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Showing posts with label Here Lies Love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Here Lies Love. Show all posts
Friday, December 26, 2014
Friday, December 26, 2014
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Whenever the big yearly theatre awards swing around I always a get a bit befuddled. Half the plays nominated I've never even heard of, and the winners tend to be things I thought stunk up the place. This is a symptom of living in a city with upwards of a hundred theatres, not just the big plastercast and chandelier glitz palaces of the West End, but the sweatboxes above pubs, tucked into the basements of shops and the very streets of London itself. Once again I've seen an awful lot this year, but here's my favourites:
HONOURABLE MENTIONS
'The Picture of John Gray' at the Old Red Lion Theatre, 8th August 2014
While watching The Picture of John Gray I assumed it was a revival of some unjustly forgotten classic. I was blown away when I later learned that this was the first staging of a new work by C.J. Willmann. Emulating the cut and thrust conversations of late Victorian aesthetes is a tricky prospect, much less interweaving a genuinely touching love story and interrogation of hedonism versus Christianity. That script, coupled with a confident cast and intelligent staging, made for a total triumph. Best of it, it spurred me on to learn more about the people featured within, a gaggle of people with outstanding biographies.
'King Charles III' at the Wyndham's Theatre, 13th December 2014
That a play so virulently anti-monarchy can be released to wide acclaim in 2014 warms the cockles of my heart. Merely voicing suspicions of the monarchy makes you feel like a social pariah, let alone advocating their safe, smooth but quick removal from power. Their laminated, rubbery faces peer from the front of every magazine, every new familial development greeted with hushed deference from the media. I shudder when I see the submissive masses furiously tugging their forelocks at the neverending cycle of weddings, jubilees and births.
Yet in the midst of all this Mike Bartlett's King Charles III reminds us that a) these people are morons, b) they're a medieval anachronism and c) the Royal family are a potential political catastrophe. I was all a-quiver with enjoyment from minute one until the curtain fell; a play that may as well have been made for me.
'Cans' at Theatre 503, 7th November 2014
One major advantage theatre has over other narrative forms is the intensification of emotions. Obviously it's possible to be moved by television and cinema, but when you have a living human being being put through the emotional wringer mere feet from you, their tears glistening under stage lights, it's so much more visceral. This is further magnified when a playwright chooses to probe an open wound, in Cans' case the tendency of popular radio personalities to rape and abuse their way through their fans.
Stuart Slade even takes the difficult path through this subject, examining the limits of sympathy and empathy by showing us the impact of a destroyed reputation on the DJ's family members. Both Jennifer Clement and Graham O'Mara knocked their roles out of the park. A bold play that successfully picks its way through a figurative minefield. My kinda stuff.
WINNER
'Here Lies Love' at the National Theatre, 17th October 2014
Given my twin love of both Talking Heads and chunky dance beats, it is unsurprising that I dug Here Lies Love right down to its molten core. This is a musical like few others, less a passive experience and more like you're attending the greatest party on earth. The songs are upbeat, the costumes are dynamic and the performers simply sweat charisma. The performance space roughly simulates being in a nightclub, the audience either looking down on the dancefloor or right in the midst of things being bumped by elbows and catching the eyes of the pretty person dancing next to you. It's an intoxicating vibe.
Offsetting these good times is that Here Lies Love tells the story of Imelda Marcos, an egomaniacal monster who exploited the peoples of the Philippines, living a life of luxury while the people starved. But Byrne doesn't so much show us her life as try and seduce us into it, the show roughly emulating the amphetamine rush of living within a neverending party where anything flies. It's equivalent to Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street in condemning behaviour while showing it as enjoyable - but where Scorsese just lets us watch his wild parties, Byrne lets us dance, drink and lust away with Imelda. It's ace and it's still on in the National. If you dig cool theatre you've got to check it out!
Saturday, October 25, 2014
Saturday, October 25, 2014
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Surprise surprise the musical by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim is absolutely fantastic. It's not as if iconic musicians haven't come unstuck in heading towards musical theatre before, but let's face it, if anyone is going to make a goddamn amazing musical about the corrupting influence of materialism, it's David Byrne (with Fatboy Slim more than capable of supplying some cool beats).
Here Lies Love is a musical biography of Imelda Marcos, widow of Phillippine President Ferdinand Marco. Beginning as a 'simple country girl' sleeping on boxes in the garages of Tacloban she claws her way towards opulence on the back of her rmarriage. From its beginnings as a populist movement led by a war hero their regime gradually slides towards authoritarian tyranny, with Imelda effectively ruling the country in the 1980s. Eventually the situation becomes untenable, concluding with the peaceful 'People Power Revolution' of 1986 that forced the Marcoses to flee the country by helicopter. Following her departure the poor of Manila ransack the palace, famously discovering her gargantuan shoe collection.
Them's the facts, so how do they work as a musical? At the core of Byrne's vision is the idea of experiencing history in a nightclub. The audience are everywhere; gazing down at events from high above the stage or standing around a transformable stage. The cast move in and around us, at times hugging us and incorporating us into their choreography. This constant motion gives the show a unique energy; seducing us with the extravagance of the Marcos lifestyle.
Musically this is firmly, fiercely and religiously pop inclined. The show has rightly been described as a 'poperetta', stuffed full of gossamer light synth beats, booty-shaking disco bass and catchy choruses that all but beg to be sung along to (and we do). Obvious highlights are the recurring title track, Here Lies Love (which gets its title from what Imelda wants engraved on her tomb), We Are The People of the Philippines and the climactic Why Don't You Love Me? All the songs are covered in Byrne's distinctive lyrical fingerprints - it's all too easy to hear his voice in this music, no matter who's singing them.
There's a risk that translating the life of Imelda Marcos into super fun happy disco times would trivialise her crimes against the people of Manila. After all, underneath all the shoes, fur coats, haute couture and partying lies torture, despotism and corruption. Here Lies Love is even broadly sympathetic to Imelda, though the triumphant climax involves her being unceremoniously booted from the country, her panicked lack of comprehension renders her more pathetic than outright evil.
Instead, Here Lies Love shows how the understandable desire to escape poverty becomes monstrous when taken to its logical conclusion. The young Imelda is practically a Disney heroine in her misery, singing pleasant little ballads about how she's the flower in a ruined world, she's practically Cinderella. Imelda gets her fairytale ending about a third of the way through the play, winning the heart of not only her dashing Prince Charming but of the people. Here Lies Love is about the consequences of living out your fantasy life.
Money is the root of all evil, and once the addiction of materialism has gotten its hooks into this poor country girl she begins a metamorphosis that's the equal of anything Kafka or Cronenberg put out. This is as much a visual transformation as it is a narrative one; after beginning the show in a simple, white peasant dress with her hair loosely around her shoulders she begins to become angular and insectoid. Her hair tightens into a hard beehive, her outfits harden into a chitinous carapace of iridescent green with wing-like fins - even her features seem to grow harsher under the high-contrast stage lighting.
We can almost see the humanity draining from Imelda as the show goes on, the innocent peasant systematically replaced by the legendary 'steel butterfly'. This steady transformation is contrasted with the unchanging innocence of Estrella, her childhood friend. The unsettling conclusion is that there's nothing unique or special about Imelda the person; rather that she threw herself into a machine that warps people into monsters.
So Here Lies Love functions as a broadside against the precise kind of fun we're having so much of. When we jiggle our asses to Fatboy Slim's eminently danceable beats, become drunk on the elaborate stagecraft and marvel at the astonishing costumes we're proving ourselves susceptible to the same temptations that created this supreme villainess of shoes.
Of course this is very much having your cake and eating it. Here Lies Love is one of the most joyous musical experiences I've had all year. And therein lies a paradox. Audiences skip and boogie out of the stage door, pumped up for more partying and humming the show's eminently hummable tunes - on their own individualistic paths to awfulness. It's a sensation that leaves you giddy and queasy in equal measure.
Be sure to experience it for yourself.
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