Recent Articles
Showing posts with label stage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stage. Show all posts
Thursday, June 18, 2015
Thursday, June 18, 2015
- 0 Comments
When most people think of opera, they imagine a crowd of white-tied toffs watching a wailing woman who looks as if she's been dragged backwards through a make-up counter. Opera is an artform where emotion is accentuated beyond all reasonable bounds: sadness becomes a grief, anger becomes fury and jealousy is an untamable green-eyed monster. So it's refreshing to see something where, for all the skill and talent, the tone is loose, dumb goofiness.
Rossini's L'italiana in Algeri, here reinterpreted by Pop-Up Opera as a Vegas-set casino sleaze narrative, is jam-packed with silliness. Typically, the company puts on a short classic opera then pokes fun at the more outrageous bits. For example, a long, energetic and adventurous aria might be summarised in the surtitles as "I really miss my girlfriend!". This drains any pomposity, but, well in L'italiana in Algeri there doesn't seem like much pomposity to drain away.
Mostly set backstage at the Algiers Casino, the narrative revolves around battlin' egos and blind lust. Owner Mustafa (Bruno Loxton) is struggling to cope with his aging showgirl star (and wife) Elvira (Catrin Woodruff). In exasperation he decides to be rid of her, scheming to offload her onto luckless gambler Lindoro (Oliver Brignall). Complicating matters is Lindoro's devotion to his long lost girlfriend Isabella (Helen Stanley) and her new (temporary) squeeze Taddeo (Oskar McCarthy).
These larger than life characters are tossed together in all kinds of ways, shifting in status, falling in love, going mad and growing furious - eventually tangling up in one big farcical knot. But though feelings run high and hearts snap like twigs, every development is handled with dead-on comedy timing and a generally upbeat, irreverent atmosphere.
Pop-Up Opera are famed for their choice of performance locations. I've seen them stage operas inside cocktail bars and antique shops, though they're also ventured into castles, vineyards and garlic farms. This production found them ensconced in the stygian depths of The Brunel Museum's Thames Tunnel shaft. I've visited this venue before, when it deeply tickled my history-lover's bone.
It's tricky to imagine a more dramatic entrance to a venue; from street level you climb down into a miniature concrete pit, then duck your head and shuffle forwards through a low concrete tunnel. You emerge about 40 feet in the air, perched atop a scaffold. Gingerly you make your way down to the floor, finding yourself in a huge cylindrical room below which the paradoxically named Overground periodically rumbles past.
Last time I was here it was packed with bizarre audiovisual art, the subterranean location making for an effectively grimy backdrop. So I was eagerly anticipating returning, especially for a company as consistently entertaining as Pop-Up Opera. Sadly, the venue didn't quite live to expectations. My primary problem is that while the shaft is an amazing place to explore, as a static backdrop it's essentially a large grey wall. This made it an austere viewing experience, somewhat at odds with the tasteless Vegas luxury in this adaptation.
But what the venue lacks in glitz it certainly makes up in acoustics. As the talented cast delicately, dynamically and expertly navigate Rossini's beautiful music. Each cast member carves their own niche in the material; be it the bitchy insecurity of Catrin Woodruff's Elvira, the suspicious primadonnaness of Helen Stanley's Isabella or, my favourite, the sheer bonkers eccentricity of Bruno Loxton's Mustafa. Everyone sounds amazing, the space reverberating and amplifying every note, leaving practically able to sense the soundwaves bouncing off the hard, curved walls.
It was about when Mustafa, caught up in the bizarre rhythms of 'pappatacci' fever, removes his trousers, dons a fluffy white fur coat and a Beatle wig, that I decided that this was the most loveably dopey thing I'd seen in a while. As Loxton marched up and down in his pants, uproariously booming his bass parts, I spotted a manic glint in his eye: performing this looks about as fun as it is to watch.
I said in my last review of Pop-Up Opera that it would be difficult to imagine anyone having a bad time at their shows. I stand by that; you could place this company in practically any location and a crowd would walk out smiling. That said, in this instance the location wasn't quite in harmony with the material. But hey, I can't deny that I enjoyed myself.
This much personality and talent assembled in one company means there's a bedrock of quality they cannot sink below. I always look forward to Pop-Up Opera: they haven't disappointed yet, and I don't anticipate them doing so any time soon.
★★★
Pop-Up Opera's L'italiana in Algeri is back at the Thames Tunnel Shaft on 2-3 July 2015, then at various locations around the country. Information and tickets here.
Friday, June 6, 2014
Friday, June 6, 2014
- 0 Comments
A Catered Affair is an odd duck of a musical. For one it's fiercely claustrophobic; the action taking place almost entirely within a run-down Bronx tenement inhabited by a small cast grappling with resolutely unglamorous domestic situations. Even the music is largely utilitarian, devoid of catchy choruses and upbeat numbers - functioning more as a vehicle for emotion than as anything to hum along to. Whereas musical theatre is generally a vehicle for fancy-free escapism, A Catered Affair shoots for social realism.
Adapted from Richard Brooks' 1956 film of the same name (written by Gore Vidal), starring the inestimable Ernest Borgnine and Bette Davis, this is a story of the postwar American working class and their struggle for middle-class respectability. The space above The Eel Brook becomes a crummy New York room which we share with four members of the Hurley family: middle-aged parents Aggie and Tom (Maggie Robson and Howard Samuels), their daughter Janey (Aimee Gray) and Uncle Winston, Aggie's brother.
The family spend their lives perched on the edge of a financial cliff, with Tom describing himself as "a man who finds dollars hard to come by". He drives a cab and scrabbles together enough money to save a few crumbs every month while keeping the family just above the breadline. Further adding to their woes is the recent death of their son in the Korean War, the family collectively suppressing their grief for each other's sake.
Kicking off the events of the play is Janey's impulsive decision to marry Ralph, an upper-middle class academic. All Janey wants is a visit to the registry office with her immediate family in attendance, followed by an idyllic cross-country honeymoon. Unfortunately everyone stickd their oar in on what they think a wedding should be and all too quickly the wedding plans balloon grotesquely. As halls are hired, limousines are booked, gourmet food is ordered and hungry relatives begin crawl from the woodwork the costs mount ("why blow twenty years of savings on one party!?") and pressures both emotional and financial begin to mount on the family.
 |
| Maggie Robson and Aimee Gray |
It's the kind of plot you'd be unsurprised to find cropping up on Coronation Street, and it's be commendable if only because of its clear-minded class consciousness. The financial problems these characters face are all too easy for a modern audience to sympathise with. Aggie and Tom suffer the problems of the 'Golden Generation', having weathered both the Great Depression and World War II. Now, in the early 1950s things are starting to look up for America and these characters are desperate for their bite of a very affluent apple.
My favourite scene was a small one that most deftly and sensitively lays bare the consequences of urban poverty. Janey asks her best friend to be her Maid of Honour, and she has to decline because she can't afford a dress. Even if she could she'd have to also buy matching shoes and obviously her husband would have to attend, which would mean the rental of a tuxedo - more money. Like a stone thrown into a pond the economic ramifications of decisions ripple outwards, straining the social fabric. In frustration Janey comments "It's only money!". It's testament to how well played this scene is that I actually cringed at the naivety and crassness of saying something like this to a woman for whom it's never only money.
All this political stuff chugs along in the background quite satisfyingly, and it's only when the material begins to deviate from this that problems begin to arise. It's not so much that there's any obvious problems with the performances (though the 'Noo Yoik' accents are often a bit wobbly), rather that Fierstein's adaptation is slightly creakily constructed. The emotional core of the play is the mirroring of the two central relationships, Tom and Aggie worried that their passionless marriage of convenience is a harbinger of what's to come for the deeply dippy teenage Janey and Ralph.
 |
| David Anthony as Uncle Winston |
Jammed into the middle of this is a neurotic gay uncle whose story feels largely extraneous. Part of the problem is that in a story with a tight and admirable focus on characters monetary woes he's ambiguously wealthy one minute and relegated to sleeping on a sofa the next. His main function appears to be to clown around on the periphery of scenes saying semi-outrageous things and throwing theatrical tantrums - a stark contrast to the buttoned-down realism of every other character. This comes at the cost of attention to Janey's fiance Ralph, who deserves more than the cursory character development he gets. He likes Janey and he wears glasses. That's about it.
Still, there are some fantastic scenes here, most of them courtesy of Howard Samuel's quietly sensitive father/husband Tom, a man with a face like an well worn shoe who spends the entirety of the play looking like he's nursing a mean hangover An obvious high point is the barnstorming I Stayed, a song which constantly threatens to tip over into melodrama but doesn't. There's an argument that A Catered Affair would function better as a play rather than a musical, but the agonising sung/yelled/wept catharsis of I Stayed single-handedly puts paid to that.
 |
| Howard Samuels as Tom Hurley |
In the confines of the space above The Eel Brook, this drama gains power purely from our proximity to it. Sitting in the front row I felt less as if I was watching their lives through a lens and more that I was a fly on the wall, involved yet invisible. A Catered Affair makes the most of the space, relying on us being able to spot the tics and grimaces across the character's faces - particularly in a fine bit of acting as Maggie Robson ecstatically dreams her perfect wedding. It's not exactly a toe-tapping showstopper of a musical (ask me to whistle a tune from it and I'd come up short) - but its heart and sympathies lie in the right place. A solid, compassioniate piece of theatre, but one which never quite reaches the exceptional.
A Catered Affair is produced by the London Theatre Workshop and performed at The Eel Brook, 65 New Kings Road, SW6 4SG
3 June – 20 June, 2014
20:00 – Tuesday to Saturday
16:00 – Saturday Matinees
20:00 – Tuesday to Saturday
16:00 – Saturday Matinees
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Thursday, December 19, 2013
- 0 Comments
American Psycho is a chaotic ocean of brand names, cocaine, pop, dissection, high finance and rape. As a window into the mind of a monster Bret Easton Ellis' 1991 novel is practically peerless, giving unflinching voice to the fucked up halfthoughts that gestate in best-ignored cobwebbed mental corners. Patrick Bateman has come to be understood as the physical manifestation of the 1980s; what happens when you take voracious and self-celebratory capitalism to its logical conclusion.
And now this monster is singing and dancing across the London stage wearing the face of one of the most loveable men on British television. There's an understandable worry that turning American Psycho into a musical is simply a gimmick, staged because they could, rather than because they should. This fear is dispelled from the first bar: the musical preoccupations, shallow surface style and focus on high fashion within the material making it perfect fit for what musicals do best. This interpretation, directed by Rupert Goold with lyrics written by Duncan Sheik, takes some visual inspiration from Mary Harron's 2000 film, but though both book, film and musical cover roughly the same ground they all come to different conclusions as to the true nature of Patrick Bateman, and by extension, the society that spawned him.
Patrick Bateman is a fascinating creature; sure he's a repulsive monster on every possible level but someone who reacts to 1980s yuppiedom with unhinged homicidal rage is acting out some rather universal revenge fantasies. As he raises the axe over a sedated co-workers head we tense in pleasure as we eagerly anticipate the a fleshy *thunk*; as he skullfucks the corpse of a prostitute we giggle with grand-guignol pleasure; as he pulls out a chainsaw and starts menacingly revving it, we eagerly look forward to see it slice through some vacuous yuppie or airhead material girl.
It's not that we're psychotic sadists but if we're not out for some blood, why are we watching American Psycho in the first place? The depravities in the book are probably only possible in print; the visions acted out in the reader's head far beyond anything a film-maker would dare to put on screen. In response to this "unfilmable book" Harron's movie stylised and toned down the gore, still rejoicing in the thrill of blood splattering against moisturised skin yet behaving with detached restraint. On stage liquid red stuff is almost entirely absent, replaced with stage-wide splashes of crimson light, the convulsions of dissected bodies translated into dance.
The high stylisation makes feel it okay to laugh, and so American Psycho the musical becomes a dark, bloody comedy in the vein of Sweeney Todd or Repo: The Genetic Opera. The construction of the songs underline this, mining a rich seam of humour with kung-fu quick forced rhymes causing ripples of laughter to spread through the theatre at the audacity of rhyming, for example, "Willy Loman" with "Times New Roman". This consciously clever wordplay works wonders tonally, maintaining an arch, somewhat ironic perspective on this extremely screwed up world.
Horrible it may be, but it's still a beautifully realised world. Decked out in ultra-slick 80s white, black and chrome minimalism highlighted with bright red blood, Bateman's apartment perfectly reflects him. It's a neatly modular setup that takes inspiration from Smeg furniture, scenery revolves smoothly, slats lift to reveal background characters and objects rise out of the floor. The white walls allow the projection of hallucinogenic city-scapes, ghastly rippling wallpaper and overbearingly bright colours. Often we're drowned in giant oceans of overpowering primary colour - the effect echoing the iconic look of Michael Mann's 80s output.
At the centre of this lyrical and technical virtuosity is Matt Smith's utterly magnetic Patrick Bateman. He's a markedly different beast from Christian Bale's interpretation, the differences arising primarily because of difference in format. There's a neat paradox at the heart of adapting American Psycho into a musical that this production both understands and exploits. When a character sings on stage they expressing their inner emotions and unvarnished feelings through song - even if a character is duplicitous and underhanded it's rare to have them sing in a way that misleads the audience. So how can Patrick Bateman, a character who is "simply not there" sing a song about his feelings?
The solution is to make this Patrick Bateman surprisingly sympathetic and the 1980s the real monster. Matt Smith's Patrick Bateman is a remarkably fragile creature: desperately trying to maintain the illusion of self-confidence, feverishly denying his latent homosexuality, scrabbling for something, anything that he can feel something about. He's a man scrabbling for an identity of his own and being denied any chance to express himself. He's trying his best to be GQ-man par excellence - loudly extolling the pleasures of conformity but when surrounded by his identikit 'friends' or mistaken for someone else he's obviously uncomfortable. It's not conformity Bateman is after: after all in the famous business card scene he doesn't want to fit in, he wants to stand out.
This search for an identity to set him apart from the rabble results in his crimes, frantically rummaging through the entrails of his victims to try and take something of them into himself. He lists off his serial killer heroes like most people name their favourite writers, desperate to join this pantheon of evil. The true horror in this American Psycho is when, after committing the worst atrocities he can imagine, Patrick Bateman realises that he now conforms better than before. Nobody gives a crap about his crimes and nobody gives a toss about his psychosis. This is the tragedy of Matt Smith's Bateman: though he denies it there is something human within that murderous carapace, it's society that sees nothing there.
With this, and the murders reduced to abstractions, this perversely makes Patrick Bateman the victim. We hear his mother wistfully recall the young Bateman singing and dancing, describing a child without a hint of menace. Bateman isn't a born monster, he's a made one - innocence corrupted by an overbearing culture of avarice, materialism and greed. His final punishment is to be sucked further into the quicksand, ending up as a trophy husband in a loveless marriage - Smith's face morose with despair as he numbly intones:
“Maybe you've been slaughtered / Maybe you've been kissed / Either way means nothing / I simply don't exist.”
In other adaptations his claim to not exist can be read as a kind of triumph, the character believing himself a Randian ubermensch who's conquered human emotions. Here it's a suicide note: the epitaph of a man resigned to a future devoid of joy. That said, he probably deserves it.
This is a remarkable dissection of the story, the musical format shedding fascinating new light on the character and more than distinguishing itself from both the source material and the 2000 film. There's a few rough edges to sand off, the low point of the show is Hugh Skinner's Luis - an overly broad John Inman-style gay stereotype. Yet on the whole this is a bloody triumph, the electro-pop tunes lyrically dazzling, the staging complimenting the 80s aesthetics and the performances hilarious, exaggerated and still somehow touching - the obvious highlight Matt Smith's brilliant Patrick Bateman.
If you go and hang around the Almeida Theatre around showtime I've got a suspicion that there's a more than decent chance you'd score an unclaimed seat. It's absolutely worth risking a wasted trip.
Friday, January 4, 2013
Friday, January 4, 2013
- 0 Comments
As Alex and his droogs first make their way onto the stage you'd be forgiven for having some reservations. Kubrick's iconic film lingers in the mind, and at first glance these guys look a little stage-y. They're lithe, twirling about the stage with the precise, mannered movements of a dancer. As they launch into a tightly choreographed dance-fight against Billyboy's gang my concerns grew. Everything looked a little fey, over mannered. Where was the blood, the pleasure in inflicting pain - the ultraviolence?
Soon after, someone's being raped with a broken bottle, and you begin to appreciate the raw power and and muscularity of the production, directed by Alexandra Spencer-Jones. This is helped, in large part by the gobsmackingly amazing performance of Martin McCreadie as Alex. Up until this point I'd assumed that it was almost impossible to play Alex as anything other than a spin on Malcolm McDowell . But McCreadie manages to encapsulate not only a genuinely threatening physical presence, but also a loveable impishness that shines through even when he's committing the most sadistic scenes of violence.
 |
| Martin McCreadie as Alex |
It's a difficult task finding the balance in Alex. He's our protagonist and much of the play's latter half relies on us having at least some sympathy with his plight, but then how are we to come to love a vicious little git "whose principle interests are rape, ultra-violence and Beethoven"? McCreadie's Alex, even in his most despicable moments, still somehow manages to keep a shred of charm. So when we see him bent double in pain, every muscle straining, sweat pouring down his face as he undergoes the Ludovico technique our sympathies remain with him. Sure he's a psychopath, but Alex makes a kind of sense as a reaction to his environment, a world of grotesque caricatures and the worst kinds of little-Englanders.
In some regards, McCreadie's Alex is more threatening and effective than McDowell's purely because you're in the same room as him. The Soho Theatre is not a particularly big space, and during his monologues Alex speaks directly to us. When he glares up at us with those
black-rimmed eyes, his body tense and coiled you feel a little involuntary
thrill of fear, rather than being separated from us by both a cinema screen and
40 years here is Alex DeLarge standing in front of you and it’s utterly
magnetic.
 |
| The Ludovico Technique |
The rest of the cast acquit themselves similarly well. They constantly change roles, as Alex's droogs they're petulant, sinuous and overtly sexual in a spidery way. I was surprised at how funny this adaptation was; many of these minor roles are played in an extremely exaggerated manner, at times approaching a sort of warped pantomime. While the play dips more and more into the absurd after Alex has been institutionalised, it never detracts from the more serious themes.
This adaptation brings the homoerotic elements of the text to the fore, intertwining them with the violence that Alex inflicts upon those around him. It's an overtly gay adaptation, featuring an all-male cast of buff men who spend an inordinate amount of time topless and sweaty. Everyone on stage is beautiful, something accentuated by the sharp makeup, styled hair and costumes seem designed to show off the actors muscles as they fight and fuck their way through the text. The play is so effective in making these homoerotic elements work that when we get to the scene where the success of Alex's aversion therapy is tested, the artfully posing man they send in is equally and obviously as valid an object of desire for Alex as any woman might be.
 |
| Magic Alex |
This cocktail of homoeroticism, violence and sadomasochism is more reminiscent of Andy Warhol's adaptation of 'A Clockwork Orange': 'Vinyl' than anything Kubrick came up with. In Warhol's (incredibly loose) adaptation we see our young protagonist stripped to the waist and whipped while forced to watch violent movies that are described to us rather than shown directly. This play uses a similar device, describing horrific imagery to us rather than showing it directly. It's a clever device, one which forces us to become complicit in the Ludovico technique. As the cast recite graphic descriptions of atrocities we cannot help but visualise them ourselves, creating our own miniature horrorshows far worse than anything they could reasonably get away with on stage.
This production keeps things relevant, and when the text fortuitously references young people rioting in London, it neatly links us to a modern equivalent of Alex's behaviour. Watching disaffected, masked youths smashing in the windows of high street shops and taking what they want is utterly terrifying, but on a symbolic level it's a kind of catharsis The text of 'A Clockwork Orange' is in no danger of entirely losing its edge, but tapping into this modern mixture of fear and anarchistic thrills helps make 'A Clockwork Orange' seem less fantastic and more contemporary.
Another similarity to Warhol's 'Vinyl' is a great pop soundtrack, something that helps anchor this production in the modern day; for example, rather than a violent beating being soundtracked to 'Singin' in the Rain', we get 'Standing in the Way of Control' by Gossip. Later we get scenes set to the Scissor Sisters and Placebo. It adds a level of recognisably camp deviance to proceedings, these are things a modern audience can readily identify with, dragging us further into the world this staging of 'A Clockwork Orange' creates.
So if this production is so desperate to bring 'A Clockwork Orange' into the modern day, what does it actually have to say about modern youth? I don't think there is a convincing modern analogue for the Ludovico technique, but the notion of a government happy to employ those who enjoy inflicting violence rings true. After Alex's release he bumps into his former droogs, now gainfully employed as policemen. As they sadistically kick Alex in the guts it brings to mind the self righteous uniformed killers of Jean Charles de Menezes and Ian Tomlinson.
 |
| Milk+ |
This production uses the original (and somewhat more optimistic) ending of the book. We see an older Alex with a new trio of droogs (all ominously wearing hoodies), but we see that he's begun to outgrow his taste for violence. The text rejects forcing a morality upon others, and shows us that a greater sense of maturity naturally leads to a decline in desire for violence. He introduces us to his new partner and seems genuinely in love, ready to move towards a tentatively brighter future. As a epilogue I've always felt it was a bit unnecessary. Seeing a grown-up, matured Alex makes him seem a bit neutered, as if his impulses and actions were 'merely' growing pains. I prefer the implication at the end of the US version of the book and Kubrick's film, that Alex is less an expression of teenage angst and more something endemic to humanity, a dark, violent thing that lurks on the edges of our collective consciousness.
It's a tremendous production, one of the most compelling I've seen on stage in a long time. It sustains a fast-paced, muscular intensity throughout, and the overtly erotic elements create a compelling link between sexual urges and to the desire to inflict violence. The whole thing is held together by a god-damn amazing performance by Martin McCreadie, who brings Alex DeLarge to terrifying life in front of our eyes. If it goes on tour, make sure to go and see it as it's finishing up in the Soho Theatre tomorrow.
'A Clockwork Orange' is on 4th and 5th of January at The Soho Theatre, London, returns only.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
