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Post by Nicholas on Sept 25, 2016 20:17:09 GMT
Is Disney’s Aladdin just a glorified panto, basically a local community show with a bigger budget? Yes. Did I still enjoy it? Yes. So is it being a glorified panto a problem?
Well, Yes and No, inevitably.
No, it’s not a problem when you’ve got some of the best songs by Menken, Rice, and the great Ashman (alongside some of their filler material). No, it’s not a problem when you’ve got the glitz of however many diamonds, sparkle everywhere. No, it’s not a problem when the dancing’s this wonderful mix of Broadway, Bollywood and Banghra, culturally all over the place but choreographically fun. No, it’s not a problem when Jasmine has her very well-received and very greatly-needed feminist awakening. No, it’s not a problem when you’ve got a genie, more on which later. No, it’s not a problem if it’s fun, and it was fun. And no, it’s not a problem when Dean John Wilson has his pecs out. It’s fun, I laughed a lot, it made me smile, and sometimes that’s all you need.
But sometimes it’s not. Sometimes you need more. Some of the best shows I’ve ever seen have made me smile, but there’s been depth, be it a real inherent kindness to them, or a real political positivity, or a genuine joie de vivre. This made me smile, and then I left with nothing to keep me smiling to take away from it, beyond the tunes I knew before I went in. And this is why it’s not good enough that Aladdin is simply good enough.
So yes, scrape beyond this very thin surface and it’s a very big problem that this is a simple cheap and cheerful panto with a simple script. It’s a fun panto, don’t get me wrong, but it carries with it all the connotations and clichés and issues of panto, most problematically the cheapness and shallowness of provincial ones. Firstly, Aladdin is not Disney’s deepest work at 90 minutes, and at roughly 150 minutes no real reason for expansion is added. Dan Rebellato once wrote of ‘Mr Potato Head’ characteristics – where a person’s motivations and desires seem attached, added apropos of the person underneath and not a priori. Whilst it’s great that Jasmine says “I want to make my own destiny and not belong to a man”, one line doth not a feminist make, and rather than expand upon this Jasmine still remains the macguffin, the prize to be won. Aladdin himself is just as thin: one song doth not a character make, and (sorry, Michael!) “Proud Of Your Boy” makes Aladdin a much less fun character than the scamp he was in the shorter movie. The villains weren’t exactly Richard III in the cartoon, but turning Iago into Artie Ziff makes him less exciting, as does giving Jafar the most clichéd ‘villain tango’ song to buff his part up. Beyond characters, the script is no better than any old school panto, from puns that actually made my eyes roll to each scene being not animated magic but old-school standing still in shonky sets. I mean, hell, the lyrics of “High Adventure” mock the cheesiness of it all, and that’s one of the show’s high points.
Perhaps that would be fine in a panto, but the issue here is one almost external to the show. This isn’t Shinfield Player’s Theatre’s Aladdin, this is “Disney’s Aladdin”. It’s a problem of expectation and possibility, and execution and reality. Aladdin is possibly the most visually inventive animation of this period. Script-wise, the film is the same enjoyable muddle as this – Scheherazadian Arabic narrative which takes a Broadway back-seat when the Genie’s centre-stage – but it’s a treat to the eyes, from the Chaplin-esque Magic Carpet, to Busby Berkley music numbers, to Lawrence of Arabia in pen and ink. And Disney knows how to do visually inventive on stage: for all the criticism of The Lion King it made you believe, long before War Horse, that pieces of wood on someone’s head was a gazelle gracefully galloping or that a mighty man in a silly costume really was the king of the jungle, and Beauty and the Beast recreated the movie so wonderfully that, to my untrained eye, I still don’t know how those cartoon characters came to life, how the beast became a prince again. Disney has a reputation, a standard raised. How, wondered we as we went in, would they do the talking parrot? Elephants on stage? A magic carpet?
You know the answer: it’s a bloke, it’s just some dancers, and the carpet is so shoehorned in that the line explaining it is a joke. As is most of the staging. The market is some cardboard boxes and curtains. The cave is diamonds. The castle is a white wall. The genie came out of an obvious trapdoor. Perhaps it’s simply that this is unfortunate to open almost alongside Harry Potter, where both boundaries are pushed and simple theatrical illusions are well-incorporated, or perhaps it’s that Disney have raised my expectations too high through other work. I loved the choreography: as I say, Casey Nicholaw brings Broadway theatricality whilst respecting the Arabian source, and that amidst the magic a story ABOUT MAGIC requires would be great, but the staging is so cheap, so unimaginative – it’s how you would stage Aladdin were you to stage it in a school with limited means, and whilst sometimes stripped back IS magic, it isn’t when it’s a million-pound Disney project in such a huge theatre, and that truly matters here. When one gets to the finale, one doesn’t expect him to literally turn into a snake, but the expectation of an imaginative substitution is founded on Disney’s track record; to finish this with everyone standing still in a line and two nifty costume changes simply is not good enough for the West End, not good enough for Disney. There’s no attempt to emulate the fantastical transfigurations of the cartoon, nor to replace it with a theatrical variant. There’s just people standing still. Not even something simple choreographed. Just stillness. It was hard not to be underwhelmed.
So duff script with tacked-on ‘big-ideas’ but diminished whimsy, material over-stretched, and a really, really cheap feel to it – surely that would overwhelm any feelings of goodwill towards a moderately entertaining panto? Oh, it does. But... Really, Aladdin isn’t an Arabian fairytale, or a Broadway musical, or a Disney cartoon. It’s a star turn. The movie had Robin Williams doing a child-friendly GOOOOOOOOOD MOOOOOORNING VIETNAM! and getting away with daylight robbery. This has this year’s Olivier winner Trevor Dion Nicholas. Where this fails is underdoing the potential theatricality Aladdin offers, but where this succeeds is casting someone who understands the theatricality of Broadway, the theatricality of Robin Williams and the theatricality of Panto, alongside his own effervescence. If the Nicholas Brothers had a child with Neil Patrick Harris/James Cordern’s Tony Hosts, then there’s been a major moral, biological and time-travelling transgression you’d have this genie. His joy is infectious – when he smiles, you smiles, and boy does he smile – and that goes a long way, but he’s also got a natural charisma, clear affection for the role and the show, one hell of a role to sink his teeth and not insubstantial talent into, and every second he’s on stage it’s perhaps the most fun you can have in the West End at the mo. He sparkles where the show does not. When he comes on it’s a Broadway extravaganza, bringing 42nd Street and Busby Berkley and Broadway razzmatazz galore. When he’s doing this, it’s transcendent. It’s pure Broadway, and (literally) pure gold.
So it’s a curate’s Faberge egg. Am I just being churlish because I wanted more glitz? Again, yes and no; it’s indisputably an awful awful awful lot of fun, but it’s little more than that which it could be, should be and sets us up to be. “Disney’s Aladdin” is a mess, redeemed by one supporting turn: the Aladdin/Jasmine plot is an overstreched underdeveloped muddle which removes an awful lot of the wit from the cartoon (especially as three of the cartoon’s best characters – the carpet, Abu and Iago – are predominantly visual beings) and stumbles on in a slightly clichéd, theatrically underwhelming way. But “Disney’s Genie”, starring Trevor Dion Nicholas – it’s padded out with too much Aladdin malarkey, but what a show that is!
Disclaimer: I may sound like I’m being rude about Shinfield Player’s Theatre. Not at all. It’s the best theatre in the Shinfield area of Reading. They have a standard to maintain. Yesterday they had Dean Friedman.
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Post by Nicholas on Sept 25, 2016 20:16:26 GMT
To continue the People, Places and Things comparisons from earlier – watching Yerma, I think I felt how the people who (wrongly) dismissed Macmillan’s script felt about that – bravura performance, but what’s the point?
That’s a bit mean on this. This was a game of two halves, and I was rather sucker-punched (if not devastated) by the final three chapters. But there was a major issue of slightness and factual errors that made the first two thirds unbearably so-so (an issue which Parsley gets right to the heart of – we mock him, but when he’s right he’s right), and ultimately brought a slightness to an ending that should have been devastating. And before I begin, I ought to say that I don’t know this Lorca at all, so I’m attributing all its faults to Stone – that said, this is clearly his baby and he’s clearly rewritten heaps, so I think that’s fair, esp. the ending.
Part One: Let’s Get Pregnant with Paige Britain! Yerma, our protagonist, is a bizarrely written character. As a blogger, there’s a Katie Hopkins shock-jock meanness to her (which I felt came across as over-forced and artificial) that makes her rather grating; as a person, Stone (or Lorca?) doesn’t give her depth, and this undermines her theatrical existence. Because the play only really shows us the side of her which is wanting a baby, she becomes one-dimensional when that’s all we get for 1hr45 – for once, a show could be longer: expand Yerma’s life outside this one aspect, show the whole woman not merely the prospective mother. Other than that it’s a tedious Generation Game conveyer belt of Buzzwords (Whatsapp me, Sadiq’s mayor now, avocado – buzzwords incorporated a posteriori, not from inside the box), stringing together “I want a baby I want a baby I want a baby” – the modernity feels phoney and the baby-craving flimsy. Aspects – the family relationship, the job itself – hint at the depth this could have had, and that would have been rather wonderful, but instead it’s over-simple and over-repetitive and needs some more. 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”.
And on the subject of blogs – WHERE IS THEIR MONEY COMING FROM? Buying London houses is no issue to a blogger; blogging apparently makes you Midas. Oh, and also, I know that him not getting his sperm tested is for dramatic/character purposes – about pride and masculinity and all that – but practically, Brendan Cowell stringing loved ones on for years out of stubbornness just makes him a dislikeable arse, end of; dramatically it takes the edge off as he becomes one-dimensional too and quite unpleasant, and this makes it somewhat unbelievable at times.
Part Two: a very Danish Dogme downfall. And blimey does the tone rise. Stone has taken influence from the Dogme school of filmmaking before (most specifically (he mentioned this himself) The Daughter), and with how he updates and depicts Yerma’s depression, he takes the largest leaf out of the book of Lars von Trier – a great feminist at best, a great misogynist at worst, often somehow the same thing at the same time, one of the most problematic but fascinating writers of woman characters working today. Having simplified Yerma down to nothing but a mother, to take the potentiality of motherhood away from her empties her out, leaves a void, leaves a woman bereft of identity and purpose and connections; in how explicit, full-on and devastating this self-imposed emptiness was, I was very much reminded of Bjork belting her sorrows away in Dancer in the Dark, of Nicole Kidman’s treatment in Dogville, and particularly (not least due to how, and where, Yerma inflicts violence upon herself in its final moments) of Charlotte Gainsborough dismantling herself first mentally and then physically in Antichrist. As I saw the ending’s reading of women as mothers, Antichrist does rather seem a reference point (not least that that film, too, has a terribly boring first half). And whilst (as with von Trier) there are histrionics and contrivances, I think the strength of Piper’s performance makes her desperate descent into profound loneliness utterly heartbreaking. And, crucially, ‘baby talk’ is relatively relegated – the end is simply a heartbroken woman lacking what she wants, the baby a mere macguffin, and if her heartbreak doesn’t break your heart, you must be made of Stone stone.
Billie Piper seems to be doing a Mark Gatiss – not letting her populism get in the way of becoming a stunning stage actor. The Effect was a layered piece of underplaying as required, her Paige Britain was infinitely better than the play she was in, and now this! Were she not a Doctor Who alumnus, we’d be praising her as a unique talent of the stage, so let’s. It’s nice that she’s part of this brigade shattering high/low, populist/niche culture distinctions, simply by being very very very good at her job (James Mcavoy’s another example). Even at the play’s most annoying (Stone’s writing), she’s convincing to a fault, and as the play drags Yerma down to self-inflicted humiliation, self-doubt and that act of violence, Piper just stuns (to flog my dead horse, look at the performances von Trier gets from great actress in passionate/humiliating roles). She’s been very good before, but this brings out unlikeable, naked layers which are quite painful to watch in ways few actresses are, it’s really something.
So when the script gives her meat, Piper is brilliant, and when the script doesn’t, she’s still brilliant. It’s a shame the script is only half-brilliant. In The Wild Duck, Stone’s detached observation worked because his script had heart, his empathy for Hedvig and Gregers was palpable and we were on their side from step one; that he turned Ibsen’s Sophoclean intellectual decline into a modern kitchen-sink drama heightened the impact of the downfall because Stone had brought Ibsen down to earth. Here, I don’t think Stone sets up the Sophoclean decline well or believes in the issues affecting the character that much (which may be Lorca’s fault?). The Wild Duck was observational where this was clinical; we’re outside Yerma’s head, outside her heart, never able to explore what’s driving her all this time, and that means motivation is replaced by that pat modernity, where in The Wild Duck motivation was enhanced by organic modernity. The ending is amazing, the live Dogme drama something to behold, and the acting is top notch. The beginning just sags, which brings the ending down. If Stone had given Yerma a rounder, richer life from the beginning, this would be a two-hour-plus drama of profound humanity with an utterly devastating ending, but as it is it’s a slight 1hr45 study of an over-simplified protagonist given far more depth than she deserves by a wonderful, wonderful central knock-out performance.
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Post by Nicholas on Sept 25, 2016 20:14:24 GMT
With Rice’s ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ production, this is almost ‘too much of a good thing’, oddly enough. Rice’s intentions are wonderful, her innovations great. Rice’s regime will be very very good, and everything good about it was in here. So why would I merely give it three stars? That’s the problem: EVERYTHING was in here, including not just too many un-Globey ideas about how to stage Shakespeare, but every exciting mistake she’ll make. It’s good that Rice has her own identity and isn’t a Dromgoole carbon copy, it’s good that her regime is going to be more gender-balanced and inclusive and it’s good that she’s going to prioritise modernity, but good grief the anti-Bardolatory and the in-jokes and the blindingly unnecessary technology... In only her second Shakespeare but first of many to come, I think Rice wanted to show us everything she felt the Globe could be, should be and will be; rather than take ten years to make a point, she made it in three hours. The Globe under her looks set to be raucous, rollicking fun, irreverent, modern, appealing to new audiences, legitimately fun. Her Midsummer was. But this wasn’t a show as much as a show-off, and there’s the rub.
So much about this was so so lovely. Firstly, the great innovation of changing Helena to Helenus had nothing to do with sexuality and everything to do with casting Ankur Bahl, who was really really lovely! With his lovely lovelorn longing and his sense of fun, he made Helenus a sympathetic but never self-pitying, stronger-than-usual lover. This production seemed mostly to care for those four lovers, with a down-to-earthness and normality to them I found quite charming, and real comic pizzazz in those four performances. Beyond that, plenty of nice touches – genuine debauchery within the fairies (though I found Puck too shouty), genuine care towards the mechanicals, genuinely unpredictable whimsy, stunning music which shows that Rice (like her predecessors) can subtly reference the play’s darker, more intellectual aspects in a way which doesn’t interfere with the fun (using Indian music and musicians, Rice is clearly answering anti-colonial scholars who critique the stealing of an Indian baby). And the inclusion of Beyonce and Bowie in this, of all buildings, was surprising and sweet, the kind of newness and modernity that was, too often, squandered by Globe traditions.
The issue was I can enjoy debauched fairies and Hoxton lovers and Globe ushers and new technology and colonial appropriation critique in isolation; thrown together in this very special theatre, it did not make a coherent show. A Dromgoole show (or a Luscombe or Dunster or Macintyre or Carroll or Rylance show there) tended to have a simplicity of purpose: primarily, make something current out of a clunky old circle. This had a complexity of intention, more about how any Shakespeare could be staged there, and less about how this Shakespeare should. Plus these lovely touches were one of too many ‘new’ aspects, alongside the neon, alongside weirdly insider and mean-spirited in-jokes... I actually think this exact show could have been wonderful, but the anti-Dromgoole anti-Rylance newness of it overwhelmed it. There was almost a meta-voice shouting over the top “WE CAN HAVE T-SHIRTS NOT CODPIECES, WE CAN HAVE SPOTLIGHTS NOT JUST THE SUN, WE CAN CALL IT HOXTON THE WORDS CAN BE REWRITTEN, WE CAN HAVE ADLIBS, WE CAN HAVE...” and that made the show a ‘statement’, not a ‘production’. I admire almost every single aspect of this show, because I can tell Rice’s irreverence is going to shake up the building in a good way, but ‘not the sum of its parts’ comes to mind – too many parts I love make for an inconsistent and un-unified sum I merely quite liked instead.
As for removing the USP of the Globe, I do and don’t agree. Would the Bard have staged a three man Tempest? In 1612, would troupes from Belarus and Israel and Hip Hop have performed these works? Would a play like Nell Gwynn have happened, and if so presumably with not Gugu Mbatha-Raw but Richard Burbage? And presumably Prospero would be played by someone most unlike Vanessa Redgrave? The Globe’s historical value was only ever one part of it from the beginning. Rylance wasn’t a traditionalist and nor was Dromgoole, so why should Rice be? I think it’s the nature of the changes, though: whatever else, the Globe had its limits, and ‘updating’ it would ruin the point. Neon... Particularly the theoretical aspects – gender switching, sexuality switching and tasteful technology – are wonderful, but giant neon and bogstandard modern costumes seem more like working against the space, rather than with it. If next year is filled with costumes and cod-pieces I’ll feel there’s been backtracking, but I hope next year isn’t quite so anti-Globe. Mostly, less neon.
What made Dromgoole great, incidentally, was that he used the limitations and the history of the Globe to be academically incisive. Last year his Measure For Measure stood contrary to Cheek by Jowl and Gibbons-Hill’s two grimy political reinterpretations, making the problem play unproblematic fun for the groundlings; rather than make it more shallow, however, he found the heart few had seen in it before, and found something truly romantic in that very weird romance. If his Measure for Measure could have flooded the Globe with sex toys, there’d have been no need for it to be at the Globe (might have made standing in the pit an awful lot more fun, mind, though this from the Oresteia kind of did the job); due to the Globe’s Jacobethan problems, it often ended up the most insightful modern Shakespearean stage in town. There is a risk that without the Globe’s problems you don’t have anything to solve, and that would be a shame.
And perversely, I think the all-encompassing modernisation may have worked against Rice. I wonder if there’d have been something even more revelatory, and even more progressive, about turning Helena into Helenus in the rigid society of the seventeenth century. And I also think that making the Mechanicals the Globe ushers would have still worked – and been funnier – had the rest of the show been staidly Shakespearean.
So when I say “Too much of a good thing”, my cup did nor o’erflow with joy during this, though I did laugh a lot. Simply, there were too many good prospects for the future, which made for a baggy three hour show. I think Rice took everything ‘good’ she wants to do with the building over the next ten years – stage Shakespeare as a modern, progressive, updated, flippant two-fingers to Bardolatry with no qualms about modernising the place – and overpacked her first show with her mission statement. I think her 2017 and 2018 shows will be more subtle, more old-fashioned and more Globe-y, whilst I hope her 2017 and 2018 shows will keep the adventure and fun and modernity of this. Her 2016 show, though, was buckling under the weight of proving many, many points about Shakespeare as modern (points most of us got over at least ten years ago), points about how Shakespeare can accommodate irreverence and rewriting (points the Globe could have taken years ago), points about how Shakespeare is going to be inclusive (points we all welcome). As such, it was a bit crazy, modern in weirdly unnecessary ways, and too much neon, but I welcome the changes and I welcome a wonderful new regime by Rice. We now know everything she intends the Globe to be, and (neon aside) it’s going to be modern and it’s going to be inclusive and it’s going to be wonderful. Her mission statement I agree with wholly. Her comedy I found hilarious. I just do hope her next production is actually, vaguely, somehow, slightly, Shakespearean.
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Post by Nicholas on Sept 24, 2016 14:06:08 GMT
Absolutely agree with you lot, Parsley's criticisms are churlish given the fan love this inspires (and also, Parsley, didn't you say "WOW WOW WOW" about the first preview?). Is this the best play of the year? Actually I think it is up there, but objectively WHO CARES! With an obsession, or a passion, or a fandom, or a childhood memory, you really, really, really don’t want to be logical or clinical or analytical, but frankly you don’t have to be. The last Harry Potter book came out in 2007, the year of District and Circle. The last Harry Potter film came out in 2011, the year of A Separation. The Harry Potter play has come out in 2016, a year that unlike Kevin I’ve found absolutely bloody stunning play-wise (new plays The Encounter, The Flick, revivals Faith Healer, Les Blancs, I really think 2016’s had one of the most exciting set of highlights in years). Objectively, the Harry Potter pieces are not the best examples of their medium, no. But which film did I watch three times in one week at the cinema? Love Asghar Fahradi as I do, well...
The fact that the Harry Potter pieces, objectively, aren’t the best pieces of the year takes nothing away from our passion towards them. Potter’s a lovely franchise, particularly, in that I do think Rowling’s a very good writer (and Thorne indisputably is) and truly cares about the characters, so what we get tends to be good as opposed to filler. As a piece of theatre, Cursed Child is clearly something a cut above, but that’s almost by the bye – we bring to it so much goodwill, so much expectation, so much hope and passion and enthusiasm, and what matters first and foremost is that that is paid off (which is why I think it’s wonderful that Tiffany didn’t overload this with special effects, but made particularly the final quarter so focused on character). Things that happen, particularly in Act III (trying to not do spoilers, but let’s say moments of character), are the pay-off of twenty years of loyalty to these characters. That’s why this is special – not because Act III is the best-written third act in history, but it’s the one which offers the most reward back for its audience.
Would you enjoy this were you not a Potter fan? I think yes, three/four stars, you’d be wowed by the effects, entertained by the adventure, moved by the ending and content enough. But when you bring your own encyclopaedic knowledge and personal passion with you, it becomes something so much else. I assume Parsley didn’t bring that, but what Bend It To Beckham was to him Harry Potter is to a generation.
Sounds like you're one of those Harry Potter fans who's never forgiven JK Rowling for marrying Harry to Ginny & Ron to Hermione rather than Harry & Hermione to each other. ;-)
I’m more miffed she rewrote the perfect ending in the first place...
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Post by Nicholas on Sept 8, 2016 1:47:43 GMT
Nicholas, oh I did miss you terribly! Enjoyed your review v much. It's a pity you haven't seen it at NT as well 'cause it would give us a unique insight and you - a chance to compare (I confirm that Mr Streatfeild is doing more than fine but since I have a big crush on him after The Beaux' Stratagem last year you can't consider my opinion an objective one and I won't go any further.. Now to the questions. I do not actually know how excessively Shakespeare is studied in English schools, but I would imagine we have much less of Chekhov - just a couple of major plays alongside Ostrovsky and Gorky. And no, Bob Dylan is hardly known in Russia 'cause nobody understands what he's singing about lol )) But I love his early work to bits and consider him the greatest songwriter ever. You can ask away anything you like - will try to answer to the best of my knowledge (though I'm not as hardcore theatre-goer in Russia as I am in UK).
Спасибо! I’ve messaged you a load of questions so not to interrupt here – don’t feel you have to answer them all, but thanks!
I’d be tempted to go back to Ivanov – it was the best part of the trilogy, and I do love Streatfield too – but doubt I’ll have the time, because life... But The Beaux Stratagem was rather lovely, and that was pretty much all down to him! I went because of Samuel Barnett and Susannah Fielding, both great as always, but they had all that boring ‘getting divorced’ malarkey and all that was a bit of a downer, compared to Geoffrey Streatfield who literally danced away with the whole show! Wasn’t he wonderful in that? Can’t think of it and not smile. A trifle, oh a triiiiiiifle...
And I love that you say Russians don’t understand Dylan’s voice – Dylan fans at Dylan concerts don’t understand Dylan’s voice! I mean, listen to this or this and blimey it’s barely the same song it was fifty years ago! But that’s just part of the man’s genius, isn’t it?
Ivanov wasn't as good in my view as the Branagh version of some years back which was the first time I thought maybe i didn't dislike Chekhov as much as i thought i did, but it still all held together. I appear too tired or perhaps just not bright enough to fully understand Nicholas' review above as to why the direction made it more Ivanov focused but I did want to see more of Nina Sosanya and I remembered Lvov working better in the Branagh version. Whilst there were times when you just want to shake Ivanov especially in the treatment of his wife I always viewed the character through the lenses of pity, from the opening scene Steatfeild playing him very much as a man staring at this seeming chasm of endless darkness.
A) By using weird phrases and writing long spiels, I hopefully sound relatively smart and informed, whereas truth be told I haven’t a clue what I’m going on about most of the time. I say it’s a directorial choice – I’ve no idea how direction really works, I’ve just got to blame somebody and Kent will do.
B) Ivanov’s depressed, making him a misanthrope. In the Grandage version, his misery was one part of a bigger world. In this version, his misery was ALL the world. As you say, he was staring into this chasm of darkness, and it seemed the stage itself was that chasm: in how grotesquely the supporting characters were played (cattily gossiping whilst playing cards and ignoring Ivanov’s pain, making fun of genuine misery – it was like a Hogarth painting), the show shared his misanthropic view of other people. So I suppose I mean less Ivanov focused, and more through Ivanov’s eyes. In its way that was great, a truly immersive look at depression, but I think it gave Sosanya and Mcardle less to dig their teeth into than Mckee and Hiddleston had. I did like how dark and misanthropic this felt, but I preferred the more observational and even-handed Branagh version.
But I would say that – you say that for you Ivanov was what first made you not hate Chekhov, for me Ivanov was what first wowed me about theatre in the first place! 2008! Eight years, time flies...
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Post by Nicholas on Sept 2, 2016 12:14:47 GMT
I thought maybe it's because the first two I saw, the Anya Reiss version and that Regents Park one with the overhead mirror and Hans Zimmer-esque music blasting out every now and then, just detracted from the play. Having seen this version at Chichester, the most naturalistic of the three, I've come to the conclusion that this is a play about people with problems that is just not for me.
I loved the Regent’s Park Seagull. It captured the preening, posturing pretention of the protagonists perfectly – can Janie Dee play a flibbertigibbet or what? – whilst the open air theatre naturally drew constant comparisons to Konstantin’s ‘new kind of’ outside theatre from act one, a comparison which Dunster and Betts ran with, making their Seagull a subtly subversive version and positioning Chekhov’s theatrical progressiveness alongside Konstantin’s (and Betts’ rewrite of Konstantin’s play pulled no punches in mocking his pretention, so already this interpretation was laced with irony). That mirror was an excellent example of a very simple piece of scenery very effectively making a very big difference throughout (the best example would obviously be Ivo van Hove’s simple illuminated box, his Miller Corner); here it allowed the drama to chug on naturalistically on the ground, but then gave proceedings the cinematic airy-fairy airs of Sophia Coppola, or the photographic beauty of even something rather fantastical like the Cottingley Fairies, as well as its own unique floaty quality, drawing out organic beauty in ordinary conversations, all whilst enhancing the point about new theatre, old theatre, pretentious theatre and all that. The little other modernities – the Hans Zimmer blasts, the pre-recorded voiceover – just added to this traditional/modern, real/theatrical, naturalistic/beautified, Trigorin/Konstantin dichotomy. And I thought Betts’ version was very witty, very successfully updated and, occasionally, very new (notably that new last line). I thought it tremendous stuff. And, crucially, actually funny. Loved it.
Anywho, now that absolutely necessary blast from the past is over, watch as I pretend to know what I’m talking about when talking about Russian theatre in a thread where we have an actual Russian correspondent... Incidentally, RUmbledoll, I'm loving all the insights into how Russians do Chekhov/Microsoft and am trying to hold off from getting overly nerdy/nosey asking a hundred questions about Chekhov and theatre in Russia (one quickly – is he taught in school in Russia like Shakespeare is here?), but the one question I really HAVE to ask now is, from your avatar (presumably not you, although if it is...), is Bob Dylan actually big in Russia?
I’d absolutely agree, before I ramble on, that Chekhov is the second greatest playwright after Anya Reiss Shakespeare. To quote Tolstoy to Chekhov, “I can’t stand Shakespeare, but your plays are worse than his”. In fact, personally, I might prefer Anton to Bill.
I saw these in Chichester and liked them well enough. Four stars, I’d say, for the whole day’s energy; relatively, though, I’d say four for Platonov, four for Ivanov, and three for The Seagull, which unsatisfactorily wraps up an otherwise much better if not unproblematic day. As individual versions, the first two have much merit and I’d recommend both individually as good theatre. As a whole day, you can’t help but be swept up with the energy, though how you like eleven hours of Chekhov is wholly dependent on how much you like one hour of Chekhov, so the marathon won’t be for everyone (e.g. I couldn’t stand In The Vale of Health, merely because I can only stomach so much Simon Gray in one day, and four solid solo plays – enjoyable in isolation – became an endurance test consecutively, eleven hours of anyone can be tiresome to some). As an intellectual exercise, I think they make a strong claim that Chekhov the writer was as talented at 18 as he was at 44 (this book does too); I don’t think, however, they make any claim that Chekhov the theatremaker was as talented at 18 as he was at 44 – a more interesting claim – and the fault there lies not with imperfect Chekhov but with overcareful Hare and Kent.
Starting at the end, The Seagull was the worst by a long way, because it suffered what I felt The Master Builder suffered from – translation-itis. There was a line in Hare’s Master Builder which went something like “And what else is there about me that you find attractive?”. There were others like it too, that one sticks in the memory more. It was a line that jarred, one of those awful moments where you’re aware you’re hearing a translation, as the stuffy vocabulary and iffy sentence structure sounds a little too babelfish.com-y – a little too word-by-word literal-translated. His Seagull suffered so too. Too many lines weren’t well suited to dialogue. Amidst other lines I can’t remember now, the bloody frigging bloody frigging swears in The Seagull just did not work, they sounded like Sir David Hare’s uncomfortable concession to modernity, like Sir David Hare trying to rap or play Pokemon Go and keep up with the youthful Bettses and Donneleys and even Reisses, the other modern Seagull updaters whose swearing was successful. Beyond that there was a certain discomfort to it, a certain tension between Sir David Hare the academic translator and Sir David Hare trying to emulate a young satirist, which led to uncomfortably over-verbose language mixed with weird swearing and inconsistent modernities. Anna Chancellor would make a wonderful Arkadina in a better script. My criticisms of Ivanov and PLatonov are slightly personal, slightly fatuous and slightly redundant as I’d recommend both of those shows for much I admire in them. My criticisms of The Seagull are because it’s not a very good version of The Seagull, well acted though it may be. And, crucially, not funny. Three stars, one for Chancellor, one for James and one for Vinall, none for Hare.
Ivanov was good, and writing it up now makes me realise just how good it was. Kent made the first few scenes unbearably overcast with the dark clouds of depression, making us unable to see Ivanov’s townspeople as anything but unwanted interlopers, making the flippancy of their dialogue seem positively immoral next to the grief of the world – due to depression, boring dialogue becomes positively Hitchcockian in how it’s hiding true emotional distress, and for that Kent deserves much applause. The card-playing scene was horrible and lonely for this reason. As a tonal evocation of depression I was amazed by the full-on first two acts. It lost some steam after that, and by being so focused on Ivanov’s own overcast outlook we lost the chance to really get into the heads of Chekhov’s comprehensive and well-constructed supporting cast: this sidelined Nina Sosanya in a way Grandage/Stoppard never sidelined McKee (her again, always wonderful), but the biggest tragedy was Dr Lvov, who baby Tom Hiddleston played with slimy duplicity and self-righteousness, where here James Mcardle lacked the chance to show the second of Lvov’s two faces due to Kent’s Ivanov-centric direction. Not much point saying Sam West was very good as it’s now Geoffrey Streatfield (an actor who is always very good), but Sam West was, indeed, very good.
Platonov was a blistering performance by James Mcardle and a superb supporting cast (esp. Olivia Vinall and the always wonderfully sympathetic Nina Sosanya), marred by MOR direction. Now, the worst thing you can do when talking about a play is merely compare it to previous productions and not judge it on its own merits, but sod it. Three years ago a stunning piece of punk theatre was made from Chekhov’s first play (apparently Platonov was played by Jack Laskey, who I’ve since effused about in Lawrence After Arabia, there he had a real sad bravado, turns out I’m a big Laskey fan): Helena Kaut-Howson’s Sons Without Fathers brought the energy and vitality of a rock concert to the tale of a washed up rock star that PLatonov is (well, that is if you think doctors are rock stars, and given Chekhov wrote this as a teenage medical student, I’m willing to psychoanalyse and say that’s what he thought of junior doctors (and frankly, junior doctors are rock stars)). That show and Laskey’s performance had the bravado and energy and spunk of a showy-offy young man which suited the flawed script wonderfully, what with the script’s flaws being too much of a young man showing off. Here Hare handles it like a bus-pass-holding knight-of-the-realm wearing the white gloves of a historian. So I suppose not enough of Sir David Hare’s spunk. Perhaps I’ll forgive it that. His script, though, had a politeness and a formality that doesn’t do justice to the debauchery Chekhov indulges in, making a ‘well made play’ of a script that’s anything but. Kent, though, makes a museum piece of it too by behaving carefully and treating it with the over-reverence which hampered Lindsay Posner’s Vanya – it was slow, well-staged, politely ordered and sleek, and by staking such a claim for its worth as a piece of literature they rather forget its energy as a piece of theatre (Michael Frayn does both, incidentally, so Hampstead’s Wild Honey is probably a hot ticket if casting is good (bring back Laskey)). This show IS a wonderful well-made play, admittedly, but I think there's an edge to the manuscript which warrants a risk Hare wasn't willing to take. There was a real politeness to both the character of Platonov and the feel of Kent’s Platonov which meant I never felt the narrative’s excitement or sexiness, nor believed the narrative’s contrivances, wonderful though Mcardle and the women were.
And just this May, Dead Centre brought Chekhov’s First Play to Bristol, which uses the unfinished manuscript as a springboard to make damning, vital and biting observations (in only about 70 minutes, no less) about what we bring to the theatre and what theatre gives back to us, and much else besides. It was one of this year’s best pieces of theatre. Shame you can’t see it. Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah (though in all sincerity, did anyone see Chekhov’s First Play in Bristol, Ireland or internationally, and if so do you share my immense admiration for it?).
I’ve been agnostic about Olivia Vinall in the past, but she comes out of this trilogy a conquering hero. Her three performances are three separate triumphs, and to see her evoke three separate types of hurt and loneliness one day is really something.
There’s an awful lot to admire in the trilogy, not least the actors who tick off all three, and the very convincing literary claim that Chekhov’s early plays are early masterpieces. Perhaps I was a bit put off by rather bad seats in Chichester, or a bad memory since last November, or a bad The Seagull wrapping up an otherwise very good day. I’d absolutely recommend these. I just wish that the eleven hour extravaganza had the bravado of an arrogant young student, or the reckless ambition of a playwright thinking he was finished. According to the programme and press material, one reason for these revivals was to prove that young Chekhov’s writing deserves the same literary attention, appreciation and criticism as the Chekhov of those final three masterpieces. As someone who studied Chekhov, my answer is “Well, duh”. As a theatregoer, I think Kent and Hare absolutely make that literary claim, but I think that in doing so they fail to make that theatrical claim, sacrificing some theatrical daring and, more damningly, some theatrical vivacity for the sake of well-made well-done well-intentioned intellectual points. Platonov is an eight hour risk, Ivanov is a haunting depiction of depression, and The Seagull is a theatrical cry to rally forwards; here Platonov was a very good but very safe well-made-play, Ivanov was a very good haunting depiction of depression, and The Seagull was a bit of a botch job. What makes all Chekhov genius is his lifelong subtle innovation and his huge humanistic heart; what makes Young Chekhov exciting is that those elements were filtered through his early satiric eye and a lack of inhibitions from the follies of youth. Sadly Hare and Kent turn Young Chekhov into 156-Year-Old Chekhov, Platonov now the contemporary of The Moderate Soprano. As such, whilst it’s an entertaining, moving eleven hours of theatre (or eight hours, followed by The Seagull), it doesn’t zing with the passion or the identity that something as theatrically intense, individual and focused as, say, Icke’s Vanya, or Herrin’s Vanya, or Mitchell’s Cherry Orchard, or those other aforementioned Chekhov triumphs. Those were theatrical. This was intellectual. There’s the rub. Much to admire, much to move, much to like, but oh how I wish it had risk, provocation, impoliteness, youth. That would have pushed this from “Very Good But Not Unproblematic” to “Essential Intellectually, Essential Emotionally”. That might be less true to Old Hare, but that would be much much truer to Young Chekhov.
Still, four stars! Four over-polite and over-intellectual stars, but four well-acted well-deserved stars nonetheless! Bugbears are more to write than praise. I’m an arse sometimes. Well done to all concerned.
Quick intellectual addendum: if this really wanted to get to grips with Young Chekhov, it would feature The Wood Demon, his third play and great anomaly. I always wish that someone would eventually try and find the merit in it: the only Chekhov I’m yet to see and the only bad play Chekhov wrote, and it’s BAAAAAAAAAD... It’s the slapstick Uncle Vanya down to Vanya’s slapstick suicide, complete with act three’s property talk intact – and as well as having too many characters, being too morally black and white and obvious, making Vanya a figure of fun and then actually having Vanya shoot himself only for everyone to move on immediately (spoiler), the jokes just aren’t funny. I say all this believing it to be terrible literature, but possibly an edit, or an ironic touch, or a sensitive touch may find the good in it. Had Hare and Kent tried this, they may have made it funny or humanistic or half-decent, and THAT would prove something theatrical and new about Young Chekhov. Regardless, I know Trevor Nunn once wanted to do it, and whilst he’s a variable director I’d love to know what he finds exciting in it. Given her teenage bastardisations of the great man’s great work, for once I think Anya Reiss would do a good job with this lesser effort. I think I say this every time I see any Chekhov. In fact, has anyone seen any production of The Wood Demon, and is it as bad as I fear?
P.S. Former Ivanov Sam West recently narrated a wonderful podcast called Borders: An Odyssey, which is possibly the best piece of new literature I’ve encountered all year: a sprawling Sebaldian epic retelling of refuge which is sweet in its classicism, comprehensive in its scope and vital in its political modernity – do hunt it down, brilliant stuff. Also West was just behind me at The Flick and has a lovely belly laugh, clearly enjoyed that.
P.P.S. Incidentally, I like Joshua James a lot – here his Konstantin was a sensitive soul, Here We Go was a mini-masterpiece, his Ferdinand in The Tempest was very touching, and in particular Fathers and Sons with Seth Numrich was a tour-de-force double act between those two rising stars pushing each other on to greater levels of greatness (once again, Friel’s a genius) – but he was in the audience of Kings of War at the Barbican and didn’t say thank you when I held the loo door open for him so now he’s dead to me. Hot showbiz gossip, that.
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Post by Nicholas on Sept 1, 2016 18:58:12 GMT
I’ve always loved theatre as storytelling (to misquote Mark). Given the connection between person and person that comes only from the stage, it’s surprising that so few shows appeal to that very base need we have to hear stories, but from The Weir to The Testament of Mary to Richard III there’s a strange frisson in the air when actors simply tell stories to each other and let us eavesdrop (two of those three are Irish; this is Irish; I wonder if there's a link, another debate/racial stereotype for another day). Theatre is also, abstractly, a discursive medium; theatremakers who actively deploy the second person are a rare breed, but being willing to subtly break the fourth wall and turn us into confidents is a risk worth taking when the script so implicates the audience. Friel’s script is (as many of his language-loving scripts are) theatre as storytelling. Turner’s production, then, is theatre as the second person. Together...
If Turner does something remarkable in her direction, it’s to require her actors to charge right at us audience. This was not a series of monologues, it was a series of desperate, one-sided conversation pieces, duologues with us as very quiet second characters as this second-person spiel poured out of our protagonists. It was a piece of eye-contact, of questioning, of “I’ll tell you...”, of friendliness – not of the insularity of many monologues. Given that the piece requires the audience to do their homework, take away from the stories what they will and piece together whatever truth there is, it was wonderful to place us, where? On a jury bench? As a friendly ear? A conscience as in a soliloquy? Whatever, it was more than a fly on the wall, and that was Turner’s brilliant shift, to push the personability of the monologues to the fore, slightly force us to lean forwards, and very much force her cast to give their all in a desperate act of needing a connection, despite the isolation of the monologistic script.
And I’d like to agree with Billington, naturally. The play has a mystery about why something amazes us, why a man telling us something is true is inherently believable. Does greater connectivity help with it? Yes, but there’s something about the play itself that I don’t think we’ll ever get to the heart of, something indescribable about it that makes it just work.
Naturally, a wonderful cast. McKee’s broken nature was so beautifully underplayed she made a truly pitiable figure I won’t forget in a hurry (she's always a favourite, and Bake Off's Kate reminds me rather of her). Ron Cook’s one of the finest stage actors, and it’s a part which requires that Shakespearean sensitivity and that Pinter-esque masculinity which he can do like no-one – every time he acts it’s a masterclass, but THIS is a masterclass. And now I’d like to ask, why the earlier criticism of Dillane? Is it simply he hadn’t learnt it all in previews? In its last week he was clear as a bell, laid back as needs must and forgot not one single word. He was a shabby, skeletal, self-deluding fool, something in his eyes telling us he was telling his story to convince himself as much as to convince us. Of all the broken characters, it was the fact that he seemed the least willing to acknowledge his cracks that he felt the most damaged yet the most dangerous of them all. Plus he had the intelligence not to follow through with this...
Two or three years ago, English Touring Theatre staged Translations. It was a very slow production, very languorous and laid-back, lulling you like a lullaby into listening. That sounds like bad, boring theatre, but what James Grieve’s direction did was make Friel’s use of language the star of the show; it was a community built through its language in a play about said language, and to let each line echo literally made its meaning echo in our minds. Friel’s language was the driving force behind pace, character, behind all the world of Ballybeg. Friel’s language being what it is, subtlety and clear-speaking was Grieve’s masterstroke, as it seems Ballybeg is a world of words, and once we’ve found our way in through clarity and precision, what a world Ballybeg is! As with Translations, Faith Healer is about Ballybeg, the power of words and the power of performance. Turner does something very similar to Grieve with her cast – take it slow, take it direct to the audience, make us listen, make us care. And for me, because of that, this is really something, an absolute redemption for the piss-poor Hamlet direction, a wonderful reminder of the talent we recently lost, and straight up there with The Flick and The Encounter as one of the absolute hits of the year.
Brian Friel was a genius.
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Post by Nicholas on Sept 1, 2016 18:54:19 GMT
Saw this in its final week, and thank goodness I managed to squeeze it in. What a production, just what a production. A delight, with the depths of this iconic show honoured. Such a lovely watch, such a wonderful production.
The thrill of an actor’s life, the restlessness of the river, the inevitable passage and changes of time; because those are the predominant senses when watching this beautiful production, the fact that this is one of the deepest musicals in London almost passes you by. Almost. The wonder of Evans’ production is that Evans’ sense of musicality gives this a lightness, a simplicity, a watchable-ness that belies its reputation as a piece of history, and puts character over context – this isn’t to say the historical context is in any way sidelined, as in fact the reality of the book’s look at race and sex is far more interesting when the characters in the middle of the fractious time come first. The simple, streamlined set gives such a streamlined sense of time and place which works a charm, and with time and place effortlessly established the transgression of the script is good to go, Evans' primary innovation being to bring the women wholly upstage and make this all about them, hardly at all about the Gaylords of the world. By putting the women first and foremost, it manages to say as much about society’s treatment of gender at the fin de siècle as it does about society’s treatment of race. It’s so elegant that it’s so easy to watch, and that makes it so powerful.
The ideas of the strength of these women in a much weaker time, and the racism so accepted it’s terrifyingly everyday and almost mundane, surprise and shock, respectively. As Evans directors, this is still relevant as emotional entertainment, as opposed to merely musical significance. It’s nice that Evans has the confidence in his audience to work this out for themselves. It snaps along – as does life, as does showbiz – so, more strikingly than hammering home the point, the casual nature of these attitudes comes across so terrifyingly with hindsight. Having said that, some moments were depressingly, unforgivably modern – a bit like Les Blancs, lines that should be dated weren’t, and like Les Blancs they were given fair prominence and had time taken to shock us not just in their content but in their modernity. Evans brings out the best of Hammerstein’s book, but he does so with such subtlety and musicality that all I thought when watching was “Blimey, I’d forgotten how many great songs are in this show”.
Enough has been said about what a uniformly wonderful cast it is, but let’s just repeat it. Dramatically, the characters are fleshed out with sensitivity and understanding. Musically, blimey they can’t half belt! Uniformly, what a wonderful cast.
Show Boat may occupy such a serious slot in musical theatre history, but this production was full of lightness and life. Evans does wonders through simplicity and wonderful casting. This production did justice to the great depths of this great musical, but it equally did justice to its theatricality and musicality. It was just a glorious watch, just glorious, absolutely glorious. It sits somewhere alongside She Stoops and Nell Gwynn as one of those shows I'll turn to when I'm low on Vitamin D, which is not to say it undersold the poor treatment of race and women, but it over-emphasised the togetherness, warmth and humanity. I suppose what I'm saying is there's a Gaylord in us all.
And let’s start calling her Dame Rebecca Trehearn, shall we?
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Post by Nicholas on Aug 30, 2016 4:31:19 GMT
If Harry Potter is a fairytale, The Cursed Child is its Into The Woods.
In Boyhood, Mason Jr visits the launch of Half Blood Prince when he’s 9. Not only was it a moment so many of my (in fact, many) generation(s) can recognise, but for Linklater’s tale of time passing it’s a canny comparison – we watch Mason grow up in the same way Mason watches Harry grow up, in the same way we all saw Harry grow. Latecomer mentioned reading them to her children – she’s certainly not alone there, that’s how my brother and I were read the novels too! With Harry Potter saga, Rowling (more visually in the movies, but nevertheless very much so still in the novels) took her characters on a similar track to Linklater – the reason this was the series no-one gave up on was because the characters aged before our eyes, alongside us, covering seven years of teenage life as opposed to merely seven fantastical adventures (the adventures didn’t hurt, mind, but we came for the adventure and stayed for the puberty). And so it goes on. The Cursed Child is to The Deathly Hallows what The Deathly Hallows was to The Philosopher’s Stone – the same story, only adjusted for age, à la Boyhood. Returning to these characters ten years/nineteen years later, The Cursed Child is a surprisingly adult, continuingly dark saga. It’s a sensitive, comprehensive and even psychological reunion with our fictional friends, and reappraisal of what came before; this is why The Cursed Child is a beautiful piece of theatre, and the perfect continuation/conclusion of the novels.
“All was well”. Thus ends Cinderella, and Rapunzel, and Jack and the Beanstalk, yet such drama and insight and humanity is found when looking at what a ‘happy ending’ is when morality is grey where it seemed black and white, where difficult journeys cannot have simple ends, and where everyone ends up happy, though happily ever after remains to be seen. And so to Into the Woods, a profound and poignant putting away childish things and becoming a man, and a serious study of how happy endings are merely happy intermediate-conclusions. And what do we learn from Sondheim’s great work? Witches can be right, giants can be good. Careful the things you say, children will listen. And, of course, no-one is alone.
“All was well” – well, another story ends that way too. My primary emotion going into The Cursed Child was – as it seems to have been for a lot of you (been away, only just catching up on two months of theatreboard, wish me luck!) – fear. Seven books, eight films, we had our happy ending. Wasn’t that that? Drama doesn’t come from people being ‘well’, but quite the opposite; was Rowling going to go back on her word, to force drama where none need occur, to undermine those three simple words? No, what Rowling has done (the Thorney script is indisputably Rowling’s story) is to cannily create an addendum to that. This adventure (a very fun, very exciting adventure) is window dressing an exploration of the reality of living a fantasy life, a chance to look at the consequences of childhood playtime. Albus’ story is about wanting better from the past and more from the future, of having expectations that can never be met, and wanting simply a good relationship with your parents. Harry’s story is about what happens when heroes grow up, when you can’t be Peter Pan and have to be Peter Llewelyn-Davies (what a subject for a play, eh?). Going back to Hogwarts rather suggests notions of romanticism and nostalgia or perhaps that Welsh idea of hiraeth. Going back to Godrick’s Hollow takes us to reality, regret, trauma. Between these two extremes sits The Cursed Child.
The Harry of The Cursed Child is a lovely grown-up. Firstly, he’s clearly the Harry of seven other books, grown more normal with time. Mostly, though, it’s the way he has to be normal that makes him special. That last line, “All was well”, was a significant choice of words. “Well” is not “happy”; “well” is not “wrapped-up”; “well” is, well, “well”, content at best. And how could a life like Harry’s – from abused child to child star to child soldier – be happy or wrapped-up, given all he went through? To not just age up our hero, but to turn him into a worry-wart with nightmares of wetting himself and doubts of his worth as a father, well, it’s takes Harry down many many pegs after seven novels of eulogizing, down to the uncomfortable levels of you or I. It’s a great decision to see the abuse of the Dursleys as abuse, not the children’s lit cliché of orphan life being great. It’s a greater decision to see Harry genuinely struggle with many types of survivor guilt, and show Harry knowing that the pain in his head is not some external, expeliarmus-able antagonist, but his own invincible inner life. It’s the greatest decision to then have adult Harry struggling with something so ordinary as fatherhood. Where Rowling could have contrived some unnecessary adventure to bring Harry back, it’s better that his great conflict now is not noseless nemeses but simply the question of how to say to your child in the night that nothing’s all black but nothing’s all white, how do you say it will all be all right when you know that it might not be true? Draco’s worth bracketing in here too, actually – how wonderful to make the tertiary protagonist the former tertiary antagonist, making a hero of him by merely domesticating him. Witches can be good, Malfoys can be good. Possibly the most affecting moment was his simple admission that all he wanted in life was to be happy – it’s a line of therapeutic self-knowledge which truly breaks your heart. Draco and Harry’s begrudging but well-earned friendship is a lovely mirror to the easy and loving relationship of their sons.
Incidentally, Jamie Parker IS Harry – little things in how he walks out, holds himself, has his hair – it just is Harry. His demeanour, laid-back but lost in his past, IS Harry. Parker’s wonderful; always is, always will be, absolutely is here.
We’ll return to Harry in a second, for now let’s turn to future slash-fiction stars Albus and Scorpius. Thorne had a very hard task on his hands – write a Harry Potter play where Harry’s a bit of a bore, and our heroes instead are rank strangers and have six hours to endear themselves to us as Harry had over a decade to do – and yet, lo and behold, if Scorpius particularly isn’t a fan favourite there’s no justice in the world, and both are wonderful protagonists to bring us back to the Wizarding World. Even from the off, there’s something moving about a Malfoy and a Potter bonding at all, let alone so strongly (perhaps their characters work well because they’re new after a decade, not despite, given the baggage we’ve brought to them – again, the idea of hatchet-burying and the ridiculousness of grudges is there through this friendship), but both are wonderfully realised as new people, new characters, new friends. In part, that’s because of the spectacularly, unapologetically uncool performances by Sam Clemmett and Anthony Boyle, making these characters whose nerdy charisma instantly attracts us audience (someone, I think Sebastian Faulks, once said that an author can instantly get a reader on/offside by making his characters readers or not, as readers ourselves it’s an instant link – Scorpius in particular being an intellectually successful and intellectually happy purveyor of nerd culture makes him an instant hero). Much as I’m banging on about the substance of the play being a fascinatingly revisionist take on the Potter legacy, the real reason it works is plain and simple – these two new characters are great, we love them, and we enjoy their adventure.
Through this friendship (lovely in writing, beautiful in their performances), Thorne and Rowling are true to much/most of what we loved about Harry Potter in the early days. Albus and Scorpius are troublemakers, they’re intellectuals, they’re scamps, they’re wits. Having our cake and eating it, we do get an adventure amidst the highfalutin human touches, and that’s through these two and Thorne. There is genuine jeopardy in a way never quite felt in books 1-6 – here, Harry could die in any duel at this stage in his life/narrative, as frankly could the children too. There’s also still the fun we had during the early books, of japes and adventures with Albus and Scorpius. Contrarian/easily-pleased, I felt that Delphi became a rather impressive villain as the piece built up, her villainy unexpected, and the fourth act thwarting her was edge-of-your-seat stuff. But in act four, literally returning to the past and the most awful moment in Harry’s life, adventure takes a back seat as contemplation and family comes forwards. Worse than Delphi is self-doubt, fear, guilt, and shame; with the adventure taking us into the past, so too Thorne looks back on Harry’s awful childhood and doubtful future, and Albus’ living with this legacy and wanting something more. In the church, where the father/son narrative meets, Rowling and Thorne move this to moving territory about moving forwards, making it maybe the most important chapter in the saga.
Time travel, and the Constellations-y multiverse exploration, is the only way Rowling can both indulge our adventurous inner children and explore the ‘well’ adult world. As utilised here, it’s a wonderful narrative work. It’s not, in fact, fanfic, nor ‘terminator territory’ (nor the subculture of Harry/Terminator fanfic which apparently exists, oh brave new world that has such people in it). Admittedly, though, the peculiarities of all time travel narratives still hold – i.e. quelle coincidence that in every permutation of reality Scorpius was Scorpius born same time same place same upbringing same conception one assumes – but why split hairs? It’s the perfect way to continue this contemplation of the past, to literally visit regrets and traumas. Before we reach the church and those deaths, The Cursed Child has taken some stunning steps. There’s a real narrative audacity in not just killing off Harry but changing the entire ending therein; there’s a narrative audacity in bringing back someone like Snape, whose death had such significance; there’s a narrative significance in taking a story so set in stone and stomping over its canon to make a point. None of these audacities would work without a certain weight to how they’re dealt with; some of that is wrapped up in act four, but much is raised along the way. Bringing Snape back doesn’t feel like a tokenistic fan-favourite cameo, but quite the painful opposite – a reminder of the reality and finality of his death, and an acceptance of a greater good (and gosh, what a moving line Snape's is about Albus bearing his name, getting teary now). Brining Hagrid back, I felt, brought his story to a circle – as Hagrid held Harry, I thought of Harry hugging Hagrid after the Battle of Hogwarts, and the endurance of the relationship brought a tear to my eye. As for actually going so far as to kill off Harry: that felt not only sacrilegiously shocking, but tantamount to killing off George Bailey, and that movie touched upon some rather serious themes too.
And after all this, getting into Godrick’s Hollow’s church and causing the Potter’s deaths... After three acts which a) say very clearly that death is bad, that even fictional wars have unnecessary victims, and it is good and right to try and save lives, and b) say very clearly that one always must put others first, this is a moment that goes to the heart of Harry Potter and Harry Potter, and devastates our emotions as it does so. We’ve seen Snape acknowledge that his life is sacrifice worth making and make it twice, we’ve seen Hermione and Ron suffer and die for a better, alternate world; we’ve seen Scorpius squander some happiness for him for more happiness for all; those are nothing compared to this (especially with that sparse stage, watching Harry watch Voldemort is horrible). Watching Harry become a tantamount-accessory to his parent’s murder, and make a sacrifice with the bed-wetting self-doubting bad-parenting unheroic consequences...
So, a word on the final few moments, the Albus/Harry dialogue. It’s imperfect, it’s unhappy, it’s full of shame and regret and denial. But how human! After everything we’ve seen, the act of trying to be a family, the act of accepting the world at its worst, the act of simply going on – even after seven books of adventure and six hours of time travel, this is real heroism. Now we have put down childish things, just living in an imperfect world with imperfect families and imperfect lives is the real victory. Adulthood, fame, guilt, work. Childhood, parenthood, family. Narratively, the adventure we watch is one big 360 degree turn around. Thematically, however, this ending is a human addendum to The Deathly Hallows’s happy ending – explaining what true heroism is, and what living "well" has to mean.
Enough time has passed in the real world to now treat the Harry Potter phenomenon with a pinch of salt and degree of scepticism (whilst still un-hypocritically enjoying it wholly, of course). The dual narrative of The Cursed Child does this for us, Rowling becoming her own Bettleheim and Thorne her respective Sondheim. It’s a wonderful work of theatre, and whilst some lines are clearly Rowling’s own, all credit for the theatrical strength of this goes to Thorne. I still think the basic adventure Scorpius and Albus go on is fun enough in and of itself, but the life adult Harry leads is that not of Peter Pan or Paddington Bear, but of you or I; in taking us down this narrative path – of paperwork and bills and getting parenting wrong – Rowling has not butchered her happy ending, but broadened it, domesticated it, humanised it.
The funny thing is, thus far I’ve written predominantly about the play, about the narrative, about the script. I’ve read the script since, natch, and I think it works wonderfully as a book (not least some very evocative stage directions, Thorne writes so readably) and I hope non-theatre-going-readers will get this much out of the story and dialogue alone. As a piece of theatre, though, WOW, and yet what discipline. I’ve said before that my favourite moment of His Dark Materials was not witches flying or bears fighting, but of the puppeteer removing his mask and Samuel Barnett becoming death. I don’t think I’m alone in saying my favourite piece of staging here was the moving staircases, a moment without light and magic but basic staging. Tiffany’s staging does have more WOW moments than perhaps anything I’ve seen, more “How did that happen?” conversations afterwards, but what’s wonderful is that they’re narratively led, Tiffany putting meretricious show-offery to one side unless it’s needed – and blimey, many moments, particularly the dementors, and PARTICULARLY disappearing into that phonebox, simply had to be actual factual magic to happen. One has to respect Tiffany for not overdoing this, for not turning it into merely a magic show. As I say, the WOW moments were plentiful and amazing, but they were very, very sensitively employed.
And I just realised how much I’m underselling the staging. Blimey, there were moments and a half. Really, truly, WOW WOW WOW.
And on the stage side of things, Noma Dumezweni is as much Hermione as Jamie is Harry. She has a cheek and a sarcasm which ages the character nicely, and Dumezweni always has a natural, fierce, magical intelligence – she’s naturally Hermione. Similarly Thornley has Ron’s gangly awkwardness even when fighting a rebellion, and Alex Price feels very much like (hello to) Jason Isaacs in how he does Draco. Poppy Miller is also absolutely wonderful as Ginny – slightly fleshing out that character works wonders, given how poorly the movies sidelined her and how the books never offered us the bogstandard scenes of togetherness where Harry and Ginny’s attraction could grow (her little speech about exploding snap – for all that the staging was magical, it really was the little things that made this special).
Oh, and the fact that someone in the canon finally used FLIIIIIIIIIIPENDO! is the best bloody part of this all.
Without being too portentous about this family-friendly franchise, there was something special about the way Rowling aged the series, taking Harry from precocious child hero to a true young adult. Harry Potter may have begun with the twinkly child-friendly chimes of John Williams, but it ended with the abattoir blues of Nick Cave (fab music here, BTW, hopefully Heap will release a CD soon). If The Deathly Hallows is a Nick Cave murder ballad, The Cursed Child is a Stephen Sondheim melancholic one: a little more sad, a little more contemplative, and far more narratively significant. The Cursed Child is the most ‘real’ of all the Potter stories, the most empathetic, the most emotional. It’s a piece about consequences and regret; one which says that (even after seven books of heroism) we don’t live in the best possible world, where heroes lose, where good people and dear friends die, and all we can do in response is cope; perhaps we can cope together. It’s a piece with the simple message that life always must go on and will go on, and what makes life going on worthwhile is family and friends, not magic and mischief; life with some love and some contentment is as good as life can be. Saying it in such a blatant, dark way through Harry Potter has a resonance that actually can’t be understated. Saying all this through characters we love, and characters we felt we fought with, has a real pertinence, a real relatability, a real poignancy that actually can’t be understated. The final moments of this piece are, frankly, the best of the whole series. The fourth act of The Cursed Child is everything wonderful about Potter, and the final scene of The Cursed Child is everything wonderful about Potter distilled into one moment of tear-jerking plain-speaking moralistic humanity. It’s Harry as our contemporary, our friend, our equal. It’s plain. It’s honest, real, relatable. Which is weird when we’re talking about a play which ends with our time-travelling heroes shooting fire at a bird girl. It’s the perfect eighth chapter. With all the compromises and caveats this contains, all is still well.
Plus my friend said that were I blonde I’d look like Scorpius, so I’ve been walking on air since.
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Post by Nicholas on Jul 16, 2016 12:36:04 GMT
Next Saturday, can't wait! Next Saturday as in today (bit late to the game here)? Me too! If you see me, say hello - I'll be in the stalls row P, probably wearing some kind of blue jumper (or just a light blue shirt, if it stays this hot), black trousers, and brown bag (heaven knows what Parsley would make of my fashion sense), brown hair, probably will also be bumming about by the box office/free water before/after the show. If you're busy then obviously that's fine, but if you've got a sec be lovely to put another face to another name on here!
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Post by Nicholas on Jul 16, 2016 3:50:59 GMT
Did anyone see Simon Stone’s The Wild Duck at the Barbican in 2014 (I know the answer’s yes, I remember it being (rightly) very well received on here), and has anyone seen this, his movie adaptation? It only just arrived at my local cinema, caught it a couple of days ago. 2014’s The Wild Duck felt to me like a very domesticated, down to earth, down under take on Ibsen’s highfalutin masterpiece, and thus a humane, human, devastating piece about consequences, with the subtle naturalism of Stanlislavsky but the unstoppable tragic inevitability of Sophocles; The Daughter is exactly that on celluloid, and almost as good. Stone proves a natural with and master of the camera – with a still observational approach, really canny overlapping editing, and occasional handheld Dogme diversions, Stone has this unfolding (as he did on stage) with effortless naturalism (not some faux-documentary style, just invisible unobtrusive observation and a real sense of catching these characters uninhibited, as they felt at the Barbican in that set) – it helps that Stone’s ear for naturalistic dialogue is so on the ball, so – as with on stage – the dialogue just flows (indeed, there’s almost something Mike Leigh-y to some scenes in this movie). It’s well interspersed with shots of nature, shots of communities, shots of life going on, which I think is Stone’s way of cinematising his roughly reflexive glass box from the Barbican: to show this not as high drama on a high stage but implicating you and me as bystanders, domesticating it, and showing how high drama happens not on a high stage but high drama happens in its own little world whilst life goes on around it. That much is beautifully done.
{Spoiler - click to view} I had qualms about the ending, not because he rewrote the Ibsen (I believe he did that at the Barbican anyway, not an Ibsen I know well) but because of how he rewrote the Ibsen – Hedvig’s suicide is built up to with musical cues and melodrama which the film’s thus far eschewed, then Stone replaces the honest, quiet, devastating ending from the Barbican with something that at best approaches arthouse uncertainty and at worst apes Hollywood sentimentality. It works, but I preferred the tragic follow-through and familial honesty with which the final scene was played at the Barbican.
Beyond that, very much recommended, not least a hitherto unmentioned stunning cast (no-one from the Barbican, unless the duck was recast) – Geoffrey Rush vile as only he can be (why hasn’t he been on the London stage?), Sam Neill sad as only he can be, Mark Brendanawicz surprisingly moving, and Odessa Young a name to remember in the future. I’ll be really excited to see what Stone cinematically does next – the movie was a very strong mood-piece, his writing’s effortlessly natural and cinematic, and he’s clearly very intelligent in how he puts tab A into slot B. I’m sure this will be on DVD soon, well worth catching, whether you saw and liked it at the Barbican or not.
P.S. Thinking about it, alongside this, the two best films I’ve seen so far this year have both been debut efforts – The Witch and Son of Saul. Probably just fortunate release schedules, but really exciting to see burgeoning talents granted wide exposure for their first works when they’re this good. Incidentally, while I’m waffling about cinema, as theatregoers you should see both those movies as well: the Arthur Miller aping in The Witch makes it very fun for a theatregoer, akin to The Crucible meets The Thing, with a fantastically witty, fantastically scary way of saying something rather religiously and politically important (if my interpretation is correct, which of course it is); Son of Saul is just devastating.
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Post by Nicholas on Jul 16, 2016 3:42:45 GMT
Forgot to write about this (been distracted by Brexit and Wimbledon, been a strange few weeks for a few reasons) but the news that this may be transferring justifies my egotistical need to share my thoughts.
You’d think that, Ross being unfortunately programmed almost alongside Lawrence After Arabia, watching it would be a strange experience of deja vu. It is, but not because of that – Fiennes holds himself the equal(ish) to Laskey (who I thought was tremendous in a mediocre script, though the more I’ve thought about Lawrence After Arabia the more I like it) and the two works occupy their two worlds. The more unfortunate timing coincidence is the play’s premiere in 1960 and the movie’s premiere in 1962 – after fifty years of praise for that masterpiece of a movie, Rattigan’s play struggles to find a need to be revived, sadly. There is stuff to admire in the production, and it’s an interesting footnote of a play, but it’s a bit of a damp squib, ultimately, partly down to Rattigan’s lack of skill at a biographer, and mostly down to Lawrence's legacy living on most prominently elsewhere.
To be oversimplistic, Rattigan writes about Rattiganesque characters – repressed, quiet, introverted, uncertain, homosexual or tacitly homosexual. Lawrence should be all these things – indeed, aside from not being upfront about his homosexuality, he is. And at moments, Lawrence becomes a cousin to Hester Collyer or Crocker-Harris or Major Pollock – these are mostly the moments where Lawrence is Ross, hiding himself, struggling to refrain from being himself yet desperate not to be himself. There’s a wonderful Rattigan play about this moment in Lawrence’s life alone, and an irritatingly promising hint at the exposition-free play this could have been (and would have been had the movie come out first, one assumes). The issue is less that Lawrence isn’t such a Rattiganesque man (the Ross scenes work well in that Ratty way), but that Lawrence’s life is more about the events than emotion, the outer not the inner life. And so, just as the play sets up an interesting conflict of Lawrence both becoming a legend and trying to shed his fame, Rattigan flashes back to Arabia, scraps the Ross character conflict, and just tells a biography of a man in the war. Imagine if half way through The Deep Blue Sea Helen McCrory packed up her bags and not just join the territorial army, but talk about joining it, endlessly. Because there are so many events in the life of Lawrence, there is so much exposition in this play about him, and exposition trumps repression, quietness, introversion, uncertainty and homosexuality, and eventually the play stops being about the character conflict and starts being about character plot, plot and nothing but plot. Lawrence as a Rattiganesque character does not correlate with Lawrence the military man, and where the Ross scenes are character scenes about his inner life, the bulk of Ross is Lawrence in Arabia. Rattigan tells the story in a way that a) doesn’t suit his insular style and b) was done better by Bolt.
You see, the sad, simple and should-be-irrelevant but must-be-mentioned truth of the matter is that this 1960 play has since been wholly eclipsed by 1962’s Lawrence of Arabia – not just Lean’s movie, but Robert Bolt’s study of TE Lawrence as a repressed, quiet, introverted uncertain homosexual. For all that we remember the film for David Lean’s vision, for Maurice Jarre’s iconic score, for Nic Roeg and Freddy Young’s stunning series of set-pieces, and for Peter O’Toole’s eyes, it’s as much a masterpiece for Robert Bolt’s script, a script which would probably make for a better stage play than Rattigan’s Ross. In A Man for All Seasons Bolt wrote a focused and clear study of identity, will, self-belief and the difficulties thereof; in Lawrence of Arabia he wrote the same but with better scenery and more camels. Where Rattigan has to detail the major events – the plans, the raids, Arabia itself – one shot in a movie does this for Bolt. Where Rattigan has to have Lawrence explain his sexual uncertainty, his manic privacy, his horror at warfare, Bolt leaves it to some well-placed questions and O’Toole’s eyes, and says more about introversion with less dialogue than Rattigan can say when filling a theatre. Where Rattigan has to suggest or discuss the madness and brutality of war, Bolt can sit back, let Lean do the heavy lifting, then pick up where Lean left off. Bolt's character, as such, is a more convincing introverted, repressed homosexual Rattigan usually writes, but with none of the over-expository biography Rattigan has to write. Much as the best scene in Lean/Bolt’s Doctor Zhivago is the scene of Omar Shariff taking in the horror of the Cossack attack through his eyes, Bolt’s show-don’t-tell attitude to acts of warfare allows for a more compellingly introverted tale of an introvert that Rattigan can’t tell, and paradoxically shouldn’t – why on earth would a repressed, secretive semi-spy be so explanatory in what he's doing and how he's feeling? So, to have either the real Lawrence or the Rattiganised Lawrence spill the beans is out of character. Now, this is why Brenton’s play ends up just having the upper hand – Brenton knows not to repeat an iconic film or now famous plot-points (apart from the Saint Joan mumbo-jumbo, he dealt with exposition just fine), whilst Rattigan’s play, coming before Bolt, now reads like a run-of-the-mill first draft to a history lesson that needs more introversion, more control, less telling and more showing.
Despite the play being a somewhat stilted character study, Joseph Fiennes was very good. Where Laskey played Lawrence by displaying years of age in his youthful little face, Fiennes has a faux over-confidence that suits this play well. He has that sense of doing the right thing but not knowing why it’s right, from his phoney salute to his lax leadership, and gives a compellingly uncertain performance. He’s very good, actually, he conveys youthful uncertainty developing into permanent self-doubt very affectingly. Peter Polycarpau, as always, was strong. Michael Feast was meant to play a middle eastern warlord, but when I saw it he was understudied by Alexander Meerkat. Or Feast was very hammy.
Both because the film’s since outshone it, and the play’s not much cop itself, Ross ends up as Lawrence of Arabia but with dialogue instead of set pieces, exposition instead of characterisation. It’s one time where the movie is the better medium, far more capable of show don’t tell, and even disregarding that Noble is no Lean, there’s a visual flatness to this too, a flatness which comes from this being, ultimately, a sub-par Rattigan with more plot than it’s worth. I’m being rather negative, truth be told I enjoyed it well enough (slightly less than Lawrence After Arabia), but it’s a funny one – Brenton turned Lawrence into a milquetoast Brentonesque politico and shuns the biography, but Rattigan doesn't quite turn Lawrence into any form of Rattiganesque self-doubter because the plot gets in the way, and all Ross ends up being is a moderately interesting, passably entertaining retelling of a biography told better elsewhere. If only the play had been written three years later, what an opportunity that would have been. Its dramatic raison d’etre seems to have been less to turn Lawrence into Major Pollock and more to tell Lawrence’s life to a large audience, and sadly along came Bolt and along came Lean, and as such the play’s sadly dated. Fiennes is very good, Rattigan less so, Noble less so too. A three stars perfectly good, perfectly entertaining piece of work, but with the caveat that – dare I say – the movie has a better script, and not everything is better in the theatre...
P.S. I’ve been to Chichester a few times now, but strangely never visited the cathedral. It’s lovely! And absolutely worth seeing for that wonderful tomb, of course.
P.P.S. Forget Rattigan, Bolt, forget Brenton. It’s Bennett who’s written best on Tee Hee Lawrence.
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Post by Nicholas on Jul 3, 2016 19:55:27 GMT
Well, thank god we're not kowtowing to an unelected minority anymore.
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Post by Nicholas on Jun 30, 2016 15:04:58 GMT
Oh, and this on the Tories.
A) We might have Gove as our PM. I truly believe Corbyn would convince more people than Gove. I truly believe a penis on a stick would win more votes than Gove. It’s a fact of life that leaders aren’t always elected, but there’s something terrifying about the options of unelected leaders I’m forced to bow down and take/bend over and take. If it's Gove, riot. Worry. Don't let it happen.
B) There’s something really rather underwhelming about the thought that our second female Prime Minister will make history through her position through THIS. Perhaps that’s good – gender shouldn’t be an important part of the political outlook, a good leader is a good leader, where's Liz when you need her – but it’s really weird to think something historical like that will happen by chance. That said, it might be a May vs Eagle election, and I think having women at the heads of both government and opposition is something relatively unprecedented globally. That is a step in the right direction, surely? History happening in an underwhelming way? Is it even historical? Hey ho.
C) Boris, Boris, Boris. His leaving is not answering our prayers, it’s delaying the inevitable, unless we make sure our memories are strong. As I said a while back, whoever takes over (which I predicted would not be Boris, he’s a canny one) will have to inherit the stink he’s caused, which he’s wisely farted over to Gove (who can’t win – my mother works in education and he was making it up as he went along, devaluing her profession and undermine its academic credibility, he knew nothing about it and characteristically undermined actual experts in lieu of his guesswork). When Boris runs in 2020, he’ll still stink. Don’t let him forget. He’s not running now because he didn’t believe in BRexit – he’s said enough pro-EU things on record to prove that – and wanted to move his career, not his country, forwards. His political career, focusing on ‘The Churchill Factor’, shows him as someone who wants to be remembered for speechifying and uniting a country, not fearmongering and untying its unity. By leaving now he’ll try and let the EU decision he regrets blow over, the BRexit he begrudges become someone else’s stink, then come in to fix the job. Never let him forget the stink. It must be his permanent albatross.
D) Austerity is in breach of international Human Rights. It's unbelievable and I still can't believe it, so it's worth re-iterating as often as possible. Left or right, Tory or Labour, Pro- or Anti-Austerity, something must be done against this. It’s really hard for me to believe my country, my democratic, fifth-largest-economy, Eton-educated royal throne of kings can be in breach of the Human Rights convention.
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Post by Nicholas on Jun 30, 2016 14:57:37 GMT
I accept the idea that Corbyn is a decent and principled person, but he has proven himself a spineless and ineffectual leader and needs to step aside for someone who is willing to tackle anti-Semitism and who is more able to unite the party than cause it to eat itself from the inside out until we have no viable opposition party. I joined the Labour party to vote for Corbyn as leader, and I hate that the party is so busy in-fighting that it would rather spend years arguing about and discrediting and no-confidencing its own leaders than doing its job, but it really needs to unite, now more than ever, and with Corbyn at the head, it's just not going to happen. Damn you, Baemax! Just spent an hour writing this (991 words and counting), then you say it in a paragraph. Well, thanks a lot for your conciseness and insight. Going to post this in a huff now. (By which I mean, nicely said, agree with you, to hell with your brevity though).
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a party led by a decent and principled person. I will fight for that. But are ALL other Labour MPs indecent and undisciplined? The issue is he’s not a leader. I think he should be a front-bench politician. I think he should be making his voice heard loudly and often. I just don’t think the place for him to make that voice heard is as leader.
Like Baemax, I’m a Labour member, and I voted Corbyn (second choice – voted for Liz Kendall first, 4%, should probably stop voting given my record). So, I was, to quote Harold Pinter in his open letter to Blair circa 1997, chuffed to my bollocks when he got in (I’d love to know what Pinter would have made of all this). Now... I still admire him as a politician, but the awful truth we have to face is, however much I can admire him as a person and a politician, he was not a leader during the referendum. For weeks I told everyone that he was playing the long game cannily, waiting as the Tories to turned it into an in-fight so he could swoop in and win it for its politics, not its infighting. Then... He didn’t. And that’s why I’m having to face hard truths about what my £3 is doing to politics, and why I’m thinking very carefully about who I can support in the next election. If his competitors are solely Blairite centrists, he’ll get my vote again, but if there’s a Kendall (slightly less left but equally pro-social equality and far more convincing politically), that’s where my vote’s going. Or I may well abstain.
I still believe that the right-wing press have gotten Corbyn wrong, as per his reputation. I still believe he’s electable to the majority of the public, I still believe he’s a necessary political force, I still admire him for his strong left stances, I still think he’s been given short shrift from press, I still think that if his cabinet supported him the country would – but none of that counteracts that seeing him in a leadership role has made me question his leadership. Even Gordon Brown (a better leader than he was ever allowed to be, and a more convincing politician away from the big role) was a leader during the two referenda, speechifying to the people, collaborating as necessary, face seen, points made. During this one, Corbyn was a back-bench politician at best. I heard more from four-per-cent-Liz-Kendall about staying in than I did from fifty-eight-per-cent-Jeremy-Corbyn.
Much like the EU referendum itself, we’re asked to sum up a hundred political stances into a yes/no, and my vote in the next Labour leadership debate will likely not go to Corbyn; but that’s not a betrayal of him nor me turning my back on him, I simply think that wherever he deserves to stand in the Labour cabinet, it’s not at the front. I think I may write to Labour and let them know it's not as simple as a stab in Corbyn's back, I still believe in him and want him to be a major part of the party, but when I choose a different leader it's due to his lack of leadership skills and that alone, and Labour needs his political ideology and positive forces. I’m a good navigator but I can’t drive, so my position in the car needs to be in the front seat, offering directions, whilst someone with the capacity to drives. That should be Corbyn’s job.
It’s easy to forget that when this now-war-criminal came in in 1997, Blair seemed a decent, principled, anti-establishment wunderkind. Things could only get better under him. Admittedly he was very centre-left, but still he brought youth, energy, anti-Major, anti-London, anti-Westminster fire to proceedings. 67-year-old-wunderkind Corbyn has done that too – but his inability to preach his politics broader than the converted, to stand up against the establishment, to unite people and party, his lack of leadership during his time of leadership is destroying the party I love. It’s turning people to Tim Farron (who’s held himself up as a more principled LEADER than Corbyn, merely a more principled person). What we need is not Angela Eagle, a Blairite, nor Corbyn, a man with problematic baggage and unleaderly stances. BRING BACK LIZ What we need is for some relative back-bencher (dare I say, a Jo Cox) to stand up, to bring a different energy, an equally staunch leftism but the leadership skills of a Blair, of a Wilson, of an Atlee. In a time where the Tories and their austerity is actually in breach of the UN’s human rights act, countering them should be easy. Corbyn can't, a Blairite shouldn't. Someone at the back needs to step forwards.
Incidentally, one school of thought says that’s Farron. Perhaps. Perhaps Labour voters should defect to the Lib Dems, just for the moment. Perhaps we need a Denmark-esque system of permanent coalitions between minority parties, collaborating to bring their political opinions to a compromise (at least, that’s how it seemed on Borgen). Perhaps Corbyn, as with Borgen’s Sidse Babbett Knudsenn, will start his own party, convince all his minority, take up a minor role in a majorly important government, then quit the show and make a movie about bondage and butterflies.
That’s it. We need Birgitte Nyborg. Bring back Borgen.
P.S. This petition is doing the rounds, and I think I can say this relatively apolitically – I’d urge all of you to sign it. It regards an independent office monitoring the legitimacy of political campaigns. I think we can all agree this referendum’s been a terrifying indictment of how mistruths can lead to results and it’s not melodramatic to say our very lives are at risk of people willing to fudge the facts to progress their careers. It’s neither left nor right, neither Leave nor Remain, I think something like this is necessary for any future referenda, and if you agree that this entire farrago (it’s not a farce – a farce is perfectly timed, impeccably prepared and ingeniously choreographed, where this is a fart) has been too untruthful, please please please please please sign. www.change.org/p/restore-truthful-politics-create-an-independent-office-to-monitor-political-campaigns?utm_source=action_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=609257&alert_id=NlfZbuulHI_4mnNUk0YkHneQ8HNfIHmlXc2pfzTeXnfD0y3%2Ft9uCeE%3D
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Post by Nicholas on Jun 30, 2016 2:55:47 GMT
If you don’t know, the London Gay Men’s Chorus version of Bridge Over Troubled Waters has been released as a charity single – a mere 99p, for a couple of good causes, stands against the horrors of what we saw, and brilliant to listen to to boot! Come for the great cause, stay for the great music.
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Post by Nicholas on Jun 26, 2016 22:28:44 GMT
If the vote had gone the other way it would have been like "end of story". Democracy cannot be applied a la carte. Either the majority wins or you have an elite which decides when to take democratic decisions into account, at which point you are no longer living in a democarcy. Actually, Steve's petition was started by a Leaver concerned about the vote going the other way. He’s been vocal about it – he believed Remain would win by a narrow margin so wanted a second referendum. Now Leave’s won by a narrow margin, his petition is our petition, and he sure as hell begrudges what his own petard is doing to him. I find that democratic. Incidentally, Farage said that a narrow Remain win would warrant a second referendum. 48/52. He’s been quiet about that. But this issue, this demand for a second referendum, is not anti-democracy. Let's go back two or three years, to the approaching 2015 election. Some years before, when I was at uni, my friend became very involved in our local food bank, something of which I’d been unforgivably oblivious. Seeing the number of people reliant on this go up, under Tory rule in the fifth largest economy, I was convinced that there was only one way to vote in 2015 – anti-austerity, anti-poverty, anti- this. Our country was starving, still is. After five years of an austerity that worsened the economy, crippled the poor and benefited the rich, who wouldn’t vote against that? As it turns out, enough people. As a loser, that made me angry, but as a loser, I lost. Now, there are issues with First-Past-The-Post (I still maintain Proportional Representation is the way forwards, Alternative Vote was a joke and they knew it) and their majority may be tiny, but in our democracy the Tories clearly won fair and square. Democracy. That’s that. Were there underhand tactics, press manipulation, and lies on either side? Duh. But fewer than now, more informed debate, more public truth-telling, and a clear victory. It was a fair election, fairly won, and we losers had to concede defeat. What we wouldn’t do was take a lie lying down: had the Tories said “We will prioritise the NHS” and then not (ahem), we’d be on the streets making sure this didn’t happen. We’d cross the bridge of lies when we came to it; on May 8th, we’d lost fairly. This too was won by a tiny mandate – if one in fifty Leavers voted Remain, we’d be in a different world (either way, the victory was too small to say “The public has spoken”, and how can anyone use a 50/50 split to judge a majority?). But the result came only two days ago and already the man who said “We’ll curb immigration” is maintaining levels of immigration (an issue that convinced well over 1 in 50 voters), all the people who stood behind that unambiguous £350,000,000 poster have redefined those terms like they redefined Child Poverty (an issue that convinced well over 1 in 50 voters), the economy has gone down sharper than promised (an issue that convinced well over 1 in 50 voters) and we’ll have to wait a few months in a leaderless country unsure what we’re doing, who’s doing it, under what terms and when (an issue that convinced well over 1 in 50 voters). As I say, voting Leave was not a mistake; voting Leave for these reasons WAS. This was not fairly lost by us Remainers, but unfairly won by the Leavers. There’s anger in the air. People were told to ignore experts, and lied to by those pied pipers. Those people deserve a second chance. If there’s a snap election, I do wonder how many Scotland-supporting NHS-loving cash-strapped Leavers would like the chance to show the lying Borises, Goves and Leave campaigners what’s for and turn to Remain, truth in their mind, new emotions in their heart. It’s not sour grapes for us losers; it’s sour grapes for the Pyrrhic victors who've lost it all. Lied-to Leavers deserve the chance for their voice to represent their views – not Gove’s lies, not Boris’ stink, not Farage’s racism, but their love of the NHS, their reasonable concerns with immigration, their economic dissatisfaction with the EU’s issues. We are now, as we speak, on a bridge of lies; on June 25th, we’ve lost unfairly. I’m not taking these lies lying down. P.S. Matthew, I’m no economist, and whilst the facts are readily available, I frankly barely understood your articles. Instead I trust experts to give me them in a way that speaks down to me. The single worst thing to come out of this farrago was Gove’s “I think we’ve had enough of experts”. Gove (Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, 2:1) has done more damage with that one line than anyone. He’s told us that your information is bogus, my emotions are political. Against that, there’s no counter-argument. That's terrifying. What an awful political world. P.P.S. Steve, Boris won’t be the next PM. Boris has lost by winning. He’s made promises about more than policy, promises about emotion, and already those are broken. As Dylan sang, "Everything Is Broken", and as Dylan sang on the same album, "We live in a political world/Wisdom is thrown in jail/It rots in a cell/Is misguided as hell/Leaving no-one to pick up a trail" (but then again, the album after, Dylan sang "Wiggle til you wiggle right out of here", so perhaps that’s enough Dylan/Brexit quotes). But whoever leads, we can’t forget the stink. Cameron’s gone because of Boris’ stink. His successor, be they Boris or be they nobody we know, inherits that stink. Whatever they say about Brexit, we have to reply with Boris. He can go, but don't forget him; never forget him. P.P.P.S. We have to get angry at the politicians who flat-out lied to procure a victory And the ones who had the power to change the outcome, but sat back and did nothing. Who are they, in your eyes? I ask out of genuine interest. My social circle is a socialist circle-jerk, and I find it pitifully myopic that people write articles in The Guardian, in the New Statesman, in the i100, then expect Mail, Sun and Express readers to take heart. If I wrote for the Guardian, I’d be embarrassed at how little I did to preach to the unconverted. Have you ever heard of Owen Jones, Laurie Penny, Polly Toynbee? Morons. These people need to know how little they’re doing, that their actual audience are theoretical houmus-eating champagne-socialists, whilst their target audience go reading rags that lie to them. Telling the middle class “The working class won this referendum, and they’ll lose the most from it” (as has been written, in the Grauniad) is such a backwards, nigh-on offensive way of dealing with the working class – turning them into a scapegoat, turning them into a theory, turning them into a ‘them’ – so nothing will change. That’s why there needs to be proper regulations, regulations which matter – at work someone had a Sun, and it was racist headlines and pretty pictures and emotional vitriol aimed at ‘the foreigner’, and the way to counter-act that isn’t to write a lengthy footnoted Comment Is Free in a left-wing rag’s online corner, but to take that Sun to task. P.P.P.P.S. Felt for a long time now democracy doesn't work. The people are stupid and don't deserve a vote. Don't get me wrong I would have fought for my vote and one hundred years ago I would have fought for female suffrage. I thought it great when black South Africans were able to vote, when France ousted the Nazi's in 1945, when Germany unified in 1989 and the wall came down etc etc etc. But mature democracies don't work. Give me a dictatorship anyday Of course, been waiting to post this clip for months now.
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Post by Nicholas on Jun 26, 2016 2:25:26 GMT
I feel angry. You should too. I hope I’m not ruining this wonderful reasoned debate, but I really need to get this off my chest, and if this ends up too long (of course), too angry, too one-sided, too vitriolic, I don’t apologise, actually, I feel that after the last three months this needs to be said (albeit by someone smarter, more articulate, more informed and more influential than I – I apologise for my lack of political nous, but not my lack of moderation in my anger). This is no longer a Brexit issue, it’s not a Leave or Remain issue. It’s an issue about how ugly the country’s politics, press and rhetoric have gotten, how insincere and untruthful it is, and how dangerous that is.
I voted Remain, but I spent weeks contemplating Leave, waiting until I was fully confident in my decision before going to the ballot box. Had we left because, as Theatremonkey states, the EU is no longer a simple system of trading partners and hopefully we’ll return to the EEC, great! Had we left because, as Matthew states, so much of EU policy is common sense we can implement outside, great! Had we left because, as Steve’s dentist states, EU regulations place sometimes ludicrous limitations on sometimes reasonable technology and developments, great!
But did we? We’ve left because Boris wanted to lose but write on his Prime Ministerial CV: “Good enough public speaker to almost win an unwinnable campaign”. We’ve left because Cameron wanted to keep the coalition going, over-won that bet, then proved so hateful a figure that, for many people, this was a referendum on whether we like Cameron or not, and blimey do people not like Cameron. We’ve left because xenophobic politicians blamed immigrants for the crushed economic situation of the working class, and good and decent non-xenophobic people believed them.
I can believe anyone here who voted Leave did so after a considered appreciation of the facts, an understanding of the economics, and personal experience dealing with issues, but I can’t believe 52% of voters did so. Headlines of mistruth with back-page corrections. Months of glorious promises broken the morning after. Expertise mocked and anti-intellectualism encouraged by Eton/Oxbridge graduates. THAT won the election. The campaign was twisted, manipulated, scapegoating and dangerous; my anger is not at Friday morning’s result but at Friday morning’s inevitable broken promises and multiple instabilities. I’m angry at the headline-makers, the promise-breakers, the Oxbridge graduates clambering over Cameron’s corpse to get to the throne. Leave or Remain, you should be too.
So we have to get angry, and I speak not to embittered Remainers but the lot of you. Don’t get angry at ‘old people’. Don’t get angry at ‘xenophobes’. Don’t get angry at all ‘Leavers’. I’ve read articles blaming all of those, wrongly. It’s the source. Bad reasons swayed good people. We must not blame good people. We must hate the bad reasons. We have to get angry at the politicians who flat-out lied to procure a victory, and the press with their own agendas. Leavers and Remainers all have to get angry at the Sun and the Mail and the headlines of lies, and at UKIP and at those buses, those posters and those lies.
So the conclusion I’m trying to limp towards is that the lot of us, Leave and Remain, must be angry not at the result, but at how it was gotten. But this anger has an outlet: Murdoch and Letts and Farage and Johnson – anyone who publishes lies in their papers, anyone who promises lies in their policies, and our country which lets this run unregulated. I don’t know how we demand it, but we must demand a moderated, regulated press, and reasonable, honest politics – in law – before the next general election, otherwise the way the rhetoric is going, we’ll be in an ugly, untruthful place and the consequences, well, turn to history and it’s not hyperbolic to worry about you-know-what.
We need press regulations. We need political regulations. We need campaign lies to be illegal. We need national newspapers to be truthful. How we do this, I don’t know, but given the way this campaign made extremists of us all, has affected futures for present leadership, and pushed people to breaking point and people broke, we can’t have this happen again. However you voted, you have to demand this, and we have to demand this now.
P.S. On the news last night, a man was weeping with joy as he heard the result. “I’m 80, I won’t live long to see it, but I’ve finally got my country back”. Many people my age feel angry at him, an older voter cutting off possibilities for younger Remainers for tenuous reasons. And I was angry. Not angry at him. I felt sorry for him. I felt angry at the people who told him his country, our country, was gone, and who convinced him this was taking it back. If I believed the country I’d fought for belonged to Brussels, the NHS I rely on is being bled dry by the EU, and the jobs and houses my children and grandchildren relied on were taken away by immigrants, there’s only one way to vote. But now he’s got his country back – but he doesn’t. The promises made to him are proven untrue, he’s got no more influence today than he ever had, and the only person possibly with ‘his country’ back is Boris at best. I felt angry not because an 80-year-old man has placed restrictions on my 20-year-old life, but because an 80-year-old man did so out of passion misplaced and manipulated. I didn’t feel angry at him, I felt angry for him, angry on his behalf, sorry for him, and it’s that anger I feel everyone here – smart, well-read, politically conscious people, be you Leave or Remain – needs to feel. He was lied to. He must feel betrayed. He wasted his vote. We can’t let that happen again. We need to control these campaigns.
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Post by Nicholas on Jun 25, 2016 0:20:33 GMT
“I can say I love London. I can say I love England. But I can’t say I love my country. I don’t know what that means.”
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Post by Nicholas on Jun 18, 2016 1:28:58 GMT
one has to wonder at your generosity I'm working on it, Parsley. There is too much "generosity" about. Give me a ticket for it and send me to Meanness school, where I can take "Talk to the hand" lessons. I hope I don't start shaking hands or clapping hands, as I'm like that. Anyhoo, Old Parsley used to advocate making your own mind up, and never trusting the critics. New Parsley thinks you're "a Tw*t" if you're out of "the consensus." What happened to Old Parsley? Steve, never get more mean! There’s a real pleasure in knowing that there are people in this world who almost never can give one star, who seem to feel real displeasure at stooping as low as two, and who tend to be able to find that one, teeny morsel of good in the worst shows in town, a needle of goodness in the pooey haystack of the theatre we all too often see. Your levels of analysis are something to be truly envied, but it’s even nicer to have your niceness around! In fact, when did you last give one star?
Also, how did you and Parsley spot each other at the thing? When Parsley enters a theatre, I assume storm clouds gather in a foyer, dogs bark in warning, and those in the cheap seats chant Oh Fortuna, which may be a giveaway. Or I imagine eyes across a crowded room, yin and yang... Anywho, genuinely curious what gave you away.
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Post by Nicholas on Jun 18, 2016 1:22:26 GMT
It’s not an adaptation, but I’ve always thought New York, New York is a truly amazing film. I think what Scorsese evokes is the style of musical that would have evolved had musicals never gone out of fashion: not a 1950s musical in a 1970s world per se, but a 1950s musical after 20 years of political and social change, stylistically true to its roots and thematically true to its era. It’s not pastiche and it’s not post-modern, but it’s not a tribute and it’s not a recreation, and I think that confused people and its lack of success did it in; it must be ripe time for a reappraisal. In a post-Watergate, post-Vietnam, post-Summer-of-Love world of darker, less confident, more morally ambiguous movies, it’s the movie musical of its decade, daring to go to the unsatisfactory, unpleasant and morally grey areas of Coppola and De Palma and, well, Scorsese, but still preserve the sing-song stylings of Gene Kelly or Vincente Minelli, and I think making a great movie. It’s not perfect (it’s no King of Comedy, Scorsese’s absolute peak), but I much prefer it to, say, Mean Streets, and I think it’s a fascinating, wonderful and successful anomaly in the history of the medium. And Liza! But the world goes round...
And another shout to Sunshine on Leith, not just a lovely movie, not just Peter Mullan singing (!), but a really strong and genuinely heartfelt book around the Proclaimers numbers.
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Post by Nicholas on Jun 18, 2016 1:13:01 GMT
I think the inherent fault in a scheme like this is that it doesn’t get new theatregoers in, it only gets the same theatregoers going. My friends who don’t think they can afford theatre, my friends who can afford cheap theatre but still think theatre’s for the elites, my friends away from London who’d have to pay an extortionate train fare anyway – they don’t get to see these despite the free tickets, and in some cases can't afford to go due to travel anyway. If the Donmar was truly committed to broadening audiences, this pop-up theatre would go on tour, would discount based on finance not age, and would send adverts out to the non-theatre circles so they were aware of these productions and their freebies. Instead, the same regular young faces will go see this – perhaps the free tickets will allow a greater number of financially constrained young faces, but as I say, I’m under 25 and can afford a lot of theatre, where plenty of over 25s I know can’t, and my inner milquetoast socialist, my inner Ken Loach, thinks it’s unfair that I get a free ticket based on my age and they have to pay despite their income.
I was exaggerating a little when I was banging on about having seen these before, but only a little. I saw Julius Caesar for £7.50 (day seat) and Henry IV for £10 (Barclays), both on non-age-related schemes, and I think the people who’ll mostly be excited about that are people like me, lucky enough to have seen the earlier shows, and people like you, members of Theatreboard who love their theatre. Of the free-ticket users, a minority will have seen the other Lloyd productions already, a fair number will have seen these plays in some form already, and the majority will see Shakespeare on a regular basis. This doesn’t do anything to entice new theatregoers, only keep enticing the existing regulars.
Got to say, though, book the free tickets now before you’re 26, if you go after your birthday play ignorant and pretend you’d forgotten, and just go, because Julius Caesar and Henry IV were riveting, haunting, thrilling productions and you really, really should see them! When you go, though, ask the people around you whether they’d ever been to the theatre before or regularly went, and the answer will be a depressingly frequent “All the time!”
You're probably right that people who don't go to theatre at all won't get to know about this (/maybe won't be interested anyway). I don't know in what ways they're promoting it or not so I'm not judging that. The idea of deciding based on the actual wealth of the person sounds fair but also very unrealistic - how would you prove that? You mentioned jobseekers or people from certain districts - not sure how reliable that criterion would be. That could also rule out students or perhaps at least foreign students - and while I realize that is another potentially controversial debate, I don't think closing up is a good idea. So yes while such schemes would be valuable, so are the young people ones I believe. It might not be people who don't go to theatre at all, but maybe some who have seen something more commercial, saved up to see their favourite performer or musical and wouldn't do so to just branch out and try something new; it might open them up to a totally new way of staging plays. I am of course looking at it from a very selfish point of view: these schemes benefit me so I like them, haha. I go to theatre a lot, I have studied it and want to pursue a career in it: but only these schemes, day seats etc. allow me to do so in London as well, where it truly inspires me (in my country theatre is perhaps 5 times cheaper, but also a bit rubbish). So yes you definitely do have a point and this scheme doesn't solve everything, but when I remember the stage when I was only discovering the world of theatre and it was bringing me so much, I think yes please, give that chance to other people as well. Haha thanks for the tip, might need to try it then, if it's really so good :-) EDIT: Looking back at this I realize I must seem exactly like the annoying "all the time" kind of person...but it's not like I had the money and spent it in a pub instead, basically all my money goes to discovering British theatre. I can clearly remember the phase before I studied it when I was starting to go to theatre as a teenager because it only cost about the equivalent of 2 pounds, those are the people I think it is great for. Trust me, you’re not being selfish or annoying – I don’t think anyone here will judge anyone else for wanting to see more theatre, quite the opposite! Besides, I think schemes like Entry Pass are essential a) for our finances and b) for sending a message to young people that theatre is accessible, and I never meant to say they should be scrapped. I agree with xanderl, though, I think they tend to be flawed and have no suitable follow-up for 25 and older. As my time with the cheap tickets draws to an end (less the chimes at midnight, more the chimes at brunch), I’ve started thinking about how the theatre could open up past 24, less for existing theatregoers and more for people who don’t catch the theatre bug so young, or can’t afford to.
With the income thing, I know it’s unrealistic, but there are ways around it. Some theatres have a “Pay What You Can” Scheme (I know the Arcola does, and some cinemas do too). It’s probably a scheme that’s easy to abuse if you’re a selfish cheapskate, but on the other hand it’s also a nice scheme for allowing people without the money to get to the theatre. The West End needs something like this which is open to all ages: less well-off Londoners, perhaps people with hefty travel bills, and students and young people. Alongside Entry Pass-esque ideas, this sends the message that theatre really isn’t just for the rich or the in-the-know, it’s for anyone who wants to find it.
In my theatrical utopia, I’d keep student and under 25 schemes more for the message they send out (Phantom, they’re not entitlement, they’re encouragement, unless they’re taken too far), but I’d also have these pay as you go schemes, also day seats for everyone, and hopefully make money back through full price ones. I’d hire economists and sociologists to tackle these issues practically. I know what I said was unrealistic, but I’m an idealist. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. With enough cheap tickets for the financially needy of all ages (but nothing free, making theatre free literally devalues it), I’d hopefully have an audience that’s broad, enthusiastic, curious, willing to learn, and ultimately passionate about theatre, and that’s what we want.
I mean, there are also dozens of other issues which stop young and old getting into theatre – lack of decent touring, blogging (self-funding criticism with limited travel funds) making the regions under-represented, the London-centric financial irony of free seats in the third most expensive place to live in the world – but I read about schemes to lure new audiences in, all schemes focused on the young and all schemes focused on money, and I just think “NO! These won’t work! It’s more than money! Don’t lure the young in, lure people in! And keep them there!”
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Post by Nicholas on Jun 17, 2016 17:43:37 GMT
I’d love to know how many of the under-25s going to that have never seen a Shakespeare before. I’d love to know how many hadn’t seen Julius Caesar or Henry IV before. I’d love to know how many hadn’t seen Phyllida Lloyd’s Julius Caesar or Henry IV before. I am not sure if I'll be able to catch this as I am turning 26 in November. But it totally caught my attention and I can inform you that I have never seen Henry IV (seen Julius Caesar in a different country about 6 years ago), never seen a Donmar production and don't know Phyllida Lloyd. So I don't know what you're implying here..?
I think the inherent fault in a scheme like this is that it doesn’t get new theatregoers in, it only gets the same theatregoers going. My friends who don’t think they can afford theatre, my friends who can afford cheap theatre but still think theatre’s for the elites, my friends away from London who’d have to pay an extortionate train fare anyway – they don’t get to see these despite the free tickets, and in some cases can't afford to go due to travel anyway. If the Donmar was truly committed to broadening audiences, this pop-up theatre would go on tour, would discount based on finance not age, and would send adverts out to the non-theatre circles so they were aware of these productions and their freebies. Instead, the same regular young faces will go see this – perhaps the free tickets will allow a greater number of financially constrained young faces, but as I say, I’m under 25 and can afford a lot of theatre, where plenty of over 25s I know can’t, and my inner milquetoast socialist, my inner Ken Loach, thinks it’s unfair that I get a free ticket based on my age and they have to pay despite their income.
I was exaggerating a little when I was banging on about having seen these before, but only a little. I saw Julius Caesar for £7.50 (day seat) and Henry IV for £10 (Barclays), both on non-age-related schemes, and I think the people who’ll mostly be excited about that are people like me, lucky enough to have seen the earlier shows, and people like you, members of Theatreboard who love their theatre. Of the free-ticket users, a minority will have seen the other Lloyd productions already, a fair number will have seen these plays in some form already, and the majority will see Shakespeare on a regular basis. This doesn’t do anything to entice new theatregoers, only keep enticing the existing regulars.
Got to say, though, book the free tickets now before you’re 26, if you go after your birthday play ignorant and pretend you’d forgotten, and just go, because Julius Caesar and Henry IV were riveting, haunting, thrilling productions and you really, really should see them! When you go, though, ask the people around you whether they’d ever been to the theatre before or regularly went, and the answer will be a depressingly frequent “All the time!”
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Post by Nicholas on Jun 17, 2016 16:57:30 GMT
I would like to see more plays with a lot of big amazing parts for women played by women. On the other hand, Ryan would rather see more plays with a lot of big amazing man parts. Ahem.
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Post by Nicholas on Jun 17, 2016 14:29:41 GMT
People, Places and Things the night after Denise rightly won her Oliver. I was in the onstage seats, blown apart by her performance and when she came on for a second curtain call carrying her award with a nerdy, 'OMG how did I even get this' kind of look and danced around the stage with the cast while the audience erupted in cheers was awesome. I saw it on its last night at the Dorfman (front row, thanks Friday Rush!), where the atmosphere was electric (and Hattie Morahan was in the audience!). At the end, it cuts to black, the lights come up, and... You’ve never heard such pitifully ‘polite’ applause. Slight clapping and mostly silence. It was like no-one had liked the play. And then, about ten seconds later, something happened. We all recovered. It was bizarre, but clearly everyone there felt the need to just sit, just be quiet, just reflect, and just absorb that stunning ending; a good ten seconds of quiet later, we rose as one, whooped, cheered, and the applause went on for five minutes, ten minutes? One reads about premieres, lifetimes ago, of Chekhov or Noel Coward where the audience applaud all night ("tiara'd women clapped till the seams of their gloves burst"), and this is the closest to that I’ve ever seen in our quaint desensitised capital. It was an ovation and a half, while Gough ran round the stage, punching the air, like a victory lap – much as I keep saying how great the script and show and other cast were (and it's true), it will be Gough’s performance that goes down in history, I genuinely believe that, and on that final night we clearly wanted to let her know that this was historical. Absolutely one of my best nights in the theatre, what a reaction, a beautiful way to wrap up a stunning show. I bet it’ll be electric this Saturday. Wish I could go.
In fact, one of the joys of theatre is, despite its ephemerality, shows have an outer life that’s far from ephemeral. Having only caught the end of PPT’s NT run, I’ve loved, truly loved loved loved, reading the slowpokes amongst you finally get to see it and finally love love love it yourselves. It’s meant, selfishly, that I’ve gotten to experience the show again and again and again and again and again and given what a special one-off it is – stunning new play, perfect director, hugely underrated supporting cast and DENISE DENISE DENISE DENISE DENISE – it’s been such a pleasure to discuss it further, virtually see it a hundred times, keep reliving that night. Because absolutely, what a night!
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Post by Nicholas on Jun 17, 2016 2:48:22 GMT
Cabaret (given the right production) is a fantastic stage show - and the film is simply awful. It rips the heart out of the show and stomps on it. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO. Etc. The film is a masterpiece. It perfectly evokes not just the Weimar era paranoia, but perverts the art of the Weimar era to make the boldest statement about how casually evil rises. The cabaret itself is iconically horrible, the songs dingy metaphors that use the abstraction and abnormality of bursting into song to truly icky, unsettling effect, only magnifying the naturalistic horrors of Nazism which Fosse so mundanely shows outside. The outside scenes are spectacularly done; take the songs out and call it I Am A Camera and it’s a beautifully subtle, elegant, and sad little movie with spectacular performances. Liza – OK, perhaps Sally shouldn’t sing as well as Liza, but I saw the film again recently after having read Isherwood for the first time, and the sad, self-deluding, broken-but-outwardly-confident Sally he writes in the book simply IS Liza in the film – too much is made of her great singing, too little made of the fact that she’s a great straight actor and the book of the musical/script of the movie is a great role she smashes. Joel Grey sometimes appears in my nightmares.
Meanwhile, if some perverse twist of fate made me a history teacher, the way I’d teach children about the rise of Nazism is Tomorrow Belongs To Me – and yes, a good production would do that too, but Fosse does it with gusto. How better to show how evil can become the norm than the loveable angelic child singing a loveable angelic song of hope and peace and goodwill towards the future that evolves into, well, that camera pan down to the Swastika, that group-singalong group-think, that poor man struggling to abstain, that violence with which it’s sung at the end? It's chilling, but normal. It's a scene I genuinely like on a musical and aesthetic level, I watch it and suffer picnic envy, I idly hum that song unforgivably often, and it's unapologetically on the Nazi's side, and in watching it filmed as Fosse filmed it, not just as Kander and Ebb wrote it, Fosse implicates me in liking the song, even singing along, and for that one moment, implicating me in, well... By the time I know the meaning of the scene, I'm on its side, and that's how a master moviemaker uses his camera. I feel Fosse's camerawork matched to Kander and Ebb's masterpiece says more about the subject than, say, CP Taylor's Good. Fosse deserved to beat Coppola for the Oscar.
I saw a documentary about movie musicals which said "After Cabaret's success, all musicals were set in Weimar Germany, even those that weren't". I wonder how much Fosse dislike is Fosse-imitation dislike.
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Post by Nicholas on Jun 17, 2016 2:35:35 GMT
Young people shouldn't get ultra cheap or free theatre tickets
Completely agree, but I love the idea of free tickets for some people: I think, instead, underprivileged people of all ages – certain schools or districts or jobseekers – should get any free tickets if theatres can offer them, absolutely not freeloading millennial bastards like myself. Giving the freebies to someone like me (young enough for most yoof schemes, hardly rich but fine, financially, already a regular theatregoer) only shuns the underfunded who might genuinely need such subsidies. I don’t know who they’d go to, or how to suggest it without sounding utterly patronising and blindsiding the more pressing financial problems of the country, but I don’t need free tickets, much as I want them; far rather I pay and someone with genuine financial constraints gets the freebie than tedious middle class me.
There should still be plenty of young people discounts, don’t get me wrong, they’re essential for getting new theatregoers through the door and keeping new theatregoers regular, but things like the Donmar Shakespeare trilogy scheme are just getting silly. I’d love to know how many of the under-25s going to that have never seen a Shakespeare before. I’d love to know how many hadn’t seen Julius Caesar or Henry IV before. I’d love to know how many hadn’t seen Phyllida Lloyd’s Julius Caesar or Henry IV before.
Giving free tickets to people genuinely too poor to see the theatre they love, or the theatre they may love given half a chance - that's how to broaden what a theatregoer is, that's how to genuinely diversify audiences, that's what subsidies should work towards.
Actually, that’s an opinion that’s probably not unpopular – most ‘encourage new theatregoer’ schemes aren’t that, they’re ‘subsidise regular theatregoer’ schemes, and most people instigating those schemes have no idea what they’re banging on about.
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Post by Nicholas on Jun 15, 2016 12:10:33 GMT
Here’s the thing I really, really, really don’t understand. As you’ve all said, theatre critics aren’t the only ones who work unsociable hours, and anyone in any other night-time profession can’t bring along a buddy. SO MAKE FRIENDS ON THE JOB! It’s not like critics work in isolation. What is so shameful about making friends with each other? That would make it sociable. Film critics clearly talk to each other and make friends. Not making friends with other theatre critics is just stubbornness.
Surely, too (I speak not as a blogger but a relatively regular theatregoer with a severely compromised social life), any starting blogger doesn’t have the excuse of getting paid to go to the theatre or getting their reviews widely published, but still has to say to friends “I can’t come out tonight because in the long run I want to be a theatre critic so have to go using my own free time and own money on my own initiative on my own”. It’s not sociable for bloggers either, Mark! If you want to encourage them, this is it!
I’ve banged on about this enough, so I concede to Michael Billington. He’s always upfront about the pros and cons of criticism, what the medium does wrong and what he could do better, without complaint. If Shenton discussed the matter like this, with humility, taking some blame for himself and appreciating the fortune of his position, we’d respect him far more:
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Post by Nicholas on Jun 15, 2016 12:08:51 GMT
Cardinal, on the areas I vaguely know about I agree with you almost entirely, and on the others, as always, I bow to your extraordinary knowledge on this subject! As in other places (coughangelsinamericacough) it's wonderful to have people so knowledgeable share their expertise with the rest of us mere mortals. However, I still can’t agree with you that we’re years behind, and at the risk of bursting into a chorus of “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing In Perfect Harmony” here’s why: Other countries have their dross but it is what travels that matters, McBurney, Mitchell, Donnellan, Rice and Goold (the last less so, apart from across the Atlantic) are our standard bearers. Respectively influenced by Lecoq, Bausch, Dodin, Staniewski and Lepage they have enriched our theatre and have become important exports for our theatre as much as the writers above. Without their international (and mostly European) influences British theatre production would be, as I stated, weaker and more parochial. It is what travels that matters. We get the best of foreign theatre, but it stops being foreign because it’s theatre. It’s live. It’s now. It’s here. I see foreign films, which are documents of foreign lives filmed elsewhere; I don’t see foreign theatre, because how can what’s happening within touching distance of me be foreign? So much travels to London – you mention Lepage, and you’ll be well aware that he’s here in a month’s time! We’re not years behind when we’re so receptive to the progressive present around the world. I don’t know what it’s like in Amsterdam or Berlin or Paris and whether the cultural exchange is equal there, but right now in London we get the best of European theatre – yeah, I’m jealous that I don’t see Complicite’s Beware of Pity or Toneelgroep’s Husbands and Wives, and after The Forbidden Zone I did expect more live streams, but we still get a lot, and it says a lot about the cultural of conversation we're in that Complicite are an English company premiering in Berlin and Husbands and Sons is an Australian/Dutch production of an American text. I don’t care if Europe is doing regietheater better than us, because I get the chance to see regietheater thanks to wonderful programming at the Barbican, now at the Young Vic, potentially at the new NT, a little at the BAC... As a theatregoer, not a theatremaker, I do feel London’s the greatest theatrical city in the world, not just for the theatre it makes, but for the theatre it takes in.
And on top of that, because we currently have a culture of cultural exchanges, of overseas talents coming here and English talents invading elsewhere, the only possible end result is a broader badinage of ideas and ideals, a larger pool of influences from which developing talents can steal, a greater exchange of philosophies of what theatre can be which promising but unmoulded minds can learn about and pick and choose from as they please. Paradoxically, I don’t think there’s a distinction between European and English theatre, but I clearly think there are massive cultural differences; what’s exciting about this is that we live at a moment where the communication’s great across Europe. Ideas from one culture will permeate another, or flat out play on their theatres full stop. How wonderful! As you say, without European influence English theatre would be far more parochial and far weaker, but (asking out of curiosity and ignorance) has there ever been a time with so many platforms, ever increasing, for international influence to make their mark in the UK? In another lifetime, young groups would have to learn from drama school, reading up, expensive travel and guesswork, but today young groups (I’d love to know which ones you’d single out, Cardinal) get to see so much as cultural theatre goes! It’s not a competition, it’s a dialogue, and never has the dialogue been more egalitarian.
I used to live in grotty digs at the Barbican. The theatre that took place five minutes from my front door was my theatre. That might be the RSC and Benedict Cumberbatch, or it might be Theatre De La Ville and Robert Wilson. That's what English theatre is to me - Theatre De La Ville and Robert Wilson. I'm a bit romantic here (or racist and stealing other cultures as my own), but sod it, we get wonderful work on our stages, and as far as I'm concerned when it's on our stages it's ours. I think we are behind in some fields of theatre, but ahead in others, but I don’t see that as an issue when tonight I can see Isabelle Huppert on one stage, a Greek company on another, Goold at the Almeida, Macmillan at the Wyndhams, The Flick at the National – and dare I say, where I can see Marianne Elliot, Phyllida Lloyd, John Tiffany and Julie Taymor in the West End too. It’s like being a kid in a candy store – it’s all there! And I’d fly the flag again for a) our talents like Longhurst and Elliot and McIntyre who deserve greater praise, and b) the shift in taste that’s made Young Vic, Almeida and Headlong transfers populist – I think it’s a wonderful time to be in London.
That went on a bit. I really only had one small point, that we’re lucky to get so much foreign theatre, that there’s a dialogue starting/continuing that can only be a progressive and good thing, and that I don’t like distinctions between here and there because I do think they don’t exist, and ultimately no-one’s years behind of anything, variety’s a great thing and what variety we have! It just turns out I love London. It’s easy to forget that sometimes, but blimey we’re lucky buggers!
THat's my unpopular opinion. London theatre isn't London theatre - it's mostly London theatre (much of which is populist, much of which is crap), but it's also Regional, Celtic, European, American, Global, and only moving in a direction of breadth. London is the greatest theatrical town (and thus the greatest town, what's more important than theatre?) in the world.
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Post by Nicholas on Jun 14, 2016 10:55:35 GMT
Really interested why you think European theatre is 'years ahead of British theatre' (aren't negative views worthless in isolation). But even more interested why we're 'just catching up' and truly fascinated why 'that gap may stop closing' soon. Negative 'reviews', responses to a specific show, are only relevant to that show and pretty much 'I didn't like it', 'I liked it' and that's that, positive reviews at least prompt me to go and see something I might not (steve's review of Clytemnestra at The Gate for example, thanks steve!); negative 'views' are at least a topic for conversation and debate, given their broader range. I'm not talking musical theatre here, where the US is streets ahead but in the field of non-musical theatre. I see a lot of international theatre and the ideas and approaches take a while to seep through to British theatre, which is relatively conservative and parochial. What I see now from young directors is what the likes of Ostermeier and Van Hove have been doing for years. It's no surprise that as the UK has become closer to Europe and, with populations intermingling to a greater degree, that that gap has been closed. It's not all to do with political integration as on the edges you have somewhere like Iceland and Vesturport who have made waves. Polls show that, across Europe, however, there is a growing mood of isolationism and that mood can only hamper the cross-pollination of international theatres and theatremakers. EDIT: Just realised that Iceland is a member of the EEA so there is free movement. Russia maybe and the Vakhtangov instead?
I'm not sure I agree. I say this from a position of relative ignorance, but I often wonder if we romanticise ‘foreign theatre’. I haven’t been abroad in two years now, but whenever I go abroad I find it fascinating to look at the cinema listings. The last time I saw Paris, there were posters all over the place for ‘Un film de Ken Loach, scenario de Paul Laverty’ – Jimmy’s Hall, a film that made pennies at the box office and was treated as a footnote by a past-it leftie windbag by half the papers here, but represented the best of English auteur cinema by a rare double Palme d'Or winner (hooray!) when it played as a ‘foreign film’ – and posters all over the place for a sh*tty little French rom com that was so bad it never reached our shores but was clearly doing well over there. Walk through London a few years ago, and there’d have been adverts for the new Xavier Dolan movie next to Pudsey The Dog: The Movie. I bet artistically minded cinemagoers were having identical conversations on both sides of the channel: “Look at the cinema they make over there, look at the sh*t we make over here, the grass is so much greener.”
Is that not true of theatre? Having only been to one theatre outside England, on Broadway ten years ago, my encounters with foreign theatre have been OStermeier, Ninagawa, Vakhtangov, where my encounters with UK theatre have been Thriller Live and Mamma Mia. On that basis we’re not years behind but epochs. However, in Germany, similarly, is Mamma Mia not the hottest ticket, not Ostermeier? Are there not people talking about how they’re still years behind Katie Mitchell, Simon Mcburney, Cheek by Jowl, let alone upstart wünderkinds like Rupert Goold (now a wünder-middle-age), Joe Hill-Gibbons and Robert Icke? Is German theatre actually represented by Ostermeier, or is the best of German theatre represented by OStermeier?
Besides, I don’t think the distinction between us and them really exists now, let alone as a gap that's mercifully closing. There've been great talents we've produced, on whose shoulders EUropean directors are now standing, on whose shoulders young British directors are beginning to stand. Look at West End sell-out Simon Stephens, a channel hopping auteur-endorsing juggernaut, and West End sell-out Duncan Macmillan who, with Atmen/Lungs, The Forbidden Zone and 2071, is surely snapping at Stephens’ heels for the position of Anglo-European playwright-laureate (not to mention West End sell-out Florian Zeller, it goes two ways). I don’t think we’re many years behind: I think the best stuff there is as good as the best stuff here, the worst stuff there is probably as bad as the worst stuff but mercifully we dodge that bullet, and there’s a really healthy, ever growing relationship between theatres across Europe and indeed America and we’re lucky to be in the middle. Is there not something telling that in this country Ivo van Hove won the Olivier, sold out the West End, warranted a cinematic run and built up the momentum to go to Broadway and win the Tony (woop woop!) and is now part of England’s National Theatre?
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