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Showing posts with label isango ensemble. Show all posts
Showing posts with label isango ensemble. Show all posts
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Saturday, May 26, 2012
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Having seen 'Aesop's Fables' I've managed to 'complete the set' of the Isango Ensemble's residence at the Hackney Empire. It's nice to be able to compare them, and I've now got a lot of respect of their versatility. After 'La boheme' and 'the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists' this was a nice change of pace. Both of the other productions seem to have been aimed at seasoned theatre-goers, 'Aesop's Fables' was more for children, and was cheery and upbeat.
I saw it on a hot and sunny Saturday afternoon. I have to admit that the prospect of spending a few hours of a beautiful day in a theatre was ever-so-slightly off putting. On the way there I saw friends lounging around on the grass sipping ice cold, perspiring beers, and was sorely tempted to join them. If this wasn't the only production I hadn't seen out of a set of three, I may have been won over by the sunshine. So I entered the cool and dark theatre maybe slightly out of a sense of duty rather than unbridled enthusiasm.
Missing the sunshine was the least of my worries - this was in every sense of the word a sunny and happy production. There was an atmosphere of playfulness in the performance that was absent from the seriousness of 'La boheme' and 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists'. The mood throughout was enhanced by the fact that there were lots of children in the audience. I don't really go to that many plays aimed at children, and their smiles and laughs were a big change from the self conscious clipped laughs and polite applause of the adult audience at, say La boheme.
This was a far more flamboyant show than the previous Isango productions. The characters in those were poor, desperate and portrayed semi-realistically while the Aesop's Fables animals are essentially symbols of various impulses and positive and negative human traits. Their symbolic representation allows for a lot of flexibility in the costuming. Some highlights were the Rastafarian goat, the lycra-clad fitness fanatic hare and the glam-rock, futurepunk cockerel.
My two favourites, which stood out for sheer physicality were the wolf and the tortoise. The tortoise was imagined as a kind of chilled out hippy, with a painted shell, round sunglasses and waistcoat. The bright yellow colours and body language seemed to perfectly encapsulate the philosophy of doing things at your own pace that the tortoise represents. Characters would frequently come down and walk amongst the audience during the action, so I got to see the tortoises costume close-up a few times. It was covered in intricate graffiti and 60s designs, a lovely piece of costuming. The tortoise was played by Noluthando Bogwana, who I also singled out in Philanthropists as being expertly expressive with her body language. Her slow, shuffling tortoise walk is frequently played for laughs to great effect, particularly when she wins the race against the hare.
The other favourite was the wolf. The wolf was realised as a big, fat boxer. Everything about the costume screamed false bravado. The wolf is one of the 'bad guys' (such as they are) in this. The character manages to be simultaneously scary and a figure of fun. It's a nice tightrope to walk down, and the sheer physicality of the actor really helps. Zamile Gantana is quite the imposing stage presence. The guy is enormous, and the way his huge belly pokes out from under his overly tight athletic gear accentuates the theme of greed that his character represents, while also making his movements humorously clumsy.
I also have to mention the 'lion'. It makes a very brief appearance, but in its brief moment on stage is utterly awe-inspiring. It comes at the end of a rhythmic dance number, and violently thrashes its straw mane violently around. It then runs down the central aisle of the theatre. I was sitting on this aisle, and there was a fantastic rush of wind and swoosh of straw as it flew past me. It was a sudden, shocking tactile sensation that I wasn't expecting in the slightest.
Every Isango Ensemble production has had extremely strong African themes running through it. The instrumentation here was provided by xylophones and percussion was from upturned steel bins. Part of the performance was in an African language, and I'm ashamed to say that I don't know what it was (possibly Zulu?). Even though I'm ignorant as to what was being said, the shift in language did a great deal for the production. While the origins of Aesop's Fables is Greek, the African cultural influences made it feel more like these were extensions of the Anansi tales. I always feel a little culturally illiterate when I'm confronted with influences outside of my cultural sphere, but if nothing else, it gives me the impetus to expand my horizons.
All three Isango productions have focussed on the downtrodden and dispossessed in society. La boheme looked at starving artists, Philanthropists was about exploited workers and Aesop's Fables is no different. The overall plot is about a slave trying to free himself from his master. This production may be targeted towards children, but explaining why freedom is important and the knowledge one must gain in order to be truly free is something adults and children alike can learn. I really liked the themes of forgiveness too - when Aesop, the slave is finally free, he stops to emancipate his master who has been put in literal chains by his greed and hubris. The dissolving of the boundaries between protagonist and antagonist reminded me of a Studio Ghibli film. I think Disneyesque representations of black and white morality are a slightly dangerous lesson to drum into children, so teaching them that even the worst people can be redeemed and learn their lesson is a noble thing.
I've really enjoyed all of these productions, and I hope I can see them again at some point. I've watched this company perform for maybe six hours in total over the last three weeks, and I've gained a great deal of respect for their talent, versatility and charisma. They shook the audiences hands at the end of the performance, and I get a real sense of their warmth and enthusiasm for their art. My hat goes off to them.
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.
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Saturday, May 12, 2012
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Three people told me to bring tissues when I told them I was going to see La bohème. My expectations were high for a fun night of emotional trauma and misery. Maybe this, finally, will be the opera that busts through me, opens my eyes and makes me realise why people love it so much. Ever since watching Fitzcarraldo I've been impossibly intrigued by the dramatic pull opera has on people, if it can make someone drag a boat over a mountain in the middle of the jungle then there must be something I'm missing.
In the last year I've been to see Two Boys and The Passenger at the London Coliseum and while I've appreciated the costuming, staging and general technical proficiency there has been nothing that made me sit up in my seat, mouth hanging agape and entirely focussed on the stage and nothing else.
So, to La bohème at the Hackney Empire and the Isango Emsemble. The setting is tranposed to modern day Cape Town rather than 19th Century Paris, and the orchestra uses entirely African instrumentation. The staging is fairly minimal, a series of stripped down doorways and crates for the characters to sit on, the occasional bed and not much else. The costuming is modern and realistic.
As I take my seat the company has already taken to the stage and is chatting amongst themselves, a neat little tactic which I supposed was to soften the barrier between the performers and the audience. Then the opera starts. I can understand maybe a quarter of the lyrics. I always need a 5 minute period of adjustment to acclimatise myself. It's the same when seeing Shakespearian performances, you need to try and immerse yourselves in the rhythms of the dialogue and if you can't understand every word then you've got to infer what's going on from the inter-relating body language between the performers. At the other operas I've seen there was also a 'subtitles' electronic banner showing the lyrics above the stage, which might be a bit too much a crutch, but at least I know what's going on.
Maybe I'm missing the point, are you even supposed to be emotionally invested in the story of an opera? I figured most people were familiar with the story already, so probably didn't need to be explicitly what was going on. But surely it can't be the case that opera-lovers are engaged in a cold technical appraisal of the singers and staging when they attend, and why was I told to bring a tissue to mop up tears people assumed I'd have? People around me bark out short laughs at various points, I'm confused, what on earth was funny just then? I start to feel like a robot trying vainly to understand your com-plex-hu-man-emo-tions. Beep Boop. What am I missing here?!
As the interval rolled around I was following the basic outline of what was going on, and I'd managed to decipher that the lead female was called Mimi. Maybe I should have forked out £5 for a programme.
When the end rolled around, and (spoiler alert) Mimi died I realised that this was the moment I was supposed to be bawling my eyes out. I wasn't - I don't know if this is a fault of the performance, or just that I don't have the necessary critical framework to appreciate what's in front of me. It's very vexing. The only moment of emotional engagement I had over the entire production was when the lead male dropped out of singing to say that his love was dead. Surely it can't be the case the emotional highpoint of a damn opera is when the lead is not singing?
It's not that I didn't enjoy myself - the singing was impressive, the orchestration was brilliant (I'm a total sucker for steel drums in any context) and the Hackney Empire is always nice to visit. Without any kind of emotional engagement on my part though, it's hard to really concentrate. I need to know why the characters on stage are singing so passionately. The fact that they're being technically proficient is not enough.
Hopefully one day I'll finally see the opera that makes all the pieces drop into place and I'll sit there dewy eyed and trembling at the majesty I've been missing out on. Until then, the tissues in my pocket go unmoistened.
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