Fortune’s Pawn

Last night found Pawn and escort at the premier performance of Youngblood Theatre’s inaugural season: David’s Redhaired Death. The script, by Sherry Kramer, is a train wreck. It is full of forward references, flashbacks, speeches to the audience, and other atypical theatrical conceits. The story has barely any narrative to it, but rather we in the audience are given stuttering glimpses into another train wreck; the love affair between two redheads, Jean (Tess Cinpinski) and Marilyn(Jazmin Vollmar).

Action begins at an open mic night. Jean takes the stage and begins the first of many speeches to the audience.   Next comes a rather twee bit about the sisterhood of read haired women and their supposedly extraordinary qualities.  This provides a thread which weaves in and out of a budding relationship between Jean and Marilyn, her paramour. David’s Redhaired Death is a production starved for silences, nowhere more than in this first third of the one-act.  Jean and Marilyn hurtle forward (and sometimes back) propelled by the fever pitch of their dialog and monologues.   You may find yourself dazzled by the rapid fire dialog, Pawn found himself numbed.

The best parts of a drama are often found in those spaces between and around the words.  We are given no such room here, neither are the actors.   They seem at times to strain against the sheer volume of text through which they must chew in any given scene.  But just as the audience is given little or no time to reflect upon the text, the characters at times seem to lack reflection as sentence after sentence spring forth from them and fall, unconsidered, onto the stage floor.

The final third of the show does bring us a moment or two of pause, as well as one truly moving scene between Jean and Marilyn.  Cinpinski and Vollmar shine in this part of the show, and the spare setting melts away from our vision as the intensity of the acting increases.  Jean’s exit speech in the penultimate scene was quite nearly profound.  Had she been allowed to slump down into one of the empty seats, taken a moment and found her motivation for continuing after the psychic body-blows she has just taken (and dealt out) this whole scene could have gone a long way towards reclaiming an otherwise problematic effort.

One hopes Youngblood continue their work, but that they consider more carefully which shows to produce and how frantically they stage them.  This production  disappoints; a defter hand could have tamed this unruly script and presented us the heart hammering story buried within it, without hammering our heads in the process.  This kind of herky-jerky forwards/backwards, repetitious, staccato, reflexive script can be rendered into a moving theatrical experience, as Pawn found with Simple 8’s production of Monsters at Arcola Theatre back in May, but not like this.

In retrospect, given some more time to consider both the script and the performance, I have tamed some of my earlier comments.  I do look forward to seeing the rest of Youngblood’s season.  If nothing else I am impressed by the sheer audacity of their repertory effort.  Also, the more I think about it, and despite its complexity, I really did like the script for DRD.  The problems in the production made that hard to appreciate at first blush.

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Nothing like a little light theatre to cap off an exceptional day of art in London.  Well, light theatre is not what the Old Vic had in store for L and I last night.  The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov is currently in repertory with The Winter’s Tale by Shakespeare as part of The Bridge Project put together by Sam Mendes, director, and Kevin Spacey, Artistic Director of The Old Vic, along with Brooklyn Academy of Music and Neal Street Productions.

The large international cast includes people Americans would find familiar, such as Ethan Hawke and Rebecca Hall, as well as those familiar to Brits, such as Simon Russell Beale and Sinéad Cusack.

The script, in a new version by Tom Stoppard, is accessible and fluid.  The acting is superb and top notch.  The costumes, by Catherine Zuber were an absolute delight.  Paul Pyant’s lighting lovely.  Anthony Ward’s set, however, left me cold.  The house at The Cherry Orchard, where all of the action takes place, is as much a character in the play as anyone on stage, and yet in Ward’s set it is cold and distant.  Why, I find myself wondering, are these people so in love with this house?  I would be glad to be done with it.  Oh well, write it off to the constraints of repertory, I suppose.

It was a brilliant night at the theatre, in any event, and well worth the price of admission.  We had tenth row seats, which were a great vantage point.

I must mention the creative use of an “Aluminium Harp” by the musical team.  This instrument is basically a selection of aluminium rods of varied length and is played by the harpist sliding their resined finger tips up and down along the lengh of the rods.  This produces a ghostly continuous tone, used to great effect within the soundscape of the production.

Homeward after the show, stopped for a quick pint at the Lord John Russell before last call.

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Okay, this is The hot ticket right now, Sir Ian McKellen as Estragon and Patrick Stewart as Vladimir in the Samuel Becket classic, Waiting For Godot.

I managed to capture a returned ticket to the Sunday matinée performance, and dutifully trudged across from Covent Garden station to the Haymarket in ample time for 3:00 curtain.  I even purchased a programme, which I only rarely do.

It didn’t help.

Not much.

My review?  WTF!?

It was a brilliant performance, but I would be lying if I claimed I understood it all.  This was not a uviversal reaction.  My seatmate was in rapture throughout the piece, and explained that having read the script several times, and seeing other performances and a film version, with this staging it finally all made sense to her.

Lucky duck.

The staging was beautiful; set, lights, soundscape, all spot on.  The individual performances were all top notch.  Simon Callow brings a special brilliance to Pozzo and Ronald Pickup tackles the most difficult role of Lucky with applaum.  I must say that McKellen & Stewart’s chemistry was a special delight.

I will have to think more about this show before it all really sinks in.

Home again to a mindless night of telly.  “Britain’s Got Talent” indeed.

Ta!

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No, I am not referring to the new Joss Whedon show. I am referring to the Donmar Warehouse production of Henkrick Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, starring, amongst others, Gillian Anderson and Christopher Eccelston. She, of the X-Files and he of Dr. Who. It is all too easy to condemn these star studded productions as just gold digging by the theatres, but that is also quite often not the case at all. In this instance, we were quite well served by Ms Anderson, as Nora and Mr. Eccelston as Neil Kelman, as well as their cast-mates: Tara Fitzgerald, as Christine Lyle; Anton Lesser as Dr. Rank and Toby Stevens as Thomas.

First a word about the venue, Donmar Warehouse. In the heart of the West End, just off the 7 Dials, this is a small full thrust house, which means there is no “backstage” and the stage is surrounded on three sides by seating. I was stage right, second row, near the corner with the main bank of seats. There is a balcony, steeply raked, but this is a very intimate house. I was no more than four or five feet from the major entrances and exits of all of the major characters, and love that closeness.

It reminded me, in this way, of a performance of Another Time, produced by the American Jewish Theatre and starring Malcolm McDowell, which I saw with X in New York many years ago. It was wonderful to be so close to such a star that you could realise that they are no different than any other actor; they are only as good or as bad as their performance. An intimate theatre like this takes the air out of the “They’re only cast for drawing power” argument – if they suck the show will suck, and there is no getting away from it.

A Doll’s House is a taught show by any measure. Ibsen despised the gender roles of his era, and wrote unsympathetically of them here and in Hedda Gabler, the masterpiece for which he is most remembered. He was a wordy writer, and he wrote in his vernacular, the Victorian era vernacular of Norway. Translations of his work have often suffered the same fate as the King James Bible, in that the political and social sensibilities of the translator, or the translator’s patron, can often interfere with the intent of the work. In this new version, Zinnie Harris brings us an unforgiving Ibsen, in an accessible but still period vernacular. The rendition is marvellous for these times (and resonates particularly well given the current political climate).

On, then, to the performances. Ms Anderson is highly passionate in her role as the dutiful wife of a politician. While it may be tempting to dismiss this passion as mere cover for a poorly realised portrayal, it is, in Ms Anderson’s able reading, intrinsic to that character. We see, over the span of three acts, her channel this passion first one way and then another as she tries to find a way to defuse the central conflict of the drama.

That conflict is this: Nora, years ago, borrowed money from an unscrupulous source when her husband, Thomas, then a budding politician and now an MP and Cabinet Minister, had a nervous breakdown and she needed to take him abroad to shelter him from the public and press. Her husband knows nothing of this loan, would not have approved, and practically denies that this episode in his life ever happened. The lender, the now discredited former MP Neil Kelman, whose brief Thomas now holds, has decided that in order to save his own hide he must blackmail Nora over the loan he made to her under questionable circumstances. Add to this mix Christine Lyle, a schoolmate of Nora, who has fallen on hard times and prevails upon Nora to help get her a job, and serves as Nora’s confidant. Also Dr. Rank, an old family friend of means who has always held a flame for Nora.

What differentiates an Ibsen drama is that the core conflict in his dramas is always going to revolve around sexual politics. In this case Thomas doesn’t believe that his wife is anything more than a silly, and pretty, mouse. She is happy to let him live with this delusion, rather than let him know that they are both suited in dead people’s clothes from the charity shops.

Eccelston is a manic force in this piece, and I say that having seen most of his part with his back turned squarely to me (one risk of thrust staging). I did have the benefit of seeing his highest and best moment on the stage, his denouement and his salvation wrapped into one, with him and Ms Fitzgerald seated just arm’s reach away. It was gut wrenching and affirming at once. His breakdown in front of the audience was a sincere moment, and the tenderness and unyielding manner of Ms Fitzgerald’s Christine was masterful as well. The two of them nearly stole the show, Ms Fitzgerald’s performance as deliberate as Ms Anderson’s is passionate. They represent the two diametric extreme in Ibsen’s lexicon of the female soul.

In the final scene, between Nora and Thomas, the husband berates his wife; he declaims her, derides her, nearly disowns her. Ms Anderson’s Nora shakes and cowers under this onslaught and Thomas nearly froths at the mouth, his temples throbbing as he raises himself to his full, considerable, height. It is easy, at this moment, to wonder where is Ibsen’s strong woman? We do not see her here. But then, in a moment, there comes a flash and the tables are turned:

Thomas: First and foremost you are a wife and a mother.

Nora: No, first and foremost I am myself, I am Nora!

Anderson rises to her full height and nearly sweeps Stevens off the stage as she launches into her condemnation of him. You can watch the air go out of him, and her find her full power and true centre in this captivating and miraculous three minutes of stage time. To say a chill wind blows through Donmar Warehouse in this scene would be an understatement.

The performances in tonight’s show were all top notch. This show, with five key roles and three supporting, leaves little room for weakness. There is none here. As for Eccelston and Anderson, tonight they were not stars, they were great actors in the company of great actors, and they all shone.

Ibsen is often referred to, in the theatre world, as the father of modern theatre, for his productions were the first to demand, and receive, realistic staging and lighting. Before Ibsen, staging relied mostly on drops and lighting consisted mainly of “limelight” spots and footlights. But Ibsen’s shows had real three dimensional sets and the most modern of lighting. This emphasis on realism allowed the audience to see in the prosaic lives on stage a reflection of their own.

The British theatre, and especially the legitimate, or dramatic, stage, also has a rich tradition of realism, as I have commented before. This tradition shone here with the modest, but dominating design of Anthony Ward and the naturalistic and well motivated lighting of Hugh Vanstone. All of this under the skilled direction of Kfir Yefet.

I thought that Duet for One, after topping Madame de Sade, would stand as the best show I would see on this trip. No more, A Doll’s House has soundly taken that seat. Tomorrow brings a matinée performance of Samuel Becket’s Waiting for Godot starring Sir Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewert. They have a mighty high threshold to overcome.

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Just got home from another night at the theatre, this time War Horse at the New London Theatre. This is a popular ticket, partly due to being appropriate fare for families, but especially because of the spectacular use of sophisticated puppetry in many aspects of the production. If you haven’t done so already, check out this video to get an impression of what I mean:

The story line is simple enough; a young Englishman raises a horse but it gets pressed into service in World War I. He ends up going to the continent to find his horse, and both the lad and his horse have trials and tribulations on the Western Front.

The problem facing this company was how to cast a show with horses as major characters? Their solution, puppets, was brilliant. Made more so by their choice of puppeteers, Handspring Puppets (Adrian Kohler, lead designer), a South African group. Here is another video showing more details:

The effect of these horses is amazing, you simultaneously grow to accept them as simply horses, and to marvel at the quality of the puppetry. Job well done, all round.

The horses are not the only puppets; there is a barnyard goose which is full of character, as well as crows who show up at the worst of times. For that matter, right from the very first you know this is no normal production, as a pair of puppeteers come sweeping onto the stage wielding twenty foot wands with articulated birds at the ends, their wings flapping with grace, swooping around the stage.

The story is both a raw war tale and one of family struggles and clashes. Based on the best selling novel by Michael Morpurgo, this show is popular with families and adult audiences. To be honest, take away the fine puppetry and this show most likely would not make it, but such speculation misses the point – the show is what it is, and that is what makes it a success.

The other technical aspects of the show are marvelous, the set, especially, integrating animation, projections and atmospheric effects with a fine lighting hang and some other special effects. This all integrates quite well with the soundscaping and the score. A special treat is the period songs, often played and sung by a strolling minstrel with his accordion.

I give it four stars.

One note, the New London Theatre is a fairly modern space, and has a spacious feel to it common of theatres built in the 1980s, with a thrust stage, wrap-around steeply raked seating, and, most grievous, no centre aisle. The centre section in stalls is 38 seats wide, and God forbid you have a seat in the middle and need to get in our out! I was third seat from the aisle, and simply gave up on sitting until the row was filled.

Ta!

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There are a lot of little things that I keep meaning to mention, so today I will try to catch up.

First off, however, I need to comment on Havana Rakatan, the dance programme presented by Sadler’s Wells tonight at the Peacock Theatre. Ooh La La!

I have learnt that Sadler’s Wells do not disappoint, and tonight was no exception. Last year I saw Insane in the Brain and Tango Por Dos, and both were exceptional. Now, when I see an advert for a Sadler’s Wells production I just add it to my list and don’t worry myself about whether it will be a worthy investment.

So, tonight’s performance, ending Saturday, features the top Cuban Son band Turquino, and a crew of about 20 dancers representing the cream of the crop in Cuban dance. Every style of Cuban dance is represented in this show: Salsa, Mambo, Rumba, Flamenco, classic folkloric, Bolero, Cha-Cha-Cha, etc.

A crowd favourite was when, following a bracing ensemble number, just the men are left on stage wearing an assortment of tops and tie-up trousers. They all face the audience and strip off their tops. The women in the audience went nuts and we all cheered. Then they started to loosen the ties on their trousers, the whole audience gasped, and many started a deafening cheer.

Just then a female Flamenco dancer started in from stage right, all taught angles, quivering curves, a costume as red as if a vat of lip gloss had been dumped on her (and as figure hugging, too) and a severe glint in her eye. As she moved across the stage in that staccato fashion unique to Flamenco, the men preened, then shrugged and then, resigned, simply picked up their kit and slunk off the stage.

The moment was precious, and the audience was but putty in their hands after that.

The show nearly broke my heart when the band started into Guantanamera, that most Cuban of all songs. I cannot help myself, whenever I hear this song I am transported to a little Mexican restaurant I visited many, many years ago with X and her mum N. N loved Cuba, and when the mariachi’s band came by X asked if they could play it. They launched into a serviceable rendition, an N started to cry for her love of Cuba. It was a touching, and to me eternally precious, moment, and now whenever I hear that song I start to tear up at my love for N and for her love of Cuba. Oh what a tangled web…

The show ended with the entire audience brought to their feet and trying to dance along with the crew on stage. My seat mate, Carolina, (a Polish immigrant, by way of Australia) a salsa dancer, put me to shame as I just did the white-guy-shuffle and tried to keep in time.

So, the other news… I have already reported twice on the little constitutional crisis brewing over here. Well, it would be one if the Brits really had a constitution like the US does. At the root of the current mess are two separate scandals, which are coming to fruition simultaneously. The first is the peerage “laws for pay” scandal. This actually dates back to my last visit here, in early spring of 2008. In this one, members of the House of Lords, the upper chamber of parliament (think Senate) were found to be dispensing favours for money – aka taking bribes. Two peers have been found guilty, finally, and have had their privileges suspended pending further action. This is remarkable in that it hasn’t happened in over 300 years, dating back to the era of Britain’s civil war (yes, they had one too).

The second is the continuing Exes scandal, in which members of the House of Commons (MPs) have been exposed as having exploited rules which allow them to recoup various expenses associated with maintaining multiple households so as to attend parliament. This has now claimed several members of all the major parties, including senior aides and ministers, and has lead to calls for wholesale reform of the entire electoral system. Yesterday it took its biggest toll, the resignation of the Speaker of the House of Commons. Though widely expected, and called for, this act, again for the first time in more than 300 years, has set the entire government, majority and opposition alike, on their arse and made them think about just how quickly they are racing towards the abyss of writing themselves out of governance and into history.

There is a lot of talking about cooler heads prevailing and the like, but coming down the tracks like a dual locomotive are the 4 June county and EU elections. The electorate are fuming and they are ready to elect anyone who is not currently in power. This could potentially send a bunch of fascistic “England for the English” folk, like the British National Party (we’ll pay you to just move back home and leave us alone) into Whitehall. No one bargained for this.

Meanwhile the Germans and French, in the person of Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, have already issued warnings that if the Conservatives (Tories) or isolationists are elected they may need to restrict England from having a say on EU policy going forward.

This is, as my dad used to say, a right bloody mess.

On a lighter note. I noticed something in Mayfair the other day. You know those ridiculously gorgeous models in the Abercrombie and Fitch catalogues? If you go to the Mayfair outlet of A&F those very same models are there in person, wearing virtually nothing, and ready to greet you at the door and hand you a shopping basket. I kid you not.

Marks and Spenser, known affectionately around here as either M&S or Marks & Sparks, celebrate their 125^th anniversary this year, and so for three days, starting today, put 30 items on sale for a penny a piece, in recognition of their start as a penny shop (“Don’t ask the price, its a pence” was an early slogan). People started to line up at the flagship Oxford Street, Marble Arch location at 5 this morning and M&S handed out tea and coffee to those in line, along with cards listing the available products and little pencils so they could check up to five that they wanted.

Twiggy was there as Mistress of Ceremonies and has been all over the telly promoting it for the past week or so. At least we get to see a lot of Twiggy, whom fate and time have treated quite well indeed.

Bank Holiday, again! When Pawn first got here, nearly three weeks ago, England launched into a three day weekend, triggered by a bank holiday. In the US such a term evokes memories of the Great Depression, when “Bank Holiday” was a euphemism for a bank failure, wherein the government would shutter a bank for a few days while they sorted the books and then reopened the bank under national control. We have seen this happen with alarming regularity in the past year or so, but the FDIC, who handle such things, have gotten quite good at doing the whole thing over a weekend, so no one’s any the wiser.

Anyway, Bank Holiday weekends mean a few things. First off, sales, lots of sales. Two, everyone tries to leave London for the hinterlands, beaches of Brighton, etc. Third, half the underground goes under repair at once, and you cannot get anywhere you want. Fourth, the weather sucks. The forecasts are always rosy, but the actual weather always seems to suck. We’ll see if this time is any different.

The next item on today’s gazette, STRIKE! The RMT union have struck the Victoria line for a 24 hour stoppage from tonight at 9:00 pm. This is due to a little incident a couple of months ago wherein a train operator mistakenly opened the doors on the wrong side of the coaches of a Victoria Line train. The union pointed out that this line lacks the safety devices which prevent such a mistake on the other lines, but Transport for London (TfL) sacked the driver nonetheless. Thus the strike.

For me this means I may not get to see Cirxus up at Arcola Theatre’s new experimental Studio K space. Arcola are up in Dalston, in Hackney, and the only good way to get there from here is via the Victoria. I meant to go there tonight, but couldn’t risk being stranded with no way home. Thus my choice to attend Sadler’s Wells show. Tomorrow may work, but if the strike does continue for the full 24 hours it will be a no-go to get to Hackney. Bank Holiday means massive trains works, so that means the whole weekend is bullocks. >Sigh<

In other news of the day, I treked east to Bethnel Green again today, hoping to check out some more galleries there. Oops! Must learn to check the fine print more carefully. Most of these galleries are only open by appointment or on Friday and Saturday. Okay, add that to the list for the weekend.

Tomorrow L shows up from Wisconsin to visit her brother. We’ll hang out some, too. So look forward to more reports of someone getting annoyed at me for walking fast or refusing to hail cabs or other such indignities. I am hard to cope with, which just adds to your reading delight.

Two final notes: I pinched an office chair from a rubbish skip the other day, an office block across the street is under rehab and they had a half dozen chairs out to the curb.

My favourite Gay-Bollywood-After-School-Special, Nina’s Heavenly Delights is on BBC One right now. Ah, joy!

Ta!

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Last night brought the 3^rd of 5 performances of Beneath The Dress, a new cabaret show by Frances Ruffelle.

I scored a ticket to this after having been intrigued by a handbill at a the Pleasance Theatre the other night. Ruffelle has been performing on stage for many years now, having won a Tony award for her turn in Les Miserables several years back. She has heaped up a career’s worth of awards in a fairly short time, and at age 42 has pretty much pivoted to a recording career.

This show was billed with this memorable little poem:

I must confess
there’s an emptiness
each night the music ends ….
underneath the mess
and beneath the dress
I’m best when I pretend.

Well, I can tell you this, she delivered on the underneath the dress bit, performing almost the entire show in her unmentionables; prancing around the stage in various stages of undress, complicated by the numerous costume changes (think Cher) all performed centre stage.

It is worth mentioning that yet again Pawn was one of the few straight men in attendance. Her act was incredibly well put together, with very tight musical arrangements and a very capable band. Accompanying her were sax/clarinet, trumpet and trombone, drums, stand-up bass and keyboards. Her daughter, who goes by the stage name Elisa Doolittle, joined in for one number. Quite nice.

The act felt like a blend of Judy Garland and Sarah Brightman. Brightman, at least in what I have seen, plays the remote diva, while Ruffelle is anything but detached. She obviously loves what she is doing, and that comes across on stage in a way which simply cannot be faked. Her eyes always shimmer, her moves are so sure it is almost surreal, and every little movement seems to have been if not choreographed at least very well considered.

I must give a special nod to her rendition of Mood Indigo, the classic Duke Ellington song. She captured the sometimes difficult minor-key transitions masterfully, and her band never crowded her on the more delicately phrased passages.

There are two performances left for this show, June 3^rd and 14th, and I recommend it to anyone who has the opportunity to attend. Madame Jojo’s at 8-10 Brewer Street in Soho are a wonderful venue for this show.

If I’m no longer needed
and I must take my leave
I’ll go with a smile
My exit music please

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Pawn returned to old haunts today, in more ways than one. The day started with packing and moving out of the two bedroom flat shared with the now absent (and so sorely missed) X. Did I mention just how much she is missed? Boatloads, to be sure.

Okay, now that bit of appeasement is out of the way…

The move to Camden actually went pretty well. The new flat is not as nice as the old one, but has much better views.

A small gallery of photos is here. After getting sorted in the new flat, I decided to head down to Borough Market for some shopping. This is a huge market at the South Bank end of London Bridge, tucked in under the rail lines. They have everything you can imagine, from all over Europe. There are fresh cheese and sausage from France; olives, olive oil, chiles and chorizo from Spain; Parmisian Romanno fresh from Italy (with an aroma which is most arresting) as well as salami and ham that are to die for; from Germany come white asparagus and all sort of würsts; from Portugal come more olives and cheeses; Greece is represented with feta, kefta and korma, not to mention all sort of sweets; Turkey is there with Turkish Delight in forty flavours.

Local growers and vendors bring the pride of England: eggs, cheese, meats, greens, veggies, tubers, seafood (including hand caught and cut scallops, cooked to order). The list go on and on. I heard more than once people complain that their noses were stuffed from allergies, depriving them of the feast of aroma for which this market is famous. I’ll tell you, just to walk from the Italian cheeses to the Parma ham was an olfactory miracle of no small dimension. If only they made a camera which would capture odours!

I loaded up with landjeagger and French smoked salami, English cow milk brie, young Gouda, gem, asparagus, carrots, apples and pears, tin loaf bread, and some other stuff. I was quite loaded down by the time I stopped and went home to the new flat. After getting everything into the fridge (no small feat) I relaxed a bit, napped, made myself a light plate of cheese and sausage, and then headed back out to the Pleasance Theatre in North London for Dying For It.

Dying For It is based on Nikolai Erdman’s wry comedy, The Suicide, written in Russian in 1928. The Suicide reflects the growing dissatisfaction with life in post-revolutionary Soviet Russia, and was in fact banned there until after Stalin’s reign. Semyon, a young married, unemployed man is down in the dumps. Living in his mother in-law’s hallway, and suffering under her blatant distaste, he decides that his best option is to end it all. As word of his plan gets around, people from all over see in this act a way for them to express their grievances against the state, the church, the proletariat, the bourgeois, the Communists, etc.

Suddenly Semyon is famous and people are lining up and paying a fee, to Semyon’s unscrupulous neighbour Alexander, just to pitch their cause to him in hopes that his suicide note, now as eagerly awaited as the next Tolstoy or Dostoevsky novel. Semyon entertains them all, and as he does he begins to feel a pride and sense of worth he has never felt before. His wife decides to leave him over this daft plan, while his mother in-law starts to see an upside (widow’s fund and all).

I shan’t tell how it ends, but I think you can get a sense of the absurd farce that this is. It made me think of the anti-fascist piece Rhinoceros by Ianesco.

This was an amateur production, with design duties handled by final year students in theatre arts. They performed well for a small budget show, though my one big note on back stage duties would be that future such shows should include at least one make up artist. A big problem with amateur shows like this develops when each actor does their own make up, and what shows up on stage is a muddle to say the least.

So, the show? Well, it was a mixed bag. Moira Buffini’s adaptation was brilliant. The language was exceptional and her finessing of the vernacular was wonderful. She artfully made the plight of these post revolutionary Russians accessible to the British audience. Most skilful in carrying this lovely work to the stage was Daniel Kendrick as Semyon. His was an easy and friendly reading, and his performance was completely naturalistic, not an easy thing given the absurdist nature of the script. The only drawback to his skilled performance was how some of the lesser talents on stage paled next to him.

Emma Pilson, as Maria, Semyon’s long suffering wife, also turned in a stellar performance. Felcity McCormack tried her best to inhabit the role of Serafima, the mother in-law, but was defeated by her age and lack of appropriate make up. Matt Sutton (sorry, not sure on the name), an understudy, filled in for an injured Okorie Chukwu, in the role of Alexander. His performance drifted between brilliant and serviceable. I mention him in respect for the fact that he was stepping into a role for which he had less preparation than his cast mates.

All in all a great night at the theatre, all for £9 a ticket.

I must also mention the brilliant photo exhibition in the lobby spaces at Pleasance. It is collection of Jamie Gramston’s photos from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2008. I was swept up in the manner Jamie found to bring us backstage and show us moments both intimate and public. His use of light and shadow was masterful for someone who did not control that lighting but had to work with what there was. I have made enquiries to acquire a few pieces in this series.

It is worthy of note that the series was made possible by the donation of a printer, inks and paper from Epson. Thanks to their generosity, proceeds from these sales will go towards the Charlie Hartill Special Reserve a fund supporting theatre education and performance.

So, hats off to Jamie Gramston, Pleasance Theatre and Epson for this wonderful exhibit.

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A day of work today, work and writing, and then off to wander Southwark in search of interesting sights, some din-din and finally { EPIDEMIC }, and experimentatl theatre work at Southwark Playhouse.

After doing a few hours of work, and a couple of writing, I decided to head out early for my show in Southwark. I move tomorrow, from tony Fitzrovia to the more frugal climbs of Bloomsbury/St. Pans. I decided to take a walk to Kings Cross station by way of the new flat, so I could get an idea of what awaits me. It was a nice stroll over into an area, Bloomsbury, with which I am already familiar, having stayed there for a while back in 2000. The sights are mostly the same, just the works are different.

From Kings Cross I took the eastern branch of the Northern line down to Bank so that I could walk across London Bridge to the South Bank at Southwark (say “suth-ark”). After snapping a few photos of the Monument to the Great Fire of London

I took the walk and was prepared to find a right mess on the south bank, as there was a major water mains break early this morning, which lead to 1.5 metres of water in Tooley Street, right outside the London Bridge tube station, and caused hundreds of businesses, hotels and offices (including City Hall) to shut down.

London is currently pox marked with works involving replacing the Victorian era water mains (should sound familiar to Milwaukeans), and a break like this (the second in 3 months) really brings home the need for it.

As expected, Tooley Street, just east of the station, was closed to vehicular traffic, but the various agency seemed to be doing a bang up job of sorting it all. There were fire brigades from all over, Whitechaple, Kentish Town, etc. as well as Plastic Cops, the PCSO support corps., water works lorries, etc. Quite a scene.

Had a walk around and then settled for a dinner of penne carbonara not far from the action.

Back out to stroll around some more, wandered along the southern side of the train trestles to take some photos of the ornate, but sullied masonry. Along the way encountered Pierre Garroudi, a slender French designer who has honed his skills in Manhattan (I’m guessing Pratt) and Milan before settling in London. He introduced me to his cat (who has lived in all of those places with him) and his designs.

Check out today’s gallery for all the photos. “Are you an architect?” he asked, when he saw me photographing the masonry. “No, just an admirer” I told him. We had a nice chat.

The area along the southern bank of the Thames here is called MoreLondon and includes a number of very modern structures in the shadow of Tower Bridge. It is quite vibrant, as most of the old docklands are, and tonight was no exception. A lot of public art, and a lot of people admiring it. I took more photos of that.

Finally it was time to go to the playhouse to see {EPIDEMIC}, the show I had come for. The story behind how I came to be here is this: A week ago, as X and I were traveling down to South Bank for a show, we encountered a vivacious group of young Thespians on the train. They were quite animated and one girl, maybe 21, was asked by a nearby lad if she was Indian (she obviously was). She was quite a striking beauty, and coyly looked at the young man and without skipping a beat said “No, I’m white, I just tan easily. My name is Emily.” as though that name was enough to establish her racial identity.

In modern England the question of whether someone is Indian is foolish, to say the least. Indian, as well as Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Afghanistan people have lived here for generations. So, to be Indian here is to say third or forth generation Indian, and with intermarriage (which happens more often than you’d think) it all becomes meaningless fairly quickly. This young woman had the dark ruddy skin and Arian features which I happen to find quite lovely, but I was not the one pestering her, so let’s leave that out of it.

I was more interested in the large hand made drum which the quietest and shyest member of the troupe was carrying, or rather trying to carry. After helping her get settled into a seat so that her drum didn’t obstruct traffic, I inquired what the story was with the drum. She answered, in a accent I would later discover was Greek, and halting English, that they were all with a theatre troupe, and the drum was a vital prop.

I asked what show, and she said it was an experimental production at the Southwark Playhouse based upon Antigone which would be produced for one night only, May 14^th. I went online the next day and got a ticket for the whopping sum of £3.

Life is short, and when you have an opportunity to see some truly new and different perspectives in theatre, I say go for it. Enough of my theatre career was spent producing just that kind of show, so I can truly appreciate it when I have a chance to see it.

The venue was the bar of the playhouse, which itself is under the bridges of the railway interchange at London Bridge Station. In the darkened caverns of space is carved out a little antechamber to the main theatre, and this is where the production would take place. By the time I arrived, almost an hour before the show, the box office was already turning interested parties away as they had a sellout show. Eventually the eager audience prevailed upon the box office workers to sell them SRO spots, so at the start of the show the place was packed. I had three people sitting on my feet for most of the performance.

While the audience milled about and got their drinks and seats sorted the cast started to coalesce in the centre of the bar room, performing stretching and limbering exercises (made my back hurt just watching).

Then, when the audience was all watered, the actors gelled into a cohesive mass and started the show.

There is nothing grand or unheard of to report about the show. It is an old tale, Antigone, but this was a vital and inventive telling. Props were spare, mostly just a large piece of orange-red fabric and a couple of puppets. Most of the creative work went into the movements of the cast and the turns on the traditional story. Our “Emily” from the tube, Natalie Naomi Bamunuwatte, was stellar as Antigone, Luke Harris shines as Creon and Konstantinos Kavakiotis triumphs as Haemon. Ioli Adreadi, the shy woman with the drum, played director cum ring-master to the cast of eight, and crafted a piece seemingly purpose built for the space.

That’s the trick, it wasn’t. {EPIDEMIC} are all about constant change within the company of actors and the spaces they inhabit. The cast of tonight’s one-off performance consisted of 4 veterans and 4 newcomers. They will perform, as well, in Athens. They previously performed, with different cast, at Edinburgh and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, both in 2008.

I felt honoured to have been amongst the 100 or so people to get to see them this time out.

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Yesterday was a slow day by any measure. X left to return to the US and I took some time to relax, read, and generally just be lazy. I did sojourn down to Leicester Square to procure a ticket to see The Frontline , by Ché Walker, at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre down in Southwark, a recreation of original Globe Theatre, and a pretty good one at that.

Lucky for me I had a seat in dress circle (first balcony) and sheltered, as the Globe is open roofed, and the hoi polloi stand up in the courtyard and their only recourse in case of rain (like the light mist at curtain time) is rain coats or ponchos, anyone opening a bumbershoot will be roundly booed, or worse.

The plot of The Frontline is the life in the direct vicinity of an underground station somewhere in the East End of London:

There is an underground strip club; a couple of food vendors, one selling hot dogs and the other selling Korma, locked in friendly competition; a religious group; a handful of drugs dealers, and various other habitués of the area. We watch them all interact and most of the time the beautifully sculpted dialogue is taking place on two, three or four levels at once. A drug dealer is taunting his rival while a stripper is teasing her bouncer while a evangelist is converting a sinner while the hot dog vendor is berating the Afghani vendor. That we can make any sense out of this at all is testament to the skillful direction of Matthew Dunster and the cast’s remarkable sense of timing.

I loved this show. It handled many of the same issues that English People Very Nice did, but with more humour, grace and effect. It did not aspire to the full throated assault on English bigotry that show did, but it still handled the subject deftly, as in a scene in the first act where a black stripper and a white drugs kingpin get into a debate about British society and who has a right to claim priority.

A rolicking good night at the theatre, and a show I would love to see transition to film or video. One interesting thing overheard at interval; one usher to another “This one gent just left, said he was only two days off the plane from the States and couldn’t understand a word of it!”

While the promotional materials all warned about rough language and subject matter, none of them warned about the thick cockney accents and sometimes impenetrable language. But the script is so masterful, so well written, so peppered with intelligent, sophisticated, vocabulary stretching words and turns of phrase that Shakespeare’s own theatre was certainly a well deserved home for this production. Ché Walker has brilliantly earned the right to put his characters on Shakespeare’s stage.

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