"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.

‘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

*** "in spitting distance" (rukab project)

wednesday 14th may 2008

"in spitting distance"
by taher najib
performed by khalifa natour
offra henig ~ director and musical editor
jackie shemesh ~ lighting
ariella eshed ~ english translation

at the pit, barbican bite 08
http://www.barbican.org.uk/theatre/event-detail.asp?id=6489

barbican press release
Rukab Project: In Spitting Distance

"...the barbican brings rukab project, a theatre collective comprised of director ofira henig, writer taher najib and actor khalifa natour, to london for the first time with "in spitting distance". "in spitting distance" is both a funny and disturbing exposure of problems faced by many travellers since the 9/11 attacks. khalifa natour eloquently tells the
story of a palestinian actor with an israeli passport trying to travel from
paris to tel aviv. an encounter with airport security prompts a thorough reflection of the struggles experienced by those whose
countries are under occupation. performed with fearless black humour and based on a similarly farcical and infuriating true-life experience, the play is a tireless and enigmatic look at ordinary lives touched by present-day conflict. "in spitting distance" is performed in arabic with english surtitles. ofira henig is considered to be one of israel’s leading theatre directors and is currently artistic director of herzliya new ensemble. prior to this she was artistic director of the jerusalem khan theatre. in 2005 taher najib took part in the royal court’s international residency for emerging playwrights where he wrote In "in spitting distance". khalifa natour won the best actor award at the 2006
theatronetto festival in tel aviv for his performance of In "in spitting distance". he also starred in the critically acclaimed film the band’s visit (2006) which played at last year’s london film festival.

this was a great experience marred only by the speed and sometimes ineptness of the surtitles. both the language and the performance were full and rich and we wanted to take them in fully, but often the surtitles came and went in an impossible flash.

but this was still an exceptional show. the humour and recognition and insights offered by this story and the life force and humour and freshness and honesty and simplicity with which it was performed was a model for a solo show i could aspire to emulate.

notable moments:

+ the recurring tai chi resonant fighting/rowing/punting/pulling ritual movement that he opens with

+ the early soliloquy on spitting

+ his being stuck halfway between the theatre (work) and home during an attack: to run home for safety or continued un-terrorised to work (altho with the question: who would go to the theatre on a night like this?)

+ his conversation in (untranslated) french at the charles de gaule check-in desk

+ his laughter in the parisian park at how things have turned out growing to manic then disguising the crazy by pretending a mobile phone conversation

+ his arrival on to the delayed and full plane as the 'cause of the problem'

+ his seeing the 9/ll attack planes footage for the first time on the Tel Aviv security room t.v.

+ his comment that "no this has not been my day in any way...!" in response to the apparently neutral but question: how was your day?

from the programme ...

offra henig's director's notes:

when the second intifada began in israel and palestine, i was living in jerusalem/el kuds trying to survive the bombs, trying desperately to maintain contact with my friends in ramallah and even trying to complete a theatre project.

all my life as an adult, i have lived between two realities and two cultures. on one hand, being a jew born in israel and speaking my native language, and on the other, living with a strong intellectual curiosity about the 'other' culture, searching for justice and feeling a deep sense of shame as a result of the occupation. for the past 20 years, i have dealt with the issue of colonialism, particularly cultural colonialism. but the second intifada moved my life, shook and transformed it, and turned this curiosity, mixed with shame, into a way of life.

in 2003 the playwright taher najib brought me a play in hebrew that was meant to be performed in front of hebrew spectators. i knew taher as an actor because we had worked together a few times, so we read the play all night and in the morning i agreed to direct it. i said yes because it was a personal story, which crossed all political borders. the play touched upon me as an artist, an israeli citizen and a human being. i understood that i could create a space and stage for taher and khalifa to tell their stories. while it is not my personal story, they are my friends and i know their situation very well. i live alongside it every day. so this is my artistic and moral role - and it's beyond political demonstration.

the rukab project has become a small island of sanity in an insane reality. it's not a way to prove the possibilities of co-existence; it's a way to survive. since the premiere of "in spitting distance" in 2006 we have translated the play into arabic and continue to perform it to anyone who would like to listen to a story that is told differently, a story that you will never read in the newspapers.

"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

"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 ...