Cherwell attends a rehearsal of Illyria Productions’ new version of Chekhov’s masterpiece, interviewing director Chloe Wicks and actress Laura Nakhla (who plays Arkadina) about their approach and some hints as to what we can expect when it appears on-stage at the Oxford Playhouse in 2nd week.
Blog Page 1909
Review: Biutiful
Javier Bardem’s powerful presence on screen, his ability to move you with the depth of his eyes and the consistently complex roles he takes on all make me want to draw a comparison with Al Pacino. Bardem has surely achieved his magnum opus in Biutiful, where he plays Uxbal, the dying, run-down father of two, who is desperately trying to juggle looking after his children with his ‘professional’ life in Barcelona’s underworld.
It is, of course, as much down to director Iñárritu as it is to Bardem that Biutiful is as special as it is. With his previous three films – Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel – the Mexican has gained a reputation for packing his work with pain that was always nevertheless inexplicably and utterly watchable. When human suffering is exhibited in an Iñárritu film, it is never fleetingly or carelessly considered, nor is it melodramatically underscored with extravagant music. Instead, it is always brutally honest and very hard not to be moved by. The only difference is that, with the arrival of Biutiful, the experimental aspects of his earlier films have been dropped. The innovative editing of the ‘Death Trilogy,’ with its nonlinear narratives and switching between multiple stories, worked incredibly well, but one couldn’t help but think a director with such an eye for raw emotion was destined to end up focusing more intensely on one story as he does in Biutiful.
Before the film started, Bardem said to the audience at the London Film Festival that there are some films you love, others you hate, and then there’s a third type where those words don’t exactly apply in any meaningful sense, and instead you’re left with a piece of cinema that attempts to take you on a journey too heart-aching to be pleasurable, but also too human to detest. Biutiful undoubtedly fits this last category. To watch it is indeed to go on a journey, of a kind very few living filmmakers could ever even hope to achieve.
Diary of a Cherwell Girl
So it’s a new year, a new term, and a new blog from the Cherwell fashion team. Forget about collections, essays or the hideous thought of lectures that start before midday, what better way to start the term than taking a look at the latest craze to revolutionize the fashion industry – the wonderful world of fashion blogging.
I’m sure if we all cast our minds back far enough, sieving through the cringe worthy memories of dressing like your favourite Spice girl (I blame you, Sporty, for my brief foray into ill fitting tracksuit bottoms), we can remember a time before it was so easy to skim mindlessly through Facebook, Youtube and Sporcle in never ending circles of procrastination. Since then, the growth of the internet over the last two decades has been a huge driving force for fashion, making it possible to bring both high end and high street fashion to every home, with the click of a button and a flash of plastic. Following the popularity of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, which enable us to stay in touch whenever and wherever we are, fashion bloggers have been springing up all over the world to interact with the latest trends, showcase individual style and share ideas.
Fashion blogging is not to be underestimated, definitely an area of expanding importance, connecting fashion passionate individuals across the globe through a common interest in what to wear and how to wear it. Successful bloggers have become respected and established figures in the fashion world, invited to fashion shows in the hope that they will spread good publicity for the designer. Two successful fashion bloggers who have cultivated their talent and passion into a career are Tommy Ton the photoblogger behind the Jak and Jil blog who is inundated by requests for his photos and Susie Lau who’s popular Style Bubble blog got her a career as commissioning editor for Dazed Digital, the online faction of Dazed and Confused. In the same way that Youtube can launch a sensation (PLEASE name me someone who hasn’t seen Gap Yah…), bloggers can go from zero to hero in a matter of outfit changes. Take blogging sensation Tavi Gevinson as an example, a thirteen year old school girl and fashion enthusiast with a surprisingly mature and idiosyncratic style that won over top writers and designers, earning her a front row seat at New York fashion week last year and the impressive status as a muse for Rodarte.
As the blogging trend continues to spiral, designers increasingly look to fashion bloggers as serious colleagues to work with. HnM have recently revealed they are releasing a line of clothing in collaboration with Swedish fashion blogger Elin Kling, setting something of a precedent and illustrating the merging together of bloggers and the wider fashion industry. Perhaps the most charming thing about the rise of the fashion blog is that it is slowly readdressing some of the elitism of fashion, enabling unknown writers and photographers to bring their views to a wider audience and to be noticed.
Item of the week: It’s white and it’s lace, two things you’ll be seeing a lot of next season and it’s got a peter pan collar that Alexa Chung would be proud of. So a valid use of the student loan really…
Check it out
here..
Blog of the week: It’s not technically a blog, but as this is the first week, I’m going to recommend Lookbook to those of you that have been missing out. It’s the perfect place to go to for inspiration from photos of hundreds of well-dressed people from all over the world. If you like what you see there are often links from the lookbook profiles to individual blogs – a good way to find lesser known gems.
Magazine of the week: This month’s Elle magazine has a guide to the S/S catwalk collections, so definitely worth a look. If ever in doubt, scan the pages of style.com or vogue.com – something that caught my eye this week was the release of the video of Tom Ford’s much anticipated private showing of his Womenswear S/S Collection, featuring big names, provocative designs and plunging necklines.
Take a look here
Syrian Food: Lifting the Veil
‘Good lady, are you absolutely sure you are not more hungered?’
Our waiter peered anxiously at us, before energetically slapping his belly in case we didn’t understand. Unfortunately, in Syrian culture, refusal of food is taken as a polite way of asking for more, and likewise, the concept of extreme fullness is often lost in translation. The Syrian stomach is insatiable, and with food as delicious as this, you can understand why. Waving aside our protestations, he bellowed into the kitchen and within moments we were presented with two lahamajene, a bowl of yoghurt, and a fatherly pat on the back. I defy any stomach to refuse a lahamajene. It is the Middle Eastern answer to the pizza, a flat round of Arabic bread thinly layered with delicately spiced lamb mince, the flavours warmed with cinnamon and chilli, and offset with the bitter-sweet astringency of tamarind.
As is often the way in the Middle East, it is the dingiest and most unassuming backstreet joints that offer up the best fare. Avoid the brash hotels with their mistranslated English menus (‘Welcome, you are invite to eat the Middle Eastern foods in a European ambulance’), and head instead to the grubby, cramped workman’s caff buzzing with life. Throngs of noisy male diners leisurely smoke cigarettes and gesticulate over dishes of mezze, as vast tureens of stew steam at the counter and greasy overhead fans wheeze in the heat of the kitchen.
To say food is everything in Syria is an understatement. The clientele of these downtown joints know what they like, and what they do not. Consequently, nowhere can staple Syrian dishes be found closer to perfection. There is no messing about in these kitchens; there are no menus, no presentation and no pleasantries. The whole place heaves with testosterone, a riot of male bantering and jangling Syrian pop music, as old men roar at backgammon boards, chai glasses clink and sweaty waiters slam down food. Workers come during the high heat of the day, lean over the counter and ask for ladles of fasoolya, Syria’s traditional bean stew. Usually eaten at lunch, fasoolya is a meaty tomato-based broth full of large white beans, rich with olive-oil, and fragrant with herbs. It comes with thin strips of sour pickled cucumber, branches of fresh mint and a small saucer of garlicy yoghurt, while remnants of the stew are soaked up by folded discs of Arabic flat bread. Whole baby chickens are spit roast on long skewers which revolve slowly in the window. They are things of almost indescribable beauty. The skin alone is enough to make any Nando’s fan weep with envy. Sticky with rich, caramelised fat, crisp and brittle on the bronzed outside, but moist and tacky underneath, the skin of an Aleppian chicken is a wonderful thing. Before pulling it all off in one, the trick of the dab-hand is to take a circle of flat bread and vigorously rub the carcass of the chicken, as if sanding a desk, in order to soak up all the intense flavour of the juice and meat fat. The bread is then either rolled up long and thin, sandwiched with fresh mint, or dipped into platters of hummus and smoky baba ganouj, which are liberally seasoned with za’tar (a pungent Middle Eastern blend of thyme, sesame seeds and sumac) and peppery olive oil.
The flavours of Syrian food are as rich and complex as the history of the land itself. An aggregate whole, built upon layers and layers of antiquity, Syria is the cradle of human civilisation. It is a dense sedimentation of ancient culture, stationed majestically at the end of the Silk Road. Inhabited in turn by the Phoenicians, Babylonians, Persians, Romans, to name but a few, Syria is an ancient melting pot of diverse peoples, and where today, the settled dust of these illustrious civilisations is stamped down by countless feet in the labyrinth of the souq. In Aleppo, the old collides with the new. It is a living, breathing relic of bygone time, where the frantic motion of the city and the coughing of engines is set, incongruously, against the imposing backdrop of the citadel, in use since the third millennium BC.
The taste of Syrian cuisine is intense, a palimpsest of flavour, blended and deepened over time. Bedouin cookery is a fine example. These nomadic tribe people live in the empty heart of Syria, in the Palmyrene desert, where flavours of food are simplest and most concentrated. My first taste of a Bedouin barbeque was unforgettable. Having, as a desperate last resort, hitched a lift with a convoy of Syrian soldiers on their way to the Iraqi border, the thought of a whole barbequed sheep at the other end was about the only thing that would keep anyone going. The ramshackle bus swayed along the desert tracks as night fell, while spotty army youths wrestled over control of an exploded microwave, apparently a television, which crackled out Syrian hits, as fifty rifles clinked unnervingly behind us.
Through the windows of the bus, the distant fires of Bedouin camps punctured the empty blackness of the desert and drew closer.
It is the first rule of Bedouin culture that strangers are welcomed in with opened arms to share the food of the community. The flames spat with fat as shadowy, stooping figures of Bedouin women slowly turned the lamb carcass, and men reclined in the fragrant haze of shisha smoke, dipping aniseedy ring-shaped biscuits into cups of pistachio coffee perfumed with rosewater and cardamom. As the meal came to a close, our guide, Emed, leant over, with more than a predatory twinkle in his eye, and said ‘Sweet for my sweet, sexyprincess?’ Regardless of his persistent oily advances, Emed’s sweet was worth it. He offered us a plate of fat Palmyra dates, rich with the sun-sweetened stickiness of palm sugar, and then, spreading out a headscarf on the sand, began stacking up a dozen baklava, like pieces of sugary Lego. These pastries are delicious. Flaky, light and dense at the same time, they look like jewels, crusted with bright green pistachio or glazed walnuts, and heavy with the stick of date syrup or honey. Probably best to visit a dentist when you get home though.
Syria is misunderstood by the West. It is pictured in the media as a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism, shouldered by war zones, as its borders prickle with hostility and obstruction. This is absurd. The Syrian people are not a nation longing for Jihad, but some of the most hospitable people on the planet. Discarding paranoid images of Syria as the bogeyman of the region, and focusing instead on the texture of everyday living, it is food, and the love of your fellow diner, that life is all about. Around the Middle East, Syria is known as the ‘pearl of the Arabian kitchen’, and for good reason. Put simply, Syrians like eating. And if you like eating, you’ll like Syria.
Review: Black Swan
Darren Aronofsky, director of critically acclaimed The Wrestler (2008), has returned with another intense portrait of an individual; but this time it’s not a sweaty Mickey Rourke but a porcelain doll Natalie Portman gracing our screens as we turn our focus away from the ring and towards the New York City Ballet.
The film follows top ballerina Nina Sayers (Portman) as she comes to grips with the role of both the White and the Black Swan in a new take on Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Nina inhabits a depressingly empty world and yet is smothered by the small group of people who surround her: her mother (Barbara Hershey), a ballerina who had to stop her career short when she had Nina and clearly now expects to fulfil her dreams through her, her boundary-blurring boss (Vincent Cassel) who puts her in increasingly compromising positions and forces her to question herself deeply and her rival (Mila Kunis), who threatens to be not quite as laid-back and lovely as she has first appeared. All of these people become increasingly suspect and their intentions increasingly ambiguous as we follow Nina through her high pressure but desperately dull daily life and become further and further enmeshed in her neuroses.
On paper, the film looks fascinating and there are some truly interesting ideas behind the film, but unfortunately these only really come clearly into play towards the end. The last half hour of the film is fast-moving, visually stunning and genuinely compelling. Up to this point, however, the film is vague and unengaging. Watching her banal daily routine is, rather predictably, uninteresting. A sense of eerie discomfort and the promise of a storyline does keep you wanting to watch but unfortunately, it gets going too late and for such a short time that it remains, on the whole, disappointing.
All the performances are good, especially Mila Kunis, whom you may know as Jackie from That ’70s Show, whose character remains infuriatingly charming and ambiguous throughout. Do not watch this for Winona Ryder, as she features very little and is always playing hysterical when she does. Natalie Portman is much-tipped for an Oscar for this and her performance is convincing, intense and nuanced but does not allow her to show all of her range.
To put it bluntly, this is a strange film. ‘Strange’ is, of course, not always a bad thing. It is interesting in subverting certain clichés and getting us to root for a technically brilliant professional who lacks the necessary passion for her role, as opposed to a maverick lacking technical training, as is the norm in these sorts of films. The film certainly manages to be original and, in terms of visuals, almost hypnotic. However, this much-hyped film is ultimately underwhelming.
Twilight of the Superhero Movie
Superhero stories are unquestionably powerful, and the fact that they have bled so profusely into Hollywood is testament to this. The 2000s saw a furious spate of superhero movies being released, and even Bollywood managed to get involved, with the brilliant and highly-entertaining Krrish. So why does anyone watch these comic book movies, with their outlandish characters, improbable scenarios, preposterous villains and ridiculous costumes? Quite simply, it is because the superhero stories are like a mythology of our time.
From the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Greek myths, all societies have their traditional stories of heroes fighting villains and the moral messages these entail. Superhero stories are no different. Unlike classical storytellers, comic book writers are contractually obligated to write continuous stories, so characters don’t die quite as often as in the Greek myths. The themes contained in the pages of comics are often indicative of the major social issues of the time.
For example, X-Men was first published in 1963 amidst the Civil Rights movement. The comic demonstrates the horrors and injustices of racism and xenophobia, with mutants being persecuted by evil government authorities. Green Lantern and Green Arrow dealt with issues of heroin addiction and Spider-Man was created to be the kind of hero that the brand-new ‘teenage’ social demographic could identify with.
But why do we need to learn about these themes through the medium of men in bizarre costumes? The answer lies in the rich symbolism found in comics. Symbols serve as a shorthand, perhaps a way of ‘dumbing down’ themes, helping young audiences to better identify who the ‘good guys’ are; the men and women clad in ‘heroic’ costumes. Ultimately, overuse of a symbolic or stylistic device resulted in a cliché, and comic books became stagnant, with hundreds of characters and back-stories all vying for the readers’ attention. This led to DC Comics publishing the 12 part series Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985, which drastically reduced, simplified and re-ordered the DC universe. The 80s marked the end of the so called ‘Silver Age’ of comics, and with Alan Moore’s re-imagining of Swamp Thing in 1985 and Watchmen appearing a year later, the ‘Graphic Novel’ had been born. Comics had become ‘dark’ and left the mainstream forever.
Films are undergoing a similar process. Iron Man 2 was less successful than its predecessor and barely anyone bothered watching Scott Pilgrim vs the World. This and other recent movies such as The Green Hornet and Kick-Ass are already pastiches of the genre, serving to subvert it with light-hearted B-movie themes and with camp undertones. Cinema-goers will soon face a glut of superhero movies, such as the new adaptation of The Green Lantern, a brand new Spider-Man, Thor, The Avengers, another Wolverine, and a Deadpool spin-off. Nolan’s upcoming The Dark Knight Rises will, in my opinion, be both a paean to and requiem for the costumed hero. After that, it will all be over, with the debris of trampled capes and shattered masks swept out of an Odeon near you.
Interview: Bourgeois and Maurice
‘Outrageous.’ ‘Absolute filth.’ ‘Sensationally berserk.’ A mere selection from the positive explosion of praise used in reference to the duo dubbed the Darlings of the Neo-Cabaret scene. They describe themselves as ‘part-theatre, part-cabaret, part-catwalk freakshow’ and since first appearing together in 2007 have performed at the Royal Opera House, Queen Elizabeth Hall and The Royal Academy of Arts, alongside a sell-out show at Soho Theatre, with a recent appearance at Sadler’s Wells studios. Who are these people? Suffice to say I was curious enough to totter off to East London and find out.
Post-performance I was still not entirely sure how to answer this question. The best I could come up with was time travellers from a 1920’s Wintergarten cabaret in Weimar republic Berlin, who spent a stint in the 80s pop scene, got bored and moved on to dark piano pop, whilst acquiring a wardrobe to rival lady Gaga along with lyrics explicating a witty, acidulous cynicism for all things ‘Now’. I decided to organise a meeting with them in an attempt to try and get, slightly more concisely, to the heart of the matter. Meet Georgeois Bourgeois and Maurice Maurice – aka George Heyworth and Livvy Morris, the duo hiding under the tower of false eyelashes, sequins and general sartorial menagerie adorning their spicily tragicomic and narcissistic cabaret alter egos.
Chatting with the pair (in Shoreditch, naturally) I discover that Bourgeois and Maurice are in fact the product of a rather convoluted storyline. Maurice originated as Bourgeois’ grandmother, before temporarily transforming into his transvestite sister, and emerging as his melancholic sibling (think a gothic Patsy Stone). ‘We do look alike. George’s hair on stage, how it’s cut, actually looks quite similar to mine. So we do play up to that,’ Livvy tells me. I suspect this may just be to console me after my embarrassing mistake earlier in thinking they genuinely were brother and sister. With such a powerful embrace of their respective stage roles, they inevitably retreat post-show somewhat further away from said personae than they normally would lie on the personality scale. Livvy, with limited verbal input on stage, will ‘talk continually’ after the show, whereas George ‘goes quite mute’; this has also permeated his dress-sense – donning t-shirt rather than catsuit at a recent New Years fancy dress party.
In the spirit of mockery that characterised Josephson’s Café society (which advertised itself as ‘the Wrong Place for the Right People’) the duo are not afraid to push the boundaries society has attempted to place around them. Both describe their early performance talents as more theatrical than musical. When they first started recording, Livvy hadn’t played the piano since school (she has now mastered the art of producing a delicious tinkle on the ivories) and describes this as rendering her somewhat mute on stage (when not singing), which then ‘quite naturally’ led to her laconic role. An enigmatic yet comic femme fatale perched over a grand piano, the character of Maurice (whom she describes as ‘morose, awkward, yet content. She’s happy being morose’) compliments perfectly the outrageous demeanor and mannerisms of the ‘androgynous sociopath’ Bourgeois. The harmonising of their voices was an auditory treat, disguising the outright bitchiness of some of the lyrics, although George feels his appearance perhaps plays a larger part in letting him get away with saying certain things: ‘you can get away with stuff a lot more when you’ve got that amount of makeup on your face.’ Livvy agrees: ‘That has allowed us to go slightly further with what we say to people. We kind of hide behind the bars.’
The songs have epidemic potential rivaling that of swine flu: recently I found myself singing ‘Don’t go to art school’ whilst out with some arty young things from Central St Martins. Oops. The song does however make the valid point that ‘it doesn’t make you a more interesting person to pickle things in tanks’ although is perhaps a bit harsh in its warning that ‘They steal your lunch/ Pickle it in lube/ Then exhibit it at the White Cube.’ In their most recent performance the pair comment on a multiplicity of current social customs, trends and clichés. For example, they dedicate a pole dance to George Osborne chanting ‘Tax me, Tax me,’ along with an expression of empathy to students everywhere with their song ‘Give us stuff for free.’ My personal favourite was a very catchy Ode to Ritalin as they drawl ‘did you like that little bit of ritalin we gave you?’ together with the appropriately festive song ‘Santa is a Terrorist’ as the show drew to a close.
The Sadler’s Wells crew spotted them at Latitude festival before inviting them to perform at the Dance Studio in Islington. ‘Seeing as we were actually criticized in Edinburgh for our inability to dance, then of course we decided we have to call the show Can’t Dance.’ The songs (with wit acerbic enough to cut through any prudish obstructions) were interspersed with videos (including awkward dance lessons with Balletboyz), cartoons (the highlight being a meeting with Diaghilev, who expressed a similar lack in faith for their dancing skills as the aforementioned Edinburgh fan base; they mused on the process of being reduced to two dimensions as ‘very exciting’) and some utterly delicious vignettes – Bourgeois throws a strop at one point and Maurice trots over clasping a scented candle. The show provides enough variety to satiate the most hardened and demanding East-London-culture-vulture, yet maintains a constant theme of being, quite simply, fabulous.
Costume changes are as dramatic as they are slick – Bourgeois surprised everyone by hopping back onto the stage mid-performance dressed in a pink and black polka dot gimp suit. The entourage of outrageous outfits is put together by the fashion designer Julian J Smith, known for his original and fairly unusual clothing, stemming from 60s influenced bold prints and supplemented with an extravaganza of colour and audacity. George cites Smith as playing a major part in constructing their stage personae, allowing the show to move towards a more theatrical cabaret performance. Practicality sometimes had to be compromised: ‘As the venues got bigger, the costumes had to get bigger’ notes George, describing one outfit (an explosion of green folds formed into a sort of truffle encircling his torso) as ‘really strange to move in, quite restrictive, so you sort of move like a Michelin man.’
Despite the aforementioned liberty their eye-catching costumes afford their lyrics, they tell me that things do sometimes go a bit wrong, a case in point being the dangers of audience participation. George recounts one ‘victim’ who turned out to have a taste for the melodramatic limelight akin to theirs. ‘He kind of flipped, throwing his drink in my face.’ George returned the favour, after which the man ‘calmed down, and seemed to want to stay on stage.’ Accidentally choosing an individual lying on the other end of the attention-seeking scale can be equally disastrous, as the pair recount a moment when Bourgeois pretended to kill a female member of the audience on stage. ‘There was a knife on stage and she just saw it and freaked out. You really can’t predict how people will react to things.’ Fleeing to the back of the stage, she was then pursued by Bourgeois, much to the amusement of the audience – interaction with them being key to his role. At the Sadler’s performance he climbs on top of and into the centre of the audience. This is not without its risks: he notes the potential danger of sitting on a man with a ‘massive spinal injury or something. That could happen.’ Good to see the pair have a moral streak. Livvy also tells me they occasionally did have to ‘veto some lyrics,’ so there are limits to how naughty they’re prepared to be. Some of their songs inevitably will age faster than others. A satirical Lol at the Nu-Rave scene in ‘Girls in Neon’ is probably somewhat more susceptible to creeping crow’s feet than the timeless (although perhaps I’m being pessimistic) jab at the over-medication of our nation’s children, ‘Ritalin.’
George tells me their take on the world whilst off-stage is not anyway near as cynical about life as that of Bourgeois and Maurice. ‘We really just take things that are often quite nice, that we actually quite like, and just look at the other side of the coin. The mass media voice is currently kind of tended towards the critical. So it’s almost like being approached and slated by a Daily Mail writer, but just packaged in a totally different way.’ Livvy agrees, ‘The idea is not to shock, it’s to get people to question, which can require saying some fairly outrageous things, but it’s not meant to be an attack.’ Despite our creative differences, I empathise with the duo about the necessary evil of deadlines with regards to getting writing done, as well as the need to rehearse songs before taking them to stage: ‘If you don’t give it that time, then inevitably the song ends up not being that great and we just throw it away.’
We discuss the addictive nature of our modern lives (their personal vices? Livvy is hooked on coffee, whilst George soberly admitted, ‘I think I might be addicted to the internet’), which features in a number of their songs. For example, ‘Cyber Lament’ combines a look at social networking sites with an addiction to bodily mutilation: ‘I’m so sick of all these friend requests/ And the leaking from my silicone breasts.’ Discussing the changing of personal identity through clothing, Livvy sympathises with the process of ‘coming out’ (in terms of fashion sense) at university, followed by a retreat to your stylistic ‘middle ground.’ A song from an earlier show launches a more direct attack on those confused by the liminal period of university existence: ‘if you don’t know what to do with your life, then just die/ YOU are not important/ Your gap year was entirely yours, Nobody else wants to know about it.’ They describe one facet of their work as being an unusual form of self-help, although this evidently hasn’t compromised the great fun to be had in outright mockery.
This duo really is anything but dull. Their parody on the boredom epidemic suffered by office workers everwhere (YouTube the video, although preferably before applying for that fasttrack graduate scheme) is hilariously accurate in its social observation. Their performance is everything cabaret should be – sexy, pushing at the boundaries of artistic license and definition, a visual and auditory feast, and very, very funny. In response to my plea for a tip on how people can become less dull George reveals, ‘You know, I think that what makes people dull is being really judgemental, and that’s quite ironic. People who close things out are the most boring people in the world. So maybe don’t do that.’ So Be There (Bistrotheque in London, at the end of 2nd Week) for this antidote to all that’s dull, or Be Square as a pair of nu-rave Ray-Bans.
Bourgeois and Maurice are at Bibliotheque, 28-29th January, 9pm, and Brighton Dome on Valentine’s day. £12.50/£10
Review: The Seagull
With two weeks until the Oxford Playhouse opening of Chekhov’s The Seagull, director Chloe Wicks is giving line readings in rehearsals. The line reading, probably the biggest no-no for a director, takes the form of a director stopping the action of the play in rehearsal and saying something like, ‘No, darling—try it more like this…’ and proceeding to say the line in all her directorial wisdom. The general risk associated with this faux-pas is that you put the actor in the impossible situation of trying to replicate the director’s delivery of each line, and in the worst case scenario, leads to general confusion and frustration for all.
However, confusion and frustration are nowhere in sight in the word-perfect run of Act I of Chekhov’s play. Despite the ensemble’s uniform dress in black and the set-less space of the Moser, the play runs as captivatingly as it promises to do on opening night. Laura Nakhla’s embodiment of ageing actress, Arkadina, is utterly convincing in her indulgent laughter and fluttering hand gestures. Henry Faber perfectly evokes the Hamlet-esque melancholy of aspiring playwright Konstantin, and Alfred Enoch’s few lines are enough to convince us that Trigorin is the mysterious and misanthropic writer he is reputed to be. There are still two weeks for final touches to be put on this production. The time would be well spent in helping the character of Medvedenko rely less on the psychological gesture of nervously touching his glasses. And for all of Ruby Thomas’ husky voiced, frustrated sensuality, the character of Masha runs the risk of being a bit too reminiscent of the frustrated sensuality of a certain heroine in a Tennessee Williams play.
But this reviewer must come clean: I have always disliked Chekhov. Having seen various productions by the doctor-turned-playwright, ranging from The Cherry Orchard to Three Sisters, I have a hard time getting past characters that seem to jump effortlessly in and out of self-reflective, philosophical discourse on topics like Art, Russia, and The Past. Maybe things were different in 19th century Russia but when I see Chekhov done it always strikes me that no one is actually listening to each other and yet they seem familiar enough to shout ‘Leave me alone!’ regularly, while running from the room. It is not difficult to make Chekhov awful. But in despite of, or perhaps because of, Chloe Wicks’ line readings, this production has taken characters that I’ve always had a hard time swallowing and made me deeply curious about each and every one of them. I left this preview having to resist the urge to run home and reread The Seagull to remember what happens to Konstantin and Masha, Trigorin and Arkadina. Despite myself, I’ll have to be there at the opening to see and maybe begrudgingly start to appreciate Chekhov after all. And let me assure you, that in itself promises to be a theatrical feat well worth seeing.
Interview: Athol Fugard
Statements tells the true story of a white woman and a coloured man, arrested during the apartheid era because of their forbidden love. What inspired you to write about this incident?
I opened the newspaper one morning and there were pictures [of the two naked lovers] actually printed in it. And I just felt that at some point I had to deal with those photographs. It’s an awful story. The evidence in court included a piece of a blanket which the policeman had cut out with a pair of scissors because it had semen stains on it.
Are the characters in the play the same as those in real life?
No, I made up my own story. I didn’t want to write a documentary. I wanted to write a play. They call me political, they call me this, they call me that – but above everything else I am a storyteller. I want freedom to go wherever my imagination wants to go. I don’t always rise to the challenge and allow my imagination to go as far as it wants to go. But I absolutely demand that as the first principle when I sit down to write.
And that allowed you to move away from complete realism?
The monologues, the words I give the actors in the flash scenes as the police break in, are in a sense the subtext of what must have happened to the poor victims in their minds as the camera was photographing and going off. The camera happens just in an instant but time is very relative and in an instant a human being can live his whole life. But then you have the opening where the two of them have been making love and are just talking quietly. The [naturalistic] writing in there I’m very proud of. It’s terrible to talk about being proud of something that you did but I am incredibly proud of what I did in that scene. Then if you look at the writing in [the second half of the play], it’s more adventurous, bolder, more experimental than anything else I’ve ever done. It uses language in a way that I don’t think I’ve really succeeded in using it again.
You’ve tried later on to write in a similar way?
I’ve tried but nothing of mine is quite as adventurous and imaginative as that. For those reasons Statements for me is a very, very special play.
Have there been productions of any of your plays that you didn’t like?
Many, many, many. I usually try to do anything I can to avoid going along and seeing a production of one of my plays that I myself wasn’t involved in. I’ve had a few very good experiences. But for every good experience I’ve had three or four bad ones. Bad isn’t the right word. Disappointing. They didn’t ‘get it’. They were looking at the wrong things in the play. They tried to make the play do what the play didn’t want to do. The first thing to do as a director is always to ask, what is this play trying to do? What is it really talking about? What is the story? And then tell the story.
What is in your opinion the worst mistake I could make directing Statements?
I suppose to make it a political play instead of a personal play. Focus on the sense of exposure. That’s what you got to look at. The horror will make its own statement. The horror of that experience. Of intruding like that. Putting handcuffs on two innocent people.
[You must recognize that] the stage is an incredibly free medium. That is what is so magnificent about it. I think that I explored the freedom of the stage more with Statements than I did with any other play.
Are you ever angry with yourself that you haven’t been able to write with that same freedom as before?
Yes, of course. Any writer who doesn’t end up with frustrations and a sense of not having
done their best is most probably fooling themselves.
It sounds like in the past Yvonne [Bryceland, his actress and muse] gave you that freedom. She helped you discover it.
Oh, she was wonderful. She was absolutely amazing. There is an interview I once heard with Yehudi Menuhin in which he talked about when he got his Stradivarius. He had been playing with good violins but when he got his Stradivarius his music took on a new dimension. It was such an exquisite instrument. It challenged him to go further than he had ever gone before. And Yvonne was my Stradivarius. She challenged me, but all she ever asked me is: ‘Show me the way to get to the edge.’ I believe good performances are made right at the edge. Where there is no safety, no security, no safety nets. You really have to risk everything. An actor must be prepared to live dangerously.
Review: Mitsuko Uchida
The world-famous pianist, Mitsuko Uchida, gave a breath-taking performance on 11th January, in a concert at the Sheldonian Theatre in aid of Oxford’s Music Faculty. Uchida delighted a packed audience with some of the most captivating works in the Romantic piano repertoire. Her tiny frame, bent protectively over the keyboard, as if it were some precious object, belied her powerful playing in the opening bars of her exquisite interpretation of Beethoven’s Sonata in E minor Op 90. The typically Beethovenian dramatic contrasts in this work were surpassed in musical audacity by the next work in the programme, Schumann’s somewhat bipolar collection of eighteen dances, known collectively as Davidsbündlertänze. Uchida imbued each short ‘character’ piece with its own colour and vitality, balancing the more fierce and ferocious dances with restrained, graceful gestures in the calmer pieces. Not once did she lose her remarkable poise and sensitivity.
The second half of the programme allowed Uchida to reveal her gentle touch and emotional depth to its full capacity. The piano sang out in Chopin’s rhapsodic C# minor Prelude, its dream-like, tender qualities giving rise to a warm intimacy in its performance, which was unattainable in the more overtly dramatic repertoire of the first half. Squeezing as much tone as possible from each note of Chopin’s melodic lines, and leading a firm path through the composition’s chromatically wandering passages, Uchida addressed every note of this piece with meticulous articulation. The final work of the evening, Chopin’s Sonata in B minor Op 58 confirmed her virtuosity. Uchida’s slender fingers seemed simply to graze the keys, so soft were the cascading scalar passages in the finale. This was a wonderful evening, and it is an honour to have such a distinguished musician support the Faculty of Music.