Posts tagged ‘lyn gardner’

« Older Entries  |   Newer Entries »
1 March, 2010

Lyn Gardner fully expects to be replaced by Katie Price

Written for The Collective Review, 1 March 2010

The national newspapers’ habit of replacing their retired head theatre critics with columnists and political sketchwriters is pretty worrying for those of us on the bottom rungs of the theatre criticism career ladder, as I pointed out in January, when The Times announced Libby Purves would be replacing Benedict Nightingale in their top spot.

Well, it turns out up-and-comers like me aren’t the only ones concerned by the trend:  some of the country’s most influential theatre critics also expressed reservations about the appointments last Friday, at Theatre Critics In The Spotlight, a panel discussion hosted by The Student Workshop of Royal Holloway, University of London (pictured).

Even before the panel hosts – Royal Holloway lecturer and Variety theatre critic Karen Fricker, and Student Workshop Creative Learning Officer Sheryl Hill – formally posed the question, panellist Mark Shenton – critic for the Sunday Express and daily blogger for The Stage – repeatedly brought up the topic.

In Shenton’s view, the trend is a cost-saving measure, symptomatic of the problems facing the newspaper and media industry as a whole.  His fellow panellist Kate Bassett, lead critic for the Independent on Sunday, pithily summarised those problems, saying, “Newspapers don’t know how to make money any more”.

Shenton explained that papers could avoid paying an extra salary by simply adding theatre criticism to the duties of an existing member of staff, adding that editors no longer consider theatre criticism to be a full-time occupation.

Ian Shuttleworth of the Financial Times recalled – enlighteningly, for those of us relatively new to the business – the appointment of former Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer Michael Portillo as theatre critic for the New Statesman, which he considers to be the beginning of the trend.  Worryingly, he also pointed out that his own promotion to lead critic at the FT is the only instance in living memory of a retiring lead critic being replaced by their number two at the same paper – most second-stringers have to defect to a different publication in order to secure a top slot.

Lyn Gardner, critic and blogger for The Guardian, concluded the discussion with this bleak yet matter-of-fact premonition of the industry’s future:  “I fully expect my job will one day be done by Katie Price”.

Posted in Features | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
18 February, 2010

Mercury Fur

3-4 Picton Place, 17 February – 13 March 2010

Reviewed for the British Theatre Guide

Theatre Delicatessen couldn’t conceivably have picked a more ideal play with which to kick off their latest found-space residency. Mercury Fur is a perfect fit for a bold young company (provided it’s staged with maturity), as well as for the space, a disused office block just off Oxford Street – though it may not be exactly the right play for the moment.

Accessed via a fire escape overlooking a bleak concrete non-space hemmed in by buildings, the space is dingy, litter-strewn and neglected – but the soft furnishings remain intact (if grubby), a solitary unbroken china bowl is discovered amongst the empty crisp packets, and a dark, weighty wooden bookcase endures against one wall. It’s a setting immediately evocative of the play’s alternate London: of affluence and prosperity run rapidly to ruin.

Hastily tidied and swept, the space becomes the setting for a rich city worker’s sick wish-fulfilment, organised by a group of youths in exchange for the means to their own survival. The young cast – especially leading duo Matt Granados and Chris Urch as tight-knit brothers Elliot and Darren – fearlessly harness and ride Ridley’s powerful dialogue, embracing the thought-provoking contradiction between their determination not only to survive but to protect one another, and the means they’re willing to use to achieve that end.

This is the play’s first major London revival since it opened at the Menier Chocolate Factory in 2005. Having since arguably passed into canon, it’s unlikely to cause as much of a stir this time around; and though Ridley’s near-hopeless future may chime with the national mood of doom and gloom, the breakdown of civilisation via widespread habitual hallucinogenic drug abuse is hardly the apocalypse du jour. We only have ourselves to blame for the crises we face at the turn of the teenies (climate change and the credit crunch), while outside agency plus human nature plus time is the formula for the end in Mercury Fur.

Hence, while in no way sidelining or shying away from the violence, Delicatessen place heavy emphasis on the role of Elliot: the de facto guardian of humanity’s culture, mythology and history, by dint of being the only non-user in the group, and therefore the only one that remembers the world as we know it. The childlike eagerness of Darren and Naz (an incongruously innocent-seeming Mikey Bharj) for tales of life before the fall, and the delight Elliot takes in the telling, provide the only threads of hope that either the characters or the audience can grasp.

It’s evidence that the controversy that greeted its premiere was not all Mercury Fur had to offer; even with its shocks somewhat blunted by foreknowledge, it just takes the right company in the right space to reveal the heart behind the horrors.

Written by Philip Ridley

Crew includes Frances Loy (director), William Reynolds (designer/lighting), Fergus Waldron (sound design), Anna von Eicken (costume design) and Roger Bartlett (fight director)

Cast includes Debra Baker (Duchess), Mikey Bharj (Naz), Matt Granados (Elliot), Isaac Jones (Lola), Jack Sweeney (Party Piece), Chris Urch (Darren), Tom Vickers (Party Guest) and Ben Wigzell (Spinx)

Need a second opinion?

Posted in Reviews | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
3 February, 2010

My Stories, Your Emails

Barbican, 2 – 13 February 2010

Reviewed for the British Theatre Guide

Ursula Martinez is an enigma and so is her new solo show, My Stories, Your Emails. An original member of La Clique, Martinez exists in the borderlands between stand-up comedy, burlesque dance, stage magic and performance art. Similarly, My Stories, Your Emails is a lecture, a stand-up act, a play, a confession and an autobiography while simultaneously being none of these things.

It also appears simultaneously to be a constructive, creative response to a potentially upsetting situation and a petty, misdirected act of vengeance.

As the title suggests, it’s a show of two halves. The first involves Martinez reading (mostly) humorous autobiographical anecdotes from a lectern. Her deadpan delivery is disconcertingly reminiscent of Jimmy Carr, though Martinez excels at getting laughs by leaving stories hanging, instead of by comic over-explanation.

The stories serve as a brief introduction to Martinez’s life, revealing aspects of her upbringing and career, details about her family and so on, without sketching anything like a complete picture of her as a person.

The second half concerns a similarly incomplete picture – a video of her magic/striptease act Hanky Panky, which was released onto the internet without her permission – and some of the astonishing conclusions people the world over drew about her as a result. It’s a pageant showcasing some prime examples of that uniquely 21st century prose genre, the speculative online solicitation, in which the objective is to coat every syllable in steaming sexual subtext, but convince the receiving party that you are not just another hopeless case begging for sex.

There’s a surprising variety of pretexts, from those who idolise Martinez as a campaigner for Nudism, to those who want to book her act, through those seeking friendship to those barefacedly requesting sex. What they have in common is that they all think they know, understand or have some kind of claim over Martinez just because they’ve watched a video of her stripping and making a silk handkerchief disappear.

The concept of this segment is a problematic one. A piece of Martinez’s work not intended for mass online consumption ended up online; she responds to this by taking fanmail (complete with full names, photos and even some telephone numbers) presumably meant for her eyes only and performing it publicly. The majority of the men (and they are all men) don’t come out of it especially well. On paper it feels like an eye for an eye.

But she performs the emails without commentary: the men are allowed to present themselves in their own words (though she provides each with an appropriate accent). It also becomes clear from occasional instances of two-way correspondence that their permission has been sought and granted to incorporate their words and pictures into the show.

To presume to draw a definitive conclusion regarding the motivation and ethics behind My Stories, Your Emails would be to make the same mistake as the men. Best just to present the facts and let Ursula Martinez remain an enigma.

Written by Ursula Martinez

Crew includes Mark Whitelaw (director)

Cast includes Ursula Martinez

Need a second opinion?

Posted in Reviews | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
14 December, 2009

The Stefan Golaszewski Plays

Bush Theatre, 2 December 2009 – 9 January 2010

Reviewed for the London Theatre Blog and cross-posted to The Collective Review

Two one-act plays back to back don’t usually make a successful two-act play. Right? Which suggests it’s probably no coincidence that Stefan Golaszewski Speaks About A Girl He Once Loved and Stefan Golaszewski Is A Widower work so well as a double bill; it seems likely they were always meant to be performed together.

It was clear from the plays’ debuts, a year apart at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, that they were stylistically and thematically of a piece. Each is a monologue in which Golaszewski relates romantic episodes from ‘his’ life, or a fictionalised version of it (in Widower he imagines himself in the year 2056, following marriage and a moderately successful TV career), aided by some simple props and a gift for writing fresh, cliché-free imagery.

What wasn’t immediately obvious back then was how neatly the two would bolt together for their London transfer. At around an hour each they were bite-sized enough for the choice-rich, time-poor Festival theatregoer, but the double bill is substantial enough to be worth a London audience’s while. More importantly, the emotional and thematic trajectories of Golaszewski as a character and a playwright are revealed and reinforced by the juxtaposition; images, foibles and techniques introduced in About A Girl pay off with interest when revisited in Widower.

Little gimmicks used in About A Girl simply to create sight gags give rise instead to pathos when they recur in the altered context of Widower. Golaszewski’s tendency to idolise women is the quirky fulcrum of About A Girl, but Widower acknowledges the disadvantages of such an attitude when applied to a more adult kind of relationship; the wide-eyed, innocent awe of female beauty that characterises About A Girl is only briefly retrodden in Widower before tragedy abruptly erases it in favour of a whole new range of grown-up emotions like bitterness, desperation and regret.

Individually the plays are snapshots of a man at two different stages of emotional maturity. Combined, they sketch a more complete portrait of a man learning the hard way that the reality of long-term commitment can never be as idealistically romantic as rose-tinted recollections of unrealised adolescent love. Underscoring it all are the insecurities of a young playwright coming uneasily to terms with his own premonitions of future emotional disillusionment and bodily deterioration. The whole is unquestionably greater than the sum of its parts – and given all the stars, awards and praise each play received individually, marrying them is sure to result in a critical mass of acclaim.

Written by Stefan Golaszewski

Crew includes Phillip Breen (director/designer)

Cast includes Stefan Golaszewski

Need a second opinion?

Posted in Reviews | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
2 October, 2009

The Author

Royal Court Theatre, 23 Sept – 24 October 2009

Reviewed for the London Theatre Blog

Tim Crouch ’s The Author is a bitter little pill, too heavily sugared and something of a kill or cure.

Up until the final 15 minutes it’s a curiosity, an experiment for experimentation’s sake. We, the audience, are both stage and set dressing. Adrian, the archetypal gushing theatre enthusiast, speaks up from among our ranks, encouraging conversation, an exchange of views. Other performers, including Crouch himself, playing himself, reveal themselves in our midst one by one. Between them they recount a story surrounding a fictional production staged by Crouch.

Except they aren’t just relating their experiences of this notional production: an in-yer-face affair crammed with violence and abuse that has caused audience members both to walk and to pass out. They’re apologising for their part in it. Apologising to us, the audience, because theatre makers are beholden to their audiences. They need us, the consumers of their art, to understand their intentions and to forgive them.

And until those final 15 minutes that’s all The Author is: an acknowledgement of the absolute power the audience wields, seasoned with interrogations of the audience’s ingrained reluctance to exercise that power, to intervene in events onstage, however reprehensible they find them. It’s all necessary to prime us for what comes next, but it takes its sweet time doing so, and in the meantime it all feels a bit insular, a bit inconsequential, even a bit masturbatory: the mores of the theatre being discussed, by theatre makers, through the medium of theatre, using a fictional piece of theatre as an allegory, to theatregoers.

Then comes the turnaround, and in those final 15 minutes The Author is revealed for what it has really been all along: a daring act of self-flagellation by Crouch on behalf of provocative art and controversial artists. Personally present, without the ablative armour of a fictional character, and having questioned for over an hour why audiences choose not to act against onstage villainy, the playwright reveals himself as the worst kind of villain, or at least the most easily demonised. There’s nothing insular or inconsequential about his closing monologue, delivered to a pitch-dark auditorium – and yes, people sitting close to him do plead with him to stop, though not forcefully enough for him actually to do so.

The medicinal value of this bitter little pill remains to be seen. If next month The Stage reports mass walk-outs and stage invasions at Sarah Kane revivals, we’ll know it had some effect; but I suspect the thick sugary coating may well interfere with the active ingredients, and a few patients will undoubtedly refuse to swallow the pill at all.

Written by Tim Crouch

Crew includes Karl James and a smith (directors), Matt Drury (lighting designer) and Ben & Max Ringham (music & sound designers)

Cast includes Tim Crouch, Adrian Howells, Vic Llewellyn and Esther Smith (themselves)

Need a second opinion?

Posted in Reviews | 1 Comment »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
2 October, 2009

Money

New SHUNT Space, 30 September – 22 December 2009

Reviewed for the London Theatre Blog

The machine fills the New SHUNT Space from floor to ceiling. It clanks, rumbles, whooshes steam and gushes water. The specifics of how it works and what it does are stubbornly obscure from within as well as without. In that regard, it’s a bit like investment banking.

Bear with the comparison. Provided you’re willing to risk a few unaided leaps of logic, it does eventually make a surprising amount of sense. (In that regard, it’s a bit like the production staged inside the machine: Money, a SHUNT event inspired by Émile Zola’s novel L’Argent.)

The machine is the undisputed star of the production, which, after a few deliberately confusing false-starts, eventually reveals itself as a parable about the dangers of stock market speculation. As a performance space, the machine is constantly, wondrously surprising; just when it seems it has nothing left up its sleeve, whole new rooms emerge from under ingenious camouflage.

Its steampunk pistons and flywheels also drive the plot, such as it is; we, the audience, are speculators suckered by the smug Saccard into investing in the machine, despite neither him nor us knowing what it does. SHUNT’s playful sense of humour goes to work here, as we’re shown a gallery of ‘artist’s impressions of the future’ – Photoshopped images of the machine in the desert, coasting along railway tracks or perched halfway up a mountain.

The production itself is a series of disjointed scenes and encounters, ranging from the Kafka-esque (as Saccard pitches his ‘vision’ to eccentric business moguls who entertain guests only in the sauna, or travel only by footcycle) to the Python-esque (as Saccard turns a board meeting into a blackly comic game of condolence one-upmanship) to the weirdly voyeuristic (as we sip champagne and observe events occurring two storeys below, through two layers of plate glass).

Each individual scene is entertaining, often humorous, but it’s difficult to identify the purpose of the whole by examining the parts, and a certain amount of imagination is required to fill in the blanks. In that regard, it’s a bit like the machine itself; and the machine itself, as I’ve mentioned, is a bit like investment banking. It’s inhabited both by presentable official staff and by unacknowledged, sinister unknowns. It has levels and mechanisms that aren’t revealed until the very end. And as it barrels towards disaster, the obvious exits are sealed off, forcing those foresighted few to abandon ship by less conventional means.

Written by SHUNT Collective after Émile Zola

Crew includes Francesca Peschier (scenic artist), George Tomlinson (head of construction) and Paul Ross (chief carpenter)

Cast includes Serena Bobowski, Gemma Brockis, Lizzie Clachan, Louisa Mari, Hannah Ringham, Layla Rosa, David Rosenberg, Andrew Rutland, Mischa Twitchin and Heather Uprichard

Need a second opinion?

Posted in Reviews | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
21 August, 2009

Oh, My Green Soap Box ***

Pleasance Courtyard, 5 – 31 August 2009

Reviewed for The List (issue 637)

Lucy Foster aims to illuminate why we haven’t yet pulled our collective finger out and saved the planet. We get sidetracked by the trials of everyday living and loving just as her proposed game-changing environmental campaign gets sidetracked by one-night stands and dressing up. Her one-woman show is whimsical yet heartfelt, though more bemusing than amusing.

Written by Lucy Foster

Cast includes Lucy Foster (herself)

Need a second opinion?

Posted in Reviews | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
15 August, 2009

The Trial ****

C Soco, 5 – 31 August 2009

Reviewed for the British Theatre Guide

It’s often hard to see what’s going on in Belt Up’s immersive adaptation of Kafka’s absurdist work. You’re blindfolded from the moment you enter the C Soco squat; even once the blindfold is removed the space is thickly hazed, and the action often takes place beyond or amongst your fellow audience members. But perhaps this is for the best. There are monsters in the smoke.

The unjustly arrested Josef K is the only recognisably normal person in a world of grotesques. There’s extremely exaggerated vocal and physical work, a certain amount of sinister clowning, and one genuinely hideous creature: a head coated in smeared greasepaint, spitting obscenities above a monstrously obese body created from pulsating, ragged umbrellas, lit from within by golden light. It’s a bizarre, macabre, deeply unpleasant but utterly convincing world.

The company skilfully exploit the audience’s herd mentality to shepherd them into becoming corridors, portrait galleries and crowds of waiting defendants. But while the dialogue is always loud and clear enough, there are moments where it’s all too easy to get stuck behind two rows of people and miss the physical action. This engenders some empathy for K, who likewise is denied a view of the whole picture, but it’s still a wrench to miss a single eerie moment.

Written by Dominic J Allen after Franz Kafka

Crew includes

Cast includes

Need a second opinion?

Posted in Reviews | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
12 August, 2009

Susurrus ****

Assembly @ Royal Botanic Gardens, 4 August – 6 September 2009

Reviewed for the British Theatre Guide

Susurrus is a radio play at heart. A really good one. Themes and images from A Midsummer Night’s Dream ebb and flow through a series of intertwined monologues. A scientist investigates the declining population of sparrows; a brother and sister remember their famous father; an ageing actress reminisces about her role in Benjamin Britten’s opera version of Dream. Odd phrases drop, sink, bubble under and resurface in other accounts like poetic refrains. Shocking revelations simmer and are unveiled with sensitivity and without bombast, encouraging reflection, not reaction. And between scenes, excerpts from Britten’s libretto accompany relaxing strolls through the Royal Botanic Gardens – because unlike conventional radio plays, this one comes with recommended surroundings.

Because this incarnation of Susurrus can only be experienced in the Botanics, the play has been subtly reworked to include them as a pivotal location. Maps are provided with the mp3 players and headphones, and a reassuring voice explains clearly when it’s time to move to the next marked spot. The scenes are intended to be played while static, seated on benches or in gazebos rather than on the move, once again encouraging reflection over action; but while most of the locations selected for lingering in are clear points of interest, others have little to focus on visually, diminishing the effect of juxtaposing audio with environment. One such location is actually a choke point, where the path narrows and meanders and absorbed wanderers are obliged to move aside for ordinary Botanics visitors. But Susurrus is a chimerical beast, radio-play-cum-classical-mixtape-cum-guided-tour, and what one head lacks in common sense another makes up in poetic prowess.

Written by David Leddy

Need a second opinion?

Posted in Reviews | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , , ,
23 May, 2009

Rotating in a Room of Images

Battersea Arts Centre, 21 – 23 May 2009

Reviewed for the London Theatre Blog

If you’re interested in audio-instructed performance, Battersea Arts Centre is the place to go. Their Forest Fringe Previews allowed a few lucky participants to experience Rotozaza’s then-unfinished GuruGuru, and their BURST festival, running until 30 May, includes not only more Rotozaza work but also Rotating in a Room of Images by Swedish artists Lundahl and Seitl.

In audio-instructed productions, unrehearsed members of the public are given headphones that deliver prerecorded directions, making them at once audience and performer. Gathering multiple examples of this relatively new art form together under one banner allows its practitioners to prove that it isn’t just a one-trick gimmick; the technique can be applied to a variety of different styles and situations, and can have a variety of different outcomes for the participants.

For instance, while Rotozaza’s Wondermart tries hard to make participants feel safe, Rotating in a Room of Images does the opposite. Participants spend the majority of the 15-minute production in pitch darkness, guided only by invisible hands and the spooky voice in the headphones. The overwhelming feeling is of powerlessness. On your own, you’re incapable even of escaping the darkened space, much less of finding “the Room” to which the voice continually refers. You’re forced instead to rely on the goodwill of expressionless figures glimpsed moving in slow motion during brief periods of visibility – and on the disembodied voice in your head.

The actual content of Rotating in a Room of Images is everything critics of fringe theatre accuse fringe theatre of being – oblique, opaque, and so open to interpretation that it may as well mean nothing at all – but it’ll still leave you emotionally shaken. Whatever that says about this specific audio-instructed production, it’s evidence that the technique in general possesses the power not only to amuse, but also to shock. It’s difficult to decide whether to classify productions like this as theatre, but that breadth of potential should be an incentive to get them under theatre’s umbrella before some other medium claims them as its own.

Written by Lundahl and Seitl

Need a second opinion?

Posted in Reviews | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , ,
« Older Entries  |   Newer Entries »
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.