Smells Like...

Vix and Lara treated me to an afternoon at the Lyric to see Spring Awakening - the musical, which opens to the press next week, following two years of critical acclaim on Broadway. I suspect it'll be a wild and popular success, mostly because it's so very clever at tapping into and emulating both the language and the oedipal desires of teen spirit. I can see standing ovations all round.

In reality the show's an odd, but not unengaging, mix of Wedekind's original nineteenth century play with it's radical exploration of post- puberty and a modern rock opera with attitude. Neon light strips and hand held mics, languidly held, intersect with formal school uniforms and severe haircuts. A kind of History Boys meets the Pussy Cat Dolls.

Most of this British cast are on their first professional show and they're very, very good. Clearly committed, sweet voiced and charismatic. Their relative inexperience is ably supported by strong performances by old hands Sian Thomas and Richard Cordery. Although in one tricky sequence the cast properly rock out, which hangs the two older actors out to dry, leaving them gamboling Mary Poppins stylee in an embarrassing attempt to keep pace.

Whether the show marks a new standard in the never ending battle to make theatre accessible, relevant and meaningful to young people remains to be seen, but in terms of design, content and style it's certainly having a good go. It's a gift for Drama teachers looking for a credible yet mildly subversive big show experience to take their classes to and if you're a teenage dirtbag yourself you'll find the rebellion of Spring Awakening - the musical both moving and 'told you so' affirming.

When having your heart in the right place isn't enough...

To the Barbican to see The Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv's production of Plonter (meaning Tangle) - a collaborative piece devised by Arab and Jewish actors to portray the current tensions between Israel and Palestine. Focusing on the shooting of a Palestinian boy Khalil - the play then spirals out to explore the emotional effects of this one event on the families of both the child and the soldier who fired the gun. It follows the impact of the revenge killing of an Israeli child and even explores how the event is turned into a playground game of heroic martyrdom by Khalil's school friends.

This is all important, immediate and direct, but once again I felt I was watching socio-political theatre whilst sitting in a culturally informed audience who all understand compassionately that these violences and abuses happen. Most of us want to do something about it. None of us know what to do.

So what I didn't get, and longed for, was a sense of a potential future - be it inspired or sinister. These actors have worked together for six months and I wanted to know what more they understood, felt or anticipated about the conflict. The work was devised before the recent bombarbment of Gaza and so perhaps events have rather overtaken the companies even handed approach and brought the disproportionate power relationship between the two sides acutely into focus. However, the time is now and I felt we urgently needed insight, either a hope or a warning - I'm not sure we came away with either.

The best scene was the first where a conscientious Jewish family tries to entertain, without offending, their Arab neighbours. In the course of the uncomfortable dinner party every prejudice is revealed and every taboo about race and culture broken. It's very funny, absolutely democratic and offers a real expectation that the rest of the piece will hit hard.

Perhaps the current situation in Gaza and the settlements is just too awful ... perhaps the trauma too great, but theatre needs always to ask the difficult 'What if?' and leave the regulated media to try and reflect the current reality.

Twelfth Night

To the Wyndham's to see a stellar cast in Twelfth Night, directed by Donmar supremo Michael Grandage. I really enjoyed the production but left feeling slightly short changed. Hard to know why.

Set lightly Sur La Plage, and looking swish on a stage of stressed driftwood, the production gives ample opportunity for virtuoso performances - but perhaps the vast array of individual talent on display comes at the expense of a unified whole. It's a form of West End-itis. Excellent work from Ron Cook and Guy Henry, who use their own discrepancy in height to great comic effect as Belch and Aguecheek, whilst Victoria Hamilton's Viola pitched perfect the moments of anguish, as she struggled not to reveal her true feeling to Mark Bonnar's assured, but haunted Orsino.

Derek Jacobi is, as expected, a wonderful Malvolio, who grows stronger the deeper he is gulled. A brief moment of fear in the cell is quickly crushed on release, but his misplaced sense of new found nobility, makes it almost impossible for him to speak the word 'revenge' and he chooses instead to demonstrate his plans by violently ripping up the letter that trapped him, before straightening his shirt and walking off head held high. A dangerous psychosis - chaos to calm.

The moment though wasn't supported by the ensemble, with each character responding with their own private reaction. This may be authentic, it may even spin a new ambiguity over how we as an audience experience Malvolio at this crucial moment - but I find it lacks a basic theatricality. The little Malvolio in my own head wants the audience to be momentarily shamed by the cruelty of a joke that went too far, rather than have an opportunity to banish puritanism forever through unforgiving laughter. It just seems to fit with the rhythm of the packed final scene; the discomfort coming hot on the heels of the miraculous reunion of the twins, and moments before the lovers escape the stage, painfully reminds us that love can be as exclusive as it is wonderful which in turn sets Feste up for his final song of acceptance to the audience.

Prison Dramas

Great to see the broadsheets beginning to pick up on the dangers of the public acceptability test which I blogged about last week.

Yesterday's Independent published this article, drawing attention to the new directive.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/straw-clamps-down-on-prison-comedy-classes-1515322.html

...and this was followed up by Libby Purves in today's edition of The Times, which articulates brilliantly the rehabilitative journey.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/libby_purves/article5586556.ece

I'm delighted that support for the brilliant work that goes on in Prison arts has been galvanised and a counter attack against reactionary measure has been launched.

Elsewhere, the St.Mary's production of Yard Gal (a play initially commissioned by Clean Break to play to Prison audiences) continues to roll with news that's it's picked up Fringe Production of the Year from Fringe Report. The award ceremony is in Leicester Square in early February. Once again it demonstrates that we really do support some excellent theatrical as well as community focused work. Congratulations Stef!

Watching the News Eat Itself.

I've almost finished marking all the Ways of Seeing essays ready to pass on to the external examiner. The most popular question has been about whether the media now has enough influence over our lives to dictate reality to us. The problem with the question is that it assumes reality to be fixed - whereas our very understanding of the term evolves along with everything else. I suppose the virtual or escapist worlds of the Internet and TV might distract us from immersed forms of sensual engagement with the world - but in general I'm not sure we're clamped into a total brainwash even when 'reality' equates to a highly edited surveillance show or the news is just about the news.

This morning the BBC made a (crazy) decision in deciding not to broadcast an emergency appeal for aid to support the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, on the grounds that it would weaken their reputation for impartiality... but bizarrely the corporation has then spent the rest of the day interviewing its own journalists and managers, debating whether the decision is actually moral and, in itself, impartial. This self-doubt has ended up giving the very broadcast it decided not to broadcast a near monopoly of coverage..

I've been waiting for BBC news to broadcast the broadcast that they'd decided not to broadcast along with a voice over saying...

"We're now looking at clips from the banned BBC broadcast, which, having decided not to broadcast, we now broadcast, to demonstrate our impartiality"

It's pure Catch 22. To ban the appeal the Beeb have had to explain what the appeal is - and in the spirit of fair play (the very British interpretation of impartial) have interviewed several commentators who have given out the phone number needed to donate.

I suppose it's a result in the simple immediate terms of encouraging the public to give money and help relieve the crisis ... but it's so bigoted of director general Mark Thompson to suggest information needs to be censored to avoid political bias and so naive of the corporation not to realise their influence and own capacity for confusion.

Pathway Progress

The first year single honours students have been working on projects this week. The Theatre Arts students have been with Out of Joint's Ian Redford, developing a piece of verbatim theatre from testimonies gathered at a local care home. Meanwhile the Applied Theatre students have been working on a physical piece about tube travel with Imogen Bond, who was an associate at The Orange Tree last year and the Physical Theatre students have had five days re adapting Kafka's imaginary travelogue Amerika with Mitch Mitchelson from The Circus Space.

The work was shared at lunchtime today and was really impressive, sensitive and at times delightful. The verbatim piece had real poignancy, stories of heart attacks mistaken as practical jokes, memories of dancing and a wonderful sequence as a group of pensioners slowly read aloud a description of Obama's inauguration speech with knowing nods and the occasional 'ahhh - well good for him.'

The tube work was tight and movingly realised as a world weary traveller escaped into a fantasy sequence where his copy of the financial times morphed into a beautiful sun, flowers, a spliff from which love heart smoke rings blew and finally a beautiful girl in a pink dress who stole his heart.

Amerika was simply epic - an incredible body of work for four days. Imaginatively realised, not just full of fun, but disciplined and worked with concentration and belief.

The best of it is to realise what great potential there is in the year and when focused, committed and invested in the work, how much can be achieved in a relatively short time.

We're going to look at repeating the exercise next year - possibly as an induction exercise. It felt as if great progress had been made.

Vagabonds and Slumdogs!

Great news from the scholarship committee this morning that Ian has got start up funding to establish an in-house company, Vagabond Flag. Initially the idea is that over Easter Ian creates a director free environment with an ensemble of ten professional actors, to explore A Midsummer Night's Dream working as closely as possible to the original collaborative rehearsal conditions.

Underpinning the work is a reclamation of Shakespeare's language as the source of production decisions - a move against concept driven direction. It's an exciting plan and can lead on to all manner of research into the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage potentially including practice based research into the difference between the Quarto and Folio editions, single sex productions, the use of boy actors, different models of rehearsal, the learning of parts, doubling and original staging.

I also suspect that the relegation of the director, might unmask some interesting truths about the limitations of current production processes. The director as auteur is such a recent concept in the history of the theatre that I often wonder if it's just a phase we're going through. Will actors always need the outside eye coaching, relaying impression, validating or questioning decisions? Or do the best of them have the ability to both inhabit a role and stand aside objectively from it? I'm certain the old Commedia actors just self-regulated and let the audience shape the work through trial and error. They had to get it right or they wouldn't beg enough to eat. Is the director an indulgence? Perhaps needing to sing for your supper produces more impacting performance? Maybe the director is the inevitable consequence of bringing theatre into a building and selling tickets.

Later this evening I threw the marking to one side in favour of Slumdog Millioniare - which is an absolutely fantastic film about karma ... and how to get the girl, kill the baddies and save the entire planet! Kind of feel cinema was invented for movies like this so I hope it wins a shed load of Oscars. Today's been a day for the nice guys!