The first time as tragedy; the second as farce: time-shifting 'Arden of Faversham' - Swan Theatre, RSC Friday 23 May 2014

Polly Findlay's new RSC production of the anonymous Renaissance play 'Arden of Faversham' shifts it from its usual 16th Century setting to a loosely 'modern' period.  Certainly, both Findlay (as director) and Zoe Svendsen (as dramaturg) are keen to emphasise contemporary parallels between the commodification of land, people and property then and now, and the shift of housewives from makers to consumers.  This time-shifting from the late 1500s to a modern but non-specific present day moment, seems to have thrown some reviewers, as if mentally adjusting from the outer gothic frames of the Swan theatre to a stage filled with the clutter of mass packaging for the contemporary consumer age (and fashions to match) makes the play text incomprehensible.  I'd argue that it is actually pretty easy to overlook lines that (rightly, for the 16th Century) make London feel a world away, since whatever London's proximity is now in terms of communications and travel, the capital can still feel a world away from provincial business and domestic life.  

Grumbly Michael Billington, didn't like the period shift at all. Personally, I feel a period setting in Elizabethan costume would likely appear similarly artificial.  Nevertheless, there are elements that feel as if they are overstating realisations about 'capitalism for beginners'.  Arden's business is the distribution of tacky ornaments, not least an endless supply of marineki neko, the gold Japanese beckoning cats, symbolic of prosperous good fortune (oh irony when a wall of them is unveiled after Arden is killed). Arden's employees are engaged in drudgery: endless, pointless, mechanised processes carried out by humans for no particular purpose of adding anything to the product, experience or success of anyone (except Arden himself).  Work sucks; bosses are narcissistic and greedy; everyone wants a prosperous and more convenient life: we get it, with bright flashy clothes to ram the point home.

Former butcher-boy Mosby and Arden's wife

But don't be deceived: what the play lacks in subtlety (in its production setting or the prose - no Shakespeare is this) or indeed length (it is a sprightly 1 hour 40, with no interval) it more than makes up for with some wonderfully portrayed supporting characters and a healthy infusion of verve and wit. 

The tale may ostensibly be about businessman Arden (Ian Redford), his unfaithful wife Alice (Sharon Small), and her lover Mosby (Keir Charles), but the Arden employees Michael (Ian Bonar) and Mosby's sister Susan (Elspeth Brodie) - a hapless, servile, near-silent figure who regularly haunts the stage and production - keep getting our attention even as the play heads towards the inevitable murder of the titular character.  The tragedy is not really about Arden, for all that he meets an undignified death as the disposable body of capitalism: a domestic murder for domestic reasons.  Arguably, it is not even about the vivacious, capricious wife Alice, who all too late realises the enormity of her actions and choices.  Rather it is Susan and a would-be husband Michael that intrigue.  

Susan: hidden, at the edges

Produced as part of the 'Roaring Girls' season at the RSC, the publicity has been all around Small as Alice Arden.  She certainly roars - with laughter, with lust, with anger and murderous desire.  But it is the mouse that doesn't roar who I keep thinking about: Susan.  Her brother Mosby tries to match her one way: with oily poisoner painter Clarke (Christopher Middleton).  Her mistress, Alice Arden, meanwhile promises her to Arden employee Michael.  Neither Mosby nor Alice seem especially concerned to consider Susan's own preferences, and it doesn't seem to bother either prospective husband much, with both Clarke and Michael careless as to whether Susan may have a role to play in her choice of 'owner'.  Michael is at least ambivalent in how he is drawn into the murderous plotting: he doesn't really want to get involved but his desire to match with Susan becomes blinded and complicit to the actions of those around him.  That Susan is condemned and put to death alongside more active and duplicitous participants in the murder of Arden is perhaps the real tragedy of the play.*

Despite that tragedy, the production does make good use of some of the underlying elements of farce in the text, including the (not-so-original) bungling hitmen Black Will and Shakebag, ably brought to life by Jay Simpson and Tony Jayawardena.

Silent Bob and Jay

These two present violent slapstick and murderous intent thwarted by fog, timing and choices but mostly by general incompetence.  Indeed, the oleaginous Clarke is far more disturbing than they are, as it seems even Clarke's own flesh rebels against his exploits with poison and paint (rashes across his skin, gloved hands, hair and flesh that drips with contamination). By contrast the seemingly 'professional' killers - Will and Shakebag - are perpetually in more danger from each other than they can cause to others, even before the first significant head injury by unintended crowbar enters the action.  By the time the 'tragic' murder of Arden takes place, we're well prepared for the farcical raising of his body in one of his own delivery boxes above the dining table, to drop warm blood to a wine glass below.

Overall, this is a production worth seeing, short enough to be enjoyable and very well performed.  Perhaps its key problem is the baggage it comes with of being a 16th century 'true crime dramatisation'.  Taken on its own terms, this is a time-shifted tragedy whose farce makes it modern.

* The play is usually described as a 'revenge tragedy'.  But it isn't the revenge of wife or Arden as husband that defines the play.  Rather, the person who gets their revenge is a minor character: Mistress Reede.  She curses Arden to die for the "plot of ground that thou detains from me ... there be butchered by thy dearest friends".  The lands of the Abbey of Faversham from which she was evicted prove to be Arden's undoing. The play started with his discontent at having acquired the lands when his wife is adulterously in love with Mosby.  It ends with those same lands granting Mistress Reede her revenge, off stage and unnoticed.  A very strange revenge tragedy...

"Anon, anon" - reflections and reminiscences on Henry IV Part I (RSC, Stratford upon Avon Thursday 20th March 2014)

Framing comment: My O level Shakespeare text was "Henry IV part I", which means it has a special place in my heart and memories (even though  the tape recording we were regularly subjected to at school was less than wonderful, with a Hotspur who had more accents than Russell Crowe was accused of having in Robin Hood).

We'll be seeing Part II later in the season, but for now I wanted to immerse myself in Part I, attempting to rid my mind of the experience of seeing this play at the Globe a few seasons ago with the marvellous Roger Allam as a memorable Falstaff.  I don't think I'll ever quite move Allam from my mind, but Sher is such a fine actor that he nevertheless takes the role on with glee and gusto.

The RSC under Greg Doran take a conventional medieval staging for Henry IV Part I, and bring a wonderful cast to the production with fine echoes for those who saw the earlier Richard II.  Indeed, the opening scene with King Bolingbroke, penitent and praying for forgiveness for his regicidal actions, is even haunted by the ghost of Richard. (I felt sorry for the actor who had to don Tennant's white robe and a wig to figure his presence from gloomy shadows on the balcony over the stage to Jasper Britton's still-shaken Henry IV).

Although we saw an early preview (first preview was 18 March), it already felt very polished as RSC productions usually do.  Sir Anthony Sher is clearly having a whale of a time, grizzling joyously as Sir John Falstaff.  He shakes effectively from the drink; he clearly adores Hal; and he is so in love with life that all his errant ways are but means to survive another day for drinking.  His deception is not malice - he believes his lies even as they run away from him ("A hundred upon poor four of us").

It is the interaction between Harry Monmouth (Prince Hal, wonderfully played by Alex Hassell) and merry Jack Falstaff that drives the force of the play as the Prince moves from his embedded life of wastrel indulgence and humour to bravery on the battlefield against his changeling 'brother-at-arms', the fiery Hotspur, Harry Percy.  Falstaff remains present throughout this shift and Hal cannot quite abandon his adoration of his alternative father figure, even as Falstaff blatently lies about killing Hotspur and feigning his own death.  Yet we know from early on that things will turn, as prefigured by the wonderful Act 2 scene 4. Both Hal and Falstaff play at being the King and exchange on the actions and merits of Hal's behaviour and the company he keeps: it is a comic and dangerous impersonation of the King that turns its humour on its head in two simple phrases: "I do.  I will."  Moreover, Hal has already let the audience in on his secret self (the soliloquy at the end of scene Act 1 scene 2), a self that he knows will willingly abandon his friends and bawdy life.  He will banish "plump Jack".  We know, eventually, he does.

But in the meantime, we have one of the Shakespearean plays that is most playful with genres, switching eagerly between history to tragedy to comedy.  There are battles, references back to the murder of Richard, deaths amongst the families (for so many are interrelated back through the bloodlines from King Edward III), but there are also the aforementioned mockeries of Kingship and courtly power, demonstrations of cowardice, bawdy associations and much drinking of sack.

For those who delight in ensemble performance, we have several casting reiterations from Richard II, that echo and re-employ actors to fine effect.  These include resurrected Antony Byrne, previously Mowbray, who comes back as Worcester, who does not take the King's advice to make peace and instead leads "three knights... a noble earl and many a creature a else" to their deaths in the culminating battle of the play,  Sean Chapman reappears as Northumberland, father to a maniacal Hotspur (Trevor White), with the latter all growed up from the feisty naif figure who appeared in Richard II (when played by Edmund Wiseman) into a positively unhinged warrior with a wife he doesn't quite deserve (Lady Kate Percy, played with considerable vigour by Jennifer Kirby).  Sam Marks, a finely sycophantic Bushy in Richard II, also reappears here, as foil to Prince Hal in the form of Poins, the transitional friend between the life that Hal appears to live (the sack-soaked clockless days with Falstaff, with the cries of "anon, anon" from hapless Francis) and the life of court and valour that as Prince Henry he will instinctively re-take by the end of the play.

What is charming about this production is that it does not appear that the cast/audience are forever waiting on Falstaff to reappear (although Sher is delightful and clearly appreciated by the ensemble cast).  Everyone holds their poise, even as Hotspur runs around the stage twitching for a fight, even as he finds he forgets the map that will mark out his borders of power (which of course he rails against).  At the centre of the play is the now quieted King, the Bolingbroke who took the crown from Richard's cousinly hand, who longs for a son who would live up to the bold actions of himself or at least that of rival Northumberland and his fearless son Hotspur.  But in the end, King Henry IV comes to realise that there is more to his seemingly errant son than wasted days of sack and whores alongside merry Jack, and that a Hotspur for a son is no gift at all as the latter rages to his death near pointlessly.  Of course we all love Falstaff's wit and self-delusion, but we also know that forces of power will move on and past him, that his beloved Hal will throw off his "loose behaviour" and shine far better as a son to the King, and that honour - that "mere scutcheon" - will come to the fore.

I'm looking forward to seeing Part II (which I am far less familiar with as a play, something I always like because I like not having too many preconceptions), not least to see more of Paola Dionisotti as Mistress Quickly, but also to watch Oliver Ford Davies, always an excellent actor, taking up the role of Shallow.  I'm also looking forward to seeing upcoming Elliot Barnes-Worrell more as Hal's brother Prince John. But that is for a later date.

"The weight of this sad time we must obey" - Theatre Review King Lear @ Almeida Theatre, London Saturday 20 October 2012

When this was first announced about 18 months ago, Helen Lisette and I were both very excited - the prospect of seeing Jonathan Pryce on stage doing King Lear was a great prospect.

And we waited.  And waited.  We thought we may have missed the public ticket sale dates, but then somehow, HLW did it ---- she got us tickets.  Hurrah!

So last weekend, with the late addition of an early schedule performance of 55 Days to enjoy as well over the weekend, we headed to London for what we hoped would be a tremendous theatre experience.

It was: if I see a better Lear in my lifetime I will feel privileged indeed.  I suspect it may take a current generation to get older before there will be something to match it.  The sisters, especially Goneril (Zoe Waites) and Regan (Jenny Jules) were excellently venal in their manipulation and overthrowing of Lear's power - but there was also a well-played (and mostly understated) hint of a somewhat abusive relationship between Lear and his older daughters.  For example, in the opening scenes, where Lear throws open the map to allocate his kingdom according the whim of the daughters' ability to flatter him, Lear kisses Goneril.  And the kiss is... unseemly, excessive, inappropriate, unnerving. The jealousy of the older sisters towards the youngest, Cordelia, reaffirmed by Lear crowning her with a coronet before the division of land has even begun, is thus undercut by the pointers to the past.  What horrors have the older sisters endured before their - much younger - sibling arrived?  It is not overplayed throughout, but there are hints to highlight the power relationship between father and daughters that perhaps contextualises the later violence and horror of the play.

The cast was uniformly good I felt - a real ensemble performance.  Cordelia (Phoebe Fox) stands her ground to her father; Gloucester (Clive Wood) is powerhouse of a figure, bought low by the betrayal of his King and his bastard son; Kent (Ian Gelder) never waivers from his loyalty to Lear despite the horrors that ensue, and he works throughout to bring Lear back to himself, to those who care for him; and the Fool (Trevor Fox) is charmingly wise in his observation of the social disintegration around him.  These are just a few of the key performances, and I always find the worst weaknesses in the role of Cordelia are within the text itself (though Fox and the director Michael Attenborough, do their best to make this a livelier Cordelia than is usual).  But everyone does their part.  I never quite got the measure of the Duke of Cornwall (Chook Sibtain), but Cornwall is an odd role - the utter violence and spur of action with Regan at his side one moment, having come across initially just as an ambitious and thwarted husband to Lear's second daughter who ends up cuckolded almost as badly as Albany (Richard Hope).  Indeed, the husbands to the elder Lear daughters have a rough time all round really, and it is credit to Richard Hope that Albany's own cuckolded haplessness is pitiable rather than despicable (Steven Elliott as Oswald really bring out the self-serving venal qualities of this character). I was also impressed with Richard Goulding as Edgar who was suitably fit (in all senses) to play the high-born, well-born son of powerful Gloucester, who is bought down by the intense hatred of his illegitimate sibling, Edmund (a finely powered Kieran Bew).

An additional note: hilariously, at the interval (post-eye-gouging) I actually heard someone complaining about the production "excessively bloody, far more than necessary".  I nearly fell over in astonishment - did they fancy bloodless eye-gouging?!  What is this - the Disney version?

Probably difficult, if not impossible to get tickets before this closes next weekend, but a gem nonetheless.

Theatre Review: 55 Days @ Hampstead Theatre, London Friday 19 October 2012

So, we're quite keen on political plays over here at Rullsenberg Rules: a play about the English Civil War, the King and Cromwell was definitely something to be intrigued by! I was thus hardly likely to pass the chance to see Mark Gatiss on stage, especially given that Douglas Henshall was also in the cast of 55 Days.

So with a weekend in London already planned, Helen Lisette and I headed to Hampstead Theatre up near Swiss Cottage/Finchley Road on Friday night fresh from arriving in the capital.  The rain lashed down, and then the fire alarm went off and we had to evacuate, and so for 10 minutes or so poor Mark Gatiss in his frilly shirt and 17th century trews was stood under an umbrella gamely chuckling at the fun and games.

It was a fairly starry evening all ways round actually, with Ed Bennett sat in front of us (Leartes to Tennant's Hamlet, and an incredibly fine Hamlet himself - as I noted when I saw Bennett's London performance). Clare Holman also in attendance, inevitably as she is wife to Howard Davies, director of the play.

The play itself
The isolation of King Charles is highlighted by his being the only figure on period costume - everyone else has vaguely modern suits (it's a very male play, though there are a couple of good female performances).  This actually works rather well - even if it did mean there was no 'wart-counting' for Cromwell [shallowly, no complaints from me for that, though I did miss the prospect of high boots and period trews for all concerned].

The script makes canny use of the tone of 17th century discourse (the religious attitudes, the political factions), without getting too bogged down in period diction: again, King Charles is isolated for having more florid speech in keeping with what we know (or rather imply) was typical speech patterns for the period.  It is, by virtue of its nature and topics, a rather densely expositional play, but it isn't unduly overbearing.  It IS an intelligent play, with a lot going on, and worthy of attention for that.  It is also, despite the weight, not without laughter - indeed, the hysteria at the end of the play finely shows how those signing the death warrant for the King probably could hardly believe what they managed to do.  It's an uncomfortable moment - hilarious and horrific for its consequences.

Cromwell takes several scenes to appear - tantalising for me of course, but it really heightens the tension for getting the main characters all present.  And once he does, Cromwell becomes a real pivotal force - both utterly and subtly in control and yet driven into his courses of action by events he cannot quite control. The scene where Cromwell and Charles meet and talk is pretty electric for all that it is entirely fictitious.

Charles is in turns baffled by the threat to his authority, automatically expecting and mostly getting deference from his jailers and challengers. His accent and his stammer are exacerbated as his control over his destiny diminishes: when he realises that the quality of his argument - a divinely annointed King, far more than a man - will not save his neck from the axe, it is quite horrifying how he suddenly tries to get out of the situation.  The bravado of earlier ripostes disappearing, replaced by uncertainty in speech and demeanor.

I mentioned before about the limited female roles: but they are good ones.  Abigail Cruttenden as Lady Fairfax is brilliant - her faith and conflict with her husband is archly portrayed to rich effect.  She is more than equal to her husband who finds events, and Cromwell, going far beyond his own expectations of developments.  Likewise, Laura Rogers as Mary Cooke - wife of the recruited lawyer prosecuting the King, is similarly measured up to her husband and what he needs to do.  And if I need a more female-orientated Civil War narrative, I'll re-watch the excellent Channel 4 drama: The Devil's Whore.

Early days, early responses
I made the mistake of reading a review/comment on the play on Friday before heading to London.  It was pretty damning and I did fear for how the evening would go.  Both myself and HLW were exhausted (work is always pretty knackering this time of year) but as the negative reviewer commented on how high their own expectations had been, it did unnerve me. I shouldn't have worried though.  It was fine.  Press Night is Wednesday 24 October 2012 - but I'm not deterred.  I know I have a vested interest to enjoy the play, but Helen who has far less personal interest felt utterly enthralled and we ran on adrenaline til 1am.

Review - negative
Review - positive

Personal note
Awh, bless you Mr Henshall, you can make the worst of times light up with your friendly smile and affection.  At the end of a long working week, you were a real tonic.  I hope you enjoyed your much desired cigarette after the play.  Thanks to Mr Gatiss who also was kind enough to sign my programme.

Sunday cultural highlights in Leicester (1): August Sander

We headed over to Leicester about 1.30pm and arrived just after 2.30pm by the time we had driven to East Midlands Parkway train station and got a train.  As we walked out the station we passed an 'October Highlghts' poster with a super picture of an August Sander picture from the 1920s.

(I meant to take a photo of the full length poster but forgot and only a cropped version seems to be online)

The full-length image of an unnamed secretary at the German Radio Station is a stunner - and I wish I could find the woman's name.

Anyway: being interested in German early-mid 20th century culture, we duly trotted off to the Leicester Museum and Art Gallery for the August Sander exhibition.

This exhibition from Art Fund Touring Rooms, is BRILLIANT - and really worth seeing if you haven't already caught it.  It's on in Leicester until January 2013 so plenty of time to make a journey up the motorway/trainline.

We ended up spending quite some time in the gallery - they also have a great permanent collection of German art from the early 20th century anyway: Kollwitz, Grosz, Dix and earlier expressionist artists such as Marc, Kandinsky, Münter, Heckel, Kirchner, Jawlensky and Schmidt-Rottluff.  We got into a couple of conversations with staff: one of the gallery assistants (pointing out a couple of images in the Sander exhibition were wrongly hung/labelled) and talking about the exhibition more generally with a woman who was doing a questionnaire on behalf of the Art Fund who were funding the tour.  I think I bluffed my way reasonably well, though almost certainly was wrong on some things.  But it was nice to stretch my cultural historian muscles.

(This was one of the pictures concerned: easy to pick up as there was another of Dora further along the same wall)


Sander's work tried to categorise and capture archetypes and inevitably gained criticism during the 20th century.  Was his work for or against Nazism?  It is useful to consider that his son was arrested - and indeed died - due to his Communist sympathies and actions.  Was August as active in his politics?  No.  But he clearly had sympathy for the intellectuals as well as 'those of the soil' and his work captures the diversity of Germany in a way that could have hardly been comfortable for the Nazi regime.  His work has been criticised over the years - misunderstood for what he was trying to achieve.  He didn't make it easy for Germany to look at itself, but he did provide a unique record of itself for future generations.

Diary of a Football Nobody - by William Ivory: Saturday 13 October 2012 (matinee) @ Nottingham Playhouse

Diary of a Football Nobody is a remarkably touching - if VERY sweary* - play about Notts County Football Club and much more.

The play is adapted by William Ivory from David McVay's memoir Steak...Diana Ross: Diary of a Football Nobody (and Ivory was in the Cast bar at the Playhouse ahead of the play - no, we didn't bother him).

It's a very parochial play - for all the life-affirming stuff and context which speaks to community, family life, education and employment - the play is shot through with a vein of Nott'um nostalgia and reference points that would probably be lost on anyone lacking experience/awareness of Nottingham either past and/or present.  The play - for all it's brilliance - is unlikely to travel far (heck, getting beyond the boundaries of Nottingham would be difficult and as the likes of Bingham and Mansfield come in for flack, alongside the inevitable loathing for Derby and Nottingham Forest, I can barely see it travelling into Nottinghamshire).

But it IS brilliant.  I mentioned before the life-affirming stuff, and that is something that moves this play beyond JUST being about football, to highlighting that "Football isn't a matter of life and death - it is much LESS important than that".  This play shows that human beings play football: people with lives and families, lusts and foibles.  Too much Shippo beer, too many women, too much distraction from the people around us.  But in representing an age when a football player could achieve the giddy heights of earning so much as to have had to be a 'Foreman at Raleigh' to match their financial power, it's a wonderful reminder of how football has changed.

The music in the play is deftly chosen - from the obvious pop chart stuff to the delicacy of Nick Drake. It's a beautiful evocation of period, place and people (anyone with memories - first or second-hand acquired - of those days of County 'stars' will chuckle at the representations.  The staging is like Roy of Rovers come to life in graphic tone, and the comic-book realism suits the recollections it presents.  There's little in the way of fancy, the imagery of Nottingham is lightly used, and the most technical most involves a short use of wires which draws spontaneous applause from a delighted audience.

And all this is topped by the generous and heartfelt performances:  Eric Richard is especially good as Jimmy Sirrel and our lead, Perry Fitzpatrick as Dave McVay is by turns baffled, distressed and desperately trying to have a good time being a footballer with A-levels.

LeftLion like it - of course they do.  It's only on for another week.  Get there if you're in the locality.



*It would be ridiculous if it was non-sweary (does anyone alive think football and its milieu was NOT sweary in the 1970s?)  But nice that the sexism, racism and homophobia is largely dropped.  You can be too honest...

Summer Sundae 2012 Saturday

So, up early to have breakfast at the hotel with (well, on the next table to) Asian Dub Foundation.

Okay, so we only realised that AFTERWARDS, but hey.

I had to dash off early as I had Choir practice from 10-12 noon: would have been good if the staff on the gates hadn't looked at me like I'd landed from Mars when I went to go in, but hey!

Finally we got set up on the floor of the Indoor stage, weren't allowed to bring chairs in to sit on, the crew doing soundchecks for bands not due on stage til 12.35pm, and us trying to hear ourselves think!

Bit hairy, but we managed.

The choir then went over to the Leicester College pop-up tent studio where we recorded one of the tracks we would sing on stage on the Sunday: after some negotiation with the nearby volleyball/energy drink company stand, we got enough quiet to do the recording.  Hopefully will follow!

I then went over to join Neil in the HOT 'Into the Wild' tent to see the end of Hip-Hop Shakespeare.  Akala is great ambassador and performer of Shakespeare inspired material. And he always has great female vocalists with him too.




We probably should have gone to see Savages or even Tim Edey and Brendon Power, but instead we drank tea in the sun.  Well it hasn't often happened this year!

We listened to a bit of Dog is Dead from the main stage in the background of food, but 'twas nothing special.  Molotov Jukebox however were great - very lively fun!



We then skipped indoors to catch the wonderful Agnes Obel with accompanying strings - mmmm, spotting a pattern yet! - again, some technical difficulties getting the monitors right for everyone on stage, but really lovely stuff.   We did a bit of Friends in the background and then saw Micachu and the Shapes ---- this time without them having to wait for an age for some crazy Isrealis to stop tearing the indoor stage apart!

We then saw a bit of Speech Debelle - laughing like seals as she called out to the seats in the back of the tent "are you all okay in Seaworld?" and generally pleading with the lighting guys to keep the very bright lights off as "we're rotisserie!"

We then went back indoors to see the incomparable Jonathan  Richman.



He may prone to ignoring his extensive back catalogue (and who could blame him not wanting to drag back 30+ years to old material) but he had the audience in the palm of his hand.  Mad lyrics, crazy dancing, a brief flirtation with Egyptian Reggae for the fans, and just general FUN.  A great experience.

We then scampered back to the tent for most of Akala's own set (after he fronted the Hip-Hop Shakespeare session). Always brilliant and LOVE joining in on the 'conducting strings' on "Comedy Tragedy History' which he did with a fuller backing band here.  AWESOME reaction to 'absolute power' as well: "Absolute power corrupts absolutely, but absolute powerlessness does the same."

We then took in a bit of Adama Ant et al - "Prince Charming" is still awesome! - and the headed indoors for something I was really looking forward to seeing: the amazing voice and style of Merrill Garbus, aka tUnE-yArDs

Garbus is an incredible performer - again with pedals and loops and stuff.


Sorry - links etc to follow.

Summer Sundae 2012 - Friday

Well the day started early with me getting my hair done!

Neil then contacted me to say he could come to town to have lunch with me before I got the train to Leicester for Summer Sundae 2012.

We had a lovely meal at French Living in Nottingham, and then it was back to work for Neil and off to festival land for Lisa.

After a wander - and discovering my beloved 'summer burrito' stall wasn't there this year! *boo-hoo* - I strolled off to catch Bowerbirds.  I especially liked their new song which included the line "I still believe in a brighter day".



I then headed from 'Into the Wild' (the tent stage) to the Indoor stage (this year known as the Crocodile Lagoon) to see Loney Dear because I really like a bit of multi-instrument and multi-vocal pedal-created performance.

Emil Svanangen (for it is he) is Swedish - part of a significant Scandi contingent for the festival.  Very lovely and spooky.  I caught a bit of Clock Opera, but wasn't taken enough to loiter so headed to see Francois and the Atlas Mountains --- only, the French Atlas Mountains were on holiday, so we got instead a different set of fine musicians to accompany Francois including the brilliant drummer from Camera Obscura!  Neil joined me in the HOT tent - hurrah!




We then headed to the (even hotter) 'Watering Hole' tent - the main bar - where we were to watch the lovely Tiny Ruins.  Hampered by APPALLING sound engineering (seriously one of the downsides of too many of the acts) they nevertheless were utterly charming and it was only the need to attend the Summer Sundae choir rehearsal that stopped me staying to meet them afterwards.  Delightful stuff.  I'll try and add a pic later!


I'd have liked to have seen Ghostpoet but the clash of the choir rehearsal put pay to that concept.  Grr.  Nevertheless, we did see about half of Asian Dub Foundation (who we then found in the breakfast room of the hotel we were staying in!) and we then headed inside for Patrick Wolf.

Oh. My. Life.

Wolf was just astonishing.  Beautiful, accompanied by three wonderful string-instrument players (violins, cello, harp - plus a saw) he swept away the audience.  Just breathtaking.



Nothing could beat that so it was back to the ranch to freshen up and sleep.  I had another early start the next day.

Striking tone: The Comedy of Errors, RST, Stratford-upon-Avon - Saturday matinee 4 August 2012

I had made a promise to a former student of mine when she finished her English degree last year that I would go with her to Stratford to see a Shakespeare play, along with her daughter.

On Saturday, after a few bumpy organisational moments on my part, we finally managed it - and despite some tremendous showers of rain, nothing dampened our spirits.

The Comedy of Errors is one of the shorter plays (slightly, depending on the production) and has at its core a good bit of farce: two lots of mistaken identity twins.  High-larious, and potentially perfect fare for a first-time full-length Shakespeare experience for a young person.

So the rather brutal opening, even if undercut by involving a fish-tank with plastic fishes, was slightly alarming.   I didn't envy what Nicholas Day underwent as Egeon.  He seems to have got the short-straw presently for being the brutalised actor.  All this after Marat/Sade!

I shouldn't have worried though, despite the occasionally varied tone: the basic gist of the story - the wrong husband, the wrong servant - was charmingly portrayed and ultimately easy to follow.  There were plenty of laugh aloud moments, and the two Dromios were wonderful (Bruce Mackinnon as Dromio of Syracuse and Felix Hayes as Dromio of Ephesus).

And actually, there was an underlying sense to the violence of certain scenes: the text makes clear that Ephesus is state in terror, with the Duke executing anyone from Syracuse who lands on the shores.  And unlike others I had no problem with Sandy Grierson's Scottish accent in playing the Duke/Solinus - well, you probably could expect that.  Making the docks a place to import bodies and goods, at great risk to all concerned, underpins this interpretation and heightens the risk that Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse take in smuggling themselves to Ephesus in pursuit of Antipholus's lost sibling.

Overall then, a joyful production with plenty of staging amusement - I especially liked how Adriana and Luciana's room 'flies' in as a box to the stage.  (Indeed, both sisters were great:  a mix of steel and confusion - and a piercing scream - from Kirsty Bushell as Adriana, and prim little-sister-ness from Emily Taaffe).

And it was hard not to be charmed by Amie Burns Walker as the Courtesan, an ostensibly small role which she absolutely utilised to the maximum, not least in her reactions to confused wife Adriana pulling down the Courtesan's dress to a moderately more decent length. She was suitably flirty and utterly ran rings around the men who encountered her.

Overall, it was an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon, especially in good company.  Doctor Pinch - a very scary cameo role from Jonathan Slinger - was excellent, and there was much hilarity to be gained from rapping, singing, and general inability to actually be cool and 'hip'.  Plenty of out-of-their-depth attempts at being cool fell flat in the most comedic ways possible.

I hope that the experience - combined with having seen the Open Stages taster events last month - will have given another youngster a taste for Shakespeare.  It's certainly a good way to spend your days.

Art reviews: Rashid Rana "Everything is Happening at Once" and DAAR "Common Assembly" / Thomas Demand "Model Studies"

Yesterday was 'an art day'. Neil and I took in two exhibitions (well, sort-off three: but the Nottingham Contemporary Gallery almost always double-banks its exhibitions with some 'tenuous' link).

To start with it was super-rainy. The excuse of staying for coffee at the Nottingham Art Exchange in Hyson Green (my old childhood stomping ground) was mostly on the grounds that outside was torrential rain. Besides, they do nice coffee and the space is always inviting to sit in.

Anyway, we needed time to digest the beauty of the exhibition we had just seen there: Rashid Rana's incredible and breathtaking "Everything is Happening at Once" (1).

It is a brilliant, disturbing and visually entrancing exhibition, with works predominantly constructed from multiple small images: sometimes these are at odds with their apparent content, other times the large is constructed from the small.


The thing is that photographs can never do justice to this type of work, not least because they can never capture the physical experience of standing in front of them, moving around - close, further away - that brings the images in and out of focus, alerting the viewer to the construction of imagery and the undermining of meaning.

For those worried that this is sounds rather like giant optical illusions, somewhat akin to those immensely irritating early 1990s Magic Eye 3-D images (2), be not afraid. These are so much more rewarding. The reflective surfaces of 'Desperately seeking paradise II" (2010-11) that greet the visitor as they enter the central gallery, start to turn into an image, and at close proximity you realise the tiny images at the heart of the whole: small photographs of housing in Lahore. As you step further and further away from the entrance, the reflective surfaces disappear completely and the overpowering obsessive detail in each small photograph is taken over by the realisation that the whole is even greater than the sum of its parts: a immense skyline of skyscrapers - at odds with the small domesticity of low-level housing in the individual pictures.


Another work, 'Dis-location I' (2007) is constructed from around 45000 individual pictures taken of the same building over 24 hours, to make a whole image of that building, a colonial building: sometimes people intrude to the left, right and centre of the individual frames, but the building - solid, non-transitory - appears static in the bigger picture. The flux of time and space: I cannot think why this exhibition appealed to me.

Upstairs, there are warnings about "imagery of an adult nature": the series 'What Lies Between Flesh and Blood' presents Rothko-esque images constructed of images of 'flesh' and 'blood' garnered from multiple sources. But these lead into more discomforting images. 'Red Carpet' (2007) creates the sumptuous qualities of a fine Persian carpet from multiple images of a slaughter-house. At close range, the spatter of blood is disconcerting: at even a couple of feet away, such details of 'reality' are lost to the overall pattern.

I suspect though that Veil VI is the real reason for the warnings: a row of women dressed in full-veil clothing, barely individuated in their similarity, is made up from their equally un-individuated Western counterparts from Pr0nographic imagery. It is simultaneously simple (simplistic) and disturbing. Again, the disjunction of part and whole - East and West - are blurred and critiqued.

After that, Nottingham Contemporary had a tough job to pull off a comparable reaction from me. And although it had elements of the fascinating, nothing quite touched me in the same way.

As is common with Nottingham Contemporary, the space often brings together two artists/collectives/themes. In this case, it is architecture. Thomas Demand discovered the archive of John Lautner at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.

(Sorry: cannot help myself - BEEN THERE!)

Ahem.

Anyway. Demand usually creates his own models of architectural space, but destroys them once they are photographed. Here (thankfully) the urge to destroy is resisted, but Demand lends to his often super-close-up images of Lautner's modernist architectural models a sense of capturing an entire history of both modernism and architectural form. There is a weird beauty to it, but the images appear a little 'dead' after a while amidst them, in a way one hopes a visitor does not feel in Lautner's own spaces.


The other 'half' of the exhibition is both more explicitly architectural and yet more divorced from the reality of architecture.

Decolonizing Architecture/Art Residency (DAAR) is an art and architecture collective set up by Alessandro Petti, Sandi Hilal and Eyal Weizman, based in Palestine. Through videos, proposed architectural interventions, explorations of contested spaces and buildings (crucially the ill-fated and ill-located Palestinian Parliament), DAAR challenge the dispassionate modernism of Lautner and Demand to highlight how space and the buildings that occupy it, the lines that draw it, and the laws that enable it are sites of more than just creative practice.


It is intellectually interesting, but I felt rather like I have in the past when viewing Martha Rosler's work: it stimulates my brain, my politics and my sensibilities, but I don't necessarily feel creatively connected to it. I think this may be my flaw.

So it was very much an art day, even though the experiences seemed to move further away from an integration of creativity in the world to an analysis of the difficulties of bringing the creative into a fragmented inhabited space in 'the real world'.



(1) Yes, my inner nerd alarm did go off as I thought about "all of history happening at once" in the Doctor Who season fnarg plus 1 finale "The Wedding of River Song".

(2) Irritating because I could NEVER 'see' diddly with these darned Magic Eye things and merely got irked by the hours wasted in pursuit of the un-seeable.

Theatre Review: The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (on tour) - Nottingham Playhouse Preview Night Wednesday 26 October 2011

The Guardian gave it a 4 star review when reviewing this production at Liverpool earlier this month of Brecht's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui.

This fast-talking new translation of Brecht's satire is certainly worth seeing, though whether you will keep pace with the dialogue is more debatable (The Observer review intimates this concern).

Last night was preview night in Nottingham (it is on until 12 November here) and the theatre was pretty full (albeit lots and lots of teenagers). Actually, it was a very attentive audience as far as I could tell, and the cast got a very rapturous reception at the end (deservedly so). Ian Bartholomew as Arturo Ui is especially fine.

It is not quite as well done as the version of The Caucasian Chalk Circle which toured to Nottingham in 2009. And inevitably the analogies between cauliflower sellers in the USA and the rise of Hitler and Nazism in Germany are as subtle as a brick through a window. Nevertheless, I'd still recommend audiences to see this production of Arturo Ui in the UK asap: it remains a powerful work, funny and terrifying all at once.