crows gather
on the shore
as I pass
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Attempts on Her Life
According to Aleks Sierz (Theatre of Martin Crimp) 'it's no exaggeration to say that his 1997 masterpiece, Attempts on Her Life, is one of the very best plays of the past quarter-century.'
Michael Billington described it as 'a prose-poem that implies our notion of the individual ego is being steadily eroded by a mixture of rampant consumerism, global capitalism and technological advance’ and 'a work which implies virtually everything in modern society conspires to reduce our sense of self.'
In its 17 scenarios for the theatre, an irreverent postmodern chorus of voices deconstructs European Everywoman Ann/Anne/Anya/Annie/Anny/Annushka, who may or may not exist, even within the fiction of the play – she’s a central enigma, a lover, an actress, an artist, a porn star, a suicide, a terrorist, even a brand of car.
The text of the play is prefaced with a quote from Baudrillard:
‘No one will have directly experienced the actual cause of such happenings but everyone will have received an image of them’
and this is a brilliant description of both how the play works and also the experience of audiences/participants at Jersey Arts Centre youtheatre’s production at Grand Jersey this week.
The text is all refraction and resonance: answerphone messages, marketing-speak, translations, descriptions of photographs and exhibition materials – an assemblage of postmodern ennui, ideology, parody and angst, by turns romantic, sophisticated, callous, sinister, cynical, ironic, acid sharp, playfully funny, gossipy, sentimental or self-deceiving - a second-hand barrage of fiction, perceptions and insights, bizarre and mundane, with product placements, hearsay, a skit, a poem, a rap…
The play could be described as all chorus and no action – so it was an inspired decision to locate the Jersey Arts Centre production in the Park Suites at Grand Jersey, a luxurious assortment of conference rooms (including a private cinema) with inspirational and motivational quotes on the walls.
From the moment we were greeted with canapés and drinks in the lounge (director Daniel Austin is always solicitous of audiences comfort!), then led by youtheatre members (very sophisticated in black cocktail dresses and suits) through a seeming-labyrinth of business suites, to be confided in, lectured to, whispered and shouted at, until the final scenario holding hands with the actors in a circle on the hotel terrace (at night, in front of a busy road, and no doubt to the bemusement of some hotel guests!) the audience was truly embedded in the world of the play, so that it became a site-sensitive work.
Yet the cast remained true to the text with its overlapping voices, silences, poetic rhythm (the beautiful 100 words) and languages (in this case Roumanian and French) with just the addition of a few props; a dinging bell between scenes, classical music played on a laptop, black blindfolds for scenario 12 STRANGELY!
It’s an ensemble piece and one of the strengths of the Jersey Arts Centre youtheatre has always been its ensemble work, and in this they excelled again to produce a very mature piece of theatre. I can’t unpick this to do justice to all of the actors who worked together so professionally, but I did find Fleur very powerfully moving in scenario 3 Faith in Ourselves, and Hermione, tipsily giddy with self-love in scenario 5 The Camera Loves You, was a comic scene stealer.
I already admired Martin Crimp’s text, so this opportunity to experience the play was a real treat – I noticed how subliminal meanings were exposed through being stated explicitly - the racism coming out of the marketing spiel about the Anny car in scenario 7 which makes you flinch; or through being exaggerated - the hype about the Porno Anne who could change the world, end animal suffering, end human suffering, popularise psychoanalytical theory, dance with the particles of light etc..
It’s an early 'Attempt' at a new type of theatre to penetrate and exploit the media saturation we take for granted, which makes us blasé and almost unreachable because even atrocities are pre-packaged for us; an 'Attempt' at describing our experience of the world through language, while simultaneously exposing the fallacies of this. It seems to parody itself in the critics scene:
‘It’s funny. It’s sick. It’s sexy. It’s deeply serious. It’s entertaining. It’s illuminating. It’s dark. It’s highly personal and at the same time raises vital questions about the world we’re living in.’
The work cheats us of a conclusion – it slyly trails off in the last scenario, with a whimper rather than a bang – it has to really, and our audience was left appropriately wondering if the play had really ended, following the cast as they strode back into the hotel, ignoring us.
But as in the Baudrillard quote, all those words left after-images in my mind of things which I hadn’t actually seen – photographs reducing to just little dots, Anne’s red bag filled with stones, the child in two bags…
And the refrain of it is still stuck in my head the next day like some catchy pop tune:
She’s the girl next door
She’s the fatal flaw…
The camera loves you
THE CAMERA LOVES YOU
Wonderful!
Michael Billington described it as 'a prose-poem that implies our notion of the individual ego is being steadily eroded by a mixture of rampant consumerism, global capitalism and technological advance’ and 'a work which implies virtually everything in modern society conspires to reduce our sense of self.'
In its 17 scenarios for the theatre, an irreverent postmodern chorus of voices deconstructs European Everywoman Ann/Anne/Anya/Annie/Anny/Annushka, who may or may not exist, even within the fiction of the play – she’s a central enigma, a lover, an actress, an artist, a porn star, a suicide, a terrorist, even a brand of car.
The text of the play is prefaced with a quote from Baudrillard:
‘No one will have directly experienced the actual cause of such happenings but everyone will have received an image of them’
and this is a brilliant description of both how the play works and also the experience of audiences/participants at Jersey Arts Centre youtheatre’s production at Grand Jersey this week.
The text is all refraction and resonance: answerphone messages, marketing-speak, translations, descriptions of photographs and exhibition materials – an assemblage of postmodern ennui, ideology, parody and angst, by turns romantic, sophisticated, callous, sinister, cynical, ironic, acid sharp, playfully funny, gossipy, sentimental or self-deceiving - a second-hand barrage of fiction, perceptions and insights, bizarre and mundane, with product placements, hearsay, a skit, a poem, a rap…
The play could be described as all chorus and no action – so it was an inspired decision to locate the Jersey Arts Centre production in the Park Suites at Grand Jersey, a luxurious assortment of conference rooms (including a private cinema) with inspirational and motivational quotes on the walls.
From the moment we were greeted with canapés and drinks in the lounge (director Daniel Austin is always solicitous of audiences comfort!), then led by youtheatre members (very sophisticated in black cocktail dresses and suits) through a seeming-labyrinth of business suites, to be confided in, lectured to, whispered and shouted at, until the final scenario holding hands with the actors in a circle on the hotel terrace (at night, in front of a busy road, and no doubt to the bemusement of some hotel guests!) the audience was truly embedded in the world of the play, so that it became a site-sensitive work.
Yet the cast remained true to the text with its overlapping voices, silences, poetic rhythm (the beautiful 100 words) and languages (in this case Roumanian and French) with just the addition of a few props; a dinging bell between scenes, classical music played on a laptop, black blindfolds for scenario 12 STRANGELY!
It’s an ensemble piece and one of the strengths of the Jersey Arts Centre youtheatre has always been its ensemble work, and in this they excelled again to produce a very mature piece of theatre. I can’t unpick this to do justice to all of the actors who worked together so professionally, but I did find Fleur very powerfully moving in scenario 3 Faith in Ourselves, and Hermione, tipsily giddy with self-love in scenario 5 The Camera Loves You, was a comic scene stealer.
I already admired Martin Crimp’s text, so this opportunity to experience the play was a real treat – I noticed how subliminal meanings were exposed through being stated explicitly - the racism coming out of the marketing spiel about the Anny car in scenario 7 which makes you flinch; or through being exaggerated - the hype about the Porno Anne who could change the world, end animal suffering, end human suffering, popularise psychoanalytical theory, dance with the particles of light etc..
It’s an early 'Attempt' at a new type of theatre to penetrate and exploit the media saturation we take for granted, which makes us blasé and almost unreachable because even atrocities are pre-packaged for us; an 'Attempt' at describing our experience of the world through language, while simultaneously exposing the fallacies of this. It seems to parody itself in the critics scene:
‘It’s funny. It’s sick. It’s sexy. It’s deeply serious. It’s entertaining. It’s illuminating. It’s dark. It’s highly personal and at the same time raises vital questions about the world we’re living in.’
The work cheats us of a conclusion – it slyly trails off in the last scenario, with a whimper rather than a bang – it has to really, and our audience was left appropriately wondering if the play had really ended, following the cast as they strode back into the hotel, ignoring us.
But as in the Baudrillard quote, all those words left after-images in my mind of things which I hadn’t actually seen – photographs reducing to just little dots, Anne’s red bag filled with stones, the child in two bags…
And the refrain of it is still stuck in my head the next day like some catchy pop tune:
She’s the girl next door
She’s the fatal flaw…
The camera loves you
THE CAMERA LOVES YOU
Wonderful!
Friday, April 1, 2011
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Frankenstein
This was my first NT Live experience, but a long fascination with all things gothic meant I couldn't resist Danny Boyle's Frankenstein, screened live at Jersey Opera House.
Mary Shelley's novel is a seminal work and the play encapsulates themes which have become mainstream now - the dangers of science, playing God, responsibilities of procreation & parenting, nature vs. nurture, enslavement, disability, social acceptance & exclusion and Christian allegory. The strength of this production is not in Nick Dear's somewhat pedestrian script however, which seemed to falter under so much symbolism, but in how the themes are given physical embodiment.
In a tour de force visceral opening sequence. the creature (tonight Benedict Cumberbatch, alternating with Jonny Lee Miller's Victor Frankenstein in other performances) breaks out of a womb-like pod and gradually gains control of his body, struggling to raise himself, to walk and make sounds, to eat and drink. There is a child-like joy as he discovers the world, the heat of the sun, grass, rain, snow and fire. He will learn to speak, to quote Milton, debate his condition and feel emotions - beautifully expressed in a dream dance with a female creature.
Charles Spencer in the Telegraph described it as "like watching a speeded up version of human evolution" and for me it evoked memories of Dudendance's Spaceman, (performed at St James last year as part of a Jersey Arts Centre residency) as did the play's final exit through an Arctic doorway of light.
The NT Live experience itself is a curious hybrid of theatre and cinema. The liveness of the event, (broadcast to 400 venues in 22 countries), creates a sense of anticipation and excitement. There is also a feeling of intimacy, of sharing an event with a particular audience. One can't fault the camera work either which is excellent - unobtrusive and moving easily from aerial views to close ups and giving access that you wouldn't get in the theatre.
I did miss the freedom you have in the theatre to read visual content and discover meaning, to let your eye frame a scene, rather than a lens do it for you. The design of the production is beautiful, particularly the large canopy of hanging lights flickering with frissons of galvanic energy - but there's something different about seeing light rather than being in the room with it and experiencing the light and dark yourself. And although you are with an audience, it is a different audience to the one the actors are in some kind of symbiotic relationship with. The screen itself acts as a kind of fourth wall.
And I did wonder why the creature was wearing a flesh-coloured loin cloth in the opening birth sequence when reviews and production photographs suggested he would be naked, which would seem more apt - some kind of caution to not offend global sensibilities or invoke cinema censorship restrictions? Curious...
But this feeling of being at one remove, of 'secondhandedness', doesn't make the experience not worth having, it just makes it a different experience. And importantly the broadcasts widen access to those who wouldn't be able to make it to the National Theatre in London or to buy a ticket, to a global audience.
Monday, March 14, 2011
A Prophet
French film A Prophet (Director Jacques Audiard), screened at Jersey Arts Centre this evening, manages to intercut a viscerally realistic and violent portrayal of prison life with fleeting and mysterious images of ghosts and prophecy.
Stripped of its supernatural dimension, the film would still be impressive (and some might argue tighter); the interplay between naive convict Malik (Tahar Rahim) and Corsican gang leader Luciani (Niels Arestrup), as one gains in understanding and power at the expense of the other, is played out with subtlety.
But it is the images of Malik's dead victim Reyeb (Hichem Yacoubi) - bathed in flames, some kind of prison mentor, ghostly companion or conscience - that linger in the mind.
I like films that plant images in your consciousness asking to be interpreted and leave you wondering about what happens to the characters as they exit the final frame...
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
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