Bigmouth, Soho Theatre

Posted on by Catherine Love-Smith

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(Disclaimer: this was technically a preview, but to be honest it’s hard to imagine the performance being any more phenomenal than it already is)

About halfway through Bigmouth, with the tiny part of my brain not transfixed by Valentijn Dhaenens’ electrifying performance, I start to muse about framing and juxtaposition. As Dhaenens powers his way through speeches by Goebbels and Socrates, Bin Laden and Reagan, the obvious hits me: this is all just quotation. Bigmouth is essentially a patchwork history of political rhetoric, a series of stitched-together snippets from speeches stretching back thousands of years. The art, however, is in the curation.

In an astonishing hymn to the power of oration, Dhaenens’ extraordinary solo performance recreates extracts from a diverse range of speeches, from calls to arms to elegies to desperate pleas, all using just his own voice and a long table of microphones. Punctuating these speeches are various sequences of voice looping and snatches of song, by turns haunting and bewildering (the most vivid example being a slowed down rendition of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, making it the second time that song has provided one of my favourite theatrical moments after Benedict Andrews’ Three Sisters last year). The combined effect is a dazzling assault of sound, a relentless machine-gun bombardment of words. Except for brief glugs of water, there’s no let up.

This is, first of all, a stunning display of one performer’s virtuosity and versatility. Flipping with lightning agility between accents, languages and physical mannerisms, Dhaenens is a shapeshifter, morphing seamlessly from orator to orator (or, if not always quite seamlessly, the seams themselves are as interesting as anything else). He is just as compelling when (literally) spitting with rage as when calmly – almost seductively – curling his mouth around some of the most dangerous political rhetoric in history.

And make no mistake, words are dangerous, even more so when tripping persuasively from the mouths of consummate public speakers. If Dhaenens’ wide line-up of public figures from across the years demonstrates that not much has changed when it comes to the art of verbal persuasion, another steady constant is the influence of the orator themselves. While styles of delivery vary wildly, it soon becomes clear that the success – or otherwise – of a speech lies largely in the hands (or mouth) of the speaker. The selection of speeches seen here might range from the inspiring to the morally repugnant, but it’s terrifying how much more blurred those lines can seem when rhetorical tricks come into play.

One particularly striking segment of the show interweaves two speeches by Joseph Goebbels and General Patton at the height of war in 1945, jumping deftly between the two sides. Goebbels is all creepy composure, while a shouty Patton drips with all-American testosterone, but the message of their speeches is essentially the same; both are calling for all-out war, asking their listeners to do whatever it takes to win. Sometimes it’s not the words you use, but the manner in which you clothe them.

Which brings me back to those ideas of framing, selection and juxtaposition. Why has Dhaenens chosen these particular parts of these particular speeches? Why has he placed this speech next to that speech? Why insert those specific songs? As demonstrated by the example above, quotation is not a neutral act, particularly when that act of quotation also involves sitting different snatches of borrowed speech alongside one another. On another occasion, by stringing together a series of short speeches from iconic US figures to the backing of ‘America’ from West Side Story, Dhaenens is instantly commenting on the American Dream and the supposed promise of the West without using a single word of his own. Aptly, this is also in a sense what politicians do, curating the facts and the rhetoric that make the point they are seeking to hammer home.

And there’s something that this process says not only about politics, but also about theatre and performance. I often think about how influential the framing of a piece of theatre is in guiding audiences’ reception of its political message (as a thought exercise, imaging putting a piece of fascist propaganda in a subsidised London theatre; it would almost certainly be read as a damning ironic comment on the material rather than an endorsement of the political view it portrays). The sheer force of Dhaenens’ performance, meanwhile, is a powerful demonstration of how words can be propelled by their delivery and how performance itself has the ability of transforming the fabric of the material it works with. Perhaps it really isn’t what you say, but how you say it.

Thatcherwrite, Theatre503

Posted on by Catherine Love-Smith

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Originally written for Exeunt.

As with its last attempt to address current affairs (emphasis on the current) in Hacked, Theatre503’s night of plays inspired by the legacy of Margaret Thatcher is both aided and hampered by its immediacy. These short pieces aren’t quite dancing on the grave of the Iron Lady, but her death and the potent set of feelings it brought to the surface remain fresh in the collective memory. This adds a certain charge to this range of theatrical responses, which often exploit the rawness of the issues they grapple with, but equally invites some rushed thinking. Arguments made overnight are often flawed ones.

The result, somewhat unsurprisingly, is a spirited but uneven night of political theatre. Despite setting their sights on a wide spectrum of issues thrown up by Thatcher’s death, few of these pieces achieve the same punch as Tim Etchells’ 55 Funerals, an immediate but searing deployment of political anger. The tone here is more often questioning, ironic or pointedly shrewd.

The evening opens in the crowded theatre foyer with Brian Walter’s Apples, a sharp three-part breakdown of neoliberalism that neatly nods to Thatcher’s greengrocer father and threads through the evening as an important if simplified reminder of the mark left on the UK economy by her government. It might lack a little in complexity, but its message remains depressingly relevant. It also offers some great work from Paul Cawley, Rachel De-lahay and James Cooney, including an unlikely but storming version of Will Smith’s ‘Summertime’ courtesy of De-lahay and Cooney.

Also in three parts, lending some structure to what might otherwise be an amorphous bunch of responses, is Kay Adshead’s I Am Sad You Are Dead Mrs T. This takes the form of a trio of eulogies to Thatcher, one from a bigoted ‘yoof’, one from a vile Tory-in-training and one from a resident of the underprivileged communities so neglected by Thatcher’s government. The first two monologues are packed with satirical barbs and the kind of “scroungers” rhetoric still nurtured by the current government, at times coming dangerously close to perpetuating the same stereotypes they seek to skewer, but it’s in the third that Adshead really brings out the fists. This final, deeply moving piece lands a devastating blow to the guts, leaving us in no doubt about just who has suffered and continues to suffer under Thatcher’s grim legacy.

Elsewhere, the responses are decidedly mixed. Dominic Cavendish’s dream-likeTrue Blue strands an unusually sympathetic Maggie on a desert island, clutching onto the departing tide of her deteriorating mind. It’s Thatcher’s individualism pushed to its isolated extreme, as the ultimate survivor finds herself completely alone, cast off from the society she insisted did not exist. Jimmy Osborne’s tight domestic focus on one couple turns the lens on the Falkland Islands, while My Dinnertimes With Clarence by Fraser Grace tackles education and supposed equality of opportunity through the tender friendship between a teacher and student. And never has the bonus culture of banking looked more repulsive than in Ben Worth’s testosterone-drenched Shirt and Tie, following two competitive city boys on a booze and cocaine-fuelled night out.

It’s canny programming to conclude this mixed bag of offerings with an absolute gem from Jon Brittain and Matthew Tedford. Margaret Thatcher Queen of Soho, led by a brilliant performance from Tedford dragged up in full wig and pearls, imagines a wrong turn in the 1980s leading to a glittering cabaret career and a brilliantly camp reconciliation with the gay community for a lady who suddenly is for turning. This is deliciously arch fun, cloaking its fangs in sequins and hotpants. And there should be some kind of prize for the line “where there are discos, may we bring harmonies”.

The overall impact of these collected responses, however, is uncertain. A question that often haunts fictional responses to recent events is the repeated chorus of “how soon is too soon?” In the case of a divisive public figure such as Thatcher, political legacy has to be available for discussion, but the question instead shifts to the quality of that debate. Immediacy is all very well, but there’s the risk that speaking too soon produces statements that aren’t worth hearing.

With a few incisive and provocative offerings, Theatre503 just about escapes that fate, but its impetus is worth pausing over. Is this simply a calculated attempt at topicality, or do these statements carry weight beyond the immediate aftermath of the event? Perhaps, even if most of these offerings will rapidly fade away, they have established a lively theatrical debate around a figure who continues to hold huge significance for politics today. In any case, it’s unlikely that theatre is done with the Iron Lady just yet.

Photo: Alistair Muir.

Mission Drift, National Theatre Shed

Posted on by Catherine Love-Smith

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Originally written for Exeunt.

How do you tell the story of 400 years of American capitalism? The TEAM approach that seemingly impossible challenge by going right to the heart of what sustains it: mythology. Their searing, sexy, gloriously shambolic voyage through the heartland of the great American Dream takes on one myth with another, using a symbolic saga of American youth, adventure and frenzied acquisition to intelligently skewer an economic system fatally fixated on growth. And there are songs. Brilliant, heart-stopping, floor-shaking songs.

The narrative device driving this gorgeous, chaotic juggernaut is actually deceptively simple. Using one of the staples of the Hollywood movie – that other great cornerstone of American identity – Mission Drift pursues the spirit of capitalism through a pair of intertwined love stories. Catalina and Joris are two immortal Dutch teenagers who travel over on one of the first ships to the New World, forever fourteen as they hungrily chase the frontier, while in post-credit crash Las Vegas, a cocktail waitress and a desert-dwelling cowboy seek shared respite from financial collapse. Playing tricks with temporality, the show effortlessly jumps between these two couples, its fleet-footed narrative overseen by Heather Christian’s captivating songstress Miss Atomic.

The resulting atmosphere in The Shed is somewhere between theatre, gig and cabaret show. It’s thrilling, it’s explosive, it burns with the heat of flashing neon and sun-soaked desert sand. This is unapologetically exciting theatre, giddily romanticising Americana at the same time as dismantling it. Through the furious pace, Christian’s electric music and the astonishing energy of The TEAM’s performers, the audience is bathed in the white heat of financial risk and lightning growth. Its implicit confession is that capitalism is undeniably seductive. This truth is repeatedly acknowledged as Mission Drift races through boom and bust, charting first the unstoppable march of the frontier and then the inexorable growth of Las Vegas, its neon towers thrusting up out of the desert in the ultimate expression of the capitalist dream. And all the while the action is underscored with a greedy, breathless hymn to the pursuit of growth. Bigger, bigger. Better, better. I want, I want.

At the apex of this progress is the atomic bomb: explosive, destructive, yet strangely beautiful, watched by sunglass-clad gamblers during tests at the nearby Nevada Proving Grounds. Here, that violent and seductive presence is wrapped up in Miss Atomic, whose songs blow the place apart with her namesake’s intoxicating cocktail of power and beauty. She is, in a sense, the face (and blistering voice) of it all – the bomb, Las Vegas, the unstoppable force of capitalist desire. But Catalina and Joris, played by the tireless and ever-animated Libby King and Brian Hastert, are also the blazing symbols of the American Dream. A pair of entrepreneurial Peter Pans, these two Dutch adventurers attain an eternal adolescence that hints at both the immaturity and the headiness of their restless greed. They also lay claim to that very American right to reinvention, renaming themselves at each new frontier until those names become meaningless.

The TEAM’s distinctly postmodern version of the USA is one that Jean Baudrillard would instantly recognise, in which signs have replaced reality. The desert of the real is Las Vegas’ sign-littered Neon Boneyard, cradling “the fragile bones of electric dinosaurs”, while history itself has become a theme park ride – set to warp speed and decked in flashing lights. The platform on which the band performs is flanked by tree trunks, the backdrop behind them suggesting the wild, unexplored forests of the frontier, but now that frontier is only an empty image glossed over with the glitter of the casino. It’s all a mirage.

It might all be simulacra, but this breakneck production still dazzles, sweeping us up in its epic scope. Momentum builds and builds, in step with the pioneers and the skyscrapers, leaving the scattered debris of stage mess in its wake. In the words of Miss Atomic, it “grows so fast that you can see it, and feel it, and be afraid of it”. It’s only in the final half hour or so that this pace begins to flag, with music and chaos dropping away in favour of calm, reflective storytelling. While it’s with a hint of disappointment that the pulse-quickening action departs, the lull feels necessary, the sudden shift in aesthetic reflecting the water-treading stasis of recession that we still find ourselves mired in. This structure is, in itself, a sort of warning. No matter how fast you spin it, the roulette wheel always has to stop turning sooner or later.

Photo: Ves Pitts

As You Like It, Royal Shakespeare Theatre

Posted on by Catherine Love-Smith

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In The Forest and the Field, Chris Goode identifies the forest in Shakespeare as an inherently liminal space. It’s an area where identities blur, gender becomes fluid and appearances deceive; the usual rules are suspended and all bets are off. In an age of concrete jungles, director Maria Aberg has looked around for the equivalent contemporary space for her modern Forest of Arden and landed upon the inspired setting of the festival. In this context – usually with the aid of a few illicit substances – inhibitions drop away, social rules are bent and the real world is momentarily distant. And so it is in Aberg’s joyously liberated As You Like It.

This Forest of Arden is both transporting and transformational. Leaving behind the stylised monochrome claustrophobia of the court, illuminated by harsh fluorescent lighting and presided over by a particularly thuggish Duke Frederick, the transition into the woods is almost a Wizard of Oz moment – a sudden blooming into technicolour. Upon contact with the forest and its merry band of hippies, led by an ageing rocker of an exiled duke, characters experience a sudden, disorientating shift. By establishing this transformational space, Aberg effortlessly navigates some of Shakespeare’s more abrupt plot swerves; here, anything can happen. The only thing that’s hard to believe is why the characters would ever want to leave this woodland paradise.

By offering us Shakespeare’s play in all its untrimmed, anarchic glory, Aberg’s version (running at over three hours but feeling more like one) allows the Forest of Arden to make a strange sort of sense through its stubborn refusal to follow logic. Characters fall in love at first sight or shed personality traits like winter coats, in a plot full of swift handbrake turns. This slippery structure can prove problematic for interpreters, many of whom snip away at the more preposterous elements of the narrative, but Aberg’s approach makes one suspect that those heavily edited productions are sort of missing the point. Arden, this production convinces us, is not meant to make sense. It provides a magical, freeing contrast with the restrictions of the court, its power such that it can remould personalities within moments.

While more extreme reversals occur elsewhere, Pippa Nixon’s captivating Rosalind provides perhaps the most compelling example of the force exerted by the forest’s intoxicating freedom. In court, a gloomy and sinister space succinctly captured in Ayse Tashkiran’s brilliantly unsettling choreography, the exiled duke’s daughter is forced into a role as restrictive as her floor-length black dress – which even in this dark environment has an irrepressible sparkle akin to that of its wearer. In Rosalind’s early scenes and her first encounter with Alex Waldmann’s petulant, hoodie-wearing Orlando, Nixon keeps the character tentative, reined in despite her clear passion. It’s only in the Forest of Arden, where evening wear is exchanged for jeans and bare feet, that she is exhilaratingly freed and her immediate crush for Orlando is allowed to blossom into dizzying, mind-altering love.

Every last element of the production is harnessed to create this sense of giddy liberation that occurs as soon as the characters step through the trees. The wooden frame of Naomi Dawson’s beautifully simple set design initially shuts out the light, fiercely boarding up the court from the natural world outside, before a stunning transformation brings us amid the trees and earth of the forest. James Farncombe’s lighting makes an equally dramatic transition from the stark and anaemic confines of civilization to the warm glow of the wild, while the performers rapidly shed starched suits and rigidly inherited roles. And then there’s the music. Laura Marling’s murderously catchy soundtrack crashes together the folk traditions of an ancient rural England and the messy euphoria of the modern day music festival – two things which, according to Aberg, aren’t all that different. (“I have a hunch that the rural English rituals that are now long forgotten fulfil the same kind of need that we satisfy when we go to Glastonbury,” she says. “I think on some profound level those things are connected”)

While the play is every inch Rosalind’s (and, in this production, Nixon’s), right up to the playfully delivered epilogue, the tangle of interweaving plots offers plenty of work for a strong ensemble. It’s a joy to see Nicolas Tennant on stage again after Three Kingdoms, here embracing another kind of anarchy with his wryly shambolic take on Touchstone and even briefly breaking out of the text to deliver a bit of deadpan stand-up. Waldmann’s initially sulky Orlando offers another dazzling transformation, moving through vain posturing and wide-eyed bemusement before arriving at a true appreciation of Rosalind, while he and Nixon have fizzling chemistry from the off. There’s also impressive support from Oliver Ryan’s other-worldly Jacques and a scene-stealing moment of tenderness from David Fielder as faithful servant Adam.

Yet there remains, for all the sheer joy, a hint of darkness. The frenzied pitch of emotion feels unsustainable, a high that has to be followed by a crashing low – maybe upon return to the court, which this production establishes as a particularly unappealing reality. Given the clear reference point of the festival, it’s tempting to see such events as similar escapes from a bleak and hostile world, hinting at the efforts of a disillusioned generation to ignore the injustice of their society through a haze of drink, drugs and music. I’m not sure this social critique is quite as prominently foregrounded as Matt Trueman credits it with being, but perhaps that’s just because my experience of the production was helplessly dominated by the infectious fun of the closing scenes, to which I found myself willingly surrendering. Maybe it’s just nostalgia for the blissful abandon of the festival, but it was tough to resist the urge to leap around on stage with the cast by the end.

At its fiercely beating heart, As You Like It is really about falling in love, and this version offers us a Rosalind and an Arden to tumble head over heels for. Aberg’s chaotic production might not offer us any answers beyond the space of this ecstatic, muddy celebration, but that’s the essence of the forest. It’s a magical place apart, full of gorgeous anarchy, but – just like the festival – it is essentially a transitory state. While the music lasts, however, it’s impossible to do anything but dance.

Photo: Keith Pattison.

Chimerica, Almeida Theatre

Posted on by Catherine Love-Smith

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Originally written for Exeunt.

The photograph has always been something of a paradox; a record of ephemerality, the fleeting present moment arrested for posterity. It is a document of disappearance, the deceptive capture of something already lost, a lie and an irrefutable truth wrapped up in one. In Ways of Seeing, John Berger even suggests that the invention of the camera irrevocably altered our mode of perception, therefore changing the status of the image itself: “the camera isolated momentary appearances and in so doing destroyed the idea that images were timeless”. Yet still we cling to photographs as incontrovertible vestiges of the past, investing one image with the weight of an entire event – an entire ideology, even.

In Chimerica, Lucy Kirkwood fixes her lens on just one of these historically burdened snapshots. In fact, that’s already a lie; there are at least six known versions of the iconic image that provides Kirkwood’s inspiration, implicitly refuting its uniqueness and by extension the irreproachable “truth” it is assumed to offer. The photographic catalyst for Kirkwood’s play is the ubiquitous visual encapsulation of the 1989 student protests in Tiananmen Square and the subsequent massacre by the Chinese military: the image of a man standing defiantly and defencelessly in front of a line of advancing tanks. It’s become one of the most hauntingly familiar images of the twentieth century, a symbol of non-violent protest and of the chilling opposition between the fragility of man and the might of machinery.

Around this one recorded act of heroism and the enduring mystery of the anonymous “Tank Man”, Kirkwood has crafted a taut, complex and nuanced thriller, with exhilaratingly ambitious scope. Her imagined American photojournalist, Joe, is fixated on this unknown icon of defiance who he photographed 23 years ago from the window of his Beijing hotel room. Spurred on by hints from his Chinese friend Zhang Lin and a cryptic clue in a Beijing newspaper, the quest to discover this man and the story behind the photograph quickly takes on the character of an obsession. It’s a detective story, of sorts, but set against the backdrop of a nation developing at frightening, breakneck speed. As one character puts it, this is a country that has gone from famine to Slimfast in the space of one generation.

If the glorious mess of Three Kingdoms queasily exposed the British view of Europe as Other, then Chimerica goes a long way towards skewering the hypocritically exoticising Western view of China. Although the title (borrowed from Niall Ferguson’s study of the economic dominance of this pair of superpowers) might inextricably link China and the USA, the play itself repeatedly demonstrates that we equate the citizens of these two nations at our peril. While consumer insight consultant Tessa highlights the pitfalls of treating Chinese shoppers like their counterparts in the West, Americans bemoan the Westernisation of Chinese culture in the same breath with which they sigh relief that the Chinese are becoming more like their capitalist cousins. They want authentic Chinese cuisine, but only if there’s a credit card machine at the till and a Starbucks round the corner.

The idea of the photograph, beyond providing the plot’s primary impetus, also reflects these strained perceptions that nations cultivate of one another. It’s all about how we see things. This currency of images decorates Es Devlin’s exquisite set, a revolving cube that recalls Tom Scutt’s brilliant design for 13 at the National Theatre and conjures similar ideas of being boxed in – by a restrictive state, by the photographic ghosts of history, by a consumer culture that would slot individuals into neat, easily targeted pigeon-holes. The surfaces of this cube become screens for various projected photographs, creating a constantly shifting backdrop of visual truths, lies and suggestions. These ever-present images also hint at the pervasive infiltration of visual media into our homes and lives, creating a world in which, as Joe cynically puts it, photographs of atrocity are no more than “clip art”.

For all its richly layered interrogation of economics, politics and the culture of images, the play remains motored throughout by a constantly engaging narrative. In his dogged mission to track down “Tank Man”, Joe increasingly jeopardises his job, his friendships and his burgeoning relationship with Tessa, yet somehow his obsessive investigation remains unfailingly compelling. This is largely down to the riveting precision of Lydnsey Turner’s tight production and the absorbing performance of Stephen Campbell Moore, who preserves a shred of empathy for Joe even at his most self-centredly illogical. His argument that “people need to know there’s heroism in the world” is an appealing one, but as journalistic curiosity morphs into unhealthy fixation, Joe’s pursuit is one of a strange kind of personal redemption rather than any real public interest.

As Joe races across New York and racks up his long distance phone bill on the trail of “Tank Man”, his disillusioned friend Zhang Lin, played with compassion and poignant weariness by Benedict Wong, faces mounting difficulties in Beijing. Alongside the central pairing of these two men, Kirkwood and Turner build a sophisticated cast of supporting figures, often achieving vivid characterisations in just a few quick strokes. Claudie Blakley’s blunt, businesslike Tessa has an edge of vulnerability and a nagging but never simplified social conscience, while Joe’s newspaper colleagues resist being wrestled into generic boxes. The evidence of the play itself would seem to counter Tessa’s glib assertion that in the age of mass communication and sophisticated consumer profiling there’s “no such thing as an individual”.

While focus is inevitably drawn to the impressive scope of Kirkwood’s writing, it’s equally hard to deny the visual beauty of Turner’s sleekly revolving production, bringing more excitement to the stage of the Almeida than it has witnessed in years. The staging is striking in a cinematic rather than a visceral sense, however, placed at an elegant remove from the audience. With its rapid succession of often short scenes and its gripping thriller plot, it is easy to see Chimerica working on screen, a medium that this production already seems to have at the back of its mind. If early whispers of a future life are realised – as they deserve to be – it would come as no surprise if a film adaptation is not far behind.

Resisting the cinematic vocabulary of the whole, the production’s one sharp injection of thrilling theatricality comes courtesy of a ghost from the Tiananmen Square massacre. Puncturing the realism of the scene, this figure unfurls from Zhang Lin’s fridge in a way that immediately brings to mind the performer springing from a suitcase in Three Kingdoms, providing a similarly startling physical interruption. At the close of the first act, this fragile, bloodied form bears a glowing red orb, passing the pulsing sphere from performer to performer in a sequence of captivating yet ominous beauty. This lingering moment recalls the poisoned apple of fairytale – a sinister metaphor, perhaps, for a deadly political fruit that Chimerica suggests is just waiting to be bitten into.