Fitzrovia Radio Hour

The Fitzrovia Radio Hour combines two of my obsessions, theatre and all things vintage. The troupe of writer-performers stage original 1940s-style  radio shows which are performed as if being broadcast live, accompanied by riotously funny sound effects using household implements and otherwise mundane items, creatively deployed... the banging and squelching of cabbages and watermelons simulate the bloody and gory end of one character's life while a melody of small jars and pots accurately convey the (rather inept as it turns out) playing of a game of pool. the ways and means of making the sounds are just as entertaining as the plays themselves. Not to feel left out, the audience are invited to 'cheer' and 'educatedly mumble' etc to enhance the all round atmosphere of the performances. 

Pastiche, parody, whatever, the three plays that are performed during the 75 minute show (each read in two parts, and broken up by supposed adverts of the period), hilariously send up the more un-PC and preposterous elements of 1940s attitudes and views on romance, adventure, and world events. In one play, poor Frank the Leeds lathe worker comes to a sticky end because he 'should have known his place', while in another, during a feisty hunt for treasure in the backwaters of Europe, fey Nazis frolic about, before getting their just, and brutal comeuppance.

An utter delight from beginning to end.

The Firzrovia radio Hour runs until 5 Feb at The Trafalgar Studios, tickets £15. 

The chicest Russian Dolls EVER.

Russian Vogue commissioned a series of fashion designers to design their own Russian Dolls.

Died. Heaven. To. Gone. And. I've. and not necessarily in that order.

Accomplice

Quest, mystery, theatre, adventure, treasure hunt. Accomplice is all of these things – an immersive theatrical experience which summons participants to a location revealed mere hours before the show/adventure begins and thrusts them headfirst into a mystery in which they must play a role. From the initial location, you are given the backstory to the shady situation by the first character, and given a clue which leads to the unveiling of both the next location and narrative mystery as a whole. With each location, new character and more information, the pieces of the puzzle begin to fit together. 

Because you never know where you are supposed to be, everything and everyone (even passersby – especially passersby in fact) becomes suspicious. It’s clever, unusual, ingenious and original, with actors who completely inhabit their roles feeding you information, blurring the lines between theatre and reality. It’s simultaneously funny, and intriguing while inspiring paranoia, curiosity, and a mania for discovery, revelation and explanation.

Weirdly, even though it's such a fabulous and inventive idea, I'm not sure it worked as well as it could have done - the story quite often got lost in all of the hunting for clues, and the relevance of the characters to the plot sometimes felt tenuous, or at least seemed that way because their performances were bigger than the content of what they were actually saying.  i also had a few cerebrally challenged people in my group who insisted on hogging the clues and not explaining them to the rest of the group, which made me want to throw a strop, but which actually resulted in me having a good old gossip away from the action while the men bickered about whose take on the clue would lead us to the next destination. a scene that's not hard to imagine. 

Still, all that aside it's exciting to be part of an adventure like this. Go and make up your mind for yourself, I say.

Accomplice runs until October 2011

King Lear (mark 2)

A standing ovation for the Donmar's current production of King Lear. Where to start? With Derek Jacobi in the title role i suppose; Lear’s fall from sanity, power and confident majesty to babbling, confused, wandering simpleton has never moved me quite the way this performance did. It’s not just that it’s believable, it’s the texture and dimension of the emotional mastication he suffers – it’s viscerally tangible.

Gina Mckee, who I love, is a fabulously steely Goneril – poised, elegant; her face set in a permanent sneer. Her first illicit encounter (that we see) with Edmund was one of my highlights; as he repeatedly grabs her breast she jolts and shudders in ecstasy as if hit by an electric shock. Almost immediately she segues into a scene with her husband where she becomes the physical aggressor, however this time the brutality of the force is malign – she grasps his balls with disgust and shame for his nature and actions. The twisted reflection of the two scenes is perfectly set up.

The set itself was another highlight for me – the mottled white wooden boards are both blinding and bleak– the perfect backdrop to a story which turns on a knife edge. The way they encircle the auditorium also mean they envelop the audience too, drawing you in and almost including you in the action.

Ron Cook as the fool was exceptional. Normally I hate a Shakespearian fool, but this fool was so infused with melancholy, so clearly offering poignant insights without over playing it or scene stealing, I grew to see the character in a new light.

I think that that last point was ‘it’ really for me. I felt that I heard and felt the text in a new way. there were so many moments i could isolate... take one:  when Lear is cradling Tom the madman, touching/stroking him like an animal; it's a physical comparison of man and beast that is echoed in the text a little later – there were so many moments like this where what I saw echoed what I heard and visa versa but in a wholly new and original way.

I don’t often give standing ovations, but I leapt to my feet at the end of this – it was totally, utterly, knock-your-socks off brilliant.
King Lear runs until Febuary 5th at the Donmar Warehouse.

Blue Valentine

I felt broken by Blue Valentine. It almost makes one never want to fall in love. almost. And yet, despite being heart-wrenchingly upsetting, it's also a beautiful meditation on falling out of love. The film opens with a couple (Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams) about 5 years into their marriage. it's awkward to watch the subtle signs of their failing relationship, the willful miscommunication; the silences loaded with disaffection, frustration, disappointment and disillusionment; effort made by one party and its passive deflection by the other. slowly we flash back to how they met, how they fell wildly in love - it's like you imagine it being in the movies. what happens in between the two opposing points is left to circumspection, imagination: in between lingers a hazy void where the arc of the relationship is concrete in its invisibility - the journey from burgeoning beginnings to a sobering, grey flat lining.  Every look and touch taken from each side of the arc is painfully opposed; it's crushing. It's nominated for Golden Globes on Sunday. Michelle Williams in particular 100% deserves her award.

Blue Valentine is out today.

MORE book shelf porn

In The New York Times today were these seriously cool pictures of bookshelves, which cater to my specialist interest in bookshelf porn. The feature was about some guy in the US, whose job is to make bookshelves in the homes and properties of moneyed, artsy types look uber cool. This might involve wrapping them in silver jackets to match the decor (below), sourcing books along a theme to compliment the location of the house (Westerns and cowboy themed books for the wild west, bottom), or simply making a fucking show-stopping arrangement, as above, which (in case you missed it) is The American Flag. Impressive. 

Jarvis Cocker reads Peter and the Wolf Live

The most magical experience I had over Christmas was going to The Royal Festival Hall to hear Jarvis Cocker read Prokofiev's 1936  classical composition and children's story Peter and the Wolf, accompanied by the Philharmonia Orchestra. Jarvis' deeply mellifluous voice rolled out each word of the tale like another musical instrument alongside the flute-bird, clarinet-cat, oboe-duck, timpani-hunters, horn-wolf and strings-Peter. I defy anyone in the auditorium not to have felt their heart skip with the strings, soar with the flute, quake with the drums and arch, stretch and purr with the clarinet  as the story of the little boy who traps a malevolent wolf with the help of a little bird unfurled. Once Jarvis had finished reading the story, the orchestra took up their instruments once again to play the piece over, this time while the Oscar-winning animated short film by Suzie Templeton was screened (teaser above). Nothing could have been more of a complete delight.

Happy New Year

A very happy new year. clearly my moustache obsession shows no sign of abating. oh dear. 

Hansel and Gretel

I'm really sad to say that i was terribly disappointed by Kneehigh's production of Hansel and Gretel at the Southbank. I'm a huge fan of the Cornish theatre company, whose inventively interpretative productions of plays including Brief Encounter and A Matter of Life and Death have captured my heart and imagination in a way like few other plays over the last few years. Perhaps it was because this was most definitely for children, perhaps because i secretly wanted to be at a Christmas party across town, who knows, but the songs failed to excite and the story never seemed scaled the heights of innovative daring and surprise i was expecting, acrobatically flying between the familiar and fantastical with gravity-defying elegance as with former productions i've seen. I kept thinking it should have been like Told by an Idiot's production of Michel Faber's short story The Fahrenheit Twins, weird, wonderful, funny and deliciously dark, but it wasn't. sitting somewhere between awkward and deflating instead.

Still, i've booked tickets for Kneehigh's adaptation of Powell and Pressburger's classic film The Red Shoes, starring Moira Shearer, about a fatally passionate ballet dancer, which opens at the BAC in March. so fingers crossed that'll more than make up for this disappointment.

Broken Hearts

I literally can't stop listening to these Broken Hearts covers of songs. LOVE them. i want to be in the videos, clad in neo-burlesque finery with a heart shaped bob.