The RSAMD final year students and the Citizens theatre have begun a new relationship this year with the Springboards project, a collaborative work between the students and theatre world professionals. This year they have created two projects, Chekhov’s Three Sisters and a sister project, in the form of a new award winning play by Vassily Sigarev, a modern Russian playwright.
I did not manage to see both, but I did see the first night of Three Sisters. It was rather well timed, as there seems to be a resurgence of interest in Chekhov: a few weeks ago The Cherry Orchard was playing at the Lyceum in Edinburgh, and there is a new biography out, from the memoirs of his brother, Mikhail Chekhov. It could be seen as a safe choice, one of the most famous playwrights and authors in the world, associated with psychological interpretations of character and a whole new way of acting. However, Chekhov in many ways is not a safe choice, the plays are heavy on dialogue and Chekhov’s work goes hand in hand with naturalism, and the mass cluttering of the stage with meaningless every day objects is regarded as rather old fashioned. Springboards tackled this head on as in this performance it was the set that was the stand-out star, it was bold, refreshing and a lot of effort had gone in to both its design and production.
The first set was as much as you would expect in a performance of Chekhov, a few chairs scattered downstage and a long banqueting table filling the breadth of the upstage area. So I wasn’t quite prepared for the second act where a huge screen of wood represented a blocked up window. The wooden screen, which filled most of the backdrop area, was created out of pieces different in size, shape and colour, with randomly inserted pieces of furniture visible in amongst the mix. It was pierced through with slivers of orange/red light which served to illustrate the rampaging fire spreading through the town and the vulnerability of the sisters and their family, shut up in a house of wood.
The third set took it up another notch, as they made use of what many identify with rural Russia, the tall thin birch trees so beautifully described by Pasternak and Tolstoy. The birches hung from the grid and rested just above the ground, their bundles of roots just unable to take grip of the earth. In a sense a parallel with the sisters, rootless and unable to be happy in their provincial town, with the falling leaves dropping off one by one as their hopes, dreams and finally their friends leave them.
It was ambitious and it worked. I have high hopes for Springboards position in the future of Scottish theatre as it helps professionals to find new talent and fresh ideas and facilitates the students of design, acting, direction and production to find experience and to aid the transition from education to employment. I hope that this project helps to found new careers in Scottish theatre, we need more that do.
For more about The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama visit the website at www.rsamd.ac.uk
Monday 5 April 2010
Thursday 25 March 2010
Every One
I know that this blog is entitled Glasgow Theatre Blog, but when offered the opportunity to see the opening night of Jo Clifford’s new play, Every One, at the Lyceum in Edinburgh, I couldn’t resist. The play is a deeply personal one for Jo, about grief and family loss, and she was visibly nervous of how it would go down. It is a very moving play and I have never heard so many sniffles and blown noses in a theatre before, I was certainly tearful, as were those beside me. But Every One is not as depressing as all that. I found it in many ways a joyful play, focussing on the value of life whilst you have it, and that even small unappreciated moments, like doing the ironing, can be important when spent with those you love.
Jo shirks off what could be hopelessly melancholy and lugubrious by perforating the play with humour. The character of “Man”, or Death as we later learn, leaps onto the stage from amongst the audience, as he surely is in life, and delivers an onslaught of ironic and satirical humour that is terrifying in its reality. Death is a part of life, and confronts us, as the actor playing the role, Liam Brennan, confronts us with our own mortality with the aggressiveness of his delivery. I certainly felt cowed by his offhand listing of the comic physical failings of the human body and felt almost apologetic for having one. His performance enabled me to laugh at the concept of my own death, which is certainly an uncomfortable feeling, but I feel, an achievement: a victory against mortality.
Every One looks at grief from a different direction, from that of the deceased for those they leave behind. The performance of Kathryn Howden in the lead role of Mary was very touching as she learned to cope with her death and the loss of her family as she watched them grieve for her in her hospital bed. This play is not just about the subject matter, but about challenging theatrical form. The Lyceum is a very beautiful space, designed and decorated for purpose, and in the beginning of the play the characters introduce the auditorium almost as if it were a character in itself. But it wasn’t the performance space they were referencing, but the grand auditorium itself, where we, the audience sat. The Lyceum has a typical proscenium arch, directing your view like the borders of a television screen, but what was happening on this particular screen was inside out, allowing us, unexpectedly, to see out from the other side. We were voyeurs, looking on with Mary as she saw her family grieving through transparent mirrors.
After the play there was a small gathering in one of the function rooms and I got to talk to some of the people involved. The subject of grief is something that affects everyone, and it is very hard to talk about death, never mind to write or perform it. It is a sensitive subject, not least to Jo and her family who have also lost someone very important to them and many others. But Every One manages to unite people in their experiences of that most powerful of emotions, it is something that confronts us all and we in many ways, need to talk about it. We need to talk about it to make it more normal, so that it doesn’t almost choke us when we do have to discuss it. As the director, Mark Thomson said, “I don’t want to do things that aren’t worthwhile, this is worthwhile.” I think that every one in that room after the performance felt it, every one was thinking about loss, and thinking about life and those are uniting thoughts. Loss forces us to value what we do have. The final scene of the play was a dance, an ethereal, majestic and expressive dance, of women of all ages crossing the threshold and moving from that unsure space between the mirrors to whatever lies beyond. They weren’t hanging on any more, but gracefully and, more importantly, with hope, moving past life.
Every One is showing at the Lyceum until the April the 10th. http://www.lyceum.org.uk
Get more information about Jo and her plays at http://www.teatrodomundo.com/
Jo shirks off what could be hopelessly melancholy and lugubrious by perforating the play with humour. The character of “Man”, or Death as we later learn, leaps onto the stage from amongst the audience, as he surely is in life, and delivers an onslaught of ironic and satirical humour that is terrifying in its reality. Death is a part of life, and confronts us, as the actor playing the role, Liam Brennan, confronts us with our own mortality with the aggressiveness of his delivery. I certainly felt cowed by his offhand listing of the comic physical failings of the human body and felt almost apologetic for having one. His performance enabled me to laugh at the concept of my own death, which is certainly an uncomfortable feeling, but I feel, an achievement: a victory against mortality.
Every One looks at grief from a different direction, from that of the deceased for those they leave behind. The performance of Kathryn Howden in the lead role of Mary was very touching as she learned to cope with her death and the loss of her family as she watched them grieve for her in her hospital bed. This play is not just about the subject matter, but about challenging theatrical form. The Lyceum is a very beautiful space, designed and decorated for purpose, and in the beginning of the play the characters introduce the auditorium almost as if it were a character in itself. But it wasn’t the performance space they were referencing, but the grand auditorium itself, where we, the audience sat. The Lyceum has a typical proscenium arch, directing your view like the borders of a television screen, but what was happening on this particular screen was inside out, allowing us, unexpectedly, to see out from the other side. We were voyeurs, looking on with Mary as she saw her family grieving through transparent mirrors.
After the play there was a small gathering in one of the function rooms and I got to talk to some of the people involved. The subject of grief is something that affects everyone, and it is very hard to talk about death, never mind to write or perform it. It is a sensitive subject, not least to Jo and her family who have also lost someone very important to them and many others. But Every One manages to unite people in their experiences of that most powerful of emotions, it is something that confronts us all and we in many ways, need to talk about it. We need to talk about it to make it more normal, so that it doesn’t almost choke us when we do have to discuss it. As the director, Mark Thomson said, “I don’t want to do things that aren’t worthwhile, this is worthwhile.” I think that every one in that room after the performance felt it, every one was thinking about loss, and thinking about life and those are uniting thoughts. Loss forces us to value what we do have. The final scene of the play was a dance, an ethereal, majestic and expressive dance, of women of all ages crossing the threshold and moving from that unsure space between the mirrors to whatever lies beyond. They weren’t hanging on any more, but gracefully and, more importantly, with hope, moving past life.
Every One is showing at the Lyceum until the April the 10th. http://www.lyceum.org.uk
Get more information about Jo and her plays at http://www.teatrodomundo.com/
Friday 19 March 2010
Everyone, Edinburgh's Lyceum
Tomorrow night, I'm off to Edinburgh to catch Jo Clifford's new play, Every One. The Lyceum theatre has a little trailer for the play, catch it here http://www.lyceum.org.uk/ it's just on the home page.
Hopefully my blog will also feature a little chat with the playwright himself. Keep your eyes peeled and check the blog on sunday!
Hopefully my blog will also feature a little chat with the playwright himself. Keep your eyes peeled and check the blog on sunday!
Saturday 13 March 2010
Euripides' Medea at the Citz
Last night I went to see Northern Broadsides’ production of Medea at the Citz and I loved it. I, personally, have a bit of a weakness for Greek theatre, precisely because there’s no way to play it naturalistically. It’s all prayers to the gods, curses on mortals and actions so powerful their stories remain with us two thousand years on. The long speeches of heroic deeds and the presence of the chorus also prove hard to convey to an audience unused to Greek tragedy.
The story of Medea is of course a very famous one - she abandoned and betrayed her father and her country for love, by helping Jason steal its greatest treasure: the Golden Fleece. They married, and Medea used her knowledge of witchcraft to trick and destroy the enemies of Jason. When the play starts Jason has abandoned Medea for the princess of Corinth. To the original Athenian audience, this would be entirely understandable; Medea had previously involved Jason in a murder and was also a foreigner. In the ancient Greek city states, metics (foreign residents) had no rights, and were certainly not acknowledgeable wives. Medea swears vengeance and, despite changes of heart, her overwhelming passion and emotional excess lead her to destroy the controlled governmental structure of Corinth in a highly personal way. The foreigner, the threat from inside, murders the princess and King Creon through a poisoned gown, delivered by her own children. And last, monstrously, she punishes Jason by leaving him alive, and wracked with the grief that his own children were murdered by their mother.
I read this play a few years ago, so I knew what to expect, but Northern Broadsides version boasts a new script by Tom Paulin. There was no great variation in the essence of the action or dialogue from Euripides’ original, apart from a few modern insults, but not too much, thankfully. Sometimes updated versions can seem a little forced and nowhere is this clearer than in clutching at colloquialisms for a little local humour. The biggest change was in the use of the chorus. It consisted of three women, subjects of the King Creon. What Paulin did, was to engage the chorus in a more active line. They engaged in Medea’s witchcraft and prayers for vengeance. They also took a musical role, perhaps in homage to the original Greek choruses that sung their words. Harmonicas, drums and keyboards played bluesy music alongside Medea’s prayers, which identified Medea with the American black ethnic minority. The music in the spell scene, in particular, where Medea prays to Hecate, goddess of witchcraft highlights her cultural differences from the Corinthians as she performs her raging, tribal dance. It is in her difference from the Greeks, her otherness that makes her “Not as other women” and gives her power. The actress playing Medea, Nina Kristofferson, took evident relish in these exotic scenes. Her physicality on stage was powerful, her exoticism was championed - Kristofferson clothed in bright teal velvet, all the others in neutral beiges and browns. Indeed, she seemed almost Amazonian in physical power which gave weight to the fear and respect the male characters in the play afforded to her.
In the final scene the set which had, I admit, puzzled me, finally made sense as the two jagged, semicircular barriers moved together to form the chariot of Hyperion, in which Medea makes her escape. I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t see it coming as I spent a large portion of the play wondering what the set was meant to be, and how on earth they would get the chariot on stage. I was concerned that there would be no chariot, as it is a supreme image of Medea’s otherworldly power and separateness. Kristofferson appeared almost barred in the chariot, a prisoner of her own actions, clutching the sandals of her murdered sons and holding them out, like reigns. Medea’s self-possession and pride was the final image, along with a sense of her foolishness as she repeats “You cannot mock me now!”
Northern Broadsides are a touring company performing at the Citizens Theatre until Saturday the 13th of March. After that you can catch Medea in Scarborough, Newcastle and Salford.
www.northern-broadsides.co.uk
www.citz.co.uk
The story of Medea is of course a very famous one - she abandoned and betrayed her father and her country for love, by helping Jason steal its greatest treasure: the Golden Fleece. They married, and Medea used her knowledge of witchcraft to trick and destroy the enemies of Jason. When the play starts Jason has abandoned Medea for the princess of Corinth. To the original Athenian audience, this would be entirely understandable; Medea had previously involved Jason in a murder and was also a foreigner. In the ancient Greek city states, metics (foreign residents) had no rights, and were certainly not acknowledgeable wives. Medea swears vengeance and, despite changes of heart, her overwhelming passion and emotional excess lead her to destroy the controlled governmental structure of Corinth in a highly personal way. The foreigner, the threat from inside, murders the princess and King Creon through a poisoned gown, delivered by her own children. And last, monstrously, she punishes Jason by leaving him alive, and wracked with the grief that his own children were murdered by their mother.
I read this play a few years ago, so I knew what to expect, but Northern Broadsides version boasts a new script by Tom Paulin. There was no great variation in the essence of the action or dialogue from Euripides’ original, apart from a few modern insults, but not too much, thankfully. Sometimes updated versions can seem a little forced and nowhere is this clearer than in clutching at colloquialisms for a little local humour. The biggest change was in the use of the chorus. It consisted of three women, subjects of the King Creon. What Paulin did, was to engage the chorus in a more active line. They engaged in Medea’s witchcraft and prayers for vengeance. They also took a musical role, perhaps in homage to the original Greek choruses that sung their words. Harmonicas, drums and keyboards played bluesy music alongside Medea’s prayers, which identified Medea with the American black ethnic minority. The music in the spell scene, in particular, where Medea prays to Hecate, goddess of witchcraft highlights her cultural differences from the Corinthians as she performs her raging, tribal dance. It is in her difference from the Greeks, her otherness that makes her “Not as other women” and gives her power. The actress playing Medea, Nina Kristofferson, took evident relish in these exotic scenes. Her physicality on stage was powerful, her exoticism was championed - Kristofferson clothed in bright teal velvet, all the others in neutral beiges and browns. Indeed, she seemed almost Amazonian in physical power which gave weight to the fear and respect the male characters in the play afforded to her.
In the final scene the set which had, I admit, puzzled me, finally made sense as the two jagged, semicircular barriers moved together to form the chariot of Hyperion, in which Medea makes her escape. I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t see it coming as I spent a large portion of the play wondering what the set was meant to be, and how on earth they would get the chariot on stage. I was concerned that there would be no chariot, as it is a supreme image of Medea’s otherworldly power and separateness. Kristofferson appeared almost barred in the chariot, a prisoner of her own actions, clutching the sandals of her murdered sons and holding them out, like reigns. Medea’s self-possession and pride was the final image, along with a sense of her foolishness as she repeats “You cannot mock me now!”
Northern Broadsides are a touring company performing at the Citizens Theatre until Saturday the 13th of March. After that you can catch Medea in Scarborough, Newcastle and Salford.
www.northern-broadsides.co.uk
www.citz.co.uk
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