Thursday, 16 August 2007
Thursday, 19 July 2007
Doing Data Input Whilst Listening To "The Drift" By Scott Walker
It's my last week at work. For the past two days, I've been doing a lot of data input. I've had seven A3 sheets of information to input in four days. That's one and three-quarters of a page per day. In the last two days, I've cleared four pages, so I felt able to kick back a bit today, and try a little experiment.
As I'm just doing data input, there's no harm in me listening to Emma, my mp3 player, whilst doing it. Yesterday, I listened to the first two albums by the Shins. Tuesday, I tried listening to the Wu Tang Clan, which worked oddly well. But then… I had an idea.
You see, "The Drift" by Scott Walker has been lurking on my mp3 player for a while. I listened to a bit of it a while back, but never all the way through. This was because it was a bit scary. I felt pretty bad as my friend Jessie burnt it for me specially and I really should have listened to it by now. Anyway, what would happen if I forced myself to listen to the whole of "The Drift" in an office environment? This was my challenge!
Below, you shall find my track-by-track report of listening to "The Drift" whilst doing data input. The tenses are all over the place, but I think you get a good idea of the experience that I had. It was enlightening.
Or the opposite of that. It was endarkening.
Cossacks Are
The air conditioning seems to be cranked a little higher as my challenge begins. Seriously, is it colder in here just because of the song? The thumping drums are quite good at maintaining a rhythm, though. "That's a nice suit / That's a swanky suit," sings Scott. How apt. I am wearing a suit! Thanks, man. It needs dry cleaning, though. This is going fine!
Clara
A gentle, yet threatening beginning gives way to cacophonous droning and that infamous meat-punching, punctuated by klangs of horrible guitar. It is oddly apt for the workplace. The stapler appears to be smiling at me. There's a brief respite whilst I highlight an error using a blue highlighter; the droning stops so Scott can sing about Mussolini's lover waiting for execution. This song is lending my every salary adjustment an enormous significance. Some electronic squiggling sound, accompanied by the sound of a man thwacking a side of pork, is giving me a headache. A man has started yelling - it might be in the song, it might be in the office. I can't tell. Similarly, the sound of the cleaners putting some cups in the dishwasher is strongly redolent of wartime Italy. "This is not a terrapin!" sings Scott.
Oh good. The droning is back. Scott is whispering about poking a man with a stick. I notice someone, possibly me, has categorised this album as "Classical". That might be a joke.
Dear lord, what was that?! Scott shrieked and surprised me.
Jesse
"Noseholes caked in black cocaine," trills Scott, as I repeat the same data input pattern I've been doing for three days now. Someone calls the phone on my desk, but rings off after one ring. Sinister. I probably would have been too scared to answer it, in case it was Elvis's dead twin, who this song is about. It's a slow burning song, and isn't giving me much of a rhythm to my inputting. "I'm the only one left alive! I'm the only one left alive!" howls Scott, a capella.
Jolson and Jones
Drums! Hooray! Accompanied by some electric crickets and some atonal organ. Boo. I really haven't done a lot of inputting over the last song. I need this song to help me get down to it. It is unfailingly sinister. And, unfortunately for my work, its stop-start time signatures and free-form structure doesn't really do what I need.
Ah! A crazed donkey has just started braying. "Curare, curare," sings Scott. I'm just sitting here, a little dumbfounded. I pull myself together and input the salary information of someone in the Treasury department whilst a lone piper on a blasted heath toots plaintively - about what, I do not know. But it is scary.
"I'll punch a donkey in the streets of Galway! I'll punch a donkey in the streets of Galway!" yells Scott.
Cue
Five tracks in, and I think my productivity levels have been halved. Let's hope for a nice jaunty singalong that will not invade my headspace!
No. We get threatening Holst-style strings and Scott singing on the same notes he has for the past four songs. No idea what this song is about either. I think he might have just sung "Charmed like a muscle" or "Charmed like a mussle". Someone has started hitting a box. My colleague asks for a pencil sharpener; I ask him what he means. Turns out he just wants a pencil sharpener. This song is ten and a half minutes long. Sheesh.
Woah! Horrible, horrible Psycho strings! Over and over again! Scott is singing about a fat black crocodile. This is truly horrible. The strings slide down over and over again. "Slicing the swine!" bellows Scott. There was a regular beat for a while there, but it's now stopped. Someone is playing a bugle horn.
A long lull with nothing of note happening. Well, nothing of note but CONSTANTLY BUILDING DREAD. Which comes to nothing - the song comes to a quiet halt.
Hand Me Ups
Blistering, atonal cacophony is the order of the day in the intro to this song. Following the quiet end of the previous one, it is deeply unpleasant. Gritty, distorted sine waves and someone singing inaudibly in the background. "I tried, I tried," sings Scott, "Teeth taken out with a stroke / Rain running down a long spear… I felt the nail driving into my foot! I felt the nail driving into my hand!" There's a nice saxophone bit playing in the background. A screaming sound from either a woman or a violin.
It goes without saying, this is the most unpleasant one yet.
Some atonal harpsichord is accompanied by a lute. "The audience is waiting!" croons Scott. As is my boss, waiting for me to input these numbers. Sorry, boss. This is an important experiment.
Did he just sing "bat the rat"? Is this a song about a summer fete? Oh. Probably not. He just sung about "splintering white bone". I don't remember that at a summer fete.
Buzzers
Radio static! Brilliant. That's always helpful for data input. Now, some low singing about varnishing a fort (possibly), and someone hitting a wine glass. Someone in Marketing is doing terribly well with their salary.
Scott just came up with the first actual vocal melody on the album. It's track seven! True to form, it was over the lyric "Somebody dies!" After "Hand Me Ups", this is actually quite pleasant, although at the same time - of course - unbearably tense.
Oh. I've just worked out what that lyric is. "Stick the fork in him! He's done boys!" That's really put a crimp on my enjoyment of the song.
Psoriatic
This title doesn't bode well. As it is 10.40am, I decide elevenses are appropriate. I avail myself of an over-ripe banana and a tiny can of executive lemonade and crash on with the song. This banana really is very ripe. "Jada! Jada! Jing jing jing!" sings Scott. The banana is too ripe to eat. You know when bananas are too ripe and they taste a little alcoholic, that's what this one tasted like. The lemonade is sweet and fizzy. It also claims it is "Made with real lemons!" Great.
"Here come the blankets!" sings Scott. I do like a good blanket. This song isn't so bad, perhaps because that banana was slightly more horrible than the song. The song is over. That wasn't so bad.
The banana, however, was awful.
The Escape
Before this song starts, a colleague asks me to do some work for her when I've finished inputting. I obviously look a bit suspicious. To alleviate the tension, I give her a high ten. I'm not sure that's appropriate office behaviour. My guide to what is right and what is wrong has been skewed by Scott.
I start the song. Gentle, military tattoo and quiet, threatening, descending double bass. Ah, and now skittering treated violin whilst Scott sings "You and me against the world!" I think he might be covering that Space song.
There's only one track to go! This realisation gives me hope that everything will be okay.
Dear Christ! Horrible gremlin voices! Stalking strings! This is horrible! It's like Orville is coming to kill me!
A Lover Loves
The beginning of this sounds disconcertingly like "If You Go Away". Scott psst-pssts to get my attention. Leave off, Scott! I'm trying to do data input! It is gentle, and acoustic, and rather lovely. If it wasn't for the pssting, it would be fine, but the pssting is really distracting. And then it ends.
As I'm just doing data input, there's no harm in me listening to Emma, my mp3 player, whilst doing it. Yesterday, I listened to the first two albums by the Shins. Tuesday, I tried listening to the Wu Tang Clan, which worked oddly well. But then… I had an idea.
You see, "The Drift" by Scott Walker has been lurking on my mp3 player for a while. I listened to a bit of it a while back, but never all the way through. This was because it was a bit scary. I felt pretty bad as my friend Jessie burnt it for me specially and I really should have listened to it by now. Anyway, what would happen if I forced myself to listen to the whole of "The Drift" in an office environment? This was my challenge!
Below, you shall find my track-by-track report of listening to "The Drift" whilst doing data input. The tenses are all over the place, but I think you get a good idea of the experience that I had. It was enlightening.
Or the opposite of that. It was endarkening.
Cossacks Are
The air conditioning seems to be cranked a little higher as my challenge begins. Seriously, is it colder in here just because of the song? The thumping drums are quite good at maintaining a rhythm, though. "That's a nice suit / That's a swanky suit," sings Scott. How apt. I am wearing a suit! Thanks, man. It needs dry cleaning, though. This is going fine!
Clara
A gentle, yet threatening beginning gives way to cacophonous droning and that infamous meat-punching, punctuated by klangs of horrible guitar. It is oddly apt for the workplace. The stapler appears to be smiling at me. There's a brief respite whilst I highlight an error using a blue highlighter; the droning stops so Scott can sing about Mussolini's lover waiting for execution. This song is lending my every salary adjustment an enormous significance. Some electronic squiggling sound, accompanied by the sound of a man thwacking a side of pork, is giving me a headache. A man has started yelling - it might be in the song, it might be in the office. I can't tell. Similarly, the sound of the cleaners putting some cups in the dishwasher is strongly redolent of wartime Italy. "This is not a terrapin!" sings Scott.
Oh good. The droning is back. Scott is whispering about poking a man with a stick. I notice someone, possibly me, has categorised this album as "Classical". That might be a joke.
Dear lord, what was that?! Scott shrieked and surprised me.
Jesse
"Noseholes caked in black cocaine," trills Scott, as I repeat the same data input pattern I've been doing for three days now. Someone calls the phone on my desk, but rings off after one ring. Sinister. I probably would have been too scared to answer it, in case it was Elvis's dead twin, who this song is about. It's a slow burning song, and isn't giving me much of a rhythm to my inputting. "I'm the only one left alive! I'm the only one left alive!" howls Scott, a capella.
Jolson and Jones
Drums! Hooray! Accompanied by some electric crickets and some atonal organ. Boo. I really haven't done a lot of inputting over the last song. I need this song to help me get down to it. It is unfailingly sinister. And, unfortunately for my work, its stop-start time signatures and free-form structure doesn't really do what I need.
Ah! A crazed donkey has just started braying. "Curare, curare," sings Scott. I'm just sitting here, a little dumbfounded. I pull myself together and input the salary information of someone in the Treasury department whilst a lone piper on a blasted heath toots plaintively - about what, I do not know. But it is scary.
"I'll punch a donkey in the streets of Galway! I'll punch a donkey in the streets of Galway!" yells Scott.
Cue
Five tracks in, and I think my productivity levels have been halved. Let's hope for a nice jaunty singalong that will not invade my headspace!
No. We get threatening Holst-style strings and Scott singing on the same notes he has for the past four songs. No idea what this song is about either. I think he might have just sung "Charmed like a muscle" or "Charmed like a mussle". Someone has started hitting a box. My colleague asks for a pencil sharpener; I ask him what he means. Turns out he just wants a pencil sharpener. This song is ten and a half minutes long. Sheesh.
Woah! Horrible, horrible Psycho strings! Over and over again! Scott is singing about a fat black crocodile. This is truly horrible. The strings slide down over and over again. "Slicing the swine!" bellows Scott. There was a regular beat for a while there, but it's now stopped. Someone is playing a bugle horn.
A long lull with nothing of note happening. Well, nothing of note but CONSTANTLY BUILDING DREAD. Which comes to nothing - the song comes to a quiet halt.
Hand Me Ups
Blistering, atonal cacophony is the order of the day in the intro to this song. Following the quiet end of the previous one, it is deeply unpleasant. Gritty, distorted sine waves and someone singing inaudibly in the background. "I tried, I tried," sings Scott, "Teeth taken out with a stroke / Rain running down a long spear… I felt the nail driving into my foot! I felt the nail driving into my hand!" There's a nice saxophone bit playing in the background. A screaming sound from either a woman or a violin.
It goes without saying, this is the most unpleasant one yet.
Some atonal harpsichord is accompanied by a lute. "The audience is waiting!" croons Scott. As is my boss, waiting for me to input these numbers. Sorry, boss. This is an important experiment.
Did he just sing "bat the rat"? Is this a song about a summer fete? Oh. Probably not. He just sung about "splintering white bone". I don't remember that at a summer fete.
Buzzers
Radio static! Brilliant. That's always helpful for data input. Now, some low singing about varnishing a fort (possibly), and someone hitting a wine glass. Someone in Marketing is doing terribly well with their salary.
Scott just came up with the first actual vocal melody on the album. It's track seven! True to form, it was over the lyric "Somebody dies!" After "Hand Me Ups", this is actually quite pleasant, although at the same time - of course - unbearably tense.
Oh. I've just worked out what that lyric is. "Stick the fork in him! He's done boys!" That's really put a crimp on my enjoyment of the song.
Psoriatic
This title doesn't bode well. As it is 10.40am, I decide elevenses are appropriate. I avail myself of an over-ripe banana and a tiny can of executive lemonade and crash on with the song. This banana really is very ripe. "Jada! Jada! Jing jing jing!" sings Scott. The banana is too ripe to eat. You know when bananas are too ripe and they taste a little alcoholic, that's what this one tasted like. The lemonade is sweet and fizzy. It also claims it is "Made with real lemons!" Great.
"Here come the blankets!" sings Scott. I do like a good blanket. This song isn't so bad, perhaps because that banana was slightly more horrible than the song. The song is over. That wasn't so bad.
The banana, however, was awful.
The Escape
Before this song starts, a colleague asks me to do some work for her when I've finished inputting. I obviously look a bit suspicious. To alleviate the tension, I give her a high ten. I'm not sure that's appropriate office behaviour. My guide to what is right and what is wrong has been skewed by Scott.
I start the song. Gentle, military tattoo and quiet, threatening, descending double bass. Ah, and now skittering treated violin whilst Scott sings "You and me against the world!" I think he might be covering that Space song.
There's only one track to go! This realisation gives me hope that everything will be okay.
Dear Christ! Horrible gremlin voices! Stalking strings! This is horrible! It's like Orville is coming to kill me!
A Lover Loves
The beginning of this sounds disconcertingly like "If You Go Away". Scott psst-pssts to get my attention. Leave off, Scott! I'm trying to do data input! It is gentle, and acoustic, and rather lovely. If it wasn't for the pssting, it would be fine, but the pssting is really distracting. And then it ends.
Wednesday, 20 June 2007
"Dirty Birds" by Kat Flint
I've been fortunate enough to be given a copy of Kat Flint's forthcoming album "Dirty Birds", and I hereby attempt to influence you to purchase it, when you can. It's very good. Songs such as "Ohio" and "Lonesome Crowd" contain an emotional sucker punch in the same vein as Sufjan Stevens' "John Wayne Gacy". Like Stevens, Flint is a storyteller, detailing the journey between a rural idyll and the grimy city - the title track namechecks Soho before commenting knowingly that this "is where TV came to die". She is an exemplary lyricist, often seeming to write in character - a commentator on her surroundings, with the confidence to raise a weary eyebrow at the weaknesses and foibles of a screwed-up world. Some points in the album are exceptionally upsetting - always beautiful, charming, and welcoming, but incredibly emotional and heartwrenching. For the album, Flint has welded her Aimee Mann-ly glumness to a powerful musical engine, crisp string arrangements, tinkly glockenspiel and lovely picked guitar, and the songs occasionally launch into Bright Eyes-esque choral sing-a-longs. There are lots of highlights - my personal favourite track is "Saddest Blue Dress", a tender and raw song about an extra-marital affair that concludes, agonisingly, "all my children will smile like the first time we met / It's alright…" - it's blisteringly sad.
I believe it will be out soon, but do check her myspace for details of when - it is a silvery disc to cherish.
http://www.myspace.com/katflint
I believe it will be out soon, but do check her myspace for details of when - it is a silvery disc to cherish.
http://www.myspace.com/katflint
Wednesday, 21 March 2007
Don't Look Now, Lyric Hammersmith
(Written for Culture Wars)
So, here's a quandary: how do you adapt something that has already been definitively adapted? Lucy Bailey and Nell Leyshon's reversion of "Don't Look Now" takes the bold step of eschewing changes made by Nicolas Roeg in his highly-thought-of 1973 film adaptation, and returning to Daphne du Maurier's original short story.
The slow-burning first half is moodily effective and genuinely entertaining. John and Laura return to Venice, where they spent their honeymoon, to get over the death of their daughter Christine. Leyshon's script reinstates Christine's death being caused by meningitis, and not the shocking drowning of Roeg's film. Set by Bailey in a gigantic copper box, with gorgeous lighting by Chris Davey, it's a creepy, atmospheric world, with tables and other settings sliding queasily from one side of the stage to the other.
It isn't, however, Venice. Of course, having large amounts of water on stage is a bloody hard thing to achieve. Here we have some lovely rippling reflections on the walls, and some undeniably pretty theatre rain. (Man, I love theatre rain. If you're making a play that I'm going to review, add some theatre rain. I guarantee you a whole extra star on your star rating.) But without the constant eerie presence of the waterways, everything feels a little dry and safe. It becomes apparent why Roeg made his alteration to the way Christine died ? to recover from your child's drowning by visiting a city built on waterways is a pleasing dramatic irony; how could John and Laura be so stupid to think that going there was a good idea? Next time, dudes, go to the Gobi Desert! The creeping dread of water for the characters is absent, and so the location, something utterly key to both original text and cinema adaptation, cannot be delivered.
The first half contains a brilliant performance by Susie Trayling as Laura, trying desperately hard to remain upbeat, whilst occasionally letting the facade break, particularly after meeting the weird psychic sisters who let her know of the ominous warnings of her dead child. Trayling's Laura clings desperately, optimistically, to any thread of hope, and the second half misses her, as she returns to Britain to attend to the appendicitis of her son.
Simon Paisley Day, as John, has a trickier time. Stoic and stiff-upper-lipped in the first half, the cracking of his facade in the second half, as scripted, is more melodramatic and explicit. He is haunted by a child in a red coat, perhaps the ghost of his dead daughter, and beset by any number of Italian buffoons who occasionally slip into oblique pronouncements from the underworld. Day's performance is a little fussy, and never quite manages to achieve either the sensitive breakdown of Trayling or the large-scale grandstanding that must surely have been a temptation. The second half suffers because John isn't really the one we're interested in in the first half. He's a petty Englishman, more interested in saving face and being frustrated that none of the Italians will humour his stilted attempts to master their language, and as such the emotional core of the second half is absent.
Joanna McCallum and Susan Woolridge are quietly effective as the twin psychics, but don't have a huge amount to do. The locals of Venice are very broadly drawn, with fun little sketches of a hotel butler and a rambunctious restauranteur seeming out of place when set against the moodiness of the main story. John's psychic tormenting by the sinister Italians in his head late on in Act Two, however, feels a little xenophobic, and exposes the datedness of du Maurier's text. This is compounded by the giggling, demonic little person, psychotically pleased with her hobby of murdering tourists, which raised my 21st Century political correctness hackles.
An interesting experiment, then. In the programme, it is stated that Bailey was looking to devise an original ghost story, but eventually settled on "Don't Look Now". Part of me wishes that Bailey and Leyshon's obvious talents had been employed on that original story, if only to avoid the pitfalls of the burden of the film, the tinges of datedness and the difficulty of getting Venice across on stage.
So, here's a quandary: how do you adapt something that has already been definitively adapted? Lucy Bailey and Nell Leyshon's reversion of "Don't Look Now" takes the bold step of eschewing changes made by Nicolas Roeg in his highly-thought-of 1973 film adaptation, and returning to Daphne du Maurier's original short story.
The slow-burning first half is moodily effective and genuinely entertaining. John and Laura return to Venice, where they spent their honeymoon, to get over the death of their daughter Christine. Leyshon's script reinstates Christine's death being caused by meningitis, and not the shocking drowning of Roeg's film. Set by Bailey in a gigantic copper box, with gorgeous lighting by Chris Davey, it's a creepy, atmospheric world, with tables and other settings sliding queasily from one side of the stage to the other.
It isn't, however, Venice. Of course, having large amounts of water on stage is a bloody hard thing to achieve. Here we have some lovely rippling reflections on the walls, and some undeniably pretty theatre rain. (Man, I love theatre rain. If you're making a play that I'm going to review, add some theatre rain. I guarantee you a whole extra star on your star rating.) But without the constant eerie presence of the waterways, everything feels a little dry and safe. It becomes apparent why Roeg made his alteration to the way Christine died ? to recover from your child's drowning by visiting a city built on waterways is a pleasing dramatic irony; how could John and Laura be so stupid to think that going there was a good idea? Next time, dudes, go to the Gobi Desert! The creeping dread of water for the characters is absent, and so the location, something utterly key to both original text and cinema adaptation, cannot be delivered.
The first half contains a brilliant performance by Susie Trayling as Laura, trying desperately hard to remain upbeat, whilst occasionally letting the facade break, particularly after meeting the weird psychic sisters who let her know of the ominous warnings of her dead child. Trayling's Laura clings desperately, optimistically, to any thread of hope, and the second half misses her, as she returns to Britain to attend to the appendicitis of her son.
Simon Paisley Day, as John, has a trickier time. Stoic and stiff-upper-lipped in the first half, the cracking of his facade in the second half, as scripted, is more melodramatic and explicit. He is haunted by a child in a red coat, perhaps the ghost of his dead daughter, and beset by any number of Italian buffoons who occasionally slip into oblique pronouncements from the underworld. Day's performance is a little fussy, and never quite manages to achieve either the sensitive breakdown of Trayling or the large-scale grandstanding that must surely have been a temptation. The second half suffers because John isn't really the one we're interested in in the first half. He's a petty Englishman, more interested in saving face and being frustrated that none of the Italians will humour his stilted attempts to master their language, and as such the emotional core of the second half is absent.
Joanna McCallum and Susan Woolridge are quietly effective as the twin psychics, but don't have a huge amount to do. The locals of Venice are very broadly drawn, with fun little sketches of a hotel butler and a rambunctious restauranteur seeming out of place when set against the moodiness of the main story. John's psychic tormenting by the sinister Italians in his head late on in Act Two, however, feels a little xenophobic, and exposes the datedness of du Maurier's text. This is compounded by the giggling, demonic little person, psychotically pleased with her hobby of murdering tourists, which raised my 21st Century political correctness hackles.
An interesting experiment, then. In the programme, it is stated that Bailey was looking to devise an original ghost story, but eventually settled on "Don't Look Now". Part of me wishes that Bailey and Leyshon's obvious talents had been employed on that original story, if only to avoid the pitfalls of the burden of the film, the tinges of datedness and the difficulty of getting Venice across on stage.
Friday, 27 October 2006
The Good, The Bad & The Queen, The Roundhouse
If I love anything, I love free stuff most of all. Especially if that free stuff is booze and finger food. I'm mad for that shit. Last night's The Good, The Bad and The Queen gig, part of the BBC Electric Proms was notable mainly not for the return of Damon Albarn to the live fold; notable not for his newly-assembled band, including Fela Kuti drummer Tony Allen and Clash bassist Paul Simonon; notable not even for the newly spraunced-up Roundhouse. No, it was notable for the free booze and finger food.
Armed with a pink wristband, to denote how much better than everyone else we were, we marched into the VIP holding pen at about 6.30pm, giving us a full hour's worth of drinking before the first support. I chose beer, my friend chose white wine. There were some nice hors d'oeuvres as well - butterflied king prawns atop little bread, beef atop little bread, and the audacious sundried tomato filled with mozzarella. The best tactic for eating the sundried tomato was to whack the whole thing in your gob and then manage somehow. Those suckers were juicy. As I was wearing a white shirt, I decided that spillages on that white shirt would not be a good look for the night. More on that later.
The bar was filled mainly with disgusting liggers like myself. One poor guy in a sweatshirt was actively trying to network. What a loon.
At 7.30pm, the first support act started. His name was Young Tiger and he was neither young nor tigerish. He was 85, sat in a chair, walked with a stick, and read his lyrics off sheets of paper. He was accompanied by a six piece band, called the London Is The Place For Me Ensemble (crazy name, crazy guys!), who played the sort of music that only Damon Albarn and well-meaning women in tie-dye like. Apart from his final song, which was very catchy. It was called "At the Coronation" and the chorus went "I was there! / At the coronation / I was there! / At the coronation / Were you there? / At the coronation / Millions there! / At the coronation". The song was so catchy that if you cut me in half now, the words would be written through my torso like I was a stick of rock.
After Young Tiger, more drinking. The hors d'oeuvres had mysteriously dried up. My companion spilt his white wine all over a mirrored plinth and spent much of this break trying to mop it up.
Next up, Jamie T. Described as a white, British, urban rapper, I was disappointed to discover Jamie T sounded almost inseparably like the Arctic Monkeys. We lasted but three of his awful tracks, before sloping off to the bar, commenting that the songs would have really been improved by some sort of tune.
There were less people in the bar than in the interval, but not much less. Jamie T's howling was obviously not to everyone's tastes. Still no hors d'oeuvres, but by now Edith Bowman had turned up. I think she'd lost quite a bit of weight. She didn't look so good.
After Jamie T had finished, the bar filled up again. By this point, both myself and my companion were - not to put too fine a point on it - pretty drunk.
We took our seats for The Good, The Bad and The Queen. You know, every time I type that name, I want it to be better. It's a really shit name. In fact, whenever I type that name, I really hope it ends in a different way. "Please," I think, "let this end differently." I feel the same way when watching "Othello". This is a marker of how awesomely tragic this band name is. It's a total howler.
I'm not even kidding. If this band name was a kitten, I would throw it from some castle railings onto a spike.
But never mind the band name, what do they sound like?
I mean, seriously? What a shit name. It even makes an ugly-looking abbreviation. TGTBATQ. Bleurgh.
The band sound pretty much as you'd expect when half your band is Damon Albarn and Simon Tong, the guy who took over live guitar duties from Graham Coxon for "Think Tank"-era Blur. It sounds like the more droney aspects of Gorillaz, the sort of songs that - though you can't hear the lyrics through the fug of toothless Anglicised Afrobeat - are probably about how bad war is. Like, duh. One of the songs started something like "I wrote this song two years ago / Upon the Goldhawk Road". Blee. Why doesn't Damon tell us about the Nandos at Shepherd's Bush, or that time he went to Homebase?
Tony Allen's drumming is a huge non-event, with him soporifically padding his way through the songs, without ever truly kicking them into any kind of life. Paul Simonon throws punk shapes, whilst his bass fuzzes ineffectually away. At one point a rapper comes on, speaks unintelligibly for about twenty seconds, and then leaves. He isn't really part of the band. In fact, he might have been a lone stage invader. It was difficult to tell.
The gig is momentarily livened by Albarn stopping a song twice, telling the rest of the band off and saying "We can play that song better than that!" before jumping around. Tony Allen looks amused at his petulance. Albarn is wearing a top hat. I haven't liked Damon since his po-faced interview in the Britpop documentary "Live Forever", in which he morosely plinked away on a ukulele whilst trying to dodge the fact that he was largely to blame for the "Country House"/"Roll With It" shenanigans. This gig didn't change my mind.
The main problem with TGTBATQ, is that old chestnut: tunes. Actual Tunes were sorely in absence, with emphasis instead placed on turgid loops wobbling onto a stage, then falling off it again with almost no difference to the world. These were songs that made you realise the pointlessness of music. Why did these things exist? What did they come here for? Why were they hurting me?
After the gig, the liggers pour back into the bar. Weirdly, the staff bring round little bowls of beef stew and mash, which I really really wanted badly. The fork was way too big for the bowl, though, and as I took it, the fork catapulted beef stew at my white shirt. As I changed my shirt in the gents, someone accused me of being gay entertainment. By this point, my companion could barely stand. Having drunk only beer, I was marginally more in control of my faculties, so it was my job to get him home. In the end, he went to his girlfriend's, and I was left to ponder the gig.
Most heavy nights of drinking make you never want to drink again. Last night made me want to only drink again, just so I can blot out the bitter truth that I live in a world where music as unquestionably balls as this is actually applauded. Now, you could argue that it was the drink that made me not enjoy this gig, but I would argue that it was the gig that made me not enjoy the drink. That, and that the music was unquestionably balls. It made me want to call my ears liars, as no sound could possibly be as bad as it sounded like to me. It couldn't have been that bad.
Still, did I mention there was free food and booze? Whichever genius thought up that diversionary tactic deserves a raise.
Armed with a pink wristband, to denote how much better than everyone else we were, we marched into the VIP holding pen at about 6.30pm, giving us a full hour's worth of drinking before the first support. I chose beer, my friend chose white wine. There were some nice hors d'oeuvres as well - butterflied king prawns atop little bread, beef atop little bread, and the audacious sundried tomato filled with mozzarella. The best tactic for eating the sundried tomato was to whack the whole thing in your gob and then manage somehow. Those suckers were juicy. As I was wearing a white shirt, I decided that spillages on that white shirt would not be a good look for the night. More on that later.
The bar was filled mainly with disgusting liggers like myself. One poor guy in a sweatshirt was actively trying to network. What a loon.
At 7.30pm, the first support act started. His name was Young Tiger and he was neither young nor tigerish. He was 85, sat in a chair, walked with a stick, and read his lyrics off sheets of paper. He was accompanied by a six piece band, called the London Is The Place For Me Ensemble (crazy name, crazy guys!), who played the sort of music that only Damon Albarn and well-meaning women in tie-dye like. Apart from his final song, which was very catchy. It was called "At the Coronation" and the chorus went "I was there! / At the coronation / I was there! / At the coronation / Were you there? / At the coronation / Millions there! / At the coronation". The song was so catchy that if you cut me in half now, the words would be written through my torso like I was a stick of rock.
After Young Tiger, more drinking. The hors d'oeuvres had mysteriously dried up. My companion spilt his white wine all over a mirrored plinth and spent much of this break trying to mop it up.
Next up, Jamie T. Described as a white, British, urban rapper, I was disappointed to discover Jamie T sounded almost inseparably like the Arctic Monkeys. We lasted but three of his awful tracks, before sloping off to the bar, commenting that the songs would have really been improved by some sort of tune.
There were less people in the bar than in the interval, but not much less. Jamie T's howling was obviously not to everyone's tastes. Still no hors d'oeuvres, but by now Edith Bowman had turned up. I think she'd lost quite a bit of weight. She didn't look so good.
After Jamie T had finished, the bar filled up again. By this point, both myself and my companion were - not to put too fine a point on it - pretty drunk.
We took our seats for The Good, The Bad and The Queen. You know, every time I type that name, I want it to be better. It's a really shit name. In fact, whenever I type that name, I really hope it ends in a different way. "Please," I think, "let this end differently." I feel the same way when watching "Othello". This is a marker of how awesomely tragic this band name is. It's a total howler.
I'm not even kidding. If this band name was a kitten, I would throw it from some castle railings onto a spike.
But never mind the band name, what do they sound like?
I mean, seriously? What a shit name. It even makes an ugly-looking abbreviation. TGTBATQ. Bleurgh.
The band sound pretty much as you'd expect when half your band is Damon Albarn and Simon Tong, the guy who took over live guitar duties from Graham Coxon for "Think Tank"-era Blur. It sounds like the more droney aspects of Gorillaz, the sort of songs that - though you can't hear the lyrics through the fug of toothless Anglicised Afrobeat - are probably about how bad war is. Like, duh. One of the songs started something like "I wrote this song two years ago / Upon the Goldhawk Road". Blee. Why doesn't Damon tell us about the Nandos at Shepherd's Bush, or that time he went to Homebase?
Tony Allen's drumming is a huge non-event, with him soporifically padding his way through the songs, without ever truly kicking them into any kind of life. Paul Simonon throws punk shapes, whilst his bass fuzzes ineffectually away. At one point a rapper comes on, speaks unintelligibly for about twenty seconds, and then leaves. He isn't really part of the band. In fact, he might have been a lone stage invader. It was difficult to tell.
The gig is momentarily livened by Albarn stopping a song twice, telling the rest of the band off and saying "We can play that song better than that!" before jumping around. Tony Allen looks amused at his petulance. Albarn is wearing a top hat. I haven't liked Damon since his po-faced interview in the Britpop documentary "Live Forever", in which he morosely plinked away on a ukulele whilst trying to dodge the fact that he was largely to blame for the "Country House"/"Roll With It" shenanigans. This gig didn't change my mind.
The main problem with TGTBATQ, is that old chestnut: tunes. Actual Tunes were sorely in absence, with emphasis instead placed on turgid loops wobbling onto a stage, then falling off it again with almost no difference to the world. These were songs that made you realise the pointlessness of music. Why did these things exist? What did they come here for? Why were they hurting me?
After the gig, the liggers pour back into the bar. Weirdly, the staff bring round little bowls of beef stew and mash, which I really really wanted badly. The fork was way too big for the bowl, though, and as I took it, the fork catapulted beef stew at my white shirt. As I changed my shirt in the gents, someone accused me of being gay entertainment. By this point, my companion could barely stand. Having drunk only beer, I was marginally more in control of my faculties, so it was my job to get him home. In the end, he went to his girlfriend's, and I was left to ponder the gig.
Most heavy nights of drinking make you never want to drink again. Last night made me want to only drink again, just so I can blot out the bitter truth that I live in a world where music as unquestionably balls as this is actually applauded. Now, you could argue that it was the drink that made me not enjoy this gig, but I would argue that it was the gig that made me not enjoy the drink. That, and that the music was unquestionably balls. It made me want to call my ears liars, as no sound could possibly be as bad as it sounded like to me. It couldn't have been that bad.
Still, did I mention there was free food and booze? Whichever genius thought up that diversionary tactic deserves a raise.
Wednesday, 28 June 2006
On The Third Day, New Ambassadors Theatre
(Written for Culture Wars)
On the first day, God made the light and the dark, and saw that it was good. On the second day, a camera crew turned up at God's house. 'What's going on here?' said God. 'And who's that guy?' 'Him?' said the producer, 'That's Graham. He's from Kent. We're here to film a reality show called "Can You Make The Light And The Dark Better Than God?" It's reality, but - you know - highbrow.'
For avoidance of all doubt, that's not the play. That's my silly little joke. On The Third Day is, of course, the winning play from Channel 4's theatrical reality TV show The Play's The Thing. I was sent to see this play because Culture Wars knows that I am simple-minded, that I appreciate the lowbrow, and that I love tacky gimmicks and TV tie-ins. I had some time free before the show and I ate hamburgers! From Burger King! I couldn't be more suited to watch this play! I entered the theatre expecting (hoping! praying!) for the theatrical equivalent of Steve Brookstein! Or Gareth Gates!
Anyway, here's the plot of the actual play. Claire is a presenter at Greenwich Planetarium, who goes to a bar one night and brings back Mike, with whom she wants to lose her virginity. Unfortunately, he turns out to be Jesus. Whoops! I don't think He's putting out on the first date! Mike's presence forces her to confront the death of her parents, her troubled relationship with her brother, and, like, whether the Jesus dude is crazy or not.
It's important to get this out of the way: the play is not a disaster. (Oh, you can smell the disappointment from the bitchy elements of the audience! It's almost worth going just for that.) It's a mess, but it's not a disaster. The main problem with On The Third Day is - predictably - the immaturity of the playwright. Betts is wildly ambitious in the way first-time playwrights can be, chucking ideas at the stage without ever knowing quite how to make them pay off. Divinity, delusion, insanity, self-harm, incest, guilt, suicide, ghost rape, potholing, Elvis - it's a busy, restless piece which never achieves the cohesion it needs.
The first half almost - almost! - works, mainly because it is built around the relationship of the central characters, Claire and Mike. Maxine Peake gives a very nice performance of the timid side of Claire, drunkenly attempting to seduce Mike (Paul Hilton) after dragging him home from a bar. Kate Betts writes a nice line in snappy dialogue, which Peake and Hilton have fun with. In particular, Betts is a fan of coy one-liners alluding to Mike's past life as Jesus. There's a lot of these. In fact, you could probably play 'Jesus Joke Bingo', just by sitting there with a copy of the New Testament and ticking them off as they came out. When Mike referred to some overcooked fish being 'a burnt offering', I think I got my full house.
The flashbacks to Claire and her brother Robbie as children interested me much less than the present day, domestic business. I don't think I need to tell you, oh intelligent reader, that there are subtler ways to impart exposition than the flashback. One episode of The Play's The Thing I saw involved the playwright Stephen Jeffreys telling the finalist writers about the three unities of time, place and action. I wish he'd pressed his case a little more firmly, as the second half takes much of the nice domestic stuff that I liked a lot and trashes it, in favour of massive caves, food fights, singing, and some more rape. It's scrappy stuff, and unsatisfying. Like Russell T Davies' 2003 ITV drama The Second Coming, Betts has the problem that she has brought Jesus into a modern world and now doesn't know what she's going to do with him.
Davies had the temerity to kill off Our Lord (how can the same shit happen to the same guy twice, right?), but Betts opts for that old classic: he just wanders off. Probably to Heaven. The performers find it difficult to attain the dramatic peaks that the histrionics in the text demand, because of dizzying leaps in the text from high drama to subtle comedy and back. In the climactic restaurant scene there's some horrible stage direction, and the mere presence of Elvis at the dinner table turns it into exactly the sort of cheaply absurd play that I imagine producer Sonia Friedman set out to avoid. Revelations happen at a pace that suggests the characters are eager to get to the end of the play. How meta-theatrical! It's such a shame. The occasional glimmers of promise in the first half are all squandered.
Thematically, there's no real sense that Betts is engaging with her subject matter. She's assembling An Important And Symbolic Play from a list of variables; writing not what she feels, but what she thinks theatre is. I have no idea what Betts actually thinks about God, or Jesus, or even Christianity. I have no idea what she wants us to think about these things. In fact, I think the moral of the story, to paraphrase Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, is 'Be Excellent To Each Other'. The other strands of the story are somehow even less clearly defined. Claire's self-harm is gratuitous and a cheap device to show that she is, like, really upset. Claire's brother Robbie is so unsympathetic, I was left hoping Jesus committed murder by snipping his potholing ropes with scissors, which would have been out-of-character for Christ to say the least.
Theatrically, we get vaulting ambition. Throughout the series of The Play's The Thing, Sonia Friedman fretted that the final chosen play wouldn't be big enough for the West End. She disparaged plays for only being suitable for the Royal Court and encouraged her writers to think boldly to escape the deadly trap of… shudder as you say it… fringe theatre. The net result is a play punching above its weight. The design of the play is all huge projections and sofas floating onto stage mysteriously pushed by no-one; the sound design is big whooshy noises and Holst; and the script is more, more, more! It's a lie, anyway, this notion that the West End can only cope with big plays. The last play I saw on the stage of the New Ambassadors was Frank McGuinness' Someone Who'll Watch Over Me, and that's just three blokes chained to radiators.
It just saddens me. Given a proper dramaturgical going-over, this would probably be quite a good play, if shorn of flashbacks and given a tighter, claustrophobic focus. Because of the time constraints of the programme, the play has been rushed onto a stage, publicly, painfully, and I don't believe it's ready. There are glaring things in the play that could have been sorted out really easily by a skilled dramaturg - like Young Claire having a bossy character that diametrically opposes her timid older counterpart. The characters need a lot of psychological fleshing-out, and factual definition - the writer is dealing with huge, complicated human issues, and has no real idea of how to make a subject like incest both dramatically viable and psychologically 'real'.
The point of this project was to offer someone a chance to put their play on in the West End, but the script selection process used by theatres and literary agents is there for a purpose. It guarantees a play is stage-worthy by the time a paying audience sees it. The Play's The Thing promised support for a new writer, but it has actually given the writer less support, and placed more pressure on her to make something extraordinary. This doesn't seem like much of a prize.
I really hope Kate Betts gets another play put on soon, and is not crushed by this ludicrous, unreal pressure upon her as a first-time writer. As it is, the whole project seems like an immense effort for scant reward. Too silly to be appreciated by sniffy regular theatregoers, with too much incest for people who watched The Play's The Thing while waiting for Big Brother to come on, On The Third Day is a bit of a curio; a play that manages to miss every target market. This play isn't the thing - it's not good, but it's not a pleasingly-trashy disaster, and it's all a bit upsetting, really.
On the first day, God made the light and the dark, and saw that it was good. On the second day, a camera crew turned up at God's house. 'What's going on here?' said God. 'And who's that guy?' 'Him?' said the producer, 'That's Graham. He's from Kent. We're here to film a reality show called "Can You Make The Light And The Dark Better Than God?" It's reality, but - you know - highbrow.'
For avoidance of all doubt, that's not the play. That's my silly little joke. On The Third Day is, of course, the winning play from Channel 4's theatrical reality TV show The Play's The Thing. I was sent to see this play because Culture Wars knows that I am simple-minded, that I appreciate the lowbrow, and that I love tacky gimmicks and TV tie-ins. I had some time free before the show and I ate hamburgers! From Burger King! I couldn't be more suited to watch this play! I entered the theatre expecting (hoping! praying!) for the theatrical equivalent of Steve Brookstein! Or Gareth Gates!
Anyway, here's the plot of the actual play. Claire is a presenter at Greenwich Planetarium, who goes to a bar one night and brings back Mike, with whom she wants to lose her virginity. Unfortunately, he turns out to be Jesus. Whoops! I don't think He's putting out on the first date! Mike's presence forces her to confront the death of her parents, her troubled relationship with her brother, and, like, whether the Jesus dude is crazy or not.
It's important to get this out of the way: the play is not a disaster. (Oh, you can smell the disappointment from the bitchy elements of the audience! It's almost worth going just for that.) It's a mess, but it's not a disaster. The main problem with On The Third Day is - predictably - the immaturity of the playwright. Betts is wildly ambitious in the way first-time playwrights can be, chucking ideas at the stage without ever knowing quite how to make them pay off. Divinity, delusion, insanity, self-harm, incest, guilt, suicide, ghost rape, potholing, Elvis - it's a busy, restless piece which never achieves the cohesion it needs.
The first half almost - almost! - works, mainly because it is built around the relationship of the central characters, Claire and Mike. Maxine Peake gives a very nice performance of the timid side of Claire, drunkenly attempting to seduce Mike (Paul Hilton) after dragging him home from a bar. Kate Betts writes a nice line in snappy dialogue, which Peake and Hilton have fun with. In particular, Betts is a fan of coy one-liners alluding to Mike's past life as Jesus. There's a lot of these. In fact, you could probably play 'Jesus Joke Bingo', just by sitting there with a copy of the New Testament and ticking them off as they came out. When Mike referred to some overcooked fish being 'a burnt offering', I think I got my full house.
The flashbacks to Claire and her brother Robbie as children interested me much less than the present day, domestic business. I don't think I need to tell you, oh intelligent reader, that there are subtler ways to impart exposition than the flashback. One episode of The Play's The Thing I saw involved the playwright Stephen Jeffreys telling the finalist writers about the three unities of time, place and action. I wish he'd pressed his case a little more firmly, as the second half takes much of the nice domestic stuff that I liked a lot and trashes it, in favour of massive caves, food fights, singing, and some more rape. It's scrappy stuff, and unsatisfying. Like Russell T Davies' 2003 ITV drama The Second Coming, Betts has the problem that she has brought Jesus into a modern world and now doesn't know what she's going to do with him.
Davies had the temerity to kill off Our Lord (how can the same shit happen to the same guy twice, right?), but Betts opts for that old classic: he just wanders off. Probably to Heaven. The performers find it difficult to attain the dramatic peaks that the histrionics in the text demand, because of dizzying leaps in the text from high drama to subtle comedy and back. In the climactic restaurant scene there's some horrible stage direction, and the mere presence of Elvis at the dinner table turns it into exactly the sort of cheaply absurd play that I imagine producer Sonia Friedman set out to avoid. Revelations happen at a pace that suggests the characters are eager to get to the end of the play. How meta-theatrical! It's such a shame. The occasional glimmers of promise in the first half are all squandered.
Thematically, there's no real sense that Betts is engaging with her subject matter. She's assembling An Important And Symbolic Play from a list of variables; writing not what she feels, but what she thinks theatre is. I have no idea what Betts actually thinks about God, or Jesus, or even Christianity. I have no idea what she wants us to think about these things. In fact, I think the moral of the story, to paraphrase Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, is 'Be Excellent To Each Other'. The other strands of the story are somehow even less clearly defined. Claire's self-harm is gratuitous and a cheap device to show that she is, like, really upset. Claire's brother Robbie is so unsympathetic, I was left hoping Jesus committed murder by snipping his potholing ropes with scissors, which would have been out-of-character for Christ to say the least.
Theatrically, we get vaulting ambition. Throughout the series of The Play's The Thing, Sonia Friedman fretted that the final chosen play wouldn't be big enough for the West End. She disparaged plays for only being suitable for the Royal Court and encouraged her writers to think boldly to escape the deadly trap of… shudder as you say it… fringe theatre. The net result is a play punching above its weight. The design of the play is all huge projections and sofas floating onto stage mysteriously pushed by no-one; the sound design is big whooshy noises and Holst; and the script is more, more, more! It's a lie, anyway, this notion that the West End can only cope with big plays. The last play I saw on the stage of the New Ambassadors was Frank McGuinness' Someone Who'll Watch Over Me, and that's just three blokes chained to radiators.
It just saddens me. Given a proper dramaturgical going-over, this would probably be quite a good play, if shorn of flashbacks and given a tighter, claustrophobic focus. Because of the time constraints of the programme, the play has been rushed onto a stage, publicly, painfully, and I don't believe it's ready. There are glaring things in the play that could have been sorted out really easily by a skilled dramaturg - like Young Claire having a bossy character that diametrically opposes her timid older counterpart. The characters need a lot of psychological fleshing-out, and factual definition - the writer is dealing with huge, complicated human issues, and has no real idea of how to make a subject like incest both dramatically viable and psychologically 'real'.
The point of this project was to offer someone a chance to put their play on in the West End, but the script selection process used by theatres and literary agents is there for a purpose. It guarantees a play is stage-worthy by the time a paying audience sees it. The Play's The Thing promised support for a new writer, but it has actually given the writer less support, and placed more pressure on her to make something extraordinary. This doesn't seem like much of a prize.
I really hope Kate Betts gets another play put on soon, and is not crushed by this ludicrous, unreal pressure upon her as a first-time writer. As it is, the whole project seems like an immense effort for scant reward. Too silly to be appreciated by sniffy regular theatregoers, with too much incest for people who watched The Play's The Thing while waiting for Big Brother to come on, On The Third Day is a bit of a curio; a play that manages to miss every target market. This play isn't the thing - it's not good, but it's not a pleasingly-trashy disaster, and it's all a bit upsetting, really.
Monday, 13 March 2006
Masha & The Bear, White Bear Theatre
(Written for Culture Wars)
One of the most justifiably despised genres for new plays is the Unofficial Sequel. Do you think I care what happened to Beatrice and Benedick after they got married? Or where Godot has actually been all this time? No. Stoppard has a lot to answer for.
It was with some trepidation, therefore, that I approached Pitch Dark Theatre's Masha and the Bear; a look at Chekhov's Three Sisters before and after the events of his play. One of the pitfalls of the Unofficial Sequel is the presupposition that the audience knows the minutiae of the play you are riffing on. Masha and the Bear is admirably restrained in its use of the original text. Yes, the references and in-jokes are still there, but writer/director Abbey Wright focuses wisely on the characters of the sisters - Olga, prim and maternal; Irina, young and clearly in awe of her sisters; and the titular Masha, bold and imaginative, and suffocated by loveless marriage.
Rather than concentrating immediately after or before the time of the play, Wright pieces together a story flip-flopping between past and present - offering scraps of the lives of the three girls in reality and memory. Having done away with the intimacy and claustrophobia afforded by Chekhov's adherence to a single setting, Wright instead mines the intimacy of moments shared by sisters -a boring dinner, folding a sheet - with Chekhovian subtext shimmering across snatched glances.
The four performers - there is a brief role for Melissa Charlton as Masha's maidservant Sophia - are uniformly strong. Kathryn Daw plays the balance between stern and sisterly to a tee, with a tut rarely far from her lips. Her gravitas is particularly well used in returning to Masha's empty house, playing the unspoken feelings of loss, whilst distracting herself with busying herself over tidying, or fussing with spindly fingers over a box of receipts. She also gets given a perfectly weighted Chekhovian line - 'I'm not sure this is fun' - which she uses to drolly puncture the hyperactive tendencies of her sisters. Sparking effectively off Daw's Olga, Josie Daxter makes her Irina childlike and wide-eyed, with her maturity late in the play subtle and poignant. As Masha, Rosie Mason marries the emotional weight of her desperate situation with the manic energy of someone driven to reclaim her vitality from those that would take it away.
Masha and the Bear is a subtle and suitably restrained affair that can prove challenging narratively - much is left for an audience to assume or work out in their own time, but the ambiguities are rarely frustrating or impede one's understanding of the characters themselves. The sisters are key; they invite the audience into the sisterly clique, aiming to reveal nothing, but revealing everything. Pitch Dark Theatre's attention to detail and specificity in the subdued and subtextual moments should be commended, as should the focus and restraint of the writing of the piece. It is a fringe show of genuine quality, and exudes an intelligence rarely seen in London's smaller theatres.
One of the most justifiably despised genres for new plays is the Unofficial Sequel. Do you think I care what happened to Beatrice and Benedick after they got married? Or where Godot has actually been all this time? No. Stoppard has a lot to answer for.
It was with some trepidation, therefore, that I approached Pitch Dark Theatre's Masha and the Bear; a look at Chekhov's Three Sisters before and after the events of his play. One of the pitfalls of the Unofficial Sequel is the presupposition that the audience knows the minutiae of the play you are riffing on. Masha and the Bear is admirably restrained in its use of the original text. Yes, the references and in-jokes are still there, but writer/director Abbey Wright focuses wisely on the characters of the sisters - Olga, prim and maternal; Irina, young and clearly in awe of her sisters; and the titular Masha, bold and imaginative, and suffocated by loveless marriage.
Rather than concentrating immediately after or before the time of the play, Wright pieces together a story flip-flopping between past and present - offering scraps of the lives of the three girls in reality and memory. Having done away with the intimacy and claustrophobia afforded by Chekhov's adherence to a single setting, Wright instead mines the intimacy of moments shared by sisters -a boring dinner, folding a sheet - with Chekhovian subtext shimmering across snatched glances.
The four performers - there is a brief role for Melissa Charlton as Masha's maidservant Sophia - are uniformly strong. Kathryn Daw plays the balance between stern and sisterly to a tee, with a tut rarely far from her lips. Her gravitas is particularly well used in returning to Masha's empty house, playing the unspoken feelings of loss, whilst distracting herself with busying herself over tidying, or fussing with spindly fingers over a box of receipts. She also gets given a perfectly weighted Chekhovian line - 'I'm not sure this is fun' - which she uses to drolly puncture the hyperactive tendencies of her sisters. Sparking effectively off Daw's Olga, Josie Daxter makes her Irina childlike and wide-eyed, with her maturity late in the play subtle and poignant. As Masha, Rosie Mason marries the emotional weight of her desperate situation with the manic energy of someone driven to reclaim her vitality from those that would take it away.
Masha and the Bear is a subtle and suitably restrained affair that can prove challenging narratively - much is left for an audience to assume or work out in their own time, but the ambiguities are rarely frustrating or impede one's understanding of the characters themselves. The sisters are key; they invite the audience into the sisterly clique, aiming to reveal nothing, but revealing everything. Pitch Dark Theatre's attention to detail and specificity in the subdued and subtextual moments should be commended, as should the focus and restraint of the writing of the piece. It is a fringe show of genuine quality, and exudes an intelligence rarely seen in London's smaller theatres.
Monday, 21 November 2005
Alice Trilogy, Royal Court
(Written for Culture Wars)
There's a thing I've just made up called 'The Posh Lady Royal Court Gasp'. Writers on commission at the Royal Court are contractually obliged to include moments within their scripts that will provoke this elusive noise. (Please bear in mind, this is a different noise from 'The Posh Lady Reads a Particularly Saucy Bit of a Jackie Collins Novel Gasp'.)
I mention this, not only because Tom Murphy's Alice Trilogy provides a corker of such a moment - the sudden tension of the gasp tonight made every pearl round every neck of every Posh Lady in the audience quiver in unison - but also because the play concerns itself with the conversion of the eponymous Alice from a young dreamer into a weary, defeated, yet sympathetic, woman, who I imagine would gasp at things in the Royal Court.
Alice Trilogy is unsurprisingly three connected short plays about Alice, a grudgingly self-professed 'boring housewife'. We meet her at twenty five, married to the uninspiring bank manager and budgie-breeder Bill, already with three kids, teetering on the edge of alcoholism, toying with escape, perhaps suicide, and conversing with voices in her head. We then see her encounter, some ten years later, with an old flame, a TV newsreader, and then again, ten years after that, as a defeated woman, sitting awkwardly eating dinner with her husband in an airport. The play chronicles the squeezing of all hope from Alice. She begins with ideas of escape from her mundane housewife existence, sees her ideas of a more glamorous life with a man from her past crushed because, well, he's deeply sinister, and ends hollow-cheeked and bony with age and sadness, all the fight sucked out of her, sympathetic but irredeemable.
In the quotation I guess they would put in the Royal Court programme if they wanted to encapsulate why we should invest in the character, Alice says 'There's a strange, savage, beautiful and mysterious country inside me'. That's at the beginning of the play. At the end, this is coupled with 'There was a time when she felt that inside her there was something mysterious that she thought of as herself […] It is conceivable that the worst has happened and the reality of it leaves a lot to be desired'. That's the journey. Perhaps I'm being a little unfair; Murphy sprinkles the journey with a lot of humour - that humour through bleakness that Irish playwrights are rightly renowned for - and the subtlety and juxtaposition of this raises the game of the play.
Or rather 'plays', as Murphy takes the trilogy aspect of the play rather seriously. Play one, 'In The Apiary', is a stuttery exercise in self-reflection, Alice conversing with a character waggishly named 'Al' in her attic, getting drunk and wondering where it all went wrong. Play two, 'By The Gasworks Wall', is a noirish, sinister conversation piece, complete with mysterious drifters and men in trilbies emerging from the shadows. Play three, 'At The Airport', is Happy Days-in-an-airport, as Alice's increasingly fractured thought processes cascade out of her mouth, and her situation is worsened by dramatic events and increasing solitude. There's a stylistic jump between each playlet, which causes a question of cohesion. What does this all add up to?
Juliet Stevenson's performance in is, of course, staggeringly good. She has the ability to underplay moments in a mesmerising way - stuttering; implying; her brain racing, her eyes flashing mania, whilst remaining physically calm; subtext being thrown around like rice at a wedding. She does 'rabbit in the headlights' better than anyone I've seen on stage, and may well be in possession of the greatest 'manic laugh in the throes of desperate misery' in history. She works her socks off through this play, and at the curtain call looks positively frazzled with the exertion of it all. It is fascinating, and rare, to see someone being so effortlessly spectacular on a stage so close to you.
Why, then, is this a less than spectacular evening? Perhaps because the splintered glance at Alice's life makes such leaps over vital history that one is only just keying into Alice's predicament when it changes into a newer one, further entrenched in her desperate marital situation. Perhaps the play suffers through comparison to A Doll's House, with the opening episode's birdcage allusions and attic/coop set, and the fact that Stevenson played Nora in a definitive televised production of Ibsen's play, which ratcheted up the focus and claustrophobia that the larger timescale of Alice Trilogy lacks. The episodic structure aims for epic sweep, but instead suggests slightness, and this is a shame. Perhaps it is that the play's structure, despite being split into three, adheres to 'Royal Court Gasp' syndrome, throwing in unexpected horror exactly where one would expect it.
Alice Trilogy emerges as a piece of theatre only a madman would turn down a ticket to, yet one that the madman might well come out of a little disappointed. Madmen are, of course, notoriously difficult audience members. It's a chilly play, not just because of the Royal Court's overzealous air conditioning, but because our involvement with Alice is sketchy, skittish and fleeting. It's awkward to relate to her, rather than uncomfortable; like someone cautiously trying to tell you her life story without giving any of her secrets away.
There's a thing I've just made up called 'The Posh Lady Royal Court Gasp'. Writers on commission at the Royal Court are contractually obliged to include moments within their scripts that will provoke this elusive noise. (Please bear in mind, this is a different noise from 'The Posh Lady Reads a Particularly Saucy Bit of a Jackie Collins Novel Gasp'.)
I mention this, not only because Tom Murphy's Alice Trilogy provides a corker of such a moment - the sudden tension of the gasp tonight made every pearl round every neck of every Posh Lady in the audience quiver in unison - but also because the play concerns itself with the conversion of the eponymous Alice from a young dreamer into a weary, defeated, yet sympathetic, woman, who I imagine would gasp at things in the Royal Court.
Alice Trilogy is unsurprisingly three connected short plays about Alice, a grudgingly self-professed 'boring housewife'. We meet her at twenty five, married to the uninspiring bank manager and budgie-breeder Bill, already with three kids, teetering on the edge of alcoholism, toying with escape, perhaps suicide, and conversing with voices in her head. We then see her encounter, some ten years later, with an old flame, a TV newsreader, and then again, ten years after that, as a defeated woman, sitting awkwardly eating dinner with her husband in an airport. The play chronicles the squeezing of all hope from Alice. She begins with ideas of escape from her mundane housewife existence, sees her ideas of a more glamorous life with a man from her past crushed because, well, he's deeply sinister, and ends hollow-cheeked and bony with age and sadness, all the fight sucked out of her, sympathetic but irredeemable.
In the quotation I guess they would put in the Royal Court programme if they wanted to encapsulate why we should invest in the character, Alice says 'There's a strange, savage, beautiful and mysterious country inside me'. That's at the beginning of the play. At the end, this is coupled with 'There was a time when she felt that inside her there was something mysterious that she thought of as herself […] It is conceivable that the worst has happened and the reality of it leaves a lot to be desired'. That's the journey. Perhaps I'm being a little unfair; Murphy sprinkles the journey with a lot of humour - that humour through bleakness that Irish playwrights are rightly renowned for - and the subtlety and juxtaposition of this raises the game of the play.
Or rather 'plays', as Murphy takes the trilogy aspect of the play rather seriously. Play one, 'In The Apiary', is a stuttery exercise in self-reflection, Alice conversing with a character waggishly named 'Al' in her attic, getting drunk and wondering where it all went wrong. Play two, 'By The Gasworks Wall', is a noirish, sinister conversation piece, complete with mysterious drifters and men in trilbies emerging from the shadows. Play three, 'At The Airport', is Happy Days-in-an-airport, as Alice's increasingly fractured thought processes cascade out of her mouth, and her situation is worsened by dramatic events and increasing solitude. There's a stylistic jump between each playlet, which causes a question of cohesion. What does this all add up to?
Juliet Stevenson's performance in is, of course, staggeringly good. She has the ability to underplay moments in a mesmerising way - stuttering; implying; her brain racing, her eyes flashing mania, whilst remaining physically calm; subtext being thrown around like rice at a wedding. She does 'rabbit in the headlights' better than anyone I've seen on stage, and may well be in possession of the greatest 'manic laugh in the throes of desperate misery' in history. She works her socks off through this play, and at the curtain call looks positively frazzled with the exertion of it all. It is fascinating, and rare, to see someone being so effortlessly spectacular on a stage so close to you.
Why, then, is this a less than spectacular evening? Perhaps because the splintered glance at Alice's life makes such leaps over vital history that one is only just keying into Alice's predicament when it changes into a newer one, further entrenched in her desperate marital situation. Perhaps the play suffers through comparison to A Doll's House, with the opening episode's birdcage allusions and attic/coop set, and the fact that Stevenson played Nora in a definitive televised production of Ibsen's play, which ratcheted up the focus and claustrophobia that the larger timescale of Alice Trilogy lacks. The episodic structure aims for epic sweep, but instead suggests slightness, and this is a shame. Perhaps it is that the play's structure, despite being split into three, adheres to 'Royal Court Gasp' syndrome, throwing in unexpected horror exactly where one would expect it.
Alice Trilogy emerges as a piece of theatre only a madman would turn down a ticket to, yet one that the madman might well come out of a little disappointed. Madmen are, of course, notoriously difficult audience members. It's a chilly play, not just because of the Royal Court's overzealous air conditioning, but because our involvement with Alice is sketchy, skittish and fleeting. It's awkward to relate to her, rather than uncomfortable; like someone cautiously trying to tell you her life story without giving any of her secrets away.
Monday, 31 October 2005
Two Temp Agencies In London
The registration process for temp agencies probably hasn't changed since the advent of the mainstream office computer. For those of y'all who have never registered as a temp, there are three components:- Filling out lots of forms of personal details, bank information, that sort of thing; a typing and/or software test; and finally an interview with a slightly surly temp controller, whose job it is to impress upon the prospective temp that a) fucking about is not an option; b) they will get you a job.
Today, I visited two temp agencies to register. Now it is October, the summer temp job drought has eased and they are finally taking on new people. In those difficult summer months, one is often met with a stark "the students are back" excuse from agencies, before they fragrantly hang up. People who work in temp agencies are often beautiful psirens, luring you into signing documents with their slightly prissy, slightly maternal sexuality. I was once registered by a male temp controller, and he converted this coy flirtation into beery mateyness, which seemed to me highly inappropriate. Anyway, today, now, I am in need of a job. Let's see what London has to offer.
---
First up was the worryingly-named Next Employment, on Oxford Circus. I was made aware of the existence of Next Employment both by my housemate Jasmine - who, in her impressive position in the sales department of a publishing house, frequently gets temps from Next - and my friend Kinky Will who used to temp for Next. Kinky Will was keen to emphasise that the person who signed you up for Next was "a very flirtatious Australian woman". I attempted to contact said flirtatious Antipodean over the summer, but a stream of calls and emails came to naught. The summer drought, I thought, had claimed Next's interest, but come the Autumn months, contact was made.
The receptionist, an American lady who seemed quite tall when she was sitting down, welcomed me to the reception area with a clipboard, some forms and a pen. I asked if I could help myself to water from the conveniently-located watercooler, and she gave me permission. I filled the cup, and drank thereof. Cool, soothing water. Is there a drink more satisfying? No. There were only two forms to fill in, and they were relatively straightforward. The only thing that caused any consternation was the References section, which invited me to put down phone numbers. I don't like putting down phone numbers for references, after one of my referees, my friend Hayley, suggested that Office Angels had been harrassing her on my behalf. Anyway, I skipped past those sections of the form and handed the clipboard and pen back to the receptionist. She led me to the computers for stage two: the typing test.
This was not just a typing test, however. I was to be tested on Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Powerpoint, and then the typing test. I breezed through much of the software tests without complaint, pausing only to notice two glitches in the tests themselves. Firstly, occasionally one's mouse pointer would disappear from the screen, leaving one to guess where it had got to and click randomly in the hope that the button you should be clicking would be clucked. Secondly, if a menu was opened and then you clicked on the wrong option, the programme would assume that you had clicked the right option. I exploited this weakness mercilessly, all the time thinking about how I was a cool computer hacker, like Robert Redford in "Sneakers". God, "Sneakers" was a cool film.
Then, onto the typing test. One of the joys of the typing test is the document they get you to type. It is always nonsensical, and as all but the fastest typers only use the first paragraph or so, the end of each document is often quite factually inaccurate and ludicrous, as if the copywriter got bored halfway through writing it. As an example of the type of material one is expected to type, I once spent about five minutes typing up a document about genetically-modified grain and the impact upon the bread industry for an Office Angels type test.
Next's typing test centred on the importance of imagination in the work place, and suggested that it was essential and marked the difference between the average and the excellent candidate. I looked out of the window and was confronted by a brick wall with an air conditioning unit on it. Imagination in the workplace suddenly became something of a cruel joke. The document also contained the priceless advice:- "If you have a problem, sing a song about it, and then sing a song as a solution." I would like to try this in real life. My songs would be "I Am Unemployable (And Overqualified)" and its response song "You are Buggered".
You are buggered / You are screwed / You've been fucked over / By educational ambition
Oh dear oh dear oh dear / It's too late now / Say hello to / Malnutrition
After finishing the tests, I returned to the reception area. The tall receptionist said "I'll just take these results to Sally". (Sally is the flirtatious Australian.) The receptionist then said, in a hushed voice, "They're really good, these results. You got 62 words per minute... with no mistakes!" "Blimey," I said.
Sally invited me into a very small room, and invited me to sit. She sat in a chair with a little table attached to it, like they have in American classrooms. "The thing is," she said, "I want more information on your CV. We need to sell you to the employers, and just putting 'Various Temp Positions' doesn't do it." We ran through my last few temp agencies, what I actually did for them, and she looked pleased. Then she turned to my test results.
"WOW," she said, in capitals, "do you know what you got?" "Um... not really," I lied. "62 words per minute," she said, with awe in her voice, "with no mistakes. I haven't seen results like this since..." - she grasped for a comparison, and failed - "... since ever." "Blimey," I said.
"And Office Angels had you working in a warehouse? With results like these?"
"Oh yes."
She shook her head sadly. I copied her. We sat there, shaking our heads. It was a moment of communion.
She promised to find me a job and shook my hand, warmly. Shaking hands is important. A good grip, and plenty of eye contact. It communicates confidence. I went on my way. Apparently, the guy who was inside C3PO was in the HMV opposite the agency at about the time I left, but I didn't want to brave the Geek Chorus within.
---
The second agency was Crone Corkhill in Green Park. I walked into the rather opulent building and was asked by the security lady to stand in front of a camera, which took a picture of me, in a suit, slightly overdressed. "Thank you," she said, "make sure you come and see me before you leave. You need to go to the sixth floor."
The offices of Crone Corkhill are all polished wood, bold positive colours, and smart office furniture. The reception area looks like a smart cafe in the Docklands, the corridors look like a private health clinic, or a sperm donation centre. All of the receptionists - and there are about fifteen of them - are attractive, tanned women, in black suits with very prominent cleavage. I started to think I'd wandered into the wrong office, but no, they welcomed me to Crone Corkhill. A Stepford receptionist said she would take me to a room where I could fill in the forms. She led me into a corridor of about twelve tiny interview rooms, with a little sliding window on each door that said VACANT/BUSY. She took me into a VACANT room, slid the little window to BUSY and said I could fill in the forms. The room was empty, but for a table and two chairs. On the table, a dispenser of Crone Corkhill leaflets and, bizarrely, a box of tissues. "This is a sperm donation clinic," I thought, "How weird, to run a sperm donation clinic and a temp agency from the same office."
I took a photo, because I knew you wouldn't believe me.
After filling out the forms, of which there were approximately three hundred, I returned to the reception area, taking immense care not to look in any of the other rooms down "The Corridor Of Shame". One of the forms was a spelling test, which had four options of spellings of words that you will never use, like "conscientious". The problem with this is that even though one's spelling may be perfect, the combination of pressure, too many options, and the fact that you might, at any moment, be given a small Tupperware container, inevitably leads you to making a few dodgy decisions. Parallel? Parrallel? Parrallell? I don't know. I don't particularly care.
Then, onto the typing test. Again, I was asked to do tests for software. No glitches in the software this time, although it didn't tell you if you were right at any point, so one was in the dark for pretty much the whole thing. The document of the typing test, in an audacious display of self-referentiality, was about interview technique. "Shaking hands is important," read the document, "Make sure you have a good grip, and use plenty of eye contact. It communicates confidence."
After the test was over, I went back to the reception desk. "I've finished," I said.
"Yes," said the same woman from earlier. Or it might have been a different one. "I have your results here. You got 63 words per minute. That's excellent," she said, without looking impressed.
"That's one word more per minute than this morning," I thought. "I am on FIRE!"
"So," said the receptionist, "I'll pass these onto Poppy. Thanks very much."
I left the office thinking it was odd that I didn't meet a temp controller. I had only had two stages of the three standard stages. It was getting late - it was about 6pm by this point - perhaps Poppy had gone home and would call me tomorrow.
As I came out of the Underground at Finsbury Park, I got a voicemail message on my phone.
"Tom, it's Poppy. There's been a bit of a misunderstanding in reception. Could you turn round and come back in?"
"No," I thought.
Today, I visited two temp agencies to register. Now it is October, the summer temp job drought has eased and they are finally taking on new people. In those difficult summer months, one is often met with a stark "the students are back" excuse from agencies, before they fragrantly hang up. People who work in temp agencies are often beautiful psirens, luring you into signing documents with their slightly prissy, slightly maternal sexuality. I was once registered by a male temp controller, and he converted this coy flirtation into beery mateyness, which seemed to me highly inappropriate. Anyway, today, now, I am in need of a job. Let's see what London has to offer.
---
First up was the worryingly-named Next Employment, on Oxford Circus. I was made aware of the existence of Next Employment both by my housemate Jasmine - who, in her impressive position in the sales department of a publishing house, frequently gets temps from Next - and my friend Kinky Will who used to temp for Next. Kinky Will was keen to emphasise that the person who signed you up for Next was "a very flirtatious Australian woman". I attempted to contact said flirtatious Antipodean over the summer, but a stream of calls and emails came to naught. The summer drought, I thought, had claimed Next's interest, but come the Autumn months, contact was made.
The receptionist, an American lady who seemed quite tall when she was sitting down, welcomed me to the reception area with a clipboard, some forms and a pen. I asked if I could help myself to water from the conveniently-located watercooler, and she gave me permission. I filled the cup, and drank thereof. Cool, soothing water. Is there a drink more satisfying? No. There were only two forms to fill in, and they were relatively straightforward. The only thing that caused any consternation was the References section, which invited me to put down phone numbers. I don't like putting down phone numbers for references, after one of my referees, my friend Hayley, suggested that Office Angels had been harrassing her on my behalf. Anyway, I skipped past those sections of the form and handed the clipboard and pen back to the receptionist. She led me to the computers for stage two: the typing test.
This was not just a typing test, however. I was to be tested on Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Powerpoint, and then the typing test. I breezed through much of the software tests without complaint, pausing only to notice two glitches in the tests themselves. Firstly, occasionally one's mouse pointer would disappear from the screen, leaving one to guess where it had got to and click randomly in the hope that the button you should be clicking would be clucked. Secondly, if a menu was opened and then you clicked on the wrong option, the programme would assume that you had clicked the right option. I exploited this weakness mercilessly, all the time thinking about how I was a cool computer hacker, like Robert Redford in "Sneakers". God, "Sneakers" was a cool film.
Then, onto the typing test. One of the joys of the typing test is the document they get you to type. It is always nonsensical, and as all but the fastest typers only use the first paragraph or so, the end of each document is often quite factually inaccurate and ludicrous, as if the copywriter got bored halfway through writing it. As an example of the type of material one is expected to type, I once spent about five minutes typing up a document about genetically-modified grain and the impact upon the bread industry for an Office Angels type test.
Next's typing test centred on the importance of imagination in the work place, and suggested that it was essential and marked the difference between the average and the excellent candidate. I looked out of the window and was confronted by a brick wall with an air conditioning unit on it. Imagination in the workplace suddenly became something of a cruel joke. The document also contained the priceless advice:- "If you have a problem, sing a song about it, and then sing a song as a solution." I would like to try this in real life. My songs would be "I Am Unemployable (And Overqualified)" and its response song "You are Buggered".
You are buggered / You are screwed / You've been fucked over / By educational ambition
Oh dear oh dear oh dear / It's too late now / Say hello to / Malnutrition
After finishing the tests, I returned to the reception area. The tall receptionist said "I'll just take these results to Sally". (Sally is the flirtatious Australian.) The receptionist then said, in a hushed voice, "They're really good, these results. You got 62 words per minute... with no mistakes!" "Blimey," I said.
Sally invited me into a very small room, and invited me to sit. She sat in a chair with a little table attached to it, like they have in American classrooms. "The thing is," she said, "I want more information on your CV. We need to sell you to the employers, and just putting 'Various Temp Positions' doesn't do it." We ran through my last few temp agencies, what I actually did for them, and she looked pleased. Then she turned to my test results.
"WOW," she said, in capitals, "do you know what you got?" "Um... not really," I lied. "62 words per minute," she said, with awe in her voice, "with no mistakes. I haven't seen results like this since..." - she grasped for a comparison, and failed - "... since ever." "Blimey," I said.
"And Office Angels had you working in a warehouse? With results like these?"
"Oh yes."
She shook her head sadly. I copied her. We sat there, shaking our heads. It was a moment of communion.
She promised to find me a job and shook my hand, warmly. Shaking hands is important. A good grip, and plenty of eye contact. It communicates confidence. I went on my way. Apparently, the guy who was inside C3PO was in the HMV opposite the agency at about the time I left, but I didn't want to brave the Geek Chorus within.
---
The second agency was Crone Corkhill in Green Park. I walked into the rather opulent building and was asked by the security lady to stand in front of a camera, which took a picture of me, in a suit, slightly overdressed. "Thank you," she said, "make sure you come and see me before you leave. You need to go to the sixth floor."
The offices of Crone Corkhill are all polished wood, bold positive colours, and smart office furniture. The reception area looks like a smart cafe in the Docklands, the corridors look like a private health clinic, or a sperm donation centre. All of the receptionists - and there are about fifteen of them - are attractive, tanned women, in black suits with very prominent cleavage. I started to think I'd wandered into the wrong office, but no, they welcomed me to Crone Corkhill. A Stepford receptionist said she would take me to a room where I could fill in the forms. She led me into a corridor of about twelve tiny interview rooms, with a little sliding window on each door that said VACANT/BUSY. She took me into a VACANT room, slid the little window to BUSY and said I could fill in the forms. The room was empty, but for a table and two chairs. On the table, a dispenser of Crone Corkhill leaflets and, bizarrely, a box of tissues. "This is a sperm donation clinic," I thought, "How weird, to run a sperm donation clinic and a temp agency from the same office."
I took a photo, because I knew you wouldn't believe me.
After filling out the forms, of which there were approximately three hundred, I returned to the reception area, taking immense care not to look in any of the other rooms down "The Corridor Of Shame". One of the forms was a spelling test, which had four options of spellings of words that you will never use, like "conscientious". The problem with this is that even though one's spelling may be perfect, the combination of pressure, too many options, and the fact that you might, at any moment, be given a small Tupperware container, inevitably leads you to making a few dodgy decisions. Parallel? Parrallel? Parrallell? I don't know. I don't particularly care.
Then, onto the typing test. Again, I was asked to do tests for software. No glitches in the software this time, although it didn't tell you if you were right at any point, so one was in the dark for pretty much the whole thing. The document of the typing test, in an audacious display of self-referentiality, was about interview technique. "Shaking hands is important," read the document, "Make sure you have a good grip, and use plenty of eye contact. It communicates confidence."
After the test was over, I went back to the reception desk. "I've finished," I said.
"Yes," said the same woman from earlier. Or it might have been a different one. "I have your results here. You got 63 words per minute. That's excellent," she said, without looking impressed.
"That's one word more per minute than this morning," I thought. "I am on FIRE!"
"So," said the receptionist, "I'll pass these onto Poppy. Thanks very much."
I left the office thinking it was odd that I didn't meet a temp controller. I had only had two stages of the three standard stages. It was getting late - it was about 6pm by this point - perhaps Poppy had gone home and would call me tomorrow.
As I came out of the Underground at Finsbury Park, I got a voicemail message on my phone.
"Tom, it's Poppy. There's been a bit of a misunderstanding in reception. Could you turn round and come back in?"
"No," I thought.
Wednesday, 26 October 2005
Broken Flowers
The received wisdom is that Bill Murray could be filmed doing absolutely nothing for 90 minutes and would still be absolutely captivating. Jim Jarmusch's "Broken Flowers" is based heavily upon this principle and goes some way to disproving it.
It doesn't help that it's based on that hoary old narrative - "Visiting old flames to see what they can teach me about my current predicament". "High Fidelity" did it with more bite; here, it's used to place Bill Murray in a series of situations that range from the slightly awkward, to the slightly threatening, and to see what happens. The "old flame visiting" is balanced with the "you have a long lost son" narrative, itself uncomfortably close to Murray's too-recent "The Life Aquatic". "Broken Flowers" seems like its running over old ground and has nothing particularly to say about it.
Someone has sent Don a letter on pink paper saying that his 19-year-old son is on his way to see him. The letter is unsigned, and Murray's neighbour Winston persuades him to visit four of his old girlfriends, each of which may be the mother of his child, and the author of the letter.
Murray's character, the japesomely-named Don Johnston ("JohnSTON. JohnSTON," moans Murray, periodically), is a nothing, a zero, a "Man Who Wasn't There" who is even less there than Billy Bob Thornton. He sits around in horrible tracksuits all day watching cartoons. He is supposedly a great lover, who understands women better than his nebbish neighbour Winston, but it's a curiously defanged performance from Murray, which demonstrates none of the charm or explosive wit that Murray is famous for, and was presumably supposed to bring to the role. His sole nod to his comic past is overloading a fork with carrots, a momentary clowning that is not dwelt upon by Jarmusch.
Jarmusch keeps things moving at a snail's pace, albeit a snail that occasionally wanders around a large pile of salt really, really carefully. If there were interesting things happening, then we wouldn't have minded lingering, but as it is, this is a series of sketches plotted very deliberately so that all symbolism and hints towards the solution of the son's mother are left maddeningly vague. At the end of the film, we are no wiser as to who is the mother, whether Don even has a son, or if the whole thing wasn't made up as a sort of test by Don's frustrated girlfriend. In fact, we don't even know if Don cares about the fact that he has a son, although we kind of think he does. Every character is draped in elusiveness, and I'm not even sure if we feel anything for any of them. I think this might have been an oversight.
You see, what the response should probably be to this film is to empathise deeply with Murray's hangdog loveliness, to giggle at the way he enters into worlds he could have been part of, to look at him and say "hey, that schmuck could be me!", but he's actually a bit of a shit, an unfeeling bastard who is passive and driveless and unapproachable. He's less an anti-hero than an anti-human, and not even touches of Jarmusch's trademark weirdness (Murray getting beaten up without saying a word by some odd bikers, Jessica Lange's dog having the same name as Don's neighbour) can rescue it from being formless and pretty much pointless.
Distracting, rather than entertaining, I would be surprised if I remembered much about "Broken Flowers" in two months time. Sorry, Bill.
It doesn't help that it's based on that hoary old narrative - "Visiting old flames to see what they can teach me about my current predicament". "High Fidelity" did it with more bite; here, it's used to place Bill Murray in a series of situations that range from the slightly awkward, to the slightly threatening, and to see what happens. The "old flame visiting" is balanced with the "you have a long lost son" narrative, itself uncomfortably close to Murray's too-recent "The Life Aquatic". "Broken Flowers" seems like its running over old ground and has nothing particularly to say about it.
Someone has sent Don a letter on pink paper saying that his 19-year-old son is on his way to see him. The letter is unsigned, and Murray's neighbour Winston persuades him to visit four of his old girlfriends, each of which may be the mother of his child, and the author of the letter.
Murray's character, the japesomely-named Don Johnston ("JohnSTON. JohnSTON," moans Murray, periodically), is a nothing, a zero, a "Man Who Wasn't There" who is even less there than Billy Bob Thornton. He sits around in horrible tracksuits all day watching cartoons. He is supposedly a great lover, who understands women better than his nebbish neighbour Winston, but it's a curiously defanged performance from Murray, which demonstrates none of the charm or explosive wit that Murray is famous for, and was presumably supposed to bring to the role. His sole nod to his comic past is overloading a fork with carrots, a momentary clowning that is not dwelt upon by Jarmusch.
Jarmusch keeps things moving at a snail's pace, albeit a snail that occasionally wanders around a large pile of salt really, really carefully. If there were interesting things happening, then we wouldn't have minded lingering, but as it is, this is a series of sketches plotted very deliberately so that all symbolism and hints towards the solution of the son's mother are left maddeningly vague. At the end of the film, we are no wiser as to who is the mother, whether Don even has a son, or if the whole thing wasn't made up as a sort of test by Don's frustrated girlfriend. In fact, we don't even know if Don cares about the fact that he has a son, although we kind of think he does. Every character is draped in elusiveness, and I'm not even sure if we feel anything for any of them. I think this might have been an oversight.
You see, what the response should probably be to this film is to empathise deeply with Murray's hangdog loveliness, to giggle at the way he enters into worlds he could have been part of, to look at him and say "hey, that schmuck could be me!", but he's actually a bit of a shit, an unfeeling bastard who is passive and driveless and unapproachable. He's less an anti-hero than an anti-human, and not even touches of Jarmusch's trademark weirdness (Murray getting beaten up without saying a word by some odd bikers, Jessica Lange's dog having the same name as Don's neighbour) can rescue it from being formless and pretty much pointless.
Distracting, rather than entertaining, I would be surprised if I remembered much about "Broken Flowers" in two months time. Sorry, Bill.
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About Me
- Tom Wateracre
- London, United Kingdom
- Writer, Screenwriter. Born in the late Seventies. Likes marzipan.