Review: Neck of the Woods, Manchester International Festival

A woman stands at the edge of the forest. No, a girl. There’s a wolf lurking about and all that the presence of a predator in the dark suggests. We’ve all heard this one before. Neck of the Woods, a strangely uncategorisable theatre performance falling somewhere between live art, one woman show, concert and reading, wasn't entirely successful, though I didn’t hate it as much as some. Overall, I was glad I saw it, though my attention started to wander at points. But there are many things about the production, directed by Turner Prize-winning artist Douglas Gordon, that troubled me.

The performance began in a pitch darkness that stretched on for so long the audience started to get anxious, with the sound of a woodcutter… sloooowly… felling a tree crashing in our eardrums. It was a bold and effective start; ending the same way felt lazy. No question, the ingredients here are top of the line: The presence of Charlotte Rampling is enough to get me anywhere, along with roughly 75 percent of the audience.  Pianist Hélène Grimaud played solo piano music riffing on famous works and overlapping in the way you imagine the text was meant to. And Sacred Sounds Choir, a Manchester-based outfit formed as part of a previous MIF, didn’t sing but provided the soundtrack, producing all of the sounds of the forest: distant wolves howling, spooked birds and wind in the trees, while their white-gloved hands writhed in the dark. Lovely. 

But there was no cohesion to the story. A large portion of the script (written by Veronica Gonzalez Peña) was simply Rampling reading a retelling of Red Riding Hood. While being told a bedtime story by our Auntie Charlotte is a delicious proposition, we know that story. Us knowing that story should have freed the writer up to expand on it, take off from it, make some art to do with it, like Angela Carter’s short story  In the Company of Wolves, wonderfully adapted for television by Neil Jordan, or even Catherine Storr's Clever Polly and The Stupid Wolf – but this never happened. The other fractured narratives presented alongside Little Red Riding Hood were weak, feeble things that alluded to themes of child abuse but were too oblique to really connect.

And when you’re in a situation where the dramatic action consists of a woman telling stories alone on stage, those stories better work. If they don’t, it doesn’t matter if the music is amazing and the sound is incredible and your actress is a Legend of the British Theatre and there is ultra-high-quality staging and lighting and costuming – even if all of those things are unquestionably brilliant, your audience will leave the forest feeling a little flat.

Sure, you can’t always hit it out of the park, and a festival consisting mostly of new commissions can always defend itself by citing the edgy, still-evolving nature of its work. In response, we’re expected to preen over the city’s identity as artistic lab for the world, as refined versions of MIF productions move on to New York or Paris. This would be easier to swallow if we weren’t being charged finished-article prices. A Neck of the Woods ticket cost £35. I went with a friend, who paid full price because MIF’s imprint meant quality. In this case, it didn't. (In an even more dispiriting corner of the programme, Bjork tickets were £45, which seems bewilderingly expensive for what is essentially a standard album tour gig.)

In the end, it comes down to respect; respect for the audience, and respect for the artists, performers and venues involved in making the works. Many crimes are committed in the name of art, but why should we indulge them? If the incredibly experienced actor in a one-woman show doesn’t get the script in time to learn her lines, there’s a problem with the artistic process. If the artist responsible for it reacts to bad reviews by walking through a theatre with an axe down his trousers and going on a rampage that damages the building and himself, it can’t be waved away as ‘artistic temperament’. No doubt all at MIF are relieved to be hightailing it out of this neck of the woods. No wolves here after all, just one very big turkey,

Send in the clowns: Carnivals, funfairs and Coney Island

The Lost Carnival rolled into town amid much fanfare, teasing us with tales of golden feathers and phoenixes and mythical circuses cursed to roam the earth – but we could save them! As you’d expect from Wild Rumpus, which runs the excellent Just So Festival every summer, it was a fantastic event perfectly pitched at its target audience of adventurous families and wide-eyed primary age kids. Mine were terrified by the stage shows but transfixed by the dancers and strolling clowns, while enough installations that might be described as “weird arty shit” (a tree full of writhing nymphs, etc) were scattered about to keep them interested. And they spent so long in the mermaids’ hut playing with sand and listening to sea stories that they practically grew fins. Good and reasonably-priced food and drink meant the adults didn’t mind so much about spending hours in a damp field in Bury. We hear it might be back next year. We'll be there.

Every funfair has its dark side, the shadow that throws all that bright levity into sharper relief. Just think about clowns: all jokey one minute, creepy as shit the next.  And that dark side was thoroughly explored in The Funfair, HOME’s much anticipated first production in its new… oh, don’t mind if I do!… home. I’m no sucker for happy endings and escapism, but this was so unremittingly black that it could be used as a medical-grade depressant. It was like being coshed.

The plot lost its way before the end of the first act, and then chaos reigned. True, it was cleverly staged, but no matter how cool the thing looks or what a twisted Brecht-meets-Hairspray vibe it evokes, you don’t want to spend time in the company of this company if the story isn't good. This was, I think, a failure of writing. Who knows what they were trying to do? Scriptwriter Simon Stephens (adapting an obscure German expressionist play from 1932) assembled a gang of clichéd character tropes – gold-digging glamour girl, unprincipled lowborn high roller, cruel aristocrat, ne’er do well crook. But then he never got around to subverting them. The only two characters with a bit of dimension to them - Cash and Esther - had a moving scene at the end, but what small bit of redemption that provided felt like it came at too dear a cost.

If you need cheering up, Coney Island is a good place to go. Set partly there, Lonesome is a fascinating piece of cinema history. Made in 1928 at precisely the moment when silent films were poised to give way to talkies, it’s mainly silent with a few sections of speech. I hadn’t been expecting these, at a special screening of the film at HOME, and they came as an unwelcome shock, so immersed do you get in the language of music, overemphasised facial expressions and a few elliptical stitches of text. The film is a sweetly naïve New York love story, very of its time. The specially commissioned live score, by Robin Richards of Dutch Uncles, was beautifully performed live by the composer and a small company of RNCM students who were also involved in composition. A rarely-seen classic film combined with a new artistic commission, made right here in Manchester; it's exactly what we’d hoped to find at our new multi-form arts venue, and an undertaking beyond the scope of our dearly departed Cornerhouse.

I do miss it, though. Okay, I said it. So sue me.

Photo credit Brett Harkness

Review: Anna Karenina, The Royal Exchange

I can understand why someone might try to adapt Anna Karenina for the stage, but I sure as hell wouldn’t want to do it. You’ve got to cut a lot or the play would be 27 hours long. Sadly, the cuts they’ve made in this Royal Exchange/West Yorkshire Playhouse production are mortal wounds. Gone is the deep texture and grand scale that make Tolstoy’s book one of the greatest ever written – the complex motivations and insights into characters’ inner lives, the engrossing philosophical asides, the whole beautiful maddening mess of human society. We’re left instead with the predictable tale of a bored society wife, an ambitious young soldier and a series of really bad decisions. 

The first scene, in which Anna manages to make peace between her philandering brother Stiva and his long-suffering wife, Dolly, is absolutely crucial. It establishes Anna as a kind and wise woman, someone of character – which makes the tragedy of her downfall really hit home. But Ony Uhiara’s Anna seemed only fit for making a scene, all shrill hysterics and jerky, nervous energy. I just didn’t buy her reassuring the excellent Dolly about anything. 

It was the same throughout the whole play: I couldn’t get past the disservice Jo Clifford’s adaptation does its title character. Anna’s agonizing over the decision to abandon her young son Seriozha for her lover is a major plot point, probably one of the main reasons she decides to off herself, and yet here her son is barely mentioned. In the book, she also becomes pregnant with Vronsky’s child early in their affair, which has bearing on how and when she decides to leave her husband and on the lovers’ ensuing relationship – here it simply doesn’t happen. We aren’t encouraged to understand Anna or identify with her, so we can only pity her. The audience is left on the outside, with little to do for the next couple of hours but admire the (admittedly superb) coats the cast are wearing.

John Cummins’ bumbling Levin, who provided most of the evening’s few laughs, stood out in the small ensemble, directed by Ellen McDougall. While the design gets points for imagination – metal rails, rolling cars and plastic panels are used in inventive, occasionally gimmicky ways – it just didn’t work for me. And having characters linger onstage in the background when their scenes are over might be an attempt to disrupt the theatrical space, but it just confused things. It was a worthy endeavour with some memorable moments, but for me, the only level on which this succeeded is as a reminder of how bad it sucked to be a woman in Tolstoy’s Russia. That, at least, is something we can all agree on.

Anna Karenina is on at The Royal Exchange through 2 May, and transfers to West Yorkshire Playhouse 9 May- 13 June. Tickets from £10.

Review: Romeo and Juliet, HOME at Victoria Baths

I’m not gonna to lie to you: I walked into Victoria Baths ready to be disappointed by HOME’s production of Romeo and Juliet. I loved their debut outing with ANU, Angel Meadow, so much there seemed little chance the second instalment in their site-specific season could top it. And then there was the venue. People always want to use Victoria Baths for events and performances and, while it is a truly spectacular building, it’s still a big, echoey swimming baths; sound problems are inevitable. They’re still here, but with mics you can just about understand everything. It’s a reasonable compromise to see these spaces used so inventively – designer Ti Green has delivered with a staging that fully inhabits the baths, in three dimensions. 

And this is by and large a bold, assured production that delivers more than enough on pure vision to make good theatre, even if it falls short of truly connecting with the heart of the play. From the very first moment, when an Eastern European folksong came at us out of nowhere, and then the Montagues and the Capulets emerged singing from the striped changing cubicles arrayed around the pool, you knew we were in safe hands. 

With such a stripped-down set much rests on costume and music and these are strong: all tight Eurotrash spangles and the rackety gypsy barminess of an Emir Kusturica film (in an interview this spring, HOME Artistic Director Walter Meierjohann mentioned the Serbian director’s work as an example of the feeling suggested by the baths’ grand decay, and they’ve nailed it.) Props are employed with great efficiency: a little smoke machine and a wooden bench are brought on and then we’re in the Turkish baths having a shvitz with Capulet, splendidly arrayed in black towels and gold chains, as he barks out orders for his party. 

The cast is good overall, with an ensemble that slightly overshadows the lovers, who always felt a little aloof. Griffin Stevens as bumbling Capulet flunky Peter and Rachel Atkins’ as Juliet’s nurse stole every scene they were in. And Ncuti Gatwa as Mercutio moved so beautifully I could have watched him dance all night. There were a few missteps – Romeo breaking into Love Me Do and Crazy in Love during the balcony scene can be excused as a well-intentioned bid to shake up the lines we can all basically recite, and there’s more than a whiff of ham about the penultimate scene, where Romeo writhes on a platform covered with a picture of Juliet’s face. 

But when the windows opened to the third location and light and music streamed into the dark, it was a powerful moment. We were led into the final pool which has been filled with 86,000 gallons of water, and what we saw there – well, that would be a spoiler too far. It’s a difficult thing to breathe magic back into a scene where everyone knows what’s going to happen, but HOME have done just that. 

Romeo and Juliet, through Saturday October 4, Victoria Baths. (Sadly it's sold out, and the waiting list is closed.)

Review: Macbeth, Manchester International Festival

When I emigrated here a decade ago, I had some vague notion I’d always be swanning off to the RSC. Needless to say, this has not come to pass. Which is how I found myself last night in a deconsecrated church in Ancoats, sweaty and nervous, about to have my first live experience of High Church British Shakespeare courtesy of Manchester International Festival. I don’t know why I was so nervous, because of course Kenneth Branagh and Rob Ashford's Macbeth was great. Of course it was.

They somehow managed to fit Scotland into that little place, complete with rain, mud and peaty smells. The staging was in-your-face, with armies charging about in the muck and much brutal rutting and grappling inches from the audience. It was cleverly done: resourceful use of the natural lighting provided by the building, and a set that addressed the problems of this unusual venue (spoilers!). And the cast was pretty good overall. The Sainted Sir Ken was as good as you'd expect. Alex Kingston was a tremendous lady Macbeth, with other standout performances from Ray Fearon as a quietly imposing MacDuff and Daniel Ings as the porter, who provides the few laughs what is not a exactly a chucklefest of a play.

To commit murder for personal gain is to destroy your own faith in humanity, and any hope for peace you might ever have, because you truly understand the horrific lengths people will go to. This production was especially effective in showing us the progress of this revelation within the minds of Macbeth – once a good man worthy of trust – and Lady Macbeth, who couldn’t harden her own heart enough. When their stifled consciences caught up with them, erupting into feverish visions and waking nightmares, madness was the inevitable result. Followed swiftly by death, which felt like a blessed relief for everyone concerned. 

It was a relief for all of us in the audience too, because the seating was maddeningly uncomfortable and it was hot enough to fry an egg on Macduff’s shield. Yes, I know uncomfy seating is the price we pay for getting to see theatre in unusual spaces. In this case, it was a price worth paying, but if I had stayed any longer in there I might have started having a few hallucinations of my own. As good as it was, the moment of emerging outside in the evening air was pretty much the highlight of the festival for me so far. I'm not alone. In his review, fellow blogger David Hartley picked this out as an issue for him too. A plea to theatre/festival overlords: we know you can't control the weather, but the comfort of the audience is worth thinking pretty hard about.

I always hate reading rave reviews of things that have been sold out for months, and tickets for this went in nanoseconds, though it’s always worth checking for returns on the day of performance. But look! National Theatre Live is screening it in cinemas all over the country. Hey, maybe they'll even have air conditioning.

Review: The Old Woman, Manchester International Festival

In the course of writing the preview of Manchester International Festival's production of The Old Woman for Creative Tourist, I was genuinely baffled about how they’d adapt Daniil Kharms’ text, an absurdist fable where much of the action happens inside the paranoid narrator’s head (which you can read online here). But playwright Darryl Pinckney cleverly appropriated bits from his other, similarly surreal writings, which gave the production some more source material to play with. Uber-director Robert Wilson used this to create a kaleidoscopic sequence of short sketches and tableaux, expertly performed by two world-class professionals. Watching it was a joyful experience – and an exhausting one. This kind of theatre-of-the-abstract demands a lot from its audience, and by the end of 90 minutes I was ready for a break. 

Dafoe and Baryshnikov were an inspired combination, utterly different actors but positive equals in their craft. Baryshnikov was a melancholy presence who moved about the stage with dazzling grace. Dafoe was a whirlwind – a demon gurning and glowering, then a daffy goof, then a maudlin Pierrot – with that blazing charisma that means you can’t take your eyes off him. The show moved us quickly across a variety of emotional landscapes, traversing jazzy slapstick, existential crises, tenderness, horror, and even straw hat vaudeville with the pair playing off each other like an absurdist Morecambe and Wise. But permeating the whole thing was that particularly Russian feeling – a blend of folk wisdom and gallows humour developed over centuries of hard labour, oppression, vodka and long winters. 

The topsy-turvy minimalist set was continually subjected to split second changes in lighting, timed to coincide with movements from the actors and sharp reports that sounded intermittently throughout the action, creating a jittery atmosphere like a giant clock ticking at irregular times. This production needed to be utterly precise to work, and with this crack team of course it was – but don’t try this at home, kids. The Old Woman is the theatre equivalent of jumping 13 Mack trucks on a motorcycle, and every bit as exhilarating to watch.

Image courtesy Manchester International Festival