tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-77178158076716701492024-03-28T13:01:31.052+00:00Coffee-Table NotesAn archive of arts writing by Neil Cooper.
Effete No Obstacle.Neil Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05746809048974448185noreply@blogger.comBlogger3823125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7717815807671670149.post-52028894829777462562024-03-23T12:27:00.002+00:002024-03-23T12:27:24.495+00:00Casablanca: The Gin Joint Cut<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0.1pt 0cm;"><b><span style="color: #222222;">Perth Theatre</span><span style="font-family: -webkit-standard;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"><b>Four stars</b><br /><br />Casablanca has come on a bit since Morag Fullarton first adapted Michael Curtiz’s classic 1942 movie vehicle for Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman for the stage back in 2010. That was for a matinee slot as part of Oran Mor’s A Play, a Pie and a Pint lunchtime theatre season in Glasgow. </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br />Fullarton’s bite size three-actor version stayed faithful to the essence of the film’s Second World War set romance while taking an irreverent approach that was part homage and not quite pastiche, as intrigue and in-jokes sat side by side in a show that travelled the world. </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br />Fullarton’s scaled up revival opens out onto design coordinator Martha Steed’s faithfully recreated Rick’s Bar, where we’re greeted by singer Jerry Burns’s French cabaret Chanteuse. Accompanied by pianist Hilary Brooks, Burns sets the tone with a short set of torch song evergreens.<br /><br />This leaves plenty of time for actors to prepare, as Simon Donaldson, Kevin Lennon and Clare Waugh join in as if warming up in the green room before action is called. Once in the zone, each double up like Billy-o as they attempt to inhabit both the script’s roll call of characters and the Hollywood legends that originally played them. All in just seventy-five minutes. </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">To say much fun is had with this is something of an understatement, as Donaldson plays Bogie playing Rick, while Waugh doubles up as Bergman’s Ilsa and Nazi Major Strasser while not so secretly hankering after a Singin’ in the Rain routine. Lennon, meanwhile, manages to navigate an interplay between French police captain Renault and his prey Victor Laszlo while somehow playing both. </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br />As much of an actors’ fantasy wish fulfilment this makes for, Fullarton resists the temptation to let loose a Play That Went Wrong style indulgence. The knowing winks are here alright, but as the action pauses for film trivia breaks show, they never lose sight of the original material, which is channelled with a devotion only those long smitten with the film can muster. After more than a decade, it’s a love that’s still requited in a show that even after all these years is still lookin’ at you kid. </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"><i>The Herald, March 23rd 2023</i></span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">ends</span><o:p></o:p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span color="windowtext" style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Neil Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05746809048974448185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7717815807671670149.post-74008421461729006462024-03-20T22:04:00.004+00:002024-03-20T22:04:43.791+00:00Robert Softley Gale – Birds of Paradise at 30 <p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">A few weeks ago, artistic directors of Birds of Paradise Theatre Company past and present met up to take stock. It had been thirty years, after all, since the foundation of what has become Scotland’s premiere producers of theatre created and performed by disabled artists. With current company boss Robert Softley Gale gathering alongside his former co-director Garry Robson and their predecessors Morven Gregor and founding director Andrew Dawson on the eve of a tour of Rob Drummond’s dark comedy about the benefits system, Don’t. Make. Tea., this made for quite a summit meeting.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Among the many things discussed, Dawson reminded Softley Gale how he had visited Softley Gale’s school to present a workshop on the then freshly founded Birds of Paradise. Keen to get young people involved, Softley Gale was invited to take part, only to tell Dawson he was far too busy.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">While Softley Gale’s interest in theatre developed while a student at the University of Glasgow studying Computer Science and Business Management, he never saw him taking an on stage role. After speaking at a university event about his experience of education as a disabled man, however, he was asked to audition for what would become the first integrated theatre company in Europe, founded at the Theatre Workshop venue in Edinburgh.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Despite having never acted before, Softley Gale spent a year with the company. This led him to Birds of Paradise, first as an actor in Garry Robson’s play, The Irish Giant(2003). In the two decades since, Softley Gale has seen how the company has developed into a major theatrical force.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">‘<span style="color: #222222;">I think for any company to be going for thirty years is quite remarkable,’ Softley Gale says of the organisation he prefers to refer to as BOP. ‘I think that is especially so for a company like BOP, where the external perception is maybe around doing work for disabled people that’s for a good cause. I think because of that it’s even more of an achievement just to be here after thirty years, and to still be making work that’s having a big impact and bringing in big audiences. So, yeah, it feels good.’</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Birds of Paradise was formed out of an arts and disability based community theatre project initiated by the Fablevision company hat gave the new offshoot its name. With collaborations between Fablevision and BOP overseen by directors Michael Duke and Liz Gardiner, BOP went on to become fully independent in its own right. Early works included Farce of Circumstance(1994), by disabled playwright Tom Lannon and directed by Dawson. Other key productions included a collaboration with 7:84 Scotland on a production of Sam Shepard and Joseph Chaikin’s word based collage, Tongues(1997), and a new play by Alasdair Gray, Working Legs(1998).<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Under Gregor, BOP produced Ian Stephen’s football based Brazil 12 Scotland 0(2005), which also featured Softley Gale in the cast. Other plays presented under Gregor’s tenure included Mouth of Silence(2006), by Gerry Loose, Kathy McKean’s Spider Girls are Everywhere(2007), Offshore(2008) by Alan Wilkins, and a production of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children(2011), featuring Alison Peebles in the title role.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Softley Gale was appointed joint artistic director with Shona Rattray and Garry Robson in 2012. Productions since then have included Wendy Hoose(2014) by Johnny McKnight, in co-production with Random Accomplice; and Crazy Jane(2015), by Nicola McCartney. Rattray departed BOP in 2015, with Robson leaving in 2018 after appearing alongside Softley Gale in Softley Gale’s play, Blanche & Butch (2017) and directing The Tin Soldier (2017). <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">With the company having already brought disabled theatre into the twenty-first century, Softley Gale’s sole stewardship began with My Left/Right Foot(2018). <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">This was an irreverent a musical written and directed by Softley Gale and co-produced by BOP with the National Theatre of Scotland.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Working with composers Scott Gilmour and Claire McKenzie, aka Noisemaker, and Jerry Springer – The Operacomposer Richard Thomas, Softley Gale’s play tackled liberal sensitivities over inclusivity head on in a scurrilous yarn about an amateur dramatics group who attempt to comply with equalities laws by doing a production of Jim Sheridan’s Oscar winning 1989 film, My Left Foot. This was the Oscar winning film that saw able-bodied Daniel Day-Lewis ‘crip up’ as disabled artist Christy Brown. Another Softley Gale work, Purposeless Movements(2019), was seen as part of Edinburgh International Festival.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">With BOP continuing to blaze a trail for disabled theatre with work that can sit alongside any other professional theatre company on artistic merit alone, after thirty years, Softley Gale sees the future of BOP going global. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">‘<span style="color: #222222;">We already do a lot of work overseas,’ he says. ‘We’ve been working a lot in Rwanda, Nepal, and China. We do quite a lot of work engaging with disabled artists all over the world, and looking at how we can help them to develop what they do. I think that’s something really exciting in terms of what that lets us bring back to Scotland. </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">‘We can all be quite guilty of telling our stories over and over again, and that’s great, but what I've been finding fascinating when I meet a disabled person in China is we see how different their lives are, but also how similar they are to mine. So I think more international collaborations is something we definitely want to explore.’</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">As a demonstration of how far BOP have come over the last three decades in terms of creative access, Don’t. Make. Tea. includes a description for the visually impaired, a sign language interpreter and captions woven into the play’s story.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">‘It’s been great the last couple of years,’ Softley Gale reflects. ‘Myself and my colleagues have been at events where people come over and say, oh, Birds of Paradise, I love their work. That reputation that we’ve now got around the UK and further afield is very strong, and it’s great to build on that keep giving people productions they can enjoy, and come back to again and again. As a theatre maker, regardless of disability or any of that, that’s where you want to be.’</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i>Don’t. Make. Tea. opens at Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 21-22 March, then tours until April.<o:p></o:p></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i>The List, March 2024</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i> <o:p></o:p></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i>Ends</i><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Neil Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05746809048974448185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7717815807671670149.post-30945313747260917892024-03-13T02:45:00.001+00:002024-03-13T02:45:26.550+00:00Graham and Rosalind Main - Borrowed Nostalgia<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">When Rosalind Main and her dad Graham decided to start Borrowed Nostalgia, a radio programme about Edinburgh’s lost music venues, they had plenty of material to play with. As an artist, model and researcher steeped in the local scene, Rosalind had been spoon-fed war stories of gigs past by her old man. The fact that Graham’s first hand experience came, not just from attending gigs as a music hungry teen dating back to the 1970s but, as bass player with auld reekie’s premiere art/punk combo, Fire Engines, playing some of them as well.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p>The result in Borrowed Nostalgia, which airs monthly on Edinburgh’s community radio station, EHFM, is a mix of historical inquiry, anecdotes and a series of top tunes associated with whichever venue is being investigated.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">‘Growing up with dad’s music was really important’, says Rosalind. ‘Driving round, he would point out places where he’d seen things, so I’d be listening to David Bowie in the car, dad would point out the Empire Theatre, which is now the Festival Theatre, where Bowie played twice.’</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">The title of Borrowed Nostalgia comes from a line in Losing My Edge, LCD Soundsystem’s ironic 2002 pastiche of too-cool-for-school hipsters that finds James Murphy talking about ‘borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered eighties’. Murphy’s closing litany of uber-cool artists even namechecks Fire Engines.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Now three episodes in, to date, Borrowed Nostalgia has looked at Leith Theatre, Tiffany’s nightclub and the Empire Theatre, now the Festival Theatre. With the first recently opened up for the first time in decades, the second demolished and flats built in its place, and the latter long re-established as a theatrical institution, this selection is itself is a marker of Edinburgh’s losses and revivals in terms of venues across generations.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">‘It’s been really enlightening for me,’ says Graham. ‘I’ve been looking at a lot of books about the architecture of the buildings, and it’s interesting what’s going on in the city just now, because there’s a lot of building going on, so it seems to be expanding, but culturally it’s contracting.’</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">While this makes it even more vital that lost spaces are historicised and their social and artistic significance celebrated, it’s not all doom and gloom.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">“We’re going to be covering venues that still exist, like the Liquid Rooms and Summerhall, which have their own histories,’ Rosalind adds. ‘Borrowed Nostalgia is a melting pot of past, present and future, and is a reminder that there’s plenty of things going on in Edinburgh all year round.’</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i>Borrowed Nostalgia is on EHFM every second Monday of the month, 3-4pm. A full archive can be found on Mixcloud. https://www.ehfm.live/residents/borrowed-nostalgia</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i>The List, March 2024</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">ends</p>Neil Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05746809048974448185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7717815807671670149.post-66670618116561560922024-03-11T02:27:00.002+00:002024-03-11T02:27:28.344+00:00A Giant on the Bridge<p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"><b>Four stars</b></span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">The Pains of confinement come in many forms in this contemporary chamber pop song cycle – gig theatre if you prefer - devised by director Liam Hurley and singer songwriter Jo Mango. Working with a group of songwriters, they draw from material developed during Distant Voices: Coming Home, a four year research project set up by criminal justice based arts organisation Vox Liminis and three university partners. The fourteen songs co-written with a host of unnamed participants channel the real life experiences of those within the system preparing to return home. </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">Cosiness abounds on designer Claire Halleran’s array of rugs, lamps and armchairs spread out on a stage filled with musical instruments. Here, Mango and fellow singer-songwriters Louis Abbot of Admiral Fallow, Kim Grant, aka Raveloe, Jill O’Sullivan of Sparrow and the Workshop, Bdy_Prts and more, Dave Hook, aka Solareye, plus bassist Joseph Rattray, bring empathy and warmth to a moving collective experience.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">Each performer tells a story through song, with Abbott’s songwriter and workshop leader laying bare the creative process, while mediator Clem, played by Mango, ghost writes prisoners letters home inbetween dealing with her own trauma. At the show’s centre is D, brought to life by Solareye as he prepares to be released after serving his sentence. Waiting for him is his twin sister June, who, given voice by O’Sullivan, looks after D’s daughter, at times herself feeling trapped by circumstance. All this is framed by a fairy story told by Grant, about an incarcerated female giant with no heart.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">With songwriting credits for others including Rachel Sermanni and C Duncan, as well as project researcher Phil Crockett Thomas, this makes for a slow burning and heartfelt construction. The most crucial input, however, comes from the Distant Voices Community.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">The plan is for musical theatre auteurs KT Producing to develop A Giant on the Bridge further prior to an Edinburgh Festival Fringe run. As it stands, the understated beauty of the show already </span><span style="color: #222222;">f</span><span style="color: #222222;">eels like coming home. A sense of freedom awaits.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"><i>The Herald, March 11 2024</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">ends</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Neil Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05746809048974448185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7717815807671670149.post-46942354866226737252024-03-09T23:02:00.000+00:002024-03-09T23:02:11.504+00:00100 Years of Paolozzi<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>Four stars</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">The figure of Eduardo Paolozzi towers over the contemporary art world as much as his seven-metre tall sculpture of ‘Vulcan’ (1998-1999), Roman god of fire, does in its permanent residence in Modern Two’s café named after the artist. The Leith born pop auteur’s presence is similarly embedded into Edinburgh’s cityscape, be it through public sculptures, the locally brewed beer named after him, the football shirt for Leith Athletic, or the magnificent recreation of his studio in Modern Two.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">The latter is the perfect conduit for this centenary exhibition, which rolls out sixty works that not only channel the throwaway detritus of Paolozzi’s collages, but show how his ultra moderne designs made their mark beyond the gallery. This is spread across two ground floor rooms, a library and a couple of corridor showcases. The first room, Paris & London, shows off some of his 1950s collages, sculptures, screenprints and experiments with ink. The second room, Pattern & Print, leaps forward a couple of decades by way of tapestries, screenprints and plates. The library lays out fragments from his commissioned mosaic for Tottenham Court Road underground station.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">The result is a multi-coloured machine age selection box of imagery that animated its surroundings beyond gallery walls to become part of the everyday experience. This gives a glimpse of how Paolozzi mixed and matched the pop culture clutter he was immersed in, defining its time even as it points to the brave new world ahead. (Neil Cooper)</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i>Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern Two) until 21<sup>st</sup>April.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i>The List, March 2023</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">ends</p>Neil Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05746809048974448185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7717815807671670149.post-22175411182028685862024-03-08T05:01:00.000+00:002024-03-08T05:01:15.403+00:00Hamilton <p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>Festival Theatre, Edinburgh</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"><b>Four stars</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">“Immigrants,” West Indies born Alexander Hamilton and French émigré the Marquiss de Lafayette freestyle in unison in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s globe trotting hip-hop history musical. “We get things done.” American history has gone wild in the nine years since Miranda’s show came rhyming onto the stage like an old-skool block party on a grand scale. As Thomas Kail’s production arrives in Edinburgh for a two-month stint as part of its UK tour, Hamilton still possesses some of the unbridled optimism the Barack Obama era brought with it.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">Here, after all, is the American dream writ large, as ‘bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman’ Hamilton hustles his way to power after arriving in eighteenth Century New York. Ushered into society by Sam Oladeinde’s Aaron Burr, who acts as MC, rival and eventually killer, Shaq Taylor’s Hamilton wants to be number one. As he networks all the big hitters, words are his weapons, as he winds up in a double act of sorts with George Washington.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">As battles both personal and political commence, each musical number explodes onto David Korins’ vast wood lined set in a lavish swirl of choreographed pop video cosplay, with frock coats and jodhpurs to the fore in Andy Blankenbuehler’s routines. Cabinet showdowns between Hamilton and Billy Nevers’ manic Jefferson become rap battles, with mic drop moments galore. And when Hamilton’s son Philip sets out to defend his old man’s honour, the beef is settled with guns, just like the one between Hamilton and Burr, both with tragic results. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">In execution and flow, Kail’s production never stands still for a second. Miranda’s compositions tap into the more commercial end of hip-hop with a ton of reference points in Alex Lacamoire’s crystal clear arrangements. If Hamilton’s romantic dalliances are closer to soap opera schmaltz, King George’s numbers – delivered with gleeful malevolence by Daniel Boys - tap into more predictable showtune bubblegum. This makes for an exhilarating reclaiming of history that combines roots, rap and revolution with delirious abandon.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"><i>The Herald, March 7th 2024</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">ends<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Neil Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05746809048974448185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7717815807671670149.post-43385382242348913352024-02-29T14:15:00.000+00:002024-02-29T14:15:14.961+00:00Ruth Mackenzie - Robert Lepage and Barrie Kosky reimagine Stravinsky's The Nightingale and Brecht/Weill's The Threepenny Opera<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">A wealth of radical mavericks spans the centuries in this year’s Adelaide Festival opera programme. On the one hand, Igor Stravinsky’s The Nightingale is reinvigorated in a new production by Canadian auteur Robert Lepage. On the other, Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera is brought to vigorous new life by former Adelaide Festival director Barrie Kosky.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p>Just as Stravinsky, Weill and Brecht broke moulds and pushed boundaries in their respective eras, Lepage and Kosky have produced a succession of major works that have applied their own respective contemporary visions onto productions drawn from the classical canon.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Lepage’s take on The Nightingale – first presented by Stravinsky in 1913 - is an international co-production between his own Ex Machina company with Opéra national de Lyon, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Canadian Opera Company and Dutch National Opera. In tune with this internationalist approach, Lepage is working with <span style="color: #222222;">Argentinean conductor Alejo Pérez, American puppet designer Michael Curry, and Canadian set designer Carl Fillion. A cast of seventeen international singers, puppeteers and acrobats from all over the world who will join South Australia’s Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and State Opera South Australia for the show. </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Kosky’s German production, meanwhile, sees him working with the Berliner Ensemble, the company co-founded by Brecht in 1949 with his actress wife Helene Weigel in the then East Berlin. The company eventually came to take up residence in Theatre am Schiffbauerdamm, where The Threepenny Opera - his and Weill’s own reworking of John Gay’s nineteenth century romp, The Beggar’s Opera, had premiered in 1928<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">For incoming festival director Ruth Mackenzie, both productions are key markers of her first programme. The fact that both productions cut through the sacred cow status of the original works to reinvigorate them while remaining true to their source was part of the appeal.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">“<span style="color: #222222;">It was difficult for us to know whether to call Barrie’s production an opera or a theatre’ piece,’ Mackenzie says of the festival’s attempt to define the indefinable, “but the truth is, in Barrie’s hands, it is both, as well as being an anti-opera, which is what Brecht and Weill believed. It’s technically brilliant - Barry always is - theatrically and musically brilliant, sexy, funny, political.” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">As for The Nightingale, in Mackenzie’s view it<span style="color: #222222;">is “one of Robert Lepage’s best productions, ever. He’s done a marvellous job, and his production makes this the ideal opera for anyone who doesn’t normally think that opera is for them. it is a joyous, delightful, magical theatrical and musical experience. Of course, for those who do love opera, it’s Igor Stravinsky’s first, and it’s rarely performed. You won’t see a better production in your life.” </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i>The Nightingale and Other Fables, Adelaide Festival Centre, 1 and 5 March, 7.30pm, 3 March, 5.30pm, 6 March, 6pm. The Threepenny Opera, Her Majesty’s Theatre, 6-8 March, 7pm; 9 March, 2pm; 10 March, 4pm.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i>The List Adelaide Summer Festivals Magazine, January 2024</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p><i> </i></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">ends</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Neil Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05746809048974448185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7717815807671670149.post-41407660619334501202024-02-28T13:33:00.003+00:002024-02-28T13:33:38.532+00:00José Da Silva - Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Inner Sanctum<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">As the longest running and most pre-eminent survey of contemporary Australian art, the Adelaide Biennial has always attempted to showcase the most interesting work of a particular moment, with a themed approach giving the event a loose-knit narrative that goes beyond individual artists. By naming this eighteenth edition of the Biennial as Inner Sanctum, curator JoséDa Silva is suggesting a meditation of sorts on where we are now.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> “<span style="color: #222222;">Inner Sanctum came from a simple proposition of wanting to think about what the human condition might be like in 2023 and 2024,’ Da Silva says. “How might we think about the human condition after having lived through three or four years of COVID and all of the experiences of lockdown, and how that might have affected the way we think about our lives, our homes, and our communities.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">“It became clear to me very early in the thinking about this show, that there was a way of grouping certain ideas and certain artists together in distinct ways, and that you might invite an audience to take a particular journey. That might be akin to reading a great novel, or thinking about the exhibition experience, not simply as things in different rooms, but as a kind of guided journey through the museum.’</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">To this end, Inner Sanctum features twenty-four artists spread out over five specific sections. This begins with the paintings of George Cooley that make up the opening section, </span>The Inland Sea. This leads on to the next parts; A Clearing, a Periphery; The River Path; and A Quiet Spot, before ending with the evocatively titled The Writing of Love and Finding it.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">“<span style="color: #222222;">The five parts play out physically in the way that you move through the space,’ says Da Silva, “so whilst they're not linked in with cliff-hangers, there is a sense that you're experiencing certain ideas in a concentrated way as you move through the space.’ </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Around seventy per cent of the Biennial is made up of new commissions, with poetry at its heart. This includes ‘Faith’, a major new work by Kate Llewellyn, presented in a choral setting by Adelaide Chamber Singers.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">“<span style="color: #222222;">I knew from the onset that poetry had something to offer in this context,’ Da Silva says. “I want the Biennial to have a diversity of art forms in it, so you're pulling together this constellation to try and find who are the right people to be together in this moment.’</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i>Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Inner Sanctum, The Art Gallery of South Australia, 1 March – 2 June.<o:p></o:p></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i>The List Adelaide Summer Festivals Guide, January 2024</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i> </i><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">ends<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Neil Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05746809048974448185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7717815807671670149.post-72853899123962027032024-02-27T13:34:00.000+00:002024-02-27T13:34:24.002+00:00Laurie Anderson and Professor Thomas Hajdu – I’ll Be Your Mirror<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Laurie Anderson has always sounded like the future. Ever since she scored a global hit in 1981 with ‘O Superman’, the New York based artist has been at the cutting edge of melding her music, words and performances with the latest technology. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU">It should come as no surprise, then, that Anderson has embraced Artificial Intelligence in I’ll Be Your Mirror, her hi-tech exhibition that arrives in Adelaide after premiering in Stockholm in 2023. While Anderson won’t be present physically during the exhibition’s run, as she has in previous Adelaide appearances, AI Laurie Anderson very much will. This comes by way of machinery that has absorbed everything the real Anderson has ever said to create a writing machine made from her specific way with words and how she delivers them. Activated by viewers feeding in short phrases, new works are created in Anderson’s voice and style. </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU">As the Velvet Underground referencing title of the exhibition suggests, I’ll Be Your Mirror does likewise with an AI Lou Reed, using the words of the late lyrical auteur who was Anderson’s partner for twenty-one years. </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU">I’ll Be Your Mirror was developed with Professor Thomas Hajdu, Chair of Creative Technologies and Chief Innovator at the University of Adelaide, and Professor Anton van den Hegel, founding director of the Australian Institute for Machine Learning. </span><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #102535;">Anderson’s tenure as the world’s first AI Artist in Residence at the University of Adelaide’s Sia Furler Institute, presented a golden opportunity.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #102535;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #222222;">“Laurie and I have known each other for a really long time, and she has a massive history in innovation in art,’ Professor Hajdu says. “Her approach to working with technology and art is based on curiosity, and moving into the spaces of unknowingness, and I just thought this be a great opportunity for us to do some stuff together.’</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #102535;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #102535;">The first result of the collaboration was Scroll (2021), an AI-generated version of the Bible, which will also be shown in Adelaide. Scroll’s first appearance at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC predated the current high profile chatter about AI.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #102535;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #102535;">“W</span><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #222222;">hen we started, people didn't know what we're talking about,’ says Anderson. “Of course, now that I'm ‘doing’ AI, I’m always asked to comment, but this has been around forever. It’s just that now we have a name like ‘chat’, but this is nothing to panic about, right?’</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #222222;">Anderson points to a recent screening of Stanley Kubrick’s film, 2001: A Space Odyssey she attended at Lisbon Film Festival. One of 2001’s most famous plot points is when the space ship’s computer HAL 9000 rebels. Anderson goes back further to Czech writer Karel </span><span style="color: #202122;">Čapek</span><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #222222;">’s 1920 play, R.U.R, aka Rossum’s Universal Robots. </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #222222;">“The lines in that play, concerning the worries about robots taking over the world, could have been said yesterday,’ she points out. “I mean, of course any machine can blow up the world. That's what machines do. We built them to do that, and when we give them a little more agency, they will do it. Probably by some mistake, but I don't think it's something that we have to worry about on a daily basis.’</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #222222;">Audiences for I’ll Be Your Mirror so far have embraced the possibilities the technology offers them.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #222222;">“People's minds are just blown,’ Anderson observes, “because they say to somebody in the audience, give me seven words, and we're going to see what this does. And it does this really kind of beautiful, weird meditation on those words. I don't think it matters to people whether it was written by AI or not. What matters is that it is beautiful, mysterious, funny, or whatever else it can be.’</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #222222;">Coming bang up to date, Anderson is currently working on Ark, an AI generated opera set to premiere in the UK at the 2024 Manchester International Festival. She also currently finds herself a Tik Tok meme by way of two lines from O Superman, which have gone viral.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #222222;">“The two lines are ‘You don’t know me / But I know you’,’ says Anderson, “and they seem to have hit the zeitgeist, because that’s what Tik Tok is about, identity and wanting to be known, mixed up with a little bit of celebrity. It's kind of a very wonderful communal use of song-writing. I never expected when I wrote that line it would be used this way. I mean, it was really a prayer to technology. It was a lot of things. It was an invocation. It was about power and war. But it was also about identity, and the Tik Tokkers picked up on it.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #222222;">“Language is very contagious,’ Anderson continues, “and when William Burroughs said that language is a virus, he didn't understand just how quickly this could spread. I really do think words are the most powerful thing in the world, much more than weapons. If you can find the right words to say what it is that you want to say, it will change the world for sure. The words of Gandhi, the words of Jesus, the words of Plato, those are mind-bending idea words that free people.’</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #102535;">Laurie Anderson – I’ll Be Your Mirror, State Library of South Australia, 27th February – 17th March. Free entry. </span><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #102535;">In conversation with Laurie Anderson (Live stream)</span><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #102535;">, Bonython Hall, The University of Adelaide, 6 March, 11am. </span><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #102535;">Tickets</span><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #102535;">: $39, Friends $33, Concessions $30.</span><o:p></o:p></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #102535;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #102535;"><i>The List Adelaide summer Festivals Guide, January 2024</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #102535;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: #102535;">ends</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i><span lang="EN-AU"> </span></i></p>Neil Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05746809048974448185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7717815807671670149.post-67783745974424352102024-02-26T15:23:00.003+00:002024-02-26T15:24:03.635+00:00The Rejects – Jamie Collinson<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>Four stars</b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b> </b> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p>Jamie Collinson’s study of those forced out of the bands they sometimes founded makes for a refreshingly insightful, entertaining and at times poignant read. Boldly subtitled An Alternative History Of Popular Music, Collinson’s book mixes research, interviews, personal interludes, and a series of wonderful footnotes that join the dots between more than thirty subjects. At one point he writes a gonzo style first person short story charting Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten’s final days before and after being sacked by Neil Young. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Ousted Beatles drummer Pete Best, doomed Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones and dumped-on Velvet Underground auteur John Cale are all in the mix, as are ‘All the Musicians Kicked Out of Fleetwood Mac’ but Collinson focuses on what are perhaps lesser-known stories that are by turns tragic, absurd, and occasionally redemptive.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">While the book moves beyond boys with guitars and bad habits by way of original Supreme Florence Ballard, two former members of Destiny’s Child and prodigal Sugababe Siobhan Donaghy, at the centre of this are what he calls its lodestones; Steven Adler, late of Guns N’ Roses, and Nirvana’s ousted guitarist, Jason Everman. Everman’s story is particularly jaw dropping, as he moves from awkward band outsider to become a crack soldier in America’s Special Forces.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">As someone who has worked in the music business over several decades, Collinson uses his industry insider status to his advantage, as the book moves beyond pithy journalistic overview to something increasingly personal. This culminates in the two chapters on mercurial grime auteur, Wiley, who he managed. In this way, Collinson’s book lives up to its subtitle in a series of pop and roll Greek tragedies writ large. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i>Published by Constable on 22<sup>nd</sup>February, £25</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i>The List, February 2024</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p><i> </i></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i>ends</i></p>Neil Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05746809048974448185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7717815807671670149.post-9064329595844274882024-02-26T13:38:00.000+00:002024-02-26T13:38:12.135+00:00Escaped Alone<p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>Tron Theatre, Glasgow</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>Five stars</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">Home and garden are sanctuary and safe house for the four women of certain ages who line up in Caryl Churchill’s quietly devastating play. As it digs deep into what lies beneath the small talk and shared experiences of friends on a sunny afternoon, a series of everyday revelations give way to something more globally seismic.<br /><br />It begins with Blythe Duff’s Mrs Jarrett stumbling on Lena, Vi and Sally catching some rays as they indulge in chit chat, gossip and tittle tattle as any group of long standing friends and neighbours might do. As everyday mundanities hint at more complex lives, each scene is punctuated with a monologue that reveal worlds of personal and global devastation.<br /><br />Churchill’s play may date from 2016, but Joanna Bowman’s post Covid pandemic revival now looks in part a prophecy of things to come. Ushered in by sound designer Susan Bear’s foreboding drones, Anne Kidd as Lena, Joanna Tope as Sally, Irene Macdougall as Vi and Duff as cuckoo in the nest Mrs Jarrett line up on Anna Orton’s grass strip set like golden girls having a holiday in the sun. The significance of the Blakeian skies and barren landscapes beaming from Lewis den Hertog’s slow burning video backdrop is brought home in tandem with Bear’s crashing soundscape. <br /><br />Apart from anything else going on here, this is a magnificent showcase for four brilliant actresses, with Duff, Kidd, Macdougall and Tope bringing all their wisdom and experience to bear in a play of hidden depths that pulse its fifty or so minute running time with the brevity, discipline and resistance to spelling everything out of an old school TV play. At its core is a troublingly current snapshot of a suburban Eden which acts as a haven for survivors of all kinds of catastrophes in a hauntingly realised production.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"><i>The Herald, February 26th 2024<br /><br />Ends </i></span><br /></p>Neil Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05746809048974448185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7717815807671670149.post-56007284564869310472024-02-21T13:40:00.005+00:002024-02-21T13:40:35.722+00:00Richard Walker - Kildrum<p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Richard Walker’s early schooldays have clearly left their mark in this small but expansive exhibition of paintings by the Cumbernauld born artist. This is most evident in the two black and white photographs of the now demolished modernist new town primary school Walker attended, and which are placed like bookends at the top of the show’s large scale title piece that hangs across the entirety of the living room size gallery’s main wall.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">In one image, three children play beside a totemic concrete water tower. In the other, a deserted school refectory awaits the bell to fill it with rowdy life as light pours through its voguish spaceship styled windows. </span><span style="color: #222222;"><br /><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">Each of these small pictures is framed in an oval shaped cut out that resembles something that might sit on an elderly relative’s mantelpiece. Inbetween, at the painting’s centre, another egg shaped image suggests something darker beyond its frame.Beneath it, an array of tentacles and roots jostle for space in what may or may not be a large fish tank type construction overloaded with little creatures and watched by an audience in shadow. </span><span style="color: #222222;"><br /><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">The image of the refectory is partly overlaid against a shadowy cut out shape of a man standing in profile, his nose, chin and semi erect penis protruding into the rich blue backdrop. What looks like jettisoned sperm swims into a busy sea of debris. Utilising Japanese woodcut techniques, ‘Kildrum’ (2019) is made up of a series of small paintings made separately before being cut up and assembled on the bigger canvas to make a psychoactive fantasia drawn from memory and collected as a disparate dreamscape. </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">Then again, look at it from a different angle, and it becomes something different again.The other side of the painting is warmer and less cluttered, cosy, even. Is that a dog in a basket? Birds in a cage? Or are they just shapes of things to come?Walker has spoken of‘slowly removing the figures’ from his work. If ‘Kildrum’ used to be his playground, despite its busy disparity, it is also full of absences.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">Three more recent smaller paintings are just as instinctive excursions into dark places where a schoolboy on the run might hide out. Painted directly onto canvas, these layered multi dimensional abstractions hint at solitary secrets. The brooding largesse that permeates throughout suggests a remembrance of things past that taps into the everyday sense memories childhood leaves behind.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i><span style="color: #222222;">The A_Place Gallery, Glasgow until 23 February</span><span style="color: #222222;"><br /><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">Scottish Art News, February 2024</span></span><o:p></o:p></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"><i> </i></span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">ends</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: windowtext; font-family: Cambria;"> </span></p>Neil Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05746809048974448185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7717815807671670149.post-5295788304389645962024-02-16T17:45:00.010+00:002024-02-16T17:45:59.330+00:00Two Sisters<p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"><b>Four stars</b><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">They don’t make summers like they used to in David Greig’s new play, which plops its title characters in the Fife caravan park where they holidayed as teenagers. Amy is on the run from a volatile home life that sees her channelling all her lost dreams of becoming a rock singer into serial adultery. Emma is a lawyer in retreat, with notions of writing a novel. Not one where anything happens, mind. Just a story where people feel. A bit like Two Sisters, in fact.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">As Amy and Emma take a cheap holiday to explore their own misery in designer Lisbeth Burian’s rusting hulk of a caravan, this prodigals’ return sees the siblings attempt to recapture how it feels to be sixteen again beyond their black and white grown up lives. When a blast from the past shows up in the shape of maintenance man and DJ Lance, the desire to unleash the terminal adolescent within causes both women to behave as if at some kind of end of term school disco snog-fest.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">As directed by Wils Wilson in a co-production between the Royal Lyceum and Malmö Stadtsteater in Sweden, Greig’s play is introduced by a real life teenage chorus, who read back the audience’s own remembrances of things past gleaned from a questionnaire. This lends extra melancholy to Greig’s coming of middle age saga, which nods to Chekhov, Noel Coward and Australian pop sophisticates the Go-Betweens.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">The potency of cheap music is at the heart of Greig’s play, both in MJ McCarthy’s twinkly electronic score, and in the sense of transcendence and liberation Amy and Emma feel through hearing an old tune. Shauna Macdonald as Amy and Jess Hardwick as Emma tap into the overriding ennui of the piece with a series of exchanges that are laced with humour beyond the everyday denial, with Erik Olsson’s Lance similarly chasing rainbows beyond his own sense of underachievement. As the soundtrack to their lives plays out, when the trio part company, it marks a return to the reality that awaits them beyond summer’s end in an emotionally mature affair that looks like a Sunday night mini series in waiting.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"><i>The Herald, February 17th 2024</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">ends<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Neil Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05746809048974448185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7717815807671670149.post-2707307925708703802024-02-16T17:43:00.003+00:002024-02-16T17:43:36.958+00:00Deep Rooted<p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Saturday lunchtime in January, and on a plinth on the City Art Centre’s third floor, two incense sticks sit side by side. As a small crowd circle close, the first stick is lit. The scent it emits is drawn from ‘the first forest’, 385 million years ago at the dawn of civilisation, in what would become Cairo in New York State.</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Once this first stick is burnt out, a second is lit, releasing a more recent odour</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10pt;">that </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman";">comes from ‘the last forest’, deep in the Amazon Rainforest.</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman";"> As the scents of Paterson’s work intermingle in the air, they create a sensory cocktail that draws across the centuries to infuse the air that we breathe today.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">This little ritual is To Burn, Forest, Fire (2021), Katie Paterson’s contribution to the City Art Centre’s group show that gets back to nature to explore the human relationship with the natural environment. With the show’s mix of photography, painting, sculpture and installation nestling side by side, such cross fertilisation of approach itself creates a world hermetically sealed off from any further disruptions.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Beside Paterson’s plinth, a row of hanging lamp like structures make up Naomi Mcintosh’s piece, Quiet Garden (2021). These intricately woven beech wood constructions sit well next to the ashes of Paterson’s work, so one almost wishes there were a naturally woven bean bag or two one could sprawl on to enjoy a fully immersive experience alongside what look like five little creatures on a shelf that make up Lost Song (2021), which are actually ruffled visual representations of bird song created through data.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">To Burn, Forest, Fire is the sort of thing you might expect to find after dark in the room beside it, where </span>Hanna Tuulikki’s installation, Under Forest Cover/<span style="color: #111111;">Metsänpeiton alla</span>(2021) leads you into the deepest night. Using hologrammatic projections and sound, Tuulikki conjures up an eerie landscape full of stories, secrets and spectral imaginings.<span style="color: #111111;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">The images of tree trunks that make up Dalziel + Scullion’s Unknown Pines (2007) may give a sense of order, but these close ups reveal a much wilder individualism, just as the greenery of Andy Goldsworthy’s survives snow and shadows. There is a monumental quality to I can’t get no (2005), in which Anya Gallaccio places two holly twigs side by side, seemingly in stasis. Andrew Mackenzie’s landscapes, meanwhile, are shown as if under some infrared spy camera that shows off the human disruptions like some otherwise invisible forcefield that restricts access.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">With the perils of climate change a very hot topic just now, the double-edged sword of the show’s title points to a wide-open space where the seeds for reconstructing the natural world are sewn.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i>City Art Centre, Edinburgh until 25 February</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i>Scottish Art News, February 2024</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">ends</p>Neil Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05746809048974448185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7717815807671670149.post-38579815276856648042024-02-12T00:54:00.006+00:002024-02-12T00:54:38.504+00:00Candace Bushnell: True Tales of Sex, Success & Sex and the City<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>Festival Theatre, Edinburgh</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><b>Four stars</b><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">“How many of you have seen Sex and the City?” Judging from the response that bounces back at her opening gambit, Candace Bushnell knows her audience. This was the case too with Bushnell’s New York Times column and book that inspired Darren Star’s era defining TV adaptation that over the last quarter of a century set the template for every wannabe girl about town to try and step into her shoes.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">Shoes are everywhere in Bushnell’s one-woman show. The stage is lined with a row of them, each pair in a spotlight to call their own and lined up like pretty maids in a row as if awaiting their mistress to give them a twirl.Prior to Bushnell’s entrance, a big screen mash up of Bushnell’s chat show introductions is somewhat surprisingly soundtracked by Leeds anarchist combo Chumbawamba’s 90s crossover smash hit, Tubthumping.</span><span style="color: #222222;"><br /><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">This sets the scene for Bushnell’s entrance, a vision in scarlet who sashays her way through a living room set pinker than Barbie’s boudoir and lined with even more shoes that eventually give way to boxes of books, which, of course, she wrote, just as she performs her show on her own terms rather than hiring a Hollywood actress to play her.</span><span style="color: #222222;"><br /><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">What follows is a woman’s story that sees Bushnell breeze her way through 1970s New York, from sleeping on a mattress inbetween hanging out at Studio 54, to becoming an independent woman who puts a designer label gloss on hard won feminist principles. </span><span style="color: #222222;"><br /><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">Beyond the crowd-pleasing games of Real or Not Real and teasing tales of Mr Big, Bushnell’s second act is more reflective in its analysis of love and loss. It might not always be what the Sex and the City fans want to hear, but her true confessions go beyond kiss and tell to lay bare her warts and all mid life reawakening to become a kind of purging. Those shoes may not always be comfortable, but Bushnell wears them with well-earned pride.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"><i>The Herald, February 12th 2024</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">ends</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Neil Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05746809048974448185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7717815807671670149.post-49564741061539616872024-02-07T19:16:00.000+00:002024-02-07T19:16:03.466+00:00Jesus Christ Superstar<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>The Playhouse, Edinburgh</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><b>Four stars</b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Like messiahs, some shows simply refuse to lie down. Take Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s half century old rock opera charting the last days of the ultimate people’s pin-up. The show’s most recent resurrection came in 2017 care of Timothy Sheader’s Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre production. Sheader’s reimagining breathed new life into a show that had started to coast on its musical numbers alone, but which was now infused with renewed dynamism and depth.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Eight years on, with a fistful of awards and international tours under its belt, Sheader’s production remains a thrilling second coming, as Rice and Lloyd Webber’s glorious treatise on celebrity, rebellion and how the establishment can create martyrs out of radical chic steps into the post X Factor age.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">A network of giant crucifixes become catwalk, dinner table and gallows in Tom Scutt’s set, which Ian McIntosh’s Jesus walks among as a baseball capped and hoodied up hipster with an acoustic guitar and a twelve-piece boy band in denial. The carpenter’s son may have the fanbase, but it is Shem Omari James’ Judas who flies solo. Both possess soul aplenty in a production where they become two sides of the same pieces of silver.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">With an epic ensemble moving as one under Drew McOnie’s original choreography, Nick Lidster’s sound design and Tom Deering’s musical supervision avoids bombast for something infinitely more nuanced. After fifty years, Rice and Lloyd Webber’s musical stylings now make for something gloriously retro. Ensemble numbers are unlikely to have sounded better, while in the solos, McIntosh’s delivery is impressively raw, and Omari James provides impressive rock star oomph.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">The devil may have the best tunes elsewhere, but in this show, at least, they have been gifted to Mary Magdalene, here played exquisitely by Hannah Richardson, who makes Everything’s Alright and I Don’t Know How to Love Him her own. On the former she has a supreme back up that paves the way for the full on retro soul revue style freakout that comes later. The end that follows is boldly understated in a show which looks set to reign immortal for some time yet.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i>The Herald, February 8th 2024</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">ends</p>Neil Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05746809048974448185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7717815807671670149.post-32633808753394538222024-02-07T11:34:00.002+00:002024-02-07T11:34:20.217+00:00Niki King – The Everlasting Energy of Love (Soul Route)<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>Four stars</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Niki King sports flowing white robes offset against a starlit sky in publicity shots for the Edinburgh sired singer’s sixth album. If this image suggests some kind of celestial awakening, the record’s title too hints of personal and spiritual transcendence across a self produced set of songs of strength and heartbreak.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Set to a lush backdrop provided by a band with roots in Edinburgh’s criminally unsung after-hours jazz-soul scenes that King emerged from in the 1990s, the album’s twelve cuts show off the light and shade of love, life and everything that goes with it. This makes for an eminently grown up collection that is by turns reflective, mournful and redemptive.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">The opening ‘Soul Route’ is a horn-led statement of intent featuring a core of keyboardist Steven Christie, guitarist Aki Remally, double bassist Paul Gilbody and drummer Stuart Brown. ‘Dreamer’ charts the travails of attempting to navigate around a fickle music business in a song that becomes an anthem for persistence on a par with Sade’s ‘When Am I Going to Make a Living.’</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">All this is wrapped up by a string quartet arranged by Pete Harvey, harps and a horn section. At the record’s heart, however, is King’s voice, which remains rich, impassioned, determined and defiant.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">King may be launching the record at Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall this month, but it sounds sired in the late night melting pot of Henry’s Jazz Cellar where she cut her performing teeth. This new opus sits too alongside the recent stream of releases by King’s Edinburgh contemporary and kindred spirit Joseph Malik.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">If The Everlasting Energy of Love came out of Memphis or Detroit, it would be rightly hailed as a cosmic masterpiece and garner global acclaim. Close your eyes as you sink into its riches, and make it so.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">The Everlasting Energy of Love is released on Soul Route Records on 10<sup>th</sup>February. Niki King plays the Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh the same night.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i>The List, February 2024</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">ends</p>Neil Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05746809048974448185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7717815807671670149.post-86113468880454189192024-02-04T15:20:00.007+00:002024-02-04T15:20:57.017+00:00Plinth<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><b>Four stars</b><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">War, memorial and the mythology of both explode out of Al Seed’s new solo show, which stopped off for a brief tour of duty at the Manipulate festival of visual theatre this weekend following its premiere in 2023. Ostensibly a reimagining of Theseus and the Minotaur story, in which the dashing prince Theseus seeks to slay the half-man, half-bull minotaur and end its killing spree, over an intense fifty minutes, Seed takes this ancient Greek yarn hostage to make it his own.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">It begins with Seed standing on top of the platform that makes up the bulk of Kai Fischer’s battle scarred set, with Seed looking like a war game figurine on guard in an Action Man lookout tower. Coming to life twitching like an automaton on a loop programmed to kill, as all men of war are, Seed climbs down from his pedestal to take on all comers and rid the world of the enemy at the door. <span style="color: #222222;">Without a word spoken, the electronic clatter of Guy Veale’s score gives Seed’s trip into the heart of darkness a quasi operatic, sub spaghetti western vibe as our man with no name goes into battle, illuminated by shafts of light that rip up the battlefield.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">Co-produced with the Vanishing Point company, Seed’s mini epic is performed with the same level of contained focus one imagines those in uniform have drilled into them before they march into the frontline. As Seed’s defending icon squares up to invading forces, however justified the sword he wields might be, his pathway to heroic status seems guaranteed. Rightly or wrongly, this is how legends are born. Only later, once the dust settles, do they come crashing down to earth in Seed’s astonishing </span>display of tightly wound physical bravura.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i>The Herald, February 5th 2024</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">ends<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Neil Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05746809048974448185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7717815807671670149.post-58720948194742690682024-02-02T13:44:00.000+00:002024-02-02T13:44:11.149+00:00Manipulate – We Are The Robots<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The robots are coming in this year’s Manipulate festival of animation, puppetry and visual theatre. As AI technology increasingly takes over the world in a way that goes beyond sci-fi paranoia, Manipulate’s constituency of international performance makers are already playing with the possibilities of hi-tech.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Puppetry, animation and object-based theatre are arguably halfway there already in terms of incorporating non-human players into the mix. Out of this comes an ongoing series of pas de deux between man (and woman) and machine. So it goes with several shows in the 2024 Manipulate programme. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Ruins sees the Megahertz company in association with Feral fuse choreography and digital technology inside a video cube to explore the potential for news ways of being beyond ecological disaster. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">On film, Junk Head is a stop-motion sci-fi action thriller set in a distant futurescape in which mankind has forgotten how to procreate, while a human created species has rebelled and developed its own society underground. Like Megahertz, Junk Head director Takehide Hori utilises technology in his vision, which here took seven obsessive years to bring to fruition.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">HOVER, meanwhile, is a duet between American performance artist Althea Young and remote operated drone DJI Mini Pro 3. Young uses the drone as a puppet to explore increasingly prevalent surveillance culture and Silicon Valley capitalism as performer and drone skirt around each other. HOVER forms part of a work in progress double bill developed by Surge Bursary Programme. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Flesh-and-blood/tech interface is most explicit in works by Belgian theatre company Kwaad Blo and France’s Company Bakélite, who both tackle potential robot wars head on. In L’Amour Du Risque, which translates as Love Of Risk, Company Bakélite’s Olivier Rannousets up a ballet for robot vacuum cleaners that serve up a romantic candle-lit dinner with increasingly erratic returns. Kawad Blo’s Simple Machines, meanwhile, sees choreographer Ugo Dehaes demonstrate how he grows organic-looking robots in his basement, raising and training them as dancers, only for them to make him redundant.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">‘Simple Machines is a show that grew organically,’ says Dehaes of the roots of his show. ‘For twenty years I worked with human dancers, then I started to imagine it would be fun to make dance with objects. I started playing in my basement with moving boxes and putting motors into plants. Then <span style="color: #222222;">I learnt about robotics and programming, and had this idea of the simple machines.’</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">For Love At Risk, Rannou’s initial intention was to do something about love. The robot vacuum cleaners as waiters came next, with the imprecision of their movements creating a comedy of errors that are absorbed into the show.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">“Each show I do.” Rannou says, “I play with some technical things, and if I have some problem with it, or if something breaks, I like to play with it.”</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <span style="color: #222222;">Dehaes first presented early versions of his robots as an installation, and in Simple Machines the audience is invited to take part in a presentation of the robots after the main show and attempt to teach them new movements. Responses often see audiences seeing beyond the</span>emotion-free gizmos and putting a human face on things in a way that recalls the title of sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury’s 1964 short story collection, The Machineries Of Joy.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 13.5pt;">‘<span style="color: #222222;">I noticed that whenever I show my little robots, everybody has this tendency of projecting emotions on to them,’ Dehaes observes. “Everybody wants to see something alive, something human or animal. I think it's a tendency we have as human beings to project ourselves onto everything we see. Some people watching are scared for them, like they might be hurting when they fall over. But I say “don’t worry, it's just a simple machine. If it breaks, I will fix it. I will make a new one.” We have this tendency for projecting humanity onto non-living things.’</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">But maybe even focusing on how AI is absorbed into performance is missing the point. As with every other development that promises to revolutionise things, its benefits are quickly absorbed into the process and cease to be seen as a threat as we await the next new innovation.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">It isn’t that long ago, after all, when the use of video projections in anything other than avant-garde multi-media affairs was sniffed at. Today, however, it is hard to envisage a mainstream commercial touring show without such attributes embedded into the work. With this in mind, how likely are Dehaes, Rannou and the rest of the humans really likely to be made redundant by robots?<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">‘Not very,’ says Dehaes. ‘There is a website <span style="color: #222222;">called</span><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><span style="color: #222222;"><a href="http://willrobotstakemyjob.com/"><span style="color: #1155cc;">willrobotstakemyjob.com</span></a>, which said that a choreographer has one per cent chance of being replaced by a robot or a computer. A dancer has up to two or three per cent, because there is some CGI going on in cinema that can reproduce their movements. So I think we're still a very, very long way off, because when robots dance they are very stiff, and it doesn't look like dancing. I think we're still light-years away from there being any problem that I might lose my job.’</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">As for AI in the long term, ‘Maybe if you have a dictator they will do terrible things with it,” Rannou muses, “but we can do something funny and cool with it as well, so artificial intelligence is a good thing.’</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">The future starts here.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i>L’Amour Du Risque (Love Of Risk), Fruitmarket, 3<sup>rd</sup>February, 3pm and 5pm. Simple Machines, Fruitmarket, 4<sup>th</sup>February, 1pm, 3pm, 6pm. HOVER/I, Honeypot, The Studio, Festival Theatre, 6<sup>th</sup>February, 7pm. Junk Head, Summerhall, 10th February, 7pm. Ruins, The Studio, Festival Theatre, 11<sup>th</sup>February, 6pm.<o:p></o:p></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i>The List, February 2024</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">ends<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Neil Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05746809048974448185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7717815807671670149.post-32817960480248626972024-01-28T21:58:00.001+00:002024-01-28T21:58:12.759+00:00Anna Meredith<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>Burns&Beyond</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><b>Four stars</b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">There can’t be many serious contemporary classical composers who end their live shows with a classic pop sing-along anthem, This is exactly what Anna Meredith and band did, however, for their Burns&Beyond festival show of maximalist machine age euphoria delivered with enough Tiggerish ebullience to sound like a Radio 3 rave.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">With Meredith currently working on a new album, this one-off show was clearly a treat for both her and tuba player Hanna Mbuya, cellist Maddie Cutter, Sam Wilson on drums and Jack Ross on guitar. Sporting matching jumpsuits that make them look like they’ve stepped out of a 1970s TV ad for minty sweet, Pacers, the quintet launch themselves into an opening rally of the first three tracks of Meredith’s second album, Fibs, released in 2019. Over the next hour, the relentless zing never lets up for a second.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Sawbones is bashed out with Meredith pounding drums like her life depended on it; Inhale Exhale is delivered with a suitably breathless gallop; and Calion sees electronic rhythms combine with deliriously blissed-out cello. There is a tuba led sci-fi chase scene soundtrack in waiting, lovely vocals and strings interplay on Divining, while a low key Moonmoons is “something to channel the magic of Burns,” as Meredith puts it.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">At one point, the Edinburgh raised composer ‘fesses up how she once worked in the room she is now playing during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Her only job, she says, was to go up to people in the audience and ask them to stop taking photographs of famous people. With people taking pictures of her tonight, Meredith gives an impressive recitation of Sandy Thomas Ross’ poem, The Auld Broon Troot, while a later spiel promoting the merch stall suggests an alternative career on the Shopping Channel.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Rewinding to Meredith’s 2016 debut, Varmints, Nautilus sounds like a foghorn in flight before going stratospheric, Something Helpful channels leftfield 1980s baroque pop somewhere between Virgina Astley and Propaganda, and The Vapours is a full-on hands-in-the-air banger. If you think things can’t get any higher, the grand finale of The Proclaimers’ 500 Miles is a glorious rabble-rousing delight.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i>The Herald, January 29th 2024</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">ends</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Neil Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05746809048974448185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7717815807671670149.post-1661383285996025062024-01-28T21:53:00.005+00:002024-01-28T21:53:45.050+00:00Protest <p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh </b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"><b>Four stars</b></span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">Once upon a time, there were three little girls who never dreamt for a minute they could change the world. By applying their passions to everyday endeavours, however, they end up making a difference, finding their voices en route. So it goes for Alice, Jade and Chloe in Hannah Lavery’s play for young people, in which assorted rites of passage and resistance puts the trio at the centre of grassroots activism.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">All lined up against the brightly coloured wonders of designer Amy Jane Cook’s Paolozzi style adventure playground set, the trio take it in turns to tell their stories. As their criss-crossing narratives connect, they find common ground and strength in numbers enough to stand up for themselves and their assorted causes.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">For Alice it’s being able to run races as an equal. Jade has to square up to racist bullying in the classroom. And Chloe has a small thing of an environmental crisis to deal with. Together, it seems, they can make everything better for the future.</span><span style="color: #222222;"><br /><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">As played by Kirsty MacLaren as Alice, Harmony Rose-Bremner as Jade and Amy Murphy as Chloe, Hannah Lavery’s play for 8-13-year-olds is a bright burst of energy designed to rouse young hearts and minds into action. Brought to life by director Natalie Ibu, Protest is literally a call to arms, albeit utilising weapons of happiness rather than warfare. Such a family friendly manifesto for change is something the girls’ elders might want to take a look at.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">This hour-long show is co-produced by the Fuel organisation, the Imaginate festival, and Newcastle’s Northern Stage company in association with the National Theatre of Scotland, and was originally seen in 2023. As the young audience is encouraged to take a placard and rise up for themselves, there is much to be praised here from such a refreshing approach in a show that is as idealistic as its characters, and just as hopeful.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"><i>The Herald, January 29th 2024</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">ends</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Neil Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05746809048974448185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7717815807671670149.post-39148927743391271772024-01-27T15:55:00.000+00:002024-01-27T15:55:01.169+00:00The Callum Easter TV Special – Live at Burns&Beyond<p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"><b>Four stars</b><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">‘Be warned’, goes the disclaimer for one of the Burns&Beyond festival’s flagship shows this year. ‘This will not be your normal Burns Night or gig!’ Callum Easter’s post modern variety show that follows pretty much sums up the ‘Beyond’ bit of the festival name. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">With Easter clad in white and carrying what turns out to be a joke book, he sets himself up as mine host and top turn of a night that culminates in a killer set of accordion driven Caledonian blues, electronic No Wave primitivism and off kilter David Lynch themes in waiting. With the action beamed out on a screen behind him, Easter opens with a solo number before his band The Roulettes join him on twin drums to conjure up something resembling Suicide playing a ceilidh. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">The haggis is piped in by Fraser Fifield accompanied by a whip wielding Mistress Inka, aka Hettie Noir, vocalist with Edinburgh supergroup, Scorpio Leisure. There are no cheesy showbiz duets forthcoming, alas, as Mistress Inka flails a plugged-in Flying V guitar into submission on its stand, causing amplified reverberations to erupt around the room.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">Jazz trombonist Chris Greive improvises to a ten-minute film of a motorbike chase, before poet Michael Pedersen steps up as last minute replacement for a sadly indisposed Phill Jupitus. Following more songs by Easter, including what might well be a noseflute solo, drummer Edwin McLachlan pounds out a spontaneous accompaniment to a big screen car chase. Film buffs in attendance advise me this is from Philip D’Antoni’s 1973 feature, The Seven-Ups. D’Antoni also loved a car chase as producer of the better-known Bullitt, and The French Connection.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">Another last minute addition, Stephanie Strachan, belts out a dramatic Bridge Over Troubled Water while psychic medium and palm reader James Craig Page stacks stones beside her prior to Easter and the Roulettes’ grand finale. This all falls somewhere between a Dadaist show-and-tell, 1980s alternative cabaret and novelty night at the local social club. Putting such a mixed bag of concept-driven material into a civic space is a glorious sleight of hand that makes you hope Easter’s TV funnies go to series. Don’t touch that dial.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"><i>The Herald, January 27th, 2024</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">ends<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;">.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Neil Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05746809048974448185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7717815807671670149.post-13033169946307862612024-01-19T12:11:00.000+00:002024-01-19T12:11:19.486+00:00Macbeth<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.5pt;"><b>Royal Highland Centre, Edinburgh</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><b>Four stars</b><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">The battle looks far from won as audiences enter this epic staging of Shakespeare’s Scottish play. Walking through a battle-scarred landscape of burnt out cars and the debris of war, the sounds of jet planes and helicopters swoop overhead. Set designer Frankie Bradshaw’s evocative installation is quite a curtain raiser for what follows in the more formal interior where the show takes place.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">There are the Witches for starters. T</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.5pt;">he three young women who </span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">greet Ralph Fiennes’ camouflage clad Macbeth as he and Banquo are finishing their tour of duty appear like some New Age ragamuffin girl gang. As they promise Macbeth the world, the die is cast on the catastrophic power grab to come. Played by Lucy Mangan, Danielle Fiamanya and Lola Shalam, it is they who pull the strings here. In many ways in Simon Godwin’s production of Emily Burns’ adaptation, it is their play.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">The royal clique the trio manipulate into self destruction are a back stabbing sociopathic establishment who would stamp each other into the ground if they thought they could take charge. Think Succession in a war zone. Macbeth and Indira Varma’s scheming Lady M are the worst of the lot. No wonder they lose the plot once Keith Fleming’s King Duncan is bumped off. At one point Macbeth paws his partner in crime, as if a suppressed and brutal machismo had been unleashed. Later, as Fiennes sits hunched in a chair with whisky in hand while he recounts Macbeth’s ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow…’ speech, he invests the doomed king with a manic edge.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 13.5pt;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Presented by the Wessex Grove company and Edinburgh Fringe stalwarts Underbelly with a host of partners in association with the Washington DC based Shakespeare Theatre Company</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.5pt;">,</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">this is a hugely </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.5pt;">ambitious production. By the end, with his co-conspirator dead and his court in ruins, Macbeth is in agony, lashing out through the pain before his inevitable demise. As a new regime is ushered in, the Witches pause for breath, biding their time before their next insurrection in a boldly realised affair.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 13.5pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.5pt;"><i>The Herald, January 19th, 2024</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">ends<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Neil Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05746809048974448185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7717815807671670149.post-26980525214095692442024-01-18T14:44:00.005+00:002024-01-18T14:44:52.168+00:00Jekyll & Hyde<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>Five stars</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Whatever literary purists might say, the poor things, classic fiction has always been up for grabs in terms of reinvention. This is certainly the case with Robert Louis Stevenson’s nineteenth century gothic novella, a short, sharp shocker that over more than a century now has been reimagined in many ways. Gary McNair’s new rendering sees the current master of the solo show shake Stevenson’s yarn to troubling new life in a slow burning monologue that cuts through to the dark heart of the secrets that lurk within us all.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Michael Fentiman’s production begins quietly enough, as Forbes Masson returns to the Lyceum stage for the first time in two decades to offer up a disclaimer that ends up framing the show, much as the sudden snaps of light and shade do between scenes. It is as if a series of Victorian peep show portraits were being immortalised on Max Jones’ picture frame set. Whether for posterity or evidence, Masson’s confessional as Utterson, the lawyer who bears witness to his friend Jekyll’s ultimately self destructive exploration of what lies beneath his nice guy façade, is a beguiling and all too appropriate double bluff. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">As with Stevenson’s original, all of this is reported to the audience at a remove that makes for a captivatingly creepy experience. Bathed in Richard Howells’ sepulchral light, with the low rumble of Richard Hammerton’s sound design underscoring Utterson’s litany, Masson’s tone throughout the play’s taut seventy minutes is quietly conspiratorial. Without any need for hammy horror theatrics, this makes for a hypnotic piece of storytelling writ large.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">The shock here in Fentiman’s Reading Rep Theatre production comes from what we don’t see, even as Utterson’s secret self is laid bare along with that of everybody else. Purists may be irked, but this intimate interpretation of Stevenson by Masson and McNair (Victor and Gary, anyone?) plumbs the torrid depths of the human soul in a breathtaking display of sustained theatrical bravura.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i>The Herald, January 18th, 2023</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">ends</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Neil Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05746809048974448185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7717815807671670149.post-8926890360139836182024-01-13T15:03:00.001+00:002024-01-13T15:03:16.439+00:00Oliver Emanuel - An Obituary <p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>Oliver Emanuel – <i>Playwright</i></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p style="font-weight: bold;"> </o:p><b><i>Born April 4<sup>th</sup>1980; died December 19th 2023 </i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p>Oliver Emanuel, who has died aged 43, was a playwright whose every work was an adventure. This wasn’t just the way Emanuel sometimes filled his plays with fantastical creatures. It was how he brought his writing to dramatic life, driven by a sense of wonder and compassion. Whether it was writing a play without actors, as with Flight (2017-2020), or penning a piece without words with Dragon (2013-2015), Emanuel relished the challenge of finding new forms in expansive and playful ways.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">He did this both on stage and on radio, where his imagination flew, using the medium as a creative tool. This was used to maximum effect in When the Pips Stop (2019), written for the centenary of the BBC. Emanuel took the idea of the state broadcaster going off air in the event of a nuclear attack and ran with it, to the extent of the play not only interrupting The Archers, but not being listed, advertised or trailed in any way. Emanuel loved surprising both himself and audiences in this way.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">A major stage work came in The 306 (2016-2018), a trilogy for the National Theatre of Scotland to commemorate the centenary of the First World War. Written in collaboration with composer Gareth Williams, the three plays took as their starting point the 306 British soldiers executed for cowardice. The result was a moving and tender evocation of lives lost, as Emanuel’s plays honoured the dead and those left in their wake. Later works included The Monstrous Heart (2019), a play about two sisters for the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Themes of loss and grieving pulsed much of Emanuel’s work. While this came from the death of his mother when in his early twenties, he channelled it in a way that sparkled with empathy and wit. There was nothing esoteric or obscure in Emanuel’s work. For him, it was all about the story.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Oliver Robert Michael Emanuel was born in Kent, the eldest of two children with his sister Alice to Mary (nee Dunsmore), a secondary school teacher, and Peter Emanuel, a solicitor. With Mary teaching drama, and Peter an amateur drama enthusiast, Emanuel was exposed to theatre from an early age. He went to St Gregory’s Catholic Comprehensive School in Tunbridge Wells, then on to the University of Leeds, where he took English Literature and Theatre Studies.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">At Leeds, Emanuel met Dan Bye, and the pair took part in student drama. Emanuel planned to be a novelist, and did an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. Then Bye received a phone call from Emanuel one day to tell him that he had written a play, and wanted Bye to direct it. That play was IZ (2004), a piece about three men grieving the same woman. Even before his own loss, it seemed, Emanuel was sensitive to the experience.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">The production’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe run marked the beginning of Emanuel and Bye’s collaboration as Silver Tongue Theatre. Other shows included Bella & the Beautiful Knight (2005), and Man Across the Way (2007). Emanuel moved to Glasgow in 2006, and quickly became part of Scotland’s playwriting and theatre communities by way of plays at The Arches and Oran Mor.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> Emanuel’s sensibilities were perfect for children’s work. For the Macrobert, Stirling and Imaginate festival, Emanuel wrote Titus (2012), an English language version of Jan Sobrie’s novel about a ten-year-old boy dealing with grief. For the National Theatre of Scotland, there was The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish (2013), an adaptation of the book by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean. Again for the Macrobert, Emanuel penned The Little Boy that Santa Claus Forgot (2014-2015). For Visible Fictions, he wrote a version of The Adventures of Robin Hood (2014). </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Dragon (2013-2015) was created with the Vox Motus company as a puppetry and sound-led spectacle that told the story of a little boy grieving for his lost mum who finds a dragon outside his window. Co-produced with the National Theatre of Scotland and the Tianjiin Children’s Arts Theatre, China, the play saw Emanuel take a leap into his imagination to tell a story that went beyond words.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Flight (2017-2020) saw Emanuel work again with Vox Motus on an adaptation of Caroline Brothers’ novel, Hinterland, about two orphaned Afghan boys who flee from Kabul and make a two-year journey to London. The production told the story through a revolving diorama of models in light box installations, with Emanuel’s dialogue recorded by actors and heard by the audience on headphones. Opening at Edinburgh International Festival, the show won a Herald Angel, and toured the world.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">For Horsecross Arts in Perth, Emanuel wrote I Am Tiger (2022), about a little girl who is given a pet tiger after losing her brother to suicide. It won a Critics Award for Theatre in Scotland for Best Production for Children and Young People.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Emanuel’s sense of empathy applied similarly to his work as a mentor and teacher. He became Reader of Playwriting at the University of St Andrews, where, with fellow writer Zinnie Harris, he set up the MLitt in Playwriting and Screenwriting. Other posts included a stint as Associate Playwright at Playwrights Studio Scotland, and Writer-in-Residence at Gladstone’s Library, the residential library in Hawarden, North Wales.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Radio was a perfect medium for Emanuel’s wide-eyed visions. His play Daniel & Mary (2010) received a Bronze Sony Radio Academy Award for Best Drama. When the Pips Stop won the Tinniswood radio drama award. The Truth About Hawaii (2018), won a BBC Audio Drama Award for Best Original Series or Serial. Closer to home was The Tenderness of Boys (2020), about a writer who visits a supermarket and sees his mother, who has been dead for fifteen years.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Emanuel worked alongside Dan Rebellato, Michael Jameson and Lavinia Murray on Emile Zola: Blood, Sex and Money (2015-2016), an adaptation of the nineteenth century French novelist’s twenty-volume Rougon-MacQuart books. Spread across three series’, Emanuel’s contributions included Fate, a brand new work that filled in the gaps of Zola’s epic in a fictionalisation of the diplomatic scandal that led to the Franco-Prussian War. The series won Best Drama at the 2016 BBC Radio and Music Awards, and Best Adaptation at the 2017 BBC Audio Drama Awards.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Rebellato wrote how “there is no radio writer I admire more than Olly Emanuel. Every one of his plays is formally inventive, conceptually daring and – the difficult bit – emotionally rich and resonant.” As Bye put it, “every play Olly wrote was an attempt to reimagine what a play could be.”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Emanuel is survived by Vickie Beesley, and their two children, Matilda and Isaac. Emanuel and Beesley married a few weeks before his death. Emanuel is also survived by his father, Peter, and his sister, Alice.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i>The Herald, January 13th 2024</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">ends</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Neil Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05746809048974448185noreply@blogger.com0