Skip to main content

Power Ballad

Tron Theatre, Glasgow
Four Stars

In terms of what words are worth, there’s a line from Annie Lennox’s anthem for independent women, No More I Love You’s, that speaks volumes about New Zealand artists Julia Croft and Nisha Madhan’s wild construction, first seen in Scotland at the 2017 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Coming at the show’s climax, David Freeman and Joseph Hughes’ Roland Barthes-referencing lyric is the perfect glam-tastic evocation of the show’s tragi-comic plea, nay, demand for a new language and, by default, a new way of being in a world run by macho bores.

Croft and Madhan take their cue from post-beat pre-punk provocateur Kathy Acker, whose literary adventures showed she too was no slouch in dissembling old clichés and lobbing fearless linguistic grenades through sacred cow classics. This was laid bare in spades throughout the recent large-scale retrospective of Acker’s work at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. The result of Croft and Madhan’s efforts is a fifty-minute mash-up of live art cabaret, karaoke fantasy wish fulfilment and a primer of taboo-busting fellow travellers, from Patti Smith to Peaches.

With Croft crawling onstage backwards, be-wigged and half dressed, a gymnastic display of microphone envy ensues, before she attempts to get a word in edgeways or otherwise about matters of gender. Trying identities on for size in Madhan’s production, Croft points up all the mono-syllabic presumption of a patriarchy that wouldn’t recognise its own ignorance if it attempted a square go with it, but still manages to come out fighting and with a smile on her face.

It’s not that Croft and Madhan don’t take themselves seriously. Quite the reverse, in fact, as this is fearlessly deadly stuff. It’s just that they’re doing it for themselves in a way that also makes for a riot of fun. As they take up the double-edged sword of the show’s title, Power Ballad gives voice to those who might otherwise remain unheard, not as elegy, but as a call to arms it’s okay to sing along with.

The Herald, September 13th 2019

ends



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ron Butlin - The Sound of My Voice

When Ron Butlin saw a man who’d just asked him the time throw himself under a train on the Paris Metro, it was a turning point in how his 1987 novel, The Sound Of My Voice, would turn out. Twenty years on, Butlin’s tale of suburban family man Morris Magellan’s existential crisis and his subsequent slide into alcoholism is regarded as a lost classic. Prime material, then, for the very intimate stage adaptation which opens in the Citizens Theatre’s tiny Stalls Studio tonight. “I had this friend in London who was an alcoholic,” Butlin recalls. “He would go off to work in the civil service in the morning looking absolutely immaculate. Then at night we’d meet, and he’s get mega-blootered, then go home and continue drinking and end up in a really bad state. I remember staying over one night, and he’d emerge from his room looking immaculate again. There was this huge contrast between what was going on outside and what was going on inside.” We’re sitting in a café on Edinburgh’s south sid

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) 1. THE STONE ROSES    Don’t Stop ( Silvertone   ORE   1989) The trip didn’t quite start here for what sounds like Waterfall played backwards on The Stone Roses’ era-defining eponymous debut album, but it sounds

Big Gold Dreams – A Story of Scottish Independent Music 1977-1989

Disc 1 1. THE REZILLOS (My Baby Does) Good Sculptures (12/77)  2. THE EXILE Hooked On You (8/77) 3. DRIVE Jerkin’ (8/77) 4. VALVES Robot Love (9/77) 5. P.V.C. 2 Put You In The Picture (10/77) 6. JOHNNY & THE SELF ABUSERS Dead Vandals (11/77) 7. BEE BEE CEE You Gotta Know Girl (11/77) 8. SUBS Gimme Your Heart (2/78) 9. SKIDS Reasons (No Bad NB 1, 4/78) 10. FINGERPRINTZ Dancing With Myself (1/79)  11. THE ZIPS Take Me Down (4/79) 12. ANOTHER PRETTY FACE All The Boys Love Carrie (5/79)  13. VISITORS Electric Heat (5/79) 14. JOLT See Saw (6/79) 15. SIMPLE MINDS Chelsea Girl (6/79) 16. SHAKE Culture Shock (7/79) 17. HEADBOYS The Shape Of Things To Come (7/79) 18. FIRE EXIT Time Wall (8/79) 19. FREEZE Paranoia (9/79) 20. FAKES Sylvia Clarke (9/79) 21. TPI She’s Too Clever For Me (10/79) 22. FUN 4 Singing In The Showers (11/79) 23. FLOWERS Confessions (12/79) 24. TV21 Playing With Fire (4/80) 25. ALEX FERGUSSON Stay With Me Tonight (1980) 1. THE REZILL