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Showing posts with label Pleasance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pleasance. Show all posts
Thursday, May 9, 2019
Thursday, May 9, 2019
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The consensus is in: everything is terrible. The headlines on any given day talk of environmental catastrophe, political paralysis, the rise of the far right and technology having broken our brains. What can an individual do in the face of all that?
That's the question at the heart of Grace Chapman's Don't Look Away. Set in 2015, the play is about the complex relationship between Syrian asylum seeker Adnan (Robert Hannouch), middle-aged cleaner Cath (Julia Barrie) and her student son Jamie (Brian Fletcher).
We open with Adnan's first moments in the UK, walking into a Bradford community centre to try and claim asylum. He encounters Cath and, after a mutually suspicious exchange, she offers him a bed at hers for the night. This soon turns into a permanent arrangement, with Adnan occupying Cath's absent son Jamie's bedroom as the Home Office processes his asylum claim. But things become complicated when Jamie unexpectedly returns from university.
Each character then spends the play wobbling along individual moral tightropes. Cath must juggle her responsibilities as a mother against a moral compass telling her to help Adnan much as she can. Adnan is stuck in legal limbo until his claim is processed and fears he is a freeloader, while becoming increasingly paranoid about family members left behind in Calais. Jamie is peeved that Adnan is usurping his mother's affections and is selfishly concerned about his financial drain on the family.
Cath's cramped flat ends up as a political microcosm of the country. We know the moral thing is to help those fleeing their destroyed country, but what (if any) are the limits to which we can assist? Could said help end up stoking resentment and potentially make the situation worse? These aren't questions with easy answers, and Don't Look Away's choice to leave its narrative open-ended is probably a smart one. The heart of all this is summarised by Jamie's rant that his mother's help is like:
"Throwing a punch at a tidal wave. It's not going to make it stop or slow down. It's just going to engulf you and me until there's nothing left."
But while Don't Look Away provides a lot of political and moral fat to chew on, there are a number of deficiencies that cause it to stumble. Prime among them is that Adnan isn't particularly plausible, particularly in the early scenes when he's just arrived in the country. Here he's presented as a goofy slapstick moron, bizarrely attempting to claim asylum from a woman cleaning a community centre. He's a refugee, not an idiot.
This is compounded by Hannouch's performance, which pinballs between emotions so rapidly it's difficult to get a read on the character. That the play can't quite get Adnan right leaves the character as a mere catalyst for the mother/son conflict between Cath and Jamie. This is unfortunate, and while I can understand why the story is told from Cath's perspective it'd have been far more powerful seeing all this through Adnan's eyes.
On top of that, it's a fairly straightforwardly staged and naturalistic play on an abstract set. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but more realistic set design could have helped amplify the claustrophobia that the script seems to want to create.
Don't Look Away has its heart in the right place and is only going to get more relevant. As the effects of climate change ramp up we're going to see an increasing number of refugees fleeing countries that have descended into chaos due to famines and drought. The issues presented here are ones that we should all grapple with. But sadly, as a play, it's lacking.
Don't Look Away is at The Pleasance until 18 May. Tickets here.
Thursday, May 2, 2019
Thursday, May 2, 2019
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Reviewed by David James
Rating:
Who would have thought a play about an eccentric inventor constructing a bear-proof suit would be so depressing? Fledgling Theatre's Neck or Nothing (co-written and directed by Christopher Neels and Callum Cameron) is loosely based on the life of Canadian inventor Troy Hurtubise, most famous for his appearance in Peter Lynch's 1996 documentary Project Grizzly. That film followed Hurtubise as he constructed his "Ursus Mark VI", an impregnable suit of armour that would allow him to research wild bears up close without them being able to harm him.
Neck or Nothing transplants this story to England, where Hurtubise analogue Jens (James Murfitt) lives in a village with his wife Martha (Katy Daghorn) and brother Frank (David North). Martha and Frank believe in Jens' talent and support his inventing, sure that one day all his tinkering will pay off. The play commences with the family finances becoming strained, with Frank informing Jens that if he's going to make it big now is the time.
And so, with a declaration that he works best under pressure, Jens launches into a project to make an invulnerable bear-proof suit of armour. Sure, it's pointed out that there are no wild bears in England, but who can really say for sure? Meanwhile, he continues to bleed money, with the pressure beginning to stack up on his wife and brother.
It's a curious tale of ambition, talent and delusion - a man obsessed with a task that everyone around him can see is completely pointless. But who wants to be the person to step on someone's dreams?
Neck or Nothing quickly defies expectations that it's going to be a screwball tale about a mad inventor. Instead, we get a fairly complex take on modern masculinity. Throughout the play there's an impressive digital video display by Rachel Sampley that edits together footage from 80s action films, with clips from RoboCop and The Terminator mirroring Jens' desire to become an invincible metal man. We also repeatedly see footage from Rocky from the iconic training sequence of his run through Philadelphia, which demonstrates how Jens wants to be thought of by his small community.
Bubbling underneath all this is that growing realisation that something very bad happened to Jens as a child. He claims to have been menaced by a bear in the woods as a child, but as there are no bears in the UK it seems depressingly logical that something extremely traumatising happened to him at a young age that he cannot process. As the play points out: you can build a suit that renders you impervious to physical harm, but there's no armour that stops existential dread getting in.
Jens' (and by extension Troy Hurtubise's) story makes for an interesting lens to view masculinity through: men who believe they can engineer their way out of their psychological problems rather than confront them. It's notable that the play is supporting men's mental health charity CALMzone, which if nothing else it demonstrates their sincerity.
But the core story of Jens trying and failing to work through his trauma is so effective that when the focus shifts to the other characters the play suffers. Katy Daghorn is very good as Martha, showing off her talents in an excellent job interview scene that nicely summarises that sinking feeling when you realise you've set your expectations too high. But as good as this scene is, it and her story don't add a huge amount to the play. Cutting a scene as well written performed as the job interview would be a tough call, but the play suffers when the subject of the scene isn't Jens and his invention.
Similarly, there are moments where the comedy and sincerity don't gel together as well as they should. I've got no problem with a bit of tonal whiplash, but occasionally thoughtful moments are punctured by a joke that doesn't quite land (and vice versa).
But Neck or Nothing is a nicely turned out and engaging show. Special credit must go to Sophia Pardon's bear-proof suit of armour, which has a wonderful silhouette and a neat Blue-Peterish design aesthetic. Perhaps it could stand to be trimmed down to a neat festival-pleasing hour rather than the 85-90 minutes it currently runs at, but what's here is good stuff.
Neck or Nothing is at The Pleasance until 4th May. Tickets here.
Thursday, October 18, 2018
Thursday, October 18, 2018
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Running is one of my favourite things in the world. Whether it be half marathons with the family, long cross-country runs through pretty locations or the occasional ultra test of physical and mental strength - it's all very much my bag. It's one of the few times in life where you're doing something you can't be distracted from - and where there are no excuses for failure.
So I got a lot out of Grace Chapman's It's Not a Sprint, a one-woman show in which her character Maddy, teetering on the edge of 30, runs a marathon while pondering big questions about her future. She's accompanied by her inner critic (a pre-recorded Chapman piped in over the speakers), who sharply and sadistically quizzes her about whether she should settle for her current boyfriend, whether she'll need to care for her mother as she ages and her ever-ticking biological clock.
With her boyfriend/potential fiance waiting for her at the finish line, the race provides a self-imposed structure and deadline for which to untangle these knots. They are the topics that you would rather not spend too much time pondering - the things that keep you up in bed at night as you curse your misbehaving brain for not letting you drop off to sleep. But, as her brain constantly reminds her "This is going to happen. And sooner rather than later."
As the show proceeds Maddy's physical and mental wellbeing become inextricably linked. For the first easy miles she's blase and carefree, clinging to optimism even in the face of impending disaster. Then, as the fatigue sets in and muscles begin to cramp, there's a negative onslaught of possible awful futures: isolation, miscarriages, loneliness, death. Finally, as she makes it onto that last mile and realises she's actually going to do this, Maddy knows that she's not the failure her voice in her head insists that she is.
After all, if you can run a marathon, then that counts for something. Sure, on paper it's a meaningless distance rewarded with a tin medal, but it proves that you can commit to something, grit your teeth and get through it. As Billy Ocean so memorably sang: "when the going gets tough, the tough get going".
But while the miseries that plague Maddy are well communicated - they are exceptionally familiar miseries. I've seen an awful lot of shows about women feeling as if their lives are a mess as they approach 30, contending with the metronomic beat of a ticking body clock. Watching these shows has made me appreciate the pressure to have children that women feel as they leave their twenties, but each of them says the same things in broadly the same ways and It's Not a Sprint doesn't break the pattern.
Plus you can get to the point where, after endless heartfelt monologues about the woes of the relatively well-off middle-class, you get a bit blase. After a while, you begin to grit their teeth at watching the bourgeoisie sing the blues about their, uh, *checks notes*, long-term relationship, personal physical fitness and committed and loving partner. Pass me the violin.
Despite my misgivings about the show's well-trodden emotional territory, It's Not a Sprint undeniably hits its beats. That is works as well as it does is a testament to Grace Chapman's charisma and dynamism - pulling out all the stops and practically dragging the audience along this marathon with her. It's funny, it's sharply written, it's well performed - if it's over-familiar at least it does it with style.
It's Not a Sprint is at The Pleasance, London until 20th October. Tickets here.
Wednesday, March 28, 2018
Wednesday, March 28, 2018
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Rating: 
The psychology behind far-right groups is darkly fascinating. I've always thought they share a lot in common with religious cults: both prey on directionless people with little going on in their lives, both encourage insular language and acronyms, both are eager for displays of commitment (for example visible tattoos that make it difficult to leave), and both rail against a shapeless, formless adversary that is simultaneously laughable and all-powerful.
The psychology behind far-right groups is darkly fascinating. I've always thought they share a lot in common with religious cults: both prey on directionless people with little going on in their lives, both encourage insular language and acronyms, both are eager for displays of commitment (for example visible tattoos that make it difficult to leave), and both rail against a shapeless, formless adversary that is simultaneously laughable and all-powerful.
Philip Ridley's Moonfleece, first performed in 2010, takes us under the skin of a burgeoning far-right party. It's called Avalon and is intended to evoke the St George-waving imagery of the English Defence League, British National Party and the umpteen scraggly back-room-of-the-pub nationalist groups looking for someone to kick the shit out of.
The play is set within a condemned flat in the East End, formerly the childhood home of Curtis, (James Downie) a blonde, slicked-hair, besuited young fascist trying desperately to project an air of intimidating confidence. Now it's a squat, occupied by street entertainers Link (Rocio Rodriguez-Inniss) and Zak (Jaz Hutchins).
Curtis and his neo-Nazi chums re-enter the flat by kicking the door in and order Link to leave. She angrily refuses, and before too long the living room is populated by a gaggle of loose acquaintances who've gotten word that something interesting is going down. By the end there are eleven people crammed on stage: including (but not limited to) the three fascists, their disappointed former friends and an overly-dramatic would-be psychic.
Over the course of 90 minutes, Ridley efficiently demolishes far-right groups, and does it without engaging them on their preferred ideological battleground. Arguing the benefits of multiculturalism, the inanity of racism and the logical inconsistencies of fascism is pointless - any jumped up fascist worth his salt will have been thoroughly impregnated with rhetoric cul-de-sacs and disingenuous responses designed to infuriate anyone engaging with them.
A much better tactic is to get under their skin and make them understand why they're so enamoured with its pale shade. Ridley's thesis is that in an ever-complicated world in which horrible things seem to happen for no reason, people instinctively latch onto easy answers.
Your life is not a meaningless, impoverished trudge because global economic systems require it to be - it's because of Amir down the newsagents! Your Mum didn't die of a treatable disease because the NHS is chronically underfunded and being prepared for consumption by US healthcare giants, it's because the hospitals are full of scrounging migrants leeching off good honest people like you.
It's an insidiously Manichean mindset: condensing the terrifyingly infinite complexities of the world down to a black and white, good versus evil, us versus them divide. After establishing this, Moonfleece then goes on to outline some of the consequences of signing up, demonstrating through the story of Curtis' family that this worldview does not admit nuance and complexity - to question one facet calls the entire corrupt philosophy into question. It picks at the fraying edges of fascism - showing that their supposedly strong inter-group bonds, loyalty and unity will quite easily be cast aside should you stray from a prescribed path.
It's a marvellous piece of writing, but then it's a Philip Ridley play so you kind of expect that. Fortunately, this particular production more than does the ideas and writing justice. Some members of the young cast (particularly James Downie and Rocio Rodriguez-Inniss) catch the eye more than others, but there's not anyone even approaching a weak link here. Everything is shot through with a palpable energy and dynamism, perhaps best demonstrated when Jaz Hutchins leaps around the room while performing a story, in the process casually demolishing a number of the props.
Despite the on-stage chaos, Max Harrison's direction is extremely precise. The performance space is pretty cramped, especially towards the end when the eleven-strong cast are all on stage at the same time- yet the blocking is impressively invisible. The decision to use traverse staging helps, though perhaps inevitably there are a couple of moments where sightlines of key moments are blocked by actors standing right in front of me.
However, despite the play 'only' being eight years old, the nature of the far right in Britain (and elsewhere) has evolved since 2010. Crowbarring more contemporary stuff into a narrative this carefully constructed is unwise, and the basic psychology behind it hasn't changed. Still, I'd love to see a piece of drama that chews on modern 'ironic/not ironic' internet fascism.
Quibbles aside, this is a great show. It showcases both cast and ideas beautifully, and I don't hesitate to recommend you check it out.
Wednesday, August 9, 2017
Wednesday, August 9, 2017
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Victim is a neat little one woman show about the uneasy relationship between prisoner and prison guard. Written by Martin Murphy and performed by Louise Beresford, the piece switches between two people that occupy the same environment but from very different perspectives.
We first meet Tracey, a confident and likeable woman who's been working as a prison guard for a couple of years. She's built up enough experience to be aware that prisoners can manipulate guards, but not quite enough to fully develop the mental plate mail that prevents them getting under her skin. Right now she's fascinated by new arrival Marcia, whose conviction for assisting in the murder of her baby has dominated headlines.
All too soon we meet a character on the other side of the bars. Prisoner A23174 Siobhan has murdered her ex-boyfriend and has set herself up as a 'fixer' to the other prisoners, able to provide drugs, mobile phones and favours... for a price. She's also the new cellmate of Marcia, recognising that she can use Tracey's interest in her for her own ends.
Whichever character is being portrayed is shown by a red and blue light behind the performer, though this is arguably unnecessary as Beresford does such a great job defining each character's body language and behaviour. She's an easy performer to like, drawing the audience into the story with liberal amounts of eye contact and occasionally physically interacting with them. I had a pleasure of her in Siobhan mode draping her arm around me as she explained that women are more natural predators than men.
Murphy's writing is also packed full of entertaining and well-observed incidental details. Tracey relates the tale of a man whose arse was as full of treasure as Aladdin's cave, the gormlessness of a prison art therapist or the illicit thrill of having a breakfast of canned gin and Quavers on a train.
But while Victim is engaging I don't think the two women's stories dovetail together as neatly as they should. There's some meaty drama late in the production after Tracey slips up and gives Siobhan some leverage over her, but the consequences don't quite live up to their ominous promise. Perhaps a more steady and thorough corruption of Tracey and more extreme consequences for the two women would have made the title Victim that much more ambiguous.
It leaves Victim is an entertaining but not crucial watch. It's in competition with a hell of a lot of one woman/man shows across the Fringe, the best of which almost literally knocked my socks off. This has above-average writing and Louise Beresford can rightly be proud of her performance, but it doesn't quite do enough to distinguish it from the competition.
Victim is at the Pleasance Attic Aug 10-15, 17-28. Tickets here.
On the night of 9th July 1988, the North Sea oil production platform Piper Alpha exploded. Owned and operated by Occidental Petroleum, Piper Alpha was the largest oil and gas platform in the area and provided employment for 228 workers. The explosion, a result of lax safety procedures, set off a chain reaction, engulfing the platform in flame and quickly tearing it to pieces. 167 men died as a result of the explosion with many of the 61 survivors having braved a 100ft drop from the helicopter platform into a burning sea.
But up until this morning, I didn't know any of that. I had some hazy knowledge that there was a really bad disaster on an oil rig sometime in the 1980s, but had no idea of the specifics. So, if nothing else, Tom Cooper's Part of the Picture has provided a useful education to me about a disaster that seems all the more relevant in the light of the Grenfell disaster.
Part of the Picture is docu-theatre, but broadly follows the story of Sue Jane Taylor (Charlaye Blair), a Scottish artist with a focus on workers and industry. She considers the sudden eruption of activity in the North Sea oilfields an important part of cultural history that must be chronicled. And so, after finally convincing a PR man, she ends up on Piper Alpha, sketchbook in hand.
Here she meets roustabout Jim (Ross McKinnon) and crane operator Robbie (Brian James O'Sullivan) and, after some initial scepticism from the all-male crew, she sets to work sketching them. A year later she's preparing for an art exhibition on industrial workers when she hears the awful news and realises that many of her subjects have perished in the disaster.
This is a precisely told and extremely touching story, the product of careful research and interviews with all manner of offshore oil and gas workers. Cooper approaches the men of the Piper Alpha with respect and sensitivity, communicating everything from the difficulty they have being separated from their families, the problems that arise in a testosterone-saturated working environment, their precarious employment status (shackled to global oil prices) and the simple day-to-day experience of what it's like to work on an isolated platform in the middle of the ocean.
Helping achieve this is a cleverly designed set that does a lot with very little. The backdrop is an extremely evocative combination of corrugated iron as the sea and a plastic sheet as the overcast sky, the horizon dotted with the silhouettes of the distant rigs. Showing a sea that's become metallic and processed is a neat visual shorthand for how the industry regards its environment. The minimal scenery first buttressed by evocative language: the rig described as a "huge metal sea monster" and that "big men are made tiny by the scale" and secondly by O'Sullivan's atmosphere folk music soundtrack
Within this environment, the three performers excel. Blair is great as the inquisitive, passionate artist who understands the necessity of understanding the industrial world and technology through art - visibly toughening up as she emulates the sturdiness of her subjects. But it's McKinnon and O'Sullivan who provide the heart and soul of the piece. O'Sullivan's Robbie is a lively presence, keeping his travelling disco on the road when he's not at sea. For my money it was McKinnon who most embodies the stoicism of the offshore worker, recounting his own death with a weary, tragic pragmatism.
My one criticism is that we never get to see any of Sue Jane Taylor's work in the piece. I'm guessing there was a rights issue preventing this, which is understandable enough. Still, when we spend so long watching her create her portraits it's a bit of an anticlimax to see them represented by blank picture frames in the finale.
The play concludes with the pointed message that while this industry takes place hundreds of miles from land where nobody is watching, we're all a part of it. From petrol to contact lenses, our cossetted lives are made possible by lonely men in dangerous jobs. Part of the Picture movingly memorialises those that lost their lives in Piper Alpha, as well as reminding us to be thankful for the danger their contemporary counterparts face every day.
Part of the Picture is at the Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh Aug 10-13, 15-28. Tickets here.
Sunday, August 6, 2017
Sunday, August 6, 2017
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Rating: 
What is a man but his memories? Theatre Re's The Nature of Forgetting is a descent through a shattered mind, our hero clutching at his fading memories as they trickle like sand through his fingers. This is Tom (the excellent Guilliame Pigé), a middle-aged teacher suffering from early onset dementia. Once quick-witted, knowledgeable and charismatic, he's now dependant on his daughter Sophie (Louise Wilcox), who he cannot help but mistake for his (possibly) dead wife.
We open to Isabella helping Tom to get dressed before the arrival of family and friends. She repeatedly explains that he must put on the dark blue jacket on the end of the rail, and that there's a red tie in the pocket. but as he stands the words warp and change and, as he peruses the clothes in front of him, he tumbles down a rabbit hole of memories.
We experience his days as a boy in school, where the relationships that have anchored his life were formed. We see him play with his friends (Matthew Austin and Eygló Belafonte) He grows up and experiences the blossoming of love for his school sweetheart Sophie, who will later become his wife. From here we gradually climb up the ladder to the present, stopping off at graduation, weddings and the birth of a child. But there's something darker interspersed with these golden memories. Like a shard of ice, we repeatedly cut to a harshly lit argument inside a moving car, which terminates with an ominous squeal of brakes and car horns.
Storytelling is via intense and expert physical theatre combining elements of contemporary dance and mime and soundtracked by a powerful live score. The cast moving with clockwork precision as they perform what feels like memories of memories, as if the protagonist is doing his best to patch the gaps before the ragged remains completely disintegrate.
Watching a man dangling over a vast abyss of nothingness, frantically shoring up whatever memories he has left is, frankly, pretty freakin' terrifying. Slow mental collapse is right up there as far as existential fears go; the very core of who you are gradually hollowing out to leave a malfunctioning shell doing a confused, nonsensical impression of the person it once was *shiver*.
What makes The Nature of Forgetting especially horrifying is the sense that Tom knows something is wrong with him, but he cannot quite put his finger on what. There are repeated scenes in which the structure of his memory begins to collapse and he frantically tries to put it back together, as if playing a losing game of spinning plates. The programme explains that the piece was developed in collaboration with a UCL neuroscientist and ideas were taken from interviews with dementia patients, and knowing that it's based on research makes The Nature of Forgetting more terrifying.
The show knocks its big themes out of the park - communicating the reality of dementia in a terrifyingly visceral way. But under these big ideas are a plethora of little moments that act as emotional punctuation marks. The tiny moment where Tom smells his future wife's hair, his best man losing the ring at the wedding for a moment, the way his teacher would lower his head to the desk as he moved past. It's a credit to the show that these important, smaller moments are comprehensible within big physical moments like the impressive bicycle sequence.
The action is fantastically soundtracked by Alex Judd's fantastic live score. There's a fascinating glitch audio effect when the memory begins to fall apart, as if a record is quietly skipping on a turntable. This is a score all about a tick-tock rhythm, repeatedly building to percussion and violin crescendoes as the action gets ever more intense before falling apart, sending Tom chronologically spinning through his life. The cast and musicians are talented enough that it never feels like the action is driving the music or vice versa, rather than they're in perfect equilibrium with one another.
This is an extraordinary production that knocks most of what I've seen at the Fringe this year into a cocked hat. I reviewed Theatre Re's last show, Blind Man's Song, last year, and enjoyed it without being fully convinced. Now I am. The Nature of Forgetting isn't exactly super happy fun times, but it is goddamn amazing.
The Nature of Forgetting is at the Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh Aug 6-13, 15-27. Tickets here.
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
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Laura Wade's POSH made its debut during the 2010 General Election, where the last farts of New Labour did battle with the preeningly self-styled 'compassionate' Conservatives led by David Cameron. With all that's happened since it's difficult to remember the Cameron advertised to us during that election: a man with green credentials who once went dog-sledding to examine melting glaciers, or urged the public to 'hug a hoodie'.
Wade set out to reveal the 'real' David Cameron, along with his cohorts George Osborne and Boris Johnson, in her loosely fictionalised peek into their student activities in the Bullingdon Club, a dining society that reportedly requires new members to burn a £50 note in front of a homeless person and are famous for practically demolishing the buildings they hire out.
Taking inspiration from the club's 2005 trashing of an Oxfordshire pub, the play introduced us to a gang of predatory rich boys who use the club to act out their frustrations. Though not a direct dramatisation of Cameron, Osborne, and Johnson's time in the club, it was all too easy to draw parallels between the bastards on stage and the bastards on the news.
Now POSH is back, with a twist. This is an all-women production, advertised in hot pink lettering with a punky lipstick smooch. The script remains the same, with masculine pronouns, the characters talking about jizzing and grabbing their cocks, and the misogynistic entitlement all preserved.
The immediate effect is that the club's already self-conscious masculinity becomes utterly ridiculous. It was ridiculous in the original too, but this step away from realism underlines how desperately these rich boys are trying to paint themselves as alpha male leaders of men, that are born to rule, in spite of their poisonous cowardice and inferiority complexes.
POSH shows them hilariously failing to live up to their own standards - their much-vaunted ten bird roast is missing a guinea fowl, the prostitute hired to crawl around under the table and suck their dicks departs in disgust, and the landlord's daughter casually punctures their Wildean pretensions of wit. It leaves them looking deeply silly: women pretending to be boys pretending to be men.
The all-women cast also goes someway to dispelling the hate and disgust you feel towards the characters. When they're played by men the overriding feeling is of privileged revulsion - you start cheerily imagining the resurrection of the guillotine. But it's difficult to hate women with the same intensity. That probably shouldn't be the case, but at least for me, it is.
What that meant is that you I felt a tiny morsel of sympathy for these monsters. Nobody's pulling out handkerchiefs, but, as they explain, they're trapped in a world that laughs at them behind their backs, are generally denied the respect they feel entitled to, and their childhood homes are full of wandering National Trust members. I mean, boo fucking hoo, let's break out the tiny violins, right? But this does at least give the Bullingdon Club a sense of purpose - to allow its members to act out the privilege they're generally forced to suppress.
Cressida Carré's confident direction ensures that this is a handsomely staged and performed production. The dinner takes place around a wooden table that subtly paints the diners as a modern Camelot, and is lit in a way that draws impressed gasps from the audience once it's revealed. A revolving floor solves any problems of blocking, as well as conveying the increasingly boozed-out state of the participants.
Performances are top class too, the cast clearly having fun with the blustering testosterone hip thrusting. My highlights were Alice Brittain's would-be Flashheart Harry, Serena Jennings' demagoguish ogre, who appears to take oratory cues from Enoch Powell, and Verity Kirk's club newbie, who provides the lion's share of the show's laughs.
The only downside (aside from some crap stage fighting) is that the show's white-hot relevance has definitely cooled with the departure of Cameron and Osborne from front-line politics (though Johnson continues to squat uselessly in the Foreign Office like some great toad). Theresa May, for all her faults, carried out a necessary purge of toffish public schoolboys when she took office, with the majority of her high-profile ministerial briefs attending state school.
Despite the programme attempting to place the play within the context of Theresa May's government and, more vaguely, alongside the Trump-induced Women's Marches that took place around the world in January, it doesn't quite fly. While it's nice to see women performing anti-feminine parts, the intention feels less to make a political point and simply that cross-casting is an interesting theatrical experiment.
And sometimes that's more than enough. POSH is a pacey, entertaining play with a barb as sharp as a scorpion's tail. Two hours and forty minutes fly by in a hail of bodily fluids, broken tables and bruised egos, the cast summoning up the thick fug of frantic performative masculinity that Wade's writing demands. Though its edge is dulled by the departure of the Bullingdon boys from Number 10, POSH is still a fearsomely crafted weapon.
POSH is at the Pleasance Theatre until 22nd April. Tickets here.
And sometimes that's more than enough. POSH is a pacey, entertaining play with a barb as sharp as a scorpion's tail. Two hours and forty minutes fly by in a hail of bodily fluids, broken tables and bruised egos, the cast summoning up the thick fug of frantic performative masculinity that Wade's writing demands. Though its edge is dulled by the departure of the Bullingdon boys from Number 10, POSH is still a fearsomely crafted weapon.
POSH is at the Pleasance Theatre until 22nd April. Tickets here.
Wednesday, November 2, 2016
Wednesday, November 2, 2016
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Coincidence is a funny thing. This week has randomly thrown up two plays that take their titles from songs by The Smiths: Rubber Ring and Still Ill. This is off to a great start before I've even stepped inside the theatre: Rubber Ring is my favourite Smiths song. Originally the B-Side of The Boy With the Thorn in His Side, it became familiar to most from Louder Than Bombs compilation and has only risen in stature over the years.
For my money these might be Morrissey's greatest lyrics. He grew up obsessed with The New York Dolls, David Bowie and Marc Bolan, and recognised that The Smiths had the same fierce emotional connection with their fans. Rubber Ring (named for both the flotation aid and the rubber centre of a record player) imagines their fans gradually outgrowing the band, adolescent wounds healing and discovering happiness.
"But don't forget the songs that made you cry. And the songs that saved your life." Things will get better, isolation passes and who knows, maybe you'll meet someone who truly loves you. But Morrissey pleads with us not to forget him: "When you're dancing and laughing and finally living, hear my voice in your head and think of me kindly."
James McDermott's Rubber Ring shows us the woes of your typical modern Morrissey fan. This is Jimmy, trapped in suburban purgatory in Sheringham (he wastes no time describing it as the seaside town they forgot to bomb). Bullied at school, confined to a miserable bedroom bound existence at home and not sure whether he liked boys or girls (or either) - all Jimmy wants is to escape to London for a Morrissey gig.
He casts himself as the hero of his own story; and sets out from home with just a tenner in his pocket and 36% battery on his phone. He skips trains with the tried and tested method of hiding out in the toilets, each stop inching him ever further to the O2 where there's music and there's people and they're young and aliiiiiiive.
Damn, now he's got me doing it. McDermott peppers his monologue with Morrissey lyrics, constantly exclaiming things like "I haven't got a stitch to wear" or "Belligerent ghouls run Sheringham schools". His schoolmates are called Rourke and Joyce, he meets a woman called Bonnie Marr and suffers under a tyrannical PE teacher Ms Shankly. On top of that, McDermott bears a faint physical resemblance to the man himself; not only emulating that famous quiff (albeit bleached blonde) but also capturing Morrissey's caterpillar eyebrows and that archly insouciant stare.
He's also funny as hell. My barometer for something being funny is the amount of genuine laughs it gets from me (smiles don't count). Rubber Ring had me laughing so often I was usually still giggling from the last gag as the next hit. Aside from the absurd situations Jimmy finds himself in (awkwardly trapped in the flat of the horny, hairy and diabetic cockcraver1988 (aka 'Pudsey Bear')) or nervously pawing at a bored woman in an abandoned underpass. Not only that but there's some seriously clever wordplay sprinkled throughout; my favourite being the reducing of seduction to a series of women's gossip rags: "Hello!, OK!, Look, Closer, Heat, Now" (from memory).
McDermott successfully captures the bonds that form between Morrissey fans - a very broad social, economic and political community. God knows Morrissey doesn't make it easy to be a fan; whether he's writing absolutely terrible fiction, making racist remarks about Chinese people or just walking off stage mid-set (I was in that unhappy crowd, watching Jonathan Ross getting pelted with beer and small change was small comfort). But for all the times you read something about him and mutter "Fuck's sake Morrissey", he'll have always written the songs that he's written and made me feel a way no other songwriter ever has.
Rubber Ring captures the core of the Morrissey experience. The romance of the outsider, the loneliness of sexual confusion and the bonds that form in the most unlikely places. McDermott pins this down perfectly, filtering it through the prism of his dramatic alterego Jimmy. I've seen bigger, brasher and more expensive plays lately, but there's few things I've enjoyed more than Rubber Ring.
★★★★★
Rubber Ring is at the Pleasance Theatre until 6th November. Tickets here.
Saturday, April 30, 2016
Saturday, April 30, 2016
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John Milton said "To be blind is not miserable; not to be able to bear blindness, that is miserable." It's a sentiment that feels appropriate to Theatre Re's Blind Man's Song; an interpretive dance performance that attempts to recreate the imagination of a born-blind musician.
Sparsely staged; props are limited to a cane, bed and a selection of musical instruments within a piano. As the blind man (Alex Judd) plays a song he's visually accompanied by an abstracted romance. It's 'yer basic boy meets girl story, kicked off by a chance contact and developing into something passionate and heartfelt. The couple are dancers Guillaime Pigé and Selma Roth, clad in red and green and with cloth wrapped around their heads.
The narrative eschews words and is told in broad strokes. So broad that if you approach Blind Man's Song hoping to be told a story you're liable to come away rather disappointed. Instead this is a show about communication through movement, music and touch - attempting to understand the ways in which person without sight might perceive the world.
Apparently taking visual inspiration from Magritte's Lovers II, erasing the dancer's visual features forces the audience to understand them through body language. Pigé and Roth are beautifully expressive dancers, each constantly informed by the others motions as they show us a developing romance. At times Pigé reminded me of Gene Kelly stomping through the rain, hat and cane swirling through the air, his movements brimming over with personality and character.
For me, the most impressive moment came early on, as the two lovers' first contact is endlessly looped in the blind man's memory. Emerging from a train, they accidentally collide, this couple of seconds endless replaying - a plaintive piano chord repeating at their first touch. Gradually the speed is dialled down, until this tiny, forgotten fragment of time becomes invested with big heaping dollops of juicy meaning.
All through this, Alex Judd (who also wrote the music), makes for a neatly scrappy presence on piano and fiddle. He looks like a refugee from a production of Oliver Twist, all scruffy leather coat, vintage sunglasses and lovelorn expressions. He's the mystery at the core of the show, one that's slowly unspun as we work through the contents of his head.
At just an hour long, Blind Man's Song moves along at a pretty breezy pace. That said, there were times when the somnolent qualities of the music got to me a bit and, after a long day, my concentration occasionally drifted a little, not exactly helped by a scene in which the characters themselves go to bed. I didn't get as bad as the guy in front of me though; after a particularly dreamy bit he emitted a guttural honk of a snore, causing his wife to give him a sharp elbow in the ribs.
Anyone that did silently drift off into unconsciousness was in for a shock. Towards the end of the show there's this piercingly sharp sine blare that just goes on and on and on, I guess to present the character's mental turmoil. It's a bit of a shock that such a relatively sedate show is willing to dish out audio trauma on its audience, and I noticed a couple of people covering their ears to escape it. I personally found it annoying at first, but I appreciate aggressive theatre and, hell, at least it woke me the hell up.
I imagine the ideal attendee for Blind Man's Song to be an enthusiastic and knowledgeable follower of contemporary dance. That's not me, but I enjoyed myself nonetheless. It's the kind of show where you get out as much as you're willing to put in.
★★★
Blind Man's Song is at The Pleasance until 15 May. Tickets here.
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