August: Osage County
National Theatre presents Steppenwolf’s production
http://www.steppenwolf.org/
by Tracy Letts
Broadway's biggest hit comes to London for 8 weeks only.
-->Cast credits:
Little Charles : Ian Barford
Steve Heidebrecht : Gary Cole
Violet Weston : Deanna Dunagan
Johnna Monevata : Kimberly Guerrero
Karen Weston : Mariann Mayberry
Barbara Fordham : Amy Morton
Ivy Weston : Sally Murphy
Charlie Aiken : Paul Vincent O'Connor
Bill Fordham : Jeff Perry
Jean Fordham : Molly Ranson
Mattie Fay Aiken : Rondi Reed
Beverly Weston : Chelcie Ross
Sheriff Deon Gilbeau : Troy West
Production credits:
Director: Anna D Shapiro
Set Designer: Todd Rosenthal
Costume Designer: Ana Kuzmanic
Lighting Designer: Ann G Wrightson
Music: David Singer
Fights: Chuck Coyl
Sound Designer: Richard Woodbury
at Lyttleton, RNT
When the large Weston family unexpectedly reunites in Oklahoma, after their father disappears, their home explodes in a maelstrom of repressed truths and unsettling secrets. This new play unflinchingly – and uproariously – exposes the dark side of the Midwestern American family.
The internationally renowned Steppenwolf Company, last seen at the National Theatre with The Grapes of Wrath, returns to London with this Broadway smash-hit production, winner of the 2008 Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize for Best Play.
this is is a difficult show and a difficult show for me to chronicle my experience of: there is much to admire and it is completely engaging from start to finish, and yet i hung back through most of it, held firmly in place as a witness rather than being drawn in to the action or stirred emotionally at all by these people and their crashing stories. It is like watching a world - a microcosm of america we suppose - collapse in on itself. and finding it has no substance at its centre to either smash itself against or rekindle itself from, we watch it simply disappear into its own vacuum with less and less debris left behind to show what was once there.
one by one we watch each of the family members bring their own self-consumed versions of unhappy self-righteousness rage into the this claustrophobic house to thrash and wail about. None of them are entirely unlikeable, all are recognisable to us from our television and film stories and the constant ghosts of williams, albee, o'neil. Their stories, as in most families, are inescapably woven together in an increasingly mucky soup of interdependencies and stored up wrongs. And in this play it is the women who are shown to be the matter: Violet the drug addled matriarch, brewing her spells of vicious poisons around the rest of the family; her sister, Mattie Fay, stewing her own guilty secret into an unreasonably but determined rage at her bumbling son; Barbara, number one daughter, hissing her fury and hurt at not being able to keep intact the better family life she had thought to have determined for herself; Ivy, number two daughter, screeching and stamping and screening her independence into the most unholy of alliances with Little Charles; Karen, number three daughter, festooning her west coast foolishness as ludicrously brittle and transparent drapery to her repetitive victimhood; and Barbara's daughter, Jean, stoned and precociously unaffected, even by her own near rape. even Johnna, hired to be of service to family by the checking-out patriarch, while fulfilling her function with charm and efficiency, is unable to raise her own needs as a person above her need for a job.
so far so not so good but in a good way.
and the world we are shown is one where there are no longer any moral consequences - whatever people do, whatever rules, codes, behavioural ethics are trashed and transgressed, the only consequences that register are the immediately personal. so, Violet's drug-taking is only 'wrong' in the consequential effects this has on her behaviour (it's a joke she is able to blackmail doctors into writing her prescriptions); Ivy's incest is only 'wrong' when it has to be faced up to in conversation; 14 year old Jean's dope smoking goes uncensored; Bill's adultery is only measured in terms of the hurt it makes to Barbara and Jean; Steve's sexual harassment of Jean is allowed to go unchecked by police or any other possibility of retribution. this is a world where behaviour exists beyond or outside any moral coding, held up for notice or judgement only when and in terms of its infringement on what other people want or are stopped from having.
still so far so good - both as portrayal of the domestic secular story in our post-modern western world, as much as a dystopic state of the nation view of america.
but in this dissolute decaying fizzing petri dish of a species gone beyond its purpose or possibilities, the women are treated to the basest of cheap jokes and stereotypes. in a household of highly-read highly-educated people, we get the ghastly old horrors of 'you look like a lesbian', a medley of vagina-word sniggers (from the daughters); and barely more than a brief interruption in proceedings in response to Jean's molestation by the seedy Steve. and this is wrong in a very bad way. because i think for this show to matter beyond the moment of its happening in the theatre, we need to accept that these women are their own constructions made of and from themselves. just as we need to see their world as the mutually dependent dysfunctional system they have created for themselves (cf. albee's george and martha; cf. dysfunctional relationships we have known and watched ...), so too do we need to believe these women are self-made and self-perpetuated. and i do not: they are men in women's clothing. i think both watching it and now thinking back on it, i cannot accept these women as anything other than a man's creation, his pieces in an elaborate domestic computer game, where all the characters are inevitably variations of the creator.
and this is misogynism in a most destructively veiled way.
above and beyond this, the best of the show is the staging together with the acting which is fierce and forced through with an absolute intensity of single mindedness, so that all the characters arrive onstage fully fleshed. they then disappear from our view without carrying with them a hint of future story to wonder about: again like a computer game, they are all only manifest while they are deployed as competitors in action before us.
'this is the way the world ends
this is the way the world ends
this is the way the world ends
not with a bang but a whimper' (T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland)
Read an extract from the programme. http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/42706/programme-extracts/programme-extract-for-emaugust-osage-countyem.html
Read in the Guardian how August: Osage County will be made into a film by the Weinstein brothers. http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/nov/11/theatre-tracy-letts-august-osage-county-weinstein-company-broadway
Read Tracy Lett's interview in the Telegraph where he talks about his experience with August: Osage County. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/3563234/August-Osage-County%2C-the-first-great-American-play-of-the-century.html
Showing posts with label national theatre. Show all posts
Showing posts with label national theatre. Show all posts
Thursday, 1 January 2009
Friday, 17 October 2008
stalla duffy at cottlesloe
Stella Duffy in conversation with Adjoa Andoh
In her new novel, The Room of Lost Things, writer and actor Stella Duffy paints a vivid picture of life in a South London dry-cleaning shop, where secrets and lies are revealed in its customers’ pockets.
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/38100/platforms/stella-duffy.html
Another masterclass from stella - this time in how good a platform conversation can be
Two artists who cared about us and at the same time knew how to look utterly comfortable and at home on a borrowed set on a borrowed stage
Both women shine with charm and fizz with wit and energy. And each have a care for us: adjoa knowing and remembering to explain references when they arise (tv show 'the wire') and always repeating audience questions and so obviously listening in every moment; and stella too clarifying references (walter mosley) and blending her passions (craft rather than art, magic in the mistakes, the need to give a voice to white working class men as much as young british asian men, letting the story find itself) with real and practical advice (for getting published, for writing, for getting started).
i suspect if i hadn’t known stella already i’d have come away believing that i now did, as i came away feeling i’d met adjoa.
if only these two women would be watched and learned from!
p.s. The Room Of Lost Things is a brilliant read!
In her new novel, The Room of Lost Things, writer and actor Stella Duffy paints a vivid picture of life in a South London dry-cleaning shop, where secrets and lies are revealed in its customers’ pockets.
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/38100/platforms/stella-duffy.html
Another masterclass from stella - this time in how good a platform conversation can be
Two artists who cared about us and at the same time knew how to look utterly comfortable and at home on a borrowed set on a borrowed stage
Both women shine with charm and fizz with wit and energy. And each have a care for us: adjoa knowing and remembering to explain references when they arise (tv show 'the wire') and always repeating audience questions and so obviously listening in every moment; and stella too clarifying references (walter mosley) and blending her passions (craft rather than art, magic in the mistakes, the need to give a voice to white working class men as much as young british asian men, letting the story find itself) with real and practical advice (for getting published, for writing, for getting started).
i suspect if i hadn’t known stella already i’d have come away believing that i now did, as i came away feeling i’d met adjoa.
if only these two women would be watched and learned from!
p.s. The Room Of Lost Things is a brilliant read!
Tuesday, 16 September 2008
'in-i' - akram khan + juliette binoche
in-i
by Juliette Binoche and Akram Khan
by Juliette Binoche and Akram Khan
with
visual design by Anish Kapoorand
music composition by Philip Sheppard
lighting design by Michael Hulls
sound design by Nicolas Faure
If the Greeks had 14 words to describe different ways of loving, how many dare we experience?
A major new work of dance theatre created by one of the world’s leading dancer/choreographers, Akram Khan, and actress Juliette Binoche.
Throughout their careers, Binoche and Khan have both sought out surprising and daring collaborations. Akram Khan has always taken an inter-disciplinary approach to dance and his collaborators have included Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Antony Gormley and Nitin Sawhney (zero degrees), Sylvie Guillem (Sacred Monsters) and Hanif Kureishi.
Similarly, Juliette Binoche has made artistically challenging choices with directors such as Michael Haneke (Hidden) and Louis Malle (David Hare’s screenplay Damage), and has starred in award-winning films including The English Patient and Chocolat.Creating the environment for the duet is Turner Prize-winning artist Anish Kapoor.
in-i is a unique collaboration between three of today’s most exciting artists.
So seeing this the second time I now completely love it!
This time I am easily and fully immersed and this time what it is all seems so clear and evocative and resonant - like reading a novel except they are providing the sounds and pictures and we are making the story (whereas in a novel we make the sounds & pictures from the story the writer gives us). And watching this time it seems so obvious that they are bringing us a fictional story of the trajectory - the rise and clash and fall and remaking of a relationship that is raw from the scaring of past hurts - his from the Mullah as a boy, hers from (his?) violence and both from each other's fierceness.
So why was this second time such a richer experience for me?
A lot has to do with what I brought I think and at the preview show I limited my experience by expecting way too little perhaps: I forgot what a storyteller Akram's is, how his desire to tell a story is what propels and drives his shows, how much he wants to use sound and movement and rhythm to reach and communicate with us. At the preview I think I just sat and watched it as a display of a series of abstract skilfully made images, not looking for a complete narrative and so not seeing any. Then too I wonder if I let myself become distracted by their celebrity - I looked at this to see versions of Akram's Khan and Juliette Binoche when of course the point was to look past and through these 'names' to the people and their story they are making. (the exact opposite to the problem of trying to get 'visibility inside invisibility' cited today for new black performance of needing to become invisible from heightened visibility)
But I think too this show was more formed and performed: I suspect it needed audience responses to find its cadences and punctuation and energy flows to become a finished work. As well as the time and repetitions to transcend its parts and fly out from the performance space.
So 'in-i' now gives me an achingly recognisable series of moments layered into complex textures of personality clashes, dynamics of competing domination, funny awful mismatches of gender behaviours, soft intimate almost too private moments of connection, fighting currents of inner conflict as head wars with emotions, impulse jars against learned responses, past experience contaminates spontaneity. Moving & funny & personal & vivid & memorable.
This time I am easily and fully immersed and this time what it is all seems so clear and evocative and resonant - like reading a novel except they are providing the sounds and pictures and we are making the story (whereas in a novel we make the sounds & pictures from the story the writer gives us). And watching this time it seems so obvious that they are bringing us a fictional story of the trajectory - the rise and clash and fall and remaking of a relationship that is raw from the scaring of past hurts - his from the Mullah as a boy, hers from (his?) violence and both from each other's fierceness.
So why was this second time such a richer experience for me?
A lot has to do with what I brought I think and at the preview show I limited my experience by expecting way too little perhaps: I forgot what a storyteller Akram's is, how his desire to tell a story is what propels and drives his shows, how much he wants to use sound and movement and rhythm to reach and communicate with us. At the preview I think I just sat and watched it as a display of a series of abstract skilfully made images, not looking for a complete narrative and so not seeing any. Then too I wonder if I let myself become distracted by their celebrity - I looked at this to see versions of Akram's Khan and Juliette Binoche when of course the point was to look past and through these 'names' to the people and their story they are making. (the exact opposite to the problem of trying to get 'visibility inside invisibility' cited today for new black performance of needing to become invisible from heightened visibility)
But I think too this show was more formed and performed: I suspect it needed audience responses to find its cadences and punctuation and energy flows to become a finished work. As well as the time and repetitions to transcend its parts and fly out from the performance space.
So 'in-i' now gives me an achingly recognisable series of moments layered into complex textures of personality clashes, dynamics of competing domination, funny awful mismatches of gender behaviours, soft intimate almost too private moments of connection, fighting currents of inner conflict as head wars with emotions, impulse jars against learned responses, past experience contaminates spontaneity. Moving & funny & personal & vivid & memorable.
Saturday, 6 September 2008
*** 'waves' (katie mitchell)
'Waves'
A work devised by Katie Mitchell and the Company from the text of Virginia Woolf’s novel 'The Waves'
A work devised by Katie Mitchell and the Company from the text of Virginia Woolf’s novel 'The Waves'
the Company:
: Kate Duchêne
: Anastasia Hille
: Kristin Hutchinson
: Sean Jackson
: Stephen Kennedy
: Liz Kettle
: Paul Ready
: Jonah Russell
Director: Katie Mitchell
Designer: Vicki Mortimer
Video Designer: Leo Warner
Lighting Designer: Paule Constable
Music: Paul Clark
Sound: Gareth Fry
: Kate Duchêne
: Anastasia Hille
: Kristin Hutchinson
: Sean Jackson
: Stephen Kennedy
: Liz Kettle
: Paul Ready
: Jonah Russell
Director: Katie Mitchell
Designer: Vicki Mortimer
Video Designer: Leo Warner
Lighting Designer: Paule Constable
Music: Paul Clark
Sound: Gareth Fry
A tale of friendship, loss, identity and love, Waves is an exploration of human consciousness, tracing a band of friends from childhood to old age and death. The fragmented and dreamlike narrative of Virginia Woolf’s novel is exquisitely evoked using live film, sound and musicians.
Following a sell-out run in 2006, and prior to Broadway, a second chance to see the original National Theatre cast in this unique and acclaimed production.
Following a sell-out run in 2006, and prior to Broadway, a second chance to see the original National Theatre cast in this unique and acclaimed production.
Eight actors play the friends in 'The Waves' and a Reader who we take to be Virginia Woolf herself. The same actor always gives us the face of their character but they variously play different character's voices, hands, legs, feet ... And once each character's voice is established using the read narrative device of "... said Neville / Jinny / Susan / Bernard / Louis / Rhoda / Percival" the strong character acting helped vocally by distinct accents and intonation rhythms meant it was always clear who we are listening to.
This is everything '...some trace of her' was but for me even better and I can't decide whether this is because I am more familiar with the film -theatre -sound mixed live art form -certainly I felt much happier with the decisions I made about where to put my focus - or whether there is something more simple in the both the narrative line and the telling of this story that made it a much richer deeper and certainly more moving experience. The same delight and thrill I got from watching the fabulously sophisticated execution was still there, but this time I was a lot less the 'boy in a candy shop' trying hopelessly to make a grab for everything, and more the willing Alice happily jumping through the rabbit hole into this world and its people being made before us.
They give us many wonderfully evocative moments and the effect this time is so very close to reading a novel with flashes of imagery coming in and out of sudden focus. And a lot of the best moments come from patterns:
+ the shots of different faces at the train window going off to school- and then the knees coming home
+ the split-frame dinner to farewell Percival to India
+ the series of photos with Percival before he goes oft to India
+ the sequence of moments when each of the friends read the telegram telling of Percy’s death
+ the shoes walking over wet leaves during the final reunion
The film pictures made in this show seem a lot simpler than ‘… some trace of her' and are perhaps all the potent for me because of this - my brain is given more time to fully experience the moments being made because i am less frantically keeping up making sense and feeling wowed. This extra involvement is helped by a greater degree of directing our focus and less film: in ‘… some trace …’ the film images are constant and this means that it’s always up to you moment-by-moment to decide where you put your focus. And while I love the idea of this the activity of doing it - especially the first time - is unrelentingly busy; with less film in this show I am easier about putting my whole absorption in to the film images when we get them knowing there are other times for me to watch the live action. And the use of one long table and lighting and simple un-filmed props (such as the reader's cigarette and reading lamp) means that while it is always possible to watch the peripheral activity, I have a much cleaner sense of where the main focus is. And I think this gives me a deeper more emotional experience. Yes we are capable of taking in multi-layered information from an array of fields, but this leaves us no spare space or capacity to experience the inside of any moment and the experience remains intellectual only.
So for me this earlier and less sophisticated Katie Mitchell show using live theatre-film-sound is a near-perfect experience - moving and evocative, sensuously potent for the eyes and ears, emotionally resonant, and troubling and sexy and warm and familiar and richly richly experiential at every level.
Wednesday, 13 August 2008
*** "... some trace of her" (katie mitchell & the company)
tuesday 12th august 2008
...some trace of her
inspired by The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
adapted by Katie Mitchell and the company
: Cast includes
: Jamie Ballard
: Pandora Colin
: Sam Crane
: Gawn Grainger
: Helena Lymbery
: Hattie Morahan
: Bradley Taylor
: Ben Whishaw
Production credits:
Director: Katie Mitchell
Designer: Vicki Mortimer
Director of Photography: Leo Warner for Fifty-Nine Productions
Lighting Designer: Paule Constable
Composer: Paul Clark
Sound Designer: Gareth Fry
at cottlesloe, national theatre
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/sometrace
You know, I can't understand how one can pass by a tree and not be happy about the sight of it. Think how many beautiful things there are at every step, things even the most wretched man cannot but find beautiful. Look at a child, look at the grass, how it grows, look at the eyes that gaze at you and love you...
A woman lies dead on a bed in her wedding dress, a silver knife through her heart. The two men who loved her lie beside her.
I don't understand even now how it happened.
This multimedia performance develops the use of live video seen in the ground-breaking production of Waves at the National Theatre in 2006/7. Waves returns to the Cottesloe from 20 August to 9 September, prior to a UK and World Tour.
In the ...some trace of her programme Director of Photography, Leo Warner, describes the unique process of bringing ...some trace of her to the stage; plus how to access exclusive video footage from the show.
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/38744/programme-extracts/programme-extract-for-emsome-trace-of-herem.html
Some of things said by Katie Mitchell in conversation with Dan Rabellato at the platform pre-show talk:
There are 2000 muscles in the face –we want to show the subtleties of expression I see in the rehearsal room, but which in a theatre even this size from 4 or 5 rows back becomes a just white shape, and from further back the whole body is just a white shape
It takes 3 days to make 1 minute of the show
we don't experience life as one linear neat storyline - we are constantly jumping our attention from one thing to another
this is a show about faith - about what people who have this structure and what those that don't might do: does it make them more / less moral?
there is an early sequence where a man talks about his thoughts through his experience of his last 3 minutes of life before his execution, only then to be reprieved - this is a show where the characters are "living in the shadow of death" (dan rabellato's phrase)
she is hugely influenced by Eastern Europe theatre makers – they set the bar - where makers take the work very seriously, make productions in terms of not one show but 3 or 4, spend 4 years making it, make a show that runs for several hours, make work of great beauty, emphasise the importance of craft
… and then the show …
as we sit down the company and already alive and casually busy on the stage, all in black non-descript clothes, demanding little attention, the giant film screen invisible
the floor is covered in hundreds of markers coloured coded for positioning cameras, lights and props
at each side are open shelves stacked neatly with clothes and materials
a couple of tables with poise lights
a couple of wooden platforms for the Foley sound effects
as the company make the show and the story unfolds before us we get a series of close-ups on faces and objects in period black and white film, often with a second actor voicing the dialogue so we receive it as the characters thoughts, and then perhaps with another setup providing us the view of what they are doing with their hands
we choose what we look at – the lovingly photoed closeup pan of the tea table and its accoutrements on the live version laid out on the floor or the actor reading the dialogue from a book into a microphone or the shots coming into and out readiness around the stage
I moved from a delighted boy in a candy shop thrilled with the sights on offer to wanting and getting the chance to immerse fully into the story and its characters to lastly wanting and getting some emotional vibrations. the last of these was the least provided – it’s there in the performances and the overall making but always played against the deliberate consciousness of the artifice going into its performing. it’s a small carp but I would have liked the dialogue to have come free from its speakers rather than read from the book and happily sacrificed the story of the video makers buried in the story of the show they are making – I could easily have absorbed and become accustomed to the busyness around the stage and become buried in the story, its people and their emotions if I’d been allowed.
but never never did the constant and efficient bustle around through over and under the various action points steal or distract – they were there to observe if we chose but never competing or contaminating the main focuses of where the story was happening.
andf the music also being made live but out of sight was an absolutely integral part of the show providing movement, mood, atmosphere and extra layers of storytelling
some moments from the show that – to coin Mitchell’s phrase about “the idiot” – that have burned into my memory
+ the quick and effective way the woman's back story is given to us through a vision of her as a young girl with a doll being preyed upon in double mirror leering image by the older man who will dominate and own her and the sexual splash of water
+ the long lists - by him at the start; by her at the end - of "I want ..."s
+ rolling up his sleeve so he could provide the bare arm to brush his own collar in preparation for his wedding
+ the beautifully lit tiny window pane with rain and flower that appeared as a blurred background in the film
+ the layered shots of the protagonist with white lights flying horizontally across his vision while we simultaneously watched them falling vertically in front of their camera
+ the layered shot of the two women with the one reflecting in the window she is watching the other through
+ the moments when we have a more complete scene on stage than the close-up film is giving us
+ the moments of tenderness or tension or isolation between two characters together in close-up on the screen while being completely separate on stage
+the continual flow of seamless moves in and out of the action from performing to filming to voicing to setting up to performing to lighting –to sound effecting to resetting up
wonderful and rich and magical and potent and thrilling and enthralling and gloriously controlled and contained and unfurledmy one wish for next time is that I can add “and moving” to this list
...some trace of her
inspired by The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
adapted by Katie Mitchell and the company
: Cast includes
: Jamie Ballard
: Pandora Colin
: Sam Crane
: Gawn Grainger
: Helena Lymbery
: Hattie Morahan
: Bradley Taylor
: Ben Whishaw
Production credits:
Director: Katie Mitchell
Designer: Vicki Mortimer
Director of Photography: Leo Warner for Fifty-Nine Productions
Lighting Designer: Paule Constable
Composer: Paul Clark
Sound Designer: Gareth Fry
at cottlesloe, national theatre
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/sometrace
You know, I can't understand how one can pass by a tree and not be happy about the sight of it. Think how many beautiful things there are at every step, things even the most wretched man cannot but find beautiful. Look at a child, look at the grass, how it grows, look at the eyes that gaze at you and love you...
A woman lies dead on a bed in her wedding dress, a silver knife through her heart. The two men who loved her lie beside her.
I don't understand even now how it happened.
This multimedia performance develops the use of live video seen in the ground-breaking production of Waves at the National Theatre in 2006/7. Waves returns to the Cottesloe from 20 August to 9 September, prior to a UK and World Tour.
In the ...some trace of her programme Director of Photography, Leo Warner, describes the unique process of bringing ...some trace of her to the stage; plus how to access exclusive video footage from the show.
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/38744/programme-extracts/programme-extract-for-emsome-trace-of-herem.html
Some of things said by Katie Mitchell in conversation with Dan Rabellato at the platform pre-show talk:
There are 2000 muscles in the face –we want to show the subtleties of expression I see in the rehearsal room, but which in a theatre even this size from 4 or 5 rows back becomes a just white shape, and from further back the whole body is just a white shape
It takes 3 days to make 1 minute of the show
we don't experience life as one linear neat storyline - we are constantly jumping our attention from one thing to another
this is a show about faith - about what people who have this structure and what those that don't might do: does it make them more / less moral?
there is an early sequence where a man talks about his thoughts through his experience of his last 3 minutes of life before his execution, only then to be reprieved - this is a show where the characters are "living in the shadow of death" (dan rabellato's phrase)
she is hugely influenced by Eastern Europe theatre makers – they set the bar - where makers take the work very seriously, make productions in terms of not one show but 3 or 4, spend 4 years making it, make a show that runs for several hours, make work of great beauty, emphasise the importance of craft
… and then the show …
as we sit down the company and already alive and casually busy on the stage, all in black non-descript clothes, demanding little attention, the giant film screen invisible
the floor is covered in hundreds of markers coloured coded for positioning cameras, lights and props
at each side are open shelves stacked neatly with clothes and materials
a couple of tables with poise lights
a couple of wooden platforms for the Foley sound effects
as the company make the show and the story unfolds before us we get a series of close-ups on faces and objects in period black and white film, often with a second actor voicing the dialogue so we receive it as the characters thoughts, and then perhaps with another setup providing us the view of what they are doing with their hands
we choose what we look at – the lovingly photoed closeup pan of the tea table and its accoutrements on the live version laid out on the floor or the actor reading the dialogue from a book into a microphone or the shots coming into and out readiness around the stage
I moved from a delighted boy in a candy shop thrilled with the sights on offer to wanting and getting the chance to immerse fully into the story and its characters to lastly wanting and getting some emotional vibrations. the last of these was the least provided – it’s there in the performances and the overall making but always played against the deliberate consciousness of the artifice going into its performing. it’s a small carp but I would have liked the dialogue to have come free from its speakers rather than read from the book and happily sacrificed the story of the video makers buried in the story of the show they are making – I could easily have absorbed and become accustomed to the busyness around the stage and become buried in the story, its people and their emotions if I’d been allowed.
but never never did the constant and efficient bustle around through over and under the various action points steal or distract – they were there to observe if we chose but never competing or contaminating the main focuses of where the story was happening.
andf the music also being made live but out of sight was an absolutely integral part of the show providing movement, mood, atmosphere and extra layers of storytelling
some moments from the show that – to coin Mitchell’s phrase about “the idiot” – that have burned into my memory
+ the quick and effective way the woman's back story is given to us through a vision of her as a young girl with a doll being preyed upon in double mirror leering image by the older man who will dominate and own her and the sexual splash of water
+ the long lists - by him at the start; by her at the end - of "I want ..."s
+ rolling up his sleeve so he could provide the bare arm to brush his own collar in preparation for his wedding
+ the beautifully lit tiny window pane with rain and flower that appeared as a blurred background in the film
+ the layered shots of the protagonist with white lights flying horizontally across his vision while we simultaneously watched them falling vertically in front of their camera
+ the layered shot of the two women with the one reflecting in the window she is watching the other through
+ the moments when we have a more complete scene on stage than the close-up film is giving us
+ the moments of tenderness or tension or isolation between two characters together in close-up on the screen while being completely separate on stage
+the continual flow of seamless moves in and out of the action from performing to filming to voicing to setting up to performing to lighting –to sound effecting to resetting up
wonderful and rich and magical and potent and thrilling and enthralling and gloriously controlled and contained and unfurledmy one wish for next time is that I can add “and moving” to this list
Thursday, 7 August 2008
"macbeth who is that bloodied man?" (Teatr Biuro Podròzy)
thursday 7th august 2008
MACBETH Who is That Bloodied Man?
(an outdoor performance, commissioned by : Cork European Cultural Capital 2005 and premiered in Cork, 20-25 of May)
Teatr Biuro Podròzy
http://www.tbp.ipoznan.pl/recmakeng.html
Director: Pawel Szkotak
Music: Wiki Nowikow
Design: Teatr Biuro Prodozy and Iza Kolka
outside national theatre
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/macbeth
(an outdoor performance, commissioned by : Cork European Cultural Capital 2005 and premiered in Cork, 20-25 of May)
Teatr Biuro Podròzy
http://www.tbp.ipoznan.pl/recmakeng.html
Director: Pawel Szkotak
Music: Wiki Nowikow
Design: Teatr Biuro Prodozy and Iza Kolka
outside national theatre
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/macbeth
It is based on William Shakespeare's "Macbeth". It tells of human fate determined by destiny and inner necessity. It shows the world during the horror of war, the world of nightmares, the world in blood, where it is legal to betray, to intrigue, to kill. It reminds you of the tragic consequence, that crime once committed will be continued, and man's death is not man's end - he comes back as fear, remorse and obsession. The performance portrays the world of chaos, where the order of nature is replaced by the logic of death. It takes place on the borderline of reality and nightmare, where earthly characters coexist with witches and ghosts. The inspiration to this performance is the attempt to see Shakespeare's drama as a crime myth. Particularly, nowadays when human life is of less and less value, and crime is becoming the ordinary act, rarely accompanied by indecision and doubts. The performance makes spectacular use of moving set, motorbikes, stilts and fire.
poles like tree trunks are lit by witches on stilts rattling clacker-boards
a bloody ruthless army of men in black leather on motorbikes pulling a variety of trailors incl the naked thane of cawdor in a cage
the dead in black on stilts
fire on poles
the youngest banquo cheeky on a toy bike, playing with the crown on a pole
great soaring operatic music
lady macbeth leeringly mad waving her torch and jumping the perilously red carpeted iron scaffolding
a comic scene with the servants climaxing in a apple-eating lovemaking scene
the witches on stilts chasing macbeth with a giant roller filled with skulls
later scenes lit behind the iron-guazed set we had to guess at cos we couldn't really see - lady macbeth's mad scene and then her husband finding her hanging behind a door, macbeth burning in the final scene
at its best it was dangerous and thrilling - the motorbike chases through the fire
alot of the time it was impressive but too often one-dimensional and static somehow - despite being an intensely physical show - too easy to 'read' and so too little for our minds
More the charred bones of Shakespeare's play than the flesh, Biuro Podrozy's outdoor spectacle leaves the acrid smell of burned bridges in your nostrils. It is one long and exhilarating blast of images wrapped around thundering music, licking flames and wafting smoke. Lady Macbeth's body is found hanging behind a closed door; the witches lurk among the trees assaulting your ears with football rattles; Macbeth plays tag with a stilt-walking Death and a huge barrel of his victims' skulls. The great trick of this Polish company's approach is to make the play seem both medieval and utterly contemporary, conjuring the bloody dictators of the past half-century without ever mentioning any names. It is cleverly general and specific at the same time, giving the audience room to impose their own meanings. We first catch sight of Macbeth and Banquo riding motorcycle and sidecar in the wastelands of war, while back at headquarters strategies are planned and naked prisoners killed. The weapons of these gun-toting macho warriors prove useless against the veiled figures of the three witches, who survive bullets like some particularly nasty aliens. There is little text, and the compressed story sometimes feels like it hurtles from vaulting ambition to madness and death in a twinkle. Nevertheless this show still manages to be subtle in its depiction of life under the dictatorship of the Macbeths. The immediate tensions between Macbeth and Banquo are well drawn and there is a wonderful scene in which the domestic becomes tarnished by death as Duncan's bloody sheets are hung out to wash at almost the same time as Banquo's murder. The piece's imagery is cleverly thought out: beginning in a wasted forest, the charred tree trunks are felled as Macbeth's victims are dispatched and rise again at the end to become Birnam Wood advancing upon the castle. Banquo's son plays a pivotal role, a ghostly vision of the future who playfully haunts the present and who, in the final moments, climbs through the burning castle to retrieve Macbeth's crown for himself. It's a production that shows this magnificent Polish company at its best, and a reminder that large-scale outdoor theatre really can be thoughtful, as well as an eyeful.
Lyn Gardner:
The Guardian 07/08/2007
a bloody ruthless army of men in black leather on motorbikes pulling a variety of trailors incl the naked thane of cawdor in a cage
the dead in black on stilts
fire on poles
the youngest banquo cheeky on a toy bike, playing with the crown on a pole
great soaring operatic music
lady macbeth leeringly mad waving her torch and jumping the perilously red carpeted iron scaffolding
a comic scene with the servants climaxing in a apple-eating lovemaking scene
the witches on stilts chasing macbeth with a giant roller filled with skulls
later scenes lit behind the iron-guazed set we had to guess at cos we couldn't really see - lady macbeth's mad scene and then her husband finding her hanging behind a door, macbeth burning in the final scene
at its best it was dangerous and thrilling - the motorbike chases through the fire
alot of the time it was impressive but too often one-dimensional and static somehow - despite being an intensely physical show - too easy to 'read' and so too little for our minds
More the charred bones of Shakespeare's play than the flesh, Biuro Podrozy's outdoor spectacle leaves the acrid smell of burned bridges in your nostrils. It is one long and exhilarating blast of images wrapped around thundering music, licking flames and wafting smoke. Lady Macbeth's body is found hanging behind a closed door; the witches lurk among the trees assaulting your ears with football rattles; Macbeth plays tag with a stilt-walking Death and a huge barrel of his victims' skulls. The great trick of this Polish company's approach is to make the play seem both medieval and utterly contemporary, conjuring the bloody dictators of the past half-century without ever mentioning any names. It is cleverly general and specific at the same time, giving the audience room to impose their own meanings. We first catch sight of Macbeth and Banquo riding motorcycle and sidecar in the wastelands of war, while back at headquarters strategies are planned and naked prisoners killed. The weapons of these gun-toting macho warriors prove useless against the veiled figures of the three witches, who survive bullets like some particularly nasty aliens. There is little text, and the compressed story sometimes feels like it hurtles from vaulting ambition to madness and death in a twinkle. Nevertheless this show still manages to be subtle in its depiction of life under the dictatorship of the Macbeths. The immediate tensions between Macbeth and Banquo are well drawn and there is a wonderful scene in which the domestic becomes tarnished by death as Duncan's bloody sheets are hung out to wash at almost the same time as Banquo's murder. The piece's imagery is cleverly thought out: beginning in a wasted forest, the charred tree trunks are felled as Macbeth's victims are dispatched and rise again at the end to become Birnam Wood advancing upon the castle. Banquo's son plays a pivotal role, a ghostly vision of the future who playfully haunts the present and who, in the final moments, climbs through the burning castle to retrieve Macbeth's crown for himself. It's a production that shows this magnificent Polish company at its best, and a reminder that large-scale outdoor theatre really can be thoughtful, as well as an eyeful.
Lyn Gardner:
The Guardian 07/08/2007
Saturday, 26 July 2008
"her naked skin" (rebecca lenkiewicz)
friday 25th july 2008
http://picasaweb.google.com/marktrezona/HerNakedSkin
“her naked skin”
A new play by Rebecca Lenkiewicz
A new play by Rebecca Lenkiewicz
Celia Cain ………..… Lesley Manville
Eve Douglas ………..Jemima Roper
Florence Boorman …. Susan Engel
William Cain ………. Adrian Rawlins
Director…………….. Howard Davies
Designer ……………. Rob Howell
Music played live by The Elysian Quartet
At Olivier, National Theatre
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/nakedskin
Eve Douglas ………..Jemima Roper
Florence Boorman …. Susan Engel
William Cain ………. Adrian Rawlins
Director…………….. Howard Davies
Designer ……………. Rob Howell
Music played live by The Elysian Quartet
At Olivier, National Theatre
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/nakedskin
"Love is just fear I suppose. Masquerading as a fever. Then you explore each other and suddenly you have licence to become totally pedestrian. And ultimately abusive.London 1913. Militancy in the Suffragette Movement is at its height. Thousands of women of all classes serve time in Holloway Prison in their fight to gain the vote. Amongst them is Lady Celia Cain who feels trapped by both the policies of the day and the shackles of a frustrating marriage. Inside, she meets a young seamstress, Eve Douglas, and her life spirals into an erotic but dangerous chaos.
Men don't like to see a convoy of women.It unsexes us.Rebecca Lenkiewicz's "Her Naked Skin" is set at a crucial moment when, with emancipation almost in sight, women refuse to let the establishment stand in their way.
This is a perhaps deceptively straight-forward story about the Suffragettes with a love story between two of the women at its heart. Set entirely in 1913 it chronicles through scenes that slide under the great revolving frame of the prison and span from the moment Emily Wilding Davison sets off to the Derby where she will be killed stepping out in front of she King's horse wearing her Suffragette sash through scenes set in the House Of Commons, Holloway Prison, the Cain's posh drawing room, Eve's Limehouse attic bedroom, a wooded shooting party, a gentleman's club. London street and park scenes This is all achieved with a huge ironwork set on a trailer that keeps the prison cells the dominant and central structure throughout the play - whatever else we are watching we are never allowed to forget or lose sight of the women in prison. And this for me is the power of this show: it finishes with an enormous collage projection of photographs of woman after woman after woman after woman. This show is an attempt to bring out of invisibility just one of the hundreds of personal stories of the women who fought so long - 60 years! - and hard - women were often imprisoned six, seven or more times and in 1912, 90 of the 102 Suffragettes in prison are being forcibly fed! This play forces us to witness the horrible treatment Suffragettes were subjected to while also giving us a behind-the-scenes sense of the lives that were being lived through, with, alongside and pitted against their actions. And with this we get to see just how complete and secure and smug were men and the supremacy and power of their systems -the government, the law, the prisons, the doctors…
The weakness of the play is that the role of Eve - the working girl from Limehouse who falls in love with Lady Celia - is badly underwritten. Lesley Manville is perfect in her role - suave and strong and quick and confident in her class and intellect with woman, vulnerable and angry and frustrated and stuck in her position as a wife and a woman in a man's world. But because of this and because we get to know so much about her life and virtually nothing about Eve's, this arrives too much a story about a rich woman and her young pretty plaything rather than the fully developed love story between two equally strong and interesting protagonists it seems to want to be.
So, for me a flawed play that I suspect will grow and find a stronger and surer focus - the revolve got stuck one hour in the preview night we saw it, and we were forced to take an extra interval which stilted the momentum and made it a longer night.
Nevertheless this show gave me vivid pictures and ‘memories’ of an historical legacy we have inherited and makes me face the considerable costs that went into to making it happen.
And also to notice that still woman’s stories are perhaps received uneasily in a world more used to his-stories.
The weakness of the play is that the role of Eve - the working girl from Limehouse who falls in love with Lady Celia - is badly underwritten. Lesley Manville is perfect in her role - suave and strong and quick and confident in her class and intellect with woman, vulnerable and angry and frustrated and stuck in her position as a wife and a woman in a man's world. But because of this and because we get to know so much about her life and virtually nothing about Eve's, this arrives too much a story about a rich woman and her young pretty plaything rather than the fully developed love story between two equally strong and interesting protagonists it seems to want to be.
So, for me a flawed play that I suspect will grow and find a stronger and surer focus - the revolve got stuck one hour in the preview night we saw it, and we were forced to take an extra interval which stilted the momentum and made it a longer night.
Nevertheless this show gave me vivid pictures and ‘memories’ of an historical legacy we have inherited and makes me face the considerable costs that went into to making it happen.
And also to notice that still woman’s stories are perhaps received uneasily in a world more used to his-stories.
"a slight ache" (harold pinter)
friday 25th july 2008
"a slight ache"
by harold pinter
Flora ............................... Clare Higgins
Edward .......................,,... Simon Russell Beale
Matchseller ...............,,,,.... Jamie Beamish
Director ........................... Iqbal Khan
at Lyttleton, National Theatre
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/pinterdouble
A Slight Ache takes an oblique view of a long-married couple, the irascible Edward and his frustrated wife Flora, when the arrival of a statuesque silent stranger splinters their loveless bourgeois marriage. Simon Russell Beale and Clare Higgins play the couple in this early work by Harold Pinter.
this was farily pedestrian experience for me
simon russell beale and clare higgins are always easy and enjoyable to watch
and the play has some fun observations about the surreal sterility of middleclass middleaged married life conversation in its early scenes.
but after the entrance of the matchseller it all just felt too obvious and i wasn't held by either any real sense of caring about what was happening to these people - the husband meeting his own breakdown / death; his wife welcoming 'death' in as the better replacement that she could coddle and control - nor sense of much surprise. perhaps the play has dated but its lack for me was any real push or drive to it - i needed some more ominous pulsation of creeping decay if not coming doom.
m + c + s all enjoyed it more than me tho i think
"a slight ache"
by harold pinter
Flora ............................... Clare Higgins
Edward .......................,,... Simon Russell Beale
Matchseller ...............,,,,.... Jamie Beamish
Director ........................... Iqbal Khan
at Lyttleton, National Theatre
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/pinterdouble
Flora: Have you noticed the honeysuckle this morning?
Edward: The what?
Flora: The honeysuckle.
Edward: Honeysuckle? Where?
A Slight Ache takes an oblique view of a long-married couple, the irascible Edward and his frustrated wife Flora, when the arrival of a statuesque silent stranger splinters their loveless bourgeois marriage. Simon Russell Beale and Clare Higgins play the couple in this early work by Harold Pinter.
this was farily pedestrian experience for me
simon russell beale and clare higgins are always easy and enjoyable to watch
and the play has some fun observations about the surreal sterility of middleclass middleaged married life conversation in its early scenes.
but after the entrance of the matchseller it all just felt too obvious and i wasn't held by either any real sense of caring about what was happening to these people - the husband meeting his own breakdown / death; his wife welcoming 'death' in as the better replacement that she could coddle and control - nor sense of much surprise. perhaps the play has dated but its lack for me was any real push or drive to it - i needed some more ominous pulsation of creeping decay if not coming doom.
m + c + s all enjoyed it more than me tho i think
Sunday, 6 July 2008
timberlake wertenbaker and anna furse (national theatre new connections)
saturday 5th july 2008
national theatre new connections
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/newconnections
New Connections is a red-hot season of short new plays created by established writers and performed by young people.
High-profile writers including Mark Ravenhill, Abi Morgan, Jack Thorne and Bryony Lavery have written plays for this year’s festival.
The search for identity pulses through New Connections 2008: for acceptance and survival in modern Britain, for racial equality in 1960s South Africa, by deception in magical allotments, during white-out in a snow blizzard, through parenting, through faith, or by comic mistakes of social networking.
Arden City
by Timberlake Wertenbaker
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/Arden20City+36054.twl
Rosie and Sally are two cousins who escape from home after difficulties with Sally’s father. Rosie dresses as a boy for safety and the girls find their way to an allotment. Orlando, who also has to flee because his brother Oliver wants him killed, finds his way to the allotment with Adam, his younger friend.
A modern retelling of As You Like It: a story about love, identity and freedom.
Performed by Daydreamer Youth Theatre, Watford
static but often well delivered reading, stong textural script but unfortunately mostly wooden and often cheesey
The Peach Child
by Anna Furse and Little Angel Theatre
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/The20Peach20Child+36056.twl
An adaptation of a well-loved Japanese fairytale. One day, as the Old Woman washes kimonos in the river, a large peach floats by. She takes it to her husband for dinner. As he cuts into the flesh, a baby boy is born. They call him Momotaro – ‘peach child’ – and he brings joy to their lives. At the age of 15 the boy tells his adoptive parents that he has to leave them. Over the other side of the mountain dwells the evil Ogre who must be overcome.
Anna Furse, Artistic Director of Athletes of the Heart, was also Artistic Director for Paines Plough in the early 1990s and Bloodgroup in the 1980s. She is an award-winning director and writer of over 50 productions that have toured internationally, including Augustine (Big Hysteria) (Time Out Award for Writing and Directing), and Gorgeous. The Peach Child was originally written and directed for The Little Angel Theatre (Japan Festival and the National Children’s Theatre Festival 2001). She wrote and directed My Glass Body for BBC Radio 3. Current productions include Don Juan Who? (with Mladinsko, Ljubljana, touring the UK in association with FEEAST) and DUST, being researched in India on an ArtsAdmin Bursary.
Performed by Kennet School, Newbury
much more successful with the whole company (notably a school rather than youth drama group) involved in making the performance...
+ fab effects with newspapers making the set (screens, hillside, sea, boat) and costumes
+ great movements from live to puppetry into live or the two happening together so we got the peach child appearing as an infant and then (swiftly) growing up into a young man, the people leaving the house as tiny figures seen heading up the hillside, the bird who swoops in b4 being replaced with an actor …
+ live music throughout punctuating and adding dimension (harp and 2 horns)
+ use of silhouette and simple movement and to convey moments in the story and character (like the ogre)
+ terrific ensemble work to make the puppets work (3 boys manipulate the peach child infant and the set
huge amount of work that is much more engaging than the previous ‘straight play’ presentation. definitely a big hooray for what devised theatre can make possible with an amateur group
national theatre new connections
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/newconnections
New Connections is a red-hot season of short new plays created by established writers and performed by young people.
High-profile writers including Mark Ravenhill, Abi Morgan, Jack Thorne and Bryony Lavery have written plays for this year’s festival.
The search for identity pulses through New Connections 2008: for acceptance and survival in modern Britain, for racial equality in 1960s South Africa, by deception in magical allotments, during white-out in a snow blizzard, through parenting, through faith, or by comic mistakes of social networking.
Arden City
by Timberlake Wertenbaker
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/Arden20City+36054.twl
Rosie and Sally are two cousins who escape from home after difficulties with Sally’s father. Rosie dresses as a boy for safety and the girls find their way to an allotment. Orlando, who also has to flee because his brother Oliver wants him killed, finds his way to the allotment with Adam, his younger friend.
A modern retelling of As You Like It: a story about love, identity and freedom.
Performed by Daydreamer Youth Theatre, Watford
static but often well delivered reading, stong textural script but unfortunately mostly wooden and often cheesey
The Peach Child
by Anna Furse and Little Angel Theatre
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/The20Peach20Child+36056.twl
An adaptation of a well-loved Japanese fairytale. One day, as the Old Woman washes kimonos in the river, a large peach floats by. She takes it to her husband for dinner. As he cuts into the flesh, a baby boy is born. They call him Momotaro – ‘peach child’ – and he brings joy to their lives. At the age of 15 the boy tells his adoptive parents that he has to leave them. Over the other side of the mountain dwells the evil Ogre who must be overcome.
Anna Furse, Artistic Director of Athletes of the Heart, was also Artistic Director for Paines Plough in the early 1990s and Bloodgroup in the 1980s. She is an award-winning director and writer of over 50 productions that have toured internationally, including Augustine (Big Hysteria) (Time Out Award for Writing and Directing), and Gorgeous. The Peach Child was originally written and directed for The Little Angel Theatre (Japan Festival and the National Children’s Theatre Festival 2001). She wrote and directed My Glass Body for BBC Radio 3. Current productions include Don Juan Who? (with Mladinsko, Ljubljana, touring the UK in association with FEEAST) and DUST, being researched in India on an ArtsAdmin Bursary.
Performed by Kennet School, Newbury
much more successful with the whole company (notably a school rather than youth drama group) involved in making the performance...
+ fab effects with newspapers making the set (screens, hillside, sea, boat) and costumes
+ great movements from live to puppetry into live or the two happening together so we got the peach child appearing as an infant and then (swiftly) growing up into a young man, the people leaving the house as tiny figures seen heading up the hillside, the bird who swoops in b4 being replaced with an actor …
+ live music throughout punctuating and adding dimension (harp and 2 horns)
+ use of silhouette and simple movement and to convey moments in the story and character (like the ogre)
+ terrific ensemble work to make the puppets work (3 boys manipulate the peach child infant and the set
huge amount of work that is much more engaging than the previous ‘straight play’ presentation. definitely a big hooray for what devised theatre can make possible with an amateur group
Tuesday, 1 July 2008
"de profundis" (oscar wilde) performed by corin redgrave
tuesday 1st july 2008
corin redgrave reads oscar wilde's
"de profundis"
edited by merlin holland
director ~ richard nelson
at lyttleton ,national theatre
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/deprofundis
towards the end of his sentence in Reading Gaol, Wilde was agonising over the lack of contact with Bosie. In desperation, he started to write him a letter.
Reviving his National Theatre performance from 2000, Corin Redgrave reads De Profundis.
Running time is approximately 2 hours 15 minutes including interval.
Merlin Holland is Oscar Wilde's grandson.
at the end of this show i was a little bemused to hear all redgrave's fans calling bravo as he frail-y but determinedly re-mounted his podium to receive the lengthy ovations - this had seemed at first rather old fashioned stuff, full of eloquence and style but delivering little (m wondered if it was a little like it must have been seeing Michael Macliammor perform)
but in fact this was quite gentle - and happily not at all over-performed
at first in fact i thought i would have liked a stronger performance - more bitterness/ more camp? - but on reflection i think what redgrave gave us allowed me to dwell on the man behind the words and the thinking and wonder more about who he was and how he felt than to lock into the energy of the wit, the iconography, the symbolism of what he has come to stand for and against. this is very much a piece of 'thinking out loud' with a sense that wilde is working out his thinking as he writes rather than declaiming previously invented notions. and he is in this a man surprisingly free of bitterness, touchjed with self-irony along with the pique and real understanding: he is no Lear to rail against the fates of god and man but rather full of a deep wisdom and caring of what it is to be human.
a soft haunting performance that has crept into me rather by surprise
corin redgrave reads oscar wilde's
"de profundis"
edited by merlin holland
director ~ richard nelson
at lyttleton ,national theatre
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/deprofundis
towards the end of his sentence in Reading Gaol, Wilde was agonising over the lack of contact with Bosie. In desperation, he started to write him a letter.
‘You came to me to learn the pleasure of life and the pleasure of art. Perhaps I am chosen to teach you something more wonderful – the meaning of sorrow and its beauty.’It is perhaps the greatest love letter ever written. Filled with a torrent of accusation, recrimination and passion, Wilde eventually reached an extraordinary state of understanding and reconciliation. A century later De Profundis remains an astonishing tour-de-force of self analysis.
Reviving his National Theatre performance from 2000, Corin Redgrave reads De Profundis.
Running time is approximately 2 hours 15 minutes including interval.
Merlin Holland is Oscar Wilde's grandson.
at the end of this show i was a little bemused to hear all redgrave's fans calling bravo as he frail-y but determinedly re-mounted his podium to receive the lengthy ovations - this had seemed at first rather old fashioned stuff, full of eloquence and style but delivering little (m wondered if it was a little like it must have been seeing Michael Macliammor perform)
but in fact this was quite gentle - and happily not at all over-performed
at first in fact i thought i would have liked a stronger performance - more bitterness/ more camp? - but on reflection i think what redgrave gave us allowed me to dwell on the man behind the words and the thinking and wonder more about who he was and how he felt than to lock into the energy of the wit, the iconography, the symbolism of what he has come to stand for and against. this is very much a piece of 'thinking out loud' with a sense that wilde is working out his thinking as he writes rather than declaiming previously invented notions. and he is in this a man surprisingly free of bitterness, touchjed with self-irony along with the pique and real understanding: he is no Lear to rail against the fates of god and man but rather full of a deep wisdom and caring of what it is to be human.
a soft haunting performance that has crept into me rather by surprise
Friday, 20 June 2008
*** "the pitmen painters" (lee hall)
thursday 19th june 2008
Mixed reviews for this. S and C not totally convinced m and i really loved it.
There is so much in this play:
The nature of art and art appreciation
The difficulty men have talking about feelings and intimacy
The pressure to stay in your group and with what you know. Even if this is less than what you could have by going outside your group
Questions about exploitation and patronage
The very critical attacks the men make on each other’s work
The vulnerability of making work and the almost universal feelings of failure
Really great scenes between Oliver and Robert Lyon - first in the borrowing books scene and then later when Robert is making his sketch of Oliver and they finally express how much the other means to them
Also when Harry tells Oliver to take Helen’s offer of a stipend to paint
Also when Oliver admits to Helen that he made the wrong choice saying ''no"
Great use of projecting the paintings - not too much and never allowed to dominate
Very intelligent grown up warm and wonderful play that is just getting richer and more wonderful the more i think about it My only criticism was just a bit much shouting
Cast credits:
: Christopher Connel
: Michael Hodgson
: Ian Kelly
: Brian Lonsdale
: Lisa McGrillis
: Deka Walmsley
: David Whitaker
: Phillippa Wilson
Production credits:
Director: Max Roberts
Designer: Gary McCann
Lighting Designer: Douglas Kuhrt
Sound Designer: Martin Hodgson
In 1934, a group of Ashington miners hired a professor to teach an art appreciation evening class. Rapidly abandoning theory in favour of practice, the pitmen began to paint. Within a few years the most avant-garde artists became their friends and their work was acquired by prestigious collections; but every day they worked, as before, down the mine.
Straight from a sell-out season at Live Theatre Newcastle, Lee Hall’s new play is a humorous, deeply moving and timely look at art, class and politics.
"the pitmen painters"
A co-production between Live Theatre, Newcastle and the National Theatre.
cottlesloe, national theatre
by lee hall
Mixed reviews for this. S and C not totally convinced m and i really loved it.
There is so much in this play:
The nature of art and art appreciation
The difficulty men have talking about feelings and intimacy
The pressure to stay in your group and with what you know. Even if this is less than what you could have by going outside your group
Questions about exploitation and patronage
The very critical attacks the men make on each other’s work
The vulnerability of making work and the almost universal feelings of failure
Really great scenes between Oliver and Robert Lyon - first in the borrowing books scene and then later when Robert is making his sketch of Oliver and they finally express how much the other means to them
Also when Harry tells Oliver to take Helen’s offer of a stipend to paint
Also when Oliver admits to Helen that he made the wrong choice saying ''no"
Great use of projecting the paintings - not too much and never allowed to dominate
Very intelligent grown up warm and wonderful play that is just getting richer and more wonderful the more i think about it My only criticism was just a bit much shouting
Cast credits:
: Christopher Connel
: Michael Hodgson
: Ian Kelly
: Brian Lonsdale
: Lisa McGrillis
: Deka Walmsley
: David Whitaker
: Phillippa Wilson
Production credits:
Director: Max Roberts
Designer: Gary McCann
Lighting Designer: Douglas Kuhrt
Sound Designer: Martin Hodgson
‘A play about the importance of not just feeding your stomach and your brain, but about feeding your soul. And it does just that.’4 stars Guardian
‘Lee Hall’s new play is witty and touching… the inspiring story of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.’ 4 stars Metro
‘Lee Hall’s new play is witty and touching… the inspiring story of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.’ 4 stars Metro
‘An inspiring, important new play. A play that's both deliciously comic and grave.’Observer
In 1934, a group of Ashington miners hired a professor to teach an art appreciation evening class. Rapidly abandoning theory in favour of practice, the pitmen began to paint. Within a few years the most avant-garde artists became their friends and their work was acquired by prestigious collections; but every day they worked, as before, down the mine.
Straight from a sell-out season at Live Theatre Newcastle, Lee Hall’s new play is a humorous, deeply moving and timely look at art, class and politics.
Saturday, 14 June 2008
*** "the revenger's tragedy" (directed by melly still)
friday 13th june 2008
"the revenger's tragedy"
by thomas middleton
Director: Melly Still
Designers: Ti Green and Melly Still
Lighting Designer: Paul Anderson
Music: Adrian Sutton and Different Gear
Sound Designer: Paul Arditti
Movement Director: Rick Nodine
Fight Director: Paul Benzing
olivier, national theatre
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/revengerstragedy
Loud instant start and immediately we are immersed in this bacchanalian world of sex and drama and violence and intrigue and masks and corridors and duplicity and amorality
Total commitment by all the cast makes this world completely believable
The revolve presents and represents the 3 sets and skids us between them - often whirling us round like a carousel
The music is a brilliant mash of live mixed house and classical seared thru with the cut glass beauty of a counter tenor
Dark colours -reds and blacks. Masks. Change of a wig to make a disguise
Great dance sequences
Almost filmic altho' always utterly theatrical
Total commitment by all the cast makes this world completely believable
The revolve presents and represents the 3 sets and skids us between them - often whirling us round like a carousel
The music is a brilliant mash of live mixed house and classical seared thru with the cut glass beauty of a counter tenor
Dark colours -reds and blacks. Masks. Change of a wig to make a disguise
Great dance sequences
Almost filmic altho' always utterly theatrical
A huge hit for us all and for C and S particularly
'Think Sarah Kane, early Edward Bond, with Mark Ravenhill thrown in, and you’re close to defining the imaginative punch of Melly Still’s modern-dress revival…’ The Times
'Bloody dance of sex and death strikes all the right notes’ Evening Standard
‘Club music, gothic interiors, sarcastic humour and some heavy daubs of gore….an insistent coup de theatre.’ Daily Mail
Attend me, I am past my depth in lust And I must swim or drown.
As he holds the skull of his beloved – who rejected the licentious old duke’s advances and so was poisoned – Vindice plots the Duke’s grotesque murder. But in a court where adultery, rape and incest are the norm, his vengeance does not stop there. An orgy of ritualistic, even playful, bloodletting follows.
Were’t not for gold and women there would be no damnation.The Revenger's Tragedy is a ferociously dark play by Thomas Middleton, set in an avaricious world that seethes with vice and retribution.
Following his Olivier award-winning performance in The Man of Mode, Rory Kinnear returns to play Vindice.
Featuring live music from DJs differentGear
Featuring live music from DJs differentGear
Thursday, 5 June 2008
"afterlife" (michael frayn)
unfinished posting
wednesday 4th june 2008
"afterlife"
a new play by michale frayn
lyttleton, national theatre
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/afterlife
A man who has everything. Money, friends, a happy home.
And then – pfft! It’s all vanished.
Max Reinhardt, one of the greatest impresarios of theatrical history, had a lifelong ambition – to dissolve the boundary between theatre and the world it portrays. Each year at the Salzburg festival he directed a famous morality play, Everyman, about God sending Death to summon a representative of mankind for judgment. The victim he chooses is a man who, like Reinhardt, rejoices in his wealth and all the pleasures that money can buy.
Then in 1938 Hitler declares his own day of reckoning and sends Death into Austria – whereupon Reinhardt, a Jew, is left as naked and vulnerable as Everyman himself.
Michael Frayn’s Afterlife is the story of how Reinhardt achieves his great ambition; though in a way he can scarcely have foreseen.
Roger Allam, last seen at the National Theatre in Michael Frayn's Democracy, plays Reinhardt. Michael Frayn's other recent productions at the National were Copenhagen and Noises Off.
World Premiere
unfortunately another miss from the national. we were disappointed and underwhelmed by this. it has its moments but fails to accumulate into anything.
the show - which is about a man famous for staging immense pageants - is written and performed in the style of a pageant. this is engaging for about the first 20minutes and then becomes increasingly wearying and shallow.
there are moments that stand out: the complete ease and relaxation with which reinhardt tell the archbishop he is a jew and you shiver knowing in how few years ahead this will be an instant sentence; the mechanical precisely performed dance sequence by the servants that presages the clipped tight fascist marches and salutes; the more obvious similarities between the theatricality of the pageants and the later pageants of the hitler rallies.
the set is huge and chunky and altho impressive forces most of the performance into a two-dimensional face-out-front which lends itself well enough to the pageantry but again fails to add any depth.
frayn's the programme notes talk about how difficult and complex reinhardt was as a man and list an intriguing array of productions and films but what he gives us is a much smaller domestic story of a rich man at home perpetually engaged in conceiving, selling, realising or hiding in the shadows and running from the money problems made by some silly (to us) pageant. rather than an evocation of of the little boy who dreamed his childhood away from the cheap seats or the creator who imagines and then painstaking crafts programmes of immense scale and specificity we only get the showman, the bully, the perfectionist, and yes the tender lover.
unfortunately despite wanting to like this it was for me a wearying and irrelevant night at the theatre - albeit expensively produced. more frustratingly it did feel like several opportunities missed.
sadly this is the 5th new play we've seen in the current national season that has been unexceptional (with "happy now"; "never so good"; "the year of magical thinking" "harper regan"). "fram" is the only show that was special.
we pin our hopes now on "the pitman painters" ...
wednesday 4th june 2008
"afterlife"
a new play by michale frayn
lyttleton, national theatre
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/afterlife
A man who has everything. Money, friends, a happy home.
And then – pfft! It’s all vanished.
Max Reinhardt, one of the greatest impresarios of theatrical history, had a lifelong ambition – to dissolve the boundary between theatre and the world it portrays. Each year at the Salzburg festival he directed a famous morality play, Everyman, about God sending Death to summon a representative of mankind for judgment. The victim he chooses is a man who, like Reinhardt, rejoices in his wealth and all the pleasures that money can buy.
Then in 1938 Hitler declares his own day of reckoning and sends Death into Austria – whereupon Reinhardt, a Jew, is left as naked and vulnerable as Everyman himself.
Michael Frayn’s Afterlife is the story of how Reinhardt achieves his great ambition; though in a way he can scarcely have foreseen.
Roger Allam, last seen at the National Theatre in Michael Frayn's Democracy, plays Reinhardt. Michael Frayn's other recent productions at the National were Copenhagen and Noises Off.
World Premiere
unfortunately another miss from the national. we were disappointed and underwhelmed by this. it has its moments but fails to accumulate into anything.
the show - which is about a man famous for staging immense pageants - is written and performed in the style of a pageant. this is engaging for about the first 20minutes and then becomes increasingly wearying and shallow.
there are moments that stand out: the complete ease and relaxation with which reinhardt tell the archbishop he is a jew and you shiver knowing in how few years ahead this will be an instant sentence; the mechanical precisely performed dance sequence by the servants that presages the clipped tight fascist marches and salutes; the more obvious similarities between the theatricality of the pageants and the later pageants of the hitler rallies.
the set is huge and chunky and altho impressive forces most of the performance into a two-dimensional face-out-front which lends itself well enough to the pageantry but again fails to add any depth.
frayn's the programme notes talk about how difficult and complex reinhardt was as a man and list an intriguing array of productions and films but what he gives us is a much smaller domestic story of a rich man at home perpetually engaged in conceiving, selling, realising or hiding in the shadows and running from the money problems made by some silly (to us) pageant. rather than an evocation of of the little boy who dreamed his childhood away from the cheap seats or the creator who imagines and then painstaking crafts programmes of immense scale and specificity we only get the showman, the bully, the perfectionist, and yes the tender lover.
unfortunately despite wanting to like this it was for me a wearying and irrelevant night at the theatre - albeit expensively produced. more frustratingly it did feel like several opportunities missed.
sadly this is the 5th new play we've seen in the current national season that has been unexceptional (with "happy now"; "never so good"; "the year of magical thinking" "harper regan"). "fram" is the only show that was special.
we pin our hopes now on "the pitman painters" ...
Wednesday, 14 May 2008
"harper regan" (simon stephens)
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tuesday 13th may 2008
"harper regan"
by simon stephens
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harper regan ~ lesley sharp
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elwood barnes (haroer's boss) ~ michael mears
tobias rich (the young man harper meets on the bridge) ~ troy glasgow
seth regan (harper's husband) ~ nick sidi
sarah regan (harper's daughter) ~ jessica raine
justin ross (the nurse who tells harper her father has died) ~ jessica harris
mickey nestor (the cokehead drunk harper glasses) ~ jack deam
james fortune (the man harper sleeps with) ~ brian capron
alison woolley (harper's mother) ~ susan brown
duncan woolley (harper's mother's second husband) ~ eamon boland
mahesh aslam (the labourer who tells harper about living with his father's death) ~ nitin kundra
director ~ marianne elliott
designer ~ hildgard bechtler
lighting designer ~ chris davey
sound designer ~ ian dickinson
fight director ~ alison de burgh
company voice work ~ jeannette nelson
at cottlesloe, national theatre
mixed jury on this one. sarah and i liked it, colin and martyn much less so
after much talk i think this play was trying to show harper's journey out from the people and events that are crashing her life through a series of fairly minor transgressions (smashing a bottle into the face of an obnoxious drunk and sleeping with a stranger) to return home with freedom and power to choose her own destiny: to try to make the life with the family she loves work somehow. in this way it is what simon stephens says he wanted to make: a story about living in the absence of the gods as opposed to euripides world where people must live through their pre-determined fates in the presence of the gods.
lots good about it. the production is strong and makes it more theatre than television. and i liked harper's stillness while the various characters in her world act at her, on her, around her. and its great that this a rite of passage / breaking free story belongs to a woman and challenges us to make a double standard judgement about her going off that we would not make for a man doing the same.
the problem is that her very attractive and mostly constant liberal humanism and tolerance (except with her mother) perhaps makes for a pretty bland character: she is everywoman /everyman as i would wish us to be, but watching this in action can be less than compelling.
altho actually i did enjoy watching her. i liked her. the big fat flaw of this play for me is the final fantasy speech her husband gets. we are really interested in harper not him, so who the fuck cares what his fantasy might be. and why are we getting fantasy at the end when we are supposedly in a world where people are the makers of their own destinies. maybe we are to think that - as throughout the story - harper is alone her understanding about this.
and the racism (anti Jews, anti polish, anti black) is gratuitous and bothersome and irritates the story. we're not given enough time or information to read anything from this and instead are just jarred out of synch with the story for a bit until we realise this has just been a tabloid headline and is irrelevant to anything else that we are going to see and hear.
liked the pre-show talk with marianne elliott and simon stephens talking to dan rebellato. remembered moments are:
+ the play ends with a meal because i think prepoaring a meal is an intrinsically optimistic act ... i think this is a bleak play with an optimistic heart, where my previous plays have often been optimistic plays with bleak hearts (simon stephens)
+ the play is not like a male orgasm with a race along one line to the big bang climax, but rather a female orgasm with lots of ripplings out from the centre and multiple climaxes
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Wednesday, 30 April 2008
"the year of magical thinking" (joan didion)
Tuesday 29th April 2008
"the year of magical thinking"
a play by joan didion based on her memoir
performed by vanessa redgrave
directed by david hare
designed by bob crowley
costume designed by ann roth
lighting designed by jean kalman
sound designed by paul arditti
associate lighting designer - bobby harrell
lyttleton, national theatre
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/The%20Year%20of%20Magical%20Thinking+34159.twl
"following a sell-out run on broadway in 2007, vanessa redgrave repeats her award-winning solo performance in david hare's celebrated production which now receives its uk premiere..."
sad to say my first thoughts are that this was a disappointing experience.
i was expecting it to be - well magical.
so why did it not reach or leave me with any real resonance?
it is certainly extremely well crafted and in many ways flawless in its execution: the writing is fluid and expressive, the acting is honest, centred and true, and nothing happens that seems misplaced, unnecessary or bewildering.
and we all loved the design - redgrave on a chair in expensive white and cream before a series of painted silks that each fell silkily away to reveal the next one behind: the sea, a evocation of a home, then more abstracts skyscapes like oils painted across stretched canvas. these in union with a shifting series of lighting moods helped to convey different emotions and a sense of time (of day / of moving forward).
and then because i am increasingly experiencing this as a presentation i increasingly judge what i get with my head rather than my heart.
while i keep trying to lock into the anguish that is evidently and understandably breaking her apart, instead my judgements about her are piling up and making me feel dismissive - no, too strong - but distanced by the cries she herself keeps re-making and trying to parady: the need to "have things your way", to "always have the last word"accumulatively this person before me becomes just too overtly 'american' for me connect with or in the end even like: too many product placements (the tiffany bracelet, the prada bag, expensive hotels) too many times mentioned. i recognise so closely the frenzied need to direct control on anything when denied the chance to make any difference whatsoever on the very things she wanted to able to hold, keep safe, manage, make ok. but her over-repetitions of knowledge, money, things jarred with me. as did the many stories of catholic rituals that she used to commemorate what she told us was an atheist life which were told without any explanation as to their meaning for her.
and then it had just one private recollection too many for me and i would have had more to take more away if it had finished after the geological connections with '...as it was in the beginning, as it is now, as it ever shall be world without end..." and her asking "shouldn't this be enough comfort for us ...?"
but the thing is i really didn't want to be making any of these sorts of value judgements: who the fuck am i to have opinions about her and anyone else's choices? and i don't usually (i hope).
i did this time i think because i came to meet her not as a person in real relationship, but as a character on a stage.
and without any vibration of spontaneous life this was this all i could find to work with ???
in his programme notes david hare cites the moment "...the play [as] a spectacle became a warning" and has what it needs to fly from when joan didion inserted a new "...blazing admonishment with which the play opens..."
but perhaps it is this tone that makes the problem for me - by making it from the start a case of too much telling me and not enough showing me something i can connect into ???
or perhaps i am just too much untested and in denial about just how inaccessible grief can be for anyone who is not inside it, and until i am i cannot know -
but then how do we bring the resonance of this beyond just the telling of it ???
and so this performance did not reach me.
yet at least ...
"the year of magical thinking"
a play by joan didion based on her memoir
performed by vanessa redgrave
directed by david hare
designed by bob crowley
costume designed by ann roth
lighting designed by jean kalman
sound designed by paul arditti
associate lighting designer - bobby harrell
lyttleton, national theatre
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/The%20Year%20of%20Magical%20Thinking+34159.twl
"the year of magical thinking", adapted for the stage by joan didion from her best-selling memoir of the same name, chronicles the aftermath of her husband's - and then her daughter's - sudden deaths...
"following a sell-out run on broadway in 2007, vanessa redgrave repeats her award-winning solo performance in david hare's celebrated production which now receives its uk premiere..."
sad to say my first thoughts are that this was a disappointing experience.
i was expecting it to be - well magical.
so why did it not reach or leave me with any real resonance?
it is certainly extremely well crafted and in many ways flawless in its execution: the writing is fluid and expressive, the acting is honest, centred and true, and nothing happens that seems misplaced, unnecessary or bewildering.
and we all loved the design - redgrave on a chair in expensive white and cream before a series of painted silks that each fell silkily away to reveal the next one behind: the sea, a evocation of a home, then more abstracts skyscapes like oils painted across stretched canvas. these in union with a shifting series of lighting moods helped to convey different emotions and a sense of time (of day / of moving forward).
and certainly vanessa redgrave's performance gave me a woman of such complete presence that i have unquestioningly accepted i am now qualified to know and judge her.
but the problem for me was that this is a woman who has already reasoned everything out thoroughly and is presenting us now with her conclusions.
vanessa redgrave gives us a woman who is doing pretty much as she says she does: staying in control and when she can't control things trying to be incontrol even faster, harder, better (just as we all push our default behaviours in times of crisis). the problem for me in the sudience is that this means i am kept out and apart from her emotions. i hear about them. i even believe them. and much of what she is saying sounds right and honest and true. but without the chance to witness any spontaneous feelings in the moment it was for me a lecture, albeit a very very good lecture, on the nature of grief and grieving.and then because i am increasingly experiencing this as a presentation i increasingly judge what i get with my head rather than my heart.
while i keep trying to lock into the anguish that is evidently and understandably breaking her apart, instead my judgements about her are piling up and making me feel dismissive - no, too strong - but distanced by the cries she herself keeps re-making and trying to parady: the need to "have things your way", to "always have the last word"accumulatively this person before me becomes just too overtly 'american' for me connect with or in the end even like: too many product placements (the tiffany bracelet, the prada bag, expensive hotels) too many times mentioned. i recognise so closely the frenzied need to direct control on anything when denied the chance to make any difference whatsoever on the very things she wanted to able to hold, keep safe, manage, make ok. but her over-repetitions of knowledge, money, things jarred with me. as did the many stories of catholic rituals that she used to commemorate what she told us was an atheist life which were told without any explanation as to their meaning for her.
and then it had just one private recollection too many for me and i would have had more to take more away if it had finished after the geological connections with '...as it was in the beginning, as it is now, as it ever shall be world without end..." and her asking "shouldn't this be enough comfort for us ...?"
but the thing is i really didn't want to be making any of these sorts of value judgements: who the fuck am i to have opinions about her and anyone else's choices? and i don't usually (i hope).
i did this time i think because i came to meet her not as a person in real relationship, but as a character on a stage.
and without any vibration of spontaneous life this was this all i could find to work with ???
in his programme notes david hare cites the moment "...the play [as] a spectacle became a warning" and has what it needs to fly from when joan didion inserted a new "...blazing admonishment with which the play opens..."
"...This happened on December 30, 2003.
That may seem a while ago but it won't when it happens to you.
And it will happen to you. The details will be different,
but it will happen to you.
That's what I'm here to tell you.
You see me on this stage, you sit next to me on a plane, you run into me at dinner, you know what happened to me.
You don't want to think it could happen to you..."
but perhaps it is this tone that makes the problem for me - by making it from the start a case of too much telling me and not enough showing me something i can connect into ???
or perhaps i am just too much untested and in denial about just how inaccessible grief can be for anyone who is not inside it, and until i am i cannot know -
but then how do we bring the resonance of this beyond just the telling of it ???
and so this performance did not reach me.
yet at least ...
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