Time and The Conways

For J.B.Priestley's play i'm tempted simply to refer you to my below post about Chekhov, as in many ways Time and the Conways is so Chekhovian it's insane. INSANE. maybe that's because i saw The Cherry Orchard so recently and it's left a searing impression, or maybe it's because i desperately wanted to ignore the temporal philosophy JBP tries to overlay onto the story of an aristocratic family's terminal social and financial decline, which takes place during Britain's interwar years. or maybe it's becasue that real point of the play, the Time of the title, was basically not explored enough for me to engage with it. but more o that later.

anyway, the first act sees the 21st Birthday party of Kay Conway, which takes place in 1919 in a grand house in the English countryside, where she's celebrating with her three sisters, brother and mother. Charades are played, spirits are high, strains of socialism, hope, burgeoning love and creative energy fizz in the air, with a fair dose of social snobbery and fatal dramatic irony casually thrown into the mix. the second act sees the same family collected for a more sombre family meeting 19 years later, in 1938, once again on Kay's birthday - her 40th. But this time it's crisis time, the gregarious matriarch (Francesca Annis), so ebullient in the first act, now reduced to grovelling for money. As you come to realise how the family have evolved, what misfortune has befallen them due to their stupidity, mostly, the narrative speaks volumes about a dying breed of English family who cannot connect with the social flux of their times, and how that's affected the writer, the actress, the socialist, the beauty, the recluse and the cad of the family. To be honest, they all come across as being pretty odious, but there's such a compelling downshift in their spirits, reflecting how they are a product of their times and how those times have shaped their characters, that the odiousness is bearable (up to a point).

It's a very mannered production, directed by Rupert Goold. in fact, it's almost a bit like a morality play, with all the characters basically being a type, who fall to their doom because of their particular brand of hubris. at least that's how this production plays out. The Time theme seems a bit of a tag on. I guess, loosely, it explores the notion that in fact, far from separating us into different versions of ourselves, time happens to us all at once. in a single temporal continuum. Kay is the main conduit for explaining this, and it's played out very visually in this production. the first act ends with her wanting to record her present emotions for future use in a novel, but that action inadvertently transports her to the future. and then the second act closes with 10 or so versions of herself all staring at their reflections in the mirror - the same version of herself all lined up taking stock of the different scenes in her life (possibly). In the third act (which leaps back to the party of 1919), Kay then appears to have seizure like telescopic moments, where her awareness of the future is seemingly invading the present - thus rendering the whole temporal continuum immediate, by which i mean that the present and the future are effectively happening in the same time. basically showing that everything happens in the now, the past future and present are always now. one moment. this idea is then played out with Kay aged 40 dancing with a hologram type version of her 21 year old self, as if the two are one-and-the-same in the same time.

anyway, i really enjoyed it, but up to a point, that point being when the mannered performances BECAME TOO MUCH. which tended to be about 10 mins before the end of every act, when i tended to clutch my sisters beside me and hiss something like 'this CANNOT go on. it's SIMPLY TOO MUCH'. i blame Rupert Goold, even though i do love him (mostly). it is a great production in the main, but it felt a bit like trying to squeeze something into the a box that's just (and only just) the wrong size. but the wrong size nevertheless. basically it works, but there's a tiny bit that won't quite fit. and by playing it so mannered it eventually strays into being irritatingly hammy, which reaches a crescendo of annoyance which eventually becomes UNBEARABLE. It's very much in the vein of the Miss Marples he's directed for TV (or actually 'Marple' as they are now called, dropping the Miss, which completely infuriates me as the POINT is that she's an elderly spinster - she is part of an UNSEEN and IGNORED group in society and thus can pick up info to do with the mystery because people don't notice her). anyway, if you've watched those on TV you'll know what i mean. the costumes, the way of speaking, the playing it up takes over any real characterisation, or actual interest in the mystery itself - it's all about the gloss. with Time and the Conways, i think Rupert Goold has sacrificed JBP's main point - his temporal theme, for the sake of a more Chekhovian presentation of the fall from grace/grandeur of an aristocratic family, which grows out of the mannered performances.

Gosh it's taken me a long time to say this.

Chanel doll clutch bag

words ESCAPE ME. ok, so this outfit was worn by Miss Allen in January which would indicate that i'm not very quick on the uptake, but hey. i LOVE it. Chanel BTW.

Jeff Koons

Almost called this post 'Jess Koons', which would have been appropriate as i went to the private view (which opened the show last night) with Jess. and THANK GOD i did, rather than going under my own steam with my paltry press invite, as the 'plebs' queue to get in was about 50 people long, and by the time i came out the queue to get into the park (BEFORE having to queue to get into the exhibition) would have been round the block - if The Serpentine was indeed on a block. anyway, with Jess, who has recently become a Future Contemporary of The Serpentine, and who is getting married in the summer pavilion there in August, we avoided the hoi polloi waiting thing entirely and went in the back door, which made for a very 007 stealth entrance. LOVED that. and i rather loved Koons' ironic celebration of tack, too. whoop whoop to the insubstantial, pop culture, the banal, the shallow, the naff. except it isn't entirely that, obv, as his sculptures aren't the actual things he's 'celebrating' at all, which obviously makes it all very... well, very. this time, his 'inflatables' (not inflatable at all, rather made from aluminium to look like plastic inflatables) are poolside blow ups - dog rubber rings and lobster lilos (above) doing rather jaunty things like being suspended from the ceiling and holding chairs, or supporting a whole forest of chopped wood. That so much work has gone into re-creating a plastic toy that costs about £4.50 down Asda, making it from something of substance, and thus into art, art that attempts to comment on our value judgements, aesthetic sensibilities, and materialism seems particularly interesting, somehow, given the amount of 'real' plastic faces wandering around the exhibition amongst these pieces. literally hundreds of plastic surgery freaks whose smooth faces were completely betrayed by their wrinkly legs. People = the art, i thought - shiny, plastic people who were made to look young and carefree - wrinkleless, like time has stood still and experience hasn't taken its toll. sort of walking, superficial works of art. probably worth less than a Koons, though. Koons, BTW, brought his kids along to the show. They were dressed like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange in monochrome suits and bowler hats. Odd. Very odd.

PS. spotted: Stella McCartney sporting a v cool gold jacket with her husband Alasdhair Willis (such a dish).

Jeff Koons is on until 13 September at The Serpentine Gallery, London.

Image: Jeff Koons Acrobat 2003–09

Polychromed aluminium, galvanised steel, wood and straw

228.9 x 148 x 64.8 cm

Bill Bell Collection

© 2009 Jeff Koons

The Bridge Project

So, now that I've seen both The Cherry Orchard and The Winter's Tale at The Old Vic, i reckon I can comfortably say that i think that The Bridge Project (fashionably named due to its allegiance to both sides of the Atlantic (cast, performances etc)) is fab. Directed by Sam Mendes, with a starry cast including Rebecca Hall, Simon Russell Beale and Ethan Hawke, and with The Cherry Orchard translated by Tom Stoppard, both plays are wonderfully vibrant and pulsate with genuine enthusiasm and vitality. Sinead Cusack, totally scene-stealing in Stoppard's Rock'n'Roll not so long ago, clearly relishes rolling the playwright's words around her tongue, and as the theatrical Ranevskaya 100% commands the stage, strutting about in swathes of silk -you can't take your eyes off her. I can never really seem to go a year without seeing at least one Chekhov play, and thank GOD, because i always love them, despite the fact that i think that, basically, the plots are always the same - an artisocratic Russian family stuck in space and time, bemoaning the emptiness of their lives and their general desire to be somewhere else (Moscow, mostly), while the action (usually involving their fate becasue of social and economic factors) happens off stage, thus circumnavigating any actually real drama during the course of the play, which somehow exacerbates the claustrophobic atmosphere and stagnant attitudes of the characters, who refuse to accept their impending doom - usually the dissolution of their estate, which has come about because of their refusal to adapt or change with the times. Phew. Here, of course, the whole issue revolves around the beautiful cherry orchard, which some self-improving upstart (SR-B) thinks they should chop down, divide up and rent out, thus keeping enough money to maintain the house. But of course they find this an abhorrent idea, ignore him, and thus sign their own (social/economic) death warrants. I went out with someone once who i think is basically a character from a Chekhov play, so i have a particular fondness for it. but anyway, i think this production is particularly good - and last time i saw The Cherry Orchard it was with Vanessa Redgrave and Corin Redgrave at the National Theatre, so the bar was set high. The Winter's Tale, on the otherhand, was fun, but didn't set my world on fire... because, quite frankly, having never seen/read it before, i thought it was, errr RIDICULOUS. the story is so annoying. firstly i think Leontes is quite justified in being in a grump with Hermione at the start. at least in this production, where Polixines and Hermione are literally all over each other like a RASH. secondly, what was she doing for 16 years hiding away? having a Josef Fritzl time of it (as Sophie G, who i went with, asked)? insane. and the statue coming to life. no. I think basically i'm feeling very anti WS's comedies... even Twelfth Night, which i saw last autumn at the Donmar in the West End with Derek Jacobi as Malvolio and grated somewhat. maybe i'm losing my sense-of-humour. Still, in The Winter's Tale, our Ethan is rather spectacular as the con artist Autolycus, leaping about in a devilish frenzy, which saved it for me. O and the dances with balloon/dildos were quite fun. But really, one can understand, if you ask me, why this isn't one of Shakespeare's plays that is put on that often.

Victorian Gymkhana

No this isn't some gloriously aged picture from a century ago, taken by a man crouching over a tiny box with his head under a black cloth. It was taken by Hermione on Sunday, at Kenwood House, Hampstead, where we were basking in the sun watching a Victorian gymkhana - the social event of the w/e. In case you are wondering, a Victorian Gymkhana involves events like women riding side saddle whilst holding parasols or cups of tea, and trying to remain composed as their steeds race and leap over jumps. Extraordinary, but rather fun, and Queen Vic, her lady-in-waiting and a companion Rajah certainly seemed to love it.

Photo © Hermione Eyre

War Horse

Believe me, I am not a Black Beauty fan. in fact, i am about as un animally as it's possible to be, mainly a repercussion of having killed my school hamster aged 4, and which i still have nightmares about. So i wasn't expecting to be terribly impressed with this play. it's about horses for fuck's sake. which are puppets. eh? But when the giddy, nervous, jittery foal first skitted on to the stage in The National Theatre's production of War Horse, honestly, tears came to my eyes it was so dreamlike, so realistic and so incredibly beautiful. i'm rarely moved to tears by beauty, so it was a bit of a shock (nay embarrassment), but honestly, this really is something else - totally worthy of sobbing over. Apparently the national theatre's director Nicholas Hytner had seen the puppets elsewhere and was mulling over how he could possibly use them in a production at the National, when his mother suggested Michael Morpurgo's novel War Horse. rather than using marionettes on strings, the puppeteers stand inside the horses - one person controlling the hind legs, one for the front and one person manipulating the head. the structure is an elegant sinewy frame with mesh, so you can fully see the people manipulating the body, but you literally don't see them at all  - in so much as they become invisible because you are so caught up in the magic of the movements - the slow breathing bobbing, the flicks of the ears, the toss of the head, the jumps and jitters of the feet. the horses have the power and presence of The Sultan's Elephant, which trundled through London with grandly statuesque leisure a few years ago, and also have a touch of the puppet Polar bears used in the National's production of His Dark Materials, also staged several years back. but BETTER. The story sounds sentimental and schmaltzy on paper, so i won't regurgitate it, but on stage, it's powerful and moving and at the climax i was LITERALLY SOBBING MY EYES OUT. sobbing. red, raw eyes all round afterwards, though, thank god, so i wasn't alone. book now. 

Plague Over England

A plague on me more like. what a pompous, pretentious load of shit. Written by the acerbic theatre critic Nicholas de Jonge it's about the gay witch hunt in England in the 1950s and centers on the story of the recently knighted Sir John Gielgud, who, in 1953, the year of the Queen's coronation, was arrested for importuning a man in a public lavatory. i expected at least a sordid, politically vitriolic expose of the bigoted freaks in power at the time, but what i got was a load of luvvies being vacuous and nauseatingly, dahlingly theatrical, not even Celia Imrie as Sibyl Thorndyke could redeem it. theatre at it's worst. avoid like the plague. 

Iza Genzken and Gerhard Richter

they were married, you know. i know this because i went to the opening of the newly revamped Whitechapel Gallery and saw Isa Genzken's (quite frankly extraordinary) exhibition and then i went to see the Gerhard Richter exhibition at the NPG, where i saw that Richter had taken pictures of Genzken, his second ex-wife. strangely the nude shots of her (the back of her torso) were in a room with other nude images (or near nude images) of his other wives. most odd i thought. still, my god the Richter exhibition was beautiful. it's like looking at dream images - paintings of photographs from newspapers or private archives that have been blurred, so they are like looking though Vaselined glass. this image above is of his daughter, Betty, i think she's called. i had to buy the extortionately priced print i fell in love with it so much. BUT, i hated the little printed exhibition guide - i wanted to tear it up, throw it on the floor and jump up and down on it screaming, i hated it so much. it was a WASTE of TIME, and filled with absolutely nothing dressed up as something such as " By presenting an inscrutable surface, they intimate that reality cannot be seen or known but remains beneath a veneer or semblance" aaaarrrrgh. Genzken's exhibition at the WG meanwhile was interesting too (though completely different - no wonder they split up) - lots of perspex and concrete frames - some beautiful (like the kaleidoscopic buildings for Berlin) and some downright weird - the psychedelic astronauts having a love in (upstairs). still, innovative use of a slinky in some pieces i thought. In the rest of the gallery there are also rooms for the Whitechapel's modern art collection - Peter Doig, Damien Hirst, Ben Nicholson, Sarah Lucas, Anish Kapoor et al, which is fun to wander though. there are also myriad study spaces - all bright and airy and one even with a roof balcony. neat. there's also a new room dedicated to the Whitechapel Boys, the creative group including people like Jacob Epstein and Isaac Rosenberg, who used to meet in the old whitechapel library (which this new gallery has expanded into) and hatch plans about British modernist art. it's fantastic and so nice to have something genuinely moving linked to the space.

Stovepipe

I am a real fan of promenade theatre. unless the walking about bit of the play is heinously cringeworthy and pointless, in which case i LOATHE it and think it's pretentious shit. Last year's super high was the improbably named You Me Bum Bum Train- a ghost train cum theatre of nightmares housed in a warehouse on Curtain Road, E1 where you wandered though various bad dream scenarios including crawling though a tunnel that spat you out in the middle of a boxing ring where you were expected to fight, a dentist's chair, a catwalk show (at this point i was in a wheelchair and sporting a luminous yellow gum shield), a bobsleigh race and a press conference with a politician speaking Swahili (where i was supposed to be the translator). completely bizarre and utterly wonderful. This year's high might very well prove to be Stovepipe, a play set in the subterranean, echoey, creepy space beneath the West 12 shopping centre in Shepherd's Bush. It's about an ex-military private contractor, Alan, who, along with two friends, is hired by a corporation involved with the construction exhibition Project Rebuild Iraq. Supposedly paid enough to warrant no health or security clauses in their contract, the three men launch themselves into Iraq's turbulent social landscape hoping to get in and get out unscathed. Obviously it doesn't quite work out like that, and Alan (subsequently hired as a private security guard) sets out on a cross middle eastern quest to find his AWOL friend following the tortuous death of the other. As the audience you're initially welcomed into the space as if a guest at the conference, so, vacuous chat, perma-smiles and bullshit presentations are the order of the day - the language of Project Rebuild Iraq that perfectly sets the scene for the underlying foundation of the play. from then on you are herded about from Jordanian hotel room to corporate office, rowdy bar, war zone and even a welsh church, always ricocheting between the conversations of Russian prostitutes, Iraqi exiles, jumped up journalists, tough-as-shit corporation organisers and soldiers (or rather ex soldiers on the edge of sanity). sometimes you'll be guided to the next location by cool, inanely confident PRB conference 'officials' sometimes it'll be pitch black with only the lights on soldiers' helmets as a guide across the danger zone you're being shouted at to negotiate. at times terrifying, at others funny, and often perplexing with time jumps that throw you off balance and constantly make you reinterpret what you've just seen in a new way. i thought it was brilliant. it used every inch of the unconventional space with genuine innovation, seamlessly guided you from scene to scene without ever losing anyone or making you confused, the pace was perfectly pitched and the subject matter for thought. basically it was perfect theatre. then i went and had an extraordinary Polish meal down the road and drank vodka shots and really wasn't myself at all the next day. oh well, you win some you lose some.

TokyoMilk

Words escape me. i am dumbstruck with love for this card. i've just discovered TokyoMilk - amazing cards, soaps, lip balms and perfumes that you can buy in the UK from Wild and Funk... need may not be an issue, but want certainly is.