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#WelcomeToHackney: bar’s reaction to a stabbing inspires play about gentrification

Photograph: Zbigniew Kotkiewicz

Emilia Teglia, founder and artistic director of Odd Eyes Theatre, is putting on a play about cultural clashes in Hackney (dare I say ‘gentrification’).

As such, it was pertinent when we met for coffee that we were faced with two adjacent establishments: a fashionably dingy, wooden stool-ed café full of beards, and a traditional East End caff, complete with full English breakfasts and fluorescent lighting.

It was also a bit awkward, since I assumed we’d go to the flat-white-vending locale. Luckily, Teglia is a woman of principles over coffee bean snobbery, and we went for builder’s tea next door.

Teglia was inspired to write #Haters by an event last year, when a man sought help in a ‘hipster’ Hackney pub, The Bonneville, after being stabbed. “The thing that really spurred me to write this were the comments on social media,” Teglia says.

The initial tweet, by a pub employee, kicked up a storm: “#CSIClapton due to events on Lower Clapton Road this evening, we will unfortunately have to close #WelcomeToHackney”. Followed by: “Some kid got stabbed over the road and decided to run into ours. Great look for our first week.”

Teglia was shocked by the online abuse that followed, from both sides. “It’s like the mass psychology of fascism, this peer pressure on social media. It’s scary, this faceless mob mentality,” she says.

“My first instinct was to say there are no winners. The comments were blatantly aggressive and really stupid, often people saying ‘oh you can’t come here and change our community’. And I’m thinking, well, I liked the fair rents before, but I didn’t really like the knife crime.”

Teglia moved to London 16 years ago, and was initially homeless. “I can relate to both sides,” she says.

“I can see the struggle of opening up a place or putting on an event – the responsibilities and also the excitement. On the other hand, I’m a private renter and a single mother – eventually I’ll have to leave my support system here behind and move out. So I can really feel for both sides.”

In founding Odd Eyes Theatre, Teglia hoped to create “social theatre to open up conversation between people from different backgrounds,” and her latest production – #Haters – is no different.

The play follows two characters on the day that leads up to an event based on the incident at The Bonneville, and is informed by interviews with residents from Hackney – including people who live in the same building as each other, but are required to use different entrances.

“I realised only yesterday,” says Teglia, “after one and a half years working on it, that #Haters is actually Romeo and Juliet. It is about two communities imposing their values on an individual and, instead of building constructive communication to build something new and different, they bring people apart.”

Odd Eyes Theatre has a strong focus on inclusion and participation, and Teglia has aimed to make the production process and event as accessible as possible. “As well as the professional cast, there’s a participation element within the play, workshopped with people from various backgrounds.”

In the research phase though, as well as through rehearsals, what has struck her most has been the fact that – in spite of community conflict – people never fit neatly into identity categories. “I’d interview one person, and think they represent a particular group. And then, as I talked to them, I realised they didn’t fit perfectly anywhere – and that’s what this play is about.”

Teglia believes people are “absolutely ready for a more integrated community. People want their voices to be heard, and I believe London has a respect for individuality that just doesn’t exist elsewhere. It’s why people migrate here.” She believes we need to do away with the nebulous idea of ‘who was here first’, and embrace dialogue to bring people together.

#Haters is being performed at 7.30pm on Friday 11 December at Rich Mix, 35-47 Bethnal Green Road, E1 6LA
richmix.org.uk

December 7, 2015
Tube workers show station mastery with Out of Uniform exhibition

‘John Lydon’. Pencil drawing by Michael Haynes

There are around 3,500 train drivers working on the Tube, and an estimated 20,000 people working for London Underground as a whole. Who are these mysterious, uniformed people? And what do they do when they’re not under the ground?

This month an exhibition called Out of Uniform showcases art made by London Underground employees.

Held at Fill the Gap gallery in Leytonstone, the exhibition is named after an art collective founded by David Nevin, a station supervisor and artist, who back in 2010 realised that more and more of his colleagues were artists on the side.

“I have worked side-by-side magicians, musicians and PhD environmentalists not to mention a clairvoyant,” says Nevin.

“But the most common previous life that caught my ear, eye and heart were the artists. They have a common story of people needing to make a living to support a family and their creative passion.”

The exhibition contains a wide variety of art, from glorious landscape photography to paintings inspired by dreams. The first Out of Uniform exhibition in 2010 was a roaring success, with the response overwhelmingly positive, and Nevin is hoping for a repeat performance.

Fill the Gap gallery is a converted office space just outside Leytonstone station, and is run on a voluntary basis by a trio of tube staff who are also members of Out of Uniform.

Out of Uniform: Artists Working for London Underground is on until 5 December.

Fill the Gap, Church Lane, E11 1HE (next door to La Parisien café, Leytonstone station)

‘Rooster’ by Jason Alex Hill

‘Snow is Not White’ by David Nevin

Landscape by Susana Malleiro

December 4, 2015
Puppet-powered Snow White panto comes to Winterville

The cast of Snow White

When it comes to pantomimes, Londoners are – let’s face it – spoilt for choice.

But while in the past one might have to schlep into the West End to catch the best shows, there seem each year to be more Christmas productions opening on our doorstep in East London.

One of the newest recruits to the East London panto circuit is at Winterville, the winter festival in Victoria Park, which this year is staging Snow White in its resplendently mirrored Spiegeltent.

With the inclusion of ‘dwarfs’ being somewhat problematic in this day and age, the production uses puppets – or rather Jim Henson-style muppets – as Snow White’s seven forest-dwelling companions.

“I think when the puppetry is good, the audience and the kids are going to believe them,” says director Peter Joucla, who has adapted the pantomime from a script he originally wrote more than 20 years ago.

“All of our puppets have different names, there’s no Sleepy, Dopey and all that, and we’ve given them different personalities too. And as they all look different, we’re taking the liberty of making them all ethnically different.”

“I don’t think anyone’s going to pick up on it, but I see the puppets as the outcasts, the economic refugees that have been thrown out of the city.”

Joucla is the founder of Tour de Force, a theatre company that since 1996 has toured world-wide, staging theatrical classics and adaptations in English and French including The Sting at Wilton’s Music Hall this year, and one of the first adaptations of The Great Gatsby in 2011.

Last year, at the first ever Winterville festival, Tour de Force staged a swash-buckling version of Robin Hood, complete with multiple-costume changes and choreographed fight scenes.

“The Spiegeltent is an amazing space to perform,” says Joucla. “The atmosphere in there is lovely, it’s absolutely enchanting. I think this year at Winterville they’re going to do a lot more for young people than last year. I think the organisers really want it to be an alternative to the more commercial Winter Wonderland.”

Alternative the production may well be, although Joucla promises that audience participation, hissing at the baddie and silly comic routines will still be part of the fun.

Another crucial difference is the music. Fitting an orchestra in the Spiegeltent would mean no room for the audience, so Joucla, himself a musician and singer, co-wrote all the songs himself, creating “sophisticated and complicated” four-part vocal arrangements.

Having the seven dwarfs belt out ‘Uptown Funk’ would be anathema to Joucla, who will not at any price sacrifice the story at the altar of “cheap contemporary references”.

“I’ve got written on the side of my van disbelief suspension services, because all my life I’ve thought that telling stories is the most important thing,” Joucla says.

“I think stories like Snow White have a lasting impact because there’s a kernel of truth in it. For this one the darker theme is about vanity, that Snow White may be beautiful but her message is about what’s lying underneath.”

Snow White is at Victoria Park, East London until 23 December.
winterville.co.uk

December 4, 2015
This is East London: short film Jacked has true grit

Charley Palmer Rothwell and Thomas Turgoose in Jacked

Jacked is a short by Dutch director Rene Pannevis which fits nicely into what one might call the grit-porn pantheon (his oeuvre also contains a film called Junkie XL and a documentary short of DJ Tiesto of all things).

It follows young car thieves Russell and Waylen, played by Charley Palmer Rothwell (Legend) and Thomas Turgoose (This is England) respectively, who find a stack of tapes made by a dying man addressed to his unborn daughter. Hilarity ensues.

It’s an interesting, thoughtful piece – if a little contrived – giving one enough to feel something of a stake in the lives of the two young protagonists, whilst capitalising on the brevity of the short form to retain a level of ambiguity. This is creditable considering the artistic treatment of such topics can all too easily err towards the proselytising, critical or, worst of all, glamourising.

The narrow, winding grey streets (it’s in colour, but barely) form a claustrophobic labyrinth in which our two protagonists work, with a short focus camera serving to isolate them from their background. It’s a well-worn technique, but in a story dealing with isolated yoof, the obvious reference is La Haine.

On speaking to Rothwell, he confirms Kassovitz’s 1995 work was in their minds whilst filming. He is more uncertain, however, about whether we can fairly call Jacked a film about East London, despite there being several clear signs that this is where the ‘action’ takes place.

“I think the director wanted to be ambiguous. I’m not too sure that the location needs to be relevant, it could be anywhere and it would still be as gritty,” he explains. It is indeed based, we are told, on the director’s own experiences in the Netherlands.

Why is it that we are so fascinated in an almost voyeuristic way by underclass life in film of late? “Because it’s real,” Rothwell says. “I’d not use the word underclass. Things like this aren’t as uncommon as people think. Very few people could relate to something like Riot Club. If it’s about things that are real, more people will watch. If you go north of London, it is very gritty, people are poor.”

Certainly, the question of the role and success of cinema (and of the arts in general) in addressing or mirroring an uneven society is an interesting one. It is unfair, perhaps, to narrow our discussion of this short to this question though, as it also touches on loss, friendship and loneliness, and can boast a minor triumph in the natural rapport between its two leads.

facebook.com/jackedthefilm

December 4, 2015
Jack and the Beanstalk, Hackney Empire, review: hilariously silly and mischievous

The cast of Jack and the Beanstalk at Hackney Empire. Photograph: Robert Workman

Hackneydale is in the depths of climate change: it’s been winter there for 15 years and shows no sign of stopping. Jack’s job is to save the planet, which means defeating a lovelorn giant whose magical singing harp is feeding his gold habit, and somehow causing this meteorological mess.

In this year’s Hackney Empire pantomime, it’s not only the beanstalk that is green. Reimagining Jack and the Beanstalk as a climate change fable is not only cleverly topical, as the ‘perpetual winter’ makes for perfect panto staging, allowing dancers dressed in silver to whiz across the stage on skates, a talking snowman from Jamaica to become an unlikely hero, and the residents of Hackneydale to cut a dash in their winter finery, replete with furry collars and brightly coloured hats and scarves.

The likes of Clive Rowe in the cast means strong singing is almost to be expected, and with newcomer Debbie Kurup playing Jack they’ve uncovered another gem, someone who can belt out the rasping R&B of Jessie J’s ‘Flashlight’ whilst suspended in mid-air.

Rowe himself is at his wise-cracking best as Dame Daisy Trott the milk maid, resplendent in multiple costume changes, including a cupcake dress and surreal beekeeper’s uniform.

Clumsy Colin (Darren Hart) is another strong character, a loveable wimp whose secret love for ‘eco nerd’ Molly (Georgia Oldman) gives rise to a hilariously silly version of Drake’s ‘Hotline Bling’. No corners are cut with the set and costumes, with the audience gasping as the beanstalk rises up from the middle of the stage.

Then, in the second half, which is mostly set in the giant’s lair, we meet new characters, including Giant Blunderbore himself, played by Leon Sweeney, who skilfully tramps around the stage in a costume that must measure at least 15 feet tall.

In the original tale Jack kills the giant, which isn’t exactly in the spirit of panto. So instead we learn the giant is a misunderstood lover whose attentions have turned to gold after being jilted by Mother Nature, the show’s Cockney fairy godmother (Julia Sutton).

Two hours and 40 minutes might seem a touch on the long side, but the pace is unrelenting and there are no lulls in the action. Five minutes in, and we’ve already done ‘it’s behind you’ and been treated to a round of ‘oh yes it is, oh no it isn’t’.

Writer and director Susie McKenna each year pulls a rabbit from the hat with traditional pantomimes that retain that mischievous twinkle in the eye, and this is no exception.

The script might even be funnier than last year’s – certainly it is more daring, with rude gags involving selfie-sticks (think about it), and puns galore. One word of warning though: if you’re sitting in an aisle seat take care, unless you want to run rings around Buttercup the cow in a slapstick milking routine and be the subject of Dame Daisy’s amorous gazes. But this is panto after all, and audience members looking for a quiet evening out are probably not in the right place.

Jack and the Beanstalk is at Hackney Empire, 291 Mare Street, E8 1EJ until 3 January
hackneyempire.co.uk

November 30, 2015
A fish odyssey across East London

Fishing for complements… Photograph: flickr

Things that live in the sea are messed up, right? With their backwards breathing, their bottom feeding, or their just being a sentient lump of muscle that lives in a shell. But something doesn’t need to make sense for it to be tasty, and what decent human being doesn’t enjoy seafood? But away from coastal regions it comes at a price. Can you get delicious seafood (and fish) in East London that won’t cost the ocean?

Vintage Salt

I started off at Vintage Salt, in the shadow of Liverpool Street, where I was promised a ‘Cornish village look and feel’. For starters were tuna tartare with avocado and pickled cucumber, which hit the right refreshing and textural notes, while my companion for the evening opted for salt and pepper squid with chilli jam, which was pleasingly spicy. Starters often get the benefit of the doubt, but here they were definitely a highlight. My companion was not impressed with the oil seepage into my sea bass a la plancha, and perhaps it was a touch on the overcooked side too. We fared worse with the shrimp burger – it was gristly, tough, heavy and lacking in that oceanic freshness concomitant with shrimp. Afters were a buttery Bakewell tart and a very sweet apple crumble. We drank the Italian house white, which was decent drop. A good thing too, as the cost of this meal (just over £60 before wine and service) was reaching the point at which house wine becomes a necessity rather than an act of parsimony. It’s a decent enough place, though perhaps a little on the more money than sense side. As if to perfectly back this point, its sister restaurant lives in Selfridges.

Dashwood House
69 Old Broad St, London EC2M 1NA
vintagesalt.co.uk

Seabass a la Plancha at Sea Vintage

Wright Brothers

When in full weekend pomp I am probably not alone in finding Spitalfields Market something of a horror show. But I need to qualify this, for in Wright Brothers it is home to a gem of a seafood restaurant. We opened with fried oysters with Louis Sauce, which were light and moreish, home smoked mackerel with gentleman’s relish, which deserves musical metaphors I have too much self respect to use, and Galician octopus, chorizo, broad beans and garlic, which seemed rather brash in comparison, but it’s not a dish one orders for delicate perfumes. Salt-baked seabream, carved up at the table, was soft and yielding, and resplendent with umami qualities one doesn’t normally associate with fish. My trusted companion watched me warily as I tried her stone bass with tarragon risotto, which was nothing short of a flavour party. After a fairly standard lemon posset for pudding, the one sad note was the cheese selection (only two – and fairly uninspired at that). Before wine and service one is looking at very close to three figures here and if you want to get involved with the shellfish and oysters…well, let us just say it is a good thing that the food at Wright Brothers is of a standard that you’d be happy to go there for a special occasion.

8a Lamb Street, E1 6EA
wrightbrothers.co.uk

Wright Brothers. Photograph: Paul Winch-Furness

The Richmond

Of all the places earmarked to visit for this parvum opus, the Richmond was perhaps the one to which I was looking forward the most; a raw food bar complete with enthusiastic reviews from the ladies and gentlemen of the press – all very promising. The much-hyped raw dishes came first, with the standout a wonderfully delicate scallop carpaccio, while the sea bass tartare divided opinion. I thought it was subtle and suggestive, my ever-hard-to-please companion found it bland. On the tuna tartare with aubergine and harissa, we were more in concord. It felt like too much, flavours falling over each other, with none of them quite winning. We were actually rather in the market for crab muffins, but they had run out (it was 9.30pm on Monday evening), so instead we opted for cooked scallops, which resisted and surrendered in the right proportions. Our cooked mains, I’m sad to say, did not treat us so well. Both the hake and mackerel we ordered had been overcooked into dry submission, though some saag-like spinach on the side treated us better (it would come back to haunt us during our gambrinous post-prandial debrief, however). For dessert, lovage cake was an interesting sweet-herby conclusion to the meal and the banana tart was perfectly serviceable and sugary. But at just above the £100 mark (pre-wine and service), I’d have hoped for better,
Monday night or not.

316 Queensbridge Rd, London E8 3NH
therichmondhackney.com

A ‘Sunday Roast’ at Mussel Men

Mussel Men

I would like to think the team behind Mussel Men came up with the name first and followed it up with the concept. As the puntastic moniker suggests, they take a much less po-faced approach to seafood here. One senses, however, that they do take the business of seafood more seriously. The potted crayfish were delicately fragrant and fresh, though perhaps the butter layer felt a little bit like the contents of 1970s Elvis’ arteries. I had a generous bowl of mussels mariniere next, which were refreshingly not drowning in sauce, allowing the mussels to do the talking. “We’ve been nicely done to a meaty but yielding texture, and we taste a bit like we remember what it was like to live in salt water,” I think they were saying. The fries tasted a little fast foody … in a good way, and as an ardent advocate of the potato, I had a lot of time for the velveteen mash on the side. If you happen to be in the area and get the urge for seafood in genuinely unpretentious surroundings (one feels they are making a point of it), pop your head in.

584 Kingsland Road, E8 4AH
musselmen.com

November 27, 2015
PJ Harvey to headline as Field Day announces first wave of acts

Anticipant crowds at Field Day… Photograph: Carolina Faruolo

PJ Harvey is to perform an exclusive headline slot at Field Day 2016, as the first wave of acts for the East London festival were today announced.

The ground breaking artist, who has won the Mercury Prize twice and received an MBE in 2013, will be headlining Sunday night at Field Day, in what will be her first UK live, full band show since 2011.

The weekend festival will be returning to Victoria Park next June for its tenth edition, with an impeccably curated line-up of new talent, old favourites and internationally renowned acts to celebrate the milestone anniversary.

This year PJ Harvey released a volume of poetry and recorded her ninth studio album in front of live audiences inside an installation at Somerset House. So whatever she has in store for Field Day, it’s almost bound to be special.

Baltimore duo Beach House, fresh from releasing their alluring fifth album Depression Cherry, will be joining the bill for the Sunday night, with Ben Watt, of Everything But the Girl fame, performing with his band featuring none other than Suede legend Bernard Butler.

Festival favourite Four Tet will be leading the decade celebrations on the Field Day Saturday main stage, while grime superstar Skepta will also be in attendance, hopefully with a brand new album to show off.

The enigmatic Deerhunter, with their shape-shifting approach to genre and sound, will also be gracing Victoria Park, as well as Floating Points, whose full band live show promises to be full of warm electro and delicate euphoria.

Rising star SOAK will also appear on the Saturday, which veers into corners as diverse as Cass McCombs, blending rock, folk, psychedelic, punk and alt country, plus Yorkston Thorne Khan, comprising Scottish folk titan James Yorkston.

With the full line-up to be revealed in the months ahead, it already looks as though Field Day 2016 is going to be one almighty celebration.

Field Day is at Victoria Park on Saturday 11 and Sunday 12 June 2016
Ticketlink: http://fielddayfestivals.com/tickets/

November 26, 2015
The Divided Laing review – inside the mind of a psychiatrist

Alan Cox and Oscar Pearce in The Divided Laing. Photograph: Adam Bennett

Part of the appeal of madness for dramatists is the way that uncontrolled unconscious appetites and desires are thought to lurk so closely underneath the conscious, rational, socially acceptable world of everyday life, threatening to burst through at any minute.

Against the Apollonian forces of order and moderation struggle the wild and terrible Dionysian passions; behind the flimsy face of every unassuming Dr Jekyll is a ravening Mr Hyde.

Patrick Marmion’s new play at the Arcola, The Divided Laing, turns this fertile dichotomy on its head. It’s 1970, and the doors of perception are wide open: at any given time, someone on stage is either drunk or high on acid, or fighting, or all three.

The setting is Kingsley Hall, the counter-cultural anti-asylum set up by Glaswegian psychiatrist R. D. ‘Ronnie’ Laing as a place where, as Laing saw it, any sufferer of mental illness could come and be treated as “a person to be accepted, not an object to be changed”.

Madness – and its embrace as valid, perhaps superior, experience – is the order of the day. But manifesting at every turn are the Apollonian, Jekyll-style forces of sensible, normal, well-adjusted life, appearing in various guises: as policemen and pub landlords; as the suggestion of new ‘house rules’ for Kingsley Hall; as Laing’s elderly mother, insisting he return to the five children he has abandoned in Glasgow; and as a medical seminar happening in 2015, visited by Laing during an acid trip to the future and which through its multi-disciplinary, detailed, considered and intelligent discussion of the case in question, sounds the death-knell for everything he stands for.

At heart, The Divided Laing (subtitle: The Two Ronnies), is a sort of domestic farce, with Laing and his followers and patients staving off one crisis after another as they await the arrival of Sean Connery, who’s coming for dinner. (According to Marmion, this really happened, and it’s a nice detail – James Bond is British culture’s Dionysian hero, always drinking and chasing girls, never following the rules, always saving the day; Laing as imagined here is similar, and continually introduces himself with the formula “the name’s Laing, by the way. R. D. Laing.”).

It’s a laugh several times a minute, and if some of the historical irony of the 2015 trip stands out as a bit cringe (“they have this thing, what do they call it, ‘Google’”), it’s because Marmion’s good ear for a comic cadence is usually so perfectly shared by the play’s brilliant cast, with Alan Cox, for instance, as Laing, so accurately landing the gulp for air in a resigned, hyper-erudite line like “he means, Mary, is it too late to resist the glacial slide towards medicalised psychiatry and universal state funded compliance reinforced by a fiscal model of the patient as economic unit – or not?” as to make it laugh-out-loud funny.

The real life Laing died 26 years ago, at the same time as Communism was collapsing. Mourning for Kingsley Hall, as for the Eastern Bloc, is misplaced; but it is also foolish to look back triumphantly on both failed experiments and think how naïve their instigators must have been.

That overestimates our own wisdom. Marmion has done us a good turn with this play, as a reminder that all our radical clarity will in its turn appear comical.

November 25, 2015
Hackney Propaganda: a look at 19th century working men’s clubs

The Mildmay Club today. Photograph: Ken Worpole

You don’t have to look far to find examples of how East London is changing, either on the streets or indeed on this very website. Continuity – our closeness to the past – is unlikely to make headline news, though to the social historian it is of equal importance.

Author Ken Worpole acknowledges the difficulty of simultaneously holding a sense of change from and proximity to the past in his excellent introduction to Hackney Propaganda: Working Class Club Life and Politics in Hackney 1870–1900.

The pamphlet, which Worpole co-authored with the lecturer and historian Barry Burke, was first printed in 1980 by Centerprise, a radical community centre on Kingsland Road sadly now defunct, and is an extended version of two talks given there in the autumn of 1979.

“The contradictoriness of the past is captured in the popular expression, ‘the good old bad old days’, in which, of course, we continue to live”, writes Worpole in his introduction, and what follows is a brief survey (40 pages) covering Hackney’s working men’s club movement and socialist organisations during the latter part of the nineteenth century.

Radical intellectuals such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Daniel Defoe and Isaac Watts are given their due in Hackney with proposed statues and streets and pubs named after them. But for working class people in Victorian Hackney, free thought and political independence were impossible without a formal education and better living conditions.

After the Reform Act was passed to extend adult suffrage in 1867 and the founding in 1864 of the International Working Men’s Association came a boom of groups and organisations representing unorthodox ideas and non-conformist thought.

The working men’s club was a hotbed of oppositional opinion. An alternative to the public house, it was a heated and well-lit environment where men could drink ale, enjoy entertainment and educate themselves.

The Borough of Hackney Club, which opened in 1873, contained a reading room and a small library, and its activities included “weekly discussions and lectures on political and social questions”.

By the 1880s, according to Charles Booth’s survey Life and Labour of the People in London, there were 115 clubs in Hackney and East London. “To many more club life is an education,” Booth wrote.

The authors look at the members and activities of several clubs of the period, clubs with names such as the Homerton Club, the United Radical Club and the
Kingsland Progressive.

Some of the clubs were explicitly socialist, distributing literature in the streets and holding meetings that were broken up by police. Others provided an audience and venue for speakers such as William Morris.

Walking through Hackney, it is difficult to gain a sense of what the borough used to look like 130 years ago, let alone feel any connection to the people who lived in those times.

But Warpole and Burke provide anecdotes and vignettes about those long forgotten people who once inhabited Hackney’s streets, which entice the reader and force us to engage imaginatively. They also draw neat conclusions about the legacy of those times on the politics of today – though the today referred to is 1980. To make Hackney Propaganda relevant to 2015 would require at least another chapter.

Hackney Propaganda: Working Class Club Life and Politics in Hackney 1870–1900 is available from Hackney bookshops and at worpole.net. RRP: £5.

November 23, 2015
My Beautiful Black Dog – review: finding humour in depression

Brigitte Aphrodite in My Beautiful Black Dog. Photograph: Richard Davenport

Brigitte Aphrodite is a wonderful performer. Funny, watchable, and present, she has a sold out audience eating out of the palm of her hand before the show has even begun.

My Beautiful Black Dog, Aphrodite’s unabashed theatre-gig about one of society’s biggest taboos has been at Hackney Showroom this week, and before the show starts Aphrodite takes it upon herself personally to apply glitter to the beaming faces of almost everyone in the room.

The show is a personal reflection of Aphrodite’s own bouts of depression, which have kept her away from the stage and confined her to bed for up to three weeks at a time.
Using a mixture of spoken word and song, she is accompanied onstage by the leather-clad, guitar-wielding Quiet Boy, forming a musical duo that invokes shades of Bowie and the Bromley Contingent, where Aphrodite also hails from.

Easy targets though they are, it is the coke-fuelled rants of London’s media trendies that provide Aphrodite with some of her funniest lines. In ‘Pop This Party’, her satire of a Saturday night in Shoreditch, the popping of a champagne cork is one partygoer’s second favourite sound – after birdsong.

Quiet Boy also finds his niche on the track ‘Prickly’, which pitches him somewhere between the hard rock credentials of Dave Grohl and the tongue-in-cheek vocals of Jack White on ‘Danger! High Voltage’. Their partnership is mostly choreographed and amiable but occasionally, like life, it veers into hostility and anger.

The morning after the night before, and following a bitter exchange with her guitarist, Aphrodite retreats to her human-sized, glitter-lined, flight case for the next few minutes. Closing the lid to the world to better contemplate the dark.

In her absence we hear a series of voicemail recordings apparently left on her phone during her real-life depression. We hear what claim to be genuine recordings of Dad, Mum, Nan, boyfriend, and others attempting to coax Aphrodite from out of the box.

But like her onstage relationship with Quiet Boy, it is never entirely clear whether these are genuine. Are they the original recordings, retained during her actual depression or have they have been mocked up for the show? Are the musician and performer a couple in reality or is it purely onstage chemistry?

Even though the show is about honesty and the raw truth, it would benefit from greater artifice. Aphrodite’s unadorned reflections on how she felt at key moments are heartfelt but the lack of metaphor, and character, fails to transmit the message as powerfully as it might.

Nevertheless, this is a courageous performance and both of the performers are excellent, Aphrodite in particular has such a strong relationship with the audience that by the end the whole room was shimmying along with her.

She shares a powerful conclusion with us at the end of the show too – that this is not the end. This journey she is on, along with so many others that suffer with depression, will never be definitively over. It is a present and constant struggle. One that, for now, she is winning.

My Beautiful Black Dog is at Hackney Showroom, Hackney Downs Studios, Amhurst Terrace, E8 2BT until 20 November.
www.hackneyshowroom.com

November 20, 2015