I can't really remember there ever being much good comedy at MIF before. This year it's like someone there woke up and remembered that it existed. And thank god they did. The Festival's onslaught of serious heavyweight highbrow culture (Three words: Hans Ulrich Obrist) needs a bit of leavening now and then. And of course there's a good audience for comedy in Manchester, so this was a shrewd move, though it's unclear how this fits in to the festival's all-new-work ethos, which has come to seem a bit like something that applies for big ticket items but not the gigs and performances booked around the edges. Yeah, okay, they've just got successful comedy night Invisible Dot Cabaret up from London to curate a run, but when they're putting on stuff this good, what do we really care? And with Edinburgh not long after MIF, it's likely that at least some of it was relatively new material as pretty much everyone we saw there was heading up north to do a show.
By all accounts we were lucky with the changing lineup the night we went; a friend who saw them another night earlier in the run said it wasn't that great. But we got James Acaster hosting the whole thing and starting off with a brilliant set that showed off his mordant wit and intensely likeable stage persona. He stitched the evening together beautifully and proved a very generous compere to the last. Following Acaster was a winning set from the excellent Gein's Family Giftshop, a hometown comedy trio that's clearly well on its way to a national profile. Things get pretty dark in their little world, and it's a twisted, uncomfortable universe that I'll certainly be looking to revisit at the earliest opportunity.
My favourite act of the night was the deeply weird BEARD (Rosa Robson and Matilda Wnek) who started off with a surreal, near-silent physical gag, and then moved into an astonishingly smart and nervy set that had the audience rapt. There's a lot of white space in their material; they use silence and tension in fascinating ways. Following them was Tom Basden, writer of The Crocodile which was also showing as part of the festival, Basden came onstage with a guitar and sang very silly songs and gently mocked Mancunians, all of which went over extremely well, bringing the audience back down to earth and sending us out into the night with a smile.
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,
Our new independent bookstore/cafe Chapter One Books is open Tues-Sat 8am-7pm, on the corner of Dale and Lever Streets in the Northern Quarter.
You know how things slow down in the summer? Not here. Nope,
Manchester’s literary scene never goes on vacation. The big news is that we’re
getting a new performance night. Crack literary magazine BareFiction are launching a regular night in the next month or so. Editor Robert
Harper says they’ll be inviting poets, fictioneers and theatre people to get
involved. Follow them on Twitter or Facebook to stay in the loop. I’ve heard
other rumblings about new literary events launching in the city, but cannot
divulge them yet.
It’s Edinburgh preview season, so warm-up shows are go: First, Fat Roland’s made
a show called Kraftwerk Badger Spaceship (using his patented
Fat Roland brand random word generator) and he's previewing it at Gullivers on Sunday July 26. Then writing
duo Jasmine Chatfield and Lenni Sanders aka Dead Lads preview their poetry play Nuclear Roomates at 3MT on Tues July 28. Also,
Sarah Jasmon launches her debut novel The Summer of Secrets at the
aforementioned Chapter One Books on Sat 14 August with support readings from Jo Bell and Tania
Hershman and Benjamin Judge and Graeme Shimmin followed by an 1980s themed disco. All of these events are FREE and will be FUN.
First Draft have welcomed Harry Jelley to the Captain’s
Table and introduced a new format – inviting contributions written to a prompt
– with the next evening on the theme of 'All Shoved Together' August 17 at The Castle. Rad live storytelling night Tales of Whatever is
down to hold its next event 12 August at time of writing, but check on Twitter to confirm closer to the date.
And then there’s our live nonfiction night, The Real Story. (See how I waited to mention my night last? I wasn't raised in a barn, you know.) The next one is Weds 19 August at Gulliver’s with headliner Michael Symmons
Roberts, the Forward and Whitbread Prize winning poet who also happens to be a
pretty wonderful essayist; he'll be reading from essay collection Edgelands. Rounding out the bill are a diverse group of writers including novelist Marli
Roode, Nick Thompson, Adam Farrer and me & my co-pilot Nija Dalal.
If you’re curious about The Real Story, creative nonfiction
and the writing/live lit scene in Manchester, Nija and I are going to be
talking about all of that on Ella Gainsborough and Kieren King’s
radio show on August 13 from 8-9pm. Kieren and Ella run the ace Salford spoken word night Evidently,
and they’re just launching this weekly dose of spoken words on Fab Radio International. Check it out.
And finally, look out for the announcement of the full Manchester Literature Festival programme going out here and here and here around the
second week in August. The Festival is happening 12-25 October and it
celebrates its tenth birthday this year. It’s going to be extra
good.
The Lost Carnivalrolled 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 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.
Good news for the city's readers: if all goes according to plan, we'll get two independent bookstores in Manchester this spring. Weird, huh? We haven't had one since forever, and now, suddenly, we're getting two. It's kind of like those two new cereal cafes we're getting, but without the business concept that makes you want to stab yourself in the eye repeatedly with a spoon.
Chapter One Books
The first of the two is already being installed in the Northern Quarter. Sister-owners Christine Cafun (above) and Lyndsy Kirkman come to the book trade from the beauty industry and the NHS respectively. They've taken that long-vacant storefront on the corner of Dale and Lever Street, fronted by a pocket park with a few benches, and are completely overhauling the place. Cafun says they're lobbying the city to let them keep the large trees currently throwing shade there, which are due to be chopped down (guess they decided the Northern Quarter was leafy enough with all those mature trees around. Mmmhmm.)
Inside, there'll be nearly 5,000 feet of bookstore for people of all ages, including a cafe and a 50-capacity event space that the owners hope will be used for book launches and readings as well as more offbeat live lit shenangigans. Also, maybe some typewriters. I'm kinda excited about the typewriters. They're aiming to be open around April 1. You can follow them on Twitter @chapter1, and if you have a good idea for the shop or several boxes of unused typewriter ribbon to donate to the cause email them on somethingnew @ chapteronebooks.co.uk.
Aspidistra Books
Aspiwhatnow? As-pi-di-stra. It's a plant. The name comes from the Orwell novel Keep the Aspidistra Flying, which was partly inspired by working in a bookshop. It's also a book about throwing off the shackles of the nine-to-five, which is exactly what proprietor Joseph Parkinson is doing: after years in the charity sector, he's following his bookstore-owning dream.
As the Orwell connection suggests this will be a shop with a political and literary bent, and according to Parkinson, a strong interest in LGBT literature. Parkinson also likes the idea of hosting readings alongside casual literary-themed events like 'speed dating with Hemingway' {insert joke about Hemingway's love life here.} He's currently looking for a premises, probably in the Northern Quarter or the Village, and hopes to be open by May. Parkinson wants us to tell him what we want in a bookshop. Get in touch via Facebook or Twitter (@AspidstraBooks), or help by filling in this survey.
Independent bookstores are great, aren't they? We definitely want some around. You know how we get to keep these, and maybe get some more? By actually buying books from them. That's how.
Don Marquis was a journalist in New York, apparently minding his own business, when a cockroach and cat invaded his column in the Evening Sun. The pair had been friends in their former lives - archy the cockroach had been a free verse poet and continued to write in his reincarnated state by jumping on a typewriter, which accounts for the lack of capitals and punctuation. Bohemian alley cat mehitabel reflected on her many misadventures, remaining "always a lady in spite of h dash double l." Marquis featured the characters in a hugely popular series of comics and writings beginning in 1916, eventually illustrated by Krazy Kat creator George Herriman. They continued on through the 20s and 30s, staking out a strange territory between comic verse, serious poetry, commentary and cartoon.
I was looking around for archy and mehitabel on the internet the other day and I found SpokenVerse, a YouTube channel dating back a few years ago. All of the 400+ videos feature a man's voice reading poetry under the name Tom O'Bedlam. The poems are well chosen, the voice extraordinary. But no one has any idea who did it, or why he did it, or why he stopped.
Tom O'Bedlam liked Don Marquis though. He recorded three of his poems: mehitabel dances with boreas, the lesson of the moth and archy's autobiography (below). If you're a writer who just had to pay their tax bill, you'll probably relate.
I like gigs. More accurately, I like making plans to go to gigs. I get to roughly 25 percent of the gigs I fully intend to go to. Because, you know, my life is complicated. Also, sometimes I find out that my new favourite band was in Manchester last week, oh no, you weren't there? Best gig ever! Ah, too bad they're not coming back for another year... or four. This makes me sad. So I sat myself down and made a formal plan to get more live music in 2015, and this post is the manifestation of it. If you see me at any of these, I'll probably be looking very happy. If you don't see me, I'll be at home, resenting the hell out of you.
February
Matthew Halsall with The Gondwana Orchestra, GoGo Penguin, and Mammal Hands at RNCM, 7 February
I've been known to bitch about the fact that the jazz scene in Manchester is kind of lame, and then a concert like this comes along and makes me realise how completely full of shit I am. Three jazz acts, each Manchester-based, each good enough in their own right to warrant a trip down to the venue with the best acoustics in the city. But together - trumpeter; composer Matthew Halsall's new outfit the Gondwana Orchestra (with vocals from special guest Josephine Oniyama), Mercury Prize-nominated GoGo Penguin and the slick Mammal Hands - they make for an unmissable lineup.
I'm not so into February. You know what's good in February? An all-woman power pop band fronted by fount of musical awesomeness Mary Timony. Iwant Ex Hex hanging on my wall in a box with a little sign that says: IN CASE OF FEBRUARY, BREAK GLASS. Their Rips was one of my favourite records of 2014: a storming succession of short and punchy riffed-up songs that will make you slam dance around your kitchen. Or Soup Kitchen.
Sneakily dropped on us like a stealth soul bomb in December, the long-awaited Black Messiah is an intensely textured and timely album, and features the work of the exquisitely-named bass genius Pino Palladino. Pino, Pino, Pino...
He was the drummer in the Fleet Foxes and recorded a bunch of moany songs as J. Tillman before re-inventing himself as the glorious Father John Misty after some psychedelic vision in a tree. His new album I Love You Honeybear, produced by Laurel Canyon music god Jonathan
Wilson, is out on 9 February and to say I'm looking forward to hearing
it is kind of an understatement. I actually don't even know where to start with this guy. Maybe just read this. And listen to this:
Appearing as part of FutureEverything (25-28 Feb), Icelandic composer Olafur Arnalds has recently become better known here on account of his excellent film and TV scores, most recently for Broadchurch. It's good stuff for long winter evenings: spare, minimalist electronically-inflected classical music that exudes warmth and emotional resonance. Should be mesmerising live.
Another gig that's part of the FutureEverything programme, Ariel Pink. With the Haunted Graffiti he made some good lo-fi psych pop, with appealing melodies and growly singing. On his newest release, pom pom, he's performing as a solo artist. Oh, and he likes to say daft things. He's a kind of professional weirdo at this point. Honestly worth going down just to see what he does. And wears.
All We Are are from Liverpool and I've been listening to their eponymous new album for a couple of days now but I still don't know how to describe it. Hmm. Can't really better their own description: "The Bee Gees on diazepam". No? Oh, okay, it's kind of stripped down electronic post-rock, with a dreamy, shoegazey wash of guitars and boy-girl vocals but sunnier and poppier than, say, the xx.Good tip from the clued-up folk at our friendly local record store, Piccadilly Records.
The husband and wife duo of Brett and Rennie Sparks make a cinematic kind of alt-country that reminds me a little bit of Nick Cave and, actually, Calexcio (see April). They've been performing together for 20 years, which makes their gigs feel like real family affairs.
Australian singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett's debut album is yet to come out, but her double EP A Sea of Split Peas is full of songs that are raw and messy and delivered in a deadpan shout. If you're as tired of twee, safe, overly-produced lady singer-songwriters as I am, you might like her. Her lyrics are always excellent, as in the cuttingly Dylanesque Out of The Woodwork. But her just-released single is faster and even edgier. She clearly hasn't calmed down any. Good.
Ah Calexico, you stayed away for too long, hiding out in some Mexicali boxcar making music full of tumbleweeds and long nights and mysterious strangers with itchy trigger fingers. But we'll forgive you because you're coming back to us, and in the fantastic surroundings of the Albert Hall, too, with solid support from The Barr Brothers.
Halfway through our meal at 4244 Edge Street, I’m reminded of that Woody Allen quote: “Is sex dirty? Only if it’s done right.” If you can come to the end of a plate in this restaurant without running your finger along its surface to capture the last drops of sauce, you’re doing it wrong. If you can finish your bread and then not go on to scoop up the last bit of the nut brown butter neat, you’re doing it wrong. This is food that demands The Full Nigella. Granted, I may have taken things a bit too far when I finished off a little dish of beef dripping and pan juices by pouring it directly into my mouth. To her credit, our server smiled and pronounced me her favourite customer of the night. “It’s so deliciously wicked, isn’t it?” she said. “Would you like some more?”
And to think this sort of thing is happening in the back of Teacup. When I heard the sainted Mary Ellen McTague was opening a pop up here while her Prestwich restaurant, Aumbry, was being renovated, I wasn’t sure how it would work. The answer is: fine. It doesn’t feel much like the back of Teacup, though you can see people in the cafe. The lighting from the open kitchen shines out like floodlights – but some German botanical prints and an antique dresser have been employed to good effect. As at Aumbry, the china and silver are old fashioned and mismatched, and the big, nubbly linen napkins look like the sort of thing a Victorian housewife might have done the washing up with. They probably cost about £45 each, but they’re intensely covetable.
4244 is serving a single menu, four courses for £50 with wine on top (pairings at £36). Eccentricities abound: The wine list is all Croatian as they genuinely love the wines and want to showcase small producers from the country. I’m on board with that as long as they’re all as good as the big, powerful Cattunar Teran, which knocked us sideways like a fist swathed in silk. They make their own bread from biodynamic flour – yep, grown according to the phases of the moon – no idea if this makes any difference, but it’s the chewy, rustic stuff I love. And there’s that butter (made in Bolton). And the dripping. Ah, the dripping.
The food is exactly what you'd get at Aumbry, but no need to do anything new as this is a different audience. A frankly ridiculous number of good amuses was followed by wild mushrooms with curds, hay ash and birch powder. The textures were punched up with crispy, soft rounds of homemade malt loaf – but the taste balance was edgy. McTague likes bold, at times downright peculiar taste combinations and I love eating food like this, but it’s dangerous cooking. With this many powerful flavours shouting at once the result is not always completely harmonious. I don't mind that, though. It's the opposite of comfort food, and I mean that as a compliment.
Hare consommé reminded me a lot of a dish I’d had at The French, which I’d argue is the only place in town serving better food than this right now: cubes of barely cooked turnip, daringly rare rabbit and a rich, tepid broth poured from a wee teapot. But the star of the night was a slow cooked partridge pie of unsurpassing loveliness. Again, the textures were so beautifully balanced, and here the taste combinations were spot on, with the mellow shards of savoy cabbage, flaky homemade pastry, cooked-to-meltingness meat and the sweet pan reduction mingling with the celeriac cream.
Ratafia pudding is one of those 18th Century dishes of the sort that McTague likes to ferret out of her vintage cookbooks. Given the choice, I’d never order it. Thankfully, I didn’t have a choice. A cube of Cox’s Pippin, clear red and baked until buttery perched on a slab of sweet pastry, like a deconstructed Tarte Tatin with a dash of intensely cidery sauce. My Cattunar Muskat Ruza was pleasantly dry and green for a dessert wine, though I wished I’d gone back and ordered another glass of that glorious red instead. Next time. For I’m going to be saving up to get back there again before 4244’s six week run is over. Greedy? Maybe. But when it comes to this woman’s cooking I have very little self control.
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.)
