Jackson's Way

Last night, feeling moribund and in serious need of motivation, I went to see celebrity motivational speaker Chris John Jackson and learned about Jackson's Way, a guide to revolutionising your life by doing things which are completely pointless. And now my life is changed FOREVER!

Oh OK. This is only sort of true. Actually I really was feeling moribund and seriously in need of motivation, but Chris John Jackson is the fictional creation of Will Adamsdale, and Jackson's Way is a comedy show which won the Perrier back in 2004 and is belatedly touring London on a 26-date "Jacksathon".

And it is brilliant. The peril of writing about a show like this is the less you know before you arrive the better. But to give you some idea: Adamsdale - a lovably bonkers stage presence reminiscent of Mork-era Robin Williams (there may be doubters out there but for me this is praise indeed) - is charm itself as Jackson. He bounds with energy and contagious enthusiasm as he unfolds his technique, which starts off pleasingly silly and builds through a series of logical leaps to end up in a place which is utterly insane. As he demonstrates through use of slides, there is a lot of pointless stuff out there, and you will explore more of it than you might have imagined. You will find yourself swept along to dream up your own Jacktions (maybe even complex Jacktions, if you reach level 3 or 4) and contemplate the joy of Moving Things. Meanwhile Jackson himself is tugged at by demons (what is the mystery of his brother Travis? Has he just become the gimmicky "towel guy"? And will he ever be entirely accepted by the doubting self-help community, who think is technique is kinda samey?) - but he always bounces back with puppyish glee.

The show convinces utterly as a self-help talkshopinar (that's talk / workshop / seminar, of course) complete with powerpoint presentation, meaningless jargon, endless acronyms and audience participation of the most surreal and least humiliating type. I was alarmed that some of it veered dangerously close to actual exercises that I teach to my creative writing class (what is the opposite of a lampshade?) - maybe I've had an inner Jackson all this time. And the weird thing is that although it's utter hokum, I came to the end of the show feeling genuinely motivated to do something completely pointless. So I swapped two identical programmes on two identical seats for one another, and felt strangely satisfied. And now my life is changed, ah, temporarily. [punches air] Achieved!

More details and tour dates here - it's selling out so book now. I really can't recommend this highly enough.

Our third...

...and final blogger-reviewed Future Me post is up here for your perusal. While not quite as positive as the other two, Rob nevertheless pulls a four out of five out of the bag, and thoughtfully talks you through the toilet / drinks options / etc too.

I think I'll shut up about this now. Until I go myself, natch.

Seeing as it's the theme of the day...

...Londonist loved it too.

And there's more

Rupert Hill (the lead actor) blogs about Future Me over here on the Guardian website. All the best people are blogging about Future Me today, dontcha know.

Present, um, him.

A while ago I posted an interview with Stephen Brown about his play Future Me, and invited three interested bloggers to go along and post their own reviews afterwards.

Well, the first review is in, from the lovely Jane Henry, and it's a rave. Hurrah! (Warning, the review contains spoilers.)

Future Me runs at the Only Connect Theatre in King's Cross, London until April 26th. Tickets from www.pleasance.co.uk or 020 7609 1800.

This Play Is Not Grim

As promised, my interview with playwright Stephen Brown, author of Future Me.

'I was on the edge of my seat!' - Time Out

'Unexpected, peppery humour' - London Metro

'Packed with ironies and funny lines' - San Francisco Weekly

'Informative, creepy, humane, thought provoking and riveting' - San Franscisco Chronicle

And that's just the play! Imagine how good the interview's going to be.

MP: Tell me about Future Me.

SB: Future Me is about a successful young barrister who gets sent to prison for sex offences. It follows him over five years, into prison and back out again. It shows you all the people around him – his girlfriend and his brother and the people he meets in prison – and the effects of what he did and how he changes on them as well. And it’s about a number of different things; it’s about sex and compulsion and desire, and it’s about change, and just what does it mean to say ‘I can’t change’ or ‘I have changed’, and how would you prove it – how would it be possible to prove it. It’s about how we as a society think about our monsters, and about the collision between our desire to forgive people or to let people have a second chance and our visceral reaction to certain kinds of crime – to horrific crimes that turn our stomach.

MP: Most people would expect to identify with the other characters in the play, with the victim or the family, but in Future Me, you’re also encouraged to identify with the protagonist, which is more unusual.

SB: The most complex and exciting and testing relationship within the whole play is the relationship between the audience and the characters on stage. Half the characters of the play are sex offenders and you’re actually, in different ways, sympathetic to all of them, even though you’re simultaneously invited to judge them and to question what they’ve done and whether they’re able to change. And so the play works by giving people a very complex experience of identification.

MP: What was that like for you as a writer?

SB: One of the things that I’ve learned from writing it is that you can write about anything if you want to. You can take your imagination into places that are extremely dark. Writing the play took me on a difficult personal journey into a world that was quite disturbing. But then that’s the point of the play. It’s easy to pontificate about justice or mercy or what it would be like to have committed a crime or to want to commit a crime, but the nature of a play is to take the audience on an experience where they’re at ground level with those questions and living them with the characters. The play puts you right in those people’s world. And it shows you them struggling with who they are and what they are and what they’ve done.

MP: It’s a play about sex offenders but it’s also a play about temptation and self-control and about the dark side of anyone, and I think most people will find it an uncomfortable watch, because we all know what it’s like to want to do something that you know you shouldn’t do.

SB: There are two ways of looking at deviant or criminal behaviour. One of them is to separate those people off and view them as abnormal and try to put them in a different box, as another type of human being, and the other way, which is my way, is to view everyone as being on a continuum. For me, the really interesting thing writing the play was to say simultaneously that these are human beings like us, who have their attractive aspects so we sort of like them, and at the same time, not to tell lies about the reality of what they’ve done. It’s very easy to make somebody who’s done something awful attractive by minimising what they’ve actually done, but the play is very, very clear that certain kinds of behaviour are really damaging to the victims and are wrong.

MP: People think you either condemn or you understand, and that understanding is condoning, but I think you can condemn and understand at the same time.

SB: That divide, or that contradiction, is just where justice lives. Justice means that, over and over again, you need to make a judgement which in some sense is impossible.

MP: Why did you call the play Future Me?

SB: Future Me is a phrase taken from a therapy programme that is given to sex offenders in British prisons, in which the prisoners are invited to list the characteristics of their Old Me, while they were still offending, and then list the characteristics of their Future Me. The whole play, in a sense, is about whether the central character has a Future Me. People who’ve committed sex offenses end up in a position where, like alcoholics, you’re never not an alcoholic. It’s always there within you. And so you can never really enter into the future. You’re always facing the future but always on the brink of your past as well.

MP: The play is quite funny, which people might not expect from everything else that you’ve said.

SB: The humour just developed naturally. I wanted to do something where it wasn’t po-faced because I don’t think life is po-faced, and I think life is particularly not po-faced when it is dealing with serious things. If you go into prisons and talk to the people you meet there, you find this massive streak of black humour, and that was certainly true in the prisons I went into, amongst the prison officers and probation officers and psychologists and so on who were dealing day to day with people who had done, in some cases, really appalling things. Equally, if you make a child abuser into this incredibly shadowy, terrifying figure who’s the bogeyman, it dehumanises them, and somehow at the same time reinforces their power over the people they abuse, whereas the reality of these people is that they do terrible things and they’re also slightly absurd and laughable. A lot of these guys are fundamentally emotionally immature, and there’s a lot of comedy in that, but it’s dark, edgy comedy.

MP: The play doesn’t take the tone you’d expect. It’s not hysterical, it’s not a heavy, miserable experience. A lot of people will think ‘why would I want to go and see a play about sex offenders?’

SB: It is funny, and it’s also exciting. It’s a bit like a thriller, there’s a lot of jeopardy. One of the characters is basically trying to save the other character, and it’s a tense and exciting story. Guy Retallack, who’s directing it for this tour, said, ‘One of the things I say to the actors is that this play is about anything that’s unspeakable.’ It’s about secrets, about people dealing with things that they find at the edges of what they can talk about, and how difficult that is. The play observes how people deal with these extreme pressures. That’s making it sound terribly, terribly grim.

MP: It’s all right, I won’t make it sound grim.

SB: Edit that out. Just put in loads of jokes.


***Ticket Giveaway***
Stephen Brown and Scott Davison Productions are offering three pairs of tickets free, to any performance. The only condition is that you review Future Me on your blog or website, ideally before the run ends... If you want to take part, e-mail me on strugglingauthor at tiscali dot co dot uk.

Future Me is touring the UK:

New Greenham Arts, Newbury
Tuesday 24 February
01635 522733 / www.cornexchangenew.com

Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry
Wednesday 25 – Thursday 26 February
024 7652 4524 / www.warwickartscentre.co.uk

The Lowry, Salford
Monday 2 – Tuesday 3 March
0870 787 5780 / www.thelowry.com

Theatre Royal, York
Thursday 12 – Saturday 14 March
01904 623568 / www.yorktheatreroyal.co.uk

Burton Taylor Studio at Oxford Playhouse
Thursday 26 – Saturday 28 March
01865 305 305 / www.oxfordplayhouse.com/BurtonTaylor

Only Connect, London
1-26 April 2009
0845 370 7990 / www.onlyconnectuk.org

Further details available from www.scottdavisonproductions.com

Please note that the play is suitable for ages 15+ only.

Future Blog

On Monday, I am going to be posting an interview I did with Stephen Brown, the hot (in every sense, ladies) young (well, youngish - sorry Stephen) playwright whose brilliant play Future Me is about to embark on a UK tour. You should totally read that interview, not least because it took me forever to transcribe and edit down - seriously - about six hours, because I had to cut out exchanges like this one:

MP: I think, from the perspective of, obviously I’ve seen it, and I’ve read bits of it since it was on.
SB: In preparation.
MP: In my in-depth research.
SB: You can edit this.
MP: That’s just what I was thinking. Because I’ve done a lot of these for radio, so I forgot, OK, this isn’t going out on the radio. I just have to listen to it over and over, hideously. I’m very self-conscious, as if someone -
SB: You’re not going to use very much are you?
MP: Well, I’ll edit it down. I haven’t quite decided how to do it. I haven’t decided whether to do it QA QA or to write a piece with some answers in it.
SB: Will it be like: he was wearing a teal jumper…
MP: The fascinating but enigmatic Stephen Brown…
SB: Overweight.
MP: [laughs]

I mean, I could have left them in, which might have made for a very entertaining interview, except it would have been over 4,000 words long. Plus the play is about sex offenders. So it was important to, shall we say, calibrate the tone.

Anyway, the interview is still pretty long so I thought I'd give you a bit more info about the play today, in advance, a trailer if you will, and also so Monday's post doesn't collapse under its own weight.

Here's the official blurb:

Peter often works late. A promising young barrister, he's about to move in with his girlfriend. Then one day his computer sends out an email to everyone he knows, with an attachment that no one can bear to look at.

From the strange alliances of a prison segregation unit, to the trials of life on the outside, Future Me tells an epic story of ordinary monsters.

It's OK blurb. I don't think it's enough to get me to go see the play. So I am going to add, what this play is really about is: what would it be like if one of your perfectly normal-seeming mates - or your brother, or your boyfriend - turned out to be a paedophile? More to the point, what if you were the one who was trying to be perfectly normal when deep down you knew that you were a paedophile?

You totally want to see this play now, right? And you should. It's shocking and exciting and clever and thought-provoking and a lot funnier than you might expect. But why listen to me when you could listen to The Guardian or The Stage or Metro, or Time Out, who gave it four stars and made it Critic's Choice, only I can't find the review online.

Anyway, on Monday I will be posting my interview with Stephen Brown and giving details of when the play is on, how you can buy tickets or, if you are really lucky, win some.

Hamlet

Hamlet is THE role for a young(ish) actor and so it is inevitable that it goes to the big stars. Next summer, Jude Law will be performing his at the Donmar, and tonight, of course, was supposed to be David Tennant's night. Now I cede to nobody in my admiration of David Tennant, but believe me when I say that I could not have enjoyed tonight's Hamlet more if his back had allowed him to take that lead. I could have enjoyed it as much, perhaps, and in a different way - but not more.

David Tennant is a brilliant, charismatic, lead actor, and his Hamlet I'm certain would have been that of a virtuoso, exceptionally performed and wonderfully entertaining. But I don't think it could possibly have been as heartbreaking as Edward Bennett's. What, for me, made Bennett's performance so magical is that he is not the star. He had not been chosen for his brilliance and charisma. He is, like Hamlet, a man trapped in a story that is much bigger than he is - the understudy thrown into the limelight. What, in sum, made Bennett's Hamlet so special for me was that in many ways he is quite ordinary.

His Hamlet is unprincely, even slightly nerdy. At the start of the play I would go so far as to describe him as goofy. He does not shine brightest on the stage - that honour goes to Patrick Stewart's masterful Claudius, whose power to inspire both love and loathing is made all the more potent by the way his stage presence outshines that of his rather more average nephew. Circumstance has thrown Bennett's Hamlet into a situation which he cannot handle, try as he might. It is too big for him. He is intelligent, he is resourceful, he becomes ruthless, but it isn't enough, because Fate has all the cards. He is a normal person woefully unprepared to do what he is called upon to do. No wonder his self-doubt rings out through all those soliloquies. How can an average bloke decide whether to be or not to be? The sight of an unremarkable man driven to the great heights - and depths - taking on such an immense force, was gripping in a way that I have never experienced Shakespeare to be.

And so, at the end, when Fate plays out its hand bringing Hamlet down and the rest of the court around him, it is heartbreaking. Great heroes are meant to die great deaths. But Bennett's Hamlet is not a great hero, he is one of us, doing his best - and it is not enough. As he dies, surrounded by destruction, he reverts to the decent, flawed person he was all along. It is devastating.

To be clear, there is nothing ordinary about Bennett's acting - he is incredibly skilled. But he is a character actor, not a star, and to see Hamlet performed as a character rather than a star turn was something special, and probably unique to these circumstances.

Praise must also go to the rest of this production, particularly Penny Downie, bringing astonishing emotional complexity to Gertrude, Oliver Ford Davies as a sweet, sad Polonius, and Patrick Stewart, aforementioned, as a surprisingly sympathetic Claudius. The directing by Gregory Doran was exceptional and the production design by Robert Jones wonderfully effective in its simplicity.

All in all, magnificent.

"Break a Leg!"

The Big Day Arrives!

I can't wait to see Hamlet tonight! I love David Tennant Edward Bennett! He is so sexy mysterious! And there's nothing I love more than seeing an actor about whom I have a fully formed fantasy life in which we are married but he is away on location all the time I know absolutely nothing aside from that he can flamenco dance and play the clarinet! I can't wait to show off to all those losers who couldn't get a ticket because they didn't have a friend who was a member of the RSC be fully focused on the glories of Shakespeare's language! And isn't it exciting that I will be within grabbing distance of David Tennant without a restraining order be able to see the guy who usually plays Guildenstern playing Laertes! I am totally taking a condom in my handbag just in case interested in theatre for the sake of theatre! No! Yes! Yes! Yes!

Positive Spin

I mean, in years to come, I might be able to tell people that I was one of the lucky few who saw Edward Bennett in Hamlet, when he stepped in for David Tennant under dramatic circumstances, brought the house down with his spectacular performance, and launched his now-glittering career! Pity the poor folk who just saw boring old DT. Indeed, did I ever mention how I saw the actress who'd been the understudy in 42nd St and then took over the role, in a case of life imitating art? It was Catherine Zeta Jones. Fact. So the future me finds this totally exciting. Totally. Exciting.

This is Edward Bennett

I have three days to get as excited about seeing him as Hamlet as I was about seeing David Tennant. I have been a fan of David Tennant ever since Casanova, which was three years ago, so it's three years per day. It's a big ask but I reckon I can manage it. Otherwise, and I know it's an ensemble production etc etc, but it is a bit like going to see Aretha Franklin and finding out that she's lost her voice but they are going to do the gig anyway, with one of the backing singers on lead vocals. I mean, I'm sure the backing singer has a terrific voice. But she aint Aretha.

So, anyway, there is stuff to get excited about here. Ed has great eyebrows and nice lips. He probably kisses like a dream. Also, according to his Rada page, he can do the Lindy Hop and play the bongos. He has a clean driving license, which is important, because I don't have a car, and he likes swimming, and so do I. He likes swimming so much he has mentioned it twice. And he has played Hamlet at university, which is handy. We are totally overlooking the fact that not only does he hunt on horseback but he has put it on his CV. Because if not, that is going to fully interfere with the crush I have to develop by 7.30pm on Friday.

Mrs Edward Bennett. Mrs Marie Bennett. Mr and Mrs Phillips-Bennett.

I can probably wean him off the hunting.

...And I owe it all to Arthur Leone PR

I have been blogging, on various sites, for five and a half years. That's a lot of blogging. (Although, if I believe Malcolm Gladwell, it is slowly turning me into a genius, so I can't complain.) People often ask me why I blog, and I tell them: for fun. To practise writing. To feel part of the world when in reality I am sitting alone at home all day. To build up a lovely community of readers, who I can then flog books to. What I rarely say is: so that people will give me stuff. This is because people don't give me stuff, though I sweat blood and get blisters on my fingers to entertain them day in day out for five and a half years (see above) completely voluntarily and unpaid, and I will totally accept gifts and cash sent via my agent David Godwin at David Godwin Associates as a token of your appreciation, though please also send the receipt so I can swap it for something I actually want.

Anyway: enter Arthur Leone PR. A few weeks ago I happened to mention Dirty Dancing: The Musical on my blog, and to say thank you, they were kind enough to offer me two tickets to go and see it, though this did come with a veiled rebuke for not having given it its proper name: Dirty Dancing: The Classic Story On Stage. Just for having mentioned it! (And can I just say: Jimmy Choo, Tiffany, Apple (that's computers, not fruit, though I will accept fruit, I am not fussy), Porsche, Prada...)

So anyway, last night, off I went with a dear friend to see Dirty Dancing: The Classic Story On Stage. From here on in, dear reader, there will be spoilers. However, I am not too worried about this, as I am fairly sure that you divide neatly into two camps: people who have seen Dirty Dancing: The Classic Story On Screen, and therefore already know everything that happens in Dirty Dancing: the Classic Story On Stage, and those of you who have never seen Dirty Dancing: The Classic Story On Screen, have no intention of ever seeing Dirty Dancing: The Classic Story On Screen Or Stage, and therefore couldn't give a monkey's nut about spoilers.

And to be fair to those folk at Arthur Leone PR, Dirty Dancing: The Classic Story On Stage is not really a musical in the purest sense. This is to say that nobody breaks into song to describe the innermost feelings in their hearts. This is slightly disappointing: it does mean that there is no "I Carried A Watermelon" tango, no "Nobody Puts Baby In A Corner" Cha Cha Cha. On the other hand, this decision does save Dirty Dancing: The Classic Story On Stage from being really, really crap. You still get some on-stage singing, mainly set up as 'performance' at Kellermen's (the holiday camp where the play is set), and the rest of it is off-stage, either recorded or with the cast doing creditable impersonations of the original songs off the soundtrack. The choice to go au naturel with the music does mean that the eighties stuff off the soundtrack (She's Like The Wind, Hungry Eyes and of course I've Had The Time Of My life) sticks out miles, just like it did in the movie, and as with the movie I was left wondering why the hell Johnny Castle sets his final valedictory performance to a style of music that will not be invented until at least twenty years after the story is set. On the other hand, he does keep banging on about his exciting new ideas, so maybe that explains it. Me, I'd have been happy with a pachanga.

Dirty Dancing: The Classic Story On Stage is in the main a faithful representation of the original Dirty Dancing, as you would expect. It is, after all, The Classic Story On Stage. The cast have been chosen and made up to look like the original characters (Baby's wig is particularly brilliant), key scenes from the movie are acted out almost precisely as they are in the film, key dance routines also. And this is all to the good. There would have been rioting and people ripping out the seats had Baby carried a cantaloupe, sat in a circle, and if *that* lift had been omitted. In fact where the production starts to go wrong is where it decides to veer away from the movie, in, for example, the alarming "Civil Rights" sequence where a black cast member unaccountably sings in front of a rear projection of Martin Luther King for no reason whatsoever. Did Dr King dance? Did he dance dirtily? He was a church man. I think not. Also, upon consultation with my dear friend and companion, we are both convinced that nowhere in the original movie are the words "there's a lot of power in these wrists" uttered by Johnny Castle during the lift practice sequence. Because if they were, I would have been sure to respond, as I did audibly on the night, "I'm sure there are, mate." Also, in the movie, I am pretty certain that Johnny and Baby kiss at some point, probably prior to them having sex. (As an aside, the sex in Dirty Dancing: The Classic Story On Stage is kind of gross and projected onto screens at the rear so that you can have a really good look at it. Do not take your young kids.) There is no kissing in Dirty Dancing: The Classic Story On Stage. Why? Halitosis? Cold Sores? Incurable phobia of lip contact?

So you don't go to Dirty Dancing: The Classic Story On Stage for fresh interpretation, surprises, or snogging (though it might be worth a visit if you are a die-hard Martin Luther King fan.) So why do you go? Well, for the dancing. The dancing is spectacular. I have never seen anything like it in any musical I have seen, and believe me I have seen a lot of musicals. Like Sarah Palin, I may even be able to claim to have seen "all of them". The cast are incredible - special mention has to go to the girl playing Penny (the one who gets "knocked up" by "Robbie the creep" and thus precipitates the collapse of Baby's relationship with her father, leading Baby to be seated in a corner) who is about seven feet tall, one inch wide, and can insouciantly kick her ankles behind her head. The routines are fabulously choreographed, and intelligently too, allowing for contextual variation between people who "can dance" or "can't dance" while still making all the dancing enjoyable to watch. My only criticism of the dancing was that there was not enough of it. Dirty Dancing: The Classic Story on Stage, is pretty average in every respect except the dancing, but when it comes to the dancing, it is exceptional. Therefore it would seem like a good idea to topload the dancing, especially in the second half where the plot gets murky and a bit dull. Incidentally, Strictly fans, there is a lot of recognisable Latin dancing in this, and so you are primed to particularly enjoy it. I would go so far as to say that if you love Strictly you're in with a good chance of loving Dirty Dancing: The Classic Story on Stage, so run, don't walk etc.

On the other hand, if you love convincing American accents or for that matter convincing acting of any variety, if indeed actors being able to act is a bit of a deal breaker for you, you might want to consider staying away. The cast have been chosen for their dancing, and it shows in the best and worst possible way. Allow me to be blunt about this: a hell of a lot (though not all) of people on that stage can in no way act, and sadly amongst their number is lead male, Johnny Castle. Johnny Castle - whose dancing is undeniably brilliant - may be one of the worst actors I have ever seen. Every line he speaks goes beyond unconvincing into a whole new realm. Lovely companion and I got to the point where we wept tears of laughter every time he opened his mouth. As did the people in the row in front. Not only was it impossible to believe that he and Baby were in love, it was impossible to believe that Baby could even tolerate being in the same room with him, in fact I would go so far to say that it was impossible to believe that he was an actual human being, let alone a would-be gigolo trying to escape from a humdrum life as a house-painter through the medium of dance. (To be fair, anybody would have to be a pretty impressive actor to convince on that score.) The moment when Johnny Castle appears for his final dance - just before rescuing Baby from that corner - may be the most unintentionally hilarious stage moment I have ever witnessed, and I will not elaborate, so that you can appreciate it in all its glory.

So the obvious question remains: did I have the time of my life? Hell yes. Just not entirely in the way that the show's producers (or indeed Arthur Leone PR) might have wished. If you are the kind of person who loves reveling in so-bad-it's-good, and who will appreciate some extraordinary dancing on the side, I urge you to go right away to Dirty Dancing: The Classic Story On Stage. If, on the other hand, you veer towards the ept rather than inept in your performance standards, and are apt to tut and roll your eyes when Baby's Father changes accent for the thirtieth time of the night (though to be fair, we got the understudy), perhaps just stick to the original movie, as acted by actors, not dancers.

When Computer Predictions Go Wrong

I have just received an e-mail from Lastminute.com saying that as I loved 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf', I should also enjoy 'The Sound of Music', 'Phantom of the Opera' and eating pizza.

Mark Morris: Romeo & Juliet

I like stories. And I like dance. So you'd think I'd be all over narrative ballet. It's storytelling in dance form! All boxes ticked, right? But watching Mark Morris's Romeo & Juliet at the Barbican over the weekend I felt a stealthy malaise come over me. What on earth, I kept thinking, is the point of this?

To rewind a little, I don't know much about ballet, though I've seen three or four, and I do enjoy contemporary dance. Mark Morris is a key contemporary choreographer - one I've never seen before - and I was excited to read he's be staging Prokoviev's R&J, as I love the score. To add to my interest, Morris had chosen to direct Prokoviev's never-heard original version of the score, in which the friar does reach Romeo in time and saves the day, and the lovers don't die. This radical version was instantly suppressed by Stalin who took a dim view of pro-Christian propaganda (either that or he had surprisingly purist feelings about Shakespeare.) So I thought it would be eclectic and unusual and quite different from traditional classical ballet. And entertaining, naturally.

Well, to begin with I have to say that I didn't notice anything particularly different in Mark Morris's choreography than I would expect from any classical ballet. There was some nudity and a bit of simulated sex at the opening of the third act (big disappointment for the people in front of us who went home after the first two), and two of the main male roles (Mercutio and Tybalt) were played by women - an inspired decision which allowed for an excess of swagger and playfulness around sexuality which wouldn't have been possible with male dancers - think the exaggerated femininity of a drag queen in reverse.

But aside from that it was disappointingly predictable. I'd even go so far as to say that it was a distressingly literal reading of the work, with lots of crowd scenes where people come in and mime saying oh hello, nice to see you, is that the time and so on. It actually reminded me of watching Playschool. The bits with the Friar were particularly cringe-inducing, poor chap - lots of miming around the poison "if you DRINK this you will SLEEP and then you'll appear DEAD but when the SUN COMES UP you will WAKE" - imagine miming that, and you're pretty much there. Maybe it's not Morris's fault - there is a lot of story in Romeo and Juliet, and I suppose you've got to make sure the audience is following the drift. But it was the very adherence to narrative that I found so off-putting. I was hoping for something oblique, an emotional reading, deboned of story, but suffused with a deeper truth. They call Mark Morris an iconoclast after all. What I got was exposition through gesture, and lots of it.

Thankfully there was a saving grace - quite literally - in the form of Rita Donahue as Juliet. It was as if she was in a completely different ballet. Every time she appeared on stage everything changed, the entire work lifted, and suddenly I felt as if I were seeing into someone's soul. I forgot all the intellectual buzzing in my head (I'm sure you're not actually supposed to be sitting there silently debating with yourself whether ballet is a dated art form or whether it has always looked this bloody stupid) and became lost in the elegance and dramatic subtleties of her performance. Suddenly it all made sense, she was the embodiment of all the narrative potential of dance, the way in which, like music, it can give you insights into the personal, emotional spaces which ordinary words and gesture can't. She was glorious, she was beautiful. And then her scene would be over and off she'd go, and on would gallumph a bunch of Renaissance peasants doing a drama school version of "now we are brawling in the streets!"

File under disappointing work by allegedly great masters that I have wasted time and money on at the Barbican.

What a Contrast!

Last night was Thomas Middleton's 1606 play, The Revenger's Tragedy at the National. No risk of not following what was going on there. Of course, it did help, as my companion pointed out, that the characters told you what they were going to do before they did it, then did it, and then recapped afterwards about what they had done, and it's pretty much all sex, disguises and lots and lots of murder, which is all nice and visual, but even so, the key is: I almost never felt as if the dialogue was running away from me. Perhaps the language wasn't as idiomatic as Shakespeare, but even so.

Quite aside from that, it was a brilliantly designed, strikingly modern production, almost over the top but still controlled, and full of shocks and gore. The acting and directing were perfectly pitched to be large enough to carry the dialogue where it was difficult, but still retain genuine emotional resonance. And it was one of the very few plays of this type I've seen where I didn't think that the storyline and mounting bodycount were laughably ridiculous, probably because of the magnificent scene-setting of the opening minutes - some of the best theatre I've seen - which place you convincingly in that dark, decadent world.

In conclusion of what has become an unexpected two-part post (see below for the related first half), it shouldn't matter if the play is written in Early Modern English, it is possible to follow the dialogue if it is well performed, and directors do audiences a disservice by assuming we are all familiar with plays that we might not be, and not bothering to make the meaning clear.

Tickets for The Revenger's Tragedy at the National are still available, and it's part of the travelex season, so they are dead (so to speak) cheap (mine were £10).

Shakespeare with(out) Spoilers

Yesterday I saw King Lear for the first time. King Lear being one of the great Shakespeare plays, it's one of those ones where it's generally assumed that you know what happens, like Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello etc. I don't remember ever having not known what happens in Romeo & Juliet, in the same way that I don't remember not knowing how to walk, but my mother tells a great story of going to see it with a friend of hers when they were both students, and her friend didn't know what happened and was inconsolable at the end. As a result of which, I've always thought it would be nice to see one of these great plays fresh, as it were, and so have taken great cares over the last 32 years not to find out anything about King Lear. (Avoiding spoilers, as it were - which you will not be able to do, should you read much further).

So, was my experiment a success? Sadly, no. It reminded me of a funny answer I once read from an exam paper, "I found the play very hard to understand due to it being written in Shakespeare". The sad truth is that I could barely follow the dialogue, which meant that I only kept up with the plot on the most basic level (and totally missed Edgar coming back as Old Tom - he was wearing different clothes and his hair was messy, what could I do? - which at least answers the question I always ask in the mistaken identity bits of Shakespeare, ie surely they would notice - well, apparently not. But then again Edgar is not my son.) The acting seemed very heartfelt, but at times I may as well have been watching in a different language, to the extent that I would almost have appreciated some surtitles, although that might have gone slightly against the authenticity, given that we were at the Globe.

The three people I was with, all English teachers or having studied English at degree level, and therefore very familiar with the play, were in floods of tears by the time it finished, while I was still trying to figure out whether Lear was dead or just prostrate with grief. All I could manage was to think, on an intellectual level, that it was a "good" play. I wasn't at all moved. I'd be very interested to know whether the company who staged the play had assumed that everyone would know it already and therefore hadn't bothered to worry about enunciating the lines that much - some of the dialogue shot past incredibly fast; or whether it is just a particularly hard play to understand; whether the Globe's open air, unmic-ed set up is to blame, for letting so many of the lines be swallowed by passing aircraft; or whether I am just thick. Interestingly though, I do want to see it again now - now that I have been "spoilered" and know what happens, so that I can concentrate on *how* it happens.

PS I have just been to the Globe site to set up a link, and one of the pictures they are using to illustrate the show is from the very last scene and features a very dead cast member! So they must be assuming that we all know what happens at the end.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

I am having a little problem with falling asleep at the moment.

The other night I went with He of the Big Mouth to see Kristin Hersh of the Throwing Muses doing a live event, combining readings from her memoirs, guitar accompaniment, solo songs, and the projection behind her of huge, dreamlike paintings. Dreamlike, or were they actual dreams? Hard to say, because I was only awake for about two thirds of it. It was a completely brilliant two thirds and I am sure that the additional one third was also excellent but I can't say for certain, because I was fully unconscious at the time. Big Mouth, with the benefit of having seen 100pc of the show, reviews at the bottom of this post.

Then this weekend I went to stay with aforementioned Big Mouth, and on Saturday night we watched Infamous. This is the other movie about Truman Capote, which came out at the same time as Capote and was completely ignored. Completely and unfairly ignored, because the film is fantastic, featuring excellent performances from Toby Jones - hilarious yet poignant - as Capote, Sandra Bullock - uncharacteristically restrained and showing off her dramatic abilities - as Harper Lee, Daniel Craig - muscular and volatile - as the murderer Perry, and a host of brilliant names such as Isabella Rosselini, Juliet Stevenson and Jeff Daniels all providing impeccable support. Of course, when I say that the film is fantastic, what I really mean is that the first half is fantastic, as I slept all the way through the second half. I can't even compare Infamous with any real honesty to Capote, as I fell asleep in that as well, and the only reason woke up is that I went to see it with my sister and she fell asleep as well, and her snoring woke us both up.

I have long had a problem with falling asleep in the theatre. Great shows that I have snoozed through include the award-winning Nicholas Nickleby (parts one and two); Shared Experience's adaptation of Wide Sargasso Sea; and Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet. And I don't think I was awake for more than half of my MA in Anthropological documentary. Admittedly they did insist on showing us three-hour-long epics about crop rotation in Kenya. But I still remember the sensation of being dragged into sleep about twenty minutes into Shoah, the world-famous documentary about the Holocaust. I remember thinking, 'these people have survived the most horrific treatment imaginable to humanity, the least you can do is stay awake'. But it was not to be. It should be becoming obvious by now that it is not a question of getting bored. But seat me in the dark, dim the lights and show me ANYTHING AT ALL and I am liable to start nodding off.

The irony is that I am a terrible insomniac. I can't fall asleep lying down in bed with anywhere near the same ease. I am also a ridiculously light sleeper, so that any sound or light at all wakes me up - I have to travel everywhere with earplugs and a sleep mask. I can't sleep with anyone at all in the room, let alone in my bed with me. I literally can't remember the last time I managed to sleep through an entire night without waking up at least once.

Perhaps I should try sleeping sitting up with the television on and seven hundred people watching it with me at home?

Tough Time, Nice Time

Two men sit in a bathtub and talk about sodomy, genocide, and Tom Hanks. If this doesn't appeal to you, best to avoid Tough Time, Nice Time, the new Ridiculusmus show at the Barbican. But why wouldn't it? It's fast and brave and funny and disturbing and very very smart, and I can't think of many better ways of passing 70 minutes no interval do not pass Go. It flies by so quickly that you can't keep up with your own thoughts about what's going on and have to take them all home to ponder later. What's the show really about? A hundred different things - from the difference between Nazis and hypocritical "Ordinary Germans", symbolised by the two characters hard-nosed Stefan and anxious Martin; to the eroticism inherent in the power struggle of conversation; to the seductive impulse to lie to strangers, and to oneself; to the purpose and pointlessness of storytelling, of writing and of movies; to the mystery of how a mobile phone dropped down a toilet whilst being buggered by a rent boy in Bangkok could turn up on the floor of another toilet across town two weeks later, "with twenty-five missed calls". You don't want to laugh in case you miss something and yet you can't help but laugh... This show is only on for a couple of weeks, but it shouldn't be too hard to get tickets - I picked mine up yesterday morning for the show last night. Go, see, laugh, think, and feel slightly queasy.