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Showing posts with label The Smiths. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Smiths. Show all posts
Friday, November 4, 2016
Friday, November 4, 2016
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In Still Ill, Morrissey asks one of the classical biggies of philosophy "Does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body?" Are we creatures of intellect or instinct? Are we beholden to our flesh? Do we fool ourselves when we imagine transcending these prisons of bone, sinew and blood?
It's weighty dramatic territory, but there's few more appropriate prisms to examine it through than psychogenic disease, specifically functional neurological syndrome disorder (FNsD).
FNsD is a condition in which you begin suffering neurological symptoms like unexplained weakness, seizures or loss of muscular control (to name but a few). If you research these symptoms online, the first thing that's going to leap out at you are two terrifying words: brain tumour. So you make the trip to the hospital and end up nervously lying inside an MRI. When the results come back, the doctor happily explains that there's no physical abnormalities in the brain.
Awesome! There's nothing wrong with you! But even after the all-clear the symptoms persist, maybe even get worse. There's something wrong with you, but the doctors say you're completely fine. Suspicions start to build that you're malingering: making the whole thing up for attention. After all, there's nothing wrong with you, and 'nothing' can't be treated. And yet you're in constant agonising pain.
Up and coming young actor Sophie (Sophie Steer) finds herself trapped in this cruel medical oubliette. The condition first rears its head as she's playing a doctor in a cheesy medical drama. During a stressful day on set her left hand contorts into a paralysed claw. Terrified, she consults a doctor who injects it with botox; it's miraculously and instantly cured. Problem is, botox only starts working after two days.
As the months progress things only get worse. Sophie begins suffering frequent seizures, chronic pain and even loses muscle control in her leg, confining her to home. The once ambitious young actor is reduced to listlessly watching TV and researching her condition online, each possibly diagnosis inevitably leading down a medical dead end. She grows depressed. Her brother Mark, initially sympathetic, grows suspicious and resentful. All too soon, life has turned to shit.
Still Ill is a marvellous bit of drama: stuffed fulla dramatic creativity, top notch performances and lots and lots of interesting medical information. It's an hour and forty minutes straight through, yet manages to avoid being dull by deploying a tonne of contrasting tones - running the gamut from broad comedy right through to bone-chilling medico-horror.
Sophie Steer is the star attraction: pouring every last drop of her soul into an incredibly physically and mentally demanding role. It's pretty breathtaking stuff, the character going on an odyssey to the depths of frustration, pain and misery. Sounds pretty heavy right? Fortunately it's a journey leavened with humour, and saved from sentimentality by some pretty severe probing of the fourth wall.
Mind you, Hamish McDougall and Harriet Webb are no slouches, believably inhabiting a variety of supporting characters. They fill in the dramatic blanks, constructing a world of helpful yet emotionally distant doctors, snippily caricatured TV production crews and support ground attendees.
On top of all that, the show is liberally studded with countless imaginative bits of staging, set design and lighting. Characters reach 'through' television sets, conduct brain surgery on a cauliflower, cover the stage in discarded medical supplies, insert a catheter up a cucumber cock or conduct mock Skype sessions through on-stage cameras. In addition, there's some seriously smart blocking - at one point confining Steers to the far corner of the stage, isolating her even within the set.
But the performances and theatrics are all in service to director James Yeatman's masterful control of tone and pace and on-stage live musician Zac Gvirtzman. Still Ill is a show of lulls and swells, snowballing from calm to complete sensory overload. These moments press you back into your seat, the drama almost symphonic as it reaches a series of crescendos that perfectly simulate the stress, frustration and misery experienced by the lead character.
Since watching Todd Haynes' excellent 1995 film Safe, I've been fascinated by psychogenic and psychosomatic illnesses; having spent time reading about medically strange conditions, like electromagnetic hypersensitivity, Morgellons and multiple chemical sensitivity. They present a curious paradox: when external or physical causes have been empirically ruled out, how do you explain a a patient that their life is ruined purely because of their malfunctioning psyche? How can you deliver that information without passing the blame onto them. It's easy to discount these conditions as 'all in the mind': these people are experiencing pain, and medicine is largely failing its obligation to sooth and treat it.
This is the second great play I've seen this week named after a Smiths song, the other being the excellent Rubber Ring (the obvious lesson is to only go see plays full of Moz references). Still Ill deals with this tricky (and unfortunately still fringe) medical subject with style, grace and empathy, making for an enormously affecting bit of theatre. You leave with Morrissey still jangling around in your head, still asking "Does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body?"
I dunno.
★★★★★
Still Ill is at the New Diorama Theatre until 19th November. 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.
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