an acoustic guitar, the sound never gets samey. A huge variety of period accurate instruments are played, from a banjo and double bass, to dulcimers and even,enjoyably, the spoons! Even though the songs can be musically similar, the varied arrangements stop any boredom setting in.
David M. Lutken's Woody is an immediately likeable character. Woody Guthrie is known primarily through his music rather than in a physical sense, a fact that gives Lutken a broad canvas to work on. You never feel like he's doing an impression or imitation, it's more that he's embodying a certain optimistic, kind spirit. Throughout the course of the show, we go from light-hearted comedy moments to some pretty pitch-black depressing stuff. Woody Guthrie didn't have the cheeriest of lives and time and time again a member of his family will burn to death. If proof were needed that the cast has the audience in the palm of their hand it's the hushed silence when Lutken falls to his knees in grief upon hearing the death of his daughter.
If I have to head down to Croydon for a show then it'd better something pretty damn amazing. I'm pleased to say 'Woody Sez' was well worth the trip. It's a modest show, friendly and welcoming, but one with an unbending sense of social justice. Here we see Woody Guthrie mythologised as a Tom Joad figure, nobly fighting for the little guy, epitomising artistic resistance against exploitative ideology. This is cleverly balanced with a portrait of a normal, flawed man who makes mistakes, suffers and loves his way through a difficult life. 'Woody Sez' is an outstandingly well-performed and politically subversive show, one that underlines the relevance of a man whose poetic soul we should all hope to emulate.
'Woody Sez' is playing at:
4 February - Buxton Opera House, Buxton
5 - 6 February - Sheffield Crucible, Sheffield
7 - 9 February - The Lowry, Salford Quays
11 - 13 February - Harrogate Theatre, Harrogate
14 - 16 February - Theatre Royal, Wakefield
Monday, January 7, 2013
Monday, January 7, 2013
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Whenever
Pixar re-release one of their films in 3D there’s a faint whiff of the
cash-in about it. It’s unattractive
in a company that prides itself on originality and the pushing
forward of boundaries.
These aren’t films designed with 3D in mind, and these releases are partly a result of the fact that post-converting a computer animated film into 3D is a relatively easy
one, at least compared to a live action film.
For some
reason I’ve always viewed ‘Monsters Inc’ as one of Pixar’s lesser creations. For me, Pixar are at their finest when they’re
taking the audience on epic journeys: all three ‘Toy Story’ films have their
characters covering huge distances (relative to their sizes anyway), ‘Finding
Nemo’ takes us halfway around the world and ‘Wall-E’ explores the universe as a
whole. ‘Monsters Inc’ is far more
static, a comedy taking place in a handful of locations, maintaining a
tight focus on character development rather than high adventure.
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| The monsters go to work. |
The conceit
of the film is to examine the life and world of the ‘monster under the bed’. Children’s closet doors worldwide are
actually portals to ‘Monstropolis’, a city inhabited by monsters of all shapes
and sizes. The city is powered by the
company, ‘Monsters Inc’ by the screams of children, which are collected by blue
collar monsters spending their days popping into children’s bedrooms, scaring
the hell out of them and then hopping back through the portal. The ‘top scarers’ in this system are Sulley and Mike (voiced by John Goodman and Billy Crystal respectively).
Sulley
and Mike are absolutely perfectly designed.
They are overtly monstrous, but also relatable enough to get the audience’s
sympathy almost immediately. At first
glance the fuzzy blue Sulley seems incapable of scaring anyone, he’s got big
expressive eyes and a modest, friendly demeanour. But he is
a good scarer, as we see later in the film when we see him at work. He’s the straight man to Mike, a one eyed green
bowling ball with limbs. Mike is a
fantastic creation, frazzled and somewhat justifiably self-centered, yet also
deeply in love with a receptionist.
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| Mike and Celia's relationship is genuinely sweet. D'aww. |
As the story begins they’re at the top of their game and life is good, but soon a spanner is thrown
into the works, namely the arrival of the human child ‘Boo’ into their world,
who arrives clinging to the back of Sulley.
Children are seen as a terrifying, poisonous and toxic presence in the
monster world, so Sulley and Mike endeavour to get her back to her bedroom
without anyone realising that she’s in their care. It’s a
compelling scenario, one is executed flawlessly. They've harnessed some dark arts over at Pixar; writers and artists with direct access to my heartstrings that
they’ll pluck relentlessly without me ever feeling manipulated. ‘Monsters Inc’ is for the most part a broad
comedy, and channels Warner Bros animated shorts in a big way. But it all hangs together as a whole due to
the relationship between Sulley, Mike and their unexpected charge,
Boo.
Boo is a
brilliant creation. Voiced by
2 year Mary Gibbs, she cutely babbles and wanders her way through scenes
with an innocence that hilariously undercuts a lot of the tension the
characters try to create. Her good nature powers the central bit of character development in the film, that of Sulley dealing with the responsibilities of unexpectedly becoming a surrogate
father. This change in Sulley directly impacts upon Mike. At the
start of the film they’re on the same page, but Sulley’s priorities shift so far
that the two come into conflict with each other; Mike wanting everything to go
back to normal whatever the cost, and Sulley wanting the best for Boo.
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| Boo, in a monster costume. |
Technically the film is nearly flawless. To 2013 eyes there are a few slightly ropey looking creations in the background, but Pixar have always known both the limitations and possibilities of their technology and nothing jumps out as obviously dated. The big technological step forward when this was released 12 years ago was Sulley's fur, this being the first time that they'd dare to try rendering a lead character covered in long hairs. The effect looks as impressive as it did then, so realistic you want to reach out and stroke it.
The voice work remains superlative. Generally voice actors perform their work alone, and the dialogue is spliced together at a later date, but Goodman and Crystal performed together at the same time, resulting in beautifully natural back and forth dialogue. I guess when you're recording dialogue for animated films, you use your voice actors when they've got free time in their schedules, and generally don't bother to get them all in at once at extra expense. 'Monsters Inc' shows that sometimes, this expense is worth it for the uplift that the spontaneity gives to the performances and the characters.
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| Billy Crystal and John Goodman together in the recording booth. |
'Monsters Inc' is interestingly plotted, the villains being an ambitious scarer who develops a sinister new way of extracting screams from children and Henry J Waternoose, a rapacious capitalist who cares more about the survival of his business than the human cost running it entails. I had only a vague memory of the plot from watching it on its release, and I was surprised to see a neat little anti-capitalist critique fuelling much of the main plot. The film presents us a classically styled besuited and portly boss, running a factory that literally runs on the screams of children. It's like a cartoon from the 'Socialist Worker'. Our heroes are blue-collar workers with an innate paternalistic trust in their boss as someone who has their interests in mind. Naturally he doesn't; he's developing a more inhumane yet more efficient method of extracting screams that will put Sulley and Mike out of a job.
"I'll kidnap a thousand children before I let this company die, and I'll silence anyone who gets in my way!" - Henry J Waternoose
I particularly like that after they've defeated this nefarious plot and saved the day, our heroes head outside to find that they have indeed put the company out of business and left the entire workforce unemployed and miserable. It's nice to see a film that considers the consequences of the actions of the hero, pointing out that even doing what is obviously the right thing can have unintended results on the wider community. Fortunately Sulley has realised that the sound of children's laughter is even more potent than their screams and reconfigures Monsters Inc. to harness this instead of their terror. Sulley replaces Waternoose as the factory boss, signified by his donning a tie and a clipboard to examine his workers.
Sulley's tie has disturbing implications. Throughout the film he's the epitome of the blue-collar worker (even down to literally being blue), but now he's begun to elevate himself above the other monsters. He's now his best friend Mike's superior and employer, a situation that can only inevitably lead to conflict between these two former buddies. In addition, while times are good in the factory at the moment and labour relations are positive how we are to know that the situation is sustainable? The desperate and sinister Waternoose was once a worker on the 'scare floor', and from the initial respect he has from his employees may have once been like Sulley. Is our furry, gregarious blue-furred hero destined for a slow transformation into a warped, manipulative, profit margin obsessed fat 'kitty'? Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Perhaps if the monsters working on the scare floor had been properly unionised they'd have had the wherewithal to reorganise Monsters Inc as a worker's co-operative to prevent history inevitably repeating itself?
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| Times are good... but for how long? Notice that Sulley is no longer 'Sulley' now. He's James P. Sullivan CEO. |
It's also worth recognising that Disney itself has parallels to the fictional corporation of 'Monsters Inc'. While Monsters Inc makes money from using children's screams as a source of energy, Disney Corporation makes money exploiting child labour in China, and considering that there are reports of colleagues committing suicide as a result of being scolded by factory bosses may well literally be running a corporation reliant on the screams of children. It's for reasons like this that at the back of my mind I always feel that even when Pixar make wonderful films with an anti-materialist or environmental message, that there's a nugget of hypocrisy lurking deep down at the core.
But that's enough politics. 'Monsters Inc' is a classic of animation that's perhaps unfairly overlooked compared to some of Pixar's more overtly ambitious technical and narrative ventures. It's a rock-solid comedy with a brilliantly original premise that executes it perfectly. It's also astoundingly self-contained, telling us all we need to know about the characters and their world in an hour and a half. There's a sequel due this summer, 'Monsters University', which I have reservations about. Is it going to be a 'Toy Story 3' or a 'Cars 2'? While I'd rather Pixar be putting out original films, if anyone can make the subject matter work its them.
The 3D adds nothing of note by the way, but it doesn't distract either.
****/*****
****/*****
'Monsters Inc 3D' is on general release from January 18.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Thursday, June 28, 2012
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Walking into a play like Michael Frayne's ‘Democracy' carries with it its own set of worries. I know vaguely that it's about the machinations of politicians in West Germany in the early 70s, this, to be honest, doesn't sound like a whiteknuckle thrillride. My knowledge of postwar West German politics is pretty basic, and creeping around the back of my mind was the fear that I’d signed myself up for an evening of very dry and worthy political drama. At first, I feel like these fears are all coming true. The stage is rapidly populated by a group of middle-aged and elderly men in suits, and without much explanation we’re thrown into a complex world of coalitions and acronyms: SDP, CDU, FDP. For the first third of the play I’m more preoccupied by trying to work out who is who and how these characters inter-relate to each other. It’s hard going. I begin to wish I’d done a bit of pre-reading as to who the characters in this play are and what they're doing.
The play concerns the intertwined lives of two men: German Chancellor Willy Brandt, and his assistant Gunter Guillaume. Brandt was a popular and charismatic, Nobel prize winning politician seemingly adored by his public. Guilluame was one of his closest aides, living and working with Brandt for years. But Guilluame was also a deep cover spy working for the East German Stasi, feeding them confidential information on Brandt for years. When Guillaume was exposed, it led to the resignation and disgrace of Brandt, arguably to the detriment of both West and East Germany.
The two men initially seem quite different, Brandt seems like a born leader and orator, a man able to sense public opinion, to make people love and believe in him. Guillaume on the other hand is ingratiating, eager-to-please and submissive, a character that lurks in the periphery of rooms, trying to become part of the scenery. The men come from starkly different political backgrounds which inform much of their personalities, Brandt seems to effortlessly swim through the murky waters of parliamentary democracy, while Guillaume comes from the authoritarian and repressive East Germany. As the two men bond and discover they have more in common than they initially thought, the emotional stakes are raised. Guillaume begins to desperately worry about what might happen to Brandt if he was uncovered as a spy.
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| Willy Brandt (Patrick Drury) and Gunter Guillaume (Aidan McArdle) |
The relationship between the two men in terms of spy and subject is somewhat unique. Guillaume is not under orders to sabotage Brandt, or to try and undermine, rather he is there so the East Germans can try to understand the man, and found out what makes him tick. The tragedy of this relationship is that in doing this the two men come to implicitly trust each other. Guillaume eventually begins to love the man he is lying to every day, and develops an appreciation of the thrills of parliamentary politics. Meanwhile, Brandt comes to rely on Guillaume’s organisational and bureaucratic skills, and his understanding of how to cheer him up.
Once I understood the nature of this relationship and had gotten to grips with the personalities of these men, the play becomes much easier to digest. Patrick Drury as Brandt has a fairly complex task in portraying a man who can be marching in front of a crowd giving an inspiring speech one moment, and sitting crumpled in his office in a depressive fugue the next. Whenever he makes a speech an echoing, booming effect is added to the actor’s voice, making us feel every portentous and inspiring word, as if he is speaking to us clearly through the fog of history. Even though he’s dynamic and successful, Drury imbues him with a sense of tragic vulnerability. He is surrounded by venal, backstabbing colleagues, and he alone seems like a true idealist and visionary. We hear about his womanising and his drinking, but these flaws somehow serve only to throw into sharp contrast his positive points. This is helped by scenes where Brandt tells us about his past dodging the Gestapo during World War II, there is a tenderness and emotional nakedness to the performance which is unnerving in a portrayal of a politician, and makes his eventual discovery of Guillaume’s betrayal that much more tragic.
Aidan McArdle has a dual role to play as Guillaume: character and narrator. He tells us the story in the past tense, often ‘pausing’ the action to explain what’s going on, or to explain his thoughts at a particular moment. His East German origins are known to the other characters, and this throws him open to some suspicion, although he manages to deflect it through most of the play, mainly by his sycophancy and harmless, bumbling persona. In the first half of the play, before he gains Brandt’s respect he is looked down upon by his colleagues, being described as ‘greasy’ and disparaged for only having experience of running a photocopying shop. McArdle’s body language in these early scenes is great, he’s always hunched over, almost hiding behind the files he’s sorting through. He’s seemingly succeeding in becoming ‘part of the furniture’, while behaving manically as narrator while the play is on 'pause'. As the pressure mounts, McArdle does a great job of showing the stress and guilt caused by espionage and undercover work. His handler is omnipresent throughout the play, perched smoking just outside of the main action, a constant observer of his actions. We can almost taste Guillaume's sweat as the pincers close in on him. This is a not altogether likeable character, after all, his very nature is to lie to those the audience is set up to admire, but McArdle manages to make us feel the pain of his betrayal and his growing guilt and paranoia at being exposed as a spy.
The rest of the cast all perform admirably, especially William Hoyland as Herbert Wehner, who looks and acts like an sinister Tony Benn. Also excellent is David Cann, who I pretty much could watch in anything. The roles outside of Brandt and Guillaume aren’t the most compelling though, especially as they tend to appear onstage as a crowd rather than individually, making their personalities somewhat indistinct. By far the best scenes in the play are those where Brandt and Guillaume bond one on one, and learn about each other. The tension of the play ratchets up a few notches whenever it’s just the two of them on stage, and slackens when they’re joined by the crowd. I suppose if you’re going to do a semi-biopic you need to show these other politicians to tell the full historical story, but from a dramatic point of view they seem to distract the audience, turning our attention away from the central relationship that drives the narrative.
Another interesting aspect of the casting is that this is an all-male play. I can appreciate the argument that this is necessitated by the patriarchal nature of politics at this time, but there are female characters referred to, we just never see them. Women in this play are generally relegated to either an element that undermines the characters (Guillaume’s wife’s request for divorce or the prostitutes that play a major part in Brandt’s downfall) or some distant element of a crowd looking up at you. I’m not entirely sure what the play is trying to achieve by this, it is a curiously sexless piece, seemingly more concerned with politics than romance. I suppose it is possible that any other romantic bond would distract from the central bond between Brandt and Guillaume, but a total lack of women seems like a deliberate and slightly puzzling decision.
This isn't the most immediately accessible play around. It throws the audience right into the deep end, and even up until the interval I wouldn’t say that I had a total grasp of what was going on. In fact, once the interval was over, quite a lot of people didn’t bother coming back for the second half. I can’t really blame them, there’s about an hour and a half before the interval. If you get that far into a play and it’s not doing anything for you then I think you can be forgiven for giving up on it.
But this is a shame, while the first half can at times seem like a barely disguised information dump, it pays off in the second half when the play deals with more understandable human interactions and emotions. It’s a far more interesting play once they don’t need to worry about setting things up, and it fascinatingly explores how different personalities can bond, how we ‘each contain a multitude’ and how political beliefs influence our interactions.
I did have a slight issue with the humour though. The play has farcical elements, but a lot of laughs come from “are things so different in modern British politics?” subtle winks. This kind of knowing, ironic humour doesn’t really do much for me, relying as it does on political science injokes that serve to make the people that 'get it' feel clever. Obviously I don’t have a problem in a play using the events of the past as a mirror of the contemporary government, but these events don’t really work as a point of comparison. Some of the biggest laughs are gotten from the fact that the Social Democratic Party Brandt belongs to is in a shaky political coalition with the 'Free Democratic Party', who are referred to as “The Liberals”. This play was written in the early 2000s, but now lines about the Liberals being ‘difficult coalition partners’ cause knowing chuckles in the audience. It’s unearned laughter, especially as the Liberal Democrats are for the most part very compliant coalition partners. As far as I can see there is no point of comparison between these two coalitions, and the humour seems to be predicated on the fact that the two parties have the same name. I guess this is maybe more of a problem with the audience than with the production, but if you’re going to even vaguely suggest that this play is somehow allegorical then I think you should follow through with it.
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| (the real) Willy Brandt kneels in contrition in Warsaw |
Despite these criticisms, this is, for the most part, a powerful and affecting piece of drama. A scene where Brandt spontaneously kneels in front of a monument to those killed in the Warsaw ghetto is powerfully staged and lit, and manages to capture the gravitas of the moment. Other outstanding scenes are a relaxed conversation between Guillaume and Brandt on holiday in Norway, where Brandt very subtly raises the tension and probes Guillaume about the nature of spying - you could hear a pin drop in the theatre! Even though the Old Vic has a fairly expansive stage, this production manages to capture a cramped atmosphere, a time of meetings in poorly lit offices with bundles of paper everywhere. A nice factor is the smell of cigarette smoke. Guillaume’s handler smokes through the play, observing events dispassionately. The smell adds another sensual layer to the performance, sucking you even further into the past and the complex political and personal power games.
This isn’t a play for everyone. It’s wilfully hard to follow at first, occasionally a little dull and hardly spectacular to look at. But once you’ve digested the motivations, setting and characters, you’ll find a surprisingly personal, touching and quietly humanistic piece of theatre.
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Saturday, May 19, 2012
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Back to the Hackney Empire for more from the Isango Emsemble. Despite not really being able to understand what the plot of La boheme was I had a pretty good time. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is a bit more up my street though, and I was familiar with the book. Nonetheless, this time I took no chances, and read through the programme before it started. This also allowed me to find out just what was going on in La boheme. In retrospect, I should have bought a programme last week.
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is a musical based on the 1914 book by Robert Tressell. The book is a classic of socialist literature, with the action set in the South of England and showing how the working class of the town are exploited by their employers. This musical version is set in South Africa during apartheid. The central characters are employed as painters and as the plot develops, we witness the effects of capitalist theory on the working class. This version, with an entirely South African cast also looks at the effects of colonialism and racism. Setting the events in South Africa is not an arbitrary decision, Robert Tressell was an Irishman who at one point lived and worked in Cape Town and Johannesburg. It was here that he became involved with trade unions, and with the socialist philosophies that fill his book.
The staging here is quite similar to that of La boheme, with the gently forward sloping stage, and with minimal set. The set is bathed in earth tones, complementing the characters shabby clothes. When there is bright colour on stage it tends to stand out. In the first act giant green letters are slowly painted blue over the course of the act, and they seem to glow bright in the light. At the start of the second act, the male characters don their ' minstrel stage wear', red and white polka-dotted evening coats and white trilbys. The bright costumes seem to make their everyday wear seem even more dowdy.
In La boheme, the instrumentation was entirely African, in this production there is no orchestra, and very little instrumentation. The voices of the performers, nearly always singing in harmony more than fill the room. The fact that most of the songs only work when all of the performers are acting as one also works thematically. There are very few parts in the room where the workers sing alone. Their 'bosses' however are placed in isolated areas of the stage and sing alone. As before, the singing was exemplary. Admittedly, I don't really have the critical framework to decide whether someone is singing brilliantly or just extremely competently, but each performer injected the personality of their character into the songs.
Now that I have a programme, I can pick out individuals to praise. In both Isango productions I've seen, Mhlekazi Mosiea has been the standout performer. He's played the leads in both, and manages to show deep inner anger coupled with an innocent fragility. As the callous and money-grubbing superintendant, Noluthando Bogwana is also a stand out. She stalks around the stage in a floor length coat, striking strange angular poses and looking somewhat terrifying with her widened eyes. There is a particular fun scene where, pretending to have a close relationship with the workers she attempts to conduct them in a choir. Almost every weird pose she finds is hilarious. As she contorts the sound of the choir shifts and warps to match her motions, it's something I've never seen before on stage, and must be pretty damn complicated to rehearse.
One scene in particular stands out above the rest. It's when our hero, Nkosi Songo explains just how the workers are being bamboozled and exploited by capitalism. He playacts the role of a factory owner, using slices of bread as the raw materials of the land. He puts his friends in the position of working for him, making the bread into sandwiches and paying them for their work. Then when they've finished making sandwiches, he asks what they're going to eat. They pay back their wages, and get a single sandwich. They are left with nothing, and the boss's wealth increases at their expense. The cycle is infinite and the workers are essentially trapped at a near-poverty level. It's a neat demonstration of Marx's theory of surplus value. I've tried to read Capital, and despite my best efforts found it somewhat impenetrable, so the fact that this staged version is able to quickly, efficiently and convincingly illustrate one of the pillars of his economic theory is a credit to both Tressell and the production.
I enjoyed this much more than La boheme. The songs, production and the politics were much more to my tastes than the opera I saw last week. I'd like to see the third of their shows, Aesop's Fables before they finish just to complete the set. In popular culture it's uncommon to see something that so unashamedly advocates socialist values, so I consider this a rare treat.
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