East End Review

Category: STAGE

  • Joseph Mercier: ‘The erotic has a different appeal to that of pornography’

     

    Queerrrr
    Of Saints and Go-Go Boys: ‘exploring party culture through a queer lens’

    Joseph Mercier is a theatre director, choreographer and performer who is fast becoming known for his erotic, provocative dance. His latest work Of Saints and Go-Go Boys explores party culture through a queer lens. Brave, innovative and interrogative of the explicit, he is building a reputation with fearless and shocking work

    Of Saints and Go-Go Boys is said to “explore the world of misfits and sinners”. Where did this fascination come from?

    It has something to do with not necessarily my own sexual questioning, but witnessing that of others. As an extension of that, the idea of critical questioning is important to me. I’m always rubbing up against a limit, seeing how flexible it is; hanging out at a challenging place, purposefully shocking and provoking. The state of shock can be interesting: in this show it’s playful.

    What can we expect from this production?

    Viewers will be invited into a hyper-theatrical flat with three characters and guided through by a narrative. It’s instructive and interactive with a light touch. There’s too much to see and hear, but it’s intimate, with only thirty at each performance. It’s the kind of show in which you can decide your own experience.

    You’ve been described as a “choreographic provocateur” – is that an accurate description?

    It’s quite delightful! I do try to create provocative art – it’s my reason for making work. In the wider sense of the word, it’s engagement with critical thought in all sorts of ways, not just sexually. I love it – it’s a compliment. 

    Do you think there are any similarities between the Parisian underworld of the 1940s and queer culture in Britain today?

    A sense of hedonism definitely unites them. But now we’re living in a time where our lives are entirely monitored. In a funny way it’s like Foucauldian reverse discourse: now we’ve named everything there’s less room for fluidity. The queer family has been absorbed by heterocentric models. I’m curious about what happens to concepts of the queer family that Jean Genet describes in Our Lady of the Flowers. Our subculture has got smaller, and in this performance we contemplate that space – it’s a fantasy of that space, anachronistic and contemporary at once.

    What do you think is the enduring appeal of the erotic, outrageous and explicit?

    The erotic has a different appeal to purely that of pornography. We’re not honest as a culture about our bodies and how they relate to each other. Eroticism is important socially, and the body is overlooked. Explicitness is inherently of the body, and Of Saints and Go-Go Boys faces the viewer with the body laid bare. I think nudity is beautiful in all spectrums of the word.

    What do you want viewers to take away from this experience?

    I’d love for someone to come and start to think about the beautiful in the abject or profane. In Liverpool an audience member avoided the show in horror, but came again the next night – and had the same reaction. She later told us she was repulsed and intrigued, delighted and challenged, which was wonderful. In this back and forth, in and out production there’s a contradiction of emotion, and that’s just it.

    Of Saints and Go-Go Boys is at Toynbee Studios, 28 Commercial Street, E1 6AB from 17 – 19 July.

  • Chris Laurence Quartet review: Invisible polymath

    Jazzmen: The Chris Laurence Quartet
    Jazzmen: The Chris Laurence Quartet

    Bassist and bandleader Chris Laurence is something of a genre-spanning polymath. He has been principal bassist with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, is a regular collaborator with Kenny Wheeler, Stan Sulzmann and John Surman in the jazz world, and has recorded with Elton John and Sting. He was joined for this Vortex gig by Frank Ricotti (vibraphone), Martin France (drums) and John Paricelli (guitar), who between them have played with Robbie Williams, M People and Joni Mitchell.

    The set list provided a nod to many of Laurence’s former band mates and it wasn’t long before they were ensconced in a Sulzmann track entitled ‘Jack Stix’. This started with a plangent bass motif that was soon joined by some extended chords on the vibes. The ethereal swirling of the latter and the relatively free bass gave things a rather amorphous air, as if to provide an introduction to the palette they were about to paint with. The drums then joined in, fairly free at first, and gradually boiled things down to a focused groove as Paricelli’s chorus-saturated tone complemented the texture, giving rise to a more unified form to which an intricate guitar solo was appended.

    This passage from relative freedom to form was to become a key theme for the rest of the gig. This antecedent freedom was never harsh or abrasive however, I imagine partly due to the naturally soporific qualities of the vibes as much as the way they were being employed. Kenny Wheeler’s The Long Waiting saw a reverb-laden Paricelli sketch a deliberately ill-defined outline of the melodic centre, to which the swaying vibes were added, before things were tightened up by the firm pulse of the rhythm section. The dynamics of this transition from freedom to form were interesting. A rich, possibly boomy bass provided the bottom end, whilst the vibes’ spacey modulation was offset against the more incisive angularity of the guitar. It was the drums that fully underpinned the unity of the group’s emerging form however, and much like he has done on recordings such as Mark Lockheart’s Big Idea, Martin France laid down grooves of drum and bass intensity whilst always being in and never on the music.

    Things continued in this vein with Wheeler and Surman pieces before they broke into Paricelli’s ‘Scrim’. This was a personal highlight which saw France unleash flurries of notes in 5/4, providing Paricelli with the ballast to let rip a solo of Scofield-esque bite.

    Musicians like these are vital to the music ecosystem. They support the commercial world, then get down to the real business unsung in small gigs. If anyone fancies checking these guys out (and/or escaping the football), three of this band are joined by Stan Sulzmann (sax) and John Taylor (piano) on 13 July at the Vortex.

    Review of Chris Laurence Quartet at the Vortex on 21 June.

  • The Arcola Theatre launches supporter scheme

    The Arcola's Artistic Director Mehmet Urgen at the launch event for the Support Arcola scheme
    The Arcola’s Artistic Director Mehmet Ergen at the launch event for the Support Arcola scheme

    The Arcola Theatre in Dalston plans to give exclusive benefits to theatregoers who sign up to its new Support Arcola Scheme.

    As a charity, The Arcola receives only a quarter of its annual budget from the Arts Council  – with the rest of the money self-generated.

    Becoming a supporter will help the theatre realise its artistic ambitions and meet the increasing demand for community work, as well as continue nurturing new talent.

    Benefits for supporters include priority booking, money off at the bar and access to special events and press nights.

    At a launch event for the scheme, Graham Benson, chair of the Arcola’s new development board, said: “What I’ve seen here over the years is a radical, imaginative, thoroughly interesting and comprehensive body of work, challenged by no-one else, especially in London.”

    Gary Beadle, who starred in Banksy: The Room in The Elephant in April, added: “The Arcola takes risks with new writers and new plays.”

    Find out more about the Support Arcola Scheme here.

    Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL

  • The Nightmares of Carlos Fuentes – preview

    Nightmares of Carlos Fuentes 620

    Black comedy The Nightmares of Carlos Fuentes is based on an award-winning short story by Hassan Blasim, who recently became the first Arabic writer to win the International Foreign Fiction Prize.

    Exploring issues of immigration and identity, it tells the story of an Iraqi refugee arriving in London after fleeing religious persecution.

    Looking to change his fortunes he marries a wealthy older woman who helps him as he fervently studies for his citizenship tests. In doing so, he discovers the complexity of what makes somebody intrinsically British.

    In the process, he arrives at the crushing realisation that knowing the history of England inside out does not constitute such an identity.

    The performance will be directed by Nicolas Kent; the former artistic director of the Tricycle Theatre and son of a Jewish-German refugee who arrived in Britain in 1936.

    “In a way I’m trying to look after my father’s heritage,” Kent says. “We live in a very tolerant society for the most part and it’s very important that we look after people who come here who have been persecuted in their own country, and that those that come to this country recognise that they have a responsibility to their host society.”

    Having been involved in a number of political productions throughout his career Kent is no stranger to sensitive subject matter, and admits immigration is a topic that has “been hugely moved up the political agenda with the recent events in the European elections”.

    “I always think theatre is most powerful when it makes people think and when it makes them question and provokes them,” he says.

    Sex and comedy gives the play certain entertainment value, though the ominous threat of the Carlos’s past proves inescapable. Kent hopes it is this combination that will intrigue the audience.

    “It’s short, it’s very funny, and it’s also very hard hitting at the same time. It really looks at the issues as to what happens in Iraq, and looks at the issues of political asylum, and also the issues of what it is to be British. All these issues are very pertinent at the moment.”

    The Nightmares of Carlos Fuentes is at the Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL from 23 July – 16 August.

  • All night Macbeth to be staged in East London

    Rift's Macbeth: so foul and fair a play you might never have seen. Photograph: Camilla Greenwell
    Rift’s Macbeth: so foul and fair a play you might never have seen. Photograph: Camilla Greenwell

    Sleepovers can be dark, scary, sexy, curious: Rift’s Macbeth promises to be all this and more.

    Following the success of last year’s The Trial, enacted across Hoxton by this pint-sized, innovative theatre company, the outfit returns with Shakespeare’s timeless tragedy –  witches, conspiracy and murder being the perfect bedfellows for a midsummer’s eve.

    Fiery, sinister and timelessly eerie, Macbeth is a good choice for Rift to take on – their track record of producing immediate, stomach-churning theatre stands them in good stead to put on a knock-out show.

    This overnight production, staged in a ‘brutalist architectural masterpiece’ in East London until August, comes at a moment when immersive theatre is on everyone’s lips. Headed up by Felix Mortimer and Joshua Nawras, Rift – whose previous works include The Wall and O Brave New World – can be counted alongside Punchdrunk and Secret Cinema for pioneering an intensely interactive form of performance that places the audience at the centre of the action.

    Director Felix Mortimer says: “Macbeth will push the boundaries of form, experimenting with dreams and the subconscious. The audience will be taken in groups to the location, the action unfolding around them: they will be a part of it. This is an exciting stage in our development.”

    Macbeth promises its audience a thrilling night of intrigue and drama to awaken the imagination, and perhaps scare you silly. The play’s characters will visit the gathered crowd in the night, enacting the chilling events surrounding Duncan’s murder and finally waking you at dawn for the final act. ‘Macbeth seen from the inside out’ will be a feast for the senses, heightened by the dark and the outdoors; stepping inside the Scottish scourge, you will come “face-to-face with witches … feasting with the Macbeths … as a siege rages around you”. This may be the most outrageous invitation to bed you’ve ever received.

    Steel your nerves and take your place in the hallowed halls of this yet unknown location out east for a long night of toil and trouble.

    Macbeth will be at a secret East London location until August.

    www.macbeth.in

  • Turfed: the play that uses football to tackle homelessness

    Turfed: tackling child homelessness. Image by Andrew Esiebo
    Turfed: tackling child homelessness. Image by Andrew Esiebo

    Brazilian director Renato Rocha is not obsessing about his country’s chances at the World Cup this month, even though his play Turfed, which opens this month at Hackney Downs Studios, is inspired by the ‘beautiful game’.

    “If Brazil wins then people forget its problems so many of us are not supporting Brazil,” he says.

    Tensions have been running high in the country with protests against the cost of staging the tournament and the comparative lack of investment in public services.

    But for Rocha it’s not a case of either/or; a fairer society versus the spiralling cost of a football competition. His idea is to harness the global pull of football to raise awareness of another global problem: child homelessness.

    In partnership with the Street Child World Cup, Turfed uses a young international cast, some with experience of living on the streets in London, Tanzania, the Philippines and Brazil, to tell stories of homelessness using football as a metaphor for life.

    “In Brazil it’s like everything is about football,” says Rocha. “I had the idea of the analogy of the ball as an opportunity in life: so to receive the ball you have to be ready, but when you do receive the ball what do you do with it?”

    Rocha has devised the play alongside the actors, who use their own experiences and stories but retell them in a non-linear way through a series of footballing analogies using dance, visual art and and music.

    “Some speak with dance, some use poetry and others speak more with music. That’s the challenge that we give to them,” he says.

    Rocha recalls a story about going to a hostel in central London with the crew to audition people for the play. One crew member, a life-long Londoner, confessed to not knowing the hostel existed. Rocha found this revealing. “If you don’t know, how do you solve a problem that’s an invisible problem?” he says.

    “We want not just to show the audience the problem but to try to make them put themselves in that situation. If you are on the streets what do you do? Why are people living on the streets? Why do they leave their homes?”

    In the UK, says Rocha, homeless children are not living on the streets like they are in Brazil. “Actually the reasons that make people to go to the streets and leave their homes are often the same,” he says and gives family, sexual abuse, domestic violence, alcohol and poverty as examples.

    With Turfed, Rocha hopes to turn the tide of ‘invisibility’, though whether the play will help directly he doesn’t know. “The world is fast and people don’t have time to see,” he sighs. “But I always use the analogy of the guys who went in search of India but instead they discovered America. It might not have been what they were looking for but at least they discovered something.”

    Turfed is at Hackney Downs Studios, Amhurst Terrace, E8 2BT from 9-21 June.

    www.liftfestival.com

  • Between Us – review: a bold confrontation of class inequality

    Callum Dixon as Dave in Between Us at the Arcola Theatre
    Callum Dixon as Dave in Between Us at the Arcola Theatre. Photograph: Jeremy Abrahams

    Julia is a therapist, moonlighting as a stand-up comedian, who has recently made contact with the daughter she gave up for adoption many years ago. Dave, her client, has come to see her since the birth of his daughter triggered a depression. Teresa, another client, is a wealthy woman struggling to cope with caring for the two children with behavioural difficulties she recently adopted.
     
    For her latest work, Sarah Daniels is confronting the audience. Her play opens with Julia, played by Charlotte Cornwell, in the role of stand-up, addressing us, the ‘Guardian-reading’ theatregoers, here in Hackney E8. We are all included in this evening’s critique, which is: ‘What price does society pay to allow the middle classes to feel good about themselves?’ 
     
    The suggestion is that Teresa (Georgina Rich) and Dave (Callum Dixon) are using therapy to feel good about themselves despite the ethically dubious choices they have made. But while the question may be a valid one, this play this feels like an over simplification of the issue. While it promises to ask ‘how have we come to this?’ this question is not really answered, and both Teresa and Dave have something of a plausibility problem. The motivations for Teresa’s behaviour and her relationship with her husband are not properly examined, and her story feels unreal. It also asks too much of the imagination to believe that Dave, a cockney builder, was ever a public school ‘posh boy’, and his behaviour when bumping into his therapist in a bar feels unlikely. 
     
    The scenes involving Julia and her daughter Kath are the most moving. Having boldly declared to begin with that inequality is a thing of the past, the many inequalities in Julia’s relationship with her daughter are painful to witness – she craves a relationship with her, but her feelings are not returned in equal measure, and she tries to use her wealth to buy time with her. Her heartache in these scenes is palpable.
     
    Between Us includes many brilliantly observed details. On learning that her daughter is a hairdresser Julia asks “and you want to be…?”  – “A hairdresser,” Kath replies. But some of the references to societal inequalities seem artificial and inserted, and the snobbery of Julia and Teresa at times too open to be convincingly English.
     
    Between Us is funny, well-acted and always compelling. Some may find its message challenging and important, others may find it unsubtle and didactic. But it is certainly engaging.

    Between Us is at the Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL, until 21 June

  • Waiting for Godot review – ‘not total tomfoolery’

    Totally Tom duo
    Comedy duo Totally Tom star as Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot

    “Nothing is funnier than unhappiness” wrote Samuel Beckett in his play, Endgame. It is apt, then, that in the Arcola Theatre’s bold new production of his famous masterpiece Waiting for Godot, the vagrants are played by stand-up comedy duo Totally Tom.

    The Samuel Beckett estate is notoriously strict on the direction of his plays. Ex-Eton master and director Simon Dormandy’s casting of his former pupils, who swap bowler hats for baseball caps in the lead roles of Vladimir and Estragon, has created a few ripples of surprise.

    The youth of Totally Tom might irk the purists –  but they give new life to a play perhaps otherwise fated to a future as the unyielding subject of undergraduate dissertations. Playing Vladimir, Tom Palmer channels a Soho video editor with his bike satchel and scuffed Nikes while his gangly companion Estragon (Tom Stourton) has the air of a morose Irish barman – the kind you might find working in a Dalston dive.

    Their clothes might be updated but Didi and Gogo’s predicament remains unchanged. They turn up to their barren spot, a background of rubble and puddles artfully designed by Patrick Kinmouth, every day to wait for their appointment with Mr Godot. The waiting is still agony, as Didi says: “Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It’s awful.”

    Their wretched impasse is punctuated by the arrival of Pozzo (Jonathan Oliver) – a whip-wielding egocentric who has an elderly man, Lucky (Michael Roberts) tied to a rope. Oliver’s Pozzo is an East End geezer with a leather pork-pie hat, rings and tattoos but he is rather out-shined by the dexterity of his slave. Commanded to ‘think!’ on demand, Roberts produces a torrent of gibberish both disturbing and entertaining, when commanded to ‘dance!’ he performs a shuffling and strangely affecting flamenco routine.

    Totally Tom shift the emphasis of Beckett’s literary anti-heroes, giving them a sense of optimism that only makes the disappointment of Godot’s absence more intense. The jokes are not total tomfoolery but palliatives, desperate attempts to conceal the horror of waking up to a life without meaning.

    Perhaps it is the agonisingly slow passage of time that means Didi and Gogo have been seen traditionally as middle-aged rather than young men. Dormandy’s Godot suggests that today it is the tracksuits not the suits that wait in limbo. Get a ticket, what are you waiting for?

    Waiting for Godot is at the Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL until 14 June.

  • The Trial of the Jew Shylock – review

    Trial of the Jew Shylock 620
    On trial: Ashley Gunstock as Shylock (right)

    Not all of Shakespeare’s works remain popular, but The Merchant of Venice is well-known and often performed today despite the cloud of controversy surrounding it. Perhaps the reason for this longevity is its capacity to keep audiences guessing. Is it a racist play, or a play about racism? Is the character of Shylock villainous or sympathetic? How did Shakespeare view him, and did he ever even meet any Jews?

    The Trial of the Jew Shylock is a new adaption by theatre company Poetic Justice, now showing at the Rosemary Branch. But if the title and promotional blurb has led you to believe this is something fresh and different, you might be disappointed – this is Shakespeare dressed in contemporary clothes, and you’ve seen that before. But that’s not to say this version of the play has nothing interesting to offer.

    As the title indicates, the play centres on the character of Shylock. But while it is hard to escape the conclusion that Shylock, with his merciless insistence on claiming his pound of flesh, is a bit of a baddie, this adaptation goes some way to suggest reasons for his behaviour. We see a man continually abused by his Christian neighbours, whose chief complaints against him seem to be his Jewishness and his perceived love of money. Their open anti-Semitism is jarring to a contemporary audience, as is the accusation of greed, since money, as this production is at pains to point out, is all anyone around here wants. His abusers despise him for being a money lender while availing themselves of his services, and his beloved daughter has abandoned him for a Christian man who loves her for her money as much as herself.

    This Shylock spends most of his time on the defensive, bitterly conscious of the injustice of his situation, and his choosing to reject the offer of big money in favour of an essentially valueless piece of flesh suggests not greed, but rage.

    Ashley Gunstock does a remarkable job of showing the humanity and complexity of a man consistently objectified by everyone around him. His delivery of the ‘Hath not a Jew eyes’ speech and the final forced conversion scene are particularly stunning, confronting the audience with questions about who is showing inhumanity towards whom. Perhaps the victim or villain? debate applies to more than one character in this play.

    The Trial of the Jew Shylock is the Rosemary Branch theatre, 2A Shepperton Road, N1 3DT until 1 June.

     

  • My Name Is… review: From the trance of young dreams to an angry separation

    Karen Bartke and Umar Ahmed in My Name Is... Photograph: Helen Maybanks
    Karen Bartke and Umar Ahmed in My Name Is… Photograph: Helen Maybanks

    When, in 2006, 12-year-old Gaby left her Glasgow home to live with her father in Pakistan, the media rushed to conclude that she had been kidnapped by her “fundamentalist” father to be a “child bride”, in a neat example of Islam vs the West. But the drama took a turn after Gaby declared she wished to remain with her father and be known as Ghazala, and the media then quickly turned on her Glaswegian mother as “unfit” and “mentally unstable”.

    My Name Is… takes a sympathetic and nuanced look at the story behind these tiresome tropes. Writer Sudha Buchar recorded interviews with Gaby/Ghazala and her parents, basing the play on her transcripts and skillfully interweaving all three voices into this authentic and moving work.

    The result is focused less on the drama that attracted the attention of the media, and more on the story of the relationship between Gaby/Ghazala’s parents, Suzy/Sajida and Farhan, from the trance of their young dreams in 1980s Glasgow to an angry separation years later, in which Gaby’s disappearance is the climax of an absorbing, if sad, tale.

    The set is split into two locations throughout – Suzy alone in her flat and Farhan and Gaby/Ghazala in a Pakistani villa, a device which allows their individual narratives to interact with each other, and as they later divide, for the two or even three voices to quite literally compete to be heard.

    My Name Is… has little to say about global, or even national politics. It is about complex and shifting identities and the ways in which the immediate realities of racial prejudice and the expectations of family and community put pressure on individual relationships. While the news headlines focused on Gaby/Ghazala’s story, the play’s title could easily refer to her mother, who changed her name and religion for the sake of her husband, later accusing him: “You took Suzy and you made Sajida and you controlled her strings…” In fact, at times it feels as if the play is more her story than her daughter’s.

    The performances by all three actors are excellent, with Karen Bartke especially compelling as Suzy/Sajida. Despite the extraordinary features of the story, this play is essentially about the struggle to make family life work and the difficulties faced by children caught between two separated parents. My Name Is… looks beyond the melodramatic and sensationalist headlines and paints a sensitive portrait of everyday family breakdown.

    My Name Is… is at the Arcola Theatre, 4 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL until 24 May