The National Theatre of Wales announced its arrival today with a press conference that was broadcast from Cardiff to the world via the internet.
The company's Artistic Director, John McGrath, announced their first year of work which will kick off in March 2010 with Alan Harris' A Good Night Out in the Valleys, an agenda-setting play about the Welsh Miners' Institutes. Harris and McGrath have visited a number of these places, asking the locals about their idea of a good night out, and turning some of their repsonses into the basis of a play that will tour the Miners' Institues throughout March.
This will be followed by Shelf Life, a collaboration between Volcano Theatre and Welsh National Opera, and a revival of The Devil Inside Himself, John Osborne's first play, written when he was eighteen.
Later productions in their inaugral year will include The Perisans,a new version of Aeschylus’s classic play by Kaite O’Reilly and Welsh playwright Gary Owen's exploration of the youth of Bridgend, Love Steals Us From Loneliness.
For further information visit the website NationalTheatreWales.org.
According to The Sun, Lily Allen has been lined up to star in the West End transfer of reasons to be pretty.
The inevitable internet babble has begun over whether this is a move of huge cynicism on behalf of the show's producers - grab a famous name, any famous name, and people will fork out for tickets - or something altogether more savvy, especially given the nature of the play. reasons is the final part of Neil LaBute's loose trilogy of plays about body image, a follow up of sorts to his previous plays, Fat Pig and The Shape of Things.
reasons focuses on Greg and his girlfriend Steph, whom he insults by calling "regular" (which, in her book, is worse than "ugly"). It started life off-Broadway at MCC Theater at the Lucille Lortel Theatre last year before making the leap to the Great White Way (and being considerably re-written in the process).
The casting of musicians and 'non-professional' actors is par for the course in shows like Chicago, so it seems a tad harsh for some commentators to already be citing Madonna's ill-advised stint on the West End stage in comparison. We were early adoptors on the Allen front, so we will refrain from passing judgment until we've seen her in action. But whatever happens with this play, it's sure to make a noise.
What happens in Internal stays in Internal. We’re not the first to make this comment but the message still stands: the less you know going in about this new show by Ontroerend Goed the better.
This is the second part in a proposed trilogy playing with ideas of intimacy of which the magnificent Smile Off Your Face was the first instalment. We’ll say only that it’s a show for five audience members at a time and involves a one-on-one encounter. Tickets are by now pretty hard to come by and there were people patiently waiting in the hotel lobby (the show is hosted by the Traverse but takes place in a room at the Mercure Point Hotel on Bread Street) in the hope that someone wouldn’t turn up for their ‘date.’
Some people have found the experience therapeutic and liberating others conversely have found it quite violating and afterwards described feeling quite used. musicOMH, being naturally guarded, perhaps did not give herself fully over to the experience and remained rather detached but it is certainly one of the more memorable 25 minutes of the Fringe and one that has lingered, stewing and brewing at the back of her mind.
musicOMH was also lucky enough to see another hit Traverse show, Grid Iron’s site-specific adaptation of the world of Charles Bukowski. Barflies takes place in the Barony Bar on Broughton Street (15.00). Your drink of choice is waiting for you as you enter the bar with its offal red ceiling and corner piano. Keith Fleming and Gail Watson play two trademark Bukowski characters, the drink-sodden writer and the volatile, self-destructive female, equally booze-pickled, though they retain their Scottish accents. They rut and totter and clamber on top of the bar while Silent Dave the bartender plays a gravely version of Lilac Wine. We weren’t quite as taken with Ben Harrison’s production as some have been (it possibly helps if you are a fan of Bukowski’s writing) but we enjoyed our trip into this sordid yet creative world.
For more information on either show visit Traverse.co.uk.
musicOMH is entering the homestretch: today marks the start of the final week of the Fringe. There is a buzz in the air about certain shows and some of the element of uncertainty inherent in Fringe theatre-going has been removed. Much of what we’re seeing now has been recommended or reviewed elsewhere. The hot tickets have been decreed and we are fortunate to have a couple of them smouldering in our pockets.
This means our hit rate is higher than it has been. We liked Crush at the Underbelly (15.15) a very well-acted two-hander about relationships in the internet age. Ella Hickson's Precious Little Talent at the Bedlam (14.30) is also is well worth seeing and it builds considerably on the promise she showed with Eight. We also really liked Frisky and Mannish’s School of Pop also at the Underbelly (21.00), but then they were already known to us. It was interesting to see them work an over-excited Friday night crowd in a bigger venue to the one we saw them in last time and their Lilly Allen does Noel Coward skit still made us laugh like a very happy drain.
We are forcing ourselves to acknowledge that we will probably not have time to see everything we want to see. There are simply too many things and not enough days left to cram them all in.
Edinburgh at least has remembered, if only for today, that it is August and therefore supposed to be summer. We are going to play in the sunshine while it la
musicOMH has been here there and everywhere over the last few days. We have been disappointed: Hoipolloi’s The Doubtful Guest at the Traverse (various times) was one of the things we were most looking forward to and it was something of a let down. Based on the world and work of Edward Gorey it was visually spot-on and yet utterly undercut the elegance and concision of the original with a drawn out performance style that had the characters explaining their every action as they carried it out.
We have also been captivated by Accidental Nostalgia, Cynthia Hokins’ barmy musical memoir thingy, also at the Traverse (22.30). We have sympathised with the sad, yearning faces in the Daniel Kitson returns line as they reach the front of the queue only to get turned away. We are tired but not fatigued. We still have hopes of seeing surprising, exciting, hidden things. We’re sure they are out there.
That said we are off to see Frisky and Mannish's School of Pop tonight at the Underbelly (21.00); we know they are good, we know we like them but sometimes the comfort of the famailiar is what's required.
For further information, tickets and things, as ever, see: EdFringe.com.
Yesterday was the half-way day for musicOMH and we celebrated by lightening our load (i.e two shows instead of five) and going for a nice long walk in the bits of Edinburgh that don’t contain venues. We stopped and had a cup of coffee and, get this, read a book rather than spend the time scribbling down notes about shows we had seen. We tried to empty our heads, for a short while, of things connected to theatre.
Later, when happily caffeinated and sun-fed, we broke our fast with the wonderful Sporadical, part of the opening night happenings at the Forest Fringe (21.00). Sporadical is a folk opera type thing by Little Bulb, the company behind the inventive and moving Crocosmia. This new show is very different in style from their last, a far bigger thing with ghosts and mermaids and music and props made of cardboard and poster paint.
Little Bulb are artists in residence at the Forest and the show will be grow and evolve over the next fortnight. The Forest Fringe has a ridiculously exciting programme: Melanie Wilson, Rotozaza, Action Hero, and it has a truly exciting vibe, an unforced air of creativity and energy. Go visit.
For more information visit ForestFringe.co.uk
musicOMH is in need of a glass of something strong. We have recently seen Denise Van Outen's solo show, Blondes,at the Udderbelly Cow Barn (17.50). The show is a showcase for her singing skills which are decent enough, her voice is versatile, but it also requires her to speak between numbers, to banter with the audience, to exhibit a degree of warmth, something she seems to be entirely uncomfortable with.
She sings her way through Marilyn, Madonna and Kylie, all the time throwing in stilted quips care of script writer Jackie Clune that one can almost hear thudding to the ground.
The whole set up was so strange and awkward in tone that, towards the end, I began to wonder if it might be some kind of exercise in meta-theatricality and that I might be witnessing one of the most subtly subversive things on the Fringe. About five minutes towards the end the lights went out and the sound failed and I thought, ah, this is it, everything is about to twist around and reveal itself. But no it was just a power cut and sound was quickly restored. Van Outen strolled back on stage and did her last few minutes with the same uneasy film still over her face.
Tickets are selling healthily though and no doubt will continue to. musicOMH much preferred Wil Hodgson's Punk Folk Tales at the Pleasance Dome (20.20), more rambling yet almost lyrical tales about life in Chippenham from the pink-haired care bear collector.
In the space of two days musicOMH has seen two separate shows that make reference to Tycho Brahe, a sixteenth century astronomer who sported a gold nose after his own was sliced off in a duel.
The first was Lucy Porter’s new show, Fool’s Gold, at the Pleasance Coutyard (20.20). Porter is a charming and engaging performer, warm-spirited with a quick wit, but though she sets up a potentially interesting premise – the history and cultural significance of gold – she just skims it, throwing in a few entertaining facts and one lovely visual gag, even at one point feeding an audience member a piece of gold leaf, but there are very few really strong jokes and a lot of the time she seems to be coasting on her own likeability.
The second show was AL Kennedy’s Words at the Assembly Rooms (16.50). Kennedy is a novelist but she has been performing on the fringe for a few years. Her shows have been classified as stand-up in the past, but this year she’s listed under Theatre, when actually, what Words most closely resembles is in fact a lecture with laughs, an imaginative and ringing hymn to language. She’s not a natural performer like Porter, but there’s a strong sense she’s there because she needs to be, because she loves language so much and needs to communicate this love, that she can’t not to do it. There are some jokes – including a nice one about Wittgenstein – but it’s not ‘hilarious’ as the Fringe programme would have us believe, but it’s oddly uplifting and is fuelled by a love of words and where they can take you.
We would also recommend you see The Petty Concerns of Luke Wright at the Underbelly (18.00), the latest show from former Aisle 16 member and self appointed candidate for Laureate. A fusion of stand up and performance poetry, Petty Concerns is one of his strongest shows to date, very funny but also genuinely self-reflective and questioning.
For more information on this year's Edinburgh Fringe visit EdFringe.com.
musicOMH still hasn’t quite got to grips with the weather up here. It is entirely possible to go into a show when the sun is shining brightly only to emerge an hour later to find a great grey blanket has been spread across the sky. There hasn’t been a day yet when we haven’t had to return to our flat to aquire or discard items of clothing.
The heat in the venues can also be intense, especially the smaller ones. A woman even fainted during Hugh Hughes’ new show, 360, at the Pleasance Courtyard (19.05). The show had to be stopped and the woman attended to. Eventually the audience were allowed back in and Hughes was able, tentatively, to pick up where he left off and complete the show and to recreate, at least partially, the atmosphere that was lost.
Hughes, the charmingly childlike alter-ego of Hoi Polloi’s Shon Dale-Jones, is listed in the Comedy section of this year’s fringe programme, rather than under Theatre, and he’s performing solo, without the flip charts and musical accompaniment of his previous shows. It’s just him in front of a big, black curtain telling a story. Our full review is over here.
musicOMH has also seen their first naked man bits of the festival, though there will probably be more before August is out. This was during the utterly barking Or(f)unny at C Soco (21.35). Part of the Espresso! Teatro Italiano season, this seriously energetic piece of physical theatre features a brother and sister, seemingly parent-less, locked in a room together.
The two performers capture the recklessness and unselfconsciousness of childhood as they fling themselves about the room with seemingly little regard for their physical well being, dancing with abandon (to, amongst other, things, Muse), spinning until they were dizzy and hurling themselves to the floor with some force. These moments of mania were interspersed with calmer, more exposing moments, literally in one case, where the brother lay horizontally on a table top staring serenely at the audience with his genitals out in the open and ketchup smeared on his chest. There was something both silly and yet so completely vulnerable about this sight that it was rather moving. In terms of the sheer exuberance and physical commitment of the performers, this one is worth seeing.
For more details of the Espresso! fest visit EspressoFringe.org.
musicOMH is in Edinburgh; and since stepping off the slow-going National Express train yesterday afternoon, we have been charmed in a bar by a man with green skin and been given the obligatory complimentary lollipop by over-eager promoters outside the big purple cow. We have acquired many, many flyers and we have also been given several free mojitos. We like this bit. On our travels around the city, which is actually properly shit-I-wish I’d-packed-my sun-glasses summery (at least for now), we have also seen a wonderful array of moustaches: handle-bar and pencil were both well represented around the city centre and there was even one spectacular specimen of the twirly villain variety in a café we stopped in. But the most interesting crop of facial hair to date was the full-on mad professor beard sported by the father in CPT’s new show Icarus 2.0 at the Pleasance Courtyard (15.25). In Matt Ball’s devised piece, a father and son live in isolation in a cramped flat. The son has been told that he is a clone, a creation of his scientist father, a thing grown in a jar, a product of love and genetic tinkering, and he is required to wear thick gloves and a gas mask whenever he ventures into the outside world to forage for their meagre meal. The father is training his son up, physically and mentally, for the not too far away time when the boy will sprout wings and take to the sky. He will fly just like his name-sake, he will soar and the Queen will want to shake his hand. It’s a small, strange and moving show, a bit Little Bulb in style and presentation and a tad unsettling at times. It contains some wonderful moments (the badminton game being one) but as poignant as it is, shot through with grief and misplaced paternal affection, it feels fuzzy and partially formed, like a pickled foetus in a bottle. And now, as I type, outside my window drums are drumming, bagpipes are piping, fireworks are exploding, and some Scottish people are having a ‘heated debate’ about, possibly, shoes. Or maybe stews. Miles to go before I sleep...
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