Recent Articles
Showing posts with label Rosemary Branch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rosemary Branch. Show all posts
Friday, November 16, 2018
Friday, November 16, 2018
- 0 Comments
I'm in awe of good improvisational comedy. It's thrilling watching performers probe the possibilities of a new story, gradually filling out the details of rough character sketches and mutually teasing out themes. It's a highwire act that can easily go wrong (and boy have I seen it go wrong...) but when it works it's like you're right in the midst of the creative process - a magical feeling.
Katy Schutte and Chris Mead have this magic in spades. They're expert, seasoned improvisational performers - and Thirteen Cycles gives them ample space to show off their talents. The theme is science fiction, with the seed of the story being locations contributed by the audience. Though there's no audience participation beyond the opening minutes, the whole thing kicks off when someone yells out "spaceship repair".
Very quickly we're in the middle of a grimy yet futuristic workshop as a grandfather and grandson mechanics bicker amongst each other as they fix up a classic spaceship. This gradually expands into a dystopia involving a throat-stabbing rebellion, a snooty elite showing off their organic pet cats and some rather grisly methods of execution.
Each show is unique, and they promise a variety of inspirations from Star Wars to Solaris. That said, the show I saw demonstrated the distances that Schutte & Mead were prepared to go. Though it's basically a comedy show there are serious scenes and a few genuinely emotional moments. The pair quickly devices extremely likeable characters and then cruelly dispose of them. As this happens you sense a kind of emotional G-Force - the more serious it gets the more it becomes difficult to change gears towards comedy.
The result is a story that's unfinished, that has a few frayed edges and a couple of narrative dead ends - but with real imagination and heart. Schutte and Mead even weave in recurring dramatic motifs and symbolism - which is like, next level improv.
Despite all this, there is one big element of the show that doesn't really work. Much is made in the promotional literature of the use of live projection mapping and score by Lemon Jelly's Fred Deakin. Projection mapping means, essentially, that an object on stage can have a texture overlaid on at any time. Theoretically, this should allow the show to visualise whatever situation the actors decide to create, with Deakin improvising along with the actors.
Well, either it didn't work properly on the night I went or it just doesn't work well at all, but what it amounted to was a couple of apparently random patterns projected on the wall that didn't seem to have any relation to the scene in question. Live projection mapping to improvised theatre is no doubt incredibly difficult, both technically and creatively and the show falls short of its stated ambitions by quite some way.
Plus - and I hate to say this as a long-time fan of Lemon Jelly - the live score soundtrack wasn't that great. There was a lot of low rumbling synths accompanying scenes but it felt like ambient noise more than an actual score. Maybe this was just a bad night for it.
Thirteen Cycles is undeniably entertaining improvisational theatre - Schutte and Meade are almost annoyingly good at what they do. I laughed a hell of a lot. Still, it doesn't quite live up to its marketing. Go expecting laughs rather than technical wizardry.
Thirteen Cycles is at the Rosemary Branch until 29th November. Tickets here.
Saturday, December 12, 2015
Saturday, December 12, 2015
- 0 Comments
Thursday saw me battling a monumental hangover. Things had gotten a little too late in Camden the night before, resulting in a day where my eyes felt like dried prunes, my teeth rattled in my gums and my brain was squeezed like a sponge. It wasn't your typical hangover, it was monumental, I'm talking giving talks in schools about it bad.
Needless to say I wasn't in the mood for a Christmas show. Especially not one that seemed to revolve around gimmicky puppetry. But I trekked up to the Rosemary Branch regardless, hoping that whatever Clementine's Seasonal Spectacular turned out to be, it wouldn't be extraordinarily painful.
With that grim sense of foreboding that arises when you're welcomed by a puppet I took an anonymous seat in the third row, huddling down and sipping at a blessedly alcohol-free orange juice. The first number begins: "Hey, this might be tolerable after all..." I think. Soon a gigantic cockerel puppet is working through a sexualised Tom Jones parody ("Huh, that's good puppetry"). By 15 minutes in I can feel the misery draining out of my frontal lobes and I manage a chuckle - the first positive emotion I've felt all day.
As the second half begins I'm positively upbeat and (at Grumpy Gay Critic's urging) have migrated to the front row. As the show ends it's as if my grey matter has been thoroughly expunged of all the booze-soused misery I entered with. I'm a new man. That's what a good night at the theatre can do for you.
'Clementine' is the brainchild of Mark Mander. Slathered in slap, false eyelashes fluttering and his smile a perfect white slash, his head hovers above a diminutive doll's body. The Barbie-like rest of him, twiggy arms expressively puppeteered creates an initially eerie effect. You get used to it in a couple of minutes, the combination of the tiny body and Mander's impressively expressive facial expressions adding up to an attractively amusing comic creations.
Clem is the figurehead of a night that features randy cockerels, bulimic bluebottles and a smattering of the spookily supernatural. Split into two halves, the first follows the backstage drama =themed, segmented into a series of musical numbers with video wraparounds.
The second half descends into panto proper, with the story of a post fairytale Snow White (as played by Clem) . This proves to be a loose James Bond parody that takes her under the sea, skiing through the mountains and into a classically styled volcano base where an evil Maggie Thatcher-a-like plots the demise of all happiness in the world.
Throughout the show there's an easy and friendly atmosphere. Appropriately for panto, Clem leaves the fourth wall in tatters and, naturally, the story is never taken particularly seriously. But the unpretentious atmosphere shouldn't be mistaken for carelessness, this was one of the most rigorously designed and performed shows I've seen in quite some time.
Highlights are some genuinely impressive props and costumes. During the undersea sequence Clem emerges within a glittering submarine, surrounded by friendly fish. It's one hell of a piece of stage design - to look at it is to understand that whoever created this has a spark of talent backed up by a seriously strong work ethic. More surprises come in the shape of a full-size Chinese dragon puppet and an all-singing all-dancing feather-filled finale. The video interludes are of a similar quality - produced with the kinds of 3D animation that you generally don't expect to find in shows above pubs.
All this is performed with whipcrack timing and big heaping barrels of personality. Aside from Mander, the cast are Steve Nallon (a Spitting Image alumni who does an uncanny Thatcher impression), burly bodybuilder genie Jack Jefferson and puppeteers Stewart Fraser, Lesa Gillespie and Clare Pointing. All are straightforwardly excellent.
The only nitpicks I have is that the lengthy video interludes, while entertaining, aren't particularly theatrical. Similarly, the decision to have practically all the dialogue pre-recorded and lipsynced sucks a little spontaneity out and introduces a mild artificiality into evening. I can understand that co-ordinating puppetry, music cues and video must be a colossal pain in the arse, but it somewhat defeats the purpose of a theatre watch a projected video.
That said, Clementine's Seasonal Spectacular entertained me from tip to toe, kindling a genuine spark of Christmassy-ness inside me. I stepped out into a drizzly night with a spring in my step and a song in my heart, the miseries of the day wiped clean. Right now this is my bone-fide 'check this out' Christmas show recommendation. I can't imagine anything dislodging it in a hurry.
★★★★
Clementine's Seasonal Spectacular is at the Rosemary Branch until 10 January. Tickets here.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
- 0 Comments
Disclaimer: I know the brother of the lead actor.
The best rock star is a dead rock star. Plucked from the limelight in the full flush of their youth they’ll never age and are ripe for transformation into an eternal, hazy idealisation. Death is an excellent way to sand the abrasive edges from somebody, never again will they embarrass themselves on chat shows or be papped puking into their hat outside Floridita nightclub. It’s an even more excellent way to make money once you’ve scoured the archives for their musical leftovers and repackaged them into some kind of quasi-album just in time for Christmas.
“Last show… Tonight!” is about one of these stars and shows us their long, slow slide into the grave. Joe Brown (Barnaby Brookman) is the lead singer and guitarist of ‘The Brothers and Si Fletcher’. He’s a walking ego, self obsessed, cruel and manipulative with the manic nature of a Rik Mayall character. The cherry on top of this rancid cake is that he’s not even a particularly talented singer/songwriter. With his keyboardist brother (Danny Wainwright) and long-suffering drummer Si, (Tom Foy) the band have put out one successful and popular album before collapsing from alcohol abuse and lack of ideas.
The conceit of the show is that we’re the audience for Joe’s last concert. This means there’s a lot of music here, most of it played straight as if we were actually at the gig. Interspersed with the songs are bitchy interludes with the other band members, as well as flashbacks to key moments in Joe’s past that fill in the gaps of how he’s gotten to this point.
On paper Joe is an awful human being, and as the show relies on us sympathising with his plight he needs to be played just right. Fortunately Brookman pitches his performance pretty finely across the gap between loveable and obnoxious. Sure he’s loud, rude and self-centred, but we can see that he is basically a good person. Joe is a character that knows how rock stars are supposed to act; he seems fully aware that he’s living up to a stereotype. It’s this overlap between how he wants to act and how he’s expected to behave that gives the character pathos. This makes the performance multi-layered but coherent, whether he’s talking to his terminally ill alcoholic dad, teasing his bandmates on stage or pleading to be let in from the cold he’s still recognisably the same guy, just with different parts of his personality highlighted.
This exposes the masculine bravado of the rock star as a smokescreen for deeper and more serious problems. One scene that ties all this together is an interview on some cheesy chat show. The host is condescending and rude, privately gleeful he’s going to get some good footage. Joe is a figure of fun to him, the boozed musician being prodded and teased like a toothless lion. Joe is aware of this and initially plays up to the Oliver Reed-like role expected of him. It's nice when the cruelty of the host is undercut quickly and efficiently by Joe ‘admitting’ he’s an alcoholic. Real life intrudes and suddenly the host isn’t finding the interview so much fun. Now the shoe is on the other foot, Joe has transformed from jester to victim.
The fact that the character can consciously play with the way he’s perceived adds another layer of tragedy to him, a man aware he’s a figure of fun but unable to do anything about it or act any differently. This debauched rock star persona allows him to function as an alcoholic without too many raised eyebrows. We laugh when told of a time when Joe was supposed to be on stage in Glasgow and was found drunk in Belfast. In most other professions this’d be faintly tragic and depressing, but for a rock star? Hey, this is what he does right?
Joe is a genuinely interesting character, a worthy subject for drama. Unfortunately we don’t get to know him quite as well as I’d like. The play runs for about 90 minutes and a large part of that is made up of songs performed by Joe and his band. The show establishes pretty early on that Joe isn’t a particularly talented writer. He’s desperate to read out his poetry on stage, to the horror and embarrassment of his bandmates. When he finally does, it’s awful adolescent teenage stuff. His lyrics aren’t much better; we laugh at them because it’s funny that Joe takes them so seriously. These songs get the biggest laughs of the show, yet while they're being performed the narrative and character development totally freezes.
I initially figured that we'd learn about Joe through his lyrics and how he chooses to express himself, but there’s two problems with that. The first is that the lyrics are a bit bland, it’s difficult to recognise much of the blustering Joe we see between songs and therefore hard to get an idea what these lyrics might signify about his state of mind. The second is technical: I was sitting in the front row and even with the performers directly in front of me it was very difficult to understand the lyrics as the loud drums drowned them out.
The knock on effect of the songs occupying so much stage time is that every other character receives only cursory development. The most egregious example is the character played by Charlotte Whittaker. She’s Joe’s romantic interest and also pregnant with his child. Learning more about her is an excellent way to try and work out what makes Joe tick and she pbviously represents a rich seam of drama to mine. In the few, short scenes she gets Whittaker is great, she's definitely got the most compelling musical performance. So it’s disappointing that for much of the play she’s relegated to the role of the roadie bringing the microphone on and off stage.
Another problem with the amount of songs in the show is the popularity of Joe’s band. We can glean from the dialogue that “The Brothers and Si Fletcher” are hugely successful. The problem with this is that it just doesn’t correspond with what we see on stage; the band don’t look or sound successful in the slightest, behaving more like an average indie pub band. This creates a bit of a disconnect between what we see and what we’re hearing; this is a play with a down-to-earth grubby aesthetic, with knackered old fridges, cheap beer and stained t-shirts. None of this seems to square with even the remote sniff of success.
The basic concept of showing us a musician's last concert inevitably means there's going to be music played. It's difficult to think of any worthwhile way around it. Even so, the characters here would have more space to breathe with maybe a few songs cut out, or some existing ones trimmed a bit.
Despite these reservations, by the time the play ends the audience has a good handle on the who and why of Joe Brown. 'Last show... Tonight!' succeeds in creating a complex tragicomic hero that we eventually find ourselves caring about. This makes the final scenes unexpectedly touching, a good sign that the play has achieved its aims. This is a fairly modest play that's conscious of its limits, but performancewise it doesn't put a foot wrong and nails the tone. It's frequently very funny, and its running time flies by. Good stuff.
'Last show... Tonight!' has its last show... tomorrow! (the 28th of November) at the Rosemary Branch Theatre Pub.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)