LONDON CITY NIGHTS

Friday, July 8, 2016

'Peter Schlemiel' at Theatre N16, 7th July 2016

Friday, July 8, 2016 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

What would become of a man whose shadow has been ripped away? This play posits that he'd be shunned, have dirt thrown at him and considered innately suspicious. Just what quality does a shadow bring to a person - and why is it so damn important?

These are questions asked by Peter Schlemiel, an adaptation of an 1814 novella by exiled French aristocrat Adelbert von Chamisso. Though widely read on its original publication it's been largely forgotten now - or at least I'd never heard of it.

A cautionary fable, the story follows the eponymous and ambitious Peter as he unwittingly makes a deal he'll come to regret. He's alking one night when he comes across a mysterious stranger who professes an appreciation of his shadow. It's a bizarre moment, only trumped when the stranger makes him an offer: would Peter be interested in trading his shadow for a bottomless wallet?

For Peter (and I suspect most people) this is a no-brainer.What practical use is a shadow anyway? Before too long he's revelling in his newfound wealth, rapidly ascending to become a man of means and attracting the attentions of sexy socialite Mina. But after pride comes the fall: upon noticing his lack of shadow Mina's father rejects him as a suitable husband, society treats him as a leper and he descends into poverty, only wishing for his beloved shadow be returned to him.

Eventually the mysterious stranger returns offering another deal. Peter will get his shadow back, at the cost of his immortal soul. 

Peter Schlemiel feels like prototypical magic realism, the play presenting the loss of a shadow as something aberrant yet apparently not particularly shocking. Though hardly an everyday occurrence, the characters take the intrusion of the supernatural into their lives without too much comment. This makes it feel like less of a sci-fi/fantasy tale and more of a political allegory.

Problem is, it's difficult to pin down precisely what that allegory is. Early in the play we watch a gaggle of champagne quaffing socialites preen as they compare their beautiful lives. The pinnacle is them chortling over the suicide of a servant who'd been told that anyone who's not a millionaire is a "snivelling worm". From the sidelines an awkward Peter watches on, apparently unnerved by their behaviour yet determined to enter their ranks.

Later in the play he does, repeating the scene word for word in vainglorious top hat and tails pomp. On the most basic level, Peter Schlemiel demonstrates that money is the root of all evil, and that basic humanity is much more valuable. Fair enough, but you want a little more than that from something so obviously allegorical. Sadly, the much-longed for complexity never comes, the play instead tying itself up in stylistic flourishes that divert, but don't exactly tickle the grey matter.

It's a pity, there's a decent amount of quality here. Prime amongst it is Robert Hill's striking bit of set design. Theatre N16 is 'yer typical room above a pub performance space and I assume that the production is running on a pretty skinny budget. Nonetheless, the notion of a doorway/picture frame for characters to pose in, crowned by a pagan-looking wings made of tree branches is striking and well-executed, hearkening back to the primeval fairytale myth-making pulsing through the play's veins.

Mention must be also be made of Edvardas Bazys' lighting design. Being asked to light a play in which a character has no shadow sounds like a nightmare brief. Obviously, Peter has a shadow throughout, but there are moments where his silhouette is accentuated to nice effect.

The cast also put in a decent amount of welly. Alex Marlow's Peter is a stolid and dependable stage presence, effectively conveying Peter's gradual slide into spiritual misery. He suffers a bit from having about half of his dialogue pre-recorded, but manages to find occasional moments of pathos and desperation as he reaches his 'red-line' when haggling with the devil. Said devil, played by Billy Irving, is an appropriately serpentine presence, his voice transitioning from charming smoothness to threatening in the blink of an eye. Irving displays a disciplined body language and wonderfully threatening aura as old Nick - only somewhat diluted by having to cycle between multiple characters within scenes.

Peter Schlemiel is one of those shows that goes down easy enough but leaves you faintly unsatisfied. Chamisso's novella, showing the disintegration of a man who opts for an easy path to the top, is fertile ground for saying something pointed and timely about modern culture. But this production doesn't really explore that aspect, instead presenting flashes of interesting drama but with little intellectual rigour underpinning it.

★★

Thursday, June 16, 2016

'Gertrude - The Cry' at Theatre N16, 14th June 2016

Thursday, June 16, 2016 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Extremely rotten. Gertrude is a nymphomaniac; Hamlet is a grinning idiot that'sbarely able to hold himself together; and Claudius can't help flashing his dick all over the place. And who the hell are the Duke of Meklenberg, Isola, Raguso and Cascan 

Howard Barker's Gertrude - The Cry is pretty damn far from your RSC tights and jerkins. We open with the King of Denmark's murder: Gertrude screams "fuck me!" as she strips down, straddles the his dying body and gets vigorously banged. As the last spasms of life drain from her husband, Gertrude lets out an orgasmic cry that probably gave the swing class in the room below pause for thought.

The rest of the play sees (among other things) Gertrude trying to recreate this 'cry': her and Claudius' subsequent sexual adventures not quite living up to the potent combo of sex, death and immorality that blew her away in the opening. Essentially she's lost her mojo, and goes to some pretty desperate ends to recapture it. 

Though the sex is cranked up to high levels, Barker's sinewy dialogue prevents things sliding into camp. Though tinged with Shakespearian-ish language, it's got a modern sheen and a sharp sense of the absurd. How can you not smile in delight at the sheer straightforwardness of Hamlet declaring, upon hearing his mother has birthed a smiling little sister, "who would not have smiled to have escaped the foetid dungeon of my mother's womb?". Stuff like this is less tinged with Freudian psychology than ripped straight from the good doctor's more lurid patient interviews.

Frankly, it's nice to see a play that really goes for it. Any notions of civility, tact and friendliness are quickly jettisoned in favour of a series of emotional crescendos that increase in volume until there's a pile of desecrated bodies in centre stage and the boundaries between each character have blurred so much they bleed into one another. Treating the classic work of British theatre with utter irreverence Barker is primarily concerned with forcing Shakespeare's characters into a blender and picking through the resulting bloody muck than straightforward storytelling.

I've got to admit, I lost the narrative thread a couple of times. As each character worked themselves up into histrionics, culminating in deeply bizarre behaviour I had to shrug and go with it. Still, while the characters transplanted straight from Hamlet are easy enough to follow, the new ones are somewhat more opaque. For example, I never could quite work out what Claudius and the King's Mum, Isola was after, apparently switching gears between cheerleading Gertrude's overt sexuality and worrying that her remaining son is about to fall victim to her vagina dentata.

Papering over these cracks is a fine set committed performances. Stephen Oswald is a eye-catching physical presence - the kind of gigantic beardy dude you can imagine on a medieval battlefield swinging an axe into somebody's face. His intimidating frame is cleverly underplayed in order to convey a character that's introverted and verbose, edgily waiting on the fringes of the action and never quite able to throatily participate in all the fucking.

But the crown jewel is undoubtedly Izabella Urbanowicz' Gertrude. She was the best thing in February's similarly bard-screwing Hamlet Peckham and never fails to impress her. She plays Gertrude like a caged animal, lashing out from under a shock of tangled hair with a scorched earth approach to sexuality. There's something irresistibly sickly about the way her Gertrude sluts it up - her eyes flashing with a serpentine seductiveness. Whenever she's on stage you can't take your eyes off her and while it's difficult to become emotionally involved in her story, Urbanowicz provides a sexual razzledazzle that it's impossible to deny.

There's been a refreshing dialling up of intensity in the theatre of late. Edward Bond's Dea served up a symphony of sexual violence, Christie in Love charted the sewers of men's minds and now Gertrude - The Cry takes us to the outer limits of female sexuality. 

Granted, the play is written and directed by men, but whoever's behind it, and despite some narrative confusingness, and despite it being a bum-numbing 2 hours without an interval, it's mega-refreshing to see anything with such fuck-you verve, determined to demolish the walls of politeness and decorum.

★★★

Gertrude - The Cry is at Theatre N16 until 30 June. Tickets here.

Friday, November 27, 2015

'In Search of England' at Theatre N16, 25th November 2015

Friday, November 27, 2015 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

Neil D'Arcy Jones' In Search of England is an ambitious piece of writing. It attempts to define a symbolic iconography of England, travel from one to the other, fit in a love story, a handful of mini-monologues, an understanding of England's relationship with violent revolution and, finally, to divine all of our relationship with England's storied past. 

All this adds up to a smartly psychological probe into what it means to 'be' English.

Our protagonist is George (Matthew John Wright) who has recently returned to England after years travelling around the world. He returns clutching a copy of H.V. Morton's classic travelogue In Search of England, determined to understand his own nationality. As the show puts it: "He was born English, his parents are English. But he's not sure whether he is any more."

This process consists of apparently aimlessly rambling up and down the country, taking on odd jobs and meeting strangers. Yet there's something else rumbling away in the background. In the first scene a detective interviews him about some suspicious acquaintances and gradually we come to sense the presence of some shadowy conspiracy that George may well be a part of - with explosive consequences.

In Search of England is an undeniably handsome production. The set consists of pages from Morton's book and various lithographs of English life dangling from the ceiling on strings. On the floor are various antique maps of urban and rural environments. The set sandwiches the action between concrete poles of meaning - anchoring it to the real world.

It's performatively impressive too. Wright's George is a mysterious stranger role leavened with an anger that we don't quite understand until the closing scenes, making a protagonist we're never sure whether to sympathise with. Playing the rest of the characters are the wonderfully chameleonic Sarah Lambie and Thomas Witcomb, who variously embody a 2nd gen Polish greasy spoon worker, a depressed homeless man, a creepy Colchester tour guide, lovelorn nurses and a confused Australian trying his best to understand Morrissey.

It's in these little character sketches that the show really shines. Witcomb in particular marks the high point of the night in a brief monologue explaining how a character ended up on the streets, working from a foundation of numbed bluntness and gradually humanising the character. Right the way through the production he switches gears with impressive speed, affecting working class directness and effete pretension at a moment's notice. 

But though In Search of England is peppered with individually impressive moments, it eventually bites off more than it can chew. It revels a little too much in its own mystery - setting up complex schemes involving furtively park meetings and transferred mix-tapes that (at least as far as I could tell) don't seem to go anywhere in particular. Not exactly helping is some mild chronological scene jumbling - the show begins with a police interview, then flashes back to earlier events. Eventually we're watching flashbacks within flashbacks - which makes divining what the plot actually is a bit of headscratcher.

Perhaps all that is a symptom of the short run-time, but I sense In Search of England would benefit from having more time to explain itself. Questions asked in the first act aren't answered in the final act, and the shadowy organisation that's eventually revealed to have been running the whole thing proves to be as omnipotent as it is unexplained - a lethal combination.

I detected a note of similarity between the work of Mike Bartlett to this - especially his Earthquakes in London - which similarly gets to grips with some essential Englishness. But where Bartlett isn't afraid to lay his cards on the table (not matter how barmy they might be), playwright Neil D'Arcy Jones seems a teensy bit afraid of going full bonkers with his narrative, instead hiding behind being cryptic.

That said, for all those flaws I really enjoyed myself. I'm a huge fan of these psychological dissections of Englishness; and I detected thematic DNA from some of my favourite authors (Ackroyd, Moore, Sinclair, Self) running right through the middle of the play. In Search of England has a kernel of truth and intelligence at its core - but this production feels like a rehearsal of what it could be.

It's an entertaining, well-staged and nicely performed rehearsal - but right now it's 'merely' good. It could be excellent.

★★★

In Search of England has finished its run - but I hope it returns.

Thursday, November 26, 2015

'Man and Superfan' at Theatre N16, 25th November 2015

Thursday, November 26, 2015 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

John Lennon's murderer, Mark David Chapman is and was a pathetic creature. Even worse, he's a boring one. Amongst crazed killers his motivations are muddles, his influences misread and his justifications fake as hell. Man and Superfan, sets out to find out what was going on under his skin, asking "what was life like for Chapman before he pulled the trigger?" 

Predictably, the answer is "not much". Taking place over the course of an awkward evening at home, we meet Chapman (Pete Darwent), his wife Gloria (Heidi Goldsmith), sister Susan (Joanna Rosenfeld) and her new boyfriend (Alex Boxall). Chapman on edge, frequently 'dropping out' of conversations to give sweatily psychotic asides to the audience. Tensions rise as the new boyfriend gets under Chapman's skin, eventually nudging him towards his fateful decision to kill John Lennon.

The background to one of the most shocking murders of the 20th century should be at least morbidly interesting, but Man and Superfan isn't. Partly this is because Chapman is a straightforwardly mentally ill man with no logic to his delusions - he rails against Lennon for engaging in self publicity, then a couple of minutes later criticises him for withdrawing from limelight to raise his son. Some effort goes into Chapman's religious fetishisation of Lennon; treating his albums as holy relics, reciting Beatles trivia as prayer and condemning his "bigger than Jesus" statement. But that peters out as the play switches gears to Catcher in the Rye - ending up with a tangled pile of disconnected pop culture loose ends.

An ideal study of Chapman would bind these disparate fixations together, giving us a glimpse into the world through his eyes. It's perhaps impossible to get an audience to empathise with the man, but we can at least attempt to understand his thought processes. Man and Superfan doesn't even come close, hamstrung by both clunky writing and a two-dimensional lead performance.

There isn't much to say about Darwent's performance other than the straightforward observation that it isn't very good. The psychotic tics he imbues Chapman with are creaky cliches - adding up to a character that's not just unconvincing as a portrayal of a historical figure, but unconvincing as a human being in general. I'll grant that he's not exactly helped by having to deliver dialogue that ranges from clunky to weirdly anachronistic, but even so his performance fails to make the case that Chapman is worthy of dramatic interest.

The rest of the cast are similarly lost in the dramatic doldrums, with the brief exception of Alex Boxall who manages to dredge up some deep-buried spark of life for a couple of minutes. But nobody is served well by staging that requires everyone to sit around a dining table for 99% of the run-time, and the generally paper-thin characterisation.

Man and Superfan feels like a first draft that probably shouldn't have made it to the stage at all. As drama it's flatly played and dully blocked, as intellectual and historical exercise it's half-baked. One to skip.

★

Man and Superfan is at Theatre N16, above The Bedford Pub, Balham until 26th November. Tickets here.

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

'The Boat' at Theatre N16, 27th October 2015

Wednesday, October 28, 2015 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

I can't fault The Boat's ambition. Theatre N16's new home in Balham (they were priced out of Stoke Newington and can't afford to rebrand) turns the top floor of the Bedford Pub into the open ocean. A white boat sits in the centre of the room, surrounded by an undulating sheet of plastic wrap that laps at the audience's feet. Inside are two young girls (Pia Laborde Noguez and Cristina Catalina), their only companions Turtle (Matthew Coulton) and Gull (Gabriele Lombardo).

Told episodically, we follow the girls on an epic "odd-at-sea" as they head towards an unstated destination. As events proceed our protagonist philosophically ponders the nature of reality, belief and trust as she spirals into psychological breakdown.

The production busts down the fourth wall in the opening minute, where the 'Jellyfish of Sound' invites the audience to imitate the swoosh and wash of the ocean, sounds that'll be looped throughout the production. This deconstructionist tendency is felt through the entire production: characters' slipping into various foreign languages for a couple of lines, the gradual destruction of the set, the 'animal' companions dissolving into men in costumes and so on.

The show blurs the line between theatre and performance art; its best bits some genuinely interesting visual ideas. The best is death conveyed by the genuinely creepy image of smearing grey clay over a character's face. It effectively obliterates their features, creating a creepy idea of depersonalisation. The wet, malleable clay also conveys decay and decomposition alarmingly well - which combined with Cristina Catalina's top class corpse performance sent shivers up the spine.

But though individual moments work well enough, as a whole The Boat really doesn't. My main beef is that the entire show is written in brain-numbing prolix: I was paying attention (and taking notes) and I found much of the experience largely impenetrable. Narrative is jettisoned in favour of, for example, long-winded allegorical arguments about the nature of the moon that have the distinct whiff of stoner philosophising. 

Reading up on the show after I'd seen it I was disturbed to find that The Boat was, according to the company: "dealing ... with personal experiences of assault and the horrific human trafficking industry that plagues our world today…." This issue is one of the tragedies of our time and a red-hot political button - precisely the kind of topic that contemporary theatre should be tackling. Unfortunately, swaddling the issue in layer after layer of suffocating metaphor and experimental staging sucks away the forthright anger and call to action that any piece touching on this topic should contain.

Frankly, dealing with the migrant crisis by having people hopping about pretending to be friendly turtles and mischievous seagulls, delivering enigmatic dialogue is straight-up gimmicky. The result is stilted, emotionally retarded theatre that revels in inaccessibility. This is an important topic - just give us the straight story and a clear message please.

The (admittedly uncharitable) conclusion I eventually reached was that all the cutesy lo-fi avant-garde trappings are there to disguise that the Emperor isn't wearing any clothes. A disappointing debut for Theatre N16.

★★

The Boat is at Theatre N16 until 5th November. Tickets here.