Review: Yank!

I was fortunate enough to be given tickets to Yank! by Time Out, so I got the chance to see a production I was unfamiliar with in a theatre I'd never been to before.

The Charing Cross Theatre say:

“Some stories didn’t make it into the history books”
Based on the Off-Broadway hit production, and transferring to London following a highly acclaimed run at the Hope Mill Theatre in Manchester earlier this year, YANK! is a poignant love story based on the true, hidden history of gay soldiers during World War Two.
In 1943, young Mid-Westerner Stu is called up to serve in the forces and becomes a reporter for Yank Magazine, the journal ‘for and by the servicemen’. Following the men in Charlie Company, this acclaimed musical explores what it means to be a man and fall in love…

This is a really difficult production to attach a star rating to. There were moments in Yank! that were four or five stars, without question, however the 'modern' framing of the piece at the beginning and end - where it is revealed that the events portrayed are from a diary - is much weaker than the rest of the show and, in fact, a bit cringey.

If we ignore these moments of the play as a misstep, then there are plenty of positives to discuss. For a start, the song and dance numbers deserve a bigger stage and a bigger audience - they are up-lifting and fabulous. The music is excellent and the choreography, mostly a blend of tap and swing, is a real delight.
Furthermore, there is some excellent multi-roling from a phenomenally strong cast - again I couldn't believe this was staged in such a small venue - and the whole cast charmed and camped and raged in a series of beautifully sympathetic performances.

All things considered, I have to recommend Yank!. The closing moments - the modern framing - annoyed me hugely, but the rest of the piece is well worth your time. The general message, 'it's not doing it that's the crime... it's wanting it', is still shockingly relevant, and the manner of the story-telling is very easily bought-into. It's a good night out.

4/5: A slick and stylish musical number
Charing Cross Theatre
Until 19th August

Review: Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave

Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave has been a massive success for the British Museum: it is virtually sold out, and it is consistently rammed. So, what's the fuss about?
The British Museum say:

Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) is widely regarded as one of Japan’s most famous and influential artists. He produced works of astonishing quality right up until his death at the age of 90. This new exhibition will lead you on an artistic journey through the last 30 years of Hokusai’s life – a time when he produced some of his most memorable masterpieces.
Throughout the exhibition, outstanding examples of Hokusai’s work will show the artist’s creative breadth and depth. A selection of superb landscapes is introduced with the iconic Great Wave – itself part of a print series of views of Mt Fuji. Intimate domestic scenes capture fleeting moments in private lives. Exquisite depictions of flora and fauna display an innate skill in representing the natural world. The artist’s imagination is given full rein in the portrayal of supernatural creatures such as ghosts and deities. Through all of these works, explore Hokusai’s personal beliefs and gain a fascinating insight into the artist’s spiritual and artistic quest in his later years.
The exhibition will include prints, paintings and illustrated books, many of which are on loan from Japan, Europe and the USA. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see these extraordinary works together.

I found that the exhibition was a really interesting insight into one man developing his artistic practice. It also does a lot to demonstrate why we should look beyond that one image an artist is famous for.

Hokusai was driven by the desire to become better and better at his art, and you can see, as the exhibition progresses, the 'Great Wave' of the title only falls about halfway through the journey of his latter years. His style is beautiful, and his talent is indisputable, so I was really excited to learn more about the breadth of Hokusai's work, as he is not an artist with which I am particularly familiar. The show opened up a whole new artistic and symbolic culture to me, and I enjoyed it a lot, despite the busyness. The 'Great Wave,' interestingly, is only a small print, compared to some of his massive paintings, but it was fascinating to see how intricate it is, up close.

If you can get tickets - which may prove impossible at this stage - you should definitely get down to the British Museum and check it out, although be prepared to get jostled around, and have a wait to see key pieces: it is a very busy exhibition in quite a narrow space, which some are finding very frustrating.

4/5: A rolling success
British Museum
Until 13th August

Review: Dreamers Awake

Ah, the summer holidays. Time to catch up on all of the shows I've been dying to see, but haven't had chance to yet...

First off, Dreamers Awake, the current exhibition at the White Cube, Bermondsey. The gallery say (in some detail):

White Cube is pleased to present ‘Dreamers Awake’, a group show at White Cube Bermondsey which explores the enduring influence of Surrealism through the work of more than fifty women artists. The exhibition brings together sculpture, painting, collage, photography and drawing from the 1930s to the present day and includes work by well-known Surrealist figures as well as contemporary and emerging artists. Woman has a powerful presence in Surrealism. She is the object of masculine desire and fantasy; a harpy, goddess or sphinx; a mystery or threat. Often, she appears decapitated, distorted, trussed up. Fearsome or fetishized, she is always the ‘other’. From today’s perspective, gender politics can seem the unlikely blind spot of a movement that declared war on patriarchal society, convention and conformity.
Nonetheless, from its earliest days female artists have been drawn to Surrealism’s emphasis on personal and artistic freedoms and to the creative potential that the exploration of the unconscious offered. By focusing on the work of women artists, ‘Dreamers Awake’ hopes to show how, through art foregrounding bodily experience, the symbolic woman of Surrealism is refigured as a creative, sentient, thinking being.
Repossessed by its owner, the fragmented, headless body of Surrealism becomes a vehicle for irony, resistance, humour and self-expression. Ranging beyond those who might identify themselves as Surrealists, the show traces the influence of the movement where artists delve into the unconscious; create alternative realities; invent fetishistic objects, such as Mona Hatoum’s Jardin Public (1993), that subvert the objectification of the female form, or, in the spirit of Claude Cahun’s iconic black and white self-portraits from the 1930s, play with gender identity as a fluid construct.

My first impression was that Dreamers Awake represented a particularly strong showing of work by women. Exploring the ideas of surrealism, it's a bold reclamation of a genre that has historically objectified the female form, so the work on show feels very powerful.

If you think about the images you connect with the idea of 'surrealism,' once you get beyond melting clocks, you probably call to mind close-cropped images of the body, or even oddly-disembodied limbs: for the Surrealists, the bodies of women were part of their language of expression. What Dreamers Awake does is return a sense of agency to women so they can make the symbolism of surrealism their own mode of expression.
The diversity of the ways in which this expression achieved is stunning; a painting by Dorothea Tanning, photography by Claude Cahun, and sculpture by Louise Bourgeois draw the mind in different directions, whilst circling back round to the concerns of identity and gender. The body of work on show is divergent, but the overall point of the exhibition holds it together with a clear sense of narrative.

I really enjoyed this show, and not just for the quality of the art. The fact that this major exhibitions is female-focused offered an exciting insight into an area of art that everyone thinks they know. As far as I'm concerned, it is well worth seeing.


4/5: A glorious wakeup call from the women of Surrealism
White Cube,
Bermondsey.
Until 17th September

Review: Selfie to Self Expression

The current major show at the Saatchi Gallery, From Selfie to Self-Expression, is an interesting one: it explores the selfie, and self-portraiture, from art history to today. In other words, the Gallery have hit upon a topic that virtually everyone will have a strong opinion on, which, by contrast, makes it quite difficult to review thoughtfully.

The Gallery say:

Saatchi Gallery and Huawei have teamed up to present From Selfie to Self-Expression. This is the world’s first exhibition exploring the history of the selfie from the old masters to the present day, and celebrates the truly creative potential of a form of expression often derided for its inanity.

The show also highlights the emerging role of the mobile phone as an artistic medium for self-expression by commissioning ten exciting young British photographers to create new works using Huawei’s newest breakthrough dual lens smartphones co-engineered with Leica. 

When I left this exhibition, I wasn't sure whether I'd witnessed a playful, clever review of the state of modern image production, or whether I was witnessing a manifestation of the end of days. I'm still not sure.
It is clear that a lot of thought has gone into the installations, and that everything included is there to spark some serious debate. Whatever your opinion of selfie culture, however, the curator has done a very good job of drawing parallels with portraiture from art history, so the exhibition isn't a study in isolated tackiness.
There's a mix of photography from established artists, large scale installation work, and, of course, both researched and crowd-sourced selfies. As a whole show it has a good balance to it, and explores the idea of self-expression in a surprising amount of intellectual depth for a show with 'selfie' in the title.
Overall, I think that Selfie to Self-Expression is worth seeing so you can wrap your own opinions around it. The issues it deals with are too contentious for any one reviewer to offer a definitive statement on, so I'm not going to try to. I still don't know if I loved or hated it, but I definitely engaged with it. It is worth your time, if only to give you something to argue over.

4/5: Irresistible debate-fodder
Saatchi Gallery
Until 6th September

Reviewing: The Ferryman

Jez Butterworth's most recent work, The Ferryman, became the fastest selling play in the Royal Court's history. His past success, and the renown of director Sam Mendes, meant that expectations were always going to be sky-high: the question is, does it live up to the hype?
The Royal Court tells us,

"Vanishing. It’s a powerful word, that. A powerful word.”
Northern Ireland, 1981. The Carney farmhouse is a hive of activity with preparations for the annual harvest.  A day of hard work on the land and a traditional night of feasting and celebrations lie ahead. But this year they will be interrupted by a visitor.

Now, in terms of plot, The Ferryman covers so much ground it's a miracle that it isn't a complete mess: instead, it's a stunning meeting of a stellar cast, a talented writer and a brilliant director, resulting in an incredible play.

All of the big themes are dealt with: love, loss, family, conflict, but they are woven together in a way that doesn't make the show seem overcrowded; Butterworth seems to have worked magic with his storytelling. The Carney family, headed by Paddy Considine's Quinn, are a vibrant, complex group of characters, each sympathetic in his or her own way, and watching them is a joy.

The naturalism of the Carney's kitchen at harvest offers insight into a world that is very similar to our own, but far enough away in time to seem dream-like. The brutal reality of the Troubles cuts through the rural idyll of the farm, and if you have any knowledge of the period, you know that the story could have no simple resolution. Others have pointed out how quickly the 3.5 hours flies by, and that is down to how compelling this story is, and how well it's performed.

Sam Mendes' direction is marvellous, and Nick Powell's music and sound design are subtle and create a sense of longing for a simpler time. Simply put, everything in this show works.

If you can get tickets for it, you really should. The Ferryman is unquestionably one of the best shows of the year.

5/5: Theatrical magic
Gielgud Theatre
Until January 2018

Review: Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour

Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour began life at the National Theatre, and is currently enjoying a West End transfer. Its life as a production has been very successful, but not entirely without controversy.
The NT describe it thusly:

From the creator of Billy Elliot (Lee Hall) comes the uplifting and moving story of six Catholic choir girls from Oban, let loose in Edinburgh for one day only.
Funny, heartbreaking and raucously rude, Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour is adapted from Alan Warner’s brilliant novel about six young friends on the cusp of change and is directed by Royal Court Artistic Director Vicky Featherstone.
Featuring the songs of ELO, Our Ladies is a glorious anthem to friendship, youth and growing up disgracefully.
Prepare thyself for… really rude language, flashing lights, pyrotechnics, lots of sexual references, excessive drinking, and extensive use of the smoke machine.

A lot of people seem to have struggled getting beyond the lewdness on Our Ladies, but if all you do is get hung up about the swearing you have really missed the point.

The stories of the six schoolgirls, on their trip to Edinburgh, are poignant, and even though the characters are lairy, the way their story develops is really touching. If you walk out before the end, then you don't reach the points of resolution and the 'morning after' clarity of the play. And that would be your loss.

Of course, you can't review Our Ladies without discussing the music. The performances of both the actors and the band are phenomenal. Really, the singing is just incredible. I left the theatre uplifted: it it a thing of joy. I've never encountered a show that blends traditional choral pieces with ELO before... and probably never will again. The juxtaposition of the two means that when the choral music cuts through the rock, it is simply stunning.

I absolutely recommend Our Ladies, but if you're prudish about swearing, sex, or wild drunkenness, it's probably not the play for you.

4/5: Proud, loud, funny, but touching
Duke of York's Theatre
Until September

Review: Hir

Hir hadn't even been on my radar when a friend asked if I wanted to go and see it, so I agreed and it became one of the three productions I scheduled for this week.
So what is it?
The Bush Theatre say:

Isaac (Arthur Darvill) gets home from serving in the marines to find war has broken out back home. In a nondescript town somewhere in Central Valley – America, Isaac’s mom Paige (Ashley McGuire) is blowing up entrenched routines.
Fed up with domestic patriarchy, Paige has stopped washing, cleaning and caring for their ailing father, who recently suffered a stroke. She reigns supreme.
Ally to their mother’s new regime is Isaac’s sibling Max (Griffyn Gilligan). Only last time Isaac checked, Max was Maxine. Once the breadwinner, Isaac’s dad (Andy Williams) has toppled from the head of the household to the bottom of the pile – a make-upped puppet emasculated by Paige once and for all.
In a cheap house made of plywood and glue, notions of masculinity and femininity become weapons with which to defeat the old order. But in Taylor Mac’s sly, subversive comedy, annihilating the past doesn’t always free you from it.

Now, it's taken me about 24 hours to process exactly what I thought of Hir, and the conclusion I reached is that, whilst there are positives, the show as a whole is a bit of a mess.

The acting itself solid. No complaints there. All four members of the cast turn in decent performances. And the staging works well: the clear messy/anarchic and clean/ordered split between the two halves does what it needs to.

However, the script tries to cram in way too much. There are Important Themes flying about all over the place, meaning that none of them are properly dealt with. The trauma of a soldier returning from a war zone, a young person establishing hir gender identity, living with serious illness, and domestic abuse are all major issues that suffer for being rammed into a short play. Nothing is fully explored. Another huge detraction is the fact that the mental/physical health of the characters is often treated, at best, lightly or, at worst, as a joke: that did not sit well.

Hir could have been an amazing bit of theatre. Instead, a waspish script is held together by some sound acting. It isn't a write-off, but your time could be better spent elsewhere.

3/5: Solid performances despite a plotting mess
Bush Theatre
Until July 22

Reviewing: Giacometti

This is the second Giacometti exhibition in London of late - the NPG's 'Pure Presence' show fell in the 2015/16 season and was very well received - so there is clearly an appetite for his work in the capital.
Of this exhibition, the Tate Modern say:

Celebrated as a sculptor, painter and draughtsman, Giacometti’s distinctive elongated figures are some of the most instantly recognisable works of modern art. This exhibition reasserts Giacometti’s place alongside the likes of Matisse, Picasso and Degas as one of the great painter-sculptors of the twentieth century. Through unparalleled access to the extraordinary collection and archive of the Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti, Paris, Tate Modern’s ambitious and wide-ranging exhibition brings together over 250 works. It includes rarely seen plasters and drawings which have never been exhibited before and showcases the full evolution of Giacometti’s career across five decades, from early works such as Head of a Woman [Flora Mayo] 1926 to iconic bronze sculptures such as Walking Man I 1960.

As the description explains, this exhibition works in broader strokes than the showing at the NPG, and as such gives a much more well-rounded view of the artist. You get to see his sketches, paintings and, of course, his sculpture.

His sketches and paintings are beguiling and complex, holding your attention as you try and figure out exactly what is being said, but, for me, it is the sculptural work where Giacometti's magic is most evident. He completed pieces on a tiny scale, whilst also producing huge works that tower over the spectator. His unique visual signature is said to explore the figure in the post-war era, everything irrelevant stripped away, but whatever is going on, the nature of his work is just mesmerising.

It is the first time a London audience has had the opportunity to see so much of Giacometti's work in one place, and it really gives you the opportunity to see his style and thinking evolve over time. The final encounter with his huge figurative work sends you out of the exhibition with a sense of his phenomenal talent and huge influence on the art world.

I thoroughly enjoyed the whole exhibition, and definitely recommend it. It is very rare for you to get such a detailed insight into a true master.

4/5: A powerful exploration of a life in art
Tate Modern
Until 10th September

Reviewing: Ink

This week involved a jaunt to Angel to see Ink at the Almeida. A piece of new writing, looking at the re-forming of The Sun newspaper into the brash, loud format we know today, Ink is dark, funny, and a masterclass in the creative rewriting of politics.

The Almeida say:

Fleet Street. 1969. The Sun rises.

James Graham’s ruthless, red-topped new play leads with the birth of this country’s most influential newspaper – when a young and rebellious Rupert Murdoch asked the impossible and launched its first editor’s quest, against all odds, to give the people what they want.

I say: Go and see it.

James Graham's writing, Rupert Goold's direction, and a fabulous cast make this play unmissable, as far as I'm concerned. The set and sound design are also a delight. In fact, I left the theatre beaming.

Ink explores the ideas of 'news' and journalistic ethics through the story of The Sun's first editor Larry Lamb (Richard Coyle), and his moral testing at the the hands of Rupert Murdoch (Bertie Carvel). The dialogue between the two men is rapid-fire, sweary, and sharp, and the performances of Carvel and Coyle are perfectly balanced.

The makeshift look of the set creates a strange sympathy for the team behind The Sun, which is quite an achievement, given that I, and probably most of the audience, fall distinctly within The Guardian's natural readership. The situating of the newspaper's first staff as underdogs is a clever way into making you rethink an institution that irrevocably changed the landscape of British journalism, and not for the better. Graham's script is brilliantly challenging in this respect - it allows you to take nothing for granted.

I loved Ink enough to be trying to make time to see it again, and that rarely happens. If you can get to it, you really should.

5/5: Brash, painfully funny, and terribly relevant
The Almeida
Until 5th August

Reviewing: Fahrelnissa Zeid

This week I took in a double bill of Tate Modern shows: Giacometti and Fahrelnissa Zeid. Of the two, Zeid's work was the most surprising, as she was a completely new artist to me - I got a ticket for her show on a whim when I went to see Giacomettii - but she proved to be a marvellous discovery.
Of Zeid, the Tate Modern say:

Trained in both Paris and Istanbul, Fahrelnissa Zeid was an important figure in the Turkish avant-garde d Group in the early 1940s and the École de Paris (School of Paris) in the 1950s. Her vibrant abstract paintings are a synthesis of Islamic, Byzantine, Arab and Persian influences fused with European approaches to abstraction. Many of her abstract works are monumental and demand attention.
Zeid’s reputation as an artist was cemented in the 1950s when she was living between London and Paris and exhibiting extensively internationally. The artist also began experimenting with painting on turkey and chicken bones, which she later cast in polyester resin panels evocative of stained-glass windows. In the later years of her life she unexpectedly returned to figurative painting, creating stylised portraits of her friends and family.
Indulge in Zeid’s obsession with line and dazzling colour in this exhibition. Rediscover one of the greatest female artists of the 20th century in this first major retrospective.​

Internationally trained and widely recognised in her contemporary moment, Zeid has since - as the exhibition points out - fallen from view. I, for one, am glad the Tate Modern has decided to take steps to bring her work out of obscurity, as I was stunned by the power of her painting, and want to see more of her.

Aside from exploring her fascinating life story,  the show charts her artistic development and showcases the raw emotion and scale of her work. Though there are some smaller works, a lot of what she paints is dramatic in size, and her use of colour, line, and pattern is nothing short of striking.

The huge abstract canvases draw you in, and it feels like there is something recognisable hidden in the patterns, if only you could stare at them for long enough. Her portraiture does nothing for me, but her use of colour across everything in the show is pure magic.

Overall, Zeid's retrospective is well worth catching.

4/5:Vibrant and hypnotic
Tate Modern
Until 8th October

Review: Gregory Crewdson: Cathedral of the Pines

 Cathedral of the Pines is really quite something. Exploring Gregory Crewdson's mysterious and deeply narrative body of work, this is the collection's first UK exhibition.

 The Photographers' Gallery - Cathedral of the Pines' current home - say:

With this series, produced between 2013 and 2014, Crewdson departs from his interest in uncanny suburban subjects and explores human relations within more natural environments. In images that recall nineteenth-century American and European paintings, Crewdson photographs figures posing within the small rural town of Becket, Massachusetts, and its vast surrounding forests, including the actual trail from which the series takes its title. Interior scenes charged with ambiguous narratives probe tensions between human connection and separation, intimacy and isolation.

Crewdson describes this project as ‘his most personal’, venturing to retrieve in the remote setting of the forest, a reminiscence of his childhood. The images in Cathedral of the Pines, located in the dystopian landscape of the anxious American imagination, create atmospheric scenes, many featuring local residents, and for the first time in Crewdson’s work, friends and family. In Woman at Sink, a woman pauses from her domestic chores, lost in thought. In Pickup Truck, Crewdson shows a nude couple in the flatbed of a truck in a dense forest—the woman seated, the man turned away in repose. Crewdson situates his disconsolate subjects in familiar settings, yet their cryptic actions—standing still in the snow, or nude on a riverbank—hint at invisible challenges. Precisely what these challenges are, and what fate awaits these anonymous figures, are left to the viewer's imagination.

Crewdson's careful crafting of visual suspense conjures forebears such as Diane Arbus, Alfred Hitchcock, and Edward Hopper, as well as the influence of Hollywood cinema and directors such as David Lynch. In Cathedral of the Pines, Crewdson's persistent psychological leitmotifs evolve into intimate figurative dramas.

Visually alluring and often deeply disquieting, these tableaux are the result of an intricate production process: For more than twenty years, Crewdson has used the streets and interiors of small-town America as settings for photographic incarnations of the uncanny. Working with a large crew, he plans his images as meticulously as any movie director.

The results of this intricate process are spectacular.

The links made between Crewdson's work and Twin Peaks seem wholly justified when you arrive amongst huge photographs of small-town America, populated with strangely disconnected people. The images have stories that beg to be told, and everything about them is otherworldly and beguiling. I was completely mesmerised by them.

The technical side of the photography is equally impressive. The amount of work Gregory Crewdson puts into staging the shots is absolutely immense - they are cinematic in scale as has already been pointed out - and the slide show of 'behind-the-scenes' photographs is illuminating as to exactly how much effort is required for the images to be created.

The exhibition as a whole thing is well-curated, and the body of work sits nicely across the three floors of the space. The Photographers' Gallery is a venue I cannot praise highly enough for not only the quality of their exhibitions, but also the gallery as a whole - it's welcoming, the cafe is good and shop ruinously well-stocked.

As someone with an active interest in photography I engaged with Cathedral of the Pines on the levels of both story and technique; these contrasting elements are equally captivating. However, even if you're not a regular photographer yourself, there is a lot to work with in this exhibition: I recommend it highly. Go get yourself lost.

5/5: It's strange and it's beautiful
The Photographer's Gallery
Soho
Until 8th October 2017

Review: Hamlet

The short version of this review runs:

This is the best version of Hamlet I have ever seen on a stage. Go and get tickets for it while you still can.

Now, if you feel so inclined, the more detailed version...
 
... Many previous reviewers have already commented on Andrew Scott's brilliance in the role of Hamlet, but it's fair praise: he is astonishing. His performance felt so light, so vital, that it could have been of a text written yesterday. Having seen Benedict Cumberbatch, Rory Kinnear and David Tennant in the role, I am still quite comfortable in saying this is the best iteration of Hamlet I have yet witnessed. Scott's version of the legendary character is both startlingly vulnerable and dangerously unpredictable.

However, this version of Hamlet isn't just the Andrew Scott show. No, the whole thing is a master-class in how to bring Shakespeare to a modern stage and make it feel relevant. Robert Icke's direction is inspired. The design, the staging, the lack of cuts that could have made it a shorter piece, the AV choices: everything works.
Particular design highlights included the use of news broadcasts, and introducing the ghost via CCTV, and the music direction - lots of Bob Dylan and some original Laura Marling - is properly spine-tingling.
The rest of the class stand up to Scott's brilliance, as well, and Juliet Stevenson's Gertrude takes Hamlet's mother in an unusually powerful direction. Her knowing death at the end was one of the striking-yet-subtle twists that made this production so incredible.

This proved to be a brave new Hamlet without a sacrifice of the original text. It made me excited about the theatre, and determined to try and rethink how to introduce Shakespeare to younger audiences (during working hours I'm an English teacher). 

If you can see it you must. It is a master-class in everything Shakespeare can be on a modern stage.

5/5: The flawless, classic, and contemporary Dane
Transferred to the Harold Pinter Theatre
Until 2nd September

Review: Into the Unknown

The Barbican are currently hosting a huge exhibition exploring the genre of scifi. They're describing it like so:

The genre-defining exhibition of art, design, film and literature.

From the 19th century cabinet of curiosities, to the vastness of space. Through future cities, into the inner landscapes of human perception.
Uncover the mysterious lands of Jules Verne and Ray Harryhausen where Science Fiction narratives first took root. Venture on an odyssey into our solar system, with vintage artwork promoting Soviet visions of space alongside immersive work by Soda_Jerk. Visit a gallery of aliens, and stand alongside iconic spacesuits from a galaxy of blockbusters including Star Trek and Interstellar.
Imagine dystopian worlds with Margaret Atwood and 28 Days Later. Then, with nowhere left to explore but human consciousness, delve deep and experience the transformation and mutation of the body through the eyes of Jack Kirby and Ex Machina.
Curated by historian and writer Patrick Gyger, this festival-style exhibition consists of more than 800 works, many of which have never been seen in the UK before. Continuing across the Centre, it includes artwork from Isaac Julien, Larissa Sansour and Conrad Shawcross, and an installation from the creators of Black Mirror.

And it's incredible!

Into the Unknown is a glorious and detailed exhibition, filling the Barbican's Curve gallery to the brim and then extending its tendrils out through the whole building, with additional exhibits in the Foyer and the Pit theatre.

The amount of content in the main Curve space is immense: it's more than you can realistically take in in one visit. If you're a scifi fan, you'll feel like you've died and gone to geek heaven, but even if it's not your genre of choice, it's still a fascinating look at the evolution of design in the field.

The artworks outside of The Curve are intriguing, and offer a balance to the exhibition, making sure it rises above just being a collection of memorabilia. As a result, Into the Unknown feels exciting and relevant.

Overall, Into the Unknown is yet another example of how good the Barbican are at designing the 'experience' of art exhibitions, beyond just hanging things on walls. Highly recommended.

4/5: A whole other world of style and substance
The Curve: Barbican
Until 2nd September

Review: Woyzeck

So, my theatre production of the week was Woyzeck, currently running at the Old Vic.

They say:

The multi-award-winning Jack Thorne (This is England, Let The Right One In, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) breathes new life into Woyzeck, one of the most extraordinary plays ever written.
It’s 1980s Berlin. The Cold War rages and the world sits at a crossroads between Capitalism and Communism. On the border between East and West, a young soldier (John Boyega) and the love of his life are desperately trying to build a better future for their child.
But the cost of escaping poverty is high in this searing tale of the people society leaves behind.

And it was alright; Woyzeck, in this iteration, is at least okay, occasionally more than okay, often not.

Tom Scutt's set design is dynamic and exciting, whilst Isobel Waller-Bridge's music and Gareth Fry's sound design are in turns looming and magnificent. Further more, the first Act holds together beautifully, fulfilling some of the drive of Buchner's original play.

After the interval, however, things start to go awry.

When the plot gives way to Woyzeck's deteriorating mental state, John Boyega, who had hitherto been quite good in the role, over acts it terribly. There's a lot of writhing and gurning, which stereotypes mental illness in a way that is really quite problematic. It's like Jack Thorne and Joe Murphy felt it was necessary to signpost at every opportunity 'THIS MAN IS HAVING A BREAKDOWN!' when really a lot more subtlety would have served the piece better.

The performances of the rest of the cast - Ben Batt as 'Andrews' particularly - are more consistent, and I realise that in focusing on Boyega I'm buying into the 'big-stars-in-plays-in-London' vibe that is currently dictating the casting of a lot of major London productions.
In this vein, I am being critical. In the field of big-stars-in-plays-in-London Woyzeck is more engaging than Obsession (starring Jude Law) was at the Barbican, but it falls way short of Angels in America (starring, well, lots of people) at the National. Overall, then, Woyzeck manages to still be worth seeing.

It's not the best thing I've seen this year, but it's far from the worst. You probably wouldn't be disappointed if you saw it, and it's pacey enough to keep you on-board.

3/5: Worth a watch, though not a game-changer
The Old Vic
Until 24th June

Review: Common

Last night was the night for Common at the National Theatre.
They say:

An epic tale of England’s lost land.

Mary’s the best liar, rogue, thief and faker in this whole septic isle. And now she’s back.

As the factory smoke of the industrial revolution belches out from the cities, Mary is swept up in the battle for her former home. The common land, belonging to all, is disappearing.

... but I don't really know what to say about it.

I liked it less than Salome, for a start, because that at least was beautiful to look at: Common, was just a mess.

Once again, a production with a lot of potential was been let down by a shockingly poor script. The story was confused, the dialogue stilted and needlessly sweary, and this left me struggling to care about any of the characters.

Anne Marie Duff was very watchable, it's just a shame she only had DC Moore's script to work with. The language of the script itself was almost unbearably frustrating, because it could have been brilliant: the use of non-standard English and hyphenated coinages could have been a fascinating exploration of how meaning is made, but it fell well short of achieving such a lofty aim.

The pagan-inspired design of the villagers in costume could have been exploited more, and to great effect. It wasn't.
The whole piece felt too long and dull.

The music was great though.

It isn't very often I would tell you to avoid a production at the National, but I just can't recommend Common: your money would be better spent elsewhere.

2/5: A mess of untapped potential
National Theatre
Until 5th August

Review: Angels in America

This year, the National Theatre are staging a revival of Tony Kushner's two-part epic Angels in America. At just shy of eight hours long, it's difficult, if not 'impossible' to put on, so it is a rare treat to be able to see it in its entirety.
The National say:

America in the mid-1980s. In the midst of the AIDS crisis and a conservative Reagan administration, New Yorkers grapple with life and death, love and sex, heaven and hell.

And?

I have never seen anything like it.

Angels in America, especially watched in one day as a double bill, is a huge theatrical feat. The cast are unreal - Andrew Garfield, Denise Gough, Nathan Lane, James McArdle, Russell Tovey, et al - the stage design works on an epic scale, and Kushner's writing is incredible.

There are a lot of things one could choose to talk about with Angels in America, so I'm going to try to limit myself to mentioning a few highlights:

1. Andrew Garfield was a revelation: I have only previously seen him in bit parts and Spiderman, so the fact that he can really, really act, came as a shock. A pleasant one.
2. The wings of the Angel, which were created by a combination of physical choreography and puppetry, were a delightful bit of design/movement work.
3. Kushner's writing of convoluted, rambling monologues is masterful. The characters of Roy (Nathan Lane) and Louis (James McArdle) get very different speeches, but the delivery of Kushner's words by the respective actors was edge-of-seat brilliant.
4. Ian MacNeil's design work and Paule Constable's lighting designs were on a scale wholly appropriate to the magnitude of the text. When the National go all out at set design, they go all out at set design.

Really, I could go on and on.

I cannot recommend Angels in America highly enough. Especially if you can see the double bill. It is unlikely you'll ever get to see the like of this again, so do what you need to do to get a ticket!

5/5: A once-in-a-generation spectacle
The National Theatre
Until 19th August

Review: Life of Galileo

There have been a few revivals of Brecht's work over the past few months - not least The Threepenny Opera at the National Theatre, and The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui at the Donmar - and now it's the Young Vic's turn: they're mounting a loud, proud retelling of The Life of Galileo.

They say:

BAFTA Award-winning film director Joe Wright (Atonement, Pride and Prejudice) returns to the Young Vic after his celebrated production of A Season in the Congo.
Brendan Cowell plays Galileo following his acclaimed performance in Yerma. Galileo makes an explosive discovery about the universe with his new invention – the telescope.
Performed in-the-round on a stunning set designed by Lizzie Clachan (Yerma, A Season in the Congo), the show features original music by The Chemical Brothers’ Tom Rowlands and projections by 59 Productions (Feast, War Horse).

Now, great CVs for the creative team do not necessarily equal a great production (see Salome as case in point). In this case, however, everything about Life of Galileo turned out glorious, from the performances to the music to the design to the projections of the cosmos.

Brendan Cowell, particularly, is a bold, mercurial Galileo, and watching him, you can't help but think they could power the whole theatre with his energy. The re-imagined Young Vic space gives him a huge arena in which to play out Galileo's ideas, and Brecht's politics, and the music direction gives everything a quick pulse.

Above the stage is a curved dome, used as a screen for projections of the universe.
It's a bit mad, in a beautiful way, but whilst the visuals are captivating, they aren't the only quirk of design used to keep things interesting in the ostensibly blank stage space. Retractable steps, re-purposed props, and the cast working in and out of the floor-seated audience means that the production is visually dynamic.

The only place the relentless pace stuttered was towards the end, where some of the monologuing seemed to drag a bit as the politics Brecht originally explored now seem dated. This is a minor drawback, however, and the fact remains that this is a fabulous production, and well worth your time.

Definitely one to catch.

4/5: Big, brash, bold and beautiful
The Young Vic
Until July 1st

Review: Salome

Well. Salome then. The National Theatre tell us it is:

The tale retold.

The story has been told before, but never like this.

An occupied desert nation. A radical from the wilderness on hunger strike. A girl whose mysterious dance will change the course of the world.

Now, where to start.

This production frustrated me to a pretty extreme degree, but let's deal with the positives first.

Firstly, the acting was brilliant: Isabella Nefar, as Salome so-called, is mesmerising as the still, calm centre of the storm. In fact, the whole cast are strong, and under movement director Ami Shulman's use of slow, dream-like choreography, they seem like a giant, classical artwork come to life.

Secondly, there is the ethereal music. Yasmin Levy and Lubana al Quntar as the 'Women of Song' lend their phenomenal vocals to the whole show. Their contributions are both technically astounding and utterly beautiful.

Thirdly, the design work is also amongst the best I've ever seen. Susan Hilferty, along with lighting designer Tim Lutkin, have created a setting so beautiful it makes the play worth seeing, despite the work's major drawback (which I will come to in a moment). Falling curtains of sand, billowing cloths, props that are used and re-purposed all give the production a properly epic and classical feel (anachronistic weaponry aside). It is a stunning sight.

However, the script.

The script was diabolical. I seriously do not think I've ever seen dialogue that poor in a major production ever. It was just dire. I felt sorry for the actors, who were doing an amazing job with what they had but were playing to a half-empty auditorium. It was embarrassing for everyone involved; I'm not sure how the script passed any kind of quality control. Yaël Farber directs well, but if I were unaware of her previous successes, I would question whether she should be trusted with the writing bit too. As things stand, I think this just has to be written off as a lesson learnt. Hopefully.

Salome is worth seeing for the design, and for the truly haunting music, but the scripting makes it painful. Go to it prepared, but do go to it.

3/5: Could have been perfect. Wasn't.
National Theatre
Until 15th July

Review: Obsession

Tonight's theatre offering was Obsession, directed by Ivo van Hove, and staring Jude Law, at the Barbican. They say:

Jude Law plays the magnetically handsome, down-at-heel Gino in a new stage adaptation of Visconti’s penetrating social drama directed by Ivo van Hove.Drifter Gino, powerful and graceful as a puma, encounters Giuseppe and his much younger, trapped wife Hanna (played by Halina Reijn) at their roadside restaurant and petrol station. He and Hanna are so irresistibly attracted to one another they begin an affair while plotting to murder her husband. But the crime does not unite them in this chilling story where passion can lead only to destruction.
Visconti’s first feature film Obsession (1943) gave rise to Italian neorealism, a cinematic movement highlighting the struggles of ordinary people in a time of upheaval. As Van Hove’s fourth Visconti production, it features a company of Dutch and British actors led by Law, whose charismatic stage and screen performances have established him as one of the foremost actors of his generation.

When you look at the setting, you know it's Van Hove right away: a beautiful, stripped back space that will, you suspect, get more messy as the play progresses.

That is pretty much a metaphor for the whole production, really.

Obsession could have been brilliant, but the pieces don't fit together. Even Jude Law and Halina Reijn's chemistry couldn't carry the mismatched space/music/dialogue, which is a shame because they're really good. The moment of intimacy they share near the beginning is one of the most erotic things I've ever seen in a theatrical production... but then we are left to observe a series of discontinuous vignettes that don't hold together as a whole.
There's the representation of a car that is lifted up and down, spraying oil on the actors. The thing with the accordion. The bit at the end with the seascape, which is beautiful, but totally out of keeping with everything else that happens. The random nudity. The treadmill. You find yourself wondering how a director who, when on form, is so utterly brilliant could also throw these things together and call it a play.

On the whole, Obsession isn't a complete disaster, it's just frustrating. It's kind of worth seeing for Law and Reijn, but there are better things on in London right now. If you have spare time and money I can half-heartedly recommend it, but beyond Law and Reijn's performances, there are a lot of things amiss.

3/5: Moments of beauty caught up in a bit of a mess
The Barbican
Until 20th May

Review: The Treatment

The Almeida's current show is a revival of Martin Crimp's The Treatment, directed by Lyndsey Turner. In short, it goes something like:

New York. A film studio.  A young woman has an urgent story to tell.
But here, people are products, movies are money and sex sells. And the rights to your life can be a dangerous commodity to exploit.

In the viewing, what the The Treatment is, is a brilliantly dark bit of theatre. It explores ideas of stories, authenticity, and ownership, in a manner that is both morally ambiguous and uncomfortably funny. The treatment, as it were, of Anne, who is played brilliantly by Aisling Loftus, is brutally unsympathetic, and as a result it is no surprise when her reality reasserts itself over the film producers who have hitherto tried to exploit her.
The performances are great, particularly Loftus - who is absolutely beguiling as central character Anne - and disintegrating power couple Jennifer (Indira Varma) and Andrew (Julian Ovenden). There is also a great use of a large cast walking in and around the scenes, giving the action a kind of 'behind-the-scenes' feel, entirely appropriate to the subject matter.
The design is striking as well, with sparse sets and bold colours framing the action with a noir-ish vibe, though there are moments when the scene changes jar the pacing a bit, which prevents the show hitting perfection.
Overall, however, The Treatment is a great bit of theatre.
Highly Recommended!

4/5: A darkly funny downward spiral
The Almeida
Until 10th June

Review: American Dream: Pop to the Present

Yesterday, pretty much on a whim, I diverted into the British Museum and got a ticket for their The American Dream: Pop to the Present exhibition. I am really, really glad I did. Printmaking isn't really an area I know a lot about, either in terms of technique or practitioners, so American Dream offered both a steep learning curve, and an insight into a lot of really exciting work.

The exhibition is being promoted like so:

America.
Land of the free. Home of the brave…
Trace 60 years of a superpower in this major new exhibition.

The past six decades have been among the most dynamic and turbulent in US history, from JFK’s assassination, Apollo 11 and Vietnam to the AIDS crisis, racism and gender politics. Responding to the changing times, American artists have produced prints unprecedented in their scale and ambition.
...
This exhibition presents the Museum’s outstanding collection of modern and contemporary American prints for the first time. These will be shown with important works from museums and private collections around the world.

The full description, available here, is quite detailed, and makes very clear how the British Museum are framing the show. The theme of politics is threaded through the work, sometimes subtly, sometime overtly, whilst each room represents the next evolutionary stage in the history of American printmaking. In the past, I've gone to exhibitions at the British Museum where, having paid for a full price adult ticket, I've walked through about three rooms of content, reached the end, and then gone, 'Is that is?' This was definitely not the case here. American Dream is a huge, detailed exhibition, so if you're thinking about going, make sure you leave enough time to fully take things in.

There is too much work in the show for me to talk in detail about all of it, but there were a few highlights that really stood out for me. Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg were well represented in American Dream, and seeing their work up close was particularly exciting as you can see their artistic practice play out over time. Chuck Close's portraiture was a masterclass of technique, and the stripped back minimalism of Donald Judd and Al Taylor articulated a reaction against both abstract expressionism as a highly personal form and pop art as an ironic gesture, representing how trends in printmaking have shifted in the past few decades. As I have already noted, though, these are just a few of the amazing pieces on offer.

American Dream is a well-curated, detailed exhibition, that treats the recent history of American printmaking with an appropriate level of care and attention. I learnt about this particular area of art history, as well as enjoying the work, and I would definitely advise you to make time to do the same.

5/5: Bold, brave and beautiful
The British Museum,
London.
Until 18th June

Review: Travesties

Last night offered an absolute theatrical treat: Tom Stoppard's Travesties, currently showing at the Apollo Theatre, Soho; I enjoyed every minute of it.

Its blurb describes it thus:

Tom Stoppard’s dazzling comedy of art, love and revolution features James Joyce, Tristan Tzara and Lenin as remembered - and misremembered - by Henry Carr, a minor British diplomat in Zurich 1917.

When Gwendolen and Cecily wander in from The Importance of Being Earnest, Henry’s mind wanders too. He knows he was Algernon in a production in Zurich. But who was the other one?

Stoppard's play was written in 1974, but feels like it could have been produced in the last couple of years. Under Patrick Marber's direction, the work is pyrotechnic, with Tom Hollander and Freddie Fox leading a fantastic cast. The two hours thirty fly by as the improbable connections between a series of historical figures are remembered and misremembered by Hollander's character, Carr. The play with language and pace is a joy to witness, and, as has been my experience watching some of Stoppard's other work, when you understand the more intellectual references, you feel properly clever.

It's not all laughs though. The pathos we feel observing Carr's deterioration is real, and Lenin's journey to power holds some uncomfortable resonances for today. There are also some serious arguments made about the nature of art, which do not sound as if they were articulated in the 70s.

Travesties has been pretty much universally well received during this revival, and that must at least partly be due to its freshness and liveliness as a production. Another major draw is its charm. And then there is its well-groomed style. And, of course, the performances. I would struggle to isolate one single thing that made me enjoy this production so much: it's just so good. Everything about it.

If you can catch it before the end of the run, you definitely should.

5/5: Hysterically clever and rightfully proud of it
Apollo Theatre, Soho
Until 29th April

Review: Consent

Last night I was fortunate enough to be offered tickets to see Nina Raine's Consent, currently showing at the Dorfman Theatre at the National, so I must start this review with a thank you to the NT's wonderful Secondary and FE Education team.

Of Consent, the NT say:

Why is Justice blind? Is she impartial? Or is she blinkered?

Friends take opposing briefs in a rape case. The key witness is a woman whose life seems a world away from theirs. At home, their own lives begin to unravel as every version of the truth is challenged.

Consent, Nina Raine’s powerful, painful, funny play sifts the evidence from every side and puts justice herself in the dock.

Consent is Nina Raine's fourth play, her previous - Rabbit, Tribes, and Tiger Country - all having been well received. Her latest work, which takes a rape case as a starting point for an exploration of the relationships between a ground of friends, is no exception to her run of great writing.

The use of the rape case, and the persuasive strategies of lawyers, as a framing device takes the notion of manipulating the feelings of a jury, then replays the process through manipulating the audience into feeling sympathy and then loathing for each of the characters in turn whilst they toy with one another's' emotions. Raine's writing is excellent in this respect as she is able to contrast the reductionist guilty/not guilty dualism of the courtroom, with the complexities of real life situations: in Consent, no one is innocent, but everyone deserves sympathy.

The dialogue is phenomenally well written, and the humour is sharp, relatable, and, occasionally, very dark. The performances of the cast of seven - Priyanga Burford, Pip Carter, Ben Chaplin, Heather Craney, Daisy Haggard, Adam James, and Anna Maxwell Martin - are solid, and you really do find yourself sympathising with, then hating different characters as the scenes progress.

The set design is neat but sparse, yet does a surprisingly good job of communicating the world in which the characters live. The sound design is less successful, as some of the transitions feel a bit jarring.

My main issue with the play, however, is the fact that the pacing dips in places, and some of the scene changes are a little awkward, but these are hopefully things which will be ironed out as the run goes on.

I would definitely recommend Consent to you, even if the white, privileged, middle-class world isn't something you find you can relate to, as the play is an absolute masterclass in character development and the writing of dialogue. I found myself applauding Raine as much as the actors on the stage.

4/5: Funny but complex: laugh out loud, then go away thinking

The Dorfman Theatre @ The National Theatre

Until 17th May

Review: Eduardo Paolozzi

A retrospective of Eduardo Paolozzi's work is currently on show at East London's Whitechapel Gallery. Before visiting the exhibition, I didn't think I knew who Paolozzi was, but it turns out that I see his work on a near-weekly basis at both the British Library, and at Tottenham Court Road tube station. The Whitechapel Gallery introduce the exhibition like so:

Eduardo Paolozzi (1924-2005) was one of the most innovative and irreverent artists of the 20th century. Considered the ‘godfather of Pop Art’, his collages, sculptures and prints challenged artistic convention, from the 1950s through to the Swinging Sixties and advent of ‘Cool Britannia’ in the 1990s.
This major Eduardo Paolozzi retrospective spans five decades and features over 250 works; from the artist’s post-War bronzes, revolutionary screen-prints and collages, to his bold textiles and fashion designs.
Alongside Paolozzi’s early brutalist concrete sculptures, highlights include material from his groundbreaking performance lecture Bunk! (1952), his large-scale Whitworth Tapestry (1967) and the iconic sculpture Diana as an Engine (1963).

I wasn't really captured by images used on the promotional material, but on entering the first room of the exhibition my heart lifted at the colour and variety of the work on show. The combination of sculpture, print, and tapestry gave the show a texture very few artists could realistically offer.

The exhibition moves chronologically through Paolozzi's work, but each of the rooms still contains a mixture of prints, textile work, and sculpture. Highlights for me include some of the later figurative sculpture, and the prints that arose from Paolozzi's friendship with the writer J.G. Ballard.
Other significant moments are offered by the huge Whitworth Tapestry, with its bold colours and presence of Mickey Mouse, and the materials from Paolozzi's 1952 'Bunk!' lecture at the ICA.

Paolozzi's magpie-like adoption of different media makes for a kaleidoscopic, and rather marvellous, experience. It is well worth your time to familiarise yourself with an artist whose work is so present in London, yet whose name is still broadly unknown.

Recommended.

4/5: A colourful, lively retrospective from one of art's polymaths.
Whitechapel Gallery
Until 14 May 2017

Review: Behind the Mask, Another Mask

Behind the Mask, Another Mask is one of the current exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery. It is being advertised with a couple of beguiling, surreal images, that don't necessarily make the nature of the show clear. So what is it?

“Under this mask, another mask. I will never finish removing all these faces.” Claude Cahun, 1930

This exhibition brings together for the first time the work of French artist Claude Cahun and British contemporary artist Gillian Wearing. Although they were born almost seventy years apart and came from different backgrounds, remarkable parallels can be drawn between the two artists. Both of them share a fascination with the self-portrait and use the self-image, through the medium of photography, to explore themes around identity and gender, which is often played out through masquerade and performance.

My first response to the exhibition's entry point was one of a casual interest. There were photographs, they were pleasing, but they didn't really set my world aflame. Some casual links between Wearing and Cahun are suggested, but the connections are quite superficial.
Then it gets weird.
 As the exhibition progresses, we see more of Wearing's mask work, and what she has done seems to sit firmly in 'uncanny valley' territory. When you realise that you aren't looking at straight portraits, but recreations of portraits achieved by Wearing in a mask, the effect is unsettling to say the least. The same eyes stare out from faces of different ages and genders in a manner that made me feel really quite uncomfortable. The juxtaposition with Cahun's work then becomes interesting, as there is a strong dialogue between the politics of identity and the fluidity of self-representation. However, the more showy images of Wearing's are staged in a way that almost overshadows Cahun's work, which is actually the more thought-provoking of the two.
The points of intersection between the two artists could bear more development as there are clear similarities and ideological links. As things stand, though, the two artists' images sit alongside one another, talking to each other too infrequently.

Behind the Mask, Another Mask is worth a visit for thinking through the points Wearing and Cahun are making about identity, but it is a far from perfect exhibition. What makes it frustrating is that it could have been a great show. Instead, it's merely a good one.

3/5: Uncanny but undeveloped
National Portrait Gallery
Until 29th May 2017

Speechlessness in Three Artworks

Speechless, adjective

unable to speak, especially as the temporary result of shock or strong emotion

I am faithless, but sometimes, when confronting an artwork, I feel as if I'm in church.
On, sadly, rare occasions I enter a gallery and experience a moment of stillness so pure it feels transcendental: my heart races, my head spins, I stop breathing for a moment - speechlessness descends as a gift to someone whose life contains little quiet.

It would be nice to think that we all find moments like this in our lives: times where we connect with something greater and more beautiful than ourselves. Times of quiet. But I am not the only person who has to struggle to escape everyday noise.

At different stages in my life, the following three artworks have rendered me speechless, all for different reasons. The were quiet points, where I had the space to think.

1. Turner's Seascapes:

There are examples of Turner's works all over the place in London, but I first fell in love with his seascapes through the 'Turner and the Sea' exhibition at the National Maritime Museum a few years ago. The scale of his late seascapes, stripped of all unnecessary detail, was immense: I felt as if I could be washed away. Turner's courage to pull back details means that you end up with huge, almost abstract canvases, and being surrounded by them is very tranquil.

2. Van Gogh's 'Wheat field with Crows':

I don't remember when it was I fell for Van Gogh's work, but when I had a brief stopover in Amsterdam for a wedding, I took great delight in going to the Van Gogh museum. The highlight for me was 'Wheat field with Crows', which is a huge canvas that seems to perfectly capture a ripple of disturbance in a field, causing the birds to rise and fly off. I stood staring at the tiny brush strokes, following the movement, until my partner hurried me along. My mind stayed with the painting.

3. Rothko's Seagram Murals:

 My love for Rothko was late in developing. When I studied art at college, I was one of those foolish, pretentious teenagers who thought they had the learning to dismiss abstract expressionism out of hand. Many years, and much maturing, later, and sitting in the room containing the Seagram Murals at the Tate Modern is about as close as I am able to get to a religious experience. You sit in the darkened space and are absolutely surrounded by these massive, abstract canvases. It's well worth waiting for a quiet moment to get in there and claim bench space. It makes me feel small, yet incredibly safe.

What artworks have given you pause? Which artists?

It seems like I don't just look for a single thing in an artwork. It is more a feeling of scale. What I'm looking for, maybe, is something with the scope to put my own life in perspective. Whatever the feeling, it's beyond words.

Review: Blasted

Styx Theatre is a small North London venue, new to me, and, it turns out, a cool and quirky little space. They are currently running a 90s Season, so I finally had the opportunity to see Sarah Kane's Blasted on stage.

Blasted originally opened at the Royal Court Theatre in 1995, directed by James Macdonald. The story plays out in a room in a hotel in Leeds where Ian, a racist, misogynistic journalist, first attempts to seduce, and then later rapes, Cate, a young woman. The fairly naturalistic opening quickly gives way to a representation of a city at war, where a soldier appears in the room and describes the terrible things he has witnessed and done. The final section deals in scenes of rape, cannibalism, and other forms of savagery. All told, the play is brutal.
The version playing at Styx is stripped down, and some interesting directorial choices give rise to a lot of questions about what is stageable, what is acceptable, and what you can pare away from Kane's work without it losing its impact. The end result is a fantastic rendering of Kane's earliest play, and some of the non-naturalistic choices actually heighten the wrongness of the work, rather than shy away from it.
The stage is black, with minimal setting and use of props. For some of the earlier graphic scenes, the stage directions describing the action are projected on the wall instead of the actors performing the acts themselves. At first I wasn't sure if this was an act of cowardice, but as the play gets more graphic, and moments like Ian's rape are staged, what we actually see realised is a series of contrasts and disquieting tensions. Everything is unnatural, yet plausible in the context of war: you might be disgusted by the soldier, but his story is not necessarily surprising.
The themes of conflict and the extremities of violence have taken on a new significance in this era of war and human displacement. As a consequence, Blasted seems to act as a warning of what happens when humanity is stripped away: it is sadly a play of startling relevance for our contemporary moment.

Recommended, though not if you are easily offended.

4/5: Still shocking, still painful, still human
Styx Theatre
Until 11th March

Review: Ugly Lies the Bone

Written by Lindsey Ferrentino and directed by Indhu Rubasingham, Ugly Lies the Bone is currently running on the Lyttelton stage of the National Theatre. They say:

After three tours in Afghanistan, Jess finally returns to Florida. In a small town on the Space Coast, as the final shuttle is about to launch, Jess must confront her scars – and a home that may have changed even more than her.

Experimenting with a pioneering virtual reality therapy, she builds a breathtaking new world where she can escape her pain. There, she begins to restore her relationships, her life and, slowly, herself.

 Now, there are a lot of interesting ideas at work in the play, but overall, nothing is satisfactorily developed. The dramatic use of video projection could have been a powerful way of expressing the virtual world being trialled by Jess (Kate Fleetwood), but some of the design work incorporated by it is, frankly, a bit naff. Meanwhile, the sliding, minimalist set worked quite well, but was nothing revolutionary. 

Acting-wise, Fleetwood is good, and Ralph Little and Kris Marshall's characters are well performed and pleasingly developed, however, the introduction of Jess's mother towards the end of the play is at best trite, and at worst downright tacky.

I think, more than anything, I was frustrated with Ugly Lies the Bone. It had the potential to be exciting and original, it just doesn't quite make it. It's not dreadful, but it is too much of a near miss for me.

3/5: Interesting ideas, average execution

Lyttelton Theatre:

National Theatre.

London

Until 6th June

Review: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead last graced The Old Vic's stage 50 years ago. This time around Daniel Radcliffe (Rosencrantz) and Joshua McGuire (Guildenstern) take to the stage with David Haig and a beautiful cast of royals and misfits.

The Old Vic say:

Half a century after its premiere on The Old Vic stage, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, the play that made a young Tom Stoppard’s name overnight, returns to The Old Vic in its 50th anniversary celebratory production directed by David Leveaux.
Against the backdrop of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, this mind-bending situation comedy sees two hapless minor characters, Rosencrantz (Daniel Radcliffe) and Guildenstern (Joshua McGuire), take centre stage with David Haig as The Player. Increasingly out of their depth, the young double act stumble their way in and out of the action of this iconic drama. In a literary hall of mirrors, Stoppard’s brilliantly funny, existential labyrinth sees us witness the ultimate identity crisis.

Directed by David Leveaux, and set in the wings of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is a clever, witty play, and I enjoyed it a lot. It is unashamedly intellectual in its humour, at a time when so much cultural output is simply aimed at the lowest common denominator. Though I'm not such a culture snob that I would dismiss light entertainment out of hand, it feels good to be able to watch something with a bit more challenge to it.

Radcliffe and McGuire do a stellar job of portraying Stoppard's balance between humour and his exploration of human transience: there are moments of real poignancy as well as points of unapologetic postmodernism. Haig's role as resident deviant is also seedy and well played, providing a knowing commentary on the unfolding events.

The design work - part renaissance, part anachronism - is pleasing too, as is the musical direction. The aesthetics suggest a faded glory around the edges of Hamlet, whilst the meander of the characters gives a life to the incidental details that provide the framework for theatre's big stories. As well as asking 'what ifs' and 'who are wes' Rosencrantz & Guildenstern offers a window on two souls, broken free from their original scripting and trying to find a place for themselves in a wider world: it is sad and beautiful.

I would strongly recommend the Old Vic's production of Stoppard's classic, but not if you want something mindless. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead requires a bit of thinking, but you are rewarded with a narrative that stays with your for days, asking questions, making you remember, giving you space to think.

4/5: Clever and well played
The Old Vic
London
Until Sat 29 Apr 2017

Review: Richard III

Schaubühne Berlin's double bill of Richard III and Beware of Pity (with Complicite) have been taking the Barbican by storm this month. I was fortunate enough to catch Richard III in person, and will be following up with the recording of Beware of Pity.
Of Richard III, the Barbican's website informs us that:

Resplendent in evening dress, showered in glitter, the victorious Yorks celebrate. Damaged and disfigured, Richard finds no peace among this elite to whom he has never fully belonged. Murdering his way to the throne, exposing conflict and mistrust in his wake, the outsider makes us complicit, addressing us directly to reveal his manipulative plans.

Of course, as ever, the blurb does not come within a mile of describing what occurs on stage. And in Schaubühne Berlin's version of Shakespeare's historic tragedy, 'what occurs on stage' encompasses quite a number of things.

The stage and lighting design, courtesy of Jan Pappelbaum and Erich Schneider, are edgy and stripped down. With the single set virtually unchanged throughout the play, a lot of the setting is done through the lighting design, which encompasses projection and a live camera feed, to great effect.
Similarly, Nils Ostendorf's music is striking, and the presence of a live drummer creates a raucous
sound scape that reflects the events of the play spiralling out of control. All of the details add up to a scenario that gains such momentum it cannot help but end in a crash.


Directed by Thomas Ostermeier, this version of the Shakespeare classic is riotous, unapologetic, and a bit mad. Lars Eidinger as the titular anti-hero is an immense presence, and he doesn't so much as perform the role as totally own it. Eidinger is by turns carnivalesque, then sinister, then outraged that anyone would accuse him of all of the things he's actually guilty of: he is a Richard who pursues villainy, rather than creeps to it.
Some have argued that Ostermeier, in giving free reign to Eidinger's colossal personality, has made Richard III a character study, tearing away the play's inherent politics. I would disagree. We live in a world where successful politicians are colossal personalities, and we offer deference to the leaders who shout the loudest. As a result, Eidinger's grotesque rendering of the role maps onto the hinterland between celebrity and political cultures.

Schaubühne Berlin have provided us with a Richard III for our age: political power wielded for personal profit, a divided country, at war with herself. It never ceases to amaze me how well Shakespeare's stories have lasted, and how, in the re-telling, they still hold warnings for us now.

5/5: Brilliant, vital madness
The Barbican
Ended 19th February

Review: Sex with Strangers

I'll be honest with you right from the off, I didn't like Sex with Strangers. However, I am going to have a go at reviewing it as objectively as I can, because it did have some redeeming features.

The Hampstead Theatre inform us that,

Olivia, an attractive and talented but underappreciated mid-career writer, is unexpectedly trapped overnight in a secluded, snowed-in B&B with Ethan, an equally attractive and wildly successful young blogger. 
Her latest novel is an unsung masterpiece; his blog is being made into a movie. She prefers books; he prefers eBooks. She is anonymous; he has half a million Twitter followers. But opposites soon attract – passionately – as each realise they want more of what the other has. But the closer they get, the more they must confront the murky side of ambition, success and Wi-Fi…

Now, as the description points out, the attractive novelist and the attractive blogger are indeed trapped in a B&B. They become involved and, over the course of the play, become less attractive personalities with every passing second.

Peter Dubois does a reasonable job of directing Laura Eason's work, but there are moments where things seem forced and awkward, for example as the couple are about to have sex, the gauze lowers in front of them, and there's a cut to blackout, every time. Every. Time. After a while this is clunky, and the momentum is lost. It feels like Eason was writing the kind of character development that is deployed on screen rather than stage - something that can be shown through a montage of time passing. It doesn't work in a play.
The characters are also remarkably unsympathetic, as we see the pull of performative identities and the lure of money cause them both to sacrifice what they hold dear. By the end I just didn't care what happened to them. On saying this, though, there were some subtleties in the character development that were well executed from the writing, I just disliked the characters so much that I was too busy being annoyed to appreciate them.

There are other positives, however. Emilia Fox and Theo James put in strong performances; despite the fact that James seems to have been cast because he looks good with his shirt off, he is particularly convincing as one of a certain breed of social media star. Also, at some points, the dialogue between the two characters is punchy and naturalistic, but not enough to win me over. Oh, and the set design is lovely.

Some people seem to have enjoyed the play. I'm not one of them. Go and see it if you will, but you might find yourself, head in hands, laughing at the number of times Theo James' character has undressed, or irritated by the fact you are stuck watching two characters you don't really care for

3/5 (begrudgingly): Pretty but disappointing
Hampstead Theatre
Until 4th March

Review: Woolf Works

This month saw a revival of Wayne McGregor's critically acclaimed Woolf Works at the Royal Opera House. McGregor's choreography is widely praised by some, but is also heavily criticised by traditionalists. So, what is the fuss about?

Wayne McGregor’s ballet triptych Woolf Works, [is] inspired by the writings of Virginia Woolf ... Each of the three acts springs from one of Woolf’s landmark novels: Mrs Dalloway, Orlando and The Waves – but these inspirations are also enmeshed with elements from her letters, essays and diaries. Woolf Works expresses the heart of an artistic life driven to discover a freer, uniquely modern realism, and brings to life Woolf’s world of ‘granite and rainbow’, where human beings are at once both physical body and uncontained essence. Woolf Works was McGregor’s first full-length work for The Royal Ballet, and saw him reunited with regular collaborator Max Richter, who provides a commissioned score incorporating electronic and orchestral music.

 The first part of the triptych, weaving in elements from Woolf's stream of conscious novel Mrs Dalloway with references to her real life, was subtle, painful and heartfelt. From what I know of McGregor's work, I was surprised at how stripped-back everything was. The second Act, meanwhile, was my least favourite of the three. It was, in theory, based on Orlando, but it was difficult to trace a sense of story through the lasers and dry ice. Richter's score was the strongest part of this section. Finally, part three intertwined moments Woolf's life with the tale of The Waves, and it was utterly lovely. The music, soundscape, and choreography were perfectly married up into something both sorrowful and hopeful. It was a gorgeous thing to behold.

The triptych is, for the most part, fantastic. Max Richter's score is a brilliant counterpoint to Mcgregor's choreography and direction. Woolf Works is a very strong contemporary work, and a good point of access for people unfamiliar with ballet - it has all of the beauty and none of the pretention. It had a brief season, already passed, so I can't instruct you to go and see it, but when it appears again, you really should fight for your ticket: Woolf Works is a stripped down, poignant piece, and a thing of real beauty.

4/5: Moments of breathtaking beauty
The Royal Opera House,
Covent Garden 

Review: La Ronde

La Ronde was originally written by Arthur Schnitzler in 1897 and looked at the romantic entanglements of ten characters in fin de siecle Vienna, to great controversy. This new reworking by Max Gill, showing at the Bunker Theatre, strips the play down to four actors playing the ten roles, with who playing what left broadly to chance.

The result is rather marvellous.

The Bunker Theatre describe it thus:

London, 2017. The disparate lives of the city’s inhabitants are thrown together by the caprice of desire and fate.  How does your desire define you?

With four actors to play the cast of ten and roles selected with a roulette, our LA RONDE embraces life’s game of chance and the blindness of desire and fortune.

This portrait of the human need for another boldly reimagines the infamous original to interrogate modern attitudes to gender, sexuality, and social status. With over three thousand different versions of the show, which story will you see? 

This rather vague description gives you a location and a concept, but not much else to work with. As a result, and not knowing the original play, I went into La Ronde blind. It was my first visit to the Bunker Theatre as well, so what to expect from my afternoon out was a complete mystery...

Well, the Bunker itself is a really interesting space, and it's very easy to walk past the ramp down to it without realising that anything is there. This would be your loss. It's a quirky little venue, and I look forward to returning to it.

Now for La Ronde.

Given the nature of the play, it is difficult to talk about the cast - Leemore Marrett Jr., Lauren Samuels, Alexander Vlahos, Amanda Wilkin - in terms of how they develop one specific role. Instead, you just have to nod to four individuals accomplishing something of serious technical difficultly, and doing so in a way that is both entertaining and, ultimately, painfully human. The fact that each role becomes gender neutral through this process is also very pleasing, and the writing made it possible for this shift to pass by, almost under the radar, something which seems to tie in with the current trend - across London's theatre scene at least - for a more diverse representation of gender alignments and sexual orientations.

I found myself marvelling at the technicality of the show as a whole. The execution of a chance-based concept is elegantly managed, and the actors rise to the challenge of not knowing exactly which play they are going to perform.  La Ronde manages to be both tremendously clever and accessible to a wide audience through its natural humour, and I hope it is indicative of great things to come for both Max Gill and the Bunker Theatre.

4/5: Cleverly structured and wonderfully executed: a must-see.
The Bunker Theatre
Until 11th March

Review: The Boys in the Band

The Boys in the Band - currently enjoying a limited-term revival at the Vaudeville Theatre - is an exploration of the lives and relationships of a group of gay men in the New York of the late 1960s.
It's described on the Vaudeville's website like so:

Mark Gatiss stars in this strictly limited West End transfer of the first major revival of this iconic play in two decades. Razor sharp and packed with wit, The Boys in the Band is fresh, startling and brilliantly entertaining. There’s a party tonight. It’s 1968 and nine men gather in a New York apartment for a birthday celebration. Harold (Mark Gatiss) receives a surprise gift from his friend, Emory (James Holmes), in the form of a beautiful male hustler. Meanwhile, party host Michael (Ian Hallard) gets an unwanted surprise of his own. As the booze is drunk and the dope smoked, the mood swings from hilarity to heartbreak.

Written by Mart Crowley in 1968, the play pre-dates the Stonewall riots, but only just, which suggests a mismatch between the frivolous, enclosed space of the party, and the outside world. When party host Michael's (Ian Hallard) square, straight (?) college friend appears, we get a glimpse of the socio-political tensions that simmer beneath the overt bitchiness.
At the play's best, we see a group of characters wrangling with their identities and the role society assigns them. Homophobia and self-loathing are articulated with finesse, and the contrast between the sharp-edged humour and the characters' moments of darker introspection feels both painful and modern.
However, the pacing and occasional dip into caricature mean that the cast really are fighting against a script of variable quality. It felt, to me, as if the play could have been cut down to relieve the awkwardness, and then be run as a 90 minute/one act piece.

Overall, it is not a bad piece of theatre, it is just frustrating to watch because it has the potential to be so much better.

3/5: A great cast carrying an average play.
Vaudeville Theatre
404 Strand
Until 18th February

Review: Amadeus

If you have a love of music, and of the sheer spectacle of big-budget theatre, Amadeus - currently playing at the National Theatre's Olivier - is probably for you.

They say:

Vienna: the music capital of the world.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a rowdy young prodigy, arrives determined to make a splash. Awestruck by his genius, court composer Antonio Salieri has the power to promote his talent or destroy it. Seized by obsessive jealousy he begins a war with Mozart, with music and, ultimately, with God.

And through the monologuing of Salieri (the brilliant Lucian Msamati) we indeed follow a flawed character's obsession with his youthful, creative superior.

Amadeus, by late icon Peter Shaffer, premièred at the National 1979 to wide acclaim. This new version, directed by Michael Longhurst, has similarly garnered glowing reviews.

Lucian Msamati's stiff, controlled Salieri is the polar opposite of Adam Gillen’s pyrotechnic Mozart, and the tension that arises between them is very well played. Gillen's hyperactive, childlike characterisation of Mozart manages to generate sympathy, rather than irritation, whilst his downfall is being carefully orchestrated (no pun intended) by Salieri, and the central roles are supported by strong performances by the whole cast.

The design work is, as you would expect for a production at the National, beautiful and challenging. The Southbank Sinfonia are on the stage all of the time, so Mozart's music is cleverly woven throughout the piece in terms both of sound and choreography, and there are surreal flares on the part of designer Chloe Lamford - Mozart in Dr Martens anyone? - that give things a rebellious edge.

I enjoyed Amadeus a lot: there are moments of such pure, spectacular beauty that the hairs on the backs of my arms literally stood up, but I also felt that the second half lost its pacing somewhat. Three hours is a long slog, and I couldn't help but feel that if the show were shorter it would have maintained its dramatic impact better.

At its best, Amadeus is glorious, at its weaker points, you want Mozart to hurry up and come to his untimely end, but overall, it was a joyful thing to behold.

4/5 Moments of majesty: a beautiful and spectacular show

The Olivier, The National Theatre
Until 18th March

Review: Us/Them

Us/Them is currently playing at the Dorfman Theatre at the National, but it comes via a sell-out, prize-winning run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival of 2016. It forms part of the National's 'Limited Editions' season of new work, playing throughout the first part of the year.
They say:

In September 2004 a group of terrorists stormed a school in Beslan taking hundreds of children hostage. The ensuing siege lasted three days and left many dead. Us/Them is not a straightforward account of this terrible tragedy, but an exploration of the entirely individual way children cope with traumatic situations.

Brussels-based BRONKS (a Belgian theatre company geared towards a young audience) brings together director Carly Wijs with actors Gytha Parmentier and Roman Van Houtven, and offers a show that is absolutely disarming in its characterisation of how young children express themselves. The charm is cut through, however, with moments where you remembered exactly what story is being told, and the effect of this means that the design of the piece as a family show seemed entirely plausible, but at the same time the exploration of ideology, the worldliness, and the emotional depth are darkly adult.

Designer Stef Stessel does a fabulous job with the look of Us/Them. The use of the space - a world built with a labyrinth of string and a carefully demarcated floor plan in chalk - is brilliant, as the relationship between the 'us' arises from a space constructed by the children at play. The design work is very cleverly done - child-like but not tacky. Similarly, the performances of Parmentier and Van Houtven within the space are subtle, funny at times, but not an unbearable aping of childhood.

Overall, I really enjoyed Us/Them. I decided to see it on a whim, and I'm really glad that I did. The performances and the look are well choreographed, and the content is balanced so that the piece is accessible to children without being jarring for adults. If you find yourself with an evening to spare before the end of the run, you could do a lot worse than trying to get hold of one of the remaining tickets. A very enjoyable hour.

4/5: Clever conceived and beautifully executed. If you can get a seat, go, enjoy, then reflect.

The Dorfman Theatre, at the National Theatre
Until 18th February