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

Review: The Vulgar

The Vulgar: Fashion Redefined is the current exhibition at the Barbican Centre. They say:

‘Vulgarity exposes the scandal of good taste’ Adam Phillips

Potent, provocative and sometimes shocking, the word vulgar conjures up strong images, ideas and feelings in us all. The Vulgar is the first exhibition to explore the inherently challenging but utterly compelling territory of taste in fashion, from the renaissance through to contemporary design. Examining the constantly evolving notion of vulgarity in fashion whilst revelling in its excesses, you are invited to think again about exactly what makes something vulgar and why it is such a sensitive and contested term.

What this means in practice is that curator Judith Clark and writer/psychoanalyst Adam Phillips - partners in life as well as work - have joined to create a spectacular and challenging display, reflecting on the idea of taste, as viewed through ideas about what constitutes 'vulgar'.
 The exhibition tracks different notions of taste and vulgarity, and each conceptual framing is accompanied by an exhibit of connected fashion pieces or artefacts. The thinking that underpins The Vulgar means that the whole show has a coherence, so it follows that the contrast between relatively simple classical-inspired shifts, and huge baroque ball gowns isn't actually jarring.
Even when you encounter things that you find garish, you are forced to reflect on why this is so and where this prejudice comes from: it is a very clever intellectual twist, which differentiates this exhibition from usual gallery shows centred on fashion.

The intellectual grounding for the exhibition makes it impossible to sign off with a comment along the lines of 'even if it's not to your taste...' But suffice to say if you have an interest in fashion, then you'll get something out of this show, even if you hate the kind of work represented within: check it out.

4/5: Thought-provoking fashion and fashion provoking thought

Barbican Centre
Until 5th February

Review: Once in a Lifetime

Hollywood, 1930. The first-ever talking motion picture is a smash hit and suddenly every actor needs a voice. Three New Yorkers head west to cash in on the talkies trend by opening an elocution school. But in a city heaving with clueless ingénues, all-powerful studio moguls and neurotic screenwriters, success is trickier than it sounds. Misadventures abound. Our three heroes vie to become the next big thing in Tinseltown.

I  knew before going to see Once in a Lifetime - Richard Jones' production for the Young Vic - that it wasn't going to be the kind of production I normally go in for. I'm a theatre snob, and light-hearted comedy is not really my thing, but even with my prejudices I was still able to enjoy Once in a Lifetime for what it was.

The American accents were slightly wonky to start off with, and the dynamic between the leads Claudie Blakley, Kevin Bishop and John Marquez wasn't quite there. I also wasn't keen on Harry Enfield's Herman Glogauer, as he went so far into caricature it felt as if he were just playing for brainless laughs, but I'm not sure if this is just my snobbishness coming through.

However, the pace of the show, and the beautiful design work, courtesy of Hyemi Shin, carried the start, and the confused ending, and gave you something pleasing to latch onto. The rotation of the stage to allow constant set changes lent the show an appropriately filmic quality, and there were plenty of genuine laughs in amongst the buffoonery.

Overall, the piece was charming enough. The whole thing was gloss and showbiz: all surface, no depth, but pleasing to look at. It's perfect for an unchallenging evening of entertainment, just, preferably, for someone who isn't me.

3/5 - Frivolous and funny. An enjoyable, if superficial, bit of escapism.

The Young Vic
25 Nov - 14 Jan 2017

Review: Hedda Gabler

My last theatre visit of 2016 was a trip to the National for Hedda Gabler. After an epic year, for me, in performances, it had a lot to live up to.

Hedda Gabler, widely acknowledged as Ibsen's masterpiece, is rarely out of performance, so the question was: what could a new production by the National Theatre bring to such an oft-performed, well-known play?
The answer, when it's in the hands of superstar director Ivo van Hove, turns out to be quite a lot.

Ruth Wilson, as the lead, offers a new angle on the play, which itself is a new translation by Patrick Marber. Her take on Gabler is mercurial throughout: in some ways incredibly sympathetic, in others the direct opposite, and Wilson is masterful in her ability to balance all of the extremes required by the title role. Even for those familiar with the play it is a surprise how each next line will be delivered, such is the volatility of Wilson's Gabler. The Hedda in this iteration is dangerous, but is so because she doesn't know how to be content in and of herself. Rafe Spall as Brack, meanwhile, knows exactly what he wants, and wields power in a way that brings a leering confidence to clash with Wilson's Hedda, whilst Kyle Soller as Tesman is not the dull, ageing academic one might expect.

The set design, by Jan Versweyveld, creates a sparse, unfinished living space for the Tesmans to inhabit, which very much fits with the tone of the piece. This fairly simple staging is brought to life, however, by some very clever lighting design, which warms, shifts, and then is blocked out as the story progresses. The design work overall is skilful, and helps realise the trap that Hedda Gabler creates for herself, which ultimately proves to be her downfall.

This version of Hedda Gabler is captivating. The understated but genius attention to detail
 makes it impossible to look away, even if you find yourself banging heads against the idea of womanhood the play suggests. The National have rounded of a blockbuster year in some serious style.

4/5 - Subtle, compelling, and complex: truly a Hedda for our times.
The Lyttelton, National Theatre until 21st March

Review: Anselm Kiefer - Walhalla

Walhalla is Anselm Kiefer's latest exhibition and, currently situated at White Cube Bermondsey, it is really rather brilliant.
The White Cube have the following to say about it:

Titled ‘Walhalla’, the exhibition refers to the mythical place in Norse mythology, a paradise for those slain in battle, as well as to the Walhalla neo-classical monument, built by Ludwig I King of Bavaria in 1842 to honour heroic figures in German history.

This gives you the context, but does nothing to describe the atmosphere.

You enter a corridor, something that wouldn't be out of place in a field hospital set up during some hellish war: dark, metallic beds line the walls on either side, which, you notice as you get closer, are sometimes labelled with the names of figures from Norse mythology or Germanic folklore. Branching off from this corridor are a series of rooms, some housing paintings, others instillations.

The instillation work is fascinating in its ability to raise questions about well known narratives and subvert any expectation you have about the idea of what 'Valhalla' might be. Everything is grimy, harsh, toxic: you think about what being slain in battle might mean in the contemporary world. Meanwhile, when you depart for the more brightly lit rooms housing the mixed-media paintings, the rawness of the work, combined with their sheer scale, makes for a powerful, almost overwhelming, experience. The diversity of this body of work in terms of technique is at the same time held together by unifying ideas, materials and shapes that echo through all of the rooms. Kiefer has taken an idea and explored it inside and out. The result is jaw-dropping.

Walhalla is one of the best exhibitions I've seen this year, both in terms of scope and ideas, and in its aesthetics and realisation. It is really worth the trip out to Bermondsey to go and explore it for yourself: my brief description here has not done it justice. You only have until February, so get a move on!

5/5 - A mythic combination of installation, sculpture and painting: go and lose yourself in the stories

White Cube Bermondsey
144-152 Bermondsey St
London
SE1 3TQ 

23 November 2016 – 12 February 2017

Review: The Radical Eye

The Radical Eye is a Tate Modern exhibition, looking at the impact of Modernist photography on the medium as a whole. The exhibition is described, by the Tate, in the following terms:

This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see one of the world’s greatest private collections of photography, drawn from the classic modernist period of the 1920s–50s. An incredible group of Man Ray portraits are exhibited together for the first time, having been brought together by Sir Elton John over the past twenty-five years, including portraits of Matisse, Picasso, and Breton.

This spiel suggests that it is an exercise in big-name spotting, especially given the identity of the collector, however, it is much more than that.

The photographs on show represent a significant turning point in the history of photography, and the aesthetics that are emergent in the collection are clearly the foundation of a lot of the journalistic and commercial photography we see around us today. Additionally, seeing this particular collection of Man Ray images together is a rare opportunity to observe some of the more 'radical' uses of photography, which creates an interesting contrast with the more straight portraiture and the photo-journalistic work. The combination of straight and experimental photography is powerful, and the images on show are captivating in their purity of expression.

The only draw-back if the exhibition is the fact that, if you're coming to the work without a sense of the history of photography, it is difficult to fully appreciate how much of a dramatic change in technique these images imply. You may also be left curious, as much is made of Sir Elton John's 8000 strong collection of photographs, and we are only permitted to see a very small portion of that number. The exhibition could have been much less sparse and delved deeper into that archive, as the amount on show seemed quite small.

Overall, The Radical Eye is a an exhibition of great - but simple - beauty, on the level of aesthetics. It's real power lies in its message about the boundary between photography and art, and as such raises questions about how we perceive photography today.

4/5: Well worth your time - incredible if you know the field, but might bear a bit of prior research if not.
 
Tate Modern, Bankside: 10 November 2016 – 7 May 2017

Review: Art

Art, a translation of Yasmina Reza's 1994 play, was originally directed by Matthew Warchus for its London premièr in 1996. Now staged at the Old Vic, as part of his run as its Artistic Director, Warchus has united the creative team from his 1996 stint with a new cast.

During the clean 90 minute production, we see Serge (Rufus Sewell) buy a modernist painting, a white canvas with some white stripes across it, which becomes the nexus for a friendship breaking apart. Marc (Paul Ritter) rails against his friend's willingness to spend a small fortune on such a painting, and Yvan (Tim Key) gets caught between them.

'A man buys a painting: his friends don't like it,' seems a dull premise for a piece of theatre, but this production of Art proves more funny than it has any right to be. The sharp dialogue and brilliant comic timing give the piece serious pace, and the audience appeared to whole-heartedly buy into the world of the play. By the time the action came to a crescendo, the tension in the auditorium was incredible, especially for a narrative in which very little actually happens.

In terms of what builds the play, there isn't much to discuss in terms of set - a blank canvas, as it were - there is just a great script brought to life by a trio of talented actors. Sewell and Ritter's cynical intellectualism versus Key's hysteria builds comedy that, though absurd, steers clear of slapstick. The quality of the writing-in-translation, courtesy of Christopher Hampton, is gloriously barbed.

Taking the play in context, when you consider the nature of the work immediately preceding Art, and look at what will happen later in the season, you cannot help but have admiration for Matthew Warchus' brave and diverse programming at the Old Vic. He seems to have gone from strength to strength as an Artistic Director, and I, for one, am looking forward to Woyzeck, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead in 2017.

4/5 - Sewell, Ritter and Key are a brilliant trinity, and their delivery alone makes Art well worth catching.
The Old Vic until 18th February