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