The Importance of Being Earnest

Perth Theatre
3 stars
The circle of fancy chairs that adorn the stage beneath a displaced 
triangle of giant red roses that hang above them give off the air of a 
Victorian séance in waiting rather than a well-heeled bachelor pad. 
There's plenty of romantic life elsewhere, however,  in London Classic 
Theatre's touring revival of Oscar Wilde's classic romp of reinvention 
and acquired identity between town and country. Here young rakes 
Algernon and Jack's wooing of Cecily and Gwendolen becomes more an 
accidental if life-changing voyage of personal self-discovery than 
anything.

Michael Cabot's well turned out production, which stopped off for a 
one-night stand at Perth Festival prior to a week of Scottish dates, 
plays considerably with the politics of scale. Much of this is down to 
Paul Sandys' diminutive Jack, who here becomes more clown-like than 
dashing. As an orphan, his insecurity further allows Helen Keeley's 
taller and quasi-predatory Lady Bracknell in waiting, Gwendolen, to 
appear as though she could simply pop him into her pocket if she so 
chose to. This is in sharp contrast to the more straight-ahead form of 
courtship provided by Harry Livingstone's Algernon and Felicity 
Houlbrooke's Cecily.

Such exchanges as those between Jack and Gwendolen make for a much more 
heightened and modern Earnest than many heritage edition Wildes, even 
if sometimes they distract from the polished wit and wisdom of epigrams 
dressed up as dialogue. The fact that the show is all but stolen by 
Richard Stamp as Merriman, the increasingly perturbed looking butler, 
speaks volumes about a play in which its youthful lead quartet are 
merely trying identities on for size until they realise who they are.

The Herald, May 23rd 2013


ends

Caryl Churchill - Far Away (and Seagulls)

Caryl Churchill plays don't get done often in Scotland. The last main-stage production of the seventy-four year old iconoclast of British theatre was in 2004, when the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow presented her 1982 look at women in society, Top Girls. That production starred This Life's Daniela Nardini as a hard-nosed career woman who finds herself at the dinner table with some of the most iconic women in history. Before that we'd have to go back to 1997, when Max Stafford Clark's Out of Joint company, with whom Churchill has frequently worked, premiered Blue Heart at at the Traverse as part of the theatre's Edinburgh Festival Fringe season.

It's a welcome surprise then, to find the Citz reviving two of Churchill's shorter works on the main stage in a slot last year occupied by a similarly styled double bill by Samuel Beckett. Far Away and Seagulls may not be quite as elliptical as the two Becketts, but in terms of Churchill's audacious use of form, in the hands of Citizens artistic director Dominic Hill, they should prove equally captivating.

Far Away dates from 2000, and is set in a dystopian futurescape in which the whole world is at war. As a little girl grows into womanhood, the sheer scale of the ongoing annihilation gradually becomes frighteningly clear. Seagulls was written in 1978, and is about what happens to a woman who is able to move things with her mind when that mind starts to fade.

“They're wonderful to work on,” says Hill. “When you've got writing that's so specific and clean, it's really rewarding picking them apart and keeping them exact and sharp. What's great about Far Away is you've got a writer writing predominately within what one thinks of as a naturalistic genre, but which is actually metaphorical and ultimately quite surreal in what it describes, but which also feels very modern. I'm very drawn to writers that go beyond the kitchen-sink. It's highly theatrical, but it's also very political, and deals very much with the world we're living in now.

“Seagulls is just a beautiful piece of writing. It was written twenty-five years ago, but it feels very current. It's about celebrity and talent, and what can happen to talent when it's misused or abused or thrust into the spotlight. While it's still very much a product of its time in terms of gender politics, it also feels very modern. They're both small plays with big themes. There's a moment in Far Away in particular that's very big.”

After her early plays were produced on television and radio in the 1960s, Churchill first came to prominence in the 1970s, when she became resident dramatist at the Royal Court. This led to working with Stafford-Clark and his Joint Stock company and feminist collective, Monstrous Regiment. Churchill's first play to gain wider acclaim was Cloud Nine, a farce about sexual politics which arrived in 1979, a year after Seagulls.

Although fiercely political, her penchant for experimentation meant Churchill's work had never been didactic. Even so, arriving in the midst of Margaret Thatcher’s first term of office as Prime Minister, the parallels in Top Girls were plain to see.

“Just putting eight or nine women onstage at the same time is very unusual in itself,” Daniela Nardini says of appearing in the 2004 revival of the play. “But it was almost like being involved in a song, the way she writes. There were never really any pauses. She'd use a slash as punctuation, so as soon as one person stopped speaking, another one would come in immediately, so it needed orchestrating.

“I find the whole experience fascinating, and I learnt so much about these historical figures, which in itself was a wonderful concept, to have all these great women at a dinner party together.”

Churchill's focus on women hasn't met with universal approval, as Nardini remembers of some of the reactions to Top Girls.

“Sometimes I feel, and I could be wrong, that a lot of the criticisms of the play I detected from audiences came from men. Maybe that's because Top Girls was so dominated by women, or maybe it's because she's a writer who speaks more to women.”

Whatever the answer, Churchill isn't saying. Over a fifty year writing career, which continues today, she has kept firmly off the publicity treadmill. Despite this lack of hype, her influence on the generations of playwrights who grew up in her wake remains unquestionable. Shopping and F****** author Mark Ravenhill recently curated a season of contemporary classic plays for BBC Radio 3 which was spearheaded by Churchill's 1976 piece, Light Shining In Buckinghamshire.

Such acknowledgements of Churchill's status as a pioneer aren't new, as a series of performed readings of Churchill's back-catalogue made clear in 2008 when they were presented at the Royal Court Theatre to in celebration of the Churchill's 70^th birthday.

A reading of Far Away was directed by playwright Martin Crimp, whose own experiments with form are best seen in his play, Attempts on Her Life. Crimp's cast included Benedict Cumberbatch, who performed alongside Deborah Findlay and Hattie Morahan. For the Citizens production, Kathryn Howden and Maureen Carr will appear alongside the theatre's current young acting interns, Lucy Hollis and Alasdair Hankinson.

Also involved in the week of readings was Edinburgh-based playwright and director Zinnie Harris, who directed Churchill's 1994 play, The Skriker, about an ancient fairy who follows a pair of teenage mothers in various guises. Given her own experiments with form in plays such as The Wheel, it's no surprise to find that Harris is a fan of Churchill.

“As an artist she is extraordinary,” Harris says. “If you think over the body of her work, no two Caryl Churchill plays are the same. Not even similar. Every Churchill play is an audacious theatrical experiment, challenging form and expectations again and again. But this isn't experimentation for its own sake, she uses this bold theatrical language to uncover and expose often painful truths, and its so skilfully achieved that audiences will go happily wherever she leads them.

“Sometimes the surreal surprises you, sometimes it is there from the opening moment. I love her work for that. She is like a great banner waving to the rest of us, saying don't be lazy, keep pushing, let theatre take you to places we haven't dreamed of yet.”

Far Away (And Seagulls), Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, May 23rd-June 8th

www.citz.co.uk

Caryl Churchill – A Literary Life

1938 – Caryl Churchill is born in London

1958-62 – Early plays are produced by Oxford-based student theatre groups.

1962-72 – Several radio plays are produced by the BBC.

1972 – Owners, Churchill's first stage play, is produced in London.

1974-75 – Resident dramatist at the Royal Court, where her play, Objections To Sex and Violence, leads to collaborations with Joint Stock company and Monstrous Regiment.

1978 – Seagulls.

1982 – Top Girls – A look at women in power becomes Churchill's best known play.

1987 – Serious Money – The London stock market is scrutinised in a piece written in rhyming couplets which wins multiple awards.

2000 – Far Away.

2009 – Seven Jewish Children – a play for Gaza – A ten-minute litany written in response to the Israeli military strike in Gaza.

2012 – Love and Information – Churchill's most recent play, which looks at knowledge, technology and the need for feeling sells out the Royal Court before transferring to New York.

The Herald, May 21st 2013

ends

The Bear

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

3 stars

It may begin with a growl and a roar behind a frosted-glass fronted cube, but by the time writer/performer Angela Clerkin and director Lee Simpson's quasi-autobiographical study of barely-repressed anger has offloaded some eighty minutes later, something even less cuddly has emerged. If that sounds like heavy weather, don't be too alarmed, as Clerkin's co-production with Improbable Theatre and Ovalhouse is infinitely playful to the point of being overloaded, throwing everything from faux noir stylings and 1970s political cabaret to murder mystery shenanigans and even a sudden burst of Irish dancing into the mix.

Dressed in a black lounge suit, Clerkin explains how a stint as an out of work actress turned solicitor's clerk led her on an after-hours adventure in search of the bear that a man on trial for murdering his wife claims is the actual guilty party. As she navigates her way through the big city jungle of Kilburn pubs with eccentric aunties, ambitious lawyers and mentally unstable witnesses, Clerkin turns detective, even as she falls prey to her own animal instincts while chasing her own tail.

Devised by Clerkin and Simpson from a short story penned by the pair, Clerkin has Guy Dartnell, a man twice her size, play all other parts as well as letting rip a slow blues. The result of all this, with notable in-put from Warhorse designer Rae Smith's all-purpose cube and Nick Powell's music is an appealingly quirky if slightly guddled self-reflexive piece of anger-management therapy dressed up as theatre. We all have a grizzly bear inside of us, Clerkin is saying, but brightly, and sometimes living with it can be murder.

The Herald, May 21st 2013

ends

The Fall – Re-Mit (Cherry Red)

4 stars

Whoa-whoa-whoa, etc! Don't ever underestimate Mark E. Smith, The Fall's founder, writer, vocalist and sole surviving member since they formed thirty-five years ago. Some may dismiss him as a past his-best drunken parody of his former glories, and while live shows can be inconsistent to the point of umbrage, the hardest working man in showbiz is an agent provocateur and master of of social engineering whose singularly eccentric shtick falls somewhere between Bernard Manning, James Brown and Polish theatre director Tadeusz Kantor, the latter of whom made onstage interventions an art-form just as Smith does.

After years of hiring and firing a multitude of members, today's Fall has reached some kind of autumnal stability of sorts, with guitarist Peter Greenway, drummer Keiron Melling and bassist David Spurr surviving in the ranks since 2006, while keyboardist and Smith spouse Elena Poulou probably deserves a medal on all counts for lasting a whole decade.

While best witnessed in the live arena, there's a vigorous urgency to The Fall's thirtieth original studio album, named, apparently, after the need to put on gloves when going out. The opening instrumental shards of 'No Respects' is just the sucker punch for 'Sir William Wray', a relentless chug of imagined history which Smith gurgles his way through with a ferocity rarely heard since 1982's 'Hex Enduction Hour.'

While sticking to a raw garage-band template, the palette is broad, from the spoken-word of

'Noise' and sonic collage of 'Pre-MDMA Years' to the slow-motion horror flick psych of 'Hittite Man' and beyond. Lyrically, Smith is back to creating the sort of parallel universe narratives that fuelled his equally dark Hogarthian mythologies on 'Hex' and 1979's 'Dragnet' album.

While there are no real surprises here for long-term Fall watchers, there's a more considered artfulness to the musical back-drop. Poulou's keyboards in particular burble with a fizzing insistence that suggests an inter-band chemistry that's familiar without ever becoming flabby or complacent. 

The List, May 2013

ends

Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons - The Original Jersey Boys

When Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons were inducted into the Rock and 
Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, it was vindication for a wide and varied 
career that took the New Jersey born singer from the high-pitched joie 
de vivre of early doo wop and rock and roll hits, to score unlikely 
favour with the 1970s Northern Soul scene, before singing the title 
track for the soundtrack of one of the most successful musical films 
ever made.

None of this might have happened if seven year old Francesco Stephen 
Castellucio had been taken by his mother to see another Frankie, with 
the second name of Sinatra, at the Paramount Theatre in New York. It 
was there and then that little Frankie recognised his destiny, and 
decided to pursue a singing career and become a star. It would be 
another decade before Valli made his public debut, when he was asked up 
onstage for a guest spot by local act, The Variety Trio. The band 
included future Four Seasons Nick Macioci and Tommy DeVito, and once 
The Variety Trio disbanded, the pair became part of the house band at 
The Strand, in New Brunswick, with Valli on bass and vocals.

With a surname affectionately poached from Texas Jean Valley, his 
favourite singer, in 1953 the then Frankie Valley cut his debut single, 
My Mother's Eyes. Around this time, Valli and lead guitarist DeVito 
quit the Strand to form The Variatones, with former Variety Trio member 
Nick Macioci (now Nick Massi) joining on bass guitar and vocals after 
various line-up changes. In 1959, Bob Gaudio, formerly of The Royal 
Teens,  joined on keyboards and tenor vocals, and by 1960s The 
Variatones had morphed first into The Four Lovers before finally 
settling as The Four Seasons, named after a New Jersey bowling alley 
they failed an audition for.

Working with producer Bob Crewe, The Four Seasons found their trademark 
sound, and scored their first number one hit in 1962 with Sherry. The 
song's mix of close harmony and a plaintive yearning was tailor-made 
for the teen market, and the band followed it up with a stream of 
million-selling hits, including Big Girls Don't Cry to Walk Like A Man, 
both of which were shot-through with their trademark sound. Between the 
years 1962 and 1964, only The Beach Boys sold more records in America.

Switching record labels, Valli and The Four Seasons maintained their 
popularity right through the 1960s Beat boom. At the same time, Valli 
had been recording and releasing solo material with varying degrees of 
success. It came as something of a surprise, then, when a 1966 single, 
You're Ready Now, was picked up by UK Northern Soul DJs. Northern Soul 
was a flamboyant dance-crazy scene operating in clubs mainly in the 
north of England, where the focus was on obscure records made by black 
American soul artists of the previous decade. Valli may have been a 
familiar name, but his background did him no harm, as the authentic 
floor-shaker crossed over to reach number eleven in the UK charts.

In 1975, with the Four Seasons still a popular live act, Valli had 
another change of style with My Eyes Adored You, and then, in 1978, 
came Grease. The original stage musical of what would go on to become 
one of the biggest musical film of all team was a loving homage to the 
era in which Valli and The Four Seasons came of age. The songs may not 
have been strictly rock and roll, but who better than to sing the theme 
song to the film than a genuine idol of the era than Valli. Written by 
Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees, Grease the song more resembled a kind of 
disco-lite more than anything. No matter. It was a hit anyway.

As for the rest of the Four Seasons, they too had a number one hit in 
1975 with a Valli-free December 1963 (Oh What A Night), which also 
proved big on the disco scene. Further hits followed, although it was 
only with the original line-ups induction into the Rock and Roll Hall 
of Fame and the world premiere of Jersey Boys in 1995 that one of the 
greatest vocal groups in American pop history began to receive the 
respect and acknowledgement they deserved.

There are many today who may only know Valli from his regular 
appearances as mobster Rusty Millio in acclaimed gangster drama, The 
Sopranos. While various incarnations of the Four Seasons – with and 
without Valli – have toured over the years, in it's way, The Sopranos 
too helped put Valli and the band back on the map. Coming from the 
tough neighbourhood that they did, it would have been easy for Valli 
and co to have fallen into real life gangsterism. As it is, Frankie 
Valli and the Four Seasons produced some of the sweetest sounds of 
their generation, and the world loved them for it.

Commissioned as programme notes for the May 2013 UK tour of New Jersey Nights.

ends

As It Is

Tron Theatre, Glasgow
4 stars
On a bare stage seated beneath striplights, actor Damir Todorovic is 
wired up to a lie detector. Sitting opposite him is fellow performer 
Pauline Goldsmith, who wields a pen over the graph paper that charts 
Todorovic's responses to the questions she asks him about events 
preserved in a twenty-year old diary. The needles that judder into life 
with each response are subsequently beamed onto a large screen behind 
the pair, allowing the audience to scrutinise the possible fictions of 
their exchange. Serbian by birth, and well known to Scottish audiences 
 from his appearances in several of Vanishing Point's large-scale works, 
Todorovic has already told us he was a soldier in the 1993 Balkan War, 
and wants to see if it's possible to live without lies.

  Whether his line of inquiry succeeds or not depends on whether you 
believe some of the uncomfortable details which Goldsmith's 
interrogation throws up in what initially looks more like a 
psychological experiment than a piece of theatre. As Goldsmith's 
gimlet-eyed and increasingly stern line of questioning pushes Todorovic 
to account for actions which may or may not have happened, in the 
deathly quiet auditorium, it's no surprise that all eyes are on the 
screen as we await a simple yes or no.

Commissioned by the Belluard Bollwerk International Festival and 
presented in this English language version at the Tron by Vanishing 
Point as part of Mayfesto, Todorovic has created a tense, intense, 
discomforting and fascinating hour. In the end, whatever the truth of 
it, as it condenses drama down to the most basic conflict, it 
transcends the roots of Todorovic's story to make for a relentless and 
riveting experience.

The Herald, May 16th 2013

ends

#sleeptightbobbycairns

Tron Theatre, Glasgow
3 stars
What would happen if the revolution became reduced to a series of 
letter-writing parties that gathered the converted together under the 
guidance of the sort of perma-grinning cheerleader normally the 
preserve of high street charity muggers? Then what if it turned out 
that said cheer-leader had missed the point enough to be sidelined from 
the cause?

As an audience of ten or so 'pioneers' are ushered into a meeting room 
with name tags and enforced jollity intact, these are exactly the sort 
of questions being asked in director Rob Jones and writer Michael 
O'Neill's all too timely look at the politics of protest for a younger 
generation in a post-ideological age. Our hostess is Layla, the 
pyjama-clad evangelist for the Need Nothing movement led by the 
guru-like Sam, who wants everyone to move into a global village in 
Peru. Layla's nemesis is Councillor Robert Cairns, her former ally and 
inspiration, who now wants to counteract inner-city knife crime by 
imposing a 9pm curfew.

Aided by hapless assistant Brendan and a litany of meaningless feelgood 
twaddle, Millie Turner's Layla finds her original drive stymied by how 
the message has been diluted and cheapened by the sort of PR-driven 
approach that has left party politics with little credibility left to 
spin.

Developed for the Tron's Mayfesto season from a piece originally seen 
at Arches Live 2012, Jones' intimate production for the Enormous Yes 
company is a wordy dissection of how youthful idealism and the activism 
it inspires can be co-opted and corrupted by forces with more 
dangerously self-serving agendas. It may take things to absurd 
extremes, but the realpolitik behind it is all too plain to see.

The Herald, May 16th 2013

ends