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Post by Nicholas on Mar 3, 2019 14:43:44 GMT
This again! After reading the UN’s eye-opening report on extreme poverty (it’s a 30-minute read and will be the best 30 minutes of your year), I immediately wanted to come on here and ask “Families must choose between food or heat, parents must starve for their children, mothers are forced into sex work – how can we get these people to see & Juliet?”. It may sound flippant to consider the theatre or the arts in the context of our country’s extreme poverty; instead, with its benefits, we should be asking more about arts access. I’d like to, ultimately, ask you a question about priorities, to which I don’t know the answer.
To list just the central gist of the UN report: swathes of our country simply don’t have the money to live. Food and bills can’t be both paid. Only parents or children get a full meal. The jobs aren’t there, nor are the benefits. Sex work pays for school clothes. Schools aren’t helping out, because they can’t afford it. Obviously, further opportunities cost more thus aren’t available.
Why isn’t it flippant to veer from this to La Traviata? Because choral singing is better than morphine. The health benefits are astonishing, the benefits of community profound, and the skills of teamwork and hard work and are great for everyday life. The UN touch upon community as a need, not a luxury. Any time arts funding is debated, the benefits raised are indisputable; are the benefits felt by everyone?
One issue that the UN also mentions, especially regarding the B-word, is identity. As another report suggested, after decades of feeling embarrassed about our working-class identity (shrinking not expanding what ‘Englishness’ means), we asked our country “Would you rather be English or European?”. That went well.
More pressingly, perhaps, many suggest issues like knife crime – on the increase after nine years of austerity – are the results of the closing down of libraries, community centres, and school facilities – ultimately, closing of opportunities. Rather than expand their identities via the arts or sports, young people’s identities close off into violence and gangs. Sincerely, the lack of drama classes (etc) may be responsible for young lives cut short, not metaphorically, but on our streets.
And one final issue here. Identity is often formed at school, via class, classes, classmates. Identity is also intertwined with opportunity. If your school has the chance, you can see yourself as an Oxbridge graduate, as a doctor, anything. If your school has none of those ‘little extras’ like books or pencils, your future identity is restricted. For children and especially late teens, a lack of long-term future opportunities means that there are few long-term risks to your behaviour now. Nothing offers opportunities more than the arts.
One reason ‘theatre’ fundamentally fails the working class, thus, is because theatre is perhaps the greatest medium to explore identity. Even only going to the theatre, you’re asked to pretend you see horses in a Wooden O. Furthermore, the skills you develop by making theatre are skills that lead to you becoming better: confidence, creativity, questioning. Playing Rosalind, a young girl both has to see Rosalind in herself – what makes her a royal, a rebel, a hero – and see herself in Rosalind – that her voice and face are the voice and face of this hero. Devising a piece about contemporary Britain where the Brexiters play Remainers and the Remainers play Brexiters (demanding empathy), whilst the political problems wouldn’t be solved, some of the ideological ones would be less stubbornly held. Every day I take the confidence, the inventiveness, the extroversion I developed in school drama lessons and apply them to day-to-day life. Too, most of my personality has been shaped by seeing so much theatre, and forcing myself into that imaginative, empathetic state. That the opportunities to act and to attend are untenable for swathes of our population – almost solely down class lines – should make us sick.
So arts aren’t just ‘a little extra’. Theatre for working class communities is important; this goes to all the arts. Choral singing can be the difference between wellness and remission, or develop a positive community path. The Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra did wonders when poorer children were encouraged into violence (because Venezuela is obviously the place to emulate), and similar schemes work here too. Surely giving every school a strong music department will have long-term benefits from career opportunities to the NHS?
Libraries are perhaps more important, and more tangible. In my first post I mentioned the class divide here, whereby poorer schoolkids were two years of reading behind, and how (OBVIOUSLY) a lack of access to books means a lack of opportunities for short-term academic progress and long-term academic (and potentially real-world) success.
All arts – photography, dance, baking, rapping – are door-openers and health-benefitting (sport too), and theatre’s performative and empathetic skills should be celebrated too.
School budgets, the EBACC, have been criminal with regards to the arts. It has actively discouraged people from doing things that help the country, help the economy, help themselves. Arts aren’t funded in schools. Instead, arts funding goes, almost entirely, to big buildings in the middle of an expensive city. All arts, including theatre, fail the working class, due to our subsidies; this failure has a trickle-up effect for our NHS, our safety, our referenda, our future.
The question I’d like to ask, thus, perhaps I shouldn’t ask at all. Were we living in a well-balanced, strong-and-stable economy, we wouldn’t need an either/or. Of course schools and arts should get due funding; however, we should ask who that funding helps, and if it can be used to help more people. As it is, though, it is an either/or, so:
Where should arts funding and subsidies go – theatres, or communities? As best I understand it – please correct me if I’m wrong – arts subsidies go not to the distribution of art, but the making of it. Therefore free museums, and subsidised theatre, are funded by the have-nots’ taxes but attended by the haves, and all the benefits (many of which are most beneficial at the bottom of the economic pole) are felt by the elite. Therefore:
Should funding go simply to theatres to make the biggest and best theatre they can, to appeal to regular theatregoers? Or should some of a county’s theatre funding go to the county’s schools, arts charities, community centres, and anything that offers the less well off the access and opportunities? Or, perhaps, should theatres/schools/charities that work with working-class and less-well-off people – Joan LIttlewood then, Anna Scher now – get as much funding as big buildings and national institutions? A collaboration, maybe – theatres should get funding for their in-house staging, but only if they use the funds to bring in, or tour to, their local ‘left behind’ communities?
And this is true of all arts funding – to galleries, concert halls, opera houses, literary funds. Is it enough to fund the buildings and the institutions, or should arts funding incentivise its orchestras and artists and actors to go to libraries and schools and estates and bring the arts where they’re needed?
Or, broader - if the arts are so important to our health, how can we make them for all, sans subsidies? What can we do to bring our theatre to where it's actually needed?
I’ve mentioned school a lot, but choral singing has health benefits for all ages. Books, whatever age, are empathy machines. Many am-dram groups aren’t young wannabe actors, but people later in life realising the benefits of this complex and questioning medium. Therefore, shouldn’t we be looking at arts subsidies for struggling communities? Mobile libraries and reading groups SPECIFICALY for, say, jobseekers and food-bank users? Community choirs where community centres have been closed? And of course theatre groups and theatre trips for people financially and geographically priced out? Obviously it’s not either/or exactly – but perhaps a county’s arts budget should be, say, between 50/50 and 75/25 theatre/community.
Personally, I can see both reasons for both sides, but I’d clearly veer towards communities. I do truly feel that arts funding spent better could save lives, boost the economy, help the NHS; all the evidence is there. And whilst people often cite and celebrate the financial and health benefits of the arts, no-one questions whether the benefits are accessible to the right people.
If the NT had to boost ticket prices (pricing me out of a show or two a year) to allow working-class communities (esp. those in extremer situations) access to the arts – and the social opportunities and health benefits that entailed – I’d happily miss a Common or a Macbeth here and there, and let the benefits of this great medium be broadly felt. Would you? We shouldn’t be in a situation where it’s an either/or to schools having libraries or not, but that’s where we are.
But it’s a passing thought. I’m sure many of you feel the exact opposite. There are many good reasons either way. I’d love to know your thoughts.
P.S. Also, semi-regular grumble about blogs and money – unless bloggers (who are better critics than ‘critics’, Letts and Treneman dear god) get paid, bloggers/critics (gatekeepers) are financially secure regular theatregoers (obvs middle-class), which preserves our blind-spot of failing the working-class. Perhaps funding should go to, say, an NT scheme that subsidises ten diverse bloggers for a year?
P.P.S. It’s also been about a year since Lyn Gardner wrote her article, and whilst I felt her article was a fascinating statement, I feel that this is an issue we ignore in the long term. Things are getting better (the Royal Court and Donmar are working with Kestrel and Clean Break so the opportunities and benefits are spread; companies like Cardboard Citizens do great work) but good enough? We should be asking this question – both in terms of on-stage representation but also offstage opportunities – more regularly. I’d love to know what Gardner thinks about the issues she raises, and what her interviewees think too. Looking at the last year, and the year to come, who is on our stages, and who is making the shows – and is it enough? And again - what can we do to help these institutions?
P.P.P.S. I can easily argue “Fundamentally a theoretical budget should go into a non-existent food-bank community-choir” to an insular forum of like-minded people and feel I’m doing something. I’m not. I want to. I’m probably not alone in being embarrassingly ignorant of companies and charities that are working to demand or implement action in this area. In any way – simply setting up a standing order, or hands-on involvement – I know some of you do charity work, school work, actually understand these issues in practice. If anyone has any practical advice on how to help with an issue like this – especially being evangelical about the arts, especially theatre – I’m sure many would appreciate hearing it. I really would.
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Post by Nicholas on Mar 3, 2019 14:37:47 GMT
WOW. This is a PERFECT production – interpretation, experiment, re-evaluation – of an unsolvable masterpiece. Maybe from 1971 onwards, with Bobby’s story so specific, trying to keep Company relevant is a fool’s errand. Marianne Elliott is no fool. Using this flawed masterpiece as her jumping-off point, Elliott’s given us – surprise surprise – an astonishingly intelligent, emotionally wrenching reinvention of it. Because of her, I ended up, somehow, MORE enamoured of a show I’ve found too narrow-minded over time, because rather than smooth its rougher edges, she’s bought out the roughest best in them.
Marianne Elliott’s Company (no-one defers to Sondheim more than me, but this show is HER (and Craig’s) masterpiece) takes the questions the original poses, and doesn’t so much answer them as reframe them. Sondheim’s Company is a funny beast – whilst incisive and nakedly emotional, it’s also rather quaint and quite of its time (“I could understand a person if it’s not a person’s bag”…). Bobby lives such a solipsistic life, his friends in such a rich New York bubble, so narrow in ideas of family, that much of their arguments are irrelevant to anyone outside. But oh that score… The show is like a family member – something I will always always always love (perhaps more than any other, better Sondheim), but boy can I hate it on a bad day. With Bobby’s small window onto the big world of love and marriage, I sometimes think that Furth and Sondheim ask some of life’s biggest questions of monogamy to a small man, only to come to some pat answers.
Why look for answers where none occur? This is why I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE Elliott’s production. It’s not about the easy answers of “Whaddaya wanna get married for?”. It takes many of the oddities and inconsistencies of the original masterpiece and magnifies them – making it more aggressive and more inquisitive and more uncertain than ever, more relatable and more haunting as a viewer. She changes the pressure to societal in a way a bachelor would never face. She changes ‘Tick Tock’ from some bloke worried about a receding hairline to far more profound pressures. She makes PJ a cock, thus a ‘bad decision’, in a way none of Bobby’s three girlfriends ever were (and yet it’s the same bloody lines – how did that asshole line ever work?!?!), changing Bobby from a suave ladies’ man to you or me wondering why we made, and make, our bad decisions. Perhaps I wish the show gave more focus to the eternal pleasures of the single life, disposable boyfriends, than lip service (yes that was a cunnilingus pun), but even the staging of that scene was comic in its juxtaposition: asking whether having Richard Fleeshman going down on you is really worth missing out on marriage (um…). For reasons others have said better than I, the gender switch reaps huge rewards. My boorish blokey interpretation is that, actually, it’s easier to relate to her – a male Bobby can be just mopey, his pressures all individual and internal, but given that Bobbie’s pressures are largely put on her by society via people who ‘love’ her, ALL the relationships change and the drama zings better. Far from just questioning Bobby’s bachelordom, we’re now even questioning – due to modern life, societal norms and specifically female attitudes – why we’re looking for answers where none occur...
Rather than the over-conclusive arc of the original (Q: “Whaddaya wanna get married for?” A: “Someone to hold me too close…”), this asks us why we even ask that first question in the first place. Rather than try and update everything to work, she lets some things remain iffy and problematic, and thus asks us to look critically at the whole situation. Rather than (as productions that I LOVE do) end with some conclusive statement about whether Bobby is lonely or hopeful, “Being Alive” is more a question mark than a full stop. There are f***ing multitudes in this show.
And… “Another Hundred People” (alongside “The Miller’s Son” one of my favourite Sondheim songs). Whilst George Blagden doesn’t have quite the belt or brass that the song has previously asked for, the miniature everyday ballets happening in the background are an expressionist, subtle rebuke to the specificity of Bobbie. Shadows going about their day, to suddenly burst into tableaus of love and lust, a positively Gene Kelly-esque display of extraordinary emotions in invisible faces… So bold in its visual storytelling, everything that miniature ballet says about the little moments where love can be found turns Bobbie’s story into the story of every hopeful lover. It was so beautiful I began to cry.
(Also, ignoring the obvious, I hadn’t realised how funny the smaller moments in this were – and the rewards this reaps! The shift into that line “you’re always sorry” was an unexpected giggle with pitch-perfect timing, then the rest becomes more sentimental with this contrast greater. Plenty of subtler moments throughout. Marianne Elliott is such a good line-reader, isn’t she?)
And where she wants to preserve everything magisterial about Company, Elliott just lets that cast do their magic. Jonathan Bailey is extraordinary at neurotic, loveable, surprisingly tender and teary, and bloody hilarious – what else can you say, we all fell in love. We fell in love with Richard Fleeshman too but for different reasons. Really fond of Mel and Gavin Spokes’ touching ordinariness. And for extraordinariness, Patti… It’s Patti! Can’t put into words how great SHE was. I loved Elliott’s setting of THAT scene – seated and trapped, an intimate, less showboating, more pointed conversation – but my god, it’s Patti!
At its heart, though, phone rings door chimes in comes Rosalie. Bobby has always been an incredibly reactive role – one which requires the performer to watch other couples singing their hearts out, without truly expressing their own; many of Company’s biggest numbers, FANTASTICALLY done here – “Ladies Who Lunch”, “Getting Married Today” – are only tangentially Bobbie’s story; never watching Rosalie Craig does it feel anything but. She can go from comic to shocked in the same laugh, sure of herself to confused in just a step, and by (almost like a fourth-wall-breaking sitcom) taking us into her confidence, her smallest worry hit the back of the auditorium. She has such an ability to turn on a dime and reflect the fights and frictions – more than a mere bystander, you can often see the cogs turn as she turns others’ emotional outbursts towards herself, or unsuccessfully tries to deflect her emotional response to the madness around her. We just catch her looking, and looking… and we look right back. And this is just her NOT singing and acting! When that voice gets “Marry Me A Little” or “Being Alive”, bloody hell… However much Bobbie is meant to have closed that door emotionally, Rosalie Craig is such an emotionally accessible presence; having her play someone as emotionally inaccessible and confused as Sondheim and Furth’s apathetic and indecisive hero complicates Bobbie – now her emotional stuntedness is self-doubt and society and real depth, a muddle of giant emotions hidden behind smaller apathetic indecisive ones. And all this from how she mouths the word “wow”! Quite simply – I know I’m going out on a limb here, given some of your reactions, but sod it – I would put Rosalie Craig’s performance up there with Hattie Morahan’s Nora, Rooster Byron, and Imelda’s Mama Rose, as one of THOSE performances. She’s that good – but there’s something special about the way she brings this to life.
(Also, some actual family members saw this, knowing nothing about the musical’s past, and loved it as a ‘new musical’ – it just works)
One last thing – seeing it closeish to the end of its run, I still felt the air of an ‘event’ around it. Perhaps that’s just breathing the same air as Patti, I don’t know, but the audience seemed buzzing. I can’t remember an atmosphere like it for a while.
I hope it’s clear I was really overwhelmed by this. It’s extraordinary. Rough edges intact, Elliott changes the focus from questions about Bobby’s bachelordom to questions that are gendered and satirical and specific, and questions that are general that hit me in my personal life – and, rather than tie them up in a bow, forces us to leave the theatre, like Bobbie, emotionally rawer and wanting answers and personally vulnerable. I haven’t stopped thinking about this since I saw it – haven’t stopped trying to consolidate Bobbie’s uncertainties and society’s pressures, haven’t stopped thinking about THAT extraordinary performance of THIS Bobbie.
P.S. When I was younger, my simple dream in life was to see Elaine Stritch, Bernadette Peters, and Patti Lupone (and yet, somehow, my parents didn’t twig anything). The first of course never happened. The second moved me to absolute tears, from the back row – the very cheapest, very last seat – of the Southbank Centre. For Patti, I thought I was missing this and it was breaking my wee heart, but luck bought me to London, the day seat queue and – to see someone I’ve idolised for years – second bloody row. She looked at me. There were moments towards the beginning when I was just completely and utterly in awe. Even now I still am.
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Post by Nicholas on Feb 17, 2019 13:41:46 GMT
We are talking about the way male roles are written in romantic films specifically. I watch a lot of films.
Because the genre writes women so well...
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Post by Nicholas on Oct 27, 2018 10:52:22 GMT
Yesterday it was five years since A Doll’s House played its last show in London (a performance I was lucky enough to attend). Five years later that show feels no less nerve-shredding, tear-jerking, real, inspiring.
I truly believe that art can change your life, perhaps none more so than theatre – that brief time within touching distance of great dramatic figures. Sometimes the impact is obvious. You see a show about a Doctor and apply to medical school, see Mark Rylance and apply to RADA, see a musician and pick up an instrument, see a Chekhov and go to Russia, see something political and campaign for change. You study theatre. You learn something new. We all have that first show that’s our first love. Of course these are “life-changing”. But I believe that an encounter with great theatre is like a brief encounter with a mystery soulmate, gone afterwards but never forgotten – that one show like a lost love for you. It’s subtler, gentler, but no less powerful and always there. There’s such connection in that one moment that, years down the line, you can’t help but think back on it, call on it for help, love it. When life lobs big decisions your way, you’re inspired by friends, family, advice, experience – and those encounters, and that show.
I’m lucky to have a list of ten or twenty shows that stopped my heart and opened my eyes – cinematic inner lives in The Flick's small talk; Black Watch; the inevitable tragedy in everyday work in A View from the Bridge; all the encounters within The Encounter; the people places and things of Barbra Marten and Jeremy Herrin and Duncan Macmillan and Denise Gough; the Wooster Group’s one good show Gatz; the love letters redefining theatre of Farinelli and the King, Chekhov’s First Play, and Ellen Terry with Eileen Atkins. Oblique Ostermeier and Lisa Dwan and Pinter; also Les Mis. Plenty more. SEE CHEKHOV’S FIRST PLAY. It still goes on – just this year Fun Home gave voice to our unvoiced repressions; last year guess which seven hour epic still unfolds? For all the crap, and the majority of mediocrities, just one show a year like this – maybe even one moment – and that makes it all worthwhile. What will be next year’s?
But there are those certain shows that speak as if only to you – years later, these nights are key parts of your life. My other one/three is The Shakespeare Trilogy. Superb shows – Caesar so strong about control and revenge, Tempest so strong about imprisonment and redemption – these redefined who Shakespeare speaks for and who theatre belongs to, with brio and bravado and genius. Hannah’s ongoing imprisonment, brought new meaning by the Bard, will stay with me to my dying day. And over almost five years, a unique way of storytelling... And sod it, I loved loved loved loved loved Nell Gwynn and secretly it’s still my favourite show ever. Heartfelt and hilarious song-and-dances don’t stay with you unless they say and mean something; Nell Gwynn said and meant so much. And a dog too!
But the first time I saw A Doll’s House I stumbled out as if winded, whilst the second time I stumbled out fully knowing this show was a part of my life. Why? There aren’t words; there was everything there. I’d read it before so it’s not just Ibsen. It’s the richness Stephens’ speech had; the baby; the faux-familial set later a cage, a boxing ring, a carousel; Nora’s dance; the humanity Cracknell brought to everyone’s smallest moments; the ignorant sensitivity of Krogstad and Torvald’s performances; Act III; Hattie Morahan…
Whatever the reason, whatever the objective merits of the show, there’s something more – far more subjective, instinctive, absolute. I truly believe I’ve taken paths in life – outside the glitzy West End, regarding people I love and places I’m at – because of the shows that linger in my life. In the last five years five years of life has happened, and there’ve been times when I’ve been unconsciously imitating old shows, and decisions deliberately influenced by the domestic façade the Helmers put on or by Nora’s tentative self-aware semi-courage. When I say the show changed my life, I mean that.
Alan Bennett wrote “The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.” Personally I think that in theatre – where the dead awaken and that hand is reaching out in front of you, before the moment is lost forever – that feeling will always be more poignant, more profound, and more personal. I’ve seen some great shows – and of course A Doll’s House is a technically great show – but moments like this, particular to you? For you, I hope there’s at least one. For me, it’s this.
Anywho, this is a long-winded and extremely pretentious way of saying that the greatest show produced in my lifetime is wonder.land A Doll’s House.
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Post by Nicholas on Sept 29, 2018 20:54:33 GMT
" in a scenario no doubt familiar to highly-strung thespians – must be kept apart lest they try to kill each other." Interesting trivia! They're using the same policy and techniques as with Keeley Hawes and Sheila Hancock. I’m more interested by the line “he’s a bit of a fidgety-bum”. Do snakes have bums?
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Post by Nicholas on Sept 29, 2018 19:50:01 GMT
The product of theatre’s something I’d like to address. The product of theatre:
So…
The reason why some people are not going to the theatre because the product doesn’t appeal to them. We can dress it up as much as you want but that’s the fact of it. That’s like Jack Wills saying “Working-class people aren’t buying our clothes. They mustn’t hate our version of the product. They must hate the product: clothes”. Or a vegetarian restaurant wondering why they almost never attract carnivores.
I’d argue that most people see theatre (like cinema, like going out for a meal) as an occasional treat a handful of times a year, and we should divide the product into literary/political/theatrical and populist. Does it matter that Cats isn’t Das Kapital – Proletaricats? It’s escapism, for a treat Les Mis is better than London Road. That people choose to go when it’s GILT or Kid’s Week or when they can proves they like the product. That Coriolanus, War Horse, Phantom, and Billy Elliott all stormed the box office based on one day in UK Cinemas proves people want theatre - even SRB’s Lear would have out-done Captain America that week (obvs we can't break this down by region, and NT Live’s still stupidly costly, but it’s fair to assume most of these audiences are theatregoers who can’t go to the theatre) - that’s quite a diverse list of shows people are flocking to! That Jamie and Kinky Boots are thriving where Made in Dagenham and The Girls and Stand Up Stand Up Stand Up and Sing flopped proves that when people have choice, they choose (in the case of the great MiD, wrongly). But it proves that people like the product.
And also, isn’t the product associated with London, trains, the whole shebang? I love theatre but often hate the four hours it takes to get there and get home. My local is still 40 minutes away. I could afford the time and money, I felt at home in London theatres. Not everyone can, not everyone does. We can make the product better.
Do you want to know what REALLY got this subject under my skin? No no-one cares shut up already It was the smash hit show Act Without Words II at the Barbican. The cast was two. The set was a piece of cardboard. The theatre was the foyer of a block of flats. And yet, this accessible exciting ‘theatre’ was a London-centric snob-fest where a bunch of middle-class consumers commuted in and paid £20 per person for this privilege. This could have been for everyone so easily! But it wasn’t. Why not?
Last year, artistically, Punchdrunk took it further. But rather than tell a story about contemporary London to contemporary Londoners, it told a story about ancient theatre to ancient theatregoers – for fifty f***ing pounds a ticket.
And in 2011, The Passion electrified Port Talbot by being free and inclusive, prominent and progressive, and with the right audience in mind. Oh...
It’s not ‘the product’. It’s what the product sells, where it is, how much it costs. Bring revivals to the streets – as that Beckett did – and it changes things. Bring new plays to the streets – as The Passion did (without any clichés or politics of class) – and the people flock! Whilst it obviously incentivised some new theatregoers, not everyone involved in The Passion is now passionate about theatre, but whether as a theatre bug or random escapism, people like the product for different reasons, and for many Michael Sheen’s Jesus nailed it.
I can thus imagine that a promenade show about Grenfell, say – written semi-verbatim by someone like Vivienne Franzmann, cast with actors from that community, set and staged in council flats touring across the country – would be amazing, accessible, and so powerful in its message and its medium that it implements real change. I can also imagine it being the theatrical bug that bites its audience – that Fanny and Alexander and Follies are suddenly filled with families from Scun-thorpe [edited, because apparently S****horpe doesn’t get through the censors...] who fell in love with this. But how does theatre actually present relevant London working-class stories? In Islington for Islington. The Tricycle stages an immediate response, and so affected are its audience it that they themselves riot. ‘The product’, you say...
(This show just premiered. It seems intent on taking theatre away from theatres and into its right location, telling an important story to its intended audience. I’d love to know how it’s engaging in outreach, accessibility, and bringing in its target audience. We’re seeing a few shows like this - companies like Clean Break, Cardboard Citizens, Kestrel, which work within a disadvantaged community to represent it - but often they end up trapped in conventional expensive inaccessible buildings, Royal Courts or Royal Exchanges, told to the wrong audience. I mentioned Cathy, which played the Barbican but played prisons too. I loved Franzmann’s lived-in livewire Pests which played upstairs at the Royal Court, so felt like a story knowingly told for an outside audience - sensitively, but not inclusively. Whilst good starts, Helena Thompson’s The Burning Tower seems the best mix of medium and message and mission statement thus far. Perhaps it’ll fail, perhaps it’ll be unpopular, perhaps it’ll prove that yes this audience hates theatre - but at least it’s going out of its way to prove that. And if it succeeds? Well, it’s sold out. I was boooooooooooooooorn by the river…)
You CANNOT produce THREE Importance of Being Earnests this decade and then earnestly go “Why isn’t Earnest appealing to the same audiences who prefers Eastenders – it’s not us, it’s them?”. You CANNOT limit perfectly accessible shows to London alone, and complain that poorer regional residents – hell, poorer Barbican residents – aren’t forking out for it. You CANNOT blame the audience for disliking the ‘product’ when look at the product!
Frankly, any medium that presents three Earnests in a decade is failing everyone anyway.
I don’t even know what working class is any more. Does it mean you have to work to live? That would be 90% of us. Is it an income level? Is it social mobility? What exactly IS working class?
Oh, easy question...
Income? Definitely yes – but not just that. Accent? Loaded with assumptions. ‘Work’? We all work! Family? So it’s hereditary, like porphyria – mebbe, but then what about social mobility? Community? Kind of… State of mind? Yes – but what the f*** does that mean? Cultural standing? Perhaps, but isn’t that depressing if it’s permanent. Social Mobility? I’d argue in some ways you move classes and in other ways you don’t. A chip on your shoulder which you pass on to your children? Clearly something my mother didn’t have and nor do I… Wanting to seem cool? Apparently. Voting for Brexit? Statistically yes, but…
One thing Gardner’s article raises, that I decided not to tackle, is “white working-class” BECAUSE WE JUST NEED MORE WHITE PEOPLE ON STAGE. The differences (economically, culturally, geographically) between a former miner and a second-generation immigrant in East London are profound – but both come under this class umbrella. Compare Windrush and Brexit, two working-class issues. Can you define both with one term, then write a two-hour play solving both concerns? And this is where it gets really tricky. “Does theatre fail them both?” – for various reasons, yes. “Does making Maxine Peake associate artist in Manchester ‘succeed’ either?” – no, of course not! But does Maxine Peake continue to provide working-class successes in theatre? Yes! In simply asking “Does theatre fail…” we’re oversimplifying, and in reaching for one solution we’re going on a wild goose chase.
So to help with your definition, regarding theatre – class is all these things and more except when it isn’t. Accent isn’t class but in some situations accent is class, mostly in situations where class isn’t an issue. And sometimes saying nothing is positive. All clear now? Good, let’s move on…
Maybe at a tangent, maybe not, but Britain is known for "class division" and making people feel they are not wanted in certain environments. What happens in other countries where the culture isn't quite so divided, or at least, not so explicitly? Well, read this! This article is perfect. It’s relatable. It’s this struggle. It’s Australian.
So… What does that say? Is it a global issue? Apparently… That author doesn’t write about the culture of theatre, but the language. So, do we have to discuss the language of Sophocles, Shakespeare, Strindberg, Simon Stone, and Neil Simon? Maybe we do. Maybe it’s relevant. Kill me now.
And you know what? Somewhere in Australia, someone was reading that going “Oh, woe is you. Try being me – an aboriginal theatregoer”.
(My only caveat, though, would be NT Live. Shows ‘transfer’ not just across the country but around the world thanks to NT Live – and I broadly think a) it’s wonderfully done and b) it’s a miracle that Angels In America and Jamie and A View from the Bridge are global. However, NT Live is UK Theatre 2018. What does this list say about today’s Britain? What class hang-ups does make global?)
Nicholas, thank you for this. So many points to consider we should convene a conference. I think you might have been thinking about this topic for a while. One small point I would take up with you. About classroom teaching: I’m told that sometimes this is pretty dire. I myself taught Shakespeare, brilliantly of course. I see your point about leaving your own 'context' for want of a better word at the door and this not being a good thing. But consider how doing exactly that can free you. In the classroom you can be Macbeth or Mark Antony or whoever you like, male female, old, young, happy, sad, in love, jealous. You can explore blame, responsibility, relationships in a safe place, within a play. My experience is that this is liberating for all children. You can shake off your gender, your class, your level of wealth and actually enact the consequences. This applies to other dramatists too of course but Shakespeare allows it more, offers more and questions more. IMO. 🤪 Oh, only about twenty years.
That’s beautifully put! My only contention is that most syllabi ask us not to put ourselves into the texts, but to preserve them in formaldehyde. I’ve dug out my GCSE coursework – ““Mercutio is an insignificant, comic character in ‘Romeo and Juliet’. How far do you agree with this statement?”. I just repeated what we were taught in class – Mercutio’s like Mercury, there’s a lot about sex (that proves it – I’d definitely left my 'context' at the door if teenage me was writing anything about sex). So, as a kid, was I that academically informed about the Greek messenger God? Or was I parroting my teacher to tick enough mark-scheme boxes to get a C-A*?
“Mercutio is like Mercury” gets you a C; “Mercutio is like me” doesn’t. Which is better for kids and for theatre? Who cares; which is better for your school? Ideally, every teacher would be as talented and caring and enthusiastic and inspiring as you (and this is how I get the grades...), but not every teacher can be. Worse, to get the school’s necessary pass-mark quota, no teacher needs to be – they just need to teach the mark scheme. When we’re marked on dull historical fact, is it any more than a historical document? Besides, is there the simple ability to ‘stage’ the plays in a classroom of 20+? You’re 100% right and your image of Shakespeare in the classroom is ideal – but that’s if these playing opportunities are there. Otherwise, you copy Dr Miller and Lord Olivier.
And by the way, gotoashow.wordpress.com/ is wonderful! Thanks for flagging it up, that’s a kid with real flair and real talent!
It’s not like anyone *needs* to head to a theatre to be entertained these days. You can access top-notch entertainment literally anywhere with a decent internet connection using a device that a great many people routinely carry in their pocket. If you haven’t been bitten by the theatre bug then it takes something special to get people out of the comfort and convenience of their home-based entertainment routines. “Reason not the need!” I’d argue, though, theatre fails the working class; but they don’t ‘need’ the theatre - theatre ‘succeeds’ for me, an obsessive who ‘needs’ it - and theatre ‘succeeds’ for my brother; who’s a bit meh on the topic. At best I go 100 times a year; at best he goes 10 times. We have so many identical formative theatrical experiences, but he doesn’t care and I care too much (he watches a LOT more Netflix than I). So why has it succeeded that non-theatregoer? Yeah, he didn’t ‘need’ to see the Alan Yentob musical where I was wetting myself at the idea; but he had the choice. Both he (occasionally) and I (obsessively) feel a) comfortable at, b) geographically close to, and c) represented in the theatre. For us, theatre is as accessible and fair as that device in our pockets (that said, to this day, we both tidy up our accents in the theatre, presumably subconsciously, just to fit in at these ridiculous buildings, so even we still feel some subconscious discomfort). For working-class audiences?
Being bitten by the theatre bug is one thing, and I do think great potential theatregoers/theatremakers are being denied this by a) not having the opportunities to go, b) not seeing themselves and their stories on stage, c) not having the opportunities to make and tell their own stories on stage, and d) the financial and geographical issues regarding regular theatregoing.
But any old entertainment? Yeah, Angry Birds is entertaining on your phone, but that’s letting self-perpetuating London-centric snobbery off the hook! If you live in a regional council house (say Cornwall/Norfolk/Newcastle), maybe the Hiddlestonanus is up your alley, because he gets half-naked. Is there enough follow-up entertainment? I think 50/50. NT Live* is good, but would be great if its representation was – how many Cornish or Norfolk or Geordie accents or actors or characters have there been on NT Live, oh right, virtually none. Tours would be good, but most post-London tours are B-casts. And if the best escapism’s in London, look up a train from Cornwall or Norfolk or Newcastle to London… Now, bless the likes of Sheridan Smith, Tom Burke, Carrie Hope Fletcher. Bless Bill Kenwright, who makes musicals cheap and accessible. And bless Icke and Imelda and Mischief Theatre for doing theatre on the telly. Obvs, huge imperfections here - mostly that many of these theatrical experiences aren’t actually live theatre - but it’s a start.
And anywho, you can watch A Doll’s House on a device in your pocket! Obviously that’s a different form of entertainment to the Young Vic, but a positive overall - but if we’re showing how great theatre can be on your phone, shouldn’t tours and NT Lives show how great theatre truly is? Couldn’t that device in you pocket be the best introduction to theatre, if a broader, cheaper, representative form of NT Live was THAT accessible? I’m not sure - and I feel it’s spiteful to introduce theatre like this and then go "Come visit us in London" when train prices...
And as we know from recent movie blockbusters, representation in populism matters. So sure, maybe you just wanna see Starlight Express, but even then a train sounding a bit like you matters.
The next time you go to the theatre, though, let me know whether that show is accessible to that hypothetical kid in a council house in Cornwall or Norfolk or Newcastle (I keep saying kids, it’s not great for their grandparents...). If not (and the answer will be no), tell me whether the NEED of the person sat next to you is truly greater than that kid’s need. If not, it’s a postcode lottery and a snob’s medium. Horse to water, of course – bring that kid to London, they might hate it! But it’s the opportunity to do so for which we should be fighting. What do you have on your device that you don’t have at the theatre? Opportunity and representation. If theatre fails the working class, that’s how I’d define succeeding - opportunities to visit that you don’t have to take, and representation in the shows. And then, if Angry Birds on your phone is better? Your opportunity! Your choice! Your loss...
*Which NT Lives are popular, nationally and globally? The ones with posh people as kings (because mostly celebs esp. in theatre are posh, it self-perpetuates, kill me now). How is the UK represented in terms of multiculturalism and the coding of accents? Most leads are white (more so than the London stage overall, I’d guess), most non-RP accents are coded as villainy or idiocy or the like. I think NT Live is less diverse than the NT or overall London/national theatre. This is the theatre we present to the regions and to the world. I love that we send artistically daring shows, and shows about topics controversial in other countries, to other countries - that in a country where Jamie being out and proud might be illegal Everybody's Talking About Jamie gets staged. But in other ways, regarding class, race, diversity, opportunities, I’m really not comfortable with what our National Theatre Live says about our nation…
Final few quickfire points. At the moment, Poet In Da Corner is on. Mightn’t this be the bug that bites? Dizzie Rascal broke a ceiling there, became a real voice for urban Londoners, and his generation paved the way for mainstream grime, Plan B’s movie, comic re-interpretations, perhaps Kate Tempest, and of course the great Stormzy. The telly took note. Movies took note. The world took note. The proms took note! Theatre’s taken note – 15 years too late. That’s unforgiveable. I’m not arguing “Every show needs to be GRIME!”, I’m arguing “90% should Maybe, instead, three or four shows a year in London, and more in the regions, should be told by a broader array of artistic, cultural and regional voices – especially contemporary ones – whilst we also revive Salad Days and The Winslow Boy, because, you know, theatre can be a broad church and cater for everyone…”. That’s it. But it shouldn’t have taken 15 years for a show like this to emerge as one part of a broader season.
And, you know, money and London. Perhaps Poet In Da Corner – like its album – is the ‘something special’ that gets people out of the comfort zone, perhaps it's just entertainment for Dizzie fans… but hobnobbing in f***ing Chelsea? The London-centric arrogance and blind spots of theatremakers would be laughable were it not failing most of the nation, even where it’s this close to succeeding.
On accent, on Shakespeare. Can King Lear be working-class? That should be today’s GCSE question. I’ve spent a lifetime thinking this through, and… I don’t know. A king can’t be, they’re the ruling class! He can have a traditionally working-class accent – but accent isn’t class. He can be coded with working-class signifiers in clothes or characteristics or trinkets, but then isn’t that judgemental? We can locate it in a working-class community, but doesn’t that fundamentally change and lessen the national tragedy? You can cast a great working-class hero of an actor like Pete Postlethwaite – but then isn’t it offensive to take a Hollywood career as great and diverse as his and say “Even at 60, after all that, playing Shakespeare, he’s still him off of Brassed Off and Labour Ads, he’s always working-class”? Can contemporary class politics come into a 400-year-old play? A large part of me thinks “No”.
The Fool, however, is often presented as working-class – often having a traditionally working-class region’s accent, being made to look poorer, to carry class signifiers, and to be laughed at because of contemporary class politics. The killers in Norris’ Macbeth spoke funny, wore “chavvy” clothes and drank lager from the can – loaded with class coding, to be laughed at and disliked. You can define working-class as money, societal position, accent, culture: the comic, mock-able characters in Shakespeare in 2018 usually tick these boxes.
And genuine question - how would you feel if Goneril was Geordie, Reagan RP and Cordelia Cornish? If we can have place-blind casting, you shouldn’t bat an eye. If accent isn’t class (and it isn’t) these accents mean nothing. But why haven’t we had this kind of diversity on stage?
Final footnotes. I appreciate that my original post was ridiculously long and many of you didn’t read it (good thing this is shorter...), but if you didn’t, I’d hugely appreciate if you read my second point – about schools – and my final point – about NT Live. That’d only take you five minutes, and I think (more so than my loved-up defence of Sunshine On Leith as this generation’s What Is To Be Done?) they’re good microcosms of blind spots.
Gardner’s article is very much about who makes theatre. It’s indisputable that most people who make theatre are not working-class. On stage, this self-perpetuates, which is why we can comment. Change oodles off-stage, though, and we’re doing better. We need positive opportunities backstage.
Finally, you. You, too. Be selfish. When did you last see a working-class new play? How diverse are the revivals you see? Are theatrical leads cast with national diversity? Do you really hear a diverse range of stories on stage? How come all the best actors today happen to sound Eton educated? Do the actors in today’s theatre represent the country today? By limiting what stories are told and who by, theatre’s failing to tell the most relevant, broadest and best of stories. Sod the working-class, theatre is failing YOU!
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Post by Nicholas on Sept 9, 2018 13:43:12 GMT
Yeah, s’ok.
RSC meets RZA.
Even going in with the highest expectations, I found myself surprised and expectations exceeded. Lin-Manuel Miranda made one of the most glorious, joyous moments of theatre I’ve ever known from a powercut! Now he’s tackling the founding and history of America, of course it was going to be good…
Might just be me, but I’m coming at this show as me – a pretentious British theatre snob – so to begin I’d like to talk quickly about why I found the staging so exciting: because the precedents it follows are the radical, revolutionary theatre we’re still following today. If you don’t mind (mods, I think all these photos are official):
Hamilton, and Jesus Christ Superstar, 1971:
Hamilton, and two typical prductions of Brecht's Epic Theatre: Threpenny Opera and Caucasian Chalk Circle:
Hamilton, and Peter Brook's Timon D’Athènes:
And the image that stuck with me most. Hamilton, and the production that immediately preceded/inspired Les Mis by Nunn and Caird at the RSC, another example of Brecht’s epic theatre theory in practice, David Edgar’s Nicholas Nickleby:
I don’t think for a second that Hamilton was based on specifics here – but I think it was inspired by this type of theatre. Why would they stage Hamilton with the back wall so visible, the sets so minimal and the multi-rolling so transparent, if not to follow the traditions of these theatremakers? It deserves to be placed in THIS theatrical history as much as as the next Bye Bye Birdie. Yes great transgressive (and conventional) musicals are in its DNA, but more than just that, Brecht’s Epic Theatre, Brook’s Empty Space, Nunn and Caird’s Minimalist Musicals are in its DNA. I felt (and I felt this, differently, during In The Heights) that thrill of the demands theatre places on its audience – to imagine together, to risk together, and to be together. I think that’s why this has touched such a (inter)national nerve – because it’s a staging that puts us on equal footing to George Washington and King George, via these stripped-back precedents. Whether Miranda or Thomas Kail, it’s amazing to watch a musical take after the empty space.
The final duel, for example, is nothing but a Wooden O, an uncostumed actress as a bullet, time standing still, Hamilton narrating outside the narrative. I struggle to think of something else so bold and bare in its storytelling theatricalism and honestly the last thing I can think of is Brook’s Battlefield. THIS IS NOW A BLOCKBUSTER! Or, more thrillingly, the moment of the show, “Satisfied”. On an empty stage, we’ve got few signifiers and nothing literal, but a story vividly retold via its casting – and then from mixtaping, that rewind comes in, leading into an extraordinary quickfire rap rewrite of everything we saw before as that Wooden O rotates and roles are recast and rap rewinds together! It comes what, 30 minutes in, but it revolutionises everything that comes before – and sets way for an ending which suggest that, however much we may “erase ourselves out of the narrative”, we still have a story that deserves to be written about. It’s ingenious. You could watch Hamilton with no sound and it says it all!
But, um, seeing Hamilton without the sound… The lyrical genius of In The Heights is that “When You’re Home” or the Finale pack an awful lot of self-reflection and profound musings on home and family into seemingly conversational situations. The genius of Hamilton is it packs an AWFUL LOT of self-reflection into a) a 600-page biography and b) a potted history of America via American music. And yeah, Lin-Manuel’s a smartypants. But its several messages – of national identity; freedom; family; and biography itself of a sort – wouldn’t work if it was merely meretricious. I couldn’t begin to pick apart the influences and references that litter this, but I didn’t need to to have my heart broken by this. It’s never cleverer-than-thou. (And I’ve not got great hearing, and I’d estimate I caught 95% of it – so hooray for whoever’s helping with diction and mixing the sound!)
And something else I’ve noticed about Miranda – at least from his two masterpieces – is he gives his piece an overall musical shape, then every character a) a leitmotif and b) a musical voice, and weaves these together. I think the rap/balladeering of "When You’re Home" is still my favourite example, but here, isn't that true too? (I'm cutting this short as I wouldn't know where to begin when discussing rap/hip-hop. I only learnt about rap when, back at uni, one of my professors proved how relevant Homer was by rapping untranslated Iliad over Illmatic. This might sound like I'm trying to create a smartarse pun. I'm not. This happened.)
Obviously I saw this a lot later than most of you, but I thought Weston’s performance was really nifty. He’s got this lithe and versatile physicality, and through that I really thought we saw him age – young scrappy and hungry at the start, but tall and established from act two onwards. Alongside dancing/rapping, which he did with brilliance and conviction, I felt he aged and adapted to adulthood with great sophistication. Compared to him Sifiso Mazibuko as Salieri (saw the understudy) is a rock, ‘adult’ when we meet him and flawed because of his inflexibility (up until "The Room Where It Happens", what a canny number) – and I loved THAT contrast (is Terrera like this?). I also did think Pennycooke probably deserved the Olivier more than George III (also saw his understudy), his LaFayette the accessible pantomime this intelligent show needs and his Jefferson a cool mid-point between the extremes of Burr and Hamilton and actually the most fascinating man on stage. But this late in the run I’d argue it’s totally Weston’s show, telling his story to the back of the circle with total physicality (although, bless this show, John McRae should have won).
That’s my conclusion, as I desperately try to say something original about Hamilton years after the fact. The foundations upon which Hamilton are based are so steeped in this rich and radical history that, years from now, it will work and work and work, still feeling theatrical (as amongst other blockbusters, I’d argue, Prince’s Phantom doesn’t work anymore but Nunn and Caird’s Les Mis still does). And selfishly, as someone who’s been going to the theatre for so long and now sees THIS and THOSE INFLUENCES as the hot-ticket in town, GET IN! It’s an astonishing piece of total theatre. Lin-Manuel Miranda is two-for-two on the genius scoreboard for me (contemporaneously, I think only Annie Baker’s his equal there). This story of the life of Alexander Hamilton is the story of the American ideal and making history itself, but the telling of this life (with all those precedents) makes it an emotional gut-punch, a masterpiece.
And then. That ending. It’s a show that, in its final Schuyler song, completely retells what came before. The medium has been the message, in casting it’s spent two hours asking who lives who dies who tells your story. Yet it ends with Eliza – trusting, kind, silently resigned – as this song’s protagonist, and thus this musical’s protagonist, arguing that everyone on stage has a revisionist musical to be told about them. Whether we erase ourselves out of the narrative, or future historians don’t focus on us for race or gender or class or era or any reason, Hamilton asks us to look around, look around, and ask who else in current narratives needs to stand centre-stage. It’s just mind-boggling. Suddenly it’s about who quietly leaves a mark on history too. That final tableau, Eliza front and centre stage, relocating the entire story to the quietest yet most vital person on stage, absolutely broke me.
So, yeah, quite good, quite clever, three stars. Think Lin-Manuel might do quite well for himself.
P.S. To avoid spoilers, I’ve completely avoided this board. Does that mean I really spent, oh, five-six hours reading this whole thread on pricing and understudies? Course not…
P.P.S. I haven’t read the Hamilton hubbub, but I do want to read esp. about its creation. So got some qs. 1) Does anyone know the order in which the songs were written – I’m thinking especially was that last song always the last song? 2) Does Chernow’s biography end similarly? 3) What are the best things to read/buy about the show? Christmas is around the corner so recommend expensive things please!
P.P.P.S. If people are laughing at George here, but not in America, SO WHAT? Theatre changes with its audience. I’ve no doubt certain lines meant more to Americans, what with it BEING CALLED Hamilton: An AMERICAN Musical. Besides, What comes next? You’ve been ‘freed’. Do you know how hard it is to lead? You’re on your own. Awesome. Wow! Do you have a clue what happens now? Oceans rise. Empires fall. It’s much harder when it’s all your call All alone, across the sea. When your people say they hate you Don’t come crawling back to me You’re on your own… After June 23rd 2016, these lines mean a different thing over here.
P.P.P.P.S. Also, after the renovation, lovely loos! Very old fashioned cubicles. I am not throwing away my sh*t.
P.P.P.P.P.S. Because In The Heights seems a slighter work, I hope the genius of that show isn’t completely overshadowed. In The Heights broadens and expands the inner lives of everyday New York immigrants to the highest, most important, and most enjoyable of arts, and that’s as exciting as doing it for Kings and Presidents – indeed, it takes a certain mind to take “negotiating debt plans” and “running a dispatch box” and make equally stunning musical numbers from these moments. However good Hamilton is, one of my favourite individual moments of theatre ever will always be the Carnival.
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Post by Nicholas on Sept 9, 2018 12:24:10 GMT
It’s an interesting Othello – streamlined, precise, strong – but also one that’s strangely inert, simple, and (confusingly) not wholly suited to the Globe’s beautiful shared space. There’s much to admire and like, but it just didn’t manage to locate the play, to locate its politics, to locate its titular character. Perhaps down to its minimal set, its stripped-down run time, I was never really transported to a Venice that meant anything. Good things happened on stage, but it felt a wee bit stagey. Whilst many other problems were fascinatingly solved, it didn’t quite sell Othello: the great character, the great play.
It’s all about Iago here, who plays it for laughs, but unexpectedly so. At the beginning, as Rylance runs through those words at such a pace, this Iago seemed to be an evil Cyrano de Bergerac – unable to flirt himself, he makes others his mouthpiece, specifically about ‘romance’ – but whereas Cyrano uses his power for good, Rylance’s Iago is a selfish, nasty player instead, and where Cyrano can love, Iago can’t. It’s all about sex, or lack thereof – talking about his wife’s infidelity stops this sad Iago dead, but when dancing with Emilia his attitude isn’t lust but control (stopping her dancing with anyone but him, but not dancing himself) suggesting him sexually incapable, sexually frustrated. Unlike the other knights with their shiny pointy daggers, Iago has a baton, phallic but blunt and useless. I do think that permeates his performance. No motiveless malignity, he only slows down when describing Othello sleeping with Emilia, and the distinct silences after make this loud and clear. Whilst I think this is his motivation, he does seem to make it up as he goes along (shocked when Othello agrees to kill Emilia), and it’s this that’s interesting about his Iago – because then, these aren’t the actions of some revenger or even some malignity, but of a failure: a weaker, less clever, impotent soldier, surprising himself and relying on luck. It’s an interesting interpretation, especially from an actor who so easily invites audiences into his confidence – yes, he played things for laughs, but he did as the class clown who uses humour to hide his own deep inadequacies, a pitiful grin masking his loneliness. He’s pathetic, but never deserving our pathos. This makes Iago a hard character to warm to, but makes for an interpretation easy to admire quite a bit.
Incidentally, I LOVED Rylance’s Richard III. It might actually be my favourite Rylance role ever (no, still Endgame). It was all about the joy of evil, as if told by a friend who DID deserve pity, and Rylance connected to the crowd on such a chummy level it was soooooo thrilling murdering together. Whilst this approach would have been great for a Globe Iago, I’m kind of glad Rylance played him so unloveably pathetically – it made an interesting contrast.
Instead, it’s Sheila Atim who runs away with this production (Emilia’s the best role in the play anyway). Always dressed in gold (thus always the most visible person on stage), she’s a literal trophy wife for Iago, a woman he married for show not love. However, Atim gives Emilia energy and autonomy even when silent, through motion and through strength. Where Iago is pathetic, Emilia is always engaging to watch sing, dance and be herself. In a crowd scene she’s great at drawing attention to herself (unlike Iago), when talking with Desdemona she seems eloquent and paced (unlike Iago). She’s a good musician (unlike Iago) and she’s clearly still got a romantic appetite (unlike Iago). Rylance’s relative age is also played up, his baldness deliberately hidden yet often displayed – comparatively, Emilia’s youth makes her more autonomous and him more pathetic. A trophy wife but never on the shelf – if she was unfaithful, then, frankly, good! This Emilia struck me as as poetic and powerful as the man she was married to (and potentially no less morally dubious), but clearly more complicated, considered, and interesting, maybe moral too. I don’t think this is because van Kampen wanted to set Emilia up as Iago’s foil – I think that’s because Atim’s that good. Maybe Atim should soon play Iago? (she should definitely release a CD)
Andre Holland, great though he can be, gets short shrift, because if the production plays up Iago’s paranoia, it also underplays Othello's. Holland’s a lovely, earnest speechifier, and his slow sexual doubts nicely mirror Rylance’s – or would, were these two closer. We never see enough of Holland and Rylance together; it felt like most of the cuts were to Othello rounding out his character. Rylance often watches Othello (an interesting choice) but rarely talks thus Othello never has reason to trust, like or know Iago (a duff choice). Instead Othello's offstage infidelity becomes Iago's motive, not Iago becoming Othello's; thus Othello’s merely the MacGuffin in Othello. I’m attributing this to the two hour thirty run time, and this is the first time I’ve ever complained about a show being too short.
But just to make a quick comparison with the Hytner – Lester was better than Holland in and of himself, but in no small part this was down to the military setting, where his vulnerabilities had to be hidden with macho bravado, a self-suppression Lester played beautifully but wholly in the DNA of the setting. Here, what is Venice? A wooden O. Without so strong a setting, where is this Othello and what does he lead? (how was Ejiofor, and crucially also how was Grandage?) Here, too, smaller roles – Cassio, Rodrigo – were generally played for laughs, which didn’t help ground the show or give context to Venice. Even the full ensemble scenes emphasised Iago and Emilia – sadly sidelining Othello and the military themselves.
Now, my expectation of “Mark Rylance plays Iago at the Globe” were that Rylance would crowd-surf his way through these scenes, clown us into liking him, and darken the story as it went on. Instead, Rylance gives a really interesting, insular, counter-intuitive but inventive performance – and nothing on stage really leaps off the stage, Atim aside, Iago’s villainy included. Expectation vs reality? Perhaps, but I admire and like the textual ideas – I just didn’t engage with anything beyond its interpretation of Iago and especially Emilia. Indisputably this Othello: The Moor of Venice downplays Othello and Venice. But it’s good too: I’m happy to write all these things I found really, really, very interesting about how Iago’s a funny failure; how Emilia’s his exact opposite; how an old and impotent Iago is as dangerous as a young and virile one; and especially how, in fact, a sexually frustrated (involuntarily celibate?), racist, sexist, past-it wannabe soldier bullying their way into the big leagues is as topical an Iago as you could get. In theory I LOVE that – but why can’t I say I liked Othello? Perhaps because these were all readings of the text, and not, as the Globe always does best, playings.
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Post by Nicholas on Sept 9, 2018 12:06:13 GMT
Saw Fun Home with my dad. That was fun. My brother took my mum to Oedipus, mind, so he still wins.
“All happy families are alike. Every unhappy family is unlike in its own way”.
What I found hard to watch in Fun Home is that Fun Home is about “happy families” (or to rephrase that, fun homes...). It’s about families who smile for the cameras, with daughters in pretty dresses, who “polish and shine” – and what we have to repress to get there. Fun Home is one of the best shows about repression and unresolved lives you could hope to see; about family and all the mess that comes with; about love too. I found it a wringing look at how we lie to ourselves and each other, then a fantastical musical about why we should accept. Ultimately this all converges a message of hope, love, mess and reality. It’s complicated, and messy, but uplifting, optimistic, gentle, and wonderful.
“Chaos never happens if it’s never seen”. This line is through what I read the piece: keeping parts of ourselves unseen – because we consider it chaotic – and what that does. No other artwork deals with emotional repression so horribly accurately, yet so subtly. How many sentences, lines in song, are left unfinished? In fact, how many moments – the siblings playing games, Alison watching TV – are interrupted? More psychologically, what about Alison’s diary entries: “Saw a dead body today. Went swimming” – the necessary emotional response itself is interrupted. Compare in an early song “He wants, he wants, he wants…” with Teenage Alison’s own “I want I want I want I...”, or with Young Alison’s later “I feel… I want… to… I mean…” – most musicals have an ‘I want’ song, but to have the crucial ‘I want’ unfinished, repressed, explicitly unable to be expressed... What’s its other leitmotif? “Maybe not right now”. Thoughts aren’t given time to be thoughts, emotions are left unsaid then unfelt – for Bruce because of small-town America, for Alison because of Bruce, for Helen because of her family. Through both being so deeply closeted, we see where this repression ends up – self-doubt at best, suicide at worst. Of course this converges with the telephone wire duet, a fantasy all about hindsight and the realisation that, ultimately, what is left unsaid right now may always remain unsaid – which is why to keep Helen so repressed but for one song tells more than her singing twenty songs could (everyone is hurt by someone else’s repression), and why to end this on a contemplative note is ideal. In Alison there’s hope, but in all of it there’s great psychological realism. In behaviour, Bruce later expresses jealousy of Alison’s freedom to come out, but how many false starts did Alison have before she was able to feel free – and is old Alison free of Bruce? For Bruce, society represses him, whilst for Alison family does, the self does – both bring different horrors. Thus through Bruce it’s a broadly political piece about why societal prejudices are so dangerous, and through Alison it’s a study of the unconscious and unspoken but ever-present prejudices of those we love, and fear – and the juxtaposition of father/daughter shows how interlinked, and dangerous, these two repressions are; about how dangerous any and all repression is. Having written that, I really think this oversimplifies it, and makes it more of a ‘think piece’ than a ‘character piece’ when it’s both – and as a character piece it’s bloody heartbreaking from beginning to end, its book almost documentarian in how easily it portrays its characters’ home lives.
The genius of musicalising, not dramatising, is that chaos never happens if it’s never seen – but heard? A documentarian drama about repression remains repressed – the music liberates it. Like all families (like Tolstoy), to leave something unspoken seems safe, but by having romantic strings under Bruce’s nervy flirtations, metronomic control under Helen’s lines, that doorbell arpeggio leitmotif to let us enter the fun home, the chaos unseen is nonetheless felt through every unfinished musical melody. Anyone who has ever hidden anything from their family – or who has had something hidden away from them – can recognise the setting, the speech, the scenario, but hear the inner yearnings in the music.
Except the funeral parlour song, that was just badass.
This cast, incidentally, is perfect – all have form at playing characters saying it all behind the eyes. Bruce is portrayed with strange, unpredictable unknowability, yet Varla lets us understand him and care despite keeping his distance, from his stilted precision earlier to his manic open-eyed floundering as it finished, both twisted forms of the free person he wants to be. Jenna Russell can play everyday so well (perhaps the most difficult thing to do) and broke me in “Days and Days”. All three Alisons have a curiosity and eager determination that, as that curiosity becomes more adult and grounded, feels like the evolution of one person. I also loved the simplicity of the intimate staging, and especially what seemed deliberate allusions to comic-panels – very two-dimensional blocking, especially with shadows against a white wall (just occasional fleeting visual cues, thought that was very cute). My reading of the late set reveal was that, when the children were children, none of it actually mattered – the family really mattered more – but the more Bruce developed the house the less he developed himself, thus building quite a hideous cathedral to his own repression – “polish and shine”. Or possibly it’s just a metaphor for Alison now seeing things as they are in reality, though I prefer to read it as Bruce not seeing things as they are.
At its heart, Fun Home is an absolute celebration of freedom and being yourself, because on the surface it’s the inverse of this – a wrenching study of kowtowing to the pressures society, family, convention demand. The book itself tells a story only half-spoken, but the music speaks for the family’s suppressed emotions. Whether it’s Helen unable to come to terms with what Bruce can’t finish, or Adult Alison unable to do the same… And incidentally, I don’t think I’ve used the word ‘lesbian’ once, because so simply does the drama accept Alison and Bruce as gay and the drama is about the worlds prohibiting them from coming out, repression a villain and homosexuality a given – and that makes it high amongst the best piece of LGBT art I’ve ever seen. I have a tin ear for ‘be yourself’ works, but the difference with Fun Home is it never pretends that being yourself, for anyone (Bruce/Helen/Alison, gay/straight, male/female, whatever job or hobby or lifestyle), isn’t chaotic, but to ‘polish and to shine’ for society is to begin on a path with more chaotic consequences. Instead, it argues, always see – never repress, always accept.
P.S. Quick note that the sound balance in the first song or two wasn’t great, but was a lot better afterwards, so kudos to whoever’s on the soundboard for picking up on a problem and solving it.
P.P.S. Also, I’ve been going to the Young Vic for years, but never eaten at the Young Vic. It’s lovely! Had a delicious grapefruit lemonade, an exquisite vegan burger, and a cheesecake which is apparently a tribute to The Inheritance.
P.P.P.S. I’ve got to say somewhere that David Lan is a genius and a hero of mine and will be much missed.
P.P.P.P.S. All of that said, it’s still only my second favourite musical based on a comic book…
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Post by Nicholas on Sept 9, 2018 11:45:03 GMT
Friend of a friend worked at Oxfam, and her description of this was that it was uncanny in its accuracy – for her, walking into this set was déjà vu.
In 2016, two great works about the migrant crisis came out. Exodus: Our Journey to Europe was this story told by the immigrants themselves, their words their films their lives. It put you alongside the chaos and confusion of being on an overstuffed dinghy or nightmarish truck, negotiating the exploitative mob rule of buying your way across Europe, leaving one unwelcoming city and entering somewhere differently unwelcoming. It had no voiceover, little editing, no comment – it just looked. The other great work was Queens of Syria, about which Susannah Clapp wrote everything that can and needs to be said. What unites them is that they are both told by the people experiencing this without politicising or commenting, merely humanising an often too-distant news story. I watched Exodus on my sofa, and Queens at the Oxford Playhouse, stunned. Both of these had real people, describing real situations unimaginable.
Theatre, though, can do two things above all other media: immerse, and story-tell.
From the second I entered The Jungle I almost had to cover my nose. Being in the Jungle becomes a really shaking experience. The sound of a meeting or fight or who knows behind you, the constant hustle and bustle from before we even begin, the (edible!) food, the risk that you might (as I was) be moved or manhandled… Daldry and Martin and Buether turn us into extras in these lives, fellow residents, occasional friends, and equally desperate people, of course with the caveat that theatre can never TRULY recreate something like this, but it's as good a facsimile as can be. The sense of reality, the mess and chaos all around, is a triumph by Daldry and Martin. It really captures the sense of camaraderie, the sense of placelessness, and the sense of uncertainty. There really is no better way to tell this story than being this close to being there.
Storytelling makes anything palatable. As children, we make sense of a nonsensical world through stories, whilst we adults know simple narrative can’t make sense of everything. The Jungle is Safi’s narrative to a child, as he constructs a knowingly constructed narrative about how countries are created and communities thrive, about who immigrates and emigrates and why, and about the harsh, sometimes journalistic facts of the Jungle. It’s a different way to look at this situation, and one that’s valid and incredibly powerful, due to its construction never hampering its reality, and its child on stage a hideous reminder of the stakes of everything. Murphy and Robertson’s script is beautifully done. That it’s peppered with newspaper articles, clips on the TV, then goes into an epilogue about Safi’s untidy reality, reminds us this isn’t just his narrative.
We felt we were living in The Jungle; we learned about living in The Jungle. Most news stories are, if we’re honest, unimaginable. I can’t imagine what an Oxfam worker goes through when visiting corners of the world. I really can’t imagine living in a camp like this. Here you don’t need to imagine.
Does it matter that it was occasionally over-expository? Does it matter that key emotional moments were then footnoted with time-and-dated references to news articles or political releases, moments overexplained, scenes stopping to discuss political success or new terminology or distant laws? Does it matter that some of the experiences before the Jungle began, about why people are there, weren’t fleshed out fully, and the ideal of England was slightly underexplored? No. None of this mattered. There are a couple of points where I wanted characters like Salar and Okot to comment and judge (Was A.A. Gill attention-grabbing or patronising? When exactly WAS the time/place for the volunteers to be there?), and sometimes I felt that the show asked ME to comment and judge specifics but I lack the necessary experience and baggage to. But these minor issues are mostly in service to this immersive storytelling. It’s a show that felt lived-in before it started, from the Cliffs of Dover to the Afghan Café; where I wanted MORE information it would have been artificial to include, and where it (artificially) included too much it did so to thoroughly source its political blows, and did those blows land. It’s mostly an exquisite script, sensitive, broad, and rich, never pulling punches about the worst of the camp, the imperfections of the immigrants, and the pros and cons of the volunteers who went over to help (the authors themselves included; if it occasionally had to sound clunky to serve its purpose, so be it. It worked. (and I’ve always had a soft spot for theatre that is child-like storytelling, and this works here: both with having a narrator story-tell, and a heartbreaking child who deserves happier stories than this)
That The Jungle is cast with people who’ve lived these lives, and written by two who lived there, matters. Everyone on stage – with foibles and hidden depths – put their faces on this often faceless story. From the food smells to the music played to the accents we heard to the lives themselves, this matters.
At the end, this lived-in recreation gives up the façade, and turns to documentary footage. As I’ve said, of the pieces of work about immigrants, something that’s stuck with me, and will until I die, is Exodus. More than The Jungle, by presenting without critique footage from immigrants themselves, this presents a reality as it is. But the documentary can’t actually put us there. The Jungle does, it presents a reality as it is – and I think Buether does so with accuracy and success despite the obvious metropolitan limitations. It’s a great script, and Daldry and Martin’s theatrical triumph, but one we pay for and can leave at any time. Until the end. Then it’s no longer theatrical. Real footage of what we’ve been living in for two hours means we can’t chalk our experiences down to canny immersive theatricality, or a very strong script. We leave lucky to leave. Of course it ends with cathartic applause (a standing ovation), but before that it denies any true catharsis by reminding us that there is a real Jungle; this is only theatre for us, not for everyone. The Two Joes write an important political story, and the two directors lets the immersive Jungle itself take you there, but then that final footage from Calais today reminds you that it’s not a story at all.
P.S. The late great John Berger published in Ways of Seeing:
Watching the opening of act two – as the interrogation continued proper, and the brutality of escaping Calais was unforgettably laid out – this passage came back into my head, as the person in front of me downed her G&T, then slowly sipped her champagne.
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Post by Nicholas on Sept 9, 2018 11:35:41 GMT
Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is a wonderful wonderful wonderful piece of work, an absolute celebration of all its characters from sensitively putting its bullies in their place, to true family, to making Jamie the superstar he really is. It’s also the best British Musical since The Grinning Man Girl from the North Country The Clockmaker’s Daughter American Psycho London Road Matilda OK actually the British musical is in pretty rude health but Jamie is bloody wonderful – and the best musical about being British I think I’ve ever seen. Definitely the best mainstream British musical in yonks, mind (since Made in Dagenham?), and that’s worth celebrating. Saw this at a cinema abroad and the experience of sharing this celebration of Britain’s tolerance and wit and working-class life with the world was one I’ll treasure.
There are two things I particularly loved about this. The first is its rounding out of its main character, and willingness to make him even, occasionally, a wee bit annoying – bit of an ego, bit of a show-off – and DEFINITELY teenage, whilst also celebrating him totally – makes him more angsty, more real, more loveable. It doesn’t wear its politics on its sleeve, though I’d argue it’s quite political – it just uses them as background to Jamie’s life. Its closest precedent is Billy Elliot, obvs, which also keep class a background element but an all-important one, makes society its villain and not people, and celebrates being yourself – but Gillespie-Sell’s musical style is far more unique and developed, and represents Jamie and Jamie’s school better than John’s music does Billy and his family. On paper there’s not much to the plot, so it relies on characters alone – and what great characters Margaret, Pritti and Jamie are!
Personally, I also think it’s fab to have a musical so celebrate the English school – full of the high melodrama teenagers make of everything. You can tell the people making this know modern schools well and feel that awful nostalgia for those idiotic years (although is ‘minger’ still an insult? I swear that was old when I was at school). Especially, the last musical I saw set in an English school wasn’t Everybody’s Talking About Jamie but everyone loves Charlie everyone loves Charlie everyone loves Charlie everyone loves Charlie everyone loves Charlie everyone loves Charlie everyone loves Charlie everyone loves Charlie.
But this is symptomatic of why the show works – it’s immersed in its characters’ lives, in their reality. For a real boy in Jamie’s (fabulous) shoes, school won’t be cliquey but familiar, home is comforting, and attitudes the problem. Jamie’s mum’s songs had a lovely different calibre, a little bit Carpenters, as if songs from her musical not his, and this style vs the more pulsing younger songs shows how deeply Gillespie-Sells cares about reflecting the reality of these characters – slightly wistful for her, but the teenage songs have teenage energy, passion, optimism and full steam ahead. Because of this sensitivity and exuberance of ESPECIALLY the wonderful lead actor, the minor issues are papered over (couple of scenes too long/repetitive, older drag queens didn’t quite ring true, not quite enough plot for two hours thirty), and whilst Margaret’s songs are unlistenably poignant (I cannot get to the end of My Man Your Boy in one piece), for the most part you feel like the best parts of being a teenager again.
But what I really loved most about this was the absence of an ‘antagonist’ per se – a boo-hiss baddie to make life simple. Yes there were the bullies, the teacher, the father, but who had the big villain song? There wasn’t one. What made this richer and truer was that, instead, the ‘antagonist’ was the ease with which homophobic opinions could be spoken and shared and accepted, divided amongst everyone but just there in this society. Dramatically, having villains as ciphers for the hate is easy, but unrealistic – having everyone from bullies to strangers to teachers to family expressing bigotry, and Jamie’s subsequent own self-doubt, all mean that at the end the ‘antagonist’ (normalised homophobia and bigotry) is far from beaten, but the battle is totally won. "Out Of The Darkness" is such a great song.
Jamie takes a documentary which celebrates English school and northern culture and the freedom to be yourself, and doesn’t soften the hard edges, but changes them into something more mainstream and sing-a-long-able – it’s a great celebration of being gay, of being yourself, of standing up to those who aren’t willing or able to love you, and of being in a loving family and making family yourself. A bit like the hugely underrated mini-masterpiece Mermaid a few years ago, this spoke up to teenagers not down, elevated teenage hormonal melodrama into high drama and high art. Especially, of course, because of the brilliant brilliant brilliant John Mcrae who – God love Hamilton – was robbed at the Oliviers. It’s a celebration of just how to be a teenager, and the most fabulous teenager you can be.
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Post by Nicholas on Sept 9, 2018 11:21:44 GMT
Well. When they announced the sequel, I was worried it would be some naff reunion, the old guard back with no new faces. Then Cher joined the cast. That’s a new face.
I was surprised at just what an emotional kick I got just seconds into the film, with Amanda Seyfried’s older (Hollywood older) Sophie back in her hotel on her island. I’m not a huge fan of the original which I’ve only properly watched as a cinematic piece of art once and have big problems with; I do admire it for Phyllida Lloyd’s gender politics, mind. However, since then, how many times have I seen clips, how many parodies have I watched, how often have I listened to the soundtrack, how many parties with the soundtrack have I been to? It’s become a feelgood classic, Pierce Brosnan’s singing has become a ubiquitous joke (albeit a well-spirited one), and that film’s naffness a touchstone. If it’s on TV, however far in, channel flipping, that’s my evening. We’ve since had Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan and theatrical genius David Bowie dabble in the genre, not to mention the Citizen Kane of jukebox musicals Sunshine on Leith, but when you say ‘jukebox musical’ people think of Mamma Mia, and when people think of Mamma Mia they smile. Over the last ten years, Mamma Mia has become no better a movie, but it’s become much, much bigger than a movie.
Here We Go Again is, too, much bigger than a movie – but it’s actually a bloody good movie too.
The genius of Mamma Mia is that it’s a Phyllida Lloyd joint and does to Hen Night entertainment what Lloyd did to Shakespeare. Yes, it’s just silly celeb karaoke, but to quote Skarsgård: “Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan and I were the bimbos. We weren’t expected to have an interior life, we were just to come in and be a little sexy and a little silly. So making Mamma Mia!, I understood how actresses normally feel.” As escapism goes, Abba karaoke’s great, but having James Bond, Mr Darcy and the Max von Sydow of his generation all still in love with, and sexually attracted to, a sexagenarian, and making (and showing) arses of themselves – there’s something subversive (for Hollywood) in there (Lloyd, of course, has form in reframing well-worn narratives to refocus on the female). The problem is, nothing’s at stake, it’s too happy-clappy, it’s objectively sh*te. “Slipping Through My Fingers” aside, by trying too hard to make sure you’re always grinning, it grates. Here We Go Again leaps over that first film’s great problem – there’s everything at stake here. In both new timelines, there’s greater love, more painful loss, and that ending that is just, completely, beautiful. And, where Mamma Mia was a hen night directed by a stage Shakespearean, Here We Go Again is written by a rom-com maestro and directed by a cinema man – on screen it’s a proper movie with more fanciful choreography and camera work, and in the script, characters now get bigger, better backstories that pack, oh my god, so many emotional punches. Both Mamma Mia and Here We Go Again are karaoke parties and boy do I love karaoke parties, but Mamma Mia sacrificed stakes for slush, whilst Here We Go Again was unafraid to give pause for sadness, sentiment, sacrifice and, even, reality. It also uses “The Name of the Game” which is currently my fave Abba song. In my (un-air-conditioned) sold-out cinema, you could tell everyone was HUGELY enjoying it (no singing along, but sporadic applause for songs and some for Cher and LOTS at the end), but the silence between songs was the silence of people fully focused and fully invested. I think this film satisfies its target audience’s need to laugh AT what’s on screen (helloooo Colin Firth stop pretending you’re not enjoying every second), but because Curtis and co don’t mind letting heartbreak be heartbreak and loss be loss, this will stay with me a lot longer than the original did – we can both end on a megamix and end on a note of loss and closure and hope and Meryl and oh bugger it I’m crying again
But as I say, Mamma Mia is more than a movie – it’s a party to which everyone (EVERYONE – old, young, shy, outgoing, gay, straight, disabled, racially diverse, any body type – EVERYONE) is invited. And so is Mamma Mia: Here WE Go Again (to which, again, EVERYONE is invited). When we return to Sophie, to Sam, to young Donna, and very, very crucially NOT to Meryl, it’s perhaps like seeing how tall Dan and Rupert and Emma had gotten since the last film, or even more pertinently, recreating that romantic pang of returning to Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. Where are they in their lives now, actually older as we all are? Sky and Sophie are together, having problems, but aw he still loves her! She’ll be a mother, exactly like her mother! Donna’s friends are still Sophie’s friends! Harry and Bill and Sam have become true fathers! Sophie’s grandmother’s forgiven her and found love and yeah this subplot would be ridiculously underdeveloped and makes no sense but oh my god it’s Cher! Sam’s doing “SOS” again badly, but so iconic-ly bad is the original (“When you’re gone” “WEN YAW GUN”) that it’s strangely Proustian hearing that tune in that voice, memories cascade… For all the praise rightly heaped on Lily James, and religiously heaped upon Cher, I think Seyfried is the film’s emotional centre by dealing with Sophie’s loss and adulthood with poise and realism, and Seyfried navigates that with a sudden sense of adulthood that first film didn’t need, but which Sophie now does and oh bugger it I’m crying again
Don’t get me wrong – it’s objectively sh*te. Sometimes we zoom from one hit to another hit after three lines of dialogue not because emotion demands it, but the soundtrack does. The three young fathers are totally underdeveloped except maybe Bill but he’s the eye candy; Donna’s also somewhat underdeveloped by her ‘world trip’ being “Oxford, Paris, sex, Greece, sex, wanderlust satiated” (this problem could have solved by making the film five minutes longer with years of Donna’s travelling life a montage under this). The visual style of “Waterloo” is from an entirely different movie, this was the only song I didn’t like. Like all jukebox musicals there’s awful clunkiness in introducing specific pre-existing emotional beats (though given the film embraced it, I wish they’d referred to Andy Garcia as Fernando throughout, just to string us along until…). And to be wholly detached, some killjoy can try and logically explain the timelines. But here’s the thing. Like a hen night at a Nandos, Mamma Mia was objectively sh*te, but once you get into the party spirit who cares – and if you didn’t get into the party spirit (as Lloyd’s stagey production values made it occasionally hard to do) it was two hours of Abba Karaoke and where’s the fun in that oh wait that is my ideal Friday night. But whilst Here We Go Again was absolutely the party of the year (“Dancing Queen” with Colin Firth doing Titanic! Cher does “Fernando”!), compare the (equally jubilant) hotel party scene in Part I with Part II: Donna singing with the Dynamos got the party started, by being wish fulfilment and defying ageist Hollywood but just being a laugh really, whilst Sophie singing with the Dynamos (two of whom are still defying ageist Hollywood) got the party started, but by touching upon a deep emotional nerve ten years in the making it said something very sweet and surprisingly profound about family and loss and dreams and oh bugger it I’m crying again
Why see Mamma Mia 2 when I say I didn’t like Mamma Mia? Because I don’t like Mamma Mia as a film that much, but it’s become more than a film, a strangely iconic point in the sand – like the Harry Potter saga or the Pixar films, it’s a topic of conversation or a party theme or a way of life – and I love the legacy it’s left. And now Mamma Mia 2 is like Harry Potter 8 or Toy Story 3 – our inexplicable sentimentality returned to, aged and matured, paid off, chapter closed. My main issue with Mamma Mia was that its naffness felt over-egged and the lack of stakes too careful – but boy it is fun. Mamma Mia 2 is fun fun FUN, but more than that, it made me laugh and opened my heart and oh bugger it I’m crying again
P.S.
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Post by Nicholas on Sept 9, 2018 11:20:10 GMT
Waiting for the Telegram saw Alan Bennett perfectly prod at, yet praise, the worst and best of hospitals and their care of the elderly – the paradox that a place of healing is also a church of death. In Waiting for the Telegram (way ahead of its time), dying young and living old sit side by side, both an unimaginable hell, yet the kindnesses in these hospital buildings is unimaginably optimistic. This might be Bennett’s best Talking Head and one of Bennett’s very best works. Thirty years on, Allelujah! is that piece’s spiritual sequel, and sees Alan Bennett back on form – almost.
The Trotsky of Betty’s Tea Shop, as ‘Alan Bennett’ has become via his self-serialisation, has never quite written a play like this – overtly this political; thematically this morbid. Ten years after his masterpiece, the complex and conflicting The Habit of Art, and six years after People, an old man ranting at country houses but with a Tour De La Force performance, this mixes Bennett’s new, angry, political persona as cultivated via the LRB, and the sadistic masochistic Bennett, best seen years ago when Bennett’s cosy British institutions were intruded by a penis-obsessed Kafka and a penis-obsessed Joe Orton – two of Bennett’s bona fide masterpieces. The end result here? Gleeful, ridiculous, exciting, misguided, all over the place, a mess, a treat.
“We’re going to the judgement day”. Allelujah! is about death. Sadistically so. Had Derek and Clive written Here We Go, here we’d be – the awful reality of needing your nappy changed, losing your mental functions, albeit here with knob jokes. It’s as if the Reaper turns up in the living room, like Kafka did, out-of-place and ill-at-ease; Bennett brings the profound into the cosy, as he does at his best, brutally so. What Allelujah! captures best is that series of paradoxical emotions we all hold about hospitals – to love the NHS but hate hospitals, to want a great hospital but never want to go there. With the geriatric ward in his crosshairs, Bennett asked the profound question “How can we feel passionate towards a house of death?”. From Intensive Care to Talking Heads to especially the last scenes of Cocktail Sticks, Bennett’s always loved hospitals, but never liked them – and Allelujah! continues this. What do creature comforts matter, when they’re VERY temporary? How is success measured, quality or quantity of death? What is a good death – is death, ever, good? Bennett juxtaposed song-and-dance with immobility – it’s bleak. Bennett has onstage self-defecation and lots of it – it’s bleak. Bennett creates a community choir but argues that hell is other people – it’s bleak. As a study of death, this was absolutely nihilistic. Never has Bennett been as unsentimental as this – and by being so chirpy, it’s amongst the darkest humour he’s ever written. It’s a privilege to watch.
But of course it is a political piece too. The political ‘Alan Bennett’ of the diaries since 1988’s The Lady in the Van is as much a character as, say, Auden or Kafka or (perhaps the most fair comparison) Miss Shepherd herself – but despite subverting national subjects I’ve felt a certain reticence to stage politics. Suddenly, not. Bennett’s anti-austerity drum-banging is wonderfully on the nose, and Bennett clearly loves the NHS despite its faults. That Bennett all-but spells out his targets, esp. cuts and target-meeting, and pulls no punches is joyous to watch. I admired Bennett for managing to criticise the notion of the geriatric ward’s tweeness whilst literally singing its praises. I also always love it when he’s unsubtle with his criticism.
Via the Samuel Barnett and Jeff Rawle characters, I felt Bennett’s interest in the local was explored too – what is community? Bennett’s hasn’t really written about a northern community in theatre in years – but by presenting an aging community and the next generation, here I was haunted by questions of where you live and with whom you die. Bennett’s presented lifelong communities before, and here takes them to the end – whilst, in the Barnett character, asking whether Rawle’s desperation to call one place home is better than Barnett’s exact opposite.
Had this wrapped up five minutes before the interval I think the wool would’ve been pulled over my eyes and I’d wholly have loved it as cynical sketch satire, even his most fantastically cynical since Kafka’s Dick. My main issue, ultimately, is structurally – with ‘the twist’ that ends Act One. There’s a great polemical farce to be written, Arsenic and Old Lace meets Peter Nichols, about murdering patients to meet targets – had this been the Act One twist in a four act play, we would have had time to explore it proper (both plot-wise and politically). Withheld until the curtain, this comic exaggeration – about which I think Bennett has more to say – end up rushed and overloaded in the final interrogation, interesting but underdeveloped. Up until then his focus has been simpler – NHS, home, death – and there’s enough to be said in simple NHS love, Tory bashing, and nihilistic glee. Adding “Sister Killer” sooner would have mined more comic potential and explored the theme of euthanasia in sickening yet satirical detail, but adding it so late felt… forced, rushed. It’s a sign of the play’s sketchiness – too many dramatic arcs are sacrificed for five-minute funny ones, and this sinister idea deserves more than that.
Stylistically, Bennett himself called it a revue, and its sketches are its blessing and curse. In its bleak singalongs I sensed the ghosts of Lindsay Anderson and Joan Littlewood haunting this – serious politics made fun of via song. It harked back to his old collaborator Anderson, and look at how Anderson himself portrayed hospitals. I laughed at the dances, I winced at the medical moments, I marvelled at the politics – but I did all this with Beyond the Fringe which is just sketches not a story; I don’t think this was that coherent a play. Is that a problem? Yes and no – perhaps it’s easier to be political, philosophical and comical in short sharp jabs, but it’s harder to have Barnett and Rawle as their opposites, Findlay as the best/worst of ‘efficiency’, the porter as yoof today, or it to really land its political blows, when its best moments are so slight. That said, this revue style makes the death and pooping on stage even more subversive – to gleefully juxtapose gleeful routines with senility and incontinence and dropping dead… It’s a sketchy piece dramatically, but it’s an interesting callback to Bennett’s earlier dramatic lives, and one that works better, I’d argue, in mocking the incontinent than mocking the incompetent (ridiculous dancing to mock the Tory government? Late to the game there Alan).
Also, I uncrossed my arms at his fourth-wall-breaking Brexit-Windrush polemic, but it is embarrassingly on-the-nose and thematically belongs in a different play, politically it fits albeit uncomfortably – I’m quite forgiving of very blunt political speeches in plays (because I’m thick and it’s helpful), just here it felt that Bennett wanted to strike Brexit whilst the iron was hot whether this was the right play or not* – and why not? – but it felt a step to the left of the play’s central, eternal, fatalistic themes (because Brexit isn’t eternal and fatalistic, not at all). *Weirdly, a bit like Smiley in Le Carre’s fascinating last. Not a ridiculous connection – two octogenarian authors underrated in academia down to their genre choices.
(Also, given the way Bennett writes these days – giving Nick Hytner unfinished ideas and working it out together – one wonders quite what Hytner sees, and when Hytner sees them as ready. I’ve praised every idea in this play, just not the structure. Yet The Habit of Art is exquisite. We know it started a muddle (not even a play-within-a-play), yet from that a two-act layered masterpiece emerged. From this, something sketchier than ever emerged, and one wonders whether this is intentional or not. I’d love to know more about his relationship with Frears and Eyre and earlier collaborators)
Oh, and Deborah Findlay can do unshowy like no-one else. Without any actorly mannerisms, whenever she turns up on stage she always bears the life that character’s lived subtly but unmistakably. Yes, Alma had a speech later on to explain herself, but I think we could have guessed her difficult childhood and lifelong service just in how she handled herself. She’s an absolute bloody treasure.
Allelujah! is a bit of a revue, and like all revues some sketches work better than others. However, also, Allelujah! is the brutal, unsentimental work of a radical author, banging his newest drum. Bennett’s actual masterpieces aren’t quite as scattergun, up-and-down, and slightly unstructured as this – think the Pirandellian overlaps and sentimental memorialising of The Habit of Art, the pervy focus that pervades Pr**k Up Your Ears as biography and about biography, or even the self-contained scathing satirical sketches of Beyond the Fringe. But Alan Bennett’s masterpieces also let him let rip, politically, institutionally, philosophically – and thus the unsentimental Allelujah! may be the most characteristically ‘Alan Bennett’ play the great man’s ever written. As a play I wish it had felt more dramatic, coherent, whole. As a political diatribe, it’s on the money but a bit messy. But as a study of death, it’s bleak and bloody brilliant.
Four stars. I’m sentimental, especially when Bennett isn’t.
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Post by Nicholas on Sept 9, 2018 10:45:12 GMT
Are bears guilty of sh*tting in the woods?
Gardner’s article is vital, but there’s so much more to say. From my experience, it’s a variety of (occasionally illogical) reasons as to why people feel failed by theatre. Since Gardner, Maurine Beattie, Maxine Peake, Eddie Marsan (amongst others) have all chipped in from different perspectives – but all write in a bubble. It all needs to be compared. It’s all linked. It all matters.
So no apologies for dragging this up – it’s been on my mind for a while and we need to keep this conversation going. And before I begin: I know I’m oversimplifying/generalising, but isn’t this long enough? Short answer: YES. Long answer: it’s school, it’s normalised, and look at NT Live for a microcosm. Full answer: fasten your seatbelts…
*** “…and if it takes a whole day and wipes out their savings, then so much the better. Because it matters! It matters, damnit! We’re talking about the sublime.”
(At Hampstead, watching The Moderate Soprano, this got a round of applause. I squirmed in my cheap seat (£15), waiting for my off-peak train (£18), wondering “Does Sir David hate me?”)
Sir David’s un-inclusive outburst encapsulates a lot. Theatre is sublime! Tickets are stupidly expensive. Trains are worse. Theatre seems London-centric, and too much is.
16-25 schemes are essential for teenager/student theatregoers. What about retirees? Zero-hours contracts? Families on free school lunches? The Shakespeare Trilogy needed a diverse audience, but only discounted for young people, not people like Hannah herself. And, without much advertising, those 16-25-year-olds were, largely, booked ahead, already on board.
There are schemes such as the Arcola and Nottingham’s pay-what-you-can. I think it’s successful; it’s certainly welcoming. Could this work in the West End? I’d genuinely think that if cheapest tickets were, say, £15 or PWYC, people like us would pay “full price” £15 and others wouldn’t feel patronised.
And theatre is a terrible medium to see last minute, and if your job’s unpredictable and not just 9-5 (say, zero-hours) you’re unlikely to book ahead and can’t spontaneously attend.
Oh, and a train from one side of London to another costs £6. That’s nearly £25 for a family of four. Outside of London…
Theatre excludes working-class theatregoers, thus theatremakers: Sir David proclaims that art should be inaccessible and his audience cheers! Before talking theatremaking, we must talk accessibility for all. Mostly we should be militantly political about trains.
*** But this assumes an interest in and familiarity with theatre.
Joan Bakewell recently said: “Older people who go to the theatre are the ones who’ve got nice retirement pensions and can access the theatre easily and feel comfortable there after a lifetime of visiting, so they tend to be middle-class – I think the division between wealthy and poor accelerates as you get older, and so I don’t think you’ll get many retired older working-class people accessing the arts because they feel it’s passed them now.” (Bakewell said that on Front Row – a magazine show. A different discussion mentioned how magazine shows like Zoe Ball’s Book Group re-encouraged reading by being unpretentious. Can/does theatre encourage so? Can theatre make a Richard & Judy Book Group, esp. with NT Live, for new older audiences?)
If you’ve never encountered any Shakespeare, any Simon Stephens, any Sondheim, how do you begin? For familiarisation, entry schemes should be for all ages – beginner’s shows should be a thing.
(and (off-topic) Bakewell’s We Need To Talk About Death is FAB)
But why has theatre passed older working-class people? I believe a rot sets in a lot earlier – Rufus does too. I might be putting two and two together and making five, but please bear with.
Drama is taught wonderfully. Did you perform Shakespeare at school? It’s an empowering leveller, or just a bit of art in a child’s life. We know the arts are being excluded from the curriculum, and thus it’s middle-class parents who’ll subsidise schools’ loss. If drama clubs become optional or expensive, of course it’ll exclude. We need drama in schools.
English is taught… problematically. Did you study Shakespeare? Of course you did! Was it theatre, or was it torture? We read lines out loud – struggling with archaic vocab – and also occasionally watched movies. As a Reading boy I connected with Branagh’s Much Ado; I connected less with Othello as played by Anthony Hopkins.
Representation matters. Representation in school and children’s literature matters most. As kids, we don’t just want to see ourselves – we need to. Children connect best with books about people like them. It’s common knowledge that children’s literature skews towards white middle-class texts, and people are challenging this. Children’s theatre? For most children that’s not the Unicorn or even panto, that’s the Shakespeare you watch in school. Does it skew white middle-class? WE WATCHED A WHITE WELSH OTHELLO!
If we’re going to make Shakespeare part of the Key Stage 3 curriculum we need to place him in that context. “If you are from a minority background, it’s implied that you leave your cultural capital at the door of the classroom,” claimed Farrah Seroukh recently, and (white) working-class is a background left at the door with the theatre we study: Priestley, Bennett, Shakespeare. With no representative productions, what cultural capital can a working-class child bring to the Bard?
Can we nominate a playwright for 2019’s laureate?
Children and YA literature must serve as either mirror or window; windows showing lives you’ll never know, mirrors showing you. Theatre does too. Watching Cumberbatch, Mirren, even Dicaprio, or the bulk of the BBC Shakespeare, working-class schoolchildren never see mirrors. This is one reason why everyone needs to speak the speech themselves, in drama, SO DON’T CUT IT FROM THE EBACC. Otherwise, what is theatre, but archaic vocab and posh movies? Hell, I’m from Reading and went on many theatre trips, but with few mirrors, that’s certainly how my old classmates still see theatre…
Maybe I only love theatre because Branagh’s Ivanov was from Reading. That’s depressing. Thank you Reading.
Theatre is literary. It’s Shakespeare in the classroom. It’s Pinter, Beckett, O’Neill, Shaw, even Dario Fo. Three dimensional literary criticism. Words words words.
Literacy in the UK: www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2018/mar/02/working-class-children-born-to-fail-teachers-disadvantaged-pupils. The stats here are shocking.
It may seem comparatively insignificant – “working-class children are two years of education behind, they might miss Spamilton!” – and it is. It’s also obviously contentious and exaggerated. Theatre’s not literary, wholly. Even Victor Hugo isn’t literary. Or TPTGW. Or Stomp. But Stoppard, or Sondheim, or Shakespeare? I wonder: if “high income households are more likely to read books frequently than low income”, does that harm low-income interest in literary playwrights, like Priestley, Bennett, Shakespeare?
And secondly, Gardner’s article is about who makes theatre – “If you work in theatre and are constantly surrounded by people who went to private school and Oxbridge [which, shorthand here for ‘not working-class’, is telling] you start feeling inadequate”. “England also does relatively badly on equality of opportunity – in terms of the degree to which social background influences skills attainment. The only country where the parents’ level of education has a greater effect on children’s skills attainment in literacy and numeracy is the Slovak Republic.” Low-income households aren’t privy to the opportunities of high-income ones, especially in the arts, due to literacy – and we wonder why creative teams are predominantly from high-income families!
And for God’s sake, it’s families who can’t afford to buy books whose children have lower levels of literacy. Do we really bloody expect these families to buy a bundle of tickets to War Horse? Not only should we be protesting discriminatory library cuts, we should be bloody staging Shakespeare in them.
Without an education system instilling that drama is worthwhile, with a diverse and representative theatrical curriculum, we tell all children – especially working-class ones – that the stage and the arts aren’t for them. We have been for years. I’d argue that in drama we make theatre and in English we study it; if we cut drama, theatremaking becomes middle-class, and if we study English poorly, theatregoing becomes unwelcoming and discriminatory. Theatre in schools is neither a mirror nor a future for working-class children.
*** You lot. Sitting back, taking it easy, waiting for me To – what? Impress you, amaze you, show you what I’ve got?
These are the opening lines to Iphigenia in Splott, one of my least favourite recent shows (Sophie Melville is mesmeric, mind). Effie begins by acknowledging that she’s the only working-class person in the room. Us and them.
I had HUGE problems with Iphigenia. I felt that Owen appropriated working-class clichéd misery to preach an easy political point to a converted choir, a middle-class pantomime. If Effie attended Iphigenia she’d feel misrepresented. Why wasn’t Effie welcome to attend her own story?
Today, if we want working-class theatre, we do one of two things. Either we look back. “Why do they need to revive [Road]? Why isn’t the Royal Court putting on new plays that are dealing with the lives of working-class northerners today?” Do read this article, which goes on to aptly ask “when was the last time I saw a northerner on stage” and note that at the Court, “with its reputation for being at the forefront of every theatrical shift, RP remains the standard”. Whatever you thought of Road, it is amazing that there are no contemporary plays like it at the Court – indeed, Rita Sue was the ONLY working-class story told there last year, eventually... It’s a backwards-looking blind-spot.
Or we appropriate. “Brexit and events such as the Grenfell Tower fire highlight the growing gulfs between the haves and have-nots”, asserts Gardner; Gardner’s former Grauniad stomping-ground commissioned Sir David on Brexit, a have on the have-nots. Hmm. Some shorts are good (Gary Owen’s is thoughtful and thought-provoking), most aren’t (Charlene James’ is based on the twist that a sexy person is a Brexiteer); but who wrote, directed, performed in these, and who was their intended audience; aren’t Sir David, Headlong and the Guardian “block[ing] access to the opportunities and jobs that the middle class take for granted”? Anywho, the NT tackled Brexit, Rufus and Dame Carol; Rufus also set wonder.land in a contemporary state school with help from a middle-aged multimillionaire. Haves and have-nots.
But Grenfell, I recently saw Broken Dreams, and despite some imperfections, this was the real story told by the right people. You don’t need to live a story to write it, theoretically, but authenticity matters. Yet who is being commissioned to tell stories of contemporary working-class life? Could Andrea Dunbar break through today? Discuss.
“We critics are still a homogeneous bunch: no longer dead, white males perhaps, but still all middle-class and university-educated, still all white”. TV and cinema being accessible, working-class misrepresentation gets quickly seen and criticised in letters or on Twitter. Theatre being inaccessible, critics are our public voice of dissent, and if they’re homogenous, can they criticise?
And whilst I loved that blog about Road, I’m very upset that blogging = criticism. Criticism should always be paid. Not for the reasons snobby Shenton says – because if it’s unpaid, only people who can afford the time and money and comfort will critique, thus excluding working-class writers further. It’s cyclical.
How to change? How did Dunbar and Cartwright break though? Broader directing/writing schemes? Financial support for low-income creatives? Teach drama in state schools and, more importantly, have it performed there? So it’s governmental? Yes and no. When was the last competition for specifically working-class playwrights, especially mentoring for young writers; Stormzy’s recently, publicly started encouraging diverse authors and poets – great! – but why nothing similar for theatre, why never anything similar for theatre? Discuss.
Effie concludes “What is gonna happen when we can’t take it anymore?” This wasn’t a “shattering, angry call for immediate revolt” (how’s that revolt going, Guardian?). It was us-and-them again; a miserablist story about an inauthentic life told to a middle-class circle-jerk. Afterwards as the audience drank wine and discussed Aeschylus, I thought about the people I knew like Effie – this wasn’t their story. People like Effie can speak for themselves. There are ways to get Effie to tell her story. Collaborate with Effie, don’t write for her. Bring Effie into the theatre to watch, not to be watched.
P.S. Sophie Melville – the incredible star of this show – even believes that theatre comes across as inaccessible, saying of how she felt at 16 before coming across Owen’s earlier (better) plays and recognising herself in them: “I was just scared of [acting] being posh and it being Shakespeare and not being able to understand what was being said”.
P.P.S. Given how many careers can be kickstarted up there, how much does it cost to stage a show in Edinburgh?
*** Now, after the practicalities, entry points, and storytellers, I’d like to focus on four working-class classics: 1) Les Mis, 2) Cathy Come Home, 3) Sunshine on Leith, and 4) Henry IV. What goes on stage? What does that say?
1) Does Les Mis have something to say about class? Sod that, it’s a blockbuster. “Wanna see Les Mis?” – it’s a treat. “Wanna see working-class great Kenneth Cranham in a French puzzle-box about dementia?” – less of a treat. We can bang on but, for many people, theatre is a day out and that’s that.
But this links to London-centricity. I think that a show being a treat is great! The Father is not a treat. That it only played in Bath and London limits its audiences; financially/geographically, plays like this are ghettoised as London, metropolitan, middle-class. They need to leave London. But blockbusters? By now Les Mis is like Big Ben.
Quick comparison to cinematic blockbusters – Fast-and-Furious blockbusters are most popular than Bergman-y arthouse, yet London theatre struggles with Fast and Furious and stages Through A Glass Darkly/Fanny and Alexander/Persona/Scenes from a Marriage, TWICE/Bergman The Musical. “Theatre isn’t literary” he said… I’m not convinced theatre caters to the broadest of tastes…
But for many, theatre’s just the blockbusters, and why not? We must protest inordinate prices, but being in London makes for a capital day out, and ya snobs this is something tours like Kenright’s redistribute excellently.
(and, with Toneelgroep’s Blockbuster Musical around the corner, what a time for the big guns!)
2) Of all the great working-class plays – Wesker, Osborne, Cartwright (and their contemporaries...) – I’m mentioning Ken Loach for a specific reason. I Daniel Blake was a sensation – Loach’s 2nd Palme D’Or, referenced in parliament, it drew national attention to the issue of food banks. It’s a masterpiece. It peaked at 9th in the UK box office. On the other hand, Noel Clarke’s Brotherhood opened, just a month before Blake, to over £1.5 million more.
I’m moving to cinema, not theatre, because of accessibility, so success is easier to gage. “If we really wanted more of the white, working-class in our theatres we’d be making work that bounced off the sorts of stuff they do flock to engage with… the big and bold and tribal and gut-wrenching,” Gardner quotes, “But we don’t. We revive Chekhov in translations by David Hare. We do not want working-class people as they are, so we do not really want them at all.” Loach (politically) and Clarke (locally) tell lived-in, authentic, big bold tribal stories. The audiences turn up, esp. for Clarke. And whilst Blake and Brotherhood are gut-wrenching, both Loach and Clarke also made charming comedies. With Eric Cantona! People flock.
If you felt reflected in Kidulthood, where’s your reflection on stage now? And I wonder, was the audience of I Daniel Blake people like Daniel Blake?
Well, Cathy played both Barbican and borstals, which says it all – these stories can be great theatre for metropolitan theatregoers and visit their target audiences too, they reflect their audience, and they reach out to their audience, where there’s a will.
That’s Loach; Clarke? Why don’t we see these stories more often, or urban stories ever? Production snobbery. Kidulthood the Musical clearly WOULD be popular. If it plays the Noel Coward Theatre, it’s located/priced out of its audience. Touring it is less prestigious and not Olivier-eligible. A very urban modern story probably won’t play Broadway or warrant a revival. It takes courage to make theatre just for the here-and-now. Like Cathy.
So the twofold answer is simple in theory. 1) Have more working-class talent on committees – but Gardner details the unease there – but it’s step 1. 2) Broaden not just what’s commissioned, but where, for whom, and why; the RC or Hampstead or NT staging Cathy would be self-defeating without taking it further; look at Love, clearly vital, akin to Loach, but sadly inaccessible; the infrastructure for completely portable (and even non-profit) theatre (from regional schools to the West End) must be there. SO MUCH of this comes to government arts funding. Simple!
Start with someone established. Noel Clarke should make theatre! And Ken Loach! Nothing there could go wrong…
(“We revive Chekhov in translations by David Hare”. And by Icke, who anglicises to Uncle Johnny. And Anya Reiss, who sings along with Common People and adds ‘only after you’ve f***ed a woman’. And Dead Centre, who order a takeaway (at the BAC, MUST SEE, the best show about theatre I’ve ever seen). Yet I’ve never seen a Chekhov with Vanya’s line “What do you say’ll happen to us, me mam, and our Sonya?” That sounds like something my family would say; now there we are in the greatest ever play. But no, he’s always posh. On this, guess who’s leading the way? Gary Owen! Translators are not purists when it comes to setting, era, character, exactitude, plot, words. But why are we purists when it comes to accent and class?)
3) Sunshine on Leith is my perfect working-class play. It tells of two squaddies getting over the war and getting with their girlfriends. Somewhere in the background, they’re working-class. It’s never mentioned. It doesn’t matter. But they don’t flatten all the vowels and throw the R away.
“I often wonder why middle-class audiences want to pay to hear me tell stories about working-class life,” quotes Gardner, “And why is it that so seldom we are funded to tell the stories of working-class success?” I believe that’s because creatives perceive ‘working-class life’ as ABOUT working-class – that working-class people wake up and think “I am working-class”. Thus we revive A Taste of Honey, and leer at Effie’s middle-class appropriation, like well-acted Guardian articles. Theatre wants working-class politics, classics and clichés. Effie BEGAN by saying “You lot”, ‘othering’ herself.
Jamie doesn’t! Musicals have a better track record at keeping class in the background – ETAJ, Blood Brothers, Billy Elliott, Perpetual Succour, The Girls, Made in Dagenham, even Kinky Boots, even London Road (and even wonder.land). Why are musicals so far ahead? I’d assume that it’s because they’re often big-budget, crowd-pleasing fun: celebrating title characters (like Iphigenia?) who shout “Some of us belong to the stars”! We’ve not had a play doing this since when, Pitmen? Jamie is about coming out, Billy the miner’s strike, London Road collective trauma and redemption, but Sunshine on Leith is totally low-stakes – it’s your everyday boy-meets-girl – and yet it’s everything: a tried-and-true love story, authentic, happy. And working-class.
The telly does this too to roaring success. So there are clearly hugely talented, hugely popular writers and performers who want to tell straight drama/comedy about working-class success.
When we talk working-class stories, at best it’s Four Yorkshiremen and at worst it’s poverty porn. But it’s a discriminatory lack of imagination that leads us there. Why can’t your basic comedy/history/tragedy be any class? Why can’t any working-class story go from misery to happiness today a-ha a-ha a-ha a-ha?
…because writers write what they know, and most theatregoers are middle-class thus write with unconscious bias. It’s cyclical. But in theory why not?
4) In Playing the Part, Ian McKellen bemoans losing his Bolton accent because there was the preconception that the Dane needed to be posh, the Bard’s words RP*. Why, he asks, when Tom Courteney, Albert Finney, David Warner didn’t? Good question, and one he can’t quite answer.
Just this year, with Andrew Scott’s Hamlet a palpable hit, I lost count of how many people said “Interesting to hear Hamlet with a different accent”.
“How someone speaks is one of the markers for class, so it’s perhaps not surprising that some working-class artists find it easier to try to fit in by coding and putting on what Scottee calls “the arts version of yourself”.”
If accent is a marker for class, and it’s unusual to hear non-RP Shakespeare, Shakespeare is middle-class.
*A personal note. Born in Berkshire but parents from up north, I decided that losing any accent would be more like the theatre I saw, so spent my teenage years trying to sound like Noël Coward (who himself exaggerated his accent to impress in theatre). In many ways, it did make a better impression when going to uni, and going to the theatre; I heard very few accents like my family’s, I sounded the part. What does that say about a) inclusivity, and b) me? But that’s not my accent and doesn’t represent me – and you can never go home again, I can’t now lose this fake voice. It’s funny how crucial voices – literal, spoken voices – are to identity. Had I had more heroes in the literary world – more characters in Shakespeare or Chekhov on stage – with the accent of my parents or grandparents, I’d proudly speak like them. But now? What do I have? Is this my voice?
Group therapy over, back to the point…
Macbeth is another Shakespeare McKellen played posh, in 1976. His Porter was Ian McDiarmid, who dials up a daffy Scots accent to ‘other’ himself. In 2018, Rufus Norris put on his Macbeth. His Porter was Trevor Fox – a stunning Shakespearean actor – who “dials up his natural Geordie to squeeze laughter out of the Olivier audience”.
“‘Working-class character as detonator.’ The character in question will have little to no emotional life of their own and will exists purely to generate chaos or, less egregiously, to hold a mirror up to the other characters – to generate narrative tension.”
Wasn’t that McDiarmid in 1976? Isn’t that Fox in 2018?
What’s more damning is that Anne-Marie Duff – one of our finest actors – still has her East London accent. She’s lost it, though, to play a Lady. Fox keeps his, to play a Fool. Coding.
Natasha Tripney’s ‘detonators’ include Consent and Amongst Friends, and I’ve argued that the entire Iphigenia script was ‘working-class detonator as character’. Theatremakers know, expect, hope (?) that their audiences will be predominantly middle-class and feel comfortable using ‘working-class’ as a shorthand for ‘laughable’, ‘dangerous’, or ‘dumb’. ‘Other’.
“Those from working-class backgrounds often get typecast as working-class characters who are not only often caricatured and offensive, but are often also secondary roles and therefore less well-remunerated,” quotes Gardner. This is true from Consent to Coriolanus; how class is weaponised says a lot.
This is why, to me, Phyllida Lloyd’s Shakespeare Trilogy is our Hamilton: who lives who dies who tells your story (05:01). Both take a text that underpins our nationality (the Constitution for the US; the Bard for us), and both shout that these are for everyone – those who reflect our nation today. Yes, Lloyd’s trilogy was all-female, but think about the diversity of ages, races, nationalities, classes, cultures, body sizes, sexuality… Shakespeare – our National poet – belonged to everyone.
Wonderfully, I think that since all-female casts were compared to “a dog’s walking on his hind legs”, we’ve only gotten Glenda’s Lear on Broadway and Matthew Tennyson as Salome because of Lloyd’s pioneering brunt-bearing. But a production where Harriet Walter’s son was Claire Dunne and her daughter was Leah Harvey was about more. It wasn’t all-female – it was all-inclusive. Where else are Cynthia Erivo, Jade Anouka, Ashley Maguire, Cush Jumbo, Sharon Rooney warriors, wizards, kings, family?
Most productions are middle-class, but use regional or working-class as ‘other’. Lloyd threw this out the window. Few have followed her here. Why?
What is a working-class story? Prince Hal vs Hotspur. ANYTHING in British history is a working-class story. Almost anything in world theatre can be too. Cast it right.
If we cast all Shakespeares as Cumberhamlets and Hiddleston-anuses, we reinforce our quaint London sensibilities. Does that make Maxine Peake’s Hamlet working-class, her Winnie working-class? Not at all, accent isn’t class – but it means people from her working-class background see and hear themselves as heroes. The wonderful Trevor Fox is the ONLY Geordie actor I’ve ever seen on stage. Growing up I didn’t hear people who sounded like my mum on stage and I still don’t; I wanted to ‘fit in’ and still do. Had I known back then that Hamlet’s soliloquies could sound like Maxine Peake... That matters. What did Peake herself say about being inspired by Victoria Wood? “She sounds a bit like me”.
I don’t know how many people got to see The Shakespeare Trilogy on TV – my only mini-bugbear was despite amazing outreach, its temporary theatre was in London, not tour-able – but I hope enough people watch it and recognise the Bard’s words in their voice, and their voice in the Bard’s words.
Play these shows in schools.
*** Everything is interconnected. NT Live is a near-perfect second-best. The Olivier can ‘transfer’ to any cinema. It’s accessible! A national treasure like McKellen is classless – September 27th will ignite many first-time theatregoers worldwide (of course, his Fool has an othering regional accent because of course he f***ing does). I will fight to the death for it.
The RSC go one better, screening into schools for free.
However, this is the current NT Live season: Follies, Young Marx, CoaHTR, Julius Caesar, Julie, King Lear, George III, Allelujah! – and, aforementioned, Macbeth. Season 8: Deep Blue Sea, Threepenny Opera, No Man’s Land, Amadeus, Saint Joan, Hedda, Twelfth Night, R&GaD, Obsession, WaoVW, Peter Pan, Salome, Angels, Yerma. Diversity?
In those 23 productions, how many regional accents are going regional? Reliably Alan Bennett; other than him, 2 (David Morrissey and Trevor Fox). And no lead roles.
More Oscar Wilde plays have been transmitted in the last year than working-class plays in the last ten.
Instead, we get Macbeth, and its aforementioned problems, told to the world. Thank you Rufus!
The RSC is better (compare their Macbeth) but most of the RSC shows I’ve seen have still had this RP-accent bias. Showing THAT in schools is only so progressive.
We have to go back to 2011’s revival of The Kitchen (1957) to find the ONE working-class story, out of nearly 100, transmitted to the world.
So, why is the National not transmitting working-class stories? Well, what can it transmit? Rufus gets one thumb up with Love, Nine Nights and Barber Shop Chronicles (despite wonder.land, Iphigenia and Macbeth). Hytner had Elmina’s Kitchen, Pitmen and London Road (which took 5 years to get to Ipswich – and only via a not-good movie). Anything else? Across London? Oscar Wilde again? Is NT Live genuinely the best the Nation has to offer?
(Well, I think SRB in Collaborators was meant to be a working-class detonator, so maybe twice, via Stalin, hooray ? ? ? ? ?)
I’ve always loved NT Live – the National Theatre is finally National, and International. I saw Everybody’s Talking About Jamie at a foreign cinema, and to see that story go global made me cry. But how come the regions who only see NT Live never see their regions or lives? I want to love NT Live, but it’s that word ‘National’ that sticks in my throat. We should be in uproar.
*** There. 6 months after the fact, everyone needed my overlong opinion on the subject… It’s that NT Live statistic that sickens me most – yet it’s the best of UK theatre’s bad job. There’s such a rot at every level. When that’s so normalised, what does that say about theatremakers, and us as theatregoers?
Two quick postscripts. We in the UK have chips on our shoulders, but theatre is global. Toneelgroep in London attracts a middle-class metropolitan audience – in Amsterdam? Of course Broadway is elitist, but United States? “Bringing my working-class relatives into the middle-class space of the theatre; getting my blood family to meet my chosen family” sounds familiar – yet it’s about the exact same problem in Australia! Is this a global issue?
Let me end with one final, historical note. The Mystery Plays were theatre for the working-class, by the working-class, about the working-class. The actors and the audience were workers from York, from Leicester, from the locality. And who are the main characters? God and Jesus. Imagine such class-blind casting today! In British theatre’s beginnings, working-class stories were the Alpha and Omega.
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Post by Nicholas on Aug 4, 2017 16:25:59 GMT
Isn’t it strange to say that THIS is how to do a Bob Dylan play?
Early on, this Hamlet says “Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt... thaw”. He corrects himself! It’s an almost insignificant moment, but remarkable, and it sets the scene perfectly. What makes this production soar is how fresh it feels, how new, how it turns much of what makes Hamlet Hamlet on its head, for profoundly affecting reasons. And it’s touches like this, teeny performance techniques, that show how sensitively, wonderfully, expertly it’s all been done. I loved this Hamlet – for its freshness, for Icke’s innovativeness, for its intelligence in all aspects. And I loved it for moments like this, a moment of seeming newness, freshness, unexpectedness, and heart.
“Denmark’s a prison”. So says Hamlet, so once said Kott, so bangs on Billington. Here, Icke’s interpretation of that is both wittily up-to-date and relevant to all. This is true of all of Denmark, not just Hamlet’s – it’s a world in which Hamlet is the eavesdropper as much as the eavesdroppee; where Ophelia and Gertrude and Claudius too are as much a victim of this perverted public living as Hamlet; where even Claudius struggles to find a peace he needs, he deserves; where even the Ghost’s appearance is first found through illicit observation; and where, crucially, we’re implicit too.
From the beginning, this is a 24-hour Elsinore, an Elsinore always under watch. It opens with rolling news. It actually opens with CCTV. Before we’ve even gotten into the observation of the play itself, we’re watching observations. Before we’ve even gotten to Hamlet being spied on, Elsinore is being spied on. By the time we get to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern being used as inside access to Hamlet’s mind, the level of observation is almost oppressive. Of course, the key to Hamlet is that he’s observed, and with the TVs on and off, the CCTV always there, the walls like glass barely hiding anything, we’re never allowed to forget this. But the key to Hamlet is that if Elsinore is a prison, Hamlet isn’t the only prisoner. Indeed, this eavesdropping, ever-present Hamlet imprisons Polonius, Claudius and Ophelia as much as they imprison him. It’s a fantastically disconcerting balance, which enriches the supporting characters so much.
And then there’s us. It begins with us watching intrusive news, almost paparazzo like. We then keep watching. And keep watching. And whilst Icke doesn’t suggest the fourth wall isn’t there (mostly), he never lets us forget we’re voyeurs into private grief, intruding into this poor man’s privacy. At some point in the first half, I realised I was feeling really uncomfortable watching this, all due to the way in which there is no escape from observation – that, for his sake, we should look away. But can’t. At a few points, particularly as Scott’s all-too-relatable grief is relayed to the country (and crucially, too, to us eavesdropping in the audience) and Claudius advises him to hide his grief, I was reminded of that photo we all know all too well of the Princes marching behind their mother’s coffin, grief on display, but forced not to feel. When Hamlet jumps into the audience, it suggests an awareness of some audience – not that Hamlet knows he’s in a theatre; just that Hamlet (always on TV, always on CCTV, always on guard) knows that his Denmark is watching him, always, as a prison.
Not to say this is some Brechtian immersive mumbo-jumbo, but (as he did, much less successfully, in his 1984), Icke uses filming and technology and our observation as paying punters to suggest that even the fourth wall has a sense of complicity. It’s canny modernity, not there through pat reference or obvious allusion, but through thematic similarity alone – in the same way that Icke’s Vanya did little explicit to change a lot, this does too. And if I was reminded of the images of the Princes, that’s because I was equally reminded of how often we’re reminded of it as outsiders to the Royal Family, almost forced to watch their lives by the complicity of rolling news. In this Elsinore, I went mad almost watching it. The brilliant thing about Icke’s egalitarian Hamlet is that Elsinore is said egalitarian lead – and through a focus on that, every person here has their own arc, drawn more densely than usual, Hamlet himself only one aspect of this wonderful show.
Amidst this prison, it’s clearly the best ensemble I have ever seen in a Hamlet – I’ve never seen a Hamlet where every arc is so beautifully drawn. Because all of them have such a strong set to bounce off us – such a strong sense of uncertainty – all become more than mere ciphers to Hamlet’s story (as has happened too often in other productions), as all have their own part to play in this peculiar landscape.
The Polonius family (surname?) are such a tight-knit clique that the breakdown of that family, again, is painful to endure. Peter Wight’s performance perfectly judges a parent only his children could love – whilst tedious to outsider Hamlet, there was such affection towards this daft old bear of a man from the two children; the famous line flub, too, hinted at a real darkness there. Luke Thompson had a sensitivity that mirrored his sister, he’s a great actor. Standing out even further, the autonomy Jessica Brown Findlay brings is crushed so much by this oppressive world that her descent into madness is as compelling as Scott’s (and mirrors it nicely too). She’s loving, wise, and sensitive, in a world and at a time where such behaviours are brutalised and crushed – her madness, a still sadness in response to this, is grounded in real heartbreak, real humanity. Findlay, too, has a delightful rapport with Scott – when Hamlet dives into Ophelia’s grave, this was the first time that I believed Hamlet. Aptly, this was an Ophelia for whom death was quite romantic, for whom I felt so afraid.
Even more revelatory was the interplay between Gertrude and Claudius – through their early interactions, the play’s dynamics are wholly shifted. Was the argument of this entire production, actually, that Gertrude should have married Claudius to begin with? Possibly, as this couple very palpably hit it off in a way that made the ‘wrong’ relationship feel that between Gertrude and King Hamlet in the first place. In Wright’s performance, I felt we were watching a man who killed for love and inherited power, instead of a man who killed for power – I found Wright judged that character to a tee – the way that embarrassing dad-dancing and sleeping on the sofa led directly into international negotiations suggested he was never to be a leader proper. Crotty was a perfect match – someone whose sexuality clashes horribly with Rintoul’s ghost’s stiltedness, someone who manages to convince with sensitivity towards Scott, and who truly sizzles alongside Wright – although, equally, someone who reacts with very human horror to the very inhumane actions Wright very inexpertly orders. He was perfect as a sad old man dancing along to Dylan (I have family. I know). From the beginning, Icke repositions the central tragic murder of Hamlet being not about hate, but about love – and more daringly, about true love, reciprocated. It’s is the boldest decision, and it pays dividends – just in beginning with a tacky little dance, Icke repositions the play entirely to be about the destructive nature of love as much as anything else.
And so to our Hamlet? Where Icke’s imprisoning Elsinore works well is using this trap to try and conflate a complex man into one word. We like to condense Hamlets down to one characteristic; but how does one condense a man clearly struggling in grief, observed from every angle, having a great task thrust upon him, struggling with love, all into one word? Scott and Icke play with this. Icke’s Elsinore is the main character here – in the middle of this oppressive, voyeuristic state, how could anyone to thine own self be true? Going through grief, ghastly invasions of privacy, and ghostly visitations, any person would feel a multitude of emotions – and the way Scott’s Hamlet evolves (as too do Ophelia, and Gertrude, and Laertes, and rather movingly even Claudius) is far more complicated than one mere epithet. It makes Scott’s Hamlet feel far more three-dimensional, whilst equally remaining far more penned-in than other Hamlets – it’s this perverse dichotomy which feeds the play its energy. The fact that he’s allowed to correct himself, to be smart sometimes and not others, to be brave sometimes and weak others – perversely, it’s daring to let Hamlet be Hamlet, to let him be contradictory, to let him be human.
“What a piece of work is man!” he cries. “How is this piece put together?” he seems to ask again, and again, and again. If I had to summate him to one word, it would be, wonderfully, “fleshy”. Shakespeare’s Hamlet muses a lot about what death might be like. Scott’s Hamlet becomes biologically fascinated by what death IS like. Touching the ghost did more than elicit an emotional connection – it elicited a tactile connection, too, between living and dead, and that’s what drives this Hamlet. There’s a mirror between touching the dead but spiritual ghost, and later touching the dead but physical Polonius – two tactile encounters with death, one mental and one physical, traumatise this Hamlet, and frankly traumatise us. Later his response to Yorick is that of curious disgust, or disgusted curiosity – through having to be in physical contact with the posthumous plains – and similarly, having to come face-to-face with Ophelia no longer living is much the same.
Hamlet muses about what death might be like again and again and again and again and again. Naturally, he comes to no conclusions. Rather than focus on these maybes, though, Icke and Scott force him to encounter what death IS, in its physical, down-to-earth factions. And forces us to watch. It’s a hard watch, but it’s revelatory.
In being so resolutely about death, though, it’s very much about life – and THAT’s why this production absolutely sings (on the subject of singing – some of Dylan’s best vocals in there too – Desire!). What interests this Hamlet is the material facts about death as much as the mysteries of it – and by being so touchy about this, Hamlet has to be aware of the actualities of living too. And just as Icke repositions the central murder to be not about hate but love, so he repositions the central theme not about death’s uncertainty but life’s certainty.
Scott’s Hamlet’s tactile responses to death only work due to his equally tactile responses to life. His too, too solid flesh fascinates him, as he watches each finger move, each sinew do its work. His relationship with Ophelia is, undoubtedly, physical (as is Gertrude and Claudius). And this show loves every tactile moment of motion, of movement, of life. This is a world in which – whilst death is not the end – the mysteries of death, those mysteries that define these monologues, are tempered by the fact that life matters much much more – death is the absence of movement, a reduction of a man down to his basest lamest materials, whilst life is the joy of motion, of movement, of feeling, of flesh. If this is a Hamlet who loves to move, who loves to touch, who loves to hold and sense and feel, then giving all this up is more than musing on heaven – this matters here and now. Of course there’s still a mystery to death – but there’s an urgency to life.
Why does the end of Hamlet normally move us? Is it because we’re sad to see him die? Is it because we’ve all learnt lessons about the futility of revenge? Last time, it was because I was bored to tears. But this time, it’s because we’d seen death not as what it might be, but what it actually is – not life, not love, just nothing. Has Horatio ever come across as anything but a damp squib, after the melodramatic mayhem of the duel? Yet here, Hamlet’s invocation to live on matters. We’ve seen that there’s an afterlife, but we want to celebrate life first. Here, that juxtaposition of the ghosts going on – the dancing, the forgiveness, the best emotions of life being their legacy; that’s love – and Horatio actually living on, bearing the whips and scorns of time – well, that’s heroism, that’s triumph; that’s life.
We’ve a trend for confining our Hamlets down to that one characteristic we can take away. Once Frances de la Tour was the woman, Jonathan Pryce the haunted madman, David Warner the unknown teenager, Alan Rickman the underpowered braniac; recently Maxine Peake was the woman, Michael Sheen the haunted madman, Ben Whishaw the unknown teenager, Benedict Cumberbatch the underpowered braniac. For goodness sake, “the Grunge Hamlet”. What Icke and Scott seem to argue is that Hamlet is a man, take him in all in all. To observe him perpetually would of course be to drive him insane, as it would anyone – as it seems to do to Ophelia and Claudius and Polonius, victims of Hamlet’s eavesdropping as much as Hamlet is of theirs, here all contenders for protagonist. And to confine him to one characteristic – “ghost/devil, acting/madness, be/not be” – is to rob him of the chance to grieve, to grow, to heal. We see him as we see a whole. This – this all encompassing production – shows him as the man, in the world, in this reality. Other Hamlets I can remember through scenes, through moments, through descriptions – but this Elsinore is one I remember in its totality, in everyone’s totalitarianism, in its inability to be taken down to one element, beyond, surprisingly, life.
Except of course, amidst everything else I’ll take from this Hamlet – its take on eavesdropping, its take on madness, its various loving relationships – one striking thing stands out: it’s a hopeful Hamlet, a Hamlet about love, a Hamlet about life. I loved this Hamlet. Behind every beautiful thing, there’s been some kind of pain – and painful though simply watching this suffering go on is, its end result is one of pure and true beauty.
This Hamlet also has kickass taste in music – as does Claudius. That helps too. Desire at the Harold Pinter Theatre, Street-Legal at the Old Vic – my cup runneth over. Hopefully Nina at the Young Vic will feature this or this, and if someone could organise a showing of Pat Garrett at the BFI, and persuade Anne Marie-Duff’s crow to sing “Every Grain of Sand”, that would be rather nice too.
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Post by Nicholas on Aug 4, 2017 16:14:05 GMT
Were Committee to have had less courage in its convictions, I think it would have been a minor masterpiece. As it is, I think it’s a fantastic, if weirdly clichéd, obscurity. By Sondheiming the facts and nothing but, it does something fascinating with the form – but whether this particular story will quite capture the imaginations of the world remains to be seen, and it genuinely could have. Nonetheless, as it is, I was still a fan of this obscure and odd little show.
Committee dramatises a court case, as a court case, and on paper, that seems to be that. So, um, to ask the bleeding obvious, if it’s just the facts and just the words, why does this need to be a musical? Well, as the person behind me said as we walked out, “I suppose it stops it from being boring”. And genuinely, I do think that is, in no small way, that. Perhaps there’s a comment that, in this age of rolling news where entertaining matters as much as informing, this was not meant to be a show-trial, but all trials can be. Simply restaging it would grate, would be untheatrical. Making a musical of it brings it to the masses, makes a point about populism in politics. And it’s worth mentioning that I enjoyed its music – I’d hugely enjoy a cast recording.
But where Billington says “By shaping our response to the material, it overlays it with editorial comment”, I rather feel he’s missing the wood for the trees. OF COURSE it does! OF COURSE this is biased! Were it not biased it would just be talking heads – by making an editorial comment, Rourke and Fraser turn it into a battle, and clearly come on Kids Company’s side. Solely on the basis of these 80 minutes, so did I, because as it’s presented here, one wants to be idealistic and help as many people whatever the cost. The “£150 shoes” moment is defines it – for one party, that’s a scandalous waste of our money, whilst for the other there’s no price tag on autonomy and rehabilitation; taken as a political point alone, it’s easy to feel one way; taken as the 11 o’clock number in a musical, our biases are swayed towards our heroes, deliberately, obviously, willingly. And given the artifice is laid on thick, that’s completely fine. I think it’s constructed in such a way as to remain somewhat balanced – no-one would leave thinking Batmanghelidjh was anything but an idealist perfect for people skills but lacking in leadership skills, for example, whilst Yentob’s somewhat po-faced throughout – and the facts complicate the fictionalising, but the music and the structure makes its biases obvious.
Superficially, then, this ‘musical’ seems a successor to London Road – and, indeed, it’s hard to imagine this existing without that blazing some sort of trail in how ‘real’ a musical can be – but actually, the far more apt comparison would be with In The Matter of J Robert Oppenheimer, that hit Broadway smash we all know and love. Anyone who saw Morton-Smith’s more recent play (which clearly was none of the Olivier committee, given Cumberhamlet was up for an Olivier and the Heff wasn’t) would be able to tell you plenty of biographical details about Oppenheimer’s life, but equally could tell you that there were obvious elements of artifice – for starters, bombs don’t talk. Instead, anyone who sees Kipphardt’s version of that trial would assume that the court transcript is the truth. And yet, naturally, what Kipphardt presents as the honest facts are skewed and subverted to suit his argument. His Oppenheimer is HIS Oppenheimer, not the real one. It’s hard to hear that final speech Oppenheimer gives in court and not consider the man a poet, a rebel, a tragic hero – and yet it’s complete fiction, something Kipphardt wrote in addition to Oppenheimer's own words. Yet it’s presented as fact, in factual context. And indeed, isn't the rest of it skewed to make Kipphardt's point anyway? Oppenheimer objected to it, of course, primarily objecting to the entirely fictional final speech, but the entire text skewed his words to make Kipphardt's point, and Oppenheimer seemed to dislike that dishonesty too - by making his own words theatre they become fiction again. Committee is the successor to ‘let’s just stage a trial’, but by layering this ‘true’ trial with clearly overdramatic music, Rourke and Fraser lay their biases on the line, and give it to us not as the truth, but as one truth, as their truth – as show trials are, as all trials are. By “overlaying it with editorial comment” they make it work as drama.
That issue of reality/artifice has been true of verbatim works in the past, although far less over the last fifteen years or so (Simon Stephens is very interesting about that here, apparently his verbatim play’s a musical too!). I remember some discussion here, about Another World, about one of the talking heads being somewhat unscrupulous – whereas in that show (which I rather enjoyed) he’s depicted with integrity intact. Everything in that show was presented as the simple honest truth – and whilst I thought it made some worthwhile points, given the breadth of the subject tackled there, that’s clearly not true, and dishonesty in reportage is dangerous. And that’s why Committee works as a musical – unlike London Road, which was a musical about overcoming which happened to use verbatim voices to make it more real, this is a verbatim play which uses music to wear its biases on its sleeve and make its sometimes boring story literally sing. There’s an absolute honesty in this fiction, by wearing its fiction so heavily, and by balancing the boring truth and the fictionalised fantastical battle in this way, it’s an interesting step forwards in both what musicals can get away with and what verbatim plays can get away with.
That does lead to the next question: why does this need to be verbatim? Weirdly, that’s a more pertinent question than why Alan Yentob’s singing – why is it Alan Yentob using Alan Yentob’s words in the first place? For a verbatim play to work, the voice or collections thereof need to be interesting, relevant, new. This tends to be using multiple voices, multiple viewpoints, multiple times, and making something through combination. London Road used ordinary cadences to make extraordinary music (music I enjoy humming along to), and collated the themes of hurt to tell the well-trodden story of overcoming a tragedy as a community chorus. David Hare’s verbatim work is a collection of researched voices. More relevantly, in Oppenheimer, Kipphardt gives voice to one of the greatest minds talking about one of the greatest moments of the century – and truth be told, even after openly fictionalising portions to make it more morally grey and more palatable to theatre, it’s still a wee bit too static, and a wee bit too dull.
Here, there are two distinct sides – Company (good) and Committee (bad) – and the editorialising is fine, it’s what makes it drama, and it’s upfront about its drama – and that’s it for characters. As any drama goes, that’s a bit didactic, a bit stilted, a bit still. In theory, this trial transcript lends itself to some cornerstones of basic drama, as explicitly edited and editorialised. In this version of the truth, the case happens to tackle some of the oldest themes in the book: with a liberal dose of liberal bias, the trial centres on personalities vs parliament, on idealism vs accountancy, on success vs failure. The facts are almost clichéd in their archetypical approach to debates. There are moments of great drama, moments of inadvertent comedy, moments of David vs Goliath – all the moments you want in an issue like this – as the best verbatim plays do, it actually would hold up to literary criticism. But unlike the best verbatim plays, it doesn’t use the real words to comment or critique – it just uses them because they’re the words – and despite the editorialising making the themes more explicit, it’s one side vs another for 80 minutes, neither budging, until we’re dismissed, the winner dictated by fact. I rather think that by sticking solely to the transcript, the scope of Committee becomes too limited. Were this willing to expand out more, makes its characters characters and not arguments in exciting costumes, and deal with the politics politically, I think this would take Broadway by storm in its innovation – I think London Road absolutely has global appeal, and this would have too. As it is, it’s too monotonous. None of the ideas are particularly profound or fresh beyond the bizarre but brilliant concept, and whether this court case is really the best way to explore these themes I don’t know (its 80 minute run time does mean that any broader, murkier, interesting issues get put to the wayside, and that is a shame). There are also some factual gaps, as any 80 minute version of a three hour event will have, and whilst some of those would be footnotes, some omissions are bad – particularly the ending, a matter upon which the script doesn’t properly deliver, and which is necessary to know. At best, this uses deliberate artifice to make a gripping fictional debate out of interesting fact – but unlike, say, the Donmar’s past Frost/Nixon, it doesn’t delve into the two sides of its debate as anything more than two sides of its debate. In fact, I was a fan of Temple, which was sheer Socratic debate – strophe/antistrophe for 90 minutes, based on fact – but Waters made his characters caring and carefully crafted people amidst an otherwise balanced debate. By editorialising activities outside the courthouse Committee could have done this too, but in being too daringly focused in form, it remains too factual to be fascinating.
Despite this, I was very much a fan of this flawed show. I think that Fraser and Rourke have crafted a (kind of clichéd) story about the eternal debate between idealism and accountancy, between what charity is but what charity needs, and what society should offer and what society is capable of offering. I think the music was fantastic, awkward, engaging stuff. I thought the debate was crafty, the characters larger than life. And I felt there was a grand honesty in how this presented its biases. It’s somewhat simplistic and sometimes on-the-nose, but nevertheless it’s a novel idea well executed, fascinatingly done, and musically astute. Perhaps it’s more interesting in theory than in actuality, but it’s engaging and exciting nonetheless. I’d give it four stars, for the exact reasons Billington gives it two.
P.S. Is Josie Rourke secretly the most radical AD in London? In the five years (!) since she’s taken over, she’s done a great job at balancing perfectly good sell-out fodder (from The Recruiting Officer to Saint Joan), via left-of-centre revivals (Anhouil, Peter Gill, My Night with Reg) and new plays with a topical dint to them (Steve Waters’ new works), to productions which really dare to do something different – the techy well-researched wizardly of Privacy, the national study of one moment in time of The Vote (which I’m sure was going to have a rewrite and revival in 2020, thanks for botching that one up too Mrs May), to this strange adventure, to the genuinely groundbreaking Shakespeare trilogy, a four-year-long, unashamedly political, almost Hamilton-esque deconstruction of national norms and clichés, one of the most remarkable theatrical achievements, perhaps, of the decade? The Donmar still doesn’t have a reputation for being as adventurous as other theatres – perhaps because it sometimes does shamelessly populist or famous, perhaps because it’s closer to the West End – but given her track record I don’t see why. She recently did this as well, pushing the building's potential further – and given Michelle Terry’s new gig, their relationship bodes very very well for that building too. Quietly in Covent Garden, I think that building’s become far more unpredictable, progressive and exciting than it’s ever been before. Let’s step back and celebrate what a five years she’s had.
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Post by Nicholas on Aug 4, 2017 15:56:51 GMT
Images, big ideas and distorted facts. Had a hipster Julie Taymor directed a Garison Keillor monologue, it would end up something like this muddle of a show – a game, warm, entertaining misfire at trying to adapt the essence of a Dylan epic into a theatrical narrative, throwing music in whether the script can stand it or not. It’s sweet, it’s fun, and oh my does it have the best songs in London at the moment, but the thin script stretches itself even thinner to accommodate songs instead of story, and then struggles further under the weight of said songs. Beauty walks a razor’s edge – this has moments of beauty, and moments of, well...
In Girl from the North Country, Ron Cook turns out to be a dead, morphine addicted cowboy doctor. He narrates the story of Nick Laine, via the people closest to him: his ill-but-stylishly-ill wife; his writer/railroader/racist son; his peculiarly impregnated adopted daughter; and his under-moneyed widowed mistress. There are also his guests; the senior-citizen-suitor; the ‘doesn’t-know-his-own-strength’ Mice and Men cliché; his over-protective, under-characterised mother and his ‘bad investment’ father; the oily, blackmailing priest cliché; and Rubin Carter, apparently. They all do stuff. All have plots. Some have several. Sometimes they converge. Mostly they sing instead.
Can you tell what the problem is?
As jukebox musicals go – and this is indisputably a jukebox musical (an interesting, superior, and adventurous one, to say otherwise is simple snobbery) – what makes Girl from the North Country progressive and hypnotic is also what makes it dramatically inert and absolutely ridiculous. I think that, in his characters who are epithets first and characters after, in his stories which interweave, and in a setting which traps then overlaps these disparate lives, McPherson is writing a Bob Dylan song for actors. It’s a musical that wants to be one of its own songs – and takes (quite expertly, if quite technically) many elements of the music to make up itself (I wonder if, actually, Bat Out Of Hell kind of does the same, very differently?). Girl from the North Country wants to be “Gates of Eden”, or “Black Diamond Bay”, or, well, “Girl from the North Country”. And in its set-up – and in its mood – it doesn’t go as far as Dylan at his best, but it succeeds.
But mood doth not a play make. Once the elements are in place, songs can do thing with them theatre cannot. Characters come and go in a song, where they stick around on stage. In a song, Leo can appear on the Titanic for a line; a waitress can ask about hard boiled eggs for three verses; the Jack of Hearts is needed in every verse. On stage, to have them bumbling about in the back gets almost embarrassing. In a song, characters are given perfect context for perfect plots, be they Sweet Melinda the Goddess of Gloom, Napoleon in rags, or the One-Eyed Midget Shouting the Word Now. In a play, imagine those three line-dancing in the back while non-characters sang songs as they wait their turn to do some plotting again (actually, I’d pay to see that!).
Here, there’s no time to think. Girl from the North Country begins with exposition from a dead morphine-addicted cowboy doctor and only gets baggier from there. It’s a Dylanesque dramatis personae, but they don’t do enough. In McPherson’s play, Michael Shaeffer comes on in the perfect image of a priest. His mystery is revealed early on. He plays an old part, but he plays it well. He sings from the (underrated, then unforgivable, then epochal) gospel period. In a song, that would be one verse. But he’s got to hang around during the mistress and the marriage proposals and the dementia and the depression. He twiddles his thumbs for 45 minutes or so, until we’ve forgotten about him, he can come and blackmail the other lodger. This should be drama too – but the lodger and his family aren’t fleshed out yet, so it’s hard to feel much. Then they all twiddle their thumbs. Then there’s an actual murder. This should be the awful culmination of emotional highs – but we know nothing about these people, nothing but their bare basic bones, and rather than let the emotional moment matter, it turns into a karaoke barn dance. Other than that, the son’s plot strands include authorship ideals, losing his love, random racism, compromising his job, moving away, and looking after his ill mother – and he’s only the sixth most important protagonist! That’s to say nothing of Shirley Henderson sitting a lot, or Sheila Atim waiting a lot despite being absolutely wonderful. The action orbits around Nick Laine, but too much happens around him, very little to him, and nothing regarding him as a man in his own right – and he doesn’t even get a bloody song! Therefore, as our hero, he’s a wee bit dull. In songwriting, these elliptical scenes of epithets would be emotional. From the man whose The Weir perfectly calibrated the silences between stories, they feel undernourished.
Overburdened with plot, it’s not hard to follow, but it’s hard to care. Characterisation gives way to karaoke. Because there’s so little to the characters – and so much in the middle of their stories – all these people we used to know become illusions to us now. What we’re left with are under-fleshed-out characters setting up stories and failing to unite, failing to resolve. Scene after scene, people talk of situations, read books, repeat quotations – but no-one draws conclusions on the wall. We used to care, but things have changed.
Most of the time, McPherson’s clear-focused all around. The monologues – monologues. The Weir – five characters, five stories, stories alone. Had this had that focus, it would have worked – and indeed, at times, expertly did. Within Girl from the North Country, there is a brilliant play more in the McPherson mould, albeit mocking up the Minnesotan mindset too. The set-up – though Dylanesque in part – reminded me far less of an abstract Dylan epic, and more of an intimate Minnesotan monologue. Its folksy tangents on provincial lives in Northern America in their microcosms of meetings are the material of A Prairie Home Companion – and at its best, the thing this reminded me of most was Robert Altman’s sweet little final film in which Keillor’s monologues became manifest, and angels, cowboys and DJs can intermingle, indeed, people can sing off-topic songs into funky country radio mics, and strangest of all Lindsay Lohan can act. Less grotesque than many of Dylan’s cameo characters, the cliché of the wannabe writer, the preacher with no shame, the family regrets masked by hobbying and hardiness – these would be perfect material for Keillor’s distinctive drawl, and honestly, who wouldn’t want to see a Lake Wobegon-y world live on stage? When this focused on family, on friendship, on familiarity and on the four or five central familial figures, I felt McPherson was writing a play whose folksiness was familiar, focused, and fun – and that play I liked a lot. It’s the Minnesotan mood piece that works best here.
The characters who got McPherson’s focus, too, were exquisite – although that’s equally in part to some astonishingly good performances. Having a cast so strong, so game, somewhat wasted but committed to the script, elevates this production immensely. Ron Cook and Jim Norton, as ‘Occasional Ghost Narrator’ and ‘Punchline’, are underused as underwritten characters, and in a cast of twenty-odd they’re not alone. However, shining through, two performances beautifully characterise the joy and jumble of this unholy mess. Sheila Atim, with her eyes like smoke and her voice like chimes, gives a performance of glowing sincerity and gorgeous singing, her strident belief in her character grounding this clunky script in loneliness but hope. On the other hand, Shirley Henderson reveals a stunning singing voice – all the more surprising for her to be able to sing whilst simultaneously chewing all on the scenery she can. In a script like this, someone needs to take it ridiculously – and given permission to due to her character being one of two “disability makes me speak the truth” clichés here created, Henderson relishes the chance. It’s no coincidence that their big musical numbers are the ones which work the best – they imbue their (superiorly written) characters with the kind of emotions that need these songs to fill. Between Atim’s wide-eyed wonder and Henderson’s hilarity, the script is given a production far above what the knotty end result deserves.
They have the best tunes, too. When Sheila Atim’s loneliness is expressed like so, it’s eye-opening, or when Stanley Townsend and his wife sing about loneliness at their low ebbs, McPherson finally focuses on their feelings, and shows the show this could have been. “Forever Young” was sincere enough to wrap it up too – whilst I don’t think it felt wholly organic, it’s testament to Henderson’s strength at characterisation that it almost did. Mostly this doesn’t work, though, as a musical – and we can see that by seeing when it does work. Too many songs are given to otherwise non-speaking characters, and none given to at least three key characters – well, either this is a litmus test as to whether you go with the mood or not, or testament to inconsistent book writing. I’m afraid, given how well the mood works with the McPherson script alone and how well the songs work when McPherson bothers to incorporate, it feels far more the latter.
So there’s mood. And it’s a lovely mood. A melancholy mood. And largely this comes from McPherson’s Minnesotan mimicry. But there’s got to be more than that – which is what a Dylan song has, and what a great McPherson play has, and what this doesn’t have. The plots don’t work, the characters don’t get enough, there’s nothing to care for beyond songs I already care for. In plot trajectory, this ain’t going nowhere.
It’s worth saying that Dylan himself became unstuck in this very area. When living and breathing in front of us, this past-it singer was nothing as to this past-it singer, minstrels didn’t compare to minstrels, and an apocalyptic president was nothing as to a president of the United States who had to stand naked (quick straw poll – President Trump or President Mickey Rourke?). In cinema, the cameo nature is less egregious, but it’s still somewhat ridiculous. Girl from the North Country is far better than Masked and Anonymous, as the mood it evokes is far more moving, but it still struggling from an over-population of under-developed characters. As a mood piece, this is beautiful, if bafflingly imbalanced. As a character piece, I just think it fails as Dylan himself has failed before.
“I was thinking about a series of dreams, where nothing comes up to the top, everything stays down where it’s wounded, and comes to a permanent stop”. If you’re willing to let the series of dream-like vignettes wash over you, this has moments of profound, profound beauty – in character, in some emotions, in some of its oddities, in all of its songs. It could have been Steinbeck’s Prairie Home Companion via The Weir’s simple storytelling – and how wonderful that would be – and at its best, it was. But at other times, epithetical characters jostle for time and space, songs distract, too much happens and too little matters. It needs to be concise and too clear, instead it wiggle, wiggle, wiggles, like a bowl of soup. It goes toe-to-toe with The Weir and with “Black Diamond Bay”, and falls short, where both have mood AND character AND a purpose this lacks. Which is not to say I didn’t hugely enjoy some of its parts. There’s a lovely McPherson play where he expands on it. There are lovely Bob Dylan songs. The bits I loved I loved. The intermingling of these lovely individual pieces is ridiculous. The sum of these parts, alas, is too much of nothing.
I’d buy a soundtrack in a heartbeat, mind. All this churlishness – it’s 15 brilliantly sung Dylan songs! Admittedly, you get that on a Dylan album, but all in all I went with this. I just wish it wasn’t so meandering, so muddled, so meaningless, and it had more than that lovely mood. You could argue that whilst nothing really matters much, it’s mood alone that counts; I needed more. At the end, the mood had won me over, but the plot: why did any of it happen, and why should I care? It ain’t no use to sit and wonder why; it don’t matter anyhow.
P.S. Theatre trivia time! 1) During Dylan’s 80s wilderness, Dylan was co-star with perhaps the greatest living actor himself, Sir Mark Rylance! In Farts for Hire. 2) With the passing of the great Sam Shepard, we get the opportunity to relive the one good thing Dylan did in the 80s with Shepard's input – and what a great thing it is...
P.P.S. Whilst of course any fan of a jukebox musical’s artist will be miffed by certain omissions of superb, or relatively unknown, or leftfield, or underrated songs (although equally pleased by decent inclusions – THREE from Street-Legal!), it seems particularly odd to set this in Bob Dylan’s depression and not to use Bob Dylan’s late-period masterpiece on the depression, his superior-to-Steinbeck “Workingman’s Blues #2” ("The buying power of the proletariat's gone down, money's getting shallow and weak"). Everything that this is saying, that song says it just as good – I would hold that up as one of the finest works of his entire career, and as it details the pain of living through a depression but the joy of living anyway, it would work wonders in the main character’s mouth, were this to work as a musical, or as drama. Meanwhile, to set it in a Dylan-esque guesthouse means it really only could have ended one way...
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Post by Nicholas on Apr 18, 2017 15:05:42 GMT
“One more year in Yorkshire, January, February, April, May, September and July...” Does Gary Barlow not know his months? Blimey, opening with that song, it was going to be a long night. And it was...
As per usual, the Oliviers muck it up royally. I’m happy enough with the awards given the shortlist, but by god did they muck up the shortlist, and then, well, the three certainties in life are death, taxes and a bad Oliviers ceremony.
Let’s start with how they mucked it up on the TV – we Brits just can’t do awards, can we? The Baftas are always laughable, but they make the Oliviers look good – and lest we forget, the 2017 British Film Awards, celebrating predominantly American cinema, began by filling a music hall with a French circus. The key difference between the Tonys and the Oliviers is that self-doubt hasn’t reached the Tonys yet. Yes, the Tonys celebrate only a few square kilometres of theatre, but when Neil Patrick Harris says theatre isn’t just for the gays or the Jews or the sad embittered malcontents who write the reviews, but is for the kid in the middle of nowhere who’s sitting there living for Tony performances, no-one rolls their eyes. Here, Jason Manford let us know he’s overweight, so that kid in the middle of nowhere can go suck it, they ain’t famous. There, musicals are art. Here, we still portray musicals as naff expensive events, even as we celebrate Murder Ballads and Threepenny Operas. So if you’re not from one of a handful of London theatres, you’re dirt. Hell, here if you’re not in Angels in America, you’re dirt. I wish that weren’t true, but look at how they introduced these grand stars of theatre. How lovely would it have been to make reference to Nathan Lane’s being involved in The Frogs at a London theatre. But no. How lovely would it have been to make reference to Charlotte Richie’s being involved in The Philanthropist at one of SOLT’s smaller but still-nominated theatres. But no. How lovely would it have been to make reference to Cush Jumbo’s being involved in Common at perhaps SOLT’s biggest theatre. But no.
It’s the small moments that are the most telling – for some weird reason they’d roped in Rose Leslie to give an award, and introduced her as “an actress making a splash in Game of Thrones”. Would, um, “an actress making a splash in Game of Thrones, most recently seen in an exciting new play at the Sheffield Crucible” have been more relevant? Have been more informative? Have promoted theatre? But no. I don’t think anyone involved knew. I don’t think anyone involved actually cares. About any theatre. ITV. Primetime(ish). SOLT may be the Society of LONDON Theatre, but it’s been given an advert to tell the whole nation “No, theatre isn’t the snobby expensive London luvvie event you think it is – look at the biggest London theatre, the starriest London theatre, the best London theatre, it’s shows in Sheffield, No Man’s Land on tour and in cinemas, TCAABR from the fringe, The Girls in Yorkshire, Perpetual Succour in Scotland, it’s theatre of the regions, local to you”. What an inspiring, populist message to effortlessly give on a relatively broad scale! And instead, let alone forgetting London theatre’s (inter)nationality (without which it both creatively and financially dies), the Society of London Theatre forgets to mention a great actress like Cush Jumbo appearing at London’s National Theatre. Usually they just neglect regional and fringe theatre. This year they neglect their own! It’s pathetic.
Prize-wise, they were fine, given the cruddy nominees. I can’t get over some horribly egregious omissions (more in a sec), and of course smaller but superior shows like The Flick were always going to be overshadowed, but... Actually, let me swallow my pride and anger over omissions and deep deep love for particularly The Flick and say you know what? Potter deserved them all. Like Latecomer said – it’s a load of people whose work we’ve loved in the past doing their best work, so what if it’s populist? You put someone like John Tiffany at the helm (someone who, a few years ago, was more of an industry secret when he deservedly won for Black Watch), and give him loads of money and six hours, and of course he’ll deserve best director! He’ll pick the best collaborators and give them all that money and time, so clearly Potter deserved every single technical award possible. Jack Thorne writes it, so the script is (if knotty and plotty and less than Annie Baker) witty, sensitive, and genuinely brings big themes of little lives to larger-than-life characters in the humanising way only theatre can. And Noma and Jamie are just great actors – and hey, when Jamie Parker wins another Olivier in two or three years (more deserved, only a matter of time), then this one will be Harry’s, and that one will be ‘his’ Olivier. It’s impossible to begrudge so many great talents doing such great work going rewarded, other than churlishness towards the childishness of Rowling’s twenty-year-old children’s book.
After Potter, I didn’t love Yerma – a flimsy and psychologically shallow interpretation of a problematic play simply to get some (admittedly terrific) Dogme grandstanding in as it ends – but Billie Piper’s been deservedly validated as the extraordinary actress that she is. And hey, if Rebecca Trehearn won, something is right in the world.
The problem is the nominations themselves are bullsh*t, which made this prizes no more than the best of a bad bunch. A ‘best cast’ category would have seen the Perpetual Succour girls, and indeed The Girls, face up against The Flick trio and the Chekhov trilogy, deservedly; no ‘best cast’ category makes those cast nominations laughable. Not nominating Danny Sapini, or Yael Farber, or Les Blancs, reeks of ‘not famous enough’/’we’ve forgotten that, it was almost a year ago’. And the Genie! The most obvious and deserving winner! What?!?!?!
But there are two particularly unforgivable, frankly stupid omissions. Let’s start with Lazarus, though not for the award(s) you think. Best new musical? Possibly. Best supporting actress/actor? Absolutely. But ‘Outstanding Achievement in Music’? The one won a few years ago by Ray Davies, for doing nothing new but having once written the Ray Davies songbook? DAVID BOWIE wrote a musical from the David Bowie songbook. He even wrote kick-ass brand new music. Ignoring the headline-grabbing, wish-fulfilling, undoubtedly emotional moment that would have come from giving the late great man his much-desired theatre award, he deserved it. The Oliviers have implicitly said Ray Davies is better than David Bowie, and explicitly said that Lord Lloyd Webber’s 9-year-olds are. How was THAT back-catalogue NOT NOMINATED AT ALL?
But (moralising) I think they got not only best actress and best director, but the special award, completely wrong (also caveat – I also got it completely wrong, THIS was the best show of 2016). I think that in years to come we’ll realise just how significant Julius Caesar turned out to be, then how gloriously The Tempest wrapped up our years of personal investment in such a political way. In a year when Emma Rice did what she did so well, where Michelle Terry has that prosthetic in Cleansed only to go to Henry V, and where King Lear is one of our four best actresses, an all-female The Tempest almost feels old-hat – though that really is because Julius Caesar now IS old hat, as all things once new grow old. It’s worth saying that whilst Rice and Maxine Peake and Deborah Warner probably would have pushed for these shows and gender-bending regardless of Phyllida Lloyd, plenty wouldn’t (I don’t think Posh would have, and I have my doubts about Henry V). It’s worth saying, though, that those shows got off scott-free, whereas there was something about Julius Caesar that touched such a techy nerve that meant it bore the brunt of reviews comparing it to dancing dogs (let alone reliable Tim Walker), so these later shows came with barely a batted eye (or less frequently batted but still batted eyes, and instead more nuanced comments on the subject). It’s worth saying, after all that, that Julius Caesar was simply amazing – then Henry IV was pretty close – then The Tempest was amazing again. As Caesar developed into The Tempest, though, I think its least interesting aspect is its treatment of gender. Throughout the trilogy, the diversity of everything BUT gender – age, race, nationality, body type, even professionalism – is more radical, more novel, and hopefully more influential too – if Dame Harriet Walter can be Leah Harvey’s father, any comments about the validity of diversity and ethnicity (of which 2016 saw too many) seem even more ludicrous, even less grounded in any kind of reality. Even in this year’s nomination for Glenda, let alone the way most all-female/cross-casting is now a non-event, I think we saw some validation of 2013’s initial influential work; but what these shows were ultimately about was the way in which theatre not only can, but MUST, connect with people from every corner in every situation, must be available to all, must speak to and be given to those in need. Perhaps it’s simply too soon to judge whether it’ll leave the impact I hope, in which case it merely deserved best actress for Walter and best director for Lloyd for being so good; but what Sir Ken did (love him as I do) was a decent West End season, whereas what Lloyd and Walter did was deconstruct any ideas that these plays need to be done in a West End way. Branagh will come back to the theatre and be wonderful-as-always in three, five, ten years, and can deservedly have his award then – what Lloyd and Walter did now deserves adulation.
Ultimately, though, the Oliviers are nothing but a technical exercise and a masturbatory advert. This year they were a bad technical exercise and bad masturbatory advert. Recently, it has been exciting to see the best shows, SOLT theatres and awards attention overlap, and thus to see Robert Icke win for Oresteia or van Hove for View from the Bridge. This year, it was kind of nice to see actors like Freddie Fox and Kate O’Flynn and particularly Jamie Parker – actors we’ve admired since smaller shows for some years now – getting in on this game, finally. And hey, if we do take these as simply an advert, why not advertise theatre to the world via Harry Potter, the stunning end-result of great theatrical collaborations which just so happened to take place under the Harry Potter banner? But a) what cocked-up nominees with which to surround this advert, and b) what a cocked-up ceremony to use as your advert. Good job, Oliviers. You’ve done it again.
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Post by Nicholas on Apr 18, 2017 14:41:51 GMT
This was a lovely tribute, in which Shaffer came across as a lovely man, let alone a leading playwright. For someone who clearly was working right until the end on pushing boundaries and progressing further, what was great was that this tribute paid tribute not just to when he pushed the envelope, but to how, and why, with each new play. To have simply staggered from Equus to Amadeus with scenes and sections would have been to show him as an inventive playwright, but it wouldn’t have shown him as him; by focusing on him as a character and collaborator and creator, this painted him as a pioneer and a person instead. Hell, how wonderful to focus even on the flops – how lovely that it wasn’t just one-sided, that masterpieces were written but mistakes too were made, and that juvenilia seemed as important as the masterworks.
And to quote lovely Pennington quoting lovely Shaffer, “Oh, the actors!” Even if we didn’t get to hear F Murray Abraham do that scene or Michael Gambon pretend to be a 20-something Spaniard, how moving – and how telling – to see titans like that giving their thanks. He clearly was instrumental in vitalising a number of careers (a point Daniel Radcliffe made very heartfelt-ly, I thought), and it felt like a very personal repaying of many favours. All the little vignettes had the competence and quality of proper performances, not one-offs – was particularly struck by the power and vindictiveness Jacobi bought, in five minutes of monologuing out-doing most of his recent cosy work. And oh, seeing Maggie Smith all but recreate her Kenneth Williams days – bliss! A delight, too, for the completely random musical interludes (and Sondheim, what an anecdote!) – all giving a fuller picture of the peerson, all making the afternoon even more nice. This account is rather wonderful in summing it all up - bookanista.com/peter-shaffer/.
Within Callow's show, I felt there was an argument underneath that Shaffer may lack the immediate name-recognition of his contemporaries, but that's solely because his voice kept developing, his style kept changing, his every new play was a brand new idea. It seemed what Callow wanted to do was not just pay tribute, but make the argument that where “Pinteresque” means – to – pause – a – lot, and “Stoppardian” means “too clever by half”, “Shafferian” may not have entered the lexicon, because how do we get from blinding horses to black comedies via Amadeus and the Andes? If such a term ought to exist, it ought to mean “unpredictable, apart from predictably doing something different”; Shafferian is adventurousness, it’s curiosity, and it’s character. Kudos to Callow, this tribute was ideally Shafferian. Not that I know Shaffer’s work all too well, but I felt Shaffer would have been chuffed to be commemorated not by a stuffy series of scenes, but by this witty biographical ribbing. In fact, one of the greatest compliments I can pay this is that, despite the glitziest of casts, it didn’t feel like it was aimed at me – a near-stranger to Shaffer with only a passing acquaintance to some of his works. It didn't want to explore the work, it wanted to explore the man. It felt aimed at the family, the friends, those familiar to these words – and the fact that it then worked for me was mere testament to how well he wrote. A great tribute to a clearly great man.
Now bring on the Tchaikovsky play!
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Post by Nicholas on Apr 18, 2017 14:32:51 GMT
What a fascinating failure this show is. Amidst a back-catalogue of profound and progressive stage work, this middling, moderately-amusing political pastiche is clearly minor Sondheim – sometimes funny, often hummable, mostly mediocre. It’s not a bad show (it’s a four-star production of a three-star script) and it’s not Sondheim’s worst (Do I Hear a Waltz isn’t irredeemable, but isn’t much good either – mostly Laurents’ book there), but it’s definitely not a great show either. It’s a footnote ticked off our completist lists. And yet, I feel (both due to the show itself and the strong production) that there’s far more worth to this production of The Frogs than just juvenile doggerel. There’s far more worth to the script than its simplicity suggests – or, its simplicity gives it its worth. There’s not a great deal of depth to The Frogs, and that’s what makes it flawed, fascinating and a little bit fantastic – rather than plumb profound depths, Sherelove, Lane and Sondheim wear their hearts on their sleeves, and what hearts they turn out to be.
Like I say, it’s not bad. No show with such a rambunctious opening number could be (the fact that the number was the original number for A Funny Thing Happened does explain that, mind). Sondheim is biologically incapable of writing badly – so even if “Dress Big” isn’t “Send in the Clowns”, it’s still amusing; even if the Frog Chorus (as per its Aristophanes) does little to plot, character or subtext, it’s still tuneful. The problem is, simply, that the scatty narrative lacks the narrative of his best, and crucially the character(s) of his best. Those two songs are cameos from never-seen-before, never-seen-after people, and barely progress plot. They’re good songs, but at his platform last year Sondheim said that his songs work best not as singles, but married to their character; here, the lovely mournfulness given to Dionysus aside, Pluto, Xanthias, Hercules and the rest aren’t characters, they’re Aristophanean stock figures, which means their songs are what Sondheim dislikes – rather than character songs, just songs.
Where it’s really let down, thus, is with its book, but I lay the blame for this not at Lane or Sherelove’s feet but at Aristophanes’. As anyone who’s endured either studying these satires or seeing even good casts try to make them modern will know, Old Comedy isn’t always funny, or, frankly, good. Lots is satire, and satire ages very quickly – pre-Brexit satire’s already obsolete, so pre-Christian satire... The Frogs is, in my opinion, Aristophanes’ worst – Aristophanes was devilishly on-point in pricking academic egos, familial relationships, a strangely relevant class system, and even good and faithful versions of these are still funny; this, on the other hand, is a too-long journey into the underworld, followed by random, useless frogs, followed by a too-straight-laced argument which is only interesting because, in Aeschylus, the beginning of The Libation Bearers is lost, but Aristophanes’ character of Aeschylus quotes it so it’s remained – it’s historical trivia. Sherelove sticks too closely to this ramshackle structure (as, admittedly, does Sondheim) and thus the original script’s a scattershot road-movie and then lit-crit; by expanding this, Lane is likely the reason it’s broader and richer in character, but he too can’t resolve the original’s clunkiness. Clearly, again, it’s not a bad script, but flawed in the clunky way Aristophanes is flawed, shallow in the way Clouds or The Birds or Lysistrata have worth. The Sondheim/Sherelove/Lane/Aristophanes hodgepodge falls between two stools of neither being the rip-roaring comedy of Forum nor the profound legend-rewriting of Sweeney. Unlike the former, it tries to purport a proper a message; unlike the latter, its simple message belies its student origins: ‘Love people while they’re alive, hate bad politics, and open a book every now and then’.
That said, I think it’s a great production of a good script. Intimacy will only get you so far – what makes the Jermyn Street Theatre so special is it demands innovation, and frankly this show was as well-served here as it would have been at the NT’s Olivier. Grace Wessel’s basically setting it in a swimming pool is a nice touch, whilst the minimalism of cast and set gives the clunk from one set-piece to the next a certain fluidity. She also respects the work, and doesn’t play the non-jokes for laughs, which serves it well. Shaw does need a beard, mind. But it’s Michael Matus’ performance which profoundly elevates this show and this staging. Initially, preconceptions and all, I was somewhat surprised that he was slightly underplaying the campness and the pompousness and the Nathan-Lane-ness of it all – but as the show rolled on, the sincerity he bought to it from the beginning paid off in spades, as it’s this sincerity which made the “Ariadne” song so moving, this sincerity which gave the competition actual stakes, this sincerity which gave the production more emotional heft than the play deserves. Yes, he was also very funny throughout, but by tempering this silliness Matus – and Wessel – gave the Sondheim the character which made us care for an Aristophanes for which I don’t care.
So that’s that – four stars to Jermyn Street (congrats on the sincerity, shame about the script), three to Sondheim (congrats on the satire, shame about the shallowness).
And yet...
The script and the songs do, indeed, have little more to say than ‘Love people while they’re alive, hate bad politics, and open a book every now and then’. But boy, how well it says this. How sincerely, passionately, and desperately it says this. Its failing is its simplicity, but its salvation is its sincerity. In The Best Worst Thing, Sondheim talks about trying to get back to that teenage idealism. In this – perhaps its greatest virtue is it being originally written for students – he captures that infantile political idealism that goes with being a student, albeit with the vocabulary of a poet and the musicality of a maestro. Assassins deals with its politics sharply and satirically. This is simple, and beautiful for it. Watching Dionysus truly appreciate the great romantic poetry, to come to terms with death, to sacrifice arch on-the-nose windbaggery and go for simple, sensitive sonnets – and to do all this with the genuine, principled notion that by doing this he could change the world – the desire for change and sincerity to do so is astounding, inspiring, amazing. There’s no archness! No cynicism! No mockery or mirth! It’s written as if to genuinely say that reading more sonnets can help us overcome death, help us find our way, and ultimately help us stop Richard Nixon/George Bush/Donald Trump – or perhaps more aptly, that, actually, we do read to think, to learn, to search for truth and to live in OUR lives, and that reading more sonnets is thus our grassroots political movement where we speak up, get sore, and now, we start. It could have made a mockery of idealism. Instead it IS idealistic. Sincerely, that’s inspiring.
There are minor flaws in this production which some tinkering and a bigger location would solve; there are major flaws with this shows which can’t be solved. But sod it – for all its many blatant simple shallow faults, I loved it. The next time someone thinks Sondheim’s simply a cynic, I’ll simply send them to the last fifteen minutes of this. It’s through the filter of this imperfect but impassioned project – the sensitivity of which is perfectly captured by this production – that I’ll view Sondheim’s works from now on, knowing that there’s not only a political animal and a status-quo shaker within his giant mind, but a sincere student romantic within there too. It’s an imperfect production of an imperfect show, but the politics and sincerity on display meant it repeatedly hit just the right nerve. When I later relisten and rewatch other Sondheims – cynical Sondeims and ironic Sondheims – I’m going to have the memory of this, this stupid and simple yet sensitive and subtle and sad Sondheim.
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Post by Nicholas on Feb 2, 2017 4:14:41 GMT
Well I just thought this was absolutely blooming wonderful and I loved it to pieces. I’ve already seen it twice and heaven knows how often I’ve heard the soundtrack. It’s just such a wonderful piece of work, heartfelt, heartbreaking, honest. What makes La La Land work so well for so many people is yes, Jacques Demy’s clearly inspired a lot about this, and more crucially Gene Kelly’s ballets have clearly inspired a lot about this, but it’s not twee, it’s not tacky, it’s not reverential, it’s not pastiche. Through and through and through and through this is a Damian Chazelle movie – the product of a singular vision and extraordinary talent. It’s so crowd-pleasing because of how wonderfully individual it is.
It’s the most beautiful film I’ve seen in some time. Frankly it’s all I could think at moments (which isn’t to say the rest of it was lacking – I just thought it was so beautiful). Even in its most incidental moments of quiet conversation, the costumes are so elegant, the colours just that bit more vibrant, the shots so well framed – and in its least incidental moments, the glitz! The glamour! The colour! The life! Looked like a million dollars, whether looking into the stars themselves or Emma Stone’s eyes. What’s particularly wonderful is how it manages to make the most mundane moments so beautiful – a traffic jam, high-street clothing, a simple piano duet – and because the visual beauty comes from these moments, moments mostly based in believable character, the beauty actually matters, the beauty actually means something, and that makes the less beautiful moments hurt, and the more beautiful moments even more beautiful. With its own visual identity too – I didn’t feel it was references galore, I felt it was Chazelle’s vision infused with influences. Truly beautiful.
But after that – which is impossible to get over (when you think it can’t look more lovely they only bloody go to space! It takes real chutzpah to get away with that sincerely, and this absolutely did) – I think, like with his Whiplash (which I also loved) and Guy and Madeline (which is fully of fun and hugely enjoyable in its own way), Chazelle makes films which use music as much as a starting point for uncompromising arguments about reality. Whiplash had a more complex argument – that of how far is too far, that of what makes a genius a genius, that of how tight is too tight a T-shirt for JK Simmons – but I don’t think La La Land is any less serious about its music or its characters or its reality either. Chazelle doesn’t skimp on the realities of compromise. I don’t think literature students will be pouring over essays about it, true, but I think what’s made it hit such a nerve is it’s not just lovely – it’s realistic too. It’s willing to make its characters professional failures and live difficultly, it’s willing to depict the reality of paying the rent and working hard for what you love. It’s got that ending too. It has bittersweetness, it has melancholy, it has a real edge when it comes down to it. But it’s tempered with such absolute loveliness, such love for its characters (and such beauty, did I mention its beauty?) that it’s sweet, it’s lovely, it’s life-affirming, it’s honest, it’s wonderful. And they’re just great. Gosling channels Brando in Guys and Dolls in his singing but that’s no bad thing when he’s as committed as he is here – I also can’t get my head around the criticism of his character because of how wonderfully deadpan and self-mocking he plays it, more like Brando meets Buster Keaton. But it’s Stone’s movie. It’s Stone who’s got the raw honesty and physicality of a young Brando. She’s got that rare gift of being able to honestly show two emotions at once, or to outwardly hide an emotion but communicate her feelings somehow. She’d dance away with the movie, were it not that their chemistry is so strong it’s a beautiful double act. It’s not Fred and Ginger, but it’s Stone and Gosling, and thank goodness for that. It's an unsentimental delight, a great film from a great writer/director, and I think it's absolutely brilliant.
Extra points, too, for an extra pointy JK Simmons.
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Post by Nicholas on Feb 2, 2017 4:03:49 GMT
“I started getting into the idea of writing a kind of a non-narrative that just had situations within it and the audience kind of joins up the dots in their own way, in the way they want to make it. They remake the material they’re offered.” – This quote, from The Last Five Years (a wonderful documentary, well worth catching up on) may have come from the 70s, but boy does it apply to Lazarus.
There’s divisive, there’s confusing, and then there’s Lazarus. This is a curate’s egg covered in marmite – a divisive show about which I feel divided. I love being baffled by a work of art. It’s why I loved Misterman and Ballyturk, which were like Rorschach tests when discussing them with family afterwards. It’s why I truly believe that the disjointed stories and zig-zag perspective of Ziggy Stardust is one of the great narratives of the twentieth century. It’s why I’m fascinated by The Man Who Fell To Earth – I’ve seen that film twice, and where it confused me so much the first time around, it confused me much more the second, but revealed itself as a deliberately debilitating piece of work, the most alienating study of alienation imaginable. What links Walsh and Roeg as directors, though, is that I get the impression that they absolutely understand their story – its central simple meaning – and afterwards deliberately confound, confuse, control the mystery. With Lazarus, I didn’t feel that; or I only felt it in parts. I really don’t think there was that purity of vision or narrative control, which gave us the opportunity to interpret what we interpret. Instead I felt there was confusion. It's a fine difference, but a vital one.
I think that, at its heart, there’s a great musical in here. It’s between a three and five hander. It’s Newton, the girl, Mary Lou, and maybe Mary Lou’s husband and maybe Valentine. But it's swamped by so much. There are Bowie songs for the sake of it. There's an alien who sold his business, but we're told he's a man and it's the earth wot he sold. There are young dudes just to sing that one song about all of them carrying the news. There seems to be a character called Valentine because this is a great song (correct me if I'm wrong, but Valentine was Newton’s ex-lover’s reincarnation’s boyfriend’s friend’s murderer, yes?). If it's true that Bowie gave Walsh a list of well over a hundred songs, then either Bowie was writing about the same character for his entire career (before he even played the role, in which case why not make more of this autobiographical link?), or Bowie wasn't picky enough and pruning needed to be done (also, weird though it is to say, Bowie is SUCH a great songwriter that when a song as iconic as "Changes" comes on, it's so iconic it overtakes the show itself, and without strong enough context we're in Mamma Mia territory). There seemed to be digressions for the sake of digressions; there seemed to be a lot of stuff jumbled up, and why? Too much of it just can’t be unwrapped, and whereas part of the fun of, say, Ballyturk was trying to unwrap it and successfully coming up with interpretations, I think too much of Lazarus is either knotted so tightly that it takes a genius of Bowie’s scale to untie; or between the three main creative voices something’s gotten muddled and the show at King’s Cross is just a bit of a muddle. In a nutshell, I think it’s telling how many people here have simply said “No idea what happened, but I enjoyed it” (or “Hated it, no idea what happened”). There are one or two themes about which we’re all in agreement – and unsurprisingly, it’s in dealing with these themes that the show shines – but rather than take the time to fight our case, to say what we saw in it and why we saw it, we just throw up our hands and give up, saying instead "it’s just bloody confusing, isn’t it?". And I think that’s something of a failing, because I really didn’t feel that amidst the confusion there really was some clear vision, some clear statement – I think that three wonderful creatives laid out three sets of dots, and if we try and match them to anything more complex than its one central idea (more on which later), we just get a muddle.
And sadly, I don’t think van Hove was the right director for this – I just don't think he's able to deal with whatever Walsh's script means, or whatever Bowie's legacy is. There’s no wit to its obtuseness, it just feels obtuse. Versweyveld’s design, meanwhile, doesn’t have the originality or oomph that this needs. It seems recycled from Song from Far Away, which is an issue. Stylistically, too, there’s nothing original or unnerving about watching overlapping dialogues or simultaneous time-zones in theatre which there is in the movies, and was in Roeg's movie. Where in cinema these cubist time-frames are unusual (and thus Roeg’s barmy timeline makes for disconcerting viewing), we see overlapping times all the time in theatre, which feels too run-of-the-mill here for such a non-run-of-the-mill script. The theatre itself is too big, and Newton’s claustrophobia is lost on us. Where Walsh and Bowie wrote a sequel to The Man Who Fell To Earth, in this set it felt like van Hove was directing a sequel to Song from Far Away, but without that show’s central loneliness. Perhaps this would have worked on film (and had it been on film, not only could it have preserved Roeg’s weird narrative mood, but filmed in 2015 could have offered this actor continuing this performance in this style). On the stage, though, it’s a surprisingly flat-footed production. I’ve always thought Walsh is a wonderful director in his own right, and seeing van Hove do this, I wished we had this one central (sound and) vision guiding us forwards – and under Walsh maybe it would have felt more in control, if no less unclear.
So that’s my predominant and overriding issue. I can’t tell you what this is about. That’s fine. But I can't interpret it, and tell you what I think it’s about. That's not fine. That seems to be the general opinion too. So rather than perplex us all into thinking different things, it perplexes us into giving up. Confusing is good, baffling better – but there’s a line between opaque and just muddy. There’s a difference between joining the dots, and joining random dots. There’s a difference between a Rorschach test and a dirty blobby piece of paper. This fell between these extremes.
And yet, I can’t tell you how I interpreted this, but I can tell you how this made me feel. And I can't tell you just how moving I found it. Strip all the baffling bits back and get to its heart, and what you have is Thomas Newton – and what a central character he is. There’s one caveat, which is that I don’t think anyone involved quite resolved whether Newton was just singing Bowie songs (it’s a new musical), was a tribute to Bowie (as I felt the "Where Are We Now" scene was, wonderfully too) or WAS Bowie (too many specific references, too many iconic songs) – but when the rest was stripped away, we had a character and his companions face death – and even without the metatextual awareness of Bowie’s life, it’s this that makes this so moving, and this emotion that makes this, ultimately, a confusing mess but a profound success.
It’s not just that Michael C Hall is tremendous in the role, strong to mask vulnerability and compelling in both stillness and song. It’s that the Bowie songs he’s given – especially the new ones – are songs which genuinely propel the character forwards. As a fan of the film, I found the Newton/Mary Lou relationship very touching. Given that his selfishness and addiction ruined the first Mary Lou, to watch him do the same – helplessly, guiltily – to a second Mary Lou brings things full-circle in an all too human way, and Elly/Mary Lou's ‘Always Crashing’ was such a good way of articulating this. It’s a brief aside, but it worked so well. I didn’t think her character had the identity or the complexity of Candy Clark in the movie and I think that was an issue, but I thought the way the Newton/Mary Lou relationship was drawn a second time was wonderfully done (going by the cast recording, I prefer Amy Lennox to Christin Miloti).
It’s also that his central issue is beautifully told. The only thing I do think this was about is death – perhaps Bowie’s own, perhaps not, but either way definitely it's about being resolute for it. This has a beautifully honest and indeed hopeful attitude towards death – one which takes the logic that a good death is simply what follows a good life, however difficult that may be to both prove and to accept. In Hall and Caruso’s friendship and Hall and Lennox’s forgiveness, this managed to shine through whatever else was happening on stage. Now, it is inescapable that something happened on the day he died, and this IS about Bowie’s own death and acceptance towards. But even ignoring this, to me it had a notion that dying is harder than death, but to go through the cathartic difficulties of accepting past mistakes, reliving past relationships, forgiving past discretions and living well is what makes a good death; to be awake to a good life matters more than, in this sleep of death, what moonage daydreams may come. It’s touching, important, and wonderfully told.
And what most affected me was this friendship. This had one of the best depictions of platonic love I’ve ever seen on stage. Sophie Ann Caruso (who very capably handled a technical fault when I saw it) more than matches Hall, with a mysterious maturity that’s compelling to watch and brings out the inner best in others. Quite what their relationship is I don’t know (father-daughter seems too obvious for this obtuse world, yet it very may be very simply that), but whatever it is, it’s such a pure and true and wonderful portrayal of platonic love, of simple perfect equal friendship. It’s telling that whilst other iconic songs felt like tagged-on tributes, "Heroes" didn’t – in the interplay between Newton and her, there was playfulness and happiness, which led into the ending with unbearable poignancy. Bowie’s final statement being about accepting death is haunting enough, but through Hall and Caruso, through Newton and her, it becomes about accepting death through living well and living together; and however I felt about Valentine or "Valentine’s Day" or van Hove, I found this message - these moments - so extremely affecting. It’s got narrative muddle, but such emotional weight.
So I had fairly hefty reservations which meant I couldn’t give my heart to it in a way I could give my heart to Song from Far Away or Ballyturk or Blackstar – and ultimately that’s just down to too many cooks, three incredibly strong narrators all pulling in their own directions (Walsh enigmatically, Bowie profoundly, van Hove unsuccessfully). I like being confused, but I don’t like watching other people be confused, and this had too much of that. And infuriatingly, there's a briefer, tauter, perhaps cinematic version of this which is no less clear, but far more in control. But when the stars aligned... When Walsh took the characters to just the right point, and Bowie’s sound and vision gave them just the right emotional escape... Always Crashing... Where Are We Now... Heroes... It’s less good than the movie, but it’s infinitely more moving, and for that, for all its faults, I find myself a fan. I'd give it four stars, because it overcomes its many faults through one genius writing stunning new songs, and one genius writing a baggy but beguiling script, and the end result's emotional impact being so affecting. Those moments, those songs, had so much to say about the difficult necessity of dying well but living well beforehand, justified the muddle around them. Yes, I would have rather had a director who I felt captured the confusing mood with greater claustrophobia, or a script with fewer digressions and greater emphasis on its central character, and fewer jukebox-musical-esque numbers – and it would have been stronger for it. But this had moment after moment where Newton and her dealt so movingly with this biggest of all themes, and song after song after song which illuminated this beautifully, hauntingly, profoundly – and one is all you need to make it work; as a great man once said, ain’t there one damn song that can make me break down and cry?
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Post by Nicholas on Feb 2, 2017 3:36:43 GMT
Bit late to the game on this one (life...) and been away for the last four months (more life...), but nonetheless wanted to stick my oar in and give my two pennies on what I think has been the most remarkable year of theatre – in terms of quality, consistency, innovation and excitement – that I’ve seen in my time regularly theatregoing. I can’t think of a previous year with as many shows which excited, inspired and wowed me in such a profound way as this year – and that’s just 9 months! I also can’t think of a year where the worst shows have been as interesting – it’s possible I missed some absolute clunkers, but these shows aren’t as objectionable or evil as previous years’ worst. So briefly (as brief as I can be) my best and worst of this wonderful year (wonderful for theatre – for everything else...):
Worst:
3) Remember reading/seeing Doctor Faustus and thinking “Using all the powers of hell for dark arts, deep power, personal gain and fulfilling all desires – pfft, I’d become a TV magician instead!”? Me neither. Remember reading/seeing Doctor Faustus and thinking “Are we meant to feel sympathy for this devil? If only someone could give me some musical cue!”? Me neither. Teevan’s new script felt like a sitcom pilot; Lloyd’s lowest-common-denominator direction plods with the old and struggles with the new so much that even Jenna Russell and Jade Anouka can’t save it. I was actually quite bored by most of it (Teevan made Faust a boring character, and even Mephistopholes mostly just stood there and complained), and intellectually insulted by the rest; Teevan’s script is the dullest new play of the year, and Lloyd’s direction the clumsiest revival.
2) Had wonder.land been a movie, it would be tempting to lump it alongside Troll 2, The Room and The Wicker Man as a cult movie, ‘so-bad-it’s-good’. I was playing a mental drinking game – drink any time the music, dialogue or teenage angst is embarrassing – and by the end I was mentally sh*tfaced. Oh, to have actually had a drink with me... I was almost rolling in the aisles by the end – were they really going to make that clunky rhyme, hit that horrible note, say this ludicrous script? Yes, yes, yes, and with such confidence and bravado and pride that (to make a better Lewis Carroll comparison than these three (three!) writers came up with) we were almost through the looking glass, where bad was good and this was thus five stars. The extraordinary Dusty managed this feat; the gloriously ridiculous How To Hold Your Breath managed it in part; wonder.land almost did. But then I remember the angle this took. This hated its characters. This wasn’t simply a fun disaster, it was a tasteless one: it made fun of Ali and her father for being addicts, spoke down to teenagers, mocked their literacy and their street smarts and their academic potential, assumed any teenager’s IQ was barely in double figures, treated a bogstandard internet forum like it was HAL in 2001, made younger people into phone-reliant dunderheads and adults into pathetic philistines, treated internet users as loners and weirdos and then went to laugh at these people for being lonely and weird, made fun of people with serious problems because of their problems... It’s actually more like the original Reefer Madness, sincerely outraged about modern times, and this sincere internet-phobia and mocking of damaged, lonely, troubled characters gave this its really nasty edge. And Albarn’s music is just unpleasantly unlistenable. Almost hilariously terrible – but its judgemental sneer and bitter aftertaste makes it just unpleasantly so.
1) Other people found much to praise in this, it’s appeared in some people’s ‘best of’s here, and Sophie Melville is indisputably the actress of the year (challenged solely by the goddess Isabelle Huppert, similarly stuck in an otherwise terrible show, and by Harriet Walter’s superb resolution to five years of stunning Shakespearean performances): so why is Iphigenia in Splott my worst show of the year? Well, I couldn’t see it as a cry for the underclass – I saw it as a cry AT the underclass, or perhaps a cry at the middle-class whilst the underclass looked on, unrepresented. Or I saw it as our dear Parsley saw Wish List: “It's a chance for middle class audiences to indulge in poorly portrayaled social inequality porn”. That mattered. Well-intentioned though it may be, its hugely misjudged tone renders it an absolute failure, and one whose arch theatricality doesn’t just subjugate its politics but completely overwhelms them and completely undermines it. It’s about drawing this arch link between the Euripidean tragedy and Effie’s contemporary crisis, and to me it’s much more about the former than the latter, interested in Effie not as an example of the underclass but an example of an Aeschylean archetype from whom Owen can wring contrived, poverty-porn drama. The plot of Effie’s tragedy was cliché – working-class fetishism followed by that surreptitiously sexist misery porn (making her suffer to make a point, then neglecting the character's emotional response for its author's political digression instead (in short, what Megan Vaughan said) – and rather than ever truly delve into Effie’s life, her normality, her psyche (in the way that, say, Pests did so well when it was so underrated some years ago), it maintained Effie at arm’s length. And that’s the issue – it wasn’t a political play for 2016 because it was a rallying cry to fight Tory cuts and defend those rendered defenceless by political neglect; it was a political play for 2016 because it was written for Gary Owen’s bubble. It felt like a person sharing an Owen Jones article on Facebook – and like Owen Jones’ articles, it was written very much about its political victim, not for them. Melville was stunning, and she should be an awards-garlanded star after this – and it’s because of how convincing she was around the material that I felt that if Effie saw this herself, she would be offended at how it didn't want us to help her, but to contemplate the analogy of the ancient Iphigenia; then Gary Owen's politics; THEN Effie. And that trickle-down of sympathy was a misjudgement in major terms. Compare, say, to this year’s I Daniel Blake – that movie was all about honestly looking alongside marginalised characters into their world; Iphigenia in Splott was about looking AT this marginalised character from our very theatrical world, thus further marginalising her. And given what its final line was – to misquote, “What will you do when we won’t take it?” – not only was Owen aware of this, he was intending it. That says it all – 90 minutes in Effie’s company, and we’re still meant not to empathise with but to fear her – ‘we’ being the converted to whom Gary Owen archly, anciently preaches. I agree with its politics, but I disagree with the slapdash, self-satisfied, smug, sneering, sidelining way it fetishised, patronised and over-theatricalised Iphigenia first and Effie second. It’s slacktivism.
Unlike previous years, I don’t absolutely hate these shows. Last year’s Truth Lies Diana was as objectionable as any artwork can get (a piece which only gets worse the more one contemplates it). This year’s Iphigenia in Splott was simply a good idea badly, badly, very badly executed. But this year’s good, mind you, have been very good...
So if I rambled about the shows I didn’t like (but which I respect – three admirable, interesting failures; but three total tasteless failures nonetheless), just wait until I get to the shows I love. These seven shows are seven contenders for the best show I’ve ever seen, for such different reasons – powerful, progressive, profound, these are eight shows that, after time to absorb what they say, only prove themselves even richer, even deeper, and even more wonderful than they were when they blew me away at the time I saw them.
In alphabetical order, my top seven shows/joint best show of the year:
Chekhov’s First Play – The best piece of theatre about theatre I have ever seen. No step of the creative process – from writing and abandoning, to directing and interpreting, to acting and pretending, to watching and believing – was left unexplored; somehow this 70 minute (!) show managed to tackle all these themes with insight and originality. Yet far from an intellectual scattershot study of how we make theatre, this is also one of the most humane and heartfelt studies of why we make theatre, our human need for theatre. It didn’t say anything about the creative process to be arch or intellectual; it said it to say something about humanity. Writing as thinking out loud; directing as understanding; reviving as reliving; acting as being; watching as empathising; SO SO SO much more, and so much more considered... When I think back on it, I either recall something new and fascinating it said about how we make a play, interpret a play and believe in a play; or I recall when they had to burst into that great Nick Cave song and its final message of hope, and I begin to cry. I hope someone else here saw it, and I hope it returns to be seen by many more. No show has ever tackled so much about theatre with such success or wit or insight; but none has ever had such a large loving heart either.
The Encounter – Where McBurney goes, we can but follow. I genuinely don’t know where to begin with this. Like his Master and Margarita, it’s a show I know will wake me up in the middle of the night in years to come, as more and more I find something new in it. Perhaps its greatest genius came in its beginning, in one almost incidental moment – the photo taken of us beforehand. In that, McBurney makes McIntyres of us. He creates a record of us starting our encounter; he then takes us to experience whatever we organically/inorganically, sensibly/nonsensically encounter; and then like the monkey with the camera he destroys all records and evidence, so it’s down to us and interpretation and anecdote alone to recount our encounter, whatever that may have been – and due to illusions of extraordinary reality, that’s quite some encounter we’re given to tell. And this is McBurney just getting started. That’s just one thing. It’s also very much about thought and perception: the impossibility of making a narrative of the former, and the easy manipulation but wonderful necessity of the latter. And it’s about a thousand philosophical, fantastical, swashbuckling, sensitive more subjects, many of which I’ll only discover when I’ve relived my encounter in my mind a few more times. For me, the enduring theatrical image of the year is that of the end, of McBurney holding his daughter and telling her a story – it’s a profoundly moving, sensitive and caring concluding image, ending philosophy and fantasy with family and home. It’s also an image that never actually happened – but so powerful was this illusion that, as I relive my encounter with this Encounter, it did. That’s remarkable. As it circles through my memories again and again, I can’t wait to see what my next encounter with it reveals. What a show.
Faith Healer – Brian Friel was a genius, and this may be his masterpiece – a complex, haunting, mysterious riddle about why we believe. With her tremendous cast of true greats, Turner had one key directorial flourish, which was to take these short stories and turn them into duologues, albeit ones in which we are silent yet still culpable collaborators (friends? Psychologist? Conscience?) to Friel’s haunted, damaged storytellers. This gives the characters a wounded depth that’s so insightful; it also forces us to confront Friel’s masterful mystery head-on, and live with it personally. Friel wrote a masterpiece of storytelling; Turner turned it into a masterpiece of loneliness and accountability. It’s haunted me so much since, I wish I didn’t love it as much as I did.
The Flick – Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Baker’s remarkable script is that it’s all about the inartistic, portrayed in an inartistic way. Working isn’t cinematic, friendships aren’t cinematic, farewells aren’t cinematic – and by making her hero a cineaste, then setting this in a cinema (then locating her cinema in a theatre), Baker forces comparison between watching someone silently sweep up popcorn and the action of Avatar. And this inartistic honesty makes The Flick one of the most artistic, action-packed pieces of work I’ve seen – one in which (as with her wonderful Circle Mirror Transformation) great drama is simple empathy with everyday life. It’s not some platitudinous piece about the drama of normal lives – I think it’s got more to say, and is also a deep and extraordinary play about art and modernity and changes and reality – but mostly what I took away is it depiction of normal life, wonderfully portrayed. Through the empathetic construction of three of the most heartbreakingly broken yet externally normal characters you could hope to see on stage, this isn’t a platitudinous piece about the great drama of normal lives, but an impossibly complex play about impossibly complex inner lives, playing out between the ordinariness of work and the extraordinariness of blockbusters, elevated by an understanding production by Sam Gold and pitch-perfect performances from one hell of a trio. So relatable is it that I find myself referring to it on an almost daily basis – in awkward small-talk with near-strangers at work, or during any awkward overlong silence, I often wonder who the person opposite me is underneath, were Annie Baker to have written them. And quite possibly, laugh-for-laugh, the funniest play of the year too. Whenever I think back on this, I get a rush of hope.
If You Kiss Me, Kiss Me – Given that everyone involved in making this refers to it as more of a pop concert than a dance/theatre show, I’ve begun to wonder if anyone involved actually realised what a strong political statement they were making with this, or if I just read too much into Jane Horrocks’ jukebox. Nonetheless, it was a wittily aggressive statement about living through the worst of the 1980s, and the depressing legacy that followed; that political and personal pain inflicted then has its scars in how we live and love now. Through very literal but very enjoyable choreography, a fairly haunting set-list, and Horrocks’ ballsy performance and presence throughout, I think this show said more about the cultural and political relationship between Thatcherism and Cameronism (the legacies of the former and the failures of the latter) than any play by James Graham or Steve Waters or Gary Owen ever could. I was also profoundly moved by its central conceit that love is all you need – rather than the usual cliché, though, this says love will see us through the worst of the worst of our political world, and in this year in particular that’s proven a particularly helpful message. And it said all this, somehow, through merely the medium Little Voice belting out The Smiths. I still hate The Smiths. I loved this show.
In The Heights – Is Hamilton better than this? CAN Hamilton be better than this? This has a simple intention – to tell normal stories of normal people with music as their lingua franca – and like Meet Me In St Louis, it does this perfectly, using songs to elevate ordinary lives into extraordinary art, and convey the extraordinary eternal depth of ordinary everyday emotions. And yet it’s not so simple. Miranda’s a better dramatist than that. The complexity of Nina’s position is told from all angles without easy answers; the sympathy given to Usnavy and Victoria’s relationship says something Shakespearean about what, in lesser hands, would just be soapy; Usnavy's final monologue is so brilliantly written it manages to bring such depth into something so simple as moving house and moving on. And whilst Miranda’s score is buzzing with vivacity to begin with, Sheppard’s production is so brimming with passion and youth and energy and love and fun that at one point I genuinely said out loud “I love this show”. Between this cast with that energy and the joy absolutely overflowing, and Miranda’s strength as a dramatist, and its dramatis personae of surprising dimensions, it was like shot after shot of adrenaline and pheromones; every time I think back on it, it energises me to remember just how lovely it was.
Les Blancs – “In a great play, everyone is right”. In Les Blancs, Hansberry dares to write as if this is the case, despite her colonising cast of characters clearly being in the wrong – and that’s where it gets its power. This wasn’t just an extraordinarily comprehensive insight into the immediate evils of colonialism and the worldwide cultural legacy thereof. In the complexity of Sapini’s uncertain titan, it’s a statement about how easily righteous views can be challenged as wrong; in the self-doubt of white-guilt do-gooders it’s a sensitively uncertain study of what doing good actually means; and in the self-confidence of those enjoying the empire’s legacy, it’s a statement about how easy awful views are to believe and uphold. Few playwrights have the talent to write this many characters with this level of complex individuality, yet Hansberry’s willingness to humanise her worst characters whilst equally criticising her best makes this lost masterpiece is just that – a masterpiece. Anyone can write a play that says ‘Racism is wrong’; Hansberry wrote a play that says “A little too much self-doubt here and too much self-confidence there and ‘colonisation’ becomes ‘empire’ and bad becomes good”. So in writing a play about nostalgia for when the country was great, the difficulty of proving black lives matter, journalists writing about what people want to hear and not the truth, and entitled racists blagging their way to power, well, you can finish this thought... Farber knows this is THE play for 2016, but doesn’t let on – a lesser director would overdo the speechifying or overplay the contemporary resonances, but Farber starts by keeping her contemporary cards close to her chest, letting the characters develop, and only giving us hints of the anger we’re later going to feel. And boy does it make us feel angry. As an incredibly insightful and comprehensive historical overview, Hansberry makes us angry; as a 1960s set story with lines all too contemporary, Farber make us angry. As such it becomes a three-hour slow build of extraordinary emotion; accompanying astonishing monologues with unforgettable tableaus, Farber ignited a spark that became a furious fire of anger that’s yet to be extinguished. And whilst he’s not famous enough to get the Olivier, was there a better performance than Danny Sapini?
“Briefly”, I said... I make no apologies for rambling (particularly as I hope that if enough people talk about Chekhov’s First Play, some producer will give it a substantial run – and I’m desperately hoping someone else on here saw it and will join me in singing its praises). Intellectually I admire every one of these shows to no end; emotionally I adore them. Seven of the best shows I have ever seen. A better, more consistent set of shows is impossible to draw up. What a year.
A belated Happy New Year and Merry Christmas and all that to the wonderful board – particularly to everyone who made it possible a year ago and makes it possible now, but generally to the lot of you who are generally wonderful! It’s been over a year now, hasn’t it? Happy Board Birthday! Here’s to many more meetings, and very best wishes for 2017! We’ll need it...
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Post by Nicholas on Oct 1, 2016 22:07:41 GMT
Our revels now are ended...
I can’t tell you how floored I was by Julius Caesar. The Shakespeare itself was fizzing with violence, menace, conspiracy and threat; the prison was also fizzing with violence, menace, conspiracy and threat. Rather than one merely complement the other, this was Julius Caesar squared, the violence of one egging on the violence of the other, the end result being utterly haunting and still as close to a bona fide thriller as I’ve ever seen on stage. Henry IV was always going to be something of a let-down, as it couldn’t have that shock factor, and whilst it didn’t quite meet the high standard of the first, it wasn’t far off: in streamlining everything down to the simple violence of civil war, the sense of threat was palpable, the testosterone pumping, the adrenaline running (the issue is Henry IV is such a broad play it inevitably felt too much like a simplification). Following two relatively great successes was always going to be a challenge, particularly when The Tempest doesn’t seem to offer such possibilities for violence or need for the prison setting. And in some ways, this is a slight let down, though that’s partly due to expectations being raised and the shock factor no longer being there, as well as a slight betrayal of the simple, streamlined genius of Caesar. But it’s impossible to treat this clinically as merely another Tempest, and instead as the closing chapter of a hugely significant trilogy, one which I hope spawns much in the way of criticism, academia and hopefully some kind of significant, lasting document containing all the lines of thought of four years of theatre. And in that sense, it still has pragmatic issues, but it’s a greatly apt finale to these three shows.
The first thing to say is I would love to see a trilogy day, as I expect that would be more dramatically surprising. Naturally the cast has changed substantially over the years, so I’m sure there’ll be moments of pertinence I didn’t get, if the Frances Barber/Cush Jumbo/Ashley Maguire ‘characters’ go on an arc that’s as involving as Harriet Walter’s. Without that I’m sure I missed out on certain bits and bobs, I wonder how cross-casting pays off in these particular manifestations of the shows. I’m sure some of the final pay-offs are far more pertinent, and perhaps some of the prisoner’s identities and off-stage relationships offer character drama when you get to invest in one day.
Regardless, it’s impossible to see this in isolation. And that helps and hinders it. Helps, infinitely, because of the affection four years of wait has nurtured and grown. Hinders, because this doesn’t follow on half as logically as it should. There was a basic economy and simplicity to Julius Caesar. This was a prison rehearsal getting out of hand. It was what it was. The final ‘twist’ of Frances Barber being a warden didn’t diminish this reality, it added to it. Henry IV was exactly the same, albeit with the silly back-entrance to be ‘immersive’ in a way those things never are (see also: the Rickson/Sheen Hamlet). Here, from the beginning, the relationship between theatre and the prison is a little hazy; whilst I don’t think that’s a bad thing in isolation, it does rather poo on the legacy of two streamlined real-relationships. If there’s any hint of this being real – which there absolutely was in the other two, both of those felt stripped-back and amateurish to just the right, non-phoney degree – it’s rather scuppered by technology far too complex to have at this level, and given the other two were ‘real’, our expectations for this have to be nullified far earlier for this to symbolically work. As it takes so long to establish that this is all symbolism, unlike the others, it begins wishy-washy, and as it’s all metaphorical and dreamt up, there’s a risk of reading Prospero's final 'release' as wholly Tom Jones. And, actually, it made for a much more compelling relationship when the drama ‘offstage’ of the prison was getting as raucous as the drama ‘onstage’, or more to the point it was getting harder and harder to tell where one ended and the next began and when the prison itself was going to riot and mutiny right in front of us, or possibly at us – this is a much safer, more comfortable show to watch through its fancifulness. All of that said, there is one moment of utter beauty, when the audience is ‘involved’, which makes this all worthwhile, such a stunningly simple but powerfully moving moment of isolation yet involvement. So as a continuation of the themes established in 2012, it’s a slight misstep, because it misjudges what the last two shows got just right. But it’s a continuation of shows from 2012 – 2012! – and that makes it more of an event than maybe any other show I’ve seen in a long long time, possibly only Harry Potter notwithstanding.
Despite these qualms, which are qualms I only have due to seeing it as part three and not its own show, Lloyd’s Tempest is, in its own isolation, genuinely insightful and (to my simple mind at least) new. Her reading of Prospero is fascinating, but more on that later – it’s Lloyd’s setting which brings out this hidden depth to the character, but it’s absolutely the performance which richly gives it life. Lloyd’s main innovation is to take the notion of the island as a colony to a fascinatingly deeper extreme; her argument is a fairly controversial extension of the long-standing criticism that Propsero is a coloniser. She argues that yes, Prospero may imprison Caliban and Ariel, but Prospero and Miranda are themselves equally prisoners of Antonio’s device, victims who make victims to get by. It’s obvious, come to think of it, but the narrative of Prospero as ruler tends to trump the narrative of Prospero the refugee, Prospero the betrayed, Prospero stuck on an island. This production repeatedly reminds us that Prospero’s life is one of refuge, and makes the island Prospero’s prison, not his study. So with a strong performance as Prospero at its centre, this would surely make for a shocking and surprising and endlessly moving innovation...
Yes, this is possibly the best thing Harriet Walter has done this millennium (what was the consensus about Boa on the other place? I thought it occasionally contrived and saccharine, but mostly quite lovely). Her Prospero is genuinely revelatory, in a year of many Tempests. It’s quite astonishing to have a Prospero as physically strong as magically, and a Prospero clearly psychologically damaged by his loneliness. The relationship between Prospero and Walter’s prisoner (to say more would be to spoil it) is beautifully drawn in a way other prisoner/character relationships aren’t. Particularly given she’s going from Brutus to Henry to Prospero, I actually think that (unless Glenda pulls it out of the bag) the Olivier this year should be hers, over McCrory or Piper (or the ineligible Sophie Melville or Isabelle Huppert); she throws her all into this, barking out the lines like a great former Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra, bringing a truly sincere love to her relationships with Ariel and Miranda and a truly scary hate to her relationship with Caliban and a truly heartbreaking yet honest desperation to her relationship with her brother/captor, darting round the stage like someone not half her age, reinterpreting the role with a menace and madness that usually is passed over for academia and intelligence, using her physical and intellectual strength to compensate for her clearly ever-dwindling psychological strength, drawing real sympathy and pity to her prisoner character, and doing this over three plays. And she plays the steel drums too. If that’s not what these awards are for, I don’t know what is. It’s her best work since “Person who flirts with Chewbacca” in Star Wars 7. She’s genuinely monumental, yet humane. Anouka’s the other stand-out, flighty and mighty, showing how wasted she was in Faustus and how witty she can be as a physical performer. Something about this set-up inspires the very best, most uninhibited from these performers. Of them, though, it’s Walter who truly dominates, utterly astonishing.
So, much as I do think the dramatic pay-off of a trilogy day will be greater, I think there’s an emotional pay-off after three/four years of investment in this saga. I’m sure there will be at least one book written about this, a document of the research and passion that made this trilogy so special, so stunning and rightly so – I can’t wait for Lloyd to let the cat out of the bag and show us all the research and secrets that made this amazing. Stage sagas don’t tend to be done. Beyond this I struggle to think of any long-running theatrical ‘event’ (marathons tend to be done in rep, not over three years). In film, in TV, sagas are easy – catch-up can take days – but for theatre, a saga like this requires so much of us, so much of theatregoers – to remain attentive over a long time, to keep our memories vivid, to sacrifice that brief bit of time every two years to keep up to date with these characters. It’s hard, in 2016, to see the conclusion of 2013’s theatre and not get nostalgic. Three/four years of investment, three/four years of theatregoing, this finale is our reward, Harriet Walter sets us free. When I saw Julius Caesar I barely knew who Ivo van Hove, Carrie Cracknell, Emma Rice, Rufus Norris, Robert Icke or Anya Reiss were. Did any of us, could any of us have predicted Tonys and Oliviers and Artistic Directorships for that lot? The West End of late 2012 wasn’t ready for the hard-hitters that would come through transfers, and I think that since then there has been a substantial swing towards controversy, misery, politics and seriousness becoming mainstream like People Places and Things, A View from the Bridge, A Doll’s House, shows I’ve seen since and can’t imagine not having as a part of my life. Hell, I was meant to see Caesar with a friend but saw it the week later as that day I ended up horrendously drunk, and when I got home from The Tempest the self-same friend phoned me, roaringly drunk herself – that’s how I bring things to full circle. Thinking about it, I’d been on the (spit on the ground) Whatsonstage board for probably under six months; back then you lovely lot barely meant anything to me (these days I don’t remember school friends but I remember you lot). Conversely yes, I’m sure that seeing all three in a day/consecutively will prove more significant regarding connections etc, but actually I think there might be a greater pay-off not from trilogy days, but from simply concluding what we started three or four years ago. If you loved Caesar – and I seem to remember, many did – The Tempest is profoundly moving. It has its own structural problems, perhaps, but for those of us who’ve invested in these years of theatregoing, it’s a clearly heartfelt farewell from all involved.
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Post by Nicholas on Oct 1, 2016 22:04:38 GMT
This production is slick in the theatre and amateurish offstage: it’s the perfect The Entertainer, in an ugly photo-negative.
If Osborne’s play has any depth – and I’m not wholly convinced it is that deep – it’s in depicting how difficult it is to accept the end of an era. It’s a paradoxically timeless theme. For Archie Rice, that should be performing capable if hackneyed routines in dilapidated old halls; for Billie Rice, that should be having attitudes he abhors brought in his own home by his own flesh and blood. With a director who can physically articulate the tackiness of the former whilst domesticating the diatribes of the latter, it would be a surprisingly deep consideration of life under Eden, which would be all too pertinent today – after all, not only is the subject of generational differences about politics and protest and particularly immigration one of incredible topicality, but so is talentless performers clinging onto their desperate dreams of glory and need to perform (Sarah Harding). It doesn’t need updating to make modern: it needs clarity.
Rob Ashford is a choreographer. He treats this play like his choreographer namesake Marshall treated Chicago and (shudder) Nine; when inner angst grows too great, we cut to the stage so the emotion can be literalised through dance. It’s the Fosse line of thinking taken to its extreme. It would be a good idea had Kander & Ebb written The Entertainer, but John Osborne did, and the play isn’t written like those musicals are. The dance sequences only work at articulating the drama if the relationship between theatre and reality is airtight, and the drama has depth, and depth comes from reality. Actually, Peggs, I kind of think that this should be more Ivanov than Much Ado, given that although Branagh’s playing a comedian he’s not playing a good one, so that lack of comedy should seem tragic. But Ashford seems to miss that, and stages it like a competent musical with an incompetent book, like Much Ado with xenophobic asides. The home scenes make for dull drama: keeping them ‘onstage’ gives them an artifice which only makes sense because of Archie, and then to have characters literally come upstage to deliver points to us seems artificial, clunky, almost amateurish, not gelling with the script. On the other hand, to back up Branagh with the sexiest, sleekest dancers in fabulous costumes suggests he’s good, they’re good and this is a good dance, and that’s just not what this play is about. Rather than naff up the dancing but respect the domestic, Ashford respects the dancing and naffs up the domestic.
Actually, making the dance sequences hokey would actually do wonders at representing Billy Rice’s line of thought, and make this Fosse-style make sense, but it doesn’t. For this to work you want a director who can cut between song and spoken, ‘reality’ and ‘the theatrical’, all the while appreciating the relationship between the two, the phoniness of the former and the intrinsic truth of the latter, all the while able to stage it with vim and pace. You want a Susan Stroman, who understands how to toe the line between pageantry and unpleasantness simultaneously, using the former to literalise the latter and render its ugliness palpable. You want an actual Bob Fosse, who subverts, not enhances, reality through song, directs character first and choreography second, and in All That Jazz had an Archie-ish figure similarly trying to escape reality, not enhance it, through his art – think of the final scene of that movie, the superficial sleekness but evident emptiness of Bye Bye Life. You want a Carrie Cracknell, who can articulate fraught family relationships like no other, whilst incorporating a certain musicality a la Blurred Lines or Macbeth.
Or, dare I say, you want Sir Chuckles Branagh. A marriage of the phony sleekness of Michael Caine’s house in Sleuth and the musical numbers of his Love’s Labour’s Lost would make this work. Branagh actually aped Fosse’s flashiness in one sequences in Love’s Labour’s Lost, but I think Branagh understands Fosse’s subtleness: the character of Lenny or the self deprecating laceration of All That Jazz (indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if a bit of Roy Scheider informed Branagh’s performance). Most tellingly, his performances hits all the bum notes this bad performer should, with a sadness behind his eyes showing Branagh understands the script; Joel Grey always says that his Emcee is an amalgamation of the worst, most desperate performers he ever saw; Branagh’s Archie Rice so richly steals from this line of thought too. For his Garrick swansong, it’s a bold decision to make Archie so very untalented let alone ugly, but Branagh clearly understands the power that comes from bad performing. The constant awkwardness, line-flubbing and bad-name-dropping from his desperate untalented hulk is unpleasant to watch in all the right ways. He’s a man only ever able to engage with others when on stage, thus bringing faux-staginess to his real life, semi-aware that his stage skills are less than stellar; Branagh’s Archie is clearly keeping self-realisation at arm’s length, and that’s very sad to watch. Less full-bodied than in The Winter’s Tale and less damn fun than Harlequinade*, maybe, but still a stellar piece of acting (I missed The Painkiller and wonder now if, in retrospect, that might have been the highlight of this season). And for any fans of Branagh’s musical Love’s Labour’s Lost (I think there are six of us), it’s a real treat to see the man dance in person.
Other performances variable – Gawn Grainger was good but no John Hurt and I think I’d be saying John Hurt was good but no Ron Cook; Greta Saachi does the best of a bad job; daughter fairly mediocre but that’s mostly being swamped by this building and direction.
So, in a nutshell, a great actor wastes some of his best work in probably the worst directorial effort of his Garrick tenure. The real issue is that, without a proper drama around him, the star turn here is wholly diminished, with Archie a dancer first and foremost rather than a bad father first and foremost. Branagh still shines through, but it’s a battle. A dated play and a too-superficial interpretation, but to watch Branagh bring the sad self-hatred of his Ivanov back, then bury it under the bad Gene Kelly he danced in Love’s Labour’s Lost, makes for powerful, dislikeable, substantial viewing.
Just stay home, turn on the TV, watch a double bill of Wallander and Love’s Labour’s Lost instead.
*Weirdly, now the dust has settled, Harlequinade comes across as a richer study of life on the stage than The Entertainer does – and Harlequinade is so flimsy that they didn’t bother reviving it alongside The Browning Version at Chichester. There’s a perverse posthumous irony or victory in the fact that even lesser Rattigan is proving so deep and so successful, whereas Osborne very, very much looks like a period piece.
P.S. As much as anything, this theatre was just too big for this play – the Garrick’s quite glamorous, this shouldn’t be. I want a chamber version of this in Wilton’s Music Hall now it’s back in business, or possibly somewhere genuinely grotty like the Arcola – Greg Hicks was there not long ago and I bet he’d eat this part up with aplomb, particularly if he could get so up-close to his audience that it would be scary.
P.P.S. It’s also a shame that this comes so shortly after such a strong revival of Long Day’s Journey Into Night, another show about a lesser theatrical talent peddling his wares whilst his family circles around him with their own problems. Really, the main difference is that Osborne writes quite unpleasant characters with unwieldy and didactic monologues, where O’Neill is a poet so the genius of that play is, quite simply, how well it is written. It’s a tenuous comparison, but there were a fair few moments watching Branagh criticise his own career where all I could hear was Irons barking the same self-criticisms but with so much more substance in his speeches, or watching Branagh’s patriarch be taken down a few pegs by his children where all I could think was that these monologues were blunt and obvious compared to the desperation of the Tyrone children. It’s a superficial comparison, but one which damages this production quite a bit, if you saw Irons and Manville work their magic. Simply put, The Entertainer is a fairly good (not great) leading man’s role, but honestly it’s not that good a play, is it?
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Post by Nicholas on Oct 1, 2016 22:03:35 GMT
Whilst I’m tending towards agreeing with the ‘good but not great’, I think that actually serves this play to a fault. Damning with faint praise, perhaps, but this is not Medea, in which the histrionics are allowed to be so overplayed they’re represented through dance, and nor is it even A Doll’s House, with a plot with the mechanics of a Swiss watch and a crescendo to an iconic ending like no other. It’s a very, very withheld piece, about people who can’t express emotions. What makes this production more moving is how underdone everything is, and how Cracknell completely avoids even the potential of histrionics, making this about as quiet as it can be. I think something lingers from this production, and that comes from it being so subtle, so simple.
Carrie Cracknell has a very open-minded, even-handed approach to her drama (not always – it would have made Blurred Lines boring, and Birdland’s Andrew Scott-centricity gave that its energy – but when it comes to domestic settings particularly). What made A Doll’s House so stunning was that, however triumphant Hattie Morahan was, Cracknell’s treatment of Torvald and Krogstad was kindly, and for brief moments they became heroes of their own minor dramas with Nora, never the victim, almost a villain in their worlds; whilst we ultimately sided completely with Nora, that was despite the faults these prisms made us see in her, and that only made for richer, richer, ever richer drama – if I had to pick a best show ever, I think I’d still plump for that. Her Medea was far kinder on Jason than the play needed to be. Hell, even her Macbeth was strangely non-partisan, though that was a duffer. And here, the things that made it shine were the three dimensions every character had. Tom Burke does a wonderful self-analysis; he begins with caddish confidence and ends with caddish confidence, but at every stage where he’s allowed to be himself he lets us in on this as a façade. When he utters the awful shilling line, it sends chills through its cruelty, but also its possible faux-cruelty: that he’s saying that less because he means it and more because he thinks his ‘character’ of a cad would mean it, and the fact that he would hurt her so again for a façade... Where this egalitarian view came into its own was with Nick Fletcher (the wonderful Krogstadt from earlier), who absolutely stole the show. It looks like I’m not alone in thinking this, and if anyone from here is up for awards I hope it’s him. There’s a simple plain-speaking to him, yet a mournful tiredness, a resilience. It’s so supportive it’s tearjearking. Between the highfalutin pilot phoniness of Burke, and the slightly too-underdone support of Peter Sullivan who I did think didn’t make an impression, Fletcher injects real, sincere, human heart into this, able to articulate to her what McCrory clearly doesn’t allow herself to feel. He’s all the emotions of this piece. Marion Bailey was good in a role much too small for her – not least, when I noticed it was her, I remembered she was so good in Blurred Lines, then I remembered more about that show, then I had this bloody tune going through my head very inappropriately throughout the second half.
Helen McCrory has infinitely less to do than in Medea, and that’s why this is so powerful. Like Burke, she performs to conformity, until she’s allowed to be herself, though even then conformity is her normality; it's an exercise in breaking an unbreakable norm. She plays uncertainty. There’s a central self-doubt, in her occasional voice-cracks, her occasional shakiness, her Teflon approach to any questions about herself, all to reveal that, underneath her calm exterior there’s a desperately sad person, and underneath that there’s an absence where she’s been trying to conform for too long and the artist within, the person Hester used to be, is struggling to be heard. It’s judged rather beautifully, actually, how much of Hester is forced and how much is just because she’s not used to being ‘Hester’ anymore. As she becomes less Hester Collyer, and less Hester Page, her growing realisation that she doesn’t know who Hester alone is anymore is heartbreakingly held back, made more moving by Fletcher’s insistence on bringing out her intrinsic humanity. Because it’s less showy than some other performances (not least her own Medea) it won’t win awards, and arguably it’s less good too, but it’s a very moving portrayal of emptiness and societal conformity and loneliness which comes through clearly.
Unlike other Cracknell shows, this is not one which peaks and peaks and peaks until the tension at the end is airtight, but unlike other Cracknell shows the script she works with demands a subtlety she provides in spades. The ending, after all, is ultimately a boring act – boiling an egg – yet it takes a great director to make something so intrinsically boring so affectingly moving. Because she paints every character in a very human light, and because she demands all emotions be hidden behind the layers of Kenneth Moore-esque acting the 50s require, this Rattigan is a profoundly human, empathetic piece. I didn’t love it (not least, like Plough and Stars, the beautiful set was overblown in this too-big space), but I far more than admired this – its subtle unpicking of its characters’ restraint made for something truly heartbreaking, whilst if its central performance doesn’t set the stage on fire, that’s because it lights a much smaller spark that burns long after the drama is done.
P.S. Do any of you subscribe to the NT Podcasts, and have you heard the Helen McCrory one yet? It’s a bit underwhelming, a little too much of Libby Purves describing the show to Helen McCrory, but some interesting insights about working with Carrie Cracknell. Mostly, though, you can never over-estimate how facetious my mind can get: “Because I worked with Carrie, on Medea...” McCrory starts. “What did she say?” think I, “Kenneth Williams as Creon, Sid James as Jason, Hattie Jacques in the lead – it’s Carry On Medea!”.
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Post by Nicholas on Oct 1, 2016 22:01:32 GMT
Forgot to say, hit the jackpot at Aladdin.
Ten minutes in, two girls clamber in late and occupy the two empty seats next to me.
Twenty minutes in, they start unpacking their picnic, which they’d wisely packed at the bottom of their bag, ignoring both me and the people in front turning around and doing their best Paddington Bear Hard StareTM.
Twenty-five minutes in, start eating their picnic, and when I say picnic I mean picnic – firstly something else, but then it turns out they’d packed those crisps which are very crunchy (annoying everyone who can hear), and, worse, really, really smelly (vinegary, annoying mostly me). When I notice it’s not just a small bag but TWO entire tubs of the stuff, and because clearly other people were getting antsy too, I lean over and do my best mock-polite whispering “Sorry, that’s quite noisy, would you mind waiting until the interval?”
Forty minutes in, could they heck. Crunch crunch crunch, hard stare goes ignored. I tend to assume people who eat/check phones/whisper often don’t realise how loud they’re being, and tend to be apologetic if you ask. So when these people know they’re annoying a lot of people who’ve paid an awful lot of money to be here but just don’t give a damn... I can’t quite remember what I said, but it wasn’t polite. So they put them away, and I relax, because it’s not like they’re going to do anything else to distract me, is it, I can sit and enjoy the sh-oh what the f*** are they doing now...
Out come the f***ing phones. It’s like they were working their way through a list of how to piss people off. The usher comes along (good ushers here, shining their lights on phones) and tells them off, so they graciously acknowledge their fourth wrongdoing of the night and turn it off they stroppily say (not whisper, say) “I’M TURNING IT OFF!” like a bolshy teenager, then somehow take five minutes to find the off button. And you know the best bit? I can see they’re on Facebook, and I’m 99.9% sure they were complaining about how badly I was behaving towards them at the theatre.
Something happened during the interval, and they behaved themselves in the second half, but when people are such arses you keep waiting for them to arse around further – it took a long time to relax into the show. So thanks to those two strangers, I’ve ticked off my year’s bad behaviour bingo card in one bloody hour.
P.S On a lighter note...
Not a show, but went to the Abstract Expressionism exhibition at the Royal Academy today and (as often happens) had the experience marred by a few parents who had brought very small children with them who spent the whole time screaming with no attempt by the parents to quieten their little darlings down And also incidentally a fair few families with nice quiet well behaved children! So not saying don't bring them, but if they are screaming or running about take them out!
One of my favourite experiences in an art gallery was going around the David Hockney ipad art exhibition at the Royal Academy, some three or four years ago now. Whilst pretentious sods like myself were staring at a wall full of pictures of fairly similar, nondescript, brightly coloured trees and pretending we could see deep meaning within them, a parent turned to his little bundle of joy and excitedly said “I think I can see a Gruffalo in one of those!”.
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Post by Nicholas on Oct 1, 2016 22:00:36 GMT
I mean, we never even know why Yerma wants a baby; the only reason Stone or Piper gives us is “because she wants to, because she wants to”. I know you're half-joking here, Nicholas, but - speaking as someone who has never wanted to have children - the reason most people want a baby is basically 'because she wants to'. At least from my perspective, anyway. People don't need any other reason. Indeed, they persist in wanting babies even when it's demonstrably the worst possible thing that could happen at that point in their lives, and they'd be much better off not having them. At some point you just have to chalk it up to biological imperative. HALF-joking? Is such a thing possible? You can never over-estimate how facetious I’m being. I only got into theatre so you lot have to take it seriously when we’re comparing Fannies and Gaylords.
But you’ve hit the nail on the head, actually. That’s a perfectly legitimate(ish) reason to have a child – for the sheer damn hell of it – but it didn’t work within this drama, when it so easily could have. A few years ago Duncan Macmillan’s Lungs was similarly about a very modern hip middle-class couple thinking about having a child “because they wanted to”, but they debated whether that was good enough in this world (they decided, spoiler, that (as Yerma decides) it was), and I refuse to believe that this couple would not have had the same conversations – even briefly – about whether that’s good enough and what it entails to bring a new life into the twenty-first century (particularly given how ‘modern’ other parts of the play were – they clearly read the Guardian, if they’ll discuss Sadiq and Avocados, they’ll sure as hell discuss the carbon footprint of eighteen years of child-rearing, let alone other practical concerns). More damningly, though, they just needed to say “I want a child, because I want a child” with some clarity, and whilst it wouldn’t be motivation enough for me personally, it would be motivation enough for the drama. If it’s a perfectly realistic reason for having a child, it needed to be spoken more clearly here.
But then, I wonder if Steve’s hit the nail on the head (lot of nails today). That’s too literal. Dare I flog my dead horse one more time and look at Lars von Trier, who literally destroys the world to make a metaphorical point about depression (in Melancholia, his least objectionable film, and his bona fide masterpiece), so, in comparison, denying a woman a baby is child’s play. I suppose it’s a similar thing here – ultimately the child’s a catalyst, a thematic point. And I don’t know where Lorca ends and Stone begins on that. But I do think that there needs to be a greater sense of realism to the macguffin to make the drama really, really zing.
And I do think a lack of depth and believability hurts it dramatically and emotionally, because without realism I can’t surrender to it wholly (and it was SO CLOSE to realism!). I can believe they’d dismiss adoption, because too many people sadly do. But to return to popcultureboy’s point, I can’t believe that some as strong as Yerma would let her husband take three years to do a sperm test out of misplaced machismo, or that her husband would be so callow himself, or that her friends wouldn’t have a word and make him do it – stalling, yes; macho pride, yes; three years, no not this couple. And I wish we saw more of the ‘rational’ woman before her ‘irrationality’ over the baby took control, because actually I think that would be more believable, to give her three dimensions and watch them crash to one desperate one, would make a far richer arc, and a far less repetitive first half.
That said, still much to admire, particularly in the second half where I think we can agree on it streamlining everything down to the basic, simple, desperate emptiness of her life. And besides, I think we could all do with a Steve Mini-Me in our lives.
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Post by Nicholas on Sept 25, 2016 20:17:56 GMT
Saw this THE DAY BEFORE LIN MANUEL TURNED UP, GRR, bit annoyed I’m late to the game with this one. I want to rave and tell you all how Lin-Manuel Miranda’s a rising genius who’s going to do amazing things – but he already has, and you already know that anyway, don’t you? I suppose this is a bit like a modern day Meet Me In St Louis – about a small, tight-knit, local community expressing their very domestic concerns through song (where Fosse believes song is heightened emotion, here song is not just everyday language but a glorious lingua franca) – and it’s such a wonderful, caring, full-blooded and fully-realised community that it’s equally up there with Minelli’s view of 1940s life, just a pleasure immersing yourself in this world. I imagine in fifty years this will still feel young, still sound new, still have a twenty-year old’s energy. Simply put, it’s absolutely the best, most humane, most joyous, most life-affirming musical I’ve ever seen about a power cut.
P.S. Just listening to the CD now. Still love it. There are just lyrics that are just so entertainingly clever in the way a good Cole Porter rhyme is entertainingly clever (I wonder how broad Lin Manuel Miranda’s music collection must be). See, Aladdin made me smile then ended, because it’s about a joke being funny at the time. This made me happy, because it’s about the joy of being in such a close-knit, caring community, and that happiness has stuck since.
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Post by Nicholas on Sept 25, 2016 20:17:24 GMT
Surprisingly compelling, there was something of a great symphony to this play and Davies/Herrin’s production. I find myself something of a contrarian here – I really rather liked this. I found Juno and the Paycock fell flat, and I found The Silver Tassie an academic rediscovery which didn’t really work on stage, but this had a communal energy, and changes in tone, which made it quite entertaining and rather enlightening. The tone of this production was of ordinary lives lived at a fast pace as the world moved faster around them, whilst the script had a musicality which belied its domestic and political setting. I can’t say I loved this, but after two underwhelming O’Caseys, The Plough and The Stars seemed really quite a cut above, with something interesting to say about how communities start revolutions.
The Silver Tassie, of course, had that musical scene. I thought it worked in isolation, but as the second of four parts it was a sore thumb. When the drama turned into a pre-emptive O What A Lovely War, The Silver Tassie stopped being a play and started being four short plays, and that made for naff drama. The Plough and the Stars was a much better evocation of music than an actual musical section ever could be: this production had crescendos and diminuendos, solos and tutti, unison and nigh-on improvisatory jazz. Its second act, the bar, never lost momentum: outside sounds made an ostinato whilst the debate built up with lovely pace. I don’t know if Herrin brought a new energy or Davies found more to work with, but throughout I found what was impressive – and even educational – about this production was how like Caryl Churchill the overlapping intercutting dialogue was, but more presciently how scenes – like symphonies – swelled into unison (setting off a nationwide war) before softening into solos (bringing a sometimes desperate and innocent humanity into this history lesson). Because it was entertaining first and foremost to the ears (liked the set but like many things swamped in this too-big theatre) it was a rather entertaining piece of work, so when Act III exploded like it did it shocked far more pertinently than any of the explosions in The Silver Tassie, whilst the deaths in Act Four had an emotion resonance Juno and the Paycock lacked. I don’t think it’s a great play because I still think it doesn’t get to the heart of why this rebellion happened (perhaps, written so soon after the event, rewriting to add context would be good), and doesn’t consolidate its three strands of the theoretical upset causing revolution with the physical violence with the character work (interesting though all three over-stuff strands are), but I think it’s a very very good piece of theatre as seen here. Great cast, fascinating script, not perfect and not essential but surprisingly entertaining and surprisingly quite powerful.
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