Treasure Island @ The SJT [for thepublicreviews.co.uk]

The Northern Broadsides' production of Treasure Island, adapted from Robert Louis Stevenson and on tour until January.

http://www.thepublicreviews.co.uk/

Macbeth @ Hull Truck

This is a Macbeth that's very much about the audience. No matter where they turn, Shakespeare's Scottish nobles, caught in the close press of Hull Truck's staging, can't escape the eyes fixed on them.

Mainly because Gareth Tudor-Price's adaptation is being staged in the round, which is a first for the new Hull Truck space – and a welcome one. Reducing the playing area has brought the audience closer to the actors than previous productions, serving to increase the audience's sense of involvement as well as bringing back a little of the claustrophobia of the old Spring Street venue (or tin shed).

Intimacy and claustrophobia are two things Tudor-Price and his northern cast are very keen on in this production; even the lighting rig has been lowered to compress the space.
The seven-strong cast give a fast-moving performance, rarely pausing for breath or silly things like scene changes. In a way, that's classic Truck – the reclaimed wooden board set is stripped bare, and costume changes are kept to a minimum (so much so that it can be hard to distinguish between some of the characters). It's also classically 'new Ferensway venue' to have vast amounts of haze pumping onto the stage. For once, the haze lends an incredible atmosphere to the play; murky, bleak and sinister all at once.

On the down side, involving the audience so much leads to several scenes being delivered (with not much sense of movement) out to the main seating block, as though the Truck were still in its normal arrangement. Yes, the cast is playing to the majority of the audience, but at the expense of truly playing in the round. A key advantage of staging plays in the round is that the audience can be more easily made to feel that they're eavesdropping, flies on the wall in a conversation between people unaware of their existence. Actors declaiming into the middle distance spoils that a bit.

Tudor-Price's adaptation removes the physical presence of the infamous witches and instead places them around the stage, often as whispering voices with an eerie backing track. They form another audience, always watching the action, as none of the actors ever leave the stage. It's the sort of directorial trick – Tudor-Price is aiming for a highly ritualistic portrayal of the witches – that looks promising when the show opens with the cast's only woman (Fiona Wass) drawing a tight, occult-type circle in the middle of the stage, while everyone stands around looking ominous in their long leather coats. Later, Lady Macbeth uses the same circle to summon the spirits of the night, and it's a chilling flashback to that opening moment. But other than that, there's precious little witchery. All of the supernatural messing with Macbeth's head is just that – in his head.

Don't get me wrong; James Weaver gives a very strong, solid and captivating performance as the Scottish thane promised the crown by a bunch of witches and spurred on by his wife to kill King Duncan. His relationship with Lady M sizzles, their power balance shifting in every scene, always raw with passion. A shame, then, that their supporting cast is a bit patchy, a bit hit-and-miss. Weaver is the best man onstage for listening to those around him, his face (or sometimes even his shoulders) enough to tell the way his thoughts are going. He justifies Lady M's description of his face as a book in which his thoughts can be read.

With all that haze, the lighting for Macbeth is at times genuinely beautiful, evoking different shades of night as well as the heath and castle, and even making the floorlights look like small torch fires (that probably wasn't deliberate, but looked great). The whole production fits into a sparse, brutal vision, where nobody seems to like anyone else apart from Duncan (the Macbeths like each other, of course) and everyone's on edge. The fights aren't so good to watch – too ritualistic, perhaps, a case of heavy-handed 'one-two, one-two' – but otherwise it all looks lean and mean.

Hull Truck has given the city a Macbeth they can get their teeth into, in an accessible version of Shakespeare's great tragedy.

2012

In some ways, it'd be a blessing if the world did end in 2012. For one, we wouldn't have to sit through the shame of Britain's Olympics going really badly (over-budget, late, silly-looking designs even when complete, that kind of thing, never mind the actual performance of British athletes). We could probably also avoid getting hyped-up about a possible second Obama term, as well, with all the incumbent rhetoric of hope that may or may not ever get fulfilled.

Those aren't things that are important to the latest end-of-the-world film, 2012, which seems to try to take a more realistic view of the whole affair. Hey, they've even got scientists predicting stuff...and getting the schedule wrong! A writer whose book about the end of the world, in which people acted selflessly, is criticised for being naïve. So, the makers of 2012 probably don't want us to think that they're pulling any punches.

But...are they pulling any punches? There might be a bit too much sentimental 'we all need to pull together in the cause of common humanity' stuff (rhetoric of hope?) to avoid such an accusation, but it's still quite touching. Yes, maybe the closing scene is a bit optimistic, but only because of the things it misses out. In fact, there's a lot missing here that would make it much bleaker a film.

Now, let's be honest. The way the trailer plugs this is very much about the effects. The film's main draw is the utter (and I mean utter) destruction of the world. It seems to be the first of two (probably more) films this year to involve 'the end of the world as you know it' (the other, curiously, is Sherlock Holmes, not a subject known for its apocalyptic overtones). There may be a modicum of science thrown in – something about solar flares and neutrinos – but it's basically about watching the planet ripping itself to bits while people scramble to get out of the way. Various governments have been tipped off by science, and so have started building ships, or arks as they're known (watch out for the kid called Noah...see what they did there?).

That 2012 comes from the same director (Roland Emmerich) as he who did Stargate and Independence Day should come as no surprise. Similar sort of people – with immediate access to the US President – bustling through corridors of power, slightly incomprehensible scientific tecnhobabble...oh, and devastation on a planetary scale.

And what devastation! The rumbling, rising of Yellowstone is especially fun, and fictitious plane flights have probably never been so harrowing. There's some slightly improbable dashing away from oncoming danger – lucky then, that John Cusak's character is professional driver, able to race away from what seems like a huge, angry mole in hot (underground) pursuit.

Moments like Woody Harrelson's harmless (and spot-on) conspiracy nutter getting blasted into smithereens are rewarding, as is the one when the President's daughter gets dewy-eyed as the attractive, principled scientist makes a moral case for the sake of humanity, very much in her father's style (the way that ends up is all a bit predictable). Less rewarding are moments like the wanton destruction of a load of flashy sports cars – beautiful things, absolutely no need to trash them. Sometimes, it feels like destruction for the sake of it.

Mind, that's what the trailer advertises, so it shouldn't be a surprise. Plot: hammy. Ending: dodgy. Sense of governments dealing with difficult situations: hope-inspiring. General note of apocalypse: amazing.

These Things Take Time for Cunning Linguists - from October 2009's Hullfire (who said I had to upload in chronological order?)

Hull's Drama Department is definitely not playing it safe this month.

There is a wealth of plays that the Drama Department could choose to perform, classics that have been tried and tested (and done to death) or well-known, safe favourites that are hard to get wrong onstage. But University is a place to learn, to develop, to be brave and daring, to innovate. Rather than take an easy option with an established writer, the Department is giving its stage to two new, young student writers who will also direct their work.

At the end of October, Samuel Lannacombe Oliver's These Things Take Time will play alongside Thomas E. Peel's Cunning Linguists [later changed to The Various Voices of a Cunning Linguist] as a double-bill. Both shows will run each night, one after the other, which presents its own set of challenges to the casts and crew. Most challenging for Oliver is condensing his full-length play down to an hour: “I'd already finished the script before I was given the slot, and it was over an hour long. so I've had to do a lot of cutting. I've got rid of bits I quite liked, but the constant re-reading does mean I've cut bits that were rubbish and put in better bits.” Sharing the performance space each night means that both shows are low on set and have a split budget – two challenges Peel highlights along with saying that “the pressure is on due to the fact that we have written the scripts - the buck stops with us as writers and directors.”

Oliver sums up his play as being about “struggling to write, girls and weird friends”. It centres on Lloyd Karamazov, a TV writer hired to spice up a show's failing second series, and earned Oliver a First in the Scriptwriting Module – so it must be good! He quotes as inspiration things like Jeffrey Brown's 'Girlfriend' trilogy, Mary Chase's Harvey, Fear of Projection, The Goon Show, High Fidelity, Brief Encounter, The Philadelphia Story, Kind Hearts and Coronets, All About Eve and Buster Keaton films. Style-wise, it's an “amalgamation of all the things that inspired me when writing the play. So I hope that the final performance will be a mix of all the styles I've enjoyed, in an exciting and accessible way. Oh, and there's some creative swearing.”

Peel's play is harder to pin down, “I think my play's called Cunning Linguists, I say 'think', as it hasn't named itself yet. My friend suggested Cunning Linguists which seemed witty enough, but perhaps one day it will stop its tantrum and tell me what it wants to be called.” As the plot revolves around not a love triangle but a 'love scribble' and manipulation of language – using language as an “art form that very few people take the trouble to master” - with healthy doses of sex and lust, that seems a very appropriate title. Say it quickly and spot the innuendo in a phrase that's about wordplay – like a pun within a pun. It's inspired by things like “ Wilde, G.B Shaw, pre-Raphealites, aestheticism, Terry Pratchett, Johnny Cooper Clarke, Morrissey, Simon Armitage and films like Rebel Without a Cause, West Side Story, Johnny Got His Gun, The Great Escape, Pygmalion/My Fair Lady.”

Both writers have drawn on a little autobiographical material for their plays – Peel describing his as “basically the two voices in my head put into a story.” One is “driven, knows not what he wants but that he wants something different from everybody else” while the other is “ racked by insecurities, he is repressed but only by himself, and feels like he is an echo inside his own skin.” Alongside such characters, it's easy to see why Peel claims his script “shits on the liberal types in the same sentence as the conservative types.” Oliver's gentler, lightly self-deprecating approach means that his play avoids being “boring and full of awkward misunderstandings and tentative accidents (like my own life)” by being “exciting and full of awkward misunderstandings and tentative accidents (unlike my own life) with amusing characters and the like.”

I asked both men why we should go and see their double bill. Peel says that one of his characters can “bring societal conventions and norms and throw them on their head - he has some odd views which are bound to cause controversy, especially with you ladies.” Then there's “seeing a monkey-hanger (a Hartlepoolian) in a thong, the best chat-up line in the world, the worst puns in the world, being able to tell me exactly what you thought about it after over a pint, and if all goes to plan the longest beer-funnel you will probably ever see” not to mention the after-show party.

Oliver answered: “a theatrical double bill is quite a unique experience. One ticket: two plays. Isn't that nice? These Things Take Time should be seen because it's good fun. a quick-paced romp through all the little trials and tribulations we face from friendly colleagues, aggravating co-workers, pretty strangers and wishful fantasies. Also, I have a very good-looking cast and there may be partial nudity...which is always a seller.”

Both shows have already been learning curves for their writers, which means they've achieved part of their purpose. The final part is for them to entertain the masses, you lot. So, an opportunity to take in some culture, to support not only the learning of fellow students but also their future careers, and some possible nudity (which always perks an evening up). Add in an after-show party on the Saturday, and this could be a perfect student night out.

London's South Bank in the Evening - from November 2009's Hullfire

[My first foray into travel writing]:

The Houses of Parliament look splendid in the sunset. There's a metaphor in there somewhere. The politically-minded cynic might say something about the sun setting on the splendour of an institution of British democracy. By contrast, St. Paul's glows a faint, rosy pink.

Nearby on the steps of a bridge over the Thames, a tour guide has managed to attract to her tour a whole one person. To give her credit, she's going for it 100%, putting her all in as though there were a small crowd at her feet, rather than one slightly bemused Spanish man. Unfortunately, she's just coming across as his slightly patronising, know-it-all friend.

There's something especially beautiful about London in the light of the setting sun after a long Summer's day. The streets – pierced with shards of orange light and shafts of shadow – are filled with smiling people, their shoulders still a little slack after shedding the stress accumulated during the day. Couples stroll at ease, pleased with each other's company. Friends chat about the pubs they're going to and have been to on other evenings. Mothers laugh at their scampering children, or coo over the younger ones that have tired themselves out – more worryingly, a dad is seen rescuing his young daughter from dangerously close to the edge of a bridge, where her curiosity has brought her.

See how no one rushes now like they did during the day – even the trains trundle across the bridges with less urgency. Over there, by the Tube station, an immigrant languidly hands out free London newspapers. Every now and then, a white man in a suit takes one. For some reason, that always seems to be how it works: in stilted English, the vendor chants his simple sales pitch he learned parrot-fashion, and once in a while his hook catches a fish that wants to feel (and look) ever so slightly more informed about events in London and the world. This particular suit has a young blonde on his arm, and says, as he takes a paper, “No, the reason I haven't divorced her yet is -” But the rest is snatched away on the wind, carried off to some other person's ears, one more part of one more story lost in the great melting-pot of humanity that is this great, sprawling city. We'll never know.

It's certainly been a melting-pot today, the air close and the sun bright. Clothes have been light and bright, if they were there at all. Summer, in all its glory – not typical British rained-out glory, but proper sunshine-pumping, Pimm's and lemonade glory. Look, all along the South Bank, under the London Eye and between the half dozen bridges, people enjoying themselves as only young people can. Strapping lads zip past on bikes, their shirts around their waists. Women lie sunbathing while the option's still there, ready to hit the town later on. Some watch as a bunch of lads muck about in a speedboat on the Thames. One of them's fallen in and is splashing about up to his waist – he and everyone else have a laugh – naturally he gets heckled mercilessly by his mates when they pick him up and pull away. In the distance a woman starts to sing an Italian operatic aria, her voice carrying beautifully through the streets and across the tiny waves of the river. It's all good, clean fun (except for the chap who fell into the Thames, that wasn't very clean).

It's easy to see why so many poets and arty-types love and have loved this city.

A History of Opposition - from November 2009's Hullfire

Art has a long history of undermining the more assertive aspects of state control. Partly, that's because the artist is often in an ideal position to observe the workings of a state system and is the sort of person most able and likely to articulate their opinions. An artist is often on the fringes of society, while members of the government support the status quo because it places them in prominent positions. Naturally, if the state's leaders benefit from the way things work, they won't be keen on supporting external reformers. Partly, art that disagrees has much more to say than art that complies with the status quo.

Partly though, that undermining attitude springs from the fact that art and state authority are fundamentally opposed, even in fairly liberal societies. A state system, by its very nature, likes conformity – it prefers all its subjects to be just that: subjects. If everybody does as they're told, a state's job is made much easier. So state systems tend to encourage rigidity and fixed ways of working. Art, on the other hand, likes individuality – it prefers flair and originality. Art aims to liberate people, freeing their minds and encouraging new ideas and new thoughts. It inspires a level of personal freedom that not all state systems are comfortable with. Notoriously 'difficult' playwright Howard Barker described this in 1986 when he wrote in The Guardian that 'Art is a problem. The man or woman who exposes himself to art exposes himself to another problem.' - and state systems try to avoid and/or suppress problems when they can.

Few states provide a better example of this than the old USSR, which cracked down on any form of dissent. Artists came under especially heavy fire, many facing long prison stretches for criticising the government. Those that collaborated had to conform to Stalin's brand of social realism, those that didn't could expect severe treatment.

It's only a few months since the theatre world mourned the passing of one of its most active political campaigners, Augusto Boal. He became famous for developing a type of theatre called the Theatre of the Oppressed, which aimed to involve the ordinary people far more than anything that had gone before. Boal disliked the term 'spectator', and didn't want anyone to passively watch his theatre – instead, he wanted the audience to get up and be involved, taking the part of the actors and making decisions for themselves about the course of the show. These so-called 'spectactors' were allowed great freedom of thought and expression.

Another politically-active theatre practitioner who aimed to challenge authoritarian systems was the Marxist Bertolt Brecht. Like Boal, he formulated a new style of theatre to fire up the minds of his audience and to liberate his art from the standards imposed by the past. His 'epic theatre' stripped away all the conventions of traditional acting and encouraged an intellectual rather than emotional connection between audience and performer. Meanwhile the stories of his plays criticised and satirised the state of politics in his native Germany (especially the rise of Nazism) and promoted much more socialist ideals. Interestingly, both men were politically left-wing and did their most famous work in exile – more evidence of states favouring the status quo over reformers.

Art also performs an important public service in providing a chance for us, the people, to laugh at our leaders (a service performed by playwrights from ancient Greece through to the modern day), even (especially) in legitimate, non-authoritarian states. Recently, someone told me it was scary that people laughed so much at George W. Bush, considering that he was the leader of the free world and so on. But actually, it would be scarier if we weren't allowed to laugh at him. Under Elizabeth I satirical poetry was made illegal, and many playwrights sailed very close to the wind with their writing – some even facing execution. When we're no longer allowed to laugh at our leaders, they have too much power – and leaders who ban mockery can easily extend that ban to criticism and all forms of opposition; Barker's Guardian article goes on to say that 'Nothing can be satirised in the authoritarian state'. As such, satire like Bremner, Bird & Fortune and Spitting Image function as barometers of public opinion and a means of holding politicians to account, venting the anger of the satirist (and the public) in non-violent ways.

The USSR was right to worry about oppositional writers; one oft-imprisoned Czech writer, Vaclav Havel, became a leading light in the 'Velvet Revolution', which eventually brought about an independent Czechoslovakia with Havel as its first democratically-elected President. Art isn't merely a voice for freedom, but a force of liberation.

Book Review - Dragon's Teeth: Literature in the English Revolution, by Michael Wilding

Michael Wilding's opening sentence sets the scene early on – a reference to a cannonball from the seventeenth century Civil War Battle of Worcester makes it clear that Wilding's brand of criticism is going to be rooted in the events surrounding Milton, Browne, Butler and Marvell. Having told us that critics like T S Eliot have dehistoricised and depoliticised Milton, Wilding aims to restore the poet to his rightful place. He does this by re-examining Milton's poetry through the filter of his earlier, pre-Republic, prose. By re-applying the historical and political contexts to Milton, a political radical very much of his time, Wilding fulfils the brief of his final chapter heading and reclaims the radical Milton.