A Dullish Life Re-Thrilled!

 What larks, Pip? These larks!

 Time is like butter. When I buy a tub, it seems to remain nearly full for ages, until somehow, suddenly there's just two days' worth left. I voiced this thought to Alicia (pictured below, enjoying rose petals) in the kitchen we share in Newbury, while I was making breakfast at two in the afternoon, and she suggested I put it on the blog, since I hadn't posted anything since December. This was three weeks ago.

 And now here we are, after a month's run, with just four nights left of Mark Evans' theatrical adaptation of his Radio Four Bildungsroman Behemoth "Bleak Expectations" – I can hear the piccolos from "Whistle Down the Wind" rehearsing what will replace us as I write – and so here's the plug for it. Come if you can, and haven't. Tickets are here. (I've been plugging the show relentlessly on other social media, obviously, but have you seen how depressing things are over there?) Really, I couldn't be happier to be in this. I get to play a baddie previously played by Anthony Head, and Mark and director Caroline Leslie, and, well, everyone, have done a miraculous job of not only taking capital N radio Nonsense and making it work onstage, but also probably more trickily, chanelling five series of a sitcom into a moving, two-hour, cod-Dickensian narrative. We perform it in a real old watermill too, which is gorgeous, like Disneyland's "Enchanted Tiki Room" but with Victorians instead of toucans, and if it's a bit out of the way, it still gets National Press. Here we are in The Metro!

 

We also received a nice review in The Times, which you can read the top bit of without paying, as well as maybe the best three star review I've ever read in The Guardian - its only rival being the review from which these quotes accompanying Pamela Raith's gorgeous photos have been taken, HERE.

 

 Some other reviews, for – if no reason other – my own miserable hoarding:

 Broadway World

 Theatre, Films and Art reviews (Theatre, arts and films),

 A five star review from Caitlin's dad, presumably, Mickey Jo Theatre

 The original exciting cast announcement in WhatsOnStage

 An interview with our producer stroke star, Dom "Pip Bin" Hodson, for West End Best Friend (he honestly auditioned other Pips)

 And this single tweet from another Dom:

 

The Secret of Comedy 4:20am

The secret of comedy's not what you think.

It turns out there actually are two types of people: listeners and broadcasters. Neither type is more polite than the other, although it is polite to listen. But listeners aren't being patient – they just prefer to listen.

So here's the secret: Listeners are more likely to find other listeners funny, and broadcasters self-indulgent. Broadcasters are more likely to find other broadcasters funny, and listeners self-indulgent.

In other words, someone's always going to find you self-indulgent.

The Cowboy and the Frenchman (David Lynch, 1988, "Whut the Hell...?")

 

 Well yee-hah! Back in 1988, it turns out that stone-deaf David Lynch – THE great artist of unsettling alien hospitality – decided to make a film from the HOST's point of view for once, a gorgeous little project for... 

 Actually, before I go on, if this sounds like your kind of thing and you've half an hour to spare, then watch it here first. Very much not the kind of thing Lynch would make nowadays, but SO MUCH the kind of thing he made back then, it's funny to see just how starkly his mood has changed (his stuff's still fun, but not nearly so silly. This actually makes quite a nice companion piece to "Tomatoes Another Day", now I think of it.) 

 And no, all I was going to say before I cut myself off was that this piece was actually commissioned by a French television station for a season "The French as seen by..." And the reason I cut myself off was that I only learnt this fact after I'd watched the piece and can't be sure I'd have enjoyed it as much if I'd known before. 

 Conversely though... if I hadn't known beforehand that it was directed by David Lynch I might not have enjoyed it AS MUCH. I don't think I was cutting the film more slack, I just think that, this way round, I was seeing more in it. More than if I'd known it was a film made specifically for an audience with English as a second language in order to address views on the French (which it beautifully doesn't do anyway). Authorship though, hm...

 

Another point of reference for Money's machine now I think of it

The Buzz

(originally posted on myspace here)

Coming up shortly another romantic, police-state-themed anecdote, but first:

Let me fill you in on Money. So yes we're into our second run. It's January - no it's not it's February, sorry - the snows have departed but Winter's still on us like the knackering corpse of some giant squid and the "houses" (industry term) are smaller as a result, but baby we're nailing it. It's so nearly all there. A-hundred-and-thirtyish shows in, and each one different, and each one - chiefly thanks to Lou who's sat in on about a-hundred-and-twentyish of them - zipping along now with a minimum of anguish (not an absence but a definite minimum). Although the first half takes place in a waiting room I have finally been talked round to the idea that JUST LETTING THE AUDIENCE WAIT does not make for a good show - kills it (industry secret) - nor I now realise does it even lend authenticity: the audience is in a dream, you never wait in dreams. At least I never have, surely that would play havoc with your REM. 

And external validation has come anew from both The New York Times (I know, what? They can make or break a show, bud! "And I mean that as a compliment." The New York Times) and The Independent (again) in the first review to actually acknowledge the writing as anything other than a terrible mistake, which is great because you know, there's words of mine in there and you know, they're doing a job (even if it's the same job Chinese newsprint performs in a cocktail umbrella).

OH! And then, last night, Derren Brown came. Because Neil Patrick Harris had brought him. And they loved it. And it's on twitter. And they lurved me. ("Staggering" Derren Brown... Now where can I take that?) I am using short sentences to try and convey the magnitude of this. Awe. "Hi, I'm Neil." Aw. Yeah you are! And your boyfriend David Burtka's lovely! And - and Derren's first words to me were "Where do I know you from I know you I've seen you it's driving me crazy is it a - a play have you been in a play is it channel four a - a meeting - I've seen you." No. We'd never met. But look, standing here in front of me is Derren Brown WRACKING HIS BRAINS. That was a good night (but no seriously where can I take it?) 

And the Lounge? I don't know. It's opening its doors again to something tomorrow and I'd like to be there to see what. Maybe I'll be a stewardess. Maybe I'll have some kind of tiny show to hang from the title "We Should Sh" (good title eh?) but I doubt it, my baby's sick. I must go to her. I must find something to call her other than my baby...

And this is a while back now, but we thought it might be romantic to go to the fair, my baby and me:

And she took me on The Waltzer. I'd never been on one. And I thought I'd die. I'm thirty-five, I've been in a fire, I thought I'd die. I went pale and couldn't walk. I was too old and she said sorry. So we left the fair. And as we passed a news-agent she also went pale and said "Ah! Can't you hear that?" The shop had a hypersonic Mosquito "youth crowd dispersal system". No I couldn't hear it. I'm thirty-five. IN YOUR FACE,  YOUTH!

The Public Reaction

(originally posted on myspace here)

All finished!

"Yeah but hang on, Simon, eff off! You can't just disappear for a month then swan back online with 'The Public Reaction' like nothing's happ- Oo! Footage!"

Haha! Yet again I deflect your fictional carping, my shit-giving mental construct...  And now, look, if you didn't know by now, dear actual reader, regarding our show "Money" the press were good to us, very good. They said this ("cool"! four stars) and this ("teasing"! four stars) and this ("DISCERNIBLE"! four stars). There was also a not basically accurate reference to Shunt's own finances here ("Oo yeah let's read that!" four belms)... which, which, which...which is as good a place as any to mention that the Lounge will now finally be closing its doors at the end of next week. The fourteenth. Moving off. Sharded. So get your skates on. (Shit. Money's staying where it is though. That's safe. And sold out. Go Tweaks!) Various new locations have been considered. I'll show you one of them in the next post, and that will lead me on to other relocations I must fill you in on, which will in turn - basically it's alright, this blog is now sorted. Let's celebrate...

Whee.

Right I have to head off now. I'm using the Lounge's internet and everyone's gone. Nigel promised me a giant Nosferatu head left over from Halloween if I came round, then he shouted at me because I was on the computer all the time and wouldn't go with him on the boat in the tunnel of balloons George had made to look like the Super K Subterranean Neutrino Observatory after it had shut so I did. And it was good. Get your skates on.

And speaking of tweaks, you see that guy on the left in this video? That's us, in rehearsals. Okay, mainly me... Who's the guy on the right? No idea.

But the results speak for themselves.

"Makes the Caucasian Chalk Circle look like Eastenders"

So the reviews are in and WE'RE A HIT!

"... fabulous, fabulous set..." Kirsty Wark

"... spectacle... " Robin Ince

"... trying to tell you anything at all. It was super-... a laugh I suppose... reminded me of the stuff from the eighties they had on Channel 4..." John Harris 

"... the set is good..." Oliver Kamm

"... not a complete waste of time... there was nothing new about it. BUT -..." Germaine Greer

 Well at least television's regained some of its mystique for me now. All that Mitchell and Webb stuff had just made me cocky. But I'd love to know what GG was going to say after that "BUT" before Kirsty Wark cut her off to point out that the Enron show had sold out. She was spot on about reading the "event" as the "organism Money", and had stuck her tongue out at me in our Parliament so was clearly one of us. Also it was enlightening to see Robin Ince chance upon the perfect mind-set for enjoying the show; the only question now is how do we get an audience that *haven't* missed the first forty minutes to approach us in as good faith... Anyway, work continues: 10am calls, a little less audience interaction, a lot more cast interaction (which is jolly). And Lizzie's produced a fantastic series of prints for the Institute upstairs now (see above) which may just explain everything: the organism, on wheels, everywhere. We set out. They've just turned the lights off. The machine's kicked in and it's probably time to let our sixth audience pile in. My sister got it anyway. Who knows what's out there? Oh, for anyone who enjoyed Disney's Magic Highway here's Disney's Life on Mars. Well, the visuals anyway, but you all like Techno, right?

(originally posted on myspace)

Dance Bear Don't (a life in 3 acts)

(originally posted on myspace here)

Let's see if we can't squeeze another one of these posts in before Newsnight Review shows up tonight (pray God they respect to the Code of the Preview, that is all I ask...) Now - ah - I'm writing this on the office's IBM ThinkPad and there's odd little buttony growths all over it, what do they all do?!... Um, so anyway last night saw more cuts to the show: no more giant table cloth, and no more opportunity to sing along to this unparalleled two-minute ode to joy WHAT?! NO!

I do hop s ee its rurn. Oh how did the cursor get over there! I'm using my thumb to move and my forefinger to click, thi sis nonsense¬! LISTEN - no, bad caps lock! - listen, let's all just take a moment to be the water shall we? Let's fill the cup. Fill the bottle... That's better. Alan?

I mean, it's fine. I recognise the preview period will be intense and that changes need to be made. I recognize that the Simon Smith Karaoke segment wasn't working in context inasmuch as it was unbearable and stopped time itself Howard Campbell-like in its tracks, and I recognise that perfect as the song is we must pay attention to the doughnut, not the hole, and speed our plough over the bones of the dead. Of the dead bear. Of the dead child and his amazing dead dancing dead bear. That is fine. Huhhh... huhhhhh, huh huhhhhh.... I had a good conversation with Lizzie last night. She's the designer. It's good to talk to her because I think her priorities are spot on - how do you work on an audience's imagination without asking them to suspend their disbelief? That seems to me the - OH IT'S NO GOOD! ALAN PRICE! ALAN PRICE WHER ARE YOU?

Mood: None. Related Topics: None

(originally posted on myspace here)

 

Hello. I'm posting this from my phone again, from outside the machine which I think is now complete. I think. It's got bunting and a bell. And I feel I should post this because of course last night we opened, and that's a thing, and we're having a photoshoot, sitting around in towels with nothing better to do. (The costumes arrived yesterday but we're still going with just the towels, apart from Tom who having missed the towels note has shown up covered in clay and feathers with a shaved head. Good old Tom. But also, good old towels.) So how was last night? Well it felt like the first time I'd actually earnt my money, but the show itself, now I think about, reminded me of Zack Snyder's Watchmen: I - ng - liked it, but oo there was a lot missing... missing here not from the original, but from the sum and, when we were lucky, product (maths joke) of the past six months' settling of ideas, decisions and enthusiasms. Whole swathes of theme that it turns out just aren't there now. And what's interesting about that is this was evident last night even though the playing was crisp and the crowd jolly. But now let's see what we've got, less is still probably more. Already today we've axed the steampunk detox and the misunderstanding about the pen. And good. My voice is a three amp fuse right now with thirteen amps of quarrel run through it. Don't kiss me, I taste like a farm.

Ah, I've got to a computer now. Great. So here's a short animation I came across illustrating just some of the themes which didn't make it into last night's show. It's also ideally how I'd like to us to end it (I mean Germaine Greer's coming on Friday. She'd eat this up. Imagine.) Go!

Moon Alert!

(originally posted on myspace here)

Yes, moon alert: Tonight's full mooon will loom larger in the sky than it has since 1993, although peering through the blinds tonight all I see is cloud. Actually I should put some curtains up. Venetian blinds are all very well for a two-fisted man of letters keeping faith with Ridley Scott's vision of 21st century living, but it's getting quite cold now, and the bonsai tree by my brass bed's beginning to smell ill. Seriously it took me ages to locate the garlic odour.

On the subject of the moon, here's a short animation made by Paul Barritt accompanying a story by Suzanne Andrade; she stands in front of it, looking eerily like Jean Charles Deburau but with sexier hair, in their show "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" which I saw last night at the BAC:

They don't do cabaret any more. That's a shame because an hour of this on its own can look a bit phoney, whereas a fifteen-minute invasion of the stage of the Battersea Barge, say, is awesome… That's a terribly ungracious judgment for me to make however because I was sitting right at the front on my own, with a bad neck, and hadn't even paid and paying always gets you in the mood. But this was a Big Christmas Treat from the Battersea Arts Centre, you see, who'd invited me along to a "Brainstorming Session". I felt like a real player. After the show there were probably about two-hundred of us sat around tables with crackers and lasagne, two-hundred who had all, we were told, been "put on a list". Lewis was there (of "Alf and…" fame) and personal favourite Julian Fox. Crackers were pulled and tiny pairs of nail-clippers sent flying across the hall. And then the time came to "round table" some subjects, and I joined the round table that read:

ONE ON ONES

… firstly because of The Books of Soap and Interview Room H, but also because I found the name very pleasing to the eye and couldn't quite work out why. At this table the BAC's joint artistic director tabled the notion of a "one-on-one theatre festival" which sounded great. Then he suggested this festival might answer a demand from a public finding themselves in a "post-capitalist, post-Blairite, post-spin" era, hungry for honesty and "energized by Obama" etc. and I thought "Who? What? Oh no..." But it prompted Lewis to make what I thought was the most interesting and important point of the evening, namely that this demand for "one on one" theatre wasn't in fact coming from the public at all, but from us artists. It's us who want "the house-lights turned up" as he put it, far more than our paying or non-paying house. I love Lewis. And it seems to me a very important distinction for an artistic venue to make when deciding on its focus, and indeed for commentators in general. Art doesn't change direction because the public want it to but because the artists do; but artists are also of course the public - they're seeing stuff as well as making it, and chances are they're making the stuff they want to see. In other words, you don't necessarily need all these feedback forms. And the idea that the Battersea Arts Centre is somehow a barometer of national public interest is, when you think about it for a second, bonkers; what the BAC can I think genuinely take pride in is the interest they generate from the large number of artists wanting to produce work there. Dedum.

So anyway I walked home well-fed, clearly knowing everything there ever was to know about my chosen medium, found a DVD of "Planet Terror" in the living room, bunged it on and was immediately reminded how much I clearly wanted to DO THIS! THIS! MOVIES NOT THEATRE! THIS!!! Gah:

Just so we're agreed what's good...

My readership, apologies. 

Instead of knuckling down to a post mortem on Jonah, as promised, or gloating in print (or whatever medium this is) over Jonathan Ross directing a little of his boundless enthusiasm my way last Saturday (in an interview with Mitchell and Webb about the new TV series – listen to the last fifteen minutes if you must - he lightheatedly bemoaned the non-transfer of a radio sketch I wrote called "Asbo Zapruder". By me. And then he went on about "Padlockigami". Which I wrote. Which was nice. Bracket brackets: for the record, I don't see the logistical problem being Rob dressing up like a baby seal, so much as James Bachman having to pass himself off as a French heron. Also, once you've got over the initial visual gag, the sketch is basically just five minutes of watching a man text)... yeah so instead of gloating over that, which you'll see I haven't, I have, it appears, posted the following comment on David Cairns' fine movie blog "Shadowplay" still sat here in my coat (I meant to get some eggs). When not bigging up Fritz Lang's tedious, horribly acted Die Nibelungen, Mr. Cairns has been asking for people's personal moments of cinematic "euphoria", and then charmingly and intelligently broadcasting them. Mine's not a particularly remarkable choice, but I've made it now, and it's all I have to show. So here. Enjoy. (If you have broadband obviously. If you don't, here's an old flyer:)

 

"1. the opening credits of Do The Right Thing:

2. The escape by boat in Night of the Hunter.

To my mind another pretty-much-perfect movie. Suddenly, finally, here with the image of Mitchum stuck in the water, and the kids heading off into the top right hand corner, we're out of the spiky German shadows and into a children's story. Everything is made to look as simultaneously fake and as life-like as possible. I can't explain. I first saw this late at night when I was about seventeen, and it was as the boat set off that I went from loving this picture to being in love. I can think of many examples on film of a violent mood-jolt from peace to horror, but no other example of this, its opposite, a scream that lingers as a lullaby. It's unspoofable, which is pretty much the same thing as sacred.

Both these clips are completely unconcerned with any tradition that I'm aware of. They just go: Hey we can do whatever we like! And then they do it... To which should be added, now I think of it: 3. The pan over to Christina Ricci's tap-dance in Buffalo 66."

Of which I could find no clip. So here instead is Danny Kaye declaiming "Giacomo hides not behind drapes!" Happy Valentine's, you all.

Bissous x

FACEBITS (newsnightreviewze me)

Morgan lives next door. He used to leave odd messages through our letter box burnt into banana skins. Now he leaves us recycling bags full of organic bread and vegetables. It's his new business. He has a van. And even though he's got a website (morganico.com) and I've lived here now for almost eight years I've never really known that much about him except that he practices the didgeridoo and is nice. A few weeks back however we got a flyer saying that some of his art (!) was going to be exhibited up the road at the Carnegie Library until September (which is open four days a week, looks like it was drawn by Ronald Searle and stocks mainly leaflets). More of these flyers then appeared all over Brixton with FREE DRINKS circled heavily in red. So we went, and it was great. It turns out he's been responsible for all the stenciling around Herne Hill over the past three years, including the life-size portrait of Gandhi looking cheeky in a doorway... And this evening returning from the big fridge across the road with a box of chicken I saw him out and about doing some work on his van. He's giving it ears:

So I thought I'd note that down. Which brings me neatly to my absence from this blog. It is not a subject I am trying to dodge... I've seen a lot of other people's stuff since I last posted, too much to recount in one post... I've seen some stuff of my own as well, which has been exciting and empowering and which I shall also recount... I have seen one boy film another knock a girl to the pavement outside my window at seven in the morning and have no idea how to take it as all three parties were clearly friends before, during and after (Is that why it's called "happy" slapping? Are we all missing something?)... And I have - this very afternoon as it happens, coiled and beaming in front of a matinee of Interstella 5555 at the Ritzy, formulated an incredibly good idea for a radio show which I might actually keep to myself now I think of it... but I have mainly... I have mainly... to the extent where I will now find myself in a crowded room sorting mentally through Groening noses and eybrows for a match... I have mainly like every other itchy sucker been creating "avatars" on the Simpsons Movie website and sticking them up on F*c*book.
They're not really "avatars" though, are they, in any sense? They are simply lifeless portraits made from bits of Simpsons' faces and if you're lucky you might be able to get one of them to walk. But here, as an apology for being away so long, is mine:

Hang on no. That of course is my Newsnight Review avatar. I remember I used Ian Hislop's hair for the moustache.