The devised

A Strange Wild Song, created by Lecoq trained theatre company, Rhum and Clay. Telling the story of a man piecing together his grand-father’s war experiences, after an old roll of camera film is found during the excavation of a bombed-out French village. The narrative flits between the modern day, as the grandfather’s photographs are examined, and the Second World War, as the photographs are taken. The small cast of four beautifully construct both dramatic worlds through high energy performances, hilarious physicality, and utterly convincing multi-roleing.

 
In the series of photographs, the grand-father’s meeting with three young French brothers is narrated, and it is these scenes that form the heartfelt centre of the production. Almost entirely free of dialogue, the cast can really show-off their Lecoq training. Through simple actions, the war-time games of the brothers come to life, as their army-of-three defend their already devastated village from invading armies, from the pile of rubble that is their fort.

 
The company seamlessly overlap the two time zones, with help from a masterfully designed set (Alberta Jones) that is constantly taken apart and reconstructed to create two different worlds, in full view of the audience. This technique of simultaneous construction and deconstruction of the imagined world is the driving impulse behind the production.  Everything is totally convincing, yet completely subverted: the children that we feel such affection for are in fact grown men; the invading army is merely sound effects provided by the onstage musician (Laila Woozieer); even the perilous air-battle is simply an actor wearing a chest of drawers, and cardboard clouds on sticks. But the production is full of the joie de vivre of childhood’s games, where even in the most desolate of war-torn landscapes, human compassion and the power of the imagination are victorious.

The fringe

Last week I went to the Edinburgh Fringe festival. As my second time at the Fringe, I feel I’ve picked up some valuable lessons in the best ways to avoid the total car-crash shows from last year: the most vital being to rely on word of mouth and to trust your friends (not necessarily the reviewers) to provide you with the best advice on what productions you really should see.  While I didn’t manage a massive quantity of shows, I definitely got the quality, and every production that I saw was a fantastic production in its own right, whether it was devised, new-writing, dance, silent, or a man battling firework-wielding aliens on stilts… Because pretty much everything I saw deserves a post of its own (there’s too much to say about them!), I’m going to do a series of them.

This could take a while.

prince harry and the prince of wales

As of last night I’ve started reading Bright Young People by D.J. Taylor (already a fantastic book, highly recommend it), about the Bright Young movement of the 1920s; because it’s a fascinating generation, and because I’m very interested in the parallels that it has with our own generation. Throughout both runs an absence of ideals and illusions, with a sense of an impending reckoning; a sense that, despite the failure of the attempts to ‘connect’, there nevertheless exists a human interest and a common goal.

Apparently, (and the reason for this post is because I wanted to share this passage) our royals also have some similar characteristics:

“The cult of the Prince of Wales. The future King Edward VIII was one of the chief media preoccupations of the 1920s. His clothes [or Harry’s lack of…] minutely itemised, his social engagements forensically set out, his dance partners avidly discussed, the ‘Little Man’, as the newspapers christened him, dominated front pages like no previous royal personage. Photographed during his 1924 American tour in Oxford bags, dancing, at the wheel of a motor boat or playing polo, his lifestyle- for press purposes- was that of the Bright Young Person in excelsis: extravagant, pleasure-seeking, fast-moving. The activities in which he involved himself, too, had all the characteristics of the Twenties stunt: students from the University of Southampton dancing round him to shouts of ‘Here We Go Round the Prince of Wales’; the owner of the Café de Paris assuring him that only his presence on the dance floor could arrest the establishment’s decline. Frequently at large in classic Bright Young Person’s milieux- the nightclub, the West End party- the Prince was, in a certain sense, the movement’s unofficial patron. There was an ominous symbolism, again, in his detachment from the world of his parents. Compared to his playboy son, George V, with his stamp collection  and his fondness for musical comedy, seems a figure from the remote past.”

Like the future King Edward VIII before him, Harry is a symbol of a changing monarchy; it’s time the royal family began to reflect the society of which they are a part, rather than existing as an autonomous and obsolete entity, detached and alienated from the younger generation.

PS. expect more snippets from D.J. Taylor- he’s great.

a thought on ‘blogging’

I’m a little slow on the uptake with blogging, but in my first forays into graduated life it has emerged as a smart thing to be doing. Previously, the act of blogging has bothered me, as it seems pretty egotistical to splatter yourself all over the internet. It seems to me a blog is just another act of self-assertion. That said, however, this is an opinion that I’m determined to overcome. My previous theory that all bloggers are narcissistic self-promoters has been proved totally wrong by the people that I know who have blogs. It turns out it’s actually a very effective way to express your interests and thoughts, particularly for someone, like me, who thinks that actually writing would be something they’d really like to get into. And it’s only read by those who want to read it anyway. A very simple and obvious conclusion to come to, really, but one that it has taken me a little while to reach.

 
So, let the narcissistic, aggressively confrontational, utterly non-consensual, self-promotion begin.