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Showing posts with label Nell Hardy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nell Hardy. Show all posts
Monday, November 30, 2020
Monday, November 30, 2020
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NoMad reviewed by David James
Rating: 
I've been a fan of Nell Hardy for some time. Way back in 2016 I saw her in the title role of Pandemonium Performance's promenade production of Alice in Wonderland in Abney Park Cemetary. She blew my socks off and since then I've tried to see her in as much as possible, as whatever 'it' is, she's got it.
So when I was invited to a stream of her one-woman monologue, NoMad there was no way I was passing it up. I'm not sure what I was expecting from Hardy, but a blistering and brutally honest monologue about her own experiences with homelessness, institutionalisation and mental health wasn't it.
Over the course of an hour and a bit, Hardy guides us through the nightmare of processed through a juddering and underfunded social care system intentionally designed to grind those caught in it to dust. NoMad focuses on mental health treatment, making it sound like a sadistic game of snakes and ladders, albeit one with loaded dice, too many snakes and maybe one creaky ladder. But hey, at least being an inpatient means you get food, heat and a bed...
The most vivid and well-realised moments come when Hardy is explaining the physical effects of homelessness. There's the misery of getting rained on: cold and wet clothes freezing you down to the bone and no prospect of getting properly dry anytime soon; the crinkle of an unwashed, overworn sock inside a shoe that hasn't been taken off in days and a vivid recounting of how it feels to have to piss and shit outdoors.
It's in that last one that Hardy achieves something of the sublime. Much of NoMad is about a sustained assault on her sense of self and the destruction of her ego. Here, in what passes for one of the more light-hearted sequences of the show, she compares herself to a dog - both of them having a piss out in the open. It feels entirely apt, a nice summation of how homelessness erodes away human specialness as divine creatures and reduces you to a deterministic biological machine.
I went into NoMad with respect for Hardy as an actor - and left with a mild sense of awe her writing skills. Prior to this, I'd assumed she was just 'yer typical talented drama school graduate making her way through London fringe theatre scene - but there's admirable sense of purpose and precision in this writing that you simply don't encounter that often.
Plus, while the text is light on explicitly referencing politics, it's difficult to read it as anything other than a condemnation of austerity. Though it might not be mentioned by name, the degradation of care systems, the suffering baked into benefits applications and the ease with which it's possible to fall through the cracks into homelessness are all symptoms of the economic snake oil that's killed hundreds of thousands and inflicted unnecessary pain on millions more.
I'm not saying loading every Conservative politician into some kind of gigantic rocket and firing it into the heart of the sun would have actually solved any of Hardy's problems, but it certainly couldn't hurt to try.
The only flaws of note here are technical. With COVID having effectively shut down fringe theatre I've resisted reviewing plays that have been streamed online. One of the reasons I enjoy theatre so much is the visceral sense of occupying the same space as the performer, which vanishes when you're experiencing a show on video.
While NoMad's minimalist staging and soundscape probably work quite well when you're physically present in the audience, it doesn't on video. And, putting my technical hat on for a moment, especially not on incredibly low bit-rate video that constantly stutters, judders and freezes, and where the sound breaks mid-way through (thank God for automated YouTube subtitling).
But it's a testament to the quality of the show that it hits as hard as it does even with one hand tied behind its back. Watching NoMad made me positively itch to get back into a theatre - here's hoping 2021 sees this get a proper run as it deserves as much attention as it can get.
Thursday, June 13, 2019
Thursday, June 13, 2019
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She's there for me last thing at night and first thing in the morning. Throughout the day she's got my back, and ensures there's never a dull moment. She knows all my deepest secrets and darkest desires, has infinite patience to deal with the dull minutia of day-to-day life and knows the answer to every question. She even comes to the bathroom with me, where I can idly play Sonic the Hedgehog on her glistening glass face.
You've probably worked out by now that I don't have some creepy mechanical slave-woman tending to my every need: I'm talking about my phone. Much has been made of our increasing reliance to technology, and now Michael Ellis' To Drone In The Rain takes it to the creepy logical conclusion.
Set in a near future "where phones, laptops and all other technological services have become obsolete", we meet Tom (Michael Benbaruk). He's socially anxious to the point where the notion of human interaction makes him vomit into a bucket and appears to have some kind of psychosomatic condition that confines him to a wheelchair. He spends his days inside a Kubrickian monochrome studio apartment, delivering bespoke adventures to anonymous clients via a webcam.
He's taken care of by Drone Girl 9.1.13 (Nell Hardy), who is a combination of best friend, nurse, secretary, therapist and mother. We understand that this state of affairs is the norm, human beings retreating to isolation in favour of letting their android assistants interact with the world on their behalf. This extends as far as sending your Drone out to flirt with other Drones in the hope of finding love - presumably the understanding is that if two Drones get along then their owners will too.
Within this setup 9.1.13 realises that despite being programmed to care for Tom, her round-the-clock care is gradually infantilising him. He's increasingly childlike and demanding, relying on her for the simplest tasks and refusing to take responsibility for his actions. Plus there's the hunky and rebellious Drone Boy (Lino Facioli), who is offering 9.1.13 freedom from Tom and a new life where she calls the shots.
By far the most compelling part of the play is watching Tom slowly descend into helplessness as 9.1.13 struggles to work out what to do. We sense that Tom's social anxiety is a product of the insular society he lives in: he's perfectly capable of imagining detailed flights of fancy outside his apartment but utterly incapable of living them himself. And the more he's indulged by 9.1.13 the further he slides into helplessness. Michael Benbaruk plays this downward spiral very nicely, gradually minimising Tom's positive points and accentuating his flaws. This eventually leaves him as a pathetic caricature of a man - a mewling, diaper-shitting, alcoholic monster.
But the real heart of the play is Nell Hardy's 9.1.13. I've long been a fan of the laser-focused physical and psychological intensity Hardy brings to her roles and she doesn't disappoint here. The smartest decision the play makes is avoiding making this android character a sci-fi stereotype. The traditional way to write this type of character would be to focus on her grappling with strange human emotions and acting stiffly and awkwardly, like Data from Star Trek.
But, perhaps with the Tyrell Corporation slogan "More Human Than Human" in mind, 9.1.13 is totally emotionally literate and fully capable of philosophically comprehending her place in the world. Hardy plays this very nicely, threading the needle of her character realising her devotion might be poisonous. That's not to say that this character is indistinguishable from a human: Hardy moves with precision and power, striking stylised poses that reminded me of catwalk models.
But 9.1.13 being by far the interesting character in the play is the root of my problem with it. Beyond the science fiction trappings, you can understand this is the story of a man and a woman. As such, it's more than a bit regressive to see a story about a loser guy dragging down a woman concluding with the woman sacrificing herself for his benefit. By this point in the story our sympathy for Tom has evaporated - so seeing him shuffle off into the sunset wearing a cowboy hat leaves a sour taste in the mouth.
I guess the fact that I cared about these characters fates means that something is working here: though I suspect it's the strength of the performances rather than some woolly writing. To Drone In The Rain is a smart bit of science fiction and has a neat hook, but could use a bit of editing and tweaking to accentuate its positive qualities.
To Drone In The Rain is at the Tristan Bates Theatre until 15th June. Tickets here.
Friday, July 14, 2017
Friday, July 14, 2017
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Turns out there's a good reason the Brothers Grimm weren't the Brothers Cheery. Grimm's Fairy Tales finds Pandemonium Performance in Abney Park Cemetery, their old stalking ground. Within this overgrown labyrinth, we find characters both familiar and stranges. Pandemonium, like many before them, are trying to un-Disney these nursery rhymes and children's tales. Gone are the chirruping animal companions the jaunty songs and the super happy endings.
What's left are dire warnings about the cruelty and unfairness of the world, designed to prepare wide-eyed innocents for a life of drudgery speckled with misery, with a predator around every corner and where a happy ending is probably just wishful thinking. This is underlined by the magnificent backdrop of dead Victorians, looming stone angels and crooked gravestones that, in the summer twilight, begin to resemble rows of crooked teeth.
Pandemonium adapts four stories: Rumplestiltskin, Red Riding Hood, Hansel & Gretel and The Godfather. Paul Lingham, writing and directing, approaches them with a sadistic irreverence. The performers are constantly breaking the fourth wall to light-heartedly menace any children in the audience and making little satirical asides that fly over their heads. And so, for just over an hour, we wander the arteries of the cemetery, getting a glimpse of what it might really be like to be lost deep in the woods.
The show neatly captures this nervous chaos, with characters like Rob Cumming's Wolf and Stephanie Christian's cannibal Witch making us feel as if we've walked off the familiar path and found ourselves somewhere different and dangerous.
The feeling of dislocation peaks with the final story, The Godfather. This lesser known Grimm story involves a father unable to support his large family, so decides to entrust his thirteenth child to the Grim Reaper. Death raises the child, whose ability to see how long people have left to live makes him become a successful doctor. The moral of the fable is the inevitability and unpredictable nature of death, that you might feel a cold, bony hand touch your shoulder at any moment of the day and there's nothing you can do about it.
At the show I attended were a bunch of under tens who kept an eye on to see if they were enjoying themselves. They spent most of the show nervously excited (there was one great moment where, after The Huntswoman had slain the Wolf, a six-year-old spotted that his chest was still moving and exclaimed in surprise "It's not real! He's still breathing!"). However, in this finale they looked genuinely frightened - with Steve Fitzgerald's quietly sinister Death (with a taxidermied snake coiled around his top hat) even sending a shiver up my spine.
Okay fine, kids have to realise that they're going to end up as worm food at some point, but this being the finale of a show feels a bit like a theatrical sucker punch and is destined to lead to some sleepless nights/kiddie existential dread. I'm far from an advocate for all happy endings all the time, but perhaps concluding with the (relatively) cheerier Hansel & Gretel might have left us with some better vibes.
Despite that, Grimm's Fairy Tales is destined to lodge in the memory. I've seen a bunch of shows in Abney Park Cemetery now, and repetition has not dulled the power of the place. This production is especially notable for allowing us inside the skeletal chapel at the centre of the park. Formerly open to the elements but now newly roofed, it's an intensely cool place, so much so that the weather-beaten stones vie for attention with the play.
Pandemonium Performance are onto a winner here, their skewed adaptation making the familiar unfamiliar by resurrecting the dark, medieval origins of the tales. The cast gives it their all, with Nell Hardy's Hansel a particular highlight (her zombie-like eating is particularly horrifying) You can really sense the weight of history in the characters, get a taste of the power of myth and understand what W.H. Auden was on about when he described the work of the Brothers Grimm as "one of the founding works of Western culture".
One caveat - if you're thinking of bringing any particular sensitive children along I might give it a miss, unless you want to deal with a worried voice piping up on the ride home: "Mummy, when is Death going to come for me?"
Grimm's Fairy Tales is at Abney Park Cemetery until 30th July, with multiple shows per day. Tickets and details here.
Friday, April 7, 2017
Friday, April 7, 2017
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There's a strange forced jollity to The AC Group's Macbeth. Sure, the foreground is 'yer usual parade of ambition, violence, guilt and madness but in the background people strut around with instruments, strumming out jaunty tunes that at first seem at odds with the Thane of Glamis' bloody ascent to the throne of Scotland. They play as if they know everything is rotten, but maybe if they can just sustain the party long enough everything will work out okay.
It's an uneasy interpretation suited to our uneasy times. You sense that the servants and musicians of King Macbeth's court are fully aware that their new leader is lapsing into paranoid delusion, and are trying to figure out at what point they should abandon ship and save their own skins. I imagine this situation to be playing out in the White House right now.
Macbeth has always been one of the most accessible Shakespeare plays - the witches, scheming and bloody murders entertaining 2017 audiences as much as they did the groundlings of 1606. It's a narrative that can sustain a remarkable amount of streamlining and has at its core a juicy philosophical pondering on prophecy: did the Weird Sister's message to Macbeth spell out an unavoidable future or did they kick off a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Here we see a trimmed down, two hour production that whistles energetically through the narrative, produced with a obvious focus on emphasising physical movement and adding texture through live music. William Ross-Fawcett's Macbeth is an appropriately frayed, proud man who, nonetheless, finds himself on a murderous path and feels duty-bound to see it to its end. Amelia Clay's Lady Macbeth is a sleek, stylish creature - almost but not quite able to suppress her humanity and falling apart in effectively moving fashion. Both are deliver their lines in a Scottish accent- which you might think would be a given in 'the Scottish play', but in my experience is actually rather rare.
They both deliver competent, moving performances but for my money the best of the show comes in the supporting cast, each of whom plays multiple roles. Gabrielle Nellis-Pain, primarily playing Malcolm (but also a Witch and Macbeth's assassin), has a slightly hoarse throat, but makes it work for her: a strained voice is entirely appropriate given what these characters are going through. Nell Hardy as MacDuff (and another Witch) is a performance it's difficult to tear your eyes away from. Hardy was the best thing in Pandemonium Productions' Alice in Wonderland and Fear of the Dark, and her angular body language and striking physical presence communicate precisely as much as her dialogue does.
There's a clear drive for austerity in Thomas Attwood's direction and Reuben Speed's stage design. There's no scenery save for a couple of gauze sheets and hardly any props. This has mixed results. On one hand the existing architecture of the Brockley Jack's theatre quietly evokes a medieval hall in miniature - on the other (what I'm guessing is) a restricted budget saps impact from key moments.
So, swords and daggers are replaced with Stanley knives, which look too small on stage to properly intimidate. The final act swordfights eschew weapons completely, with the actors apparently instructed to do faux-martial arts. Though the actors commit to this, it's doesn't really look like the characters really want to kill one another. Similarly, it's a really small thing, but when MacDuff tosses what's supposed to be the severed head of Macbeth onto the stage it's clearly just a light ball of rags. I want the weight of the head to thump onto the stage - a grisly full stop to the chaos.
It leaves The AC Group's Macbeth as a compelling theatrical experience that never bores, yet teeters on the edge of real quality. A couple of nips and tucks - or simply better props - and this'd be a worthy mini Shakespeare. As it is it's 'merely' good.
Macbeth is at the Brockley Jack until 22 April. Tickets here.
Thursday, July 21, 2016
Thursday, July 21, 2016
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It's 151 years since Alice's Adventures in Wonderland exploded into the public consciousness and its popularity shows no signs of diminishing. Alice is everywhere - popping up in various forms on screen and stage, referenced in politics, science, music, fashion, mathematics, comics and videogames. Given her frequent changes in size, this malleability is all too appropriate - Alice able to translate to damn near any medium mankind can invent.
Pandemonium Performance's Alice in Wonderland is a fairly straightforward, Victorian tinged adaptation that hews pretty closely to the original text. A promenade piece presented as a series of vignettes, we follow Alice as she encounters all the familiar favourites, ending with her capital trial in front of the bloodthirsty Red Queen.
So far, so typically Alice. What sets this production apart from the rest is the scenery. Abney Park Cemetery is one of London's secret treasures: a real-life Wonderland tucked away in Stoke Newington. One of the 'magnificent seven' cemeteries of the 1830s and 40s, Abney Park is a garden of the dead, populated by morose and mossy angels and the mouldering skeletons of Londoners past.
On top of that is that the entire park is fetchingly overgrown. Visitors walk through paths carved into the dense undergrowth, all but the first row of graves receding into a tangled green emptiness. The effect is striking; monuments to death the bedrock for a chaotic, explosion of natural life: vines encircling tombstones, air thick with insects, trees creating a canopy above our heads. There's a pleasant feeling that you're somewhere you shouldn't be, coupled with a hint of danger (it's doesn't hurt that, somewhere in the thicket, lies an unexploded Luftwaffe bomb...)
Setting Alice here is an instant winner, a brilliant realisation of the dreamily surreal qualities of Carroll's story. Here, Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee battle atop crumbling graves; the Caterpillar puffs leisurely from atop a music hall performers last memorial and the Mad Hatter's table is a flat tomb-top. The omnipresence of death gives proceedings an appropriately gothic tinge, something played up when Alice asks a shy eight year old "who lives here?", receiving the response "dead people", to which she reacts with mock horror.
This Alice would squeak into 'success' purely through location, but the performances cement its quality. Interestingly, the show is divided into two halves, red and black. Each mirrored half has its own cast and locations, though we begin as one and eventually meet for the finale.
I was on the black side, with Nell Hardy as Alice. Accompanying her were Sara Lynam, Caitlin McMillan, Steve Fitzgerald and Luke Willats, all of whom cycle rapidly between roles, sometimes even within scenes. The five bristle with talent, clearly delineating their roles and tiptoeing the line between funny and scary.
Particular praise must go to Fitzgerald's Cheshire Cat - the performer's toothy grin and skinny build is a perfect fit for the character, not to mention his faintly feral mannerisms and vocalisms. Also excellent is Lynam's homicidally imperious Red Queen, her performance precisely tuned to underline her haughtiness, joy in power and cracked regality.
It's a cavalcade of excellence, but sitting at the top is Nell Hardy's Alice. Bone-skinny, with piercing eyes and calculatedly angular body language. She's believably child-like in her reactions, her unvarnished snorts of laughter and indignant reactions to illogical weirdness. But beneath that you sense something wild, untameable and powerful in her, despite the parade bizarre nightmare figures, we come to see the little girl Alice as the most dangerous creature in Wonderland.
It's a hell of a performance in a hell of a show, one clearly enjoyed by adults and children alike. Setting Alice in Abney Park just feels right - though the story has aged beautifully, the characters are at home surrounded the graves of the Victorian dead. Pandemonium Productions have tapped into a wellspring of historical, psychological atmosphere, not to mention the sheer aesthetic beauty of the Abney Park setting.
In these roasting days, when the sun dips lazily in the sky things become woozily indistinct,. It's the perfect time for Alice. Check it out!
★★★★
Alice in Wonderland is at Abney Park until 31 July. Tickets here.
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