Saturday Evenings: Stay In Sit Up and Switch On

The mark of an epoch-making writer is usually measured in the effect they have on generations: past, present and future. If those who are yet to come can take ownership of a text in the same way of those who have come and gone, then the writer will have succeeded.

William Shakespeare is one of those writers.

May I peer into your soul?

This is not a post about the Bard, well; it is not a post about him in the sense of an essay or scholarly text. If that were the case the result would be a faux-scholarly treatise for I still am a novice when it comes to Shakespeare.

This column tonight is more about a fascinating new project The Guardian just put together. To mark the 400^th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death some of the more outstanding and versatile British actors were filmed performing speeches from some of his more famous plays to the camera. The outcome is mesmerising for many reasons. One was the delivery. Each actor/actress had a unique approach to Shakespeare but there was a common thread running through their performances. A beautiful common denominator that united them all. Two were the expressions. They ran the whole gamut of facial phraseology, a stunning display of rainbow-like human emotions. I switched the volume off at some point and just watched their eyes, mouths, noses, hands silently (the only sound was the constant purring of our washing machine in the background). They said as much as the words they uttered. Third were the props they used or lack of them thereof. Eileen Atkins’ glass of wine at the end of her scene is as powerful as Adrian Lester’s prop-less one-second pause after “Or to take arms against a sea of troubles/And by opposing end them.”

To watch these first six films (I believe The Guardian has commissioned more) is to be exposed to Shakespeare’s intricate nuance. The beauty of his plays was that they were rarely black-and-white. Lester’s Hamlet (below) is a good example. I love the way he plays this renowned soliloquy. He is knackered. Hamlet is beyond exhaustion. His father has been murdered by his uncle with whom his own mother is consorting. That is enough to send anyone over the edge. “To die- to sleep- /No more; and by a sleep to say we end/The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks/That flesh is heir to.” How many of us have not felt like that, at the end of our tether? Life pulling us in different directions?

I wish I had done Shakespeare properly in uni. I wish I had taught Hamlet properly, too, when I had the opportunity. The Bard not only wrote for an audience, but for the mind. The evidence is in the amount of people who read his plays without necessarily looking to attend a stage production. We all carry an internal Will. Do yourselves a favour, click on the link (in red, above) and enjoy once more this epoch-making writer.



© 2016

Next Post: “London, my London”, to be published on Wednesday 10^th February at 6pm (GMT)

'Nation' (Review)

If, like me, you're a fan of Mark Ravenhill's fortnightly columns in The Guardian and were wondering what the acclaimed playwright's been up to, I advise you to make your way down to the National Theatre, located in London's popular South Bank. There, you will be able to enjoy the quadragenarian venue's latest family show, 'Nation'.

Based on the novel of the same name by Terry Pratchett and adapted for the stage by Mark Ravenhill, 'Nation' tells the story of Daphne and Mau, two children on the cusp of adolescence who meet in very eventful and extraordinary circumstances. Daphne sails off from Britain to see her father, when a gigantic tsunami wave overthrows the ship on which she is travelling. Suddenly she finds herself on what appears at first to be a deserted island in the South Pacific. Meanwhile, on the same island, local boy Mau is in the middle of his coming-of-age ritual when the same wave catches him unawares. The meeting and eventual interaction of these two beings become the main plot in both novel and play. For Daphne this means changing her posh ways and getting used to the natives' culture. For Mau, on the other hand, it signifies premature leadership; the wave has destroyed his country and the few survivors feel desperate and hopeless. Danger comes in the form of Cox, Daphne's former butler, who is now the chief of a rival tribe and treated like a god. The ex-servant, still traumatised by the death of his five-year-old son many years before, has focused his hatred on Daphne, whom he blames for many of the ills he has suffered. In reference to 'Nation' Terry Pratchett has said that it deals with 'a boy and a girl and a parrot, and about how people tend to be very similar to other people once you get past a few insignificant differences. At one point it was a book about how the Archbishop of Canterbury might have been a cannibal chief, if he had been born in another place at another time.'

Though I bought the book at the theatre, I have yet to read it so this review is mainly focused on the play. As a spectator, I found it to be teeming with several themes, subtly presented. For instance, the big wave is a reference to the tsunami wave that brought chaos and devastation to many countries in the Indian Ocean in 2004. Creation myths are analysed through the powerful and ubiquitous presence of Imo, the God of Mau's people. Colonialism is also examined through the relationship between Daphne (the name she adopts on the island) and Mau; and also between the rest of the shipwreck survivors and the island's inhabitants.

Above all, 'Nation' is a play that moves easily between humour and tragedy and does so with quality and panache. This is down, for the most part, to excellent performances and a superb mise en scène: a rotating stage that allows multiple settings, an ingenious use of new media, imaginative props (the vultures and the giant boar are spectacular) and live music. In the leading roles both Gary Carr (Mau) and Emily Taaffe(Daphne) stand out, even if sometimes they're both overshadowed by Jason Thorpe (Milton, the foul-mouthed parrot).

That this family show premiered last year, just before the annual Yuletide jamboree should be an indication that Christmas needn't be a time to switch your brain off. At the National they're already taking care of that.

Copyright 2010

Image taken from the telegraph.co.uk




Next Post: 'Killer Opening Songs', to be published on Thursday 11th March at 11:59pm (GMT)

... as the mother of a brown boy... (Lamento Fortissimo)

We are telling a story. All stories are preciou. All stories are unique and there are universal truths to be shared in her story and the story of her brown boy (...) Above all we are telling the simple story of a mother's loss. The pain of a mother's loss is not affected by the circumstances. Loss is loss.

David Carey and Christine Niering

If you are still talking about a play a couple of hours after you have left the theatre then you know that the mise en scène was good. If you wake up the next morning and the first comment you make to your partner whilst having breakfast is related to the stage production you both saw the evening before, then you know that the piece was excellent. If you are still talking, let alone thinking about the play almost a week after, then the only words that come to mind are: sublime, exquisite, thought-provoking, mature and many others.
... as the mother of a brown boy... is one of those plays.

On 6 October 2005, Mischa Niering took part in a failed raid of Tiffany in Sloane Square in west London. Driving away from the scene on a scooter, he got caught up in a high-speed police chase and was killed. The police were later found guilty of taking insufficient safety measures during the pursuit. Niering was 19 years old.

As a consequence, Mischa's friends at the Chickenshed company (where he was once a member) developed an hour-long play that tackled some of the issues surrounding his death. The title of the play came from conversations with his mother. The heading to most of her answers was: ... as the mother of a brown boy...

The production is an ambitious project. Using white, big boxes as the only props the thirteen actors and actresses on stage use their own bodies as devices with which to propel the audience into the vortex of the conflict. Spoken words are rare, other than voice-overs. A staff member from Chicken Shed provides assistance to deaf people or people hard of hearing using sign language. A screen up above at the back of the stage, where the words from the text roll up continuously, does a similar service This frees the performers to tell the story with what I usually call an actor's raw material: their faces, their limbs, their eyes. Their eyes. Their Eyes. THEIR EYES. One of the elements that most caught my attention was the sudden changes the performers underwent from elation to despair, from defiance to meekness and how their eyes responded to that challenge so well.

The tale is a familiar one these days. Mischa, a mixed-race boy comes from a broken home; his black teenage father leaves him when he is very little, but his mother does her utmost to provide him with a modest but respectable upbringing. He does become a high achiever in school, only to go off the rails later on when he mixes with the wrong crowd. From then onwards, Mischa finds himself more and more isolated until his untimely demise. His life becomes intertwined with the white boxes that surround him and the cast, sometimes supporting him and pulling him through the most adverse situations, sometimes choking him. These white, lifeless props symbolise what Mischa's world has come to signify, a young man boxed in by race, deprivation, deficient education, housing and felony.

... as the mother of a brown boy... poses more questions than it answers. Correction. It does not answer any questions. And I liked that. Currently there are so many issues stemming from young people stabbing other young people in the streets of London that I would not have welcomed a play seeking to give a definite answer to a dilemma that has blighted so many communities, mainly the black community. What atmoabb does do is present issues in nuanced tones. Mischa is no angel and neither is he portrayed like that. But to the statement: 'The risk assessment was not conducted properly', voiced by the coroner in charge of the case, Mischa's mother can't help but ask aloud: 'And who conducted a risk assessment on my son's life when he was failing?' Tough question. No easy answers.

Unlike many of the other cases that have come to the public attention in recent weeks this play does not deal with young person on young person crime. It tackles a different issue, which, not for being dissimilar, has an easier solution. That of authority and the use of it. Are the police immune? And who are they accountable to? Jean Charles de Menezes' murder in 2005 in broad daylight in a botched terrorist raid, revealed the Metropolitan Police for what it is, a body that will stop to nothing to enforce the law. But what if the enforcement is wrongly handled? Who will pay for the error?

The play does not seek to expiate Mischa's faults. But questioning the procedures that led to Mischa's death is not, in my view, 'political correctness gone mad' but an attempt to 1) acknowledge that mistakes were made in the pursuit of the scooter Mischa was riding, 2) make the police understand this and make them pledge that they will take steps to amend this and similar problems, 3) raise awareness of human rights as per the European Convention on Human Rights and 4) address the issue as to why so many young people, mainly black boys, are falling prey to a life of crime.

Last Sunday, 8th June, the black actor Lennie James penned an open letter to the knife-carriers in the newspaper The Observer. My first thought on reading the document was whether this man I have so long admired for his thespian professionalism was not preaching to the converted. My second thought on reflecting on the readership of this particular newspaper was whether he was not, inadvertently, mind, pandering to the fears of the chattering classes who see these issues as 'the other side's problems'. Don't get me wrong. I know many a middle-class, middle-aged, white folk who go to the inner cities to share the workload and do so sincerely. But the feeling I get more often than not is that many of these people actually enjoy this moral tourism, partly because it assuages their post-colonial guilt and partly because they commute to these places, which means that they don't have to endure the living conditions most of the local residents have to put up with. Am I right or wrong in feeling like this?

Moreover, could something have been done to prevent Mischa from losing his life? The play points in different directions, the absent father, the wrong crowd, the young mother with a second child, the lack of support from the school, the racism Mischa encounters. Are these influential or determining factors? And which one(s), if any, is(are) the one(s) we need to focus on the most?

144 hours after I watched atmoabb I am still touched by the professionalism of the cast (amateurs? no way!), the light effects, the stunning music and the multimedia stagecraft. A panel discussion after the play brought a much needed lively debate on some of the issues I've highlighted above. And it was the last speaker of the night, a man who advises the police and the mayor of London on racial issues, whose words still reverberate in my mind after four days. He talked about the community's role in safeguarding our achievements and in keeping the police and other government bodies in check (he was referring to the new 'stop and search' laws in particular). Furthermore, he said very clearly that we all had responsibility for what happened in our doorsteps, because it takes a village to raise a child. To that gentleman, I say that with this review I am already contributing to that child's upbringing and I am proud of that.

... as the mother of a brown boy... is on tour now, for more information, please click here

Copyright 2008