spaceplays

Einstein on the Beach: Oh “these were the days my friends”!

 Einstein on the Beach, directed by Robert Wilson, composed by Phillip Glass, Barbican Theatre, London, 11.5.12.

Given the speed at which we lap up whatever musicals, films and TV shows that sail across the pond having proved a success, 36 years is an incredulously long time for a critically acclaimed US performance to make its UK premiere.  But so it is with Einstein on the Beach, the avant-garde opera conceived by Robert Wilson (director) and Phillip Glass (composer).  Eagerly anticipated by so many, this production had much to live up to and, after a wobbly start (on opening night there were so many technical malfunctions that Wilson himself came on stage to apologise), by the time I saw it a week later this mathematical lullaby could not fail to astound and entrance the audience.  The presence of Barbican technicians on stage at several points to move and set up pieces of set is actually appropriate given the piece’s subject matter.

Those hoping for a biography or bildungsroman of Einstein’s life will be disappointed; instead of a narrative, various themes of his work and life are abstracted and layered upon one another using text, music, dance and visual effects.  We see childhood memories and romance, a love of trains, travel and discovery and we also see glimpses of the atomic bombs that are the most troubling part of his legacy.  The scientist appears, but only for a half hour and in the guise of a violinist (Antonie Silverman) who sits alone at the front of the stage playing fast and tirelessly. The opera’s 4 Acts are framed and divided by short “knee-plays” which resemble one another in their use of the same two female performers, talking in placid, old-fashioned radio or weather reporter’s voices, and the choir’s singing of repeated numbers, “1…2…3…1…2…3…4…”, with impressive precision and religious intensity.  These “knee-plays” work excellently within the piece: both giving the audience a good opportunity to take a breather (as the piece is over 4 hours the audience are free to come and go) and providing them with a sense of continuity and circularity.

The queer music – in its intricate overlaid patterns and unusual combinations (at one moment Glass combines jazz, choral and electronica styles) – never really resolves into a melody, but then one feels it isn’t meant to.  It keeps us lulled and compelled to keep listening.  The text seems to be constructed in a similar way though its effect is very different.  The short, broken-up and sometimes-repeated phrases, reminiscent of Samuel Beckett’s later works, are initially quite opaque but as my ears picked out sections that resonated, such as the wistful “all these are the days my friends and these are the days my friends” they brought sense to the piece.

Lucinda Child’s choreography is elegant and eloquent.  The first main dance sequence is a burst of light and lightness; to the choral repetition of “keep moving”, the dancers swirl euphorically (resembling atoms orbiting one another) across a stage that could be a seascape or a skyscape.  The second, where they dance on platforms backed by spinning lights, before a screen with some sort of atomic bomb blueprint comes down, called to mind the film Metropolis and its notion of people being slaves to a machine which ultimately destroys them.  A recurring theme seems to be the blurring of what is natural and what is man-made.  The simple, androgynous costumes of shirts, trousers and trainers implied human unity although there were clearly marked gender roles in the piece’s arrangement.

All the performers: musicians, actors and dancers, must be praised for the precision and the passion in their rendering of this challenging composition, which never loses momentum.  Given that Einstein on the Beach is inspired by a physicist and is so technically ambitious, its beauty is astounding: a piece of multi-sensory minimalism that tugged at my heart.  A few lines from the last scene go some way to summing up my experience: “the night should be a time of peace and tranquility, a time to relax and be calm.  We have need of a soothing story to banish the disturbing thoughts of the day, to set at rest our troubled minds, and put at ease our ruffled spirits.”

5 stars.

Symbolic Cymbeline: South Sudan’s first international theatre production.

The South Sudan Theatre Company, Cymbeline (in Juba Arabic), dir. Joseph Abuk and Derik Uya Alfred, Globe to Globe Festival, Shakespeare’s Globe, London, 3.5.12.

It would have been impossible for a sense of celebration not to have accompanied and encompassed the South Sudan Theatre Company’s Cymbeline in London tonight, with both the company and the country it represents at the Globe-to-Globe Festival reaching their first birthday, but the absolute success of the performance certainly amplified it.  Though contemporary South Sudan is far removed from the 1^st century Britain in which the play is set, King Cymbeline’s fight for independent from Roman rule clearly resonated with the company.  They told the story, first in a quick plot summary directly addressed to the audience, then dramatically, with a rare passion and energy.

The performers used the intimacy of the Globe’s space to connect with the audience more effectively than in any of the dozen other productions I have seen there.  In particular, they did not shirk from the sides or the front of the stage, at several moments one was worried that they might indeed fall off and land in a heap of groundlings.  The use of movement and gesture was effusive, as it should be in this, frankly ludicrous, fairytale of a play.  Cymbeline interweaves romance, in the form of a princess’ secret marriage, with the war with the Romans, a bet upon sexual fidelity, the evil step-mother’s desire to see her son on the throne by any means necessary, a sleeping potion, a family of shepherds in Wales, the princess’ disguising herself as a page boy, the appearance of the god Jupiter and one of the most revelatory final scenes of any Shakespeare play. 

The dialogue was delivered in a rapid and unpretentious manner that simultaneously evoked both the culture of South Sudan and the theatre of Jacobean London.  Cymbeline played with the idea of playing: using melodrama, slapstick and improbable props to great effect, though at moments this drifted too close to amateurism; the final battle scene in particular, was disappointingly hurried and messy.  The final scene was also wrapped up quickly and seemed to negate the complexity of the story that had been unfolded.  That said, the deeply personal and engaging way this fantasy was communicated to the audience and the joyous and anarchic curtain-call which followed, should certainly reawaken the public’s interest in this oft-ignored Shakespeare play and the theatre’s capacity to transcend language and borders.

4 stars.

England’s green and pleasant land.

Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth, dir. Ian Rickson, Apollo Theatre, London.

Never before have I witnessed such a fervent fever surrounding a piece of theatre.  First being alerted to Jerusalem by a plethora of posters on the underground, proudly citing one critic’s label of ‘an instant modern classic’, then hearing of its Olivier and Tony award wins, then hearing every single other member of my MA Theatre Studies class rate it as one of the best productions they had ever seen, it truly seemed unmissable.  So, I got my bleary-eyed self down to Shaftsbury Ave. at 8.30am for two hours of queuing joy in the hope of obtaining two £10 day tickets (the run continues until mid-jan but is essentially sold-out and so day tickets is your only option unless you fancy forking out £50).  Even though I thought I was early, there were about 20 people in the queue in front of me and another 20-odd appeared behind me before the box office opened.  Though queuing for day tickets for west end musicals, for tourists in particular, is common, it was new to me and I got the impression that this was true for most others there.  Passers-by too looked puzzled that so many people were sitting huddled on the cold pavement in the name of theatre.

And so, and so… did it live up to the hype? The opening sequence was one of the boldest I have seen.  The safety curtain, emblazoned with the St. George’s flag, is down and a young woman dressed in fairy-green complete with wings, steps out infront to deliver a mesmerising rendition of the titular song.  ‘Jerusalem’ was originally a poem by William Blake, containing the idea of recreating Jerusalem – a Christian metaphor for heaven, in England. It was printed in 1808, set to music by Sir Hubert Parry in 1916 and another century on, radically reworked by Jez Butterworth as one of the central themes of this play.  As this opening lullaby draws to a close it is increasingly interrupted by deep electronic buzzes, the lights flicker, the singer looks round nervously and in a blast of theatrical smoke everything changes.  The curtain is quickly lifted revealing a caravan backed by trees and a raucous rave of decadent proportions – nudity, vomiting, stumbling and crashing.  It was a hyperbolic and slightly gruesome scene; I couldn’t help but laugh looking at the shocked, predominantly middle-aged audience and then supposing that this is what they probably imagine all dance music parties and raves to be like.  As quickly as it appeared, the scene switched again to a bathetic scene of the morning-after-the-night-before.  After these striking juxtapositions, the first act leisurely introduced us to the inimitable Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron (Mark Rylance), a complex outcast who has made this caravan in the Wiltshire woods for 20 years, and his entourage of various disillusioned and marginalised pleasure-seekers, the majority of whom are teenagers but the group also includes a wonderfully rendered, dotty old professor (Alan David).   We learn that tomorrow is both St. George’s day and thus the annual village fete and the day in which the council have finally set Rooster’s eviction from the forest.

During the first interval, we were excited, but not overwhelmed, the play was incredibly entertaining but we were waiting for the substance.  We didn’t have to wait long.  The play as a whole just kept getting better and better.  Real depth came into the play when Byron’s previously unmentioned ex-wife and son appeared.  Until this point, the audience sees Rooster’s group and their lifestyle positively on the whole, in contrast to the severe council officials and the other ‘grown-up’s, as carving a safe place for themselves outside of real-world drudgery and misery.  From this point the ethical line of all the characters behaviours flitters backwards and forewords, we are unsure who is right and who to trust.  Rooster in particular displays deeply undesirable characteristics and yet has a generosity and warmth that few others share. 

As the play draws to a close there are more twists and turns than anyone would expect and we were left in awe of Rylance’s and the ensemble’s achievements.  I did have the usual feminist gripes about the presentation of female characters – of course it wasn’t sexist, but it just happened that the female roles were the smallest, least-developed and least 3-dimensional in the play.  Three of Rooster’s gang are girls; we learn nothing more about ‘the fat girl’ but that the others tease her and that she is desperate to have sex; another, though not portrayed in such a ridiculous light seems to have been put in mostly to pour drinks, rearrange and paint bits of set and generally look decorative in the background while the important male actors get on with their scene; the third is the fairy-singer, who’s character is missing for most of the play and when she reappears, seems only concerned about no longer being the village May Queen and wanting to dance with Rooster.  This criticism aside, I thought the blending of a very prosaic, modern England, full of cultural references and video-phones with a pastoral and poetic view of a country steeped in religion and mythology was inspired.  The play will stick with me for a long time in its ability to be both thoroughly contemporary and historically epic.  I spent three hours on the very edge of my seat in the Gods, delighted at conventional, naturalistic theatre finally plumbing new depths and giving rise to new heights.

4.5 stars

It’s nice to know I am in good company.

‘I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what is it to be a human being.’ Oscar Wilde.

Theatre of Joy

‘To like the theatre you have to like its transcience and its immediacy: it happens in the present tense and it’s fallible.’ Richard Eyre and Nicholas Wright.

Sometimes inertia gets the better of me;  I feel overwhelmed and I spend an hour or so lying slumped on my bed, unconstructively perusing the internet, stretching,  worrying or just daydreaming.  Even during times like these though, it’s impossible to forget that I am alive.

For me, there is no other art form that lives - and lives as gloriously in the moment, in the present, like the theatre.  Life is surely to be lived, moment-to-moment and I want to fill my life with as many theatrical moments as possible. And then I want to share them. And so I begin.