*** jay brannan @ komedia

Jay Brannan @ Komedia
http://jaybrannan.com/index2.html


*** exceptional experience

What a wonderful treat
The man in person is about 10 times more wonderful than he is on an already much loved album - beguiling and charming and lightly ironic and warm and funny and conversational with a voice like honey and lyrics that can arrive like a perfectly remembered thought. Also fantastic to see his guitar playing - he seems to do very little with his left hand and yet out comes a lovely intricate melody of string sounds.
As well as the songs we know he sang a sensational version of Joni Mitchell's ‘All I Want’ and a sweetly complex new love song


Oh and of course he also just happens to be utterly beautiful
As new queer role models go i cannot think of a better man for the job

Supported by Bitch - who was also in 'shortbus'
http://www.bitchmusic.com/

Smart funny singer with strong line of anti-bush sentiments and impressive musicianship playing violin - she plays on jay's album - ukulele - making it sound cooler than I've ever heard it - and a pair of percussion balls she used with a number that used poetry to begin and bass guitar. Her sound sometimes reminds of Martha Wainright but in a good way. Intelligent spunky songs we liked enough to buy her album
A really great night out and easily worth the travel to brighton

'eating ice cream on gaza beach' by shelley silas @ soho theatre

'eating ice cream on gaza beach'
written by shelley silas
directed by anna niland
designed by anthony lamble
lighting by david kidd
projection designer john lloyd fillington

original music by reem kelani

assistant director prasanna puwanarah

Adrian ~ Christopher Sheridan
Rami ~ Oliver Hawes
Maryam ~ Bathsheba Piepe
Muz ~ Ciaran Owens
Ameena ~ Parissa Barghchi
Danny ~ David Mumeni
Ruthie ~ Laura Kiman
Shai ~ Mark Weinman
Officers ~ Obi Iwumene, Zakarya Kaye, Andrew Kaye
Ensemble ~ Tanya Cubric, Elizabeth Henstridge, Daniella Isaacs, Tyan Jones

national youth theatre
Season 2008 - Worlds Apart: global stories and home truths
http://www.nyt.org.uk/
soho theatre
http://www.sohotheatre.com/fromhomepage/pl1524.html

It's sixty years since Israeli independence. Good news for some, not good for others. While one side celebrates, the other mourns.
It's a scorching day on Gaza beach. Again.
From the Babylonians to the Greeks, the Romans, the French, the British, and now the Americans, this narrow stretch of land has been picked over by divide-and-ruling invaders throughout the whole of recorded history. It is the people on the ground who pay the price. It is the people on the sand this play is about.

We come into the theatre to find the entire cast on stage - backs mostly turned to us - still ... As the lights dim one of the actors makes the Muslim call to prayer...
An ice cream van that's seen better days turns repeatedly to evoke a checkpoint, a couple of different bedrooms, and an army office as well as Gaza beach itself.
A screen above will show fairly literal images linked with the action including various shots of Gaza beach, snapshots of Danny and his girlfriend as a happy couple, an orange sunset that could equally be pollution, and a couple of banksy images - the starbucks tank and the baby flying with balloons to illustrate Maryam's final acceptance of her son's death.
Throughout a chorus of veiled women provide a vocal, percussive and silently mimed back-story to the action of the story we get to watch.

The triumph of this play - writing and performances - is in giving us recognisable people we get time and space to get to know and care about:
Adrian "as in Mole?" the brit on a gap year, wondering what it was like for his grandfather who once fought here and determined to not take sides;
Rami the christian ice cream seller who tries so hard to stay away from protests as his way of standing up for what he believes in and because he can't believe they can achieve anything;
Muz (with distracting irish accent) full of righteous fury and pent up fervour for action;
Danny the reluctant israeli soldier forced to finish his term of military service at a checkpoint.
And as a result of finding and being with these people we are drawn in to want to know and -understand more about what is happening here - the political situation for once does not overwhelm the human stories. But at the same time we are given the complex complicated mess of things - there is no hint or pretence here of anything like an answer - just people being people in their different ways and in response to the situations they find themselves in - and not all of these are made by the war.

Lines that resound and remain for me:
"this is it for the rest of my life this is all I've got" Muz
"which would you choose if you had to - england or israel - your physical or your spiritual home?"
"i’m not on either side i’m on both sides i’m on the third side" Adrian
"Not acting is a choice - it's not doing nothing." Rami

This is a brave play honestly performed. I liked a lot that none of the characters are as straight forward and predictable as we might expect them to be: Danny the soldier of conscience nevertheless follows his orders; Rami is pulled away from his determined decision not to act and his own sense of responsibility by his sense of responsibility in the heat of the moment; Adrian forgets his neutrality and rushes headlong into battle; Maryam wishes for peace also finds herself taking action and joining the protest. People behaving like people - except in this place people being people can get killed.
And the brilliance of Shelley's play is she has made a true modern day tragedy: its outcome is both unacceptable and unavoidable - we hate what happens while believing utterly in its happening because none of these characters can feasibly do other than they do.

I was also hugely impressed with the intelligent feisty-ness of the young cast and the creators articulating their process making and performing of this play during the post show discussion - neither belligerent or aggressive unlike a couple of the questioners nearly were – nor in any way submissive about their choices and what they are doing.

'Telling a story of Gaza without preaching it' - 'Eating Ice-cream on Gaza Beach' brings a range of Palestinian and Israeli opinion to London audiences. By Olivia Snaije Special to The Daily Star Wednesday, August 27, 2008
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=4&article_id=95435

*** "motherland" @ underbelly

tuesday 19th august 2008

Edinburgh Festival: Motherland
@ underbelly

And another exceptional experience
Verbatim theatre made from interviews with mothers & partners from north east england of soldiers serving in iraq & afghanistan
Four actors play a dozen or more different women - sometimes falling into & out from each other, sometimes very focused, sometimes a solo voice, sometimes together as mother & daughter or friends so that we get depth as well as breadth. Performed with such truth & honesty that for the entire 1 hour 20 I never question or come out from feeling like I am listening to these women rather than the actors playing them.
Simply staged with a either canvas or plastic tarpaulin backcloth that held the projected names of the characters and as a closing film of soldiers morphing into a final image of a lace-curtained window looking out to a bit of tree. The women sit on shell boxes and the only other props are flowers that are snipped to fit a vase, framed photos of loved ones we never fully get to see, janice's file documenting her battle to find out the truth of her son's death, a mobile phone one of the women is using to text her just returned boyfriend, a microphone that is taken up twice by the women who have taken their grief into a public campaign.
The verbatim scripting give these stories the ring of truthful authenticity that this show accentuates and heightens rather than colours or distorts and the accumulative effect is of a group of smart articulate warm funny honest thinking and previously invisible and unheard women with a great deal of importance to say.
And emotionally it leaves me undone.

Special moments include:
+ the woman who holds the mike out to us in an eloquent undoing expression of helpfulnessless, voicelessness, powerlessness - and I know we are not intended to take it but at the same time I feel guilty & culpable for not reaching out to her;
+ all the stories of mothers finding out their child has been killed - one who has lost the daughter who had already had to bury two fiancés after road accidents and is now still locked in a bitter anger for all Iraqis, one a mother who persuaded the son who was killed 18 months after signing up to be a soldier rather than a footballer so as to have a longer career than 18months, and one who hears her son is dead from her daughter-in-law in a call to her mobile while she is alone on a bus, and who then learns that if she hadn't the phoned the base herself she would have had to find this out from the television because parents of married soldiers are not next of kin and currently are not included for a personal visit from service personnel.
Verbatim theatre at its absolute finest.

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/marktrezona/Motherland#

*** 66a Church Road - Daniel Kitson @ traverse

*** exceptional experience
66a Church Road - Daniel Kitson
@ traverse

66a Church Road - a Lament Made of memories and kept in suitcases

Superlative wonderful Show fluent and funny and evocative warm and human -storytelling doesn't get any finer than this

We arrive down the treacherously Steeped Stairs of traverse one and get front row seats The Stage is set with an array of old fashioned Suitcases that immediately trigger us into stories of other times and people from our lives - even before the show begins we get to enjoy sweet forgotten memories

Daniel comes on in a brown Suit, takes off his jacket and rolls up his Shirt Sleeves He sits on a chair Surrounded by Suitcases and starts to tell us the story of his six year relationship with his flat in crystal palace Each chapter is punctuated with an audio playback of another related memory usually involving him in a relationship with his father trying to Sit with dignity on the blow- up chair, with one or several girls he is involved with, with himself. With his home And these moments are magically illustrated with a variety of models and projections Into and within the Suitcases _ a projection of a room The light Shining through the slatted blinds film of his Street, looking Out through his front door to new fallen Snow and a model of his entire 3 story flat Not all of these are fully visible even from the Front and after his curtain call he completely wins my heart by coming back to explain the idea for these models only came a month ago and long after this space was arranged - the traverse needing to be more organised than i am and they have tried unsuccessfully to make them visible in Such a large space. So they are all re-lit and people are invited to file past the Stage to see them on their way out and _ holy wow! - people are welcome to take photos. This man lives my manifesto.
And this is how he Starts his story - conjuring around the emotional resonances of 'home' _ a place we go hope to find but can never really seriously go looking for 'What are you looking for in a home?' Might be the question the estate agents ask but the answer is always '' it depends...'
We hear about john his long-suffering friend Who houses him while he looks for his home And we hear alot about his landlord who is very much the Villain of this story and the cause of Daniel's eventual break-up with and leaving of 66A Church Road
This performance is packed and textured with language and observations and humanity and Spirit and love and music - literally as well as in the sounds of the spoken written speech The breaks between chapters also allow a bit of Space for Some of our own memories and associations to puff and swirl and breathe the air a little.

Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller @ fruitmarket gallery

Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller
@ fruitmarket gallery

Exceptional experience again!

Glorious experience with 'opera for a small room' in the dark - speakers arranged around the room

A new work - giving its name to this exhibition - the house of books with no windows is beautiful -inside and out

The Killing Machine is mostly just a curio this time - albeit an ingenious one - but still succeeds in giving me a little chill. And I am still unable to press the 'start' button.

The movie -name?- is rehoused into a small container toy theatre that 3 people can listen thru and Seems to combine both the opera diva and the film noir pieces from macba Barcelona

The Dark Pool is as rich and evocative and secretive and seductive as the first time _ although by this i was out of time and had to push through too quickly to get fully transported in C. saw this first and loved it- S. saw Opera with me and beamed as happily

And the fruitmarket gallery have made a video showing Janet and George talking about and making their work and this is fascinating - including the manequin with a head full of microphones to record sound as closely as we humans can hear it.

the Tiger Lilies' 7 Deadly Sins with Nathan Evans & Ophelia Bitz

the Tiger Lilies' 7 Deadly Sins with Nathan Evans & Ophelia Bitz
@ The Famous Spiegeltent
edinburgh fringe festival

we queue as per usual to get into the venue in the Spiegel Garden - a carnival atmosphere the trees white with dappled spotlight and huge crowds including a long long line just to get into the area
The Famous SpiegeLten+ is like an old fashioned merrygo round with the horses removed to make boothed seating. a bar at the entrance this is going to be punk Kabaret.
On stage a drumset with a toilet for its seat, a piano, a microphone a slender cello and in a Corner a red and white Striped Punch & Judy tent
Enter Nathan- modern camp pretty and oozing confidence through flirting eyes. He gets us to call ''wake up mr punch" and amazingly to me the crowd obliges in full pantomime chorus and despite being called "boys and girls" Nathan then disappears into the tent to animate punch and 'jude' and a pig policeman and the devil with an enormous penis {to whack mr punch with}. This is classic punch the judy performed with all its traditional zest violence and offensiveness albeit this time with full uncensored swearing sex and class A drug taking. Consequently it leaves me cold

The Tiger Lilies are an exceptional band whose lead singer is ideally suited to kabaret, his face painted white with dark skull-like eyes. he plays piano, ukelele & accordian and in many ways this feels like his show with the rest there to provide a setting for him. His voice - often in falsetto - is rich and expressive. And the best of this show is his vocals The show involves a dirty and bleakly negative trawl through the 7 Deadly Sins and the finest moment for me is the haunting song for Sloth with pheremone and gayboy Sweetly melodic on the oboe and sexy in shirtless braces, tatoos and wings
Ophelia Bitz bringing On the Sin labels and Swinging her tits about - best is her Mrs Loveitt moment pouring gin from the bottle Wedged in her cleavage
The rest is too samey too Knowingly wanting to offend and too musical hall for me to really enjoy
The crowd on the other hard adored it

"self-accusation" by peter handke @ C socco

unfinished posting
thursday 14th august 2008

"Self-Accusation"
by Peter Handke
Theatre du jour

Lots of words. A soundscape of moments from a life
An examination of small and large moments - good bad and neutral - listed through an entire life
Interpretative self- provocation coming from the ego or the id
A long poem performed sometimes vocally so as to present as music a choral piece, and sometimes as heavily {over}acted performance
It's best moments for me are in its vocal layering when there's enough neutrality to let me weave out from the density of the language and I found the heavy physical expressiveness of alot of it contaminated my experience. I also found the soundtrack mostly distracting - except the siren which made me reflect on the large and little consequences that might follow or flow from any of these listed moments.
The best of this for M was being able to chase and channel our own thoughts through the repetition and the rituals and the chanting. And he liked the individual performances they were each giving and the ways they actioned the many different moments.
Most of all it reaffirmed my huge interest in and admiration for handke's theatre and burned a wish to make something of his one day

Best Moments

It started with each performer with the same text mostly but not always out of synch so you received one as an echo of what was heard already but for each different & uniquely inflected and curved in & out
Then the back-to-back turning with the performer facing us miming the words the Other behind was voicing.
They start in grey then get red clothes and props from their suitcases to wear and brandish.

very accomplished difficult highly finessed performances that I just wanted to ring truer or at least leaving more for me to bring