The streaming series Young Royals, produced by Netflix Sverige, is a coming-of-age story about teenagers with the unusual feature that the main actors are themselves only teenagers. (Most series aimed at teenagers seem to employ actors in their twenties.) Because of this focus, the reviews of the series I have seen are aimed at parents deciding whether or not they should allow their teenage children to watch it.
Shoot from the Hip’s Improv Jams and Workshops, London (HT: WP).
Blackshaw Theatre’s New Writing Nights (HT: MB):
On Friday, I was privileged to see a final dress rehearsal of King’s Shakespeare Company’s production of Measure for Measure. Performed as a cabaret, the production is set in Weimar Germany, and the songs make this a production to remember. They are fast, witty, tuneful and memorable expressions of the interior lives of the main characters, and they add a depth of meaning to a play which is otherwise confusing. It is impressive how much intellectual heft and coherence the cabaret setting gives to the play.
The production is directed by Lauren O’Hara, with music by Henry Keynes Carpenter, and the cast includes: Rhia Abbott, Henry Keynes Carpenter, Hannah Elsy, Freddie Fullerton, Serena Grasso, William Holyhead, and Rupert Sadler. The production is only on for five nights, tomorrow Monday 21 July to Friday 25 July 2014, at the Bierkeller in Bristol. Go see it if you are anywhere nearby.
Lucy Corley has a review here.
The actor Richard Burton famously played Hamlet at the Old Vic in 1953. The following story is from a profile of Burton written by journalist John McPhee in 1963 for Time Magazine, and recounted in the current New Yorker (“Elicitation”, 7 April 2014, p.57):
He [Burton] had completed about 60 performances and the box office was beginning to slide when the house manager came to his dressing room one evening and said, “Be especially good tonight. The old man’s out front.”
“What old man?”
“He comes once a year,” said the house manager. “He stays for one act and he leaves.”
“For God’s sake, what old man?”
“Churchill.”
As Burton spoke his first line – “A little more than kin, and less than kind” – he was startled to hear deep identical mutterings from the front row. Churchill continued to follow him line for line, a dramaturgical beagle, his face a thunderhead when something had been cut. “I tried to shake him off,” remembers Burton. “I went fast and I went slow, but he was right there.” Churchill was right there to the end, in fact, when Burton took 18 curtain calls and Churchill told a reporter that “it was as exciting and virile a performance of Hamlet as I can remember.” Years later, when Winston Churchill – The Valiant Years was under preparation for television, its producers asked Sir Winston who he thought should do the voice of Churchill. “Get that boy from the Old Vic,” said the old man.
They got that boy from the Old Vic.
When a group of people jointly undergo an intensely searing experience, especially one where they face a mortal enemy or opponent, a bond is created between the participants that outsiders can find hard to penetrate or even to understand. Soldiers in battle, for example, often experience this, as good novels and films have long shown.
Last night, the audience at a King’s Players’ production in London had such an experience, and we will remember for the rest of our lives the courage and fortitude, resilience and – yes, dammit! – just plain, old-fashioned grit we all showed in the face of great odds. Nobody left, nobody laughed out loud, nobody became an alcoholic, nobody set off the fire alarm to bring this cruel and unusual torment to an end. During the quiet patches, those long dark nights of the soul, our focus on survival was so intense that the only sound you could hear was the swiveling of eyes.
Our first enemy was the play itself, Trojan Barbie, by Christine Evans. What an appalling piece of radfem agitprop! The writing is surely a parody of feminism, not intended to be serious, written as if by a teenager discovering poetry for the first time. The male characters are all evil rapists and thugs, and the women are either harlots or mad. Even the everywoman character Lotte is dotty. Not a single character appears real or embodied, a normal human being. No one grapples with the actual moral dilemmas of war, no one weighs pros and cons of different courses of action, not even in dialogue with one another. What plot there is is too ridiculous to be described, but involves unexplained time travel between ancient Troy and the present-day, with scenes set in doll repair shops, Mediterranean street cafes, refugee camps, battlefields, and the odd zoo. You couldn’t make it up if you tried.
Our second enemy, colluding with the first, were the cast and crew. Given the flaws of the script, one can only sympathize with actors having to make something of this. But why would anyone even try? Life is too short to waste it on such dross. And if, for some reason, you had to try, why not do it well? Why act badly? Why run around like a horse? Why impersonate Che Guevara and Zsa Zsa Gabor? Honestly, the only person missing from the production was Carmen Miranda with her hat made of fruit – although, there was in fact a samba. What was that doing there?
And the set! It included the world’s largest collection of Barbie Dolls, a massive pink cellophone heart, and the odd tiger. What normal person could possibly imagine that a large stuffed animal, a children’s toy, would convince us we are in a zoo? At first I thought it was intended as a visual metaphor for something else, something profound, perhaps a subtle reference to well-known war poet William Blake. (“Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright, In the forests of the Night.”) But No: the stuffed tiger behind a cage on stage was intended to be what it was: a tiger in a zoo. It roared through the sound-system, and it magically moved between scenes, sometimes lolling this way, and sometimes that. I have to say its acting was perhaps the most realistic of the evening, and I’m sure the tiger’s agent will be fielding many calls this morning.
No one would be converted to the merits of feminism by seeing this play, and lots of people would be deconverted. But that’s the usual way with agitprop: if you preach only to the choir, you lose the rest of the congregation. But of course, as with all agitprop, the preaching is not aimed at converting anyone, it’s aimed at making the preachers feel good about themselves. Shame about the poor audience, but.
However, we did make it through, we survived to the end without a single casualty. True, we lost two hours of our life that will never be regained. But we saw what we were all capable of under extreme pressure, we showed grace under fire, and we stood by each other right to the end. Being under fire together has made us life-long comrades, and at the annual reunions we survivors will no doubt tell and retell our stories of the time we fought Trojan Barbie, like the Band of Brothers that we now are.
Message to Homer: Your position as Trojan War historian is safe. No need to call your office.
PS (2014-04-06): Another review is here. “The stuffed animal representing the tiger was a bit unnecessary”
Police report of “Romeo and Juliet” Confidence Scam
Location of crime: Upstairs Foyer, Greenwood Theatre, Guy’s Campus, King’s College London.
Date of crime: Evenings of 5th, 6th, 7th February 2014. The crime may also have been “rehearsed” before these dates on unwitting spectators.
Financial sponsors: A group calling itself King’s College London English Literary Society.
Nature of crime: Deconstruction of playwright’s text without single reference to post-colonial or feminist perspectives. Co-conspirator “The Friar” tore out pages of “Romeo and Juliet” text to manifest true nature of crime.
Key victims: William Shakespeare, women.
Perpetrator: Unknown. Calls himself “The Director”. Identity: Elusive. Real identity unknown. May use pseudonyms: W. Nash, Rookie Monster, DPR, Edward Snowden.
Known Co-conspirators: Marcus “The Friar” Bazley, Hillary “The Counsellor” Chua, Laura “Juliet” Deering, Jackie “Lady Capulet” Edwards, Matthew “Romeo” Hodson. Others involved in supporting the scam thought to be: Catherine Walters, Elena Gillies, Emma Lawrence, Aja Garrod, Aggi Cantril, Sophie Omar, and Kate Gardener. Notes found at crime scene indicate others may also have assisted, almost certainly without realizing the consequences.
Modus Operandi: Perp takes out-of-copyright play text, reducing number of characters, even using unwitting mark in audience to play role in deception. Play cut down and cut up, and done as crime scene investigation, with scenes “reconstructed” by “actors”. Legal counsel present to narrate events and give illusion of objectivity.
Perp uses intelligence and wit to produce amusing, clever, and sophisticated version of play, which is used as a “script” that is then executed (“performed”) by co-conspirators in front of marks. Performance of script of professional standard, and very realistic. Thus, marks easily deceived and soon suspend disbelief.
Only one of the known co-conspirators is believed to actually make his living in theatre. Remaining co-conspirators possibly being groomed.
Co-conspirators take on “roles” to execute script. Thus, “The Friar” is a Cockney ex-junkie offering life advice to the other conspirators, along with marriage ceremonies and store-and-forward messaging services; “Romeo” is a lovestruck young man, writing dreamily in his Moleskine; “Lady Capulet” is a tyrant of the household interior, a dictator of the domestic. The different “roles” cleverly interleave, and jointly enable confidence scam. Indeed, witnesses report that the acting was so intense that it approached the threshold of caricature, but without ever crossing that threshold, making the performances thrilling to watch. Co-conspirators all appear to be under direct influence of Perp.
Co-conspirators use a variety of names, including real names, to confuse audience about when co-conspirators are “acting” in their “roles”, and when not. Humour and wit used to distract attention of audience from reconstruction of double suicide, following madness of young love, set amongst inter-gang warfare in inner-city Italy.
Toying with nature of “acting” indicates this is crime of real sophistication by people with extensive experience in deception and illusion. Perp and co-conspirators may have worked in Elizabethan theatre before. Crime shows many hallmarks of two known literary deceivers and wits with Elizabethan previous, Thomas Nashe and Kit Marlowe. Neither likely involved: Nashe believed deceased, Marlowe either deceased (Deptford Regional Office view) or living in exile in Italy.
Production involves post-coitus scene, drugs, violence, suicide, and death. No rock and roll, but. One person injured by vicious slap. Music deployed very effectively to “set the scene” and relax audience in preparation for confidence scam, and at various times during the operation to manipulate emotions of marks.
Use of Barber’s Adagio for Strings obviously intended as subtle allusion to FDR’s funeral and Oliver Stone’s film about Vietnam. This double allusion should allay concerns of English Department about absence of references to post-colonial oppression and the wickedness of US global hegemony, as well as providing a warm glow of self-satisfaction to the one person who caught the allusions.
Related scams: West Side Story, High School Musical.
Known beneficiaries of scam:
Progress of investigation: Police seeking the 132 witnesses to garner further information.
Public warning: These people are armed with professional acting skills and are very dangerous. Perp may be serial dramaturge, intent on career in intelligent theatre or deception. Co-conspirators capable of superb acting at the highest level.
Deptford Regional Office reports rumour that next confidence scam may take place in Copenhagen.
Conspirators also believed to hold raucous after-play parties to celebrate success of scam, involving alcohol, tobacco, witty conversation, and profound arguments about the existence of God and the nature of relationships. Kit Marlowe would feel at home. US State Department Advisory: Americans visiting London particularly at risk.
Note: Potential side-effects of scam include reviews written as police-reports, pretentiously imitating style of the production itself.
Having created lists of concerts I have attended, bands I have heard, galleries I have visited, etc, I overlooked theatre and dance productions I have seen. Herewith a list, sometimes annotated, to be updated as and when I remember additional events.
Belately, I want to record a play seen at the headquarters of The Royal Society in London last month, Let Newton Be, written by Craig Baxter, but using only Isaac Newton’s own words. The play was interesting although the energy of the play sagged at times, particularly in the first half. The story only barely mentioned Newton’s interest in alchemy, and seemed to overlook his brutal, deadly campaigns against money forgers later in life (or did I nap through that scene?)
The play comprised three actors, two men and a woman, who played Newton at different ages – as a child, as a young-ish Cambridge academic, and as an old man. As a work of drama, the conceit worked well, although it was best when one of the actors was playing another person interacting with Newton (eg, Halley, and later Leibniz, who spoke in an amusing cod-German accent). Perhaps the real Newton was not sufficiently schizoid for three actors to play him, at least not when constrained to only use the man’s written words. As I have remarked before, Newton’s personality was all of a piece: it is only modern westerners who cannot imagine a religious motivation for activities such as scientific research, for example, or who find alchemy and calculus incoherent.
The performance was followed by a panel discussion by the Great and the Good – two historians and two scientists. One of the scientists was the Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees, who has subsequently won this year’s Templeton Prize for Science and Religion. The discussion was interesting, so it is a pity it was not recorded for posterity.
A review of another play about a member of the matherati, Kurt Godel, is here.
Last night, I caught a new Australian play derived from the life of logician Kurt Godel, called Incompleteness. The play is by playwright Steven Schiller and actor Steven Phillips, and was peformed at Melbourne’s famous experimental theatrespace, La Mama, in Carlton. Both script and performance were superb: Congratulations to both playwright and actor, and to all involved in the production.
Godel was famous for having kept every piece of paper he’d ever encountered, and the set design (pictured here) included many file storage boxes. Some of these were arranged in a checkerboard pattern on the floor, with gaps between them. As the Godel character (Phillips) tried to prove something, he took successive steps along diagonal and zigzag paths through this pattern, sometimes retracing his steps when potential chains of reasoning did not succeed. This was the best artistic representation I have seen of the process of attempting to do mathematical proof: Imre Lakatos’ philosophy of mathematics made theatrical flesh.
There is a photograph of the La Mama billboard at Paola’s site.