Musical – humanconditioned

Matilda The Musical And Why We’re Never Growing Up

December 15, 2016RobertLeave a comment

I was very lucky to be able to watch Matilda The Musical the other day. Not only did it get me in the festive mood but I also thought it was a brilliant production. Lots of dedicated kids and adults singing their hearts out and weaving a fantastic and rather timeless story. It’s based on the Roald Dahl book, which was made into an ace movie, and now it’s on in the West End. A few spoilers on the way but I am guessing you probably already know the story: Matilda, a young girl, is bullied by her horrible parents who try and stifle her blossoming genius by threatening to ban reading. Then off to school where she is bullied by the awful (but brilliant) headmistress Miss Trunchbull who has a habit of putting naughty children in Chokey – a small and spiky cage (yup, Roald Dahl was dark). However, Matilda meets Miss Honey, a passionate teacher who is very shy and timid, and very scared of Miss Trunchbull. Miss Honey spots Matilda’s genius and tries to help foster it as any good teacher should. The rest involves giant chocolate cakes, telekinesis and floating chalk. Like many stories about children this one is about growing up and there’s a great song that is all about doing just that (see video below, starts around 42 seconds in) but there’s one bit in particular that is just spot on.

The woman in the pink cardigan is Miss Honey and it’s funny that an adult should be singing about growing up. Her words are these: “When I grow up, I will be brave enough to fight the creatures that you have to fight beneath the bed each night to be a grown up.” And it takes a super-genius, telekinetic girl with an immense capacity for bravery to help Miss Honey grow up and fight the creatures that have been plaguing her often lonely and frightened life. Yet, it’s us adults who have a habit of telling children to just grow up whilst simultaneously telling them that things will be better once they have grown up. But I reckon us adults have an awful lot of growing up to do as well and really we’re using ‘adulthood’ as a facade to exercise undue authority. Yes, adults can be frightened, lonely, scared, mean and nasty too but until we can be honest about our vulnerability we’ll keep on missing those chances to grow up, chances that come from all directions, including (and maybe espeically) from those younger than us. Only then can the world we promise our children really come true.

Matilda also has another great point to make, which is that to make a difference you don’t have to do huge things, the little things you’re capable of can also make a huge difference. Whether it’s offering a helping hand or a listening ear or even just a smile, the little things do add up and they do have an impact. Matilda is also big on challenging authority and fighting injustice, and thanks to her ‘little’ actions, which are huge for others, so much change happens. So yes, 2016 has been quite a year and 2017 has an awful lot of work to do but I reckon it’ll be a much better year if, like Matilda, we do the little things we can and, together, help each other grow up.

Donald Trump Meets Mack The Knife

September 14, 2016RobertLeave a comment

Mack the Knife is the psychopathic protagonist of Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera, now showing at the National Theatre in London. He’s misogynistic, greedy, ruthless arch-villain who is obsessed with money. Incidentally he has much in common with Donald Trump, currently doing the rounds in Trumpageddon at the King’s Head Theatre in Islington. One opera and a one-man show both painting bleak portraits of the world. The former a nihilistic, musical satire and the latter an ominous omen for things to come (but hopefully won’t).

The Threepenny Opera first. Wow. What a show. All singing, all dancing, with bits of set flying around the place, a band on stage, costumes to die for (and die in) and lots of jazzy smoke effects. It wasn’t quite Cabaret (but then again that’s a musical not an opera if we’re going to quibble) but Mack’s London is one of back stabbing, front stabbing and rape. It’s not a fun place to be and that’s the point. The joke’s on the audience as we’re mocked for wasting our cash on a show like this, a show full of low lifes and reprobates. Meanwhile, Brecht’s script does its best to ‘alienate’ us – “playing in such a way that the audience [is] hindered from simply identifying itself with the characters in the play. Acceptance or rejection of their actions and utterances [is] meant to take place on a conscious plane, instead of, as hitherto, in the audience’s subconscious” (Brecht). Yup, no sitting back and relaxing, instead we’re regularly reminded by the script that not only is this a play, what with characters shouting “scene change” and “interval”, but it’s also a visciously barbed reflection/refraction of the world we live in. Whilst that’s all well and good not being allowed to connect with the characters meant I didn’t really care what happened to them, especially Mack as he was such an utter b*stard. It also didn’t help that Rory Kinnear, who plays Mack, couldn’t quite maintain his accent (was it meant to be Cockney or Russian or posh English?).

Someone who can maintain an accent is Simon Jay. His show Trumpegedden sold out at the Edinburgh Fringe and won many an accolade including an article in the Guardian and now it’s come down to London town. First I have to make a disclaimer: I know Simon (but I don’t know Kinnear) and think he’s a thoroughly good bloke but when I went to greet him before the show my arm was practically yanked off in a handshake from his orange faced, peroxide blond Trump. He was in character all night and it was terrifyingly brilliant. As he shoved his blond assistant around the stage, as he offended the audience, as he contradicted himself without qualm (often verbatim), so we were given a glimpse of an all too possible world should the real Trump win the vote in little over 50 days time! This will be a world of open hostility and violence that will be worse for women, the LGBTQIA community, people of the Muslim and Jewish faiths, people of colour and so many more. Basically anyone who isn’t white, male, American and rich. We’re fucking doomed if this guy wins and Mack’s dodgy London will appear a mere prelude to apocalypse. So share this new Avaaz thing to encourage US voters around the world to vote (even if they’re not in the US), go watch Simon’s play (next/last show Monday 19th September) and then swing by the NT if you fancy an opera (personally, I’d recommend Chicago).

You Can’t Stop The Beat Of Equality

January 31, 2016January 31, 2016RobertLeave a comment

Fascists painting swastikas in blood on the sides of buses during an anti-refugee march in Dover. Rich Oxford University alumni threatening to write Oriel College out of their wills if the college removes a statue of the racist Cecil Rhodes. Mega-corporations getting away with avoiding paying billions of pounds worth of tax during a time of austerity and increasing inequality. Sometimes, maybe always, it seems like the world is going to pot and that the bad guys really will win. And whilst I don’t think equality and justice are guarantors but are contracts in need of endless renewal, in the same way the social fabric is a patchwork in need of constant darning, I do know that despite all the hatred out there it is so much easier being nice. Plus, nice people get a better soundtrack.

Bigotry is hard work. As the Red Queen boasts to Alice that she can believe six impossible things before breakfast so too must bigots juggle all sorts of contradictions and paradoxes in order to justify their narrow-mindedness. For example, one of the fascists who marched in Dover yesterday has to believe that certain groups of people are inferior whilst demanding that they themselves, and the people they care about, are superior. It tends to be one rule for them and one rule for me (and my family). A fascist also has to believe that our economic problems can be blamed on migrants and refugees, meaning they get to scapegoat the vulnerable whilst not bothering to question the economic and political realities that keeps a constant stream of wealth and power flowing to the elite minority at the expense of the majority (a majority that they are part of!). On the other hand, it’s much easier for a nice person who realises that nothing makes anyone inherently better or worse than anyone else and so doesn’t need to expend lots of energy discriminating against certain groups. They can also google around the issues of inequality rather than just accept what the newspapers tell them. At the end of the day (and at the start of it) love is a much more sustainable energy source than hate.

And nice people get a much better soundtrack. Take You Can’t Stop The Beat that ends the ace musical Hairspray (big spoilers by the way, equality wins). All the characters, even the baddies, shake their booty to a song that relishes the striving for so many forms of equality – between people of different races, skin colours and body shapes. “You can try to stop the paradise we’re dreaming of,” they sing, and of course (as Taylor Swift also told us) haterz gonna hate, because that’s what haters do. But “you can’t stop today as it comes speeding down the track,” sings Queen Latifah, “Child, yesterday is history and it’s never coming back.” And she’s right, today is zooming straight at us like a highspeed train and we get to choose whether it’s a train that runs people over or if it’s some awesome party train to which all are invited (rehabilitated fascists included). Because when it comes down to it hate and love are choices, and as difficult as we might find it to choose the latter, there’s still time to learn (trust me, it’ll be fun). And so concludes my blog about being nice – perhaps just an excuse to post this awesome song which does what this blog does anyway but too a far catchier tune (Spanish subtitles included).

Queers On Sunset Boulevard

November 14, 2015November 14, 2015RobertLeave a comment

I’ve been to the theatre twice in the last few days – once to the King’s Head in London to see Queers, six monologues about LGBT life, and also to the Oxford Playhouse to see Sunset Boulevard, a perhaps better known show all about an ageing film star who goes off the rails. Both were brilliant productions but for completely different reasons.

With Queers, young playwright Pat Cash has created six memorable LGBT characters who offer us brief and poignant glimpses into their lives. With Larry the Laydeez’ Lothario we witness how lad culture can suppress people’s sexualities out of fear and prejudice. In Queen Marsha F Star Star King Fabulous of Dalston we witness the fight for trans people to exist when she’s very bluntly told that she is not a woman. Each monologue was around ten minutes yet they all managed to pack a tear-jerking emotional punch. The most moving for me was the story of Old Tom who is sat at a gay bar in Soho recounting his younger days of activism to a bored, young bartender. Matthew Hodson’s portrayal of Tom is poetic and understated and he also puts on a great voice for the barman. Tom’s life is a lonely one as so many of his friends have died but as his story concludes the bartender, no longer checking his phone, puts his hand on Tom’s and calls him a friend. This simple idea that loneliness does not have to last forever is extremely touching. At £12 Queers is a bargain, on until 22nd November.

Now over to Sunset Boulevard – an exciting and exceptionally professional production from the self-professed “amateur” Oxford Operatic Society. A giant cast made for hectic and well-choreographed chorus moments and two strong leads meant the story of Norma and Joe played out with suitably dramatic highs and lows – Norma is a fascinating character as her addiction to her faded fame and external validation renders her a vulnerable and exceptionally fragile person whilst Joe’s desire to succeed often turns him into a selfish bully who, for some reason, women keep falling for. The show captures the fickle nature of showbiz and cast rivalries very astutely which couldn’t help but make me question the nature of the relationships of the actual cast members! Add to this a great spiral staircase, Norma’s epic wardrobe and a full-sized orchestra blasting out their melodies from the pit and you’re in for a good time. Two shows left today, go, go, go!

Yet as I watched Sunset Boulevard something jarred – something about the joke about not taking black friends to restaurants (apparently that’s a big no-no in 1950s screenplays) sung by a predominantly white cast, something about the token camp character (who we were encouraged to assume was homosexual) who was played for laughs, something also about the desperately stereotypical roles the leads took – past-it, fifty year old woman who goes mad and driven, sometimes selfish, young guy who ultimately gets shot in the back. I know that musicals don’t have to be informed by feminism or be diverse but I think it’s fun when they are. One could certainly interpret Sunset Boulevard through a feminist-Marxist lens and appreciate that the highly competitive and capitalistic world of film-making basically treats people very badly (apart from maybe the directors and producers) and makes us all into monsters but to do this one might also have to clutch at a few straws. It’s also somewhat of a bitter pill that whilst older, female actors are still being discriminated against in the various acting industries one of the major lead roles for an older woman in a musical is that of a faded, mad ex-actor!

This is where Queers has the edge because it’s unapologetically diverse and not necessarily because it’s trying to make a point about diversity but simply because it couldn’t but be. To meet the characters of Queers is to meet a brilliant panoply of different people whilst treading the boards of Sunset Boulevard seems to be a somewhat white and stereotyped experience. Normalising diversity in films, theatre, TV and musicals isn’t just a question of casting diverse people it also means writing inherently diverse scripts. So, I reckon that Sunset Boulevard (whilst a brilliant production) is a bit like Norma Desmond, stuck in the past, whilst Queers is ushering in a very different sort of sunrise.