Badphone in a Coma

 In its very last day at Canary Wharf, I finally got round to experiencing COMA, the Darkfield show in a shipping container I'd recorded back in 2019. Pre-plague. I had to remind myself of that when I heard my old voice expressing conern about being coughed at in the face.

 

 The pill in the little tray lay unswallowed at the back of my throat throughout the twenty minutes. That's the problem with lying down. But I managed to get the top bunk. Once the lights went out, all I could hear was me reading Glen's lines from an ipad; binaural radio's so much more prevalent than it was when we first made Contains Violence in 2008, or even Ring in 2013, and like that old film of the train pulling into the station, I don't know how much longer our brains will stay fooled. I guess I'm saying, it was more like what I was expecting than I was expecting.

 

 I'd actually booked for Saturday, but had dismebarked at the adjacent and preposterously similarly named "Canada Water" station by mistake, so missed my slot. The attendants were brilliant, but I didn't want to hang around on my own – Canary Wharf was making me miss things – so I decided to head back into town along Regent's Canal, as I hadn't walked that stretch for a while, but I got that wrong too, and turned off one rivulet too early.

 

 Heading north, I didn't recognise any of the buildings, but I'm used to that. A lot's gone up. 

 It was round about the time I took the above picture that I decided I should finally get a new phone. Not for its own sake, but because I realised I wanted a better camera. That was an exciting moment. I hadn't wanted anything in ages. I used to want to make films. I tried taking some video with what I had, and was happy with the sounds I caught. There was a party going on in a flat, coots and car horns, sirens, a solitary firework.

 

 And soon it was too dark to photograph anything. See? 

 This is a whole palm tree I found discarded on its side in a weir. I definitely didn't remember there being a weir.

 I also misread a message sprayed onto the unlit footpath as "some peace. some time." until I realised one e was an l, and all the o's a's. You don't get that in Notting Hill. But I couldn't photograph that either, so here are some swans I saw on London Beach on Friday. I think that's new. I guess the new King doesn't want them.

 

Uncle Francis' Advice to Writers

 

 Portrait by Lucy Stopford  

 "Take firm hold of a goose. Yank out a feather. Trim it. Whittle the tip. Dip that in ink, and the one thing you'll find you can't do with it is draw a diagonal line. You can't cross out a paragraph with a quill." I remember, if not verbatim, this explanation from my Uncle Francis – complete with actions – for the appearance of two different versions of the same exchange at the end of Love's Labours Lost. I also remember his dissection of Shakespeare's reasons for redrafting it: "One idea, one line: good... One idea, two lines: bad!" 

 I saw him give this class in 1999, in Oxford where he'd invited me to rehearse an installment of his blank-verse epic of Western Culture, Agora. A few months earlier, he'd invited me to a mysterious meeting at the Athenaeum Club - Mum had always said she and his other siblings thought he might be a spy - then he walked me across Pall Mall into the National Gallery, stood me in front of a Rembrandt self-portrait and asked, "How do you fancy playing him?" It was my first paid acting job outside of touring schools.

 

  It was fun. 

  Francis Robert Le Plastrier Warner was an excellent uncle, who lived right up until this Tuesday. He was also possibly one of Theatre's greatest friends. He studied under C. S. Lewis, and taught Ian McKellen. He strolled along the Sein with Samuel Beckett. He strolled with Burton and Taylor. He invited R. Buckminster Fuller – architect of EPCOT's Spaceship Earth, and populariser of domed cities – to design the first ever "black box" theatre, deep beneath St. Peter's College.

 

(source)

 

 This was never built in the end, but the money raised for it became the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust, whose annual award you can still apply for here.

 I'm bad at visiting, and I think the last time I saw him was when he came to see me in Ring at the Cambridge Junction in 2013 (Francis was a Fellow of both Universities). This was David Rosenberg's first binaural collaboration with Glen Neath, taking place in total darkness in front of an audience wearing headphones: "What it reminded me most of, of course," said Francis in the restaurant afterwards, quite out of the blue, "was being interrogated: I was in Egypt. Lucy and Georgie were with me. I'd gone out to look for eggs to scramble, because my daughters wanted scrambled eggs for breakfast, and some men bundled me into a car. In the end the only thing that saved me was that I didn't have a gun on me. Everyone had told me, going out, I should carry a gun. But it saved me. They had to let me go. Never carry a gun." Presumably, then, the Official Secrets Act's thirty years' injunction was finally over. Mum was right. 

 That's Lucy's wonderful portrait of her father at the top of this post. 

 He would always ask what I was writing. 

Last post of 2014: December 2013 - Writing/not writing

 Right, it's probably time I rounded off my clearing out of 2013...

 

 

 I remember spending much of that Christmas playing Temple Run 2 on my newly received android tablet – a colourful and endless little adrenalin stimulant, as shown above – and resolving that in 2014 I would... 

 Hang on - I wrote it down. I'll see if I can find it:

"NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION : -

Perhaps – Dare to be bored? 

 You'll only make something if you're bored. 

That might be why the Premier Inn came as such a relief [while I was touring "Ring" and writing for Mitchell and Webb] 

IN FACT Hotels in general 

I'm remembering in particular the single bed and the side table in Athens. But all hotel rooms seem to be built for a writer.

Maybe that's also why I moved my bed away from the wall.

Also, remember how much you loved those lessons - only 45 minutes long - where you were left to just do something."

 Etc.

 I also made the note: "Youtube video - on boredom", which is a reference to the V-sauce episode below. I remember David Mitchell arguing that boredom was a life skill which should be taught, rather than banished from the classroom, but V-sauce goes one further, providing hard chemical evidence that boredom is not merely a side effect of creativity, but a symptom of it, and even a spur:

 

 

 

 God, I haven't watched that video in ages; I forgot he mentioned Genie. Louis C. K. makes a similar point when he talks about cultivating "the ability to just sit there": 

 

 

 Just sit there. 

 I think I did okay this year. 

 I didn't draw a monster a day, and I haven't yet made the album I promised myself I'd make this year, and there's only an hour and a half to go. 

 But I stopped playing Temple Run 2. And then Keeps and I went to Los Angeles (where I was happy to learn she was as keen on becoming an American somehow as I was, if not keener), and then we returned and moved to our own place, and it's been great. I'm even thinking of moving the bed back against the wall. 

 So that was 2013. 

 And this is 2014. 

 If you're traveling into London this evening, the message from the police is make sure you have a ticket. And whatever you're doing for the next hour and a half... and then in 2015... I don't know... whatever you do – whatever we do – let's do it on purpose, and take no guff.

 Here's to 2015. Be well. 

 

How I Plug

Well, "Exciting Space Adventures" are all well and good, but what have you been up to?

What do you mean? Who are you?

You did another series of John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme, didn't you?

Oh! Yes! Yeah, but I assumed anyone who read this blog would already know about –

 

Can that still be heard?

Yes. Absolutely. It's up on, erm – Oh, some episodes have gone now – but there's still some left on iplayer. Yeah, it's great. So good. Listening back, I feel I could have maybe toned it down for some of the sketches, but –

 

You're not happy with your work on it?

No no no! It's – Not at all. It was really – Oh, and the Quasimodo sketch is up now on something called Radio 4 in Four.

 

The Jake Yapp thing!

Oh. No.

 

Have you heard the Jake Yapp thing?

 

Yes. 

 

It's great.

Uh-huh.   

Nice picture.

Oh yes! We got pictures done.

 

What was that like?

 

What? Um... Yeah. It was really fun. I think the original shot of John drawing a beard on his own reflection is maybe more original, and better suited for press, but it –

 

You'd rather not appear in the publicity?

No! No, it's great! A huge compliment. And if you buy the CD you can see some of our feet. No. I just –

 

You didn't post a link to the CD.

Oh. Sorry.

 

HOW much?!

 

I mean, it's probably cheaper on amazon, but I didn't want to –

 

And I presume it's also available in the BBC shop.

Apparently not... But yeah, no, I was so lucky. Nice to feel part of a gang.

 

And you did another shunt show?

 

What? Oh...

 

Is that right?

 

Sort of. Ow.

 

 

The Boy Who Climbed Out Of His Face – The Build by Floro Azqueta

 

Okay. You've written a lot about shunt on this blog. Want to talk about it?

Um. Wouldn't you rather hear another Exciting Space Adventure?

 

Do you not want to talk about theatre any more?

No! No no! Actually there's a few interesting things from the rehearsal I'd like to put up. And I did Ring. Again. And I've done – er, actually I've done a couple of shows, as a part of the London Horror festival. Just one-offs.

 

Where can we see them?

Um. They're – They've – They happened. Back in October. Yeah! But no, I had great fun doing –

 

Okay. Where can we see you next?

What? Oh! I'm in a panto. Well, it's more of a musical. A company called the Mighty Fin do one nearly every year or so, and Susannah Pearse writes the songs, and John Finnemore's in it as well, which is actually how we met, and it will be brilliant. Yes. You can get tickets... Oh wait, you can't. It's sold out.

 

Okay.

But there's 17 tickets still available for the dress rehearsal.

 

Should I bother to ask what it's called?

I mean... It's in the link. I just thought –

 

Okay. Well, thanks very much –

Oh, AND, I've popped my panel show cherry! Yes, I was invited to take part in the excellent transatlantic comedy podcast "International Waters". It went online on Monday, and you can hear me laughing my "dad laugh" on it, and plugging stuff even more poorly than I've just done here. Thank you, and MERRYCHRISTMAS!

 

 Fredandsharonsmovies.com  are still open for business, don't forget.

Two Towers

Sorry it's all gone a bit slack here. I intended to finish my review of 2013 last week with a stirring post about the value of boredom, typed up on tour in Aberystwyth. That never happened. But I did make a film. So here - in the spirit of boredom - is a twenty-minute long home movie.

.

A cheap experiment in dread

The Aberystwyth Arts Centre (10 minutes in) was a revelation - not just the eerie, free-standing concrete seats, lone bell-tower, and silvery bellow-shaped pods of uncertain purpose all pressing my 70's scifi buttons (although they were amazing), but because it all worked: a cinema, two galleries, theatres, shops, students, performance art, discos, parents dropping by for a coffee or beer and children dropped off for ballet lessons, all coexisting in a way that seemed unprecedentedly natural and unforced. I urge anyone interested in what "Arts Centre" might actually mean to head over there and eat your heart out.
How have they managed this? There's a view, which I suppose makes the Centre a destination. (It's a mile's steep walk out of the town.) But there's a great view of London from the fifth floor of the Royal Festival Hall as well, and how often do you see families up there? The architecture's important; you can wander through (13 minutes in) and see everything laid out before you. You don't have to awkwardly poke your head round a corner and be invited in by an usher to experience what's on offer, as you might in an older room-and-corridor set-up like the BAC (no matter how many doors you remove), or the Royal Festival Hall's too many floors (and to be fair the RFH must have recognised this, which is why their lifts sing so ingratiatingly) or the windowless Cabinet Warhol Rooms* of the ICA. In fact Aberystwyth's Arts Centre may have finally worked out how to bypass one of modern art's hugest dilemmas: how to go "No, come in." It's all about the view.
Hum. Maybe, if the Barbican let its hair down a bit...
So that's in the film, and some storms, and a search for supper where it all goes a bit Jimmy's End, and two towers, and the happy discovery - accidentally made 17 minutes in - that if the audio from a home video is suddenly replaced by something from Brian Eno, you get Ben Wheatley. I make no apology for my use of Vangelis. I'm knackered and knotted from rehearsing with a new bunch of actors with actual skills, the sods. When I'm recovered, we'll see in 2014.

*I'm firing myself.

September 2013 - Ring

September is touring. Ring took me to Belfast, Cambridge (for the afternoon), Margate, Preston and Bournemouth.

Bournemouth Oceanarium

The MAC in Belfast is a superb venue, brutalist like the National, but whereas the RNT seems all about getting lost - no lines of sight, floors that don't meet each other - the MAC is all views: cavernous, deep, well-like and lagoony. It was here I got to put a face to the often-dropped name, Maddy Costa. She writes for the Guardian. This was the third time she'd donned Ring's headphones, and the first time she'd realised she was sometimes listening to a recording. It's funny what people who write about theatre write about. We were lucky enough to be in Belfast for the "Culture Evening". As well as the MAC, there's also a beautiful new museum, and a beautiful new waterfront, and yet - and not necessarily in spite of all this - the city reminded me of a boarding school. Everything seemed to close at six. Something far more tangible than just a shadow of Occupation is here. It clearly doesn't want any trouble. Another thing I noticed: Belfast had the largest proportion of blind people in the audience, by far. Six, against other cities' none or one or two. Two more things: Wandering around Belfast you'd think the Titanic was the Beatles. And the airport's named after George Best.

Bournemouth Pavilion

Margate: I'd seen Nigel and Louise raving about the Tom Thumb Theatre on twitter, and they are right to rave. It has a nice Shunty vibe - by which I mean the vibe Shunt used to have after everyone was kicked out. And by which I also mean kitsch without being ersatz, like a Coney Island seance parlour. Advertised as one of the smallest theatres in the world, hence the name, it's certainly the smallest venue we toured - and carpeted, so I had to keep to the stage to let the audience pick up my foot falls. A great, great bar... I think it might have been the work of Gary Cambpell, Shunt's first barchitect, who also co-founded the Stoke Newington International Airport and did such wonders with the bar at the CPT. Yes, I think it might well have been Gary. Margate too has a brand new Arts Centre. It was closed.

 

Premiere Inn, Bournemouth

Preston lives. Preston was extraordinary. My acquaintance with the North of England being almost as poor as my acquaintance with Ireland, nothing prepared me for how great I'd feel here. Walking around parts of Preston you'd think you could still take a train south for the day and catch the Great Exhibition. I'm used to thinking of Victorian architecture as Gothic and foreboding, medieval, crinkly - maybe because I'm so used to Westminster. But further north Victorian architecture means Classical, Democratic, Beaming with Pride. Civic Pride, it was called; not all Victorian values are bastards. Things were made here, and not just the Titanic. (I mean, The Titanic?! Belfast, you must have made something that didn't sink, why not celebrate that? I know - Who'd have heard of it - I know.) We performed at the Continental, a room behind a pub. A massive, massive room behind an excellent pub. I took photographs of all it, but something went wrong with the phone. It came back to life in Bournemouth.

 

A balloon in Bournemouth

Bournemouth was great too...

When I started writing this post it was going to be about Premier Inns and the value of boredom. I'm glad that's not how it turned out. I loved touring. When I got home I moved my bed away from the wall so it would feel more like a hotel... I'll save the Premier Inn stuff for my New Years' Resolution, once 2013 is fully cleared out.

And, in case I haven't mentioned it, Ring visits Aberystwyth next week.

 

God... I hope I still have these shoes.

March 2013 - Perfs

The Dungeon reopened in March, but I was Ringing.

    This is Warwick University – where some of Ring was made – and the head on a stick used to make it. John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme, Ghostphone, Life by Misadventure, Before They Were Famous, Gentlemen of Horror, Monster Hunters, Time Tours, Christmas Carol II, Ring... 2013, I now realise, was a year full of performances and short on rehearsal. Partly this was a money issue. But also it was because a lot of this was voice work. "Voice work" simply means you can't be seen, which means you get to read from the script (unless the reason you can't be seen is because they've turned the lights off), but it also means you rarely get to rehearse. In voice work, heavy breathing is of course vital to let people know you're still there when someone else is speaking. Was it not Stanislavski who said "Acting is reacting"?*  Voice acting therefore is gasping, and going hmm.

 

* Was it not Kuleshov who said "No it' s not"?

 And I can be heard having great fun doing both in Peter Davis' and Philip North's Hellraiser fanfiction "Piercing the Veil", here.

 And tomorrow evening, I can be seen giving an unrehearsed Don Quijote as the guest performer in this.

 And next month, I can't be seen in Ring at the Aberystwyth Arts Centre, because they'll turn the lights off, but tickets are here.

(Speaking of Hellraiser, this rejected Cenobite is always good for a laugh.)

"It's happening again..."

That Mitchell and Webb Sound is happening again, I mean. I guess. I guess that's what I mean. Wait, this introduction is terrible. Start again. MITCHELL AND WEBB ARE BACK!

And these dogs are highly trained.

But of course you knew that. Ah, wonderful to be writing sketches again. I hadn't had a commission since the last series of That Mitchell and Webb Look, and that was four years ago since when I'd turned performer in three series of John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme, which is surely as useful an inside-look into how to make a sketch work as one could wish for. (I've noticed every programme I work on seems to have a really long name though, at least four stresses each - Laurence and Gus: Hearts and Minds was another. It can be a little anxiety-inducing when asked if you're up to anything, as these are difficult names to drop casually. I'd love to be able to just say "Yeah, I'm doing another series of Gag Lab"... Although reading that aloud I just said "Gad Lab"... Gag Lad. Gab.... Gag Lag. Maybe Gag Blag's not so easy a name to drop either.) What was my point again? Gag Lab. Oh yes, working on JFSP not only showed that it was possible for a single human to write an entire series of sketches and still enjoy it, it showed me a little more clearly just how an idea can become a sketch.

Not of course that I came to put any of this into practice. Of the three (rhymes with "Squeeee!") sketches of mine used last week only the first, concerning vampires' arguably supernumerary attributes, felt anything like the kind of thing someone might be looking for. The third, inspired by a throwaway gag in the first sketch, was one of those attempts at a no-rush, American-style, stuff-awkwardly-going-wrong-in-a-showbiz-setting-type sketches that I keep having a bash at, forgetting how few laughs from a studio audience such sketches eventually play to. Of course everyone is brilliant, and it wouldn't have been a worry if only every other sketch at these recordings hadn't been so dizzyingly well executed as well. It was great, but I felt like a newbie again, minus the sheen. There's an internal monologue that accompanies the first five or so seconds of each new sketch you see recorded I had completely forgotten about. It goes: "Okay who's standing up? Two men - Have I written a sketch with two men? - Yes, is this one of mine? - What's that sound effect? Did I write a sketch that starts with that sound effect? Maybe. It's a door opening. I definitely wrote a sketch that starts with a door opening. What are they saying? I don't remember that line. Did I write that line? Is this one of mine? Maybe it is and I've forgotten writing it. Is this the two men talking to each other sketch I wrote? No this is another sketch with two men talking to each other, does this mean they won't - OH BOY THAT'S GOOD. This is good. How far are they from the end? How thick are the pages they have left?" Etc.
This doesn't of course do justice to how much I enjoyed the recordings, but it happened a lot.

Then there's a second internal monologue which goes: "Aw, hey! This is my sketch! They're doing this sketch! I love this sketch! I'm going to enjoy watching this... I haven't put any jokes in. I mustn't laugh. This is my sketch. They're playing this brilliantly. I love it. Nobody's laughing though because I haven't put any jokes in. I'd laugh though. But I can't. It's mine. I'm normally a big laugher. I'd definitely be laughing at this right now if it wasn't mine, or somebody else was laughing. Shit. Everyone was having such fun a minute ago, with those good sketches written by people who do it properly. What are you playing at, dramatising your midnight qualms, Simon, you dope? You think anyone's interested in whether or not you want to watch Last Action Hero? Remember that Caesar sketch you wrote in Series 4? Why didn't you do another one of them? There you are, hill-walking in Belfast on the Ring tour, haunted by the ghost of Acker Bilk*, doing tortoise voices, tinkering at your laptop in front of a Prayer Channel in various Premiere Inns over yet another draft of your messy sci-fi pilot that you've only said is inspired by Robert Anton Wilson because you can't actually be bothered to work out what's happening in it. Sending in your ten-minute-long, five-year-old sketches about Elizabethan alchemy. You think Toby Davies tries to pull this shit? No, he applies himself. Wow, still nobody's laughing. I wish I could laugh. Why do we have to worry about whether or not people are laughing? Why can't we use canned laughter? If people were told this was funny I'm sure they'd find it funny. It's not fair. Aw man they're not even laughing at the Ali Bongo reference. I knew I should have put the Great Soprendo. Guys, I'm so sorry. What have I made you say?" Etc.

Okay, that's rarer. What I'm really saying is, I'm stunned and delighted the Last Action Hero sketch made it in. It's beautifully played and I'm fine in the end with the amount of laughter. It seemed a popular idea at the writers' meetings, and I'm conscious how little I normally contribute to those. ("Man's Hour", probably my favourite sketch of this episode, I remember Rob spinning pretty much verbatim at the same meeting. That was great, as was Toby wondering aloud if there might be anything in a sketch set in a shop that only sells cash registers. I got a bit overexcited at that.) In the end, sad and beautifully played to total silence as this new stuff has turned out, it contributes a little I hope to the episode's very effective air of hopelessness. Wait until you hear episode 4 though...

So episode 2 is available here. It's brilliant and I am lucky.
And the first episode is still available here, brilliant again!
Thanks also to here, for the Last Action Hero gif.
Finally, any "Monster Hunters" fans might be interested to learn that the Klaus running the Carpathian Open Mic night is indeed distantly related to the Klaus who runs the inn at Karnstadt in this.
Tank you, tank you.

*Every performance of Ring ended with "Stranger on the Shore".

Take Two Elements!

Any two elements... say, Electricity and Water.
On their own, perfectly harmless.
But mix them together
maybe in a bowl
DYNAMITE!

Roy Steel!
Second Best Big Game Hunter in the world!
Fighter! Lover! A man of action, with all the actions of a man!
The ancient Mayan word for "fist"!
His passport says "Beast Slapper"!

 

And Lorrimer Chesterfield.

Leading Professor of Occult Studies at London's London University!

A brain in the shape of a man!

Demon handler and Myth wrangler!

He reads books! He writes books! Sometimes he reads the books he writes!

His brain can fell an ox! 

 

My name is Sir Maxwell House. 

I took those two elements, and like some kind of scientific blacksmith I forged them, forged them into a team that would look Danger in the eye and bring it down with the Knowledge of a Man, and the Fist of a Man! They are... The Monster Hunters!

 

 And, oh, how I love them. Over the past two years the writing team of Peter Davis, Matthew Woodcock, and J. P. Chenet has produced – in addition to the above – two stage shows, two series of webcast adventures, and three specials, all available to listen to at the link above NOW, and I'm lucky enough to have been invited along for the lot. I like being in a series. I've never played a recurring character before, someone whose story I didn't know the end of, and the generous attention paid to Sir Maxwell with each new episode has made for a very happy inbox. 

 Happier still, my sister joined us for the last series, whose twisted arc the chaps played scrupulously close to their retro-fitted chests, in the happiest tradition of this mattering.  

 And it's surprisingly well researched. It turns out the Post Office Tower really was an official secret. And there really was an MI16. (There have actually been eighteen sections of military Intelligence in all, numbered 1 through to 19 – there was never an MI13.  In fact, I found out only very recently my uncle used to work for one: After an Oxford performance of Ring he casually mentioned over drinks above the Samuel Beckett Memorial Car Park, how much the experience of sitting in complete darkness wearing headphones had reminded him of his "anti-interrogation training in the foreign service". I suppose the thirty years are up then. Mum always suspected he had spent too much time in Egypt for a playwright. The Egyptians at the time must have agreed – "I stepped into a taxi, turned out it wasn't a taxi. I said, 'I have my daughters with me.' They said, 'Do they eat eggs?' I said, 'Yes.' So they boiled up some eggs and took me away. Of course, what saved me was that I didn't have a gun on me. Everyone always says carry a gun. But I was supposed to be out there teaching, if they'd found a gun on me that would be it. So they let me go."  

 Here if you're interested is a lecture he gave recently, about his childhood in Epsom growing up beneath the Battle of Britain. This is all true. But I digress.

 

The Beast Must Dies' notorious werewolf break

 Back to the silly voices, the final episode of Finnemore should still be available to listen to for a day or so, including four minutes of drunken American rambling (shaved down from eight) that I never thought would be John's kind of thing, and which I am very glad he decided was. 

 While writing this series, he actually scheduled a meeting in the "Douglas Adams Room" of the Beeb's new Grafton House digs, specifically to try out silly voices. Its decals, famously misquoting classic BBC comedy, did not disappoint. You may have thought it impossible to misquote "42".

  They managed it. 

  Ah, as I write this, Peter has just sent me this year's Monster Hunters Hallowe'en special. Dynamite.

Power Socket 3 "Gollup Gollup"

Tomorrow sees me back in the Ring - and the murk and the leg brace - for a week at the BAC again before a short run in Edinburgh. Do come along, although the durned thing keeps selling out - I know - so I will understand. Appropriately enough though, today's Power Socket also explores our darkest imaginings. (Is that how you spell imaginings? It looks silly.) I pull no punches. Ipso facto: not only does the baddie have a hood and a scythe, he has a horn.* You have been warned. Yes you have.

Did Fang go out for Chinese because they were so nasty about his cooking in Issue 1? I'd like to think so. Anyway, yes, exciting.

* And his hood has a clitoris. Okay, I'd only just noticed.

Blacking up

This is the Council Chamber of the Battersea Art Centre, where "Ring" takes place. The picture was taken Monday afternoon. Those aren't lights being rigged I now realise, they're whatever the opposite of lights are: black velvet gaffered to the holes in the ceiling. As part of a less specific refit the chamber walls have also undergone a rushed, artificial school-play ageing. Even in this light you can make out the phoney splurts of grey around the detail in the roof. 

It's a lost space dolled up as a found one. Tea candles burn everywhere, sheet metal mirrors have been screwed into the ceiling and lightbulbs hang like bunting, unfitted. I've no idea how much of this is temporary: there's a lot of building work going on (and the dressing room I'm sharing with Daniel Kitson has a few sheets of plastic where a wall might later go). I hope they keep the carpeted dining booths they've erected on the central staircase, those are dreamlike. And I hope they lose the "Arbeit Macht Frei" buzzguff beneath:

Apart from one "scratch" night, eight years ago, of the never continued Self Portrait As Frida Kahlo, this is perhaps surprisingly my first time performing at the BAC. I used to come here as a child and print badges, but I don't think I ever saw a show here, not back in those days - That's not true I've just remembered! When I was ten I saw my Dad's friend Ted tell a story about two crows nattering to each other while feasting on a dead soldier's eyes! Eeee, that must have been in the Council Chamber, and thirty odd years later here I am, in the dark.

We finally had someone leave tonight. Total darkness is strangely claustrophobic. That's not the right word. Claustrophrightening. Everything seems taken care of though, The staff are incredible, most of them I'm assuming are volunteers. It's all a bit out of my hands anyway. I'm keeping the headphones on now. 

It's like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is, none.

The buzz has been good. It's selling out around me. I think it's all going according to plan. You should come, we should see. In the meantime there's an excellent, spoiler-free interview with David Rosenberg here. And you can hear him have more binaural fun in his podcast "The Ear" here. And you can get tickets here. And here are some reviews - spoiler-free summary: Like, and even the people who don't like are coming again:

One Stop Arts
Whats On Stage
A Younger Theatre
The Upcoming
Spoonfed
Evening Standard
The Guardian
Time Out
Everything Theatre
Exeunt
London Magazine 
What's Peen Seen

The Man Who Would Be King Of Popes

Topical

It was the press night of Ring tonight, so, and yikes - there's people moving in that dark - take your headphones off (don't take your headphones off!) and you'll be astounded at the amount of slithering people produce... in that dark. Anyway, regardless, today was also New Old Pope Day, so thanks to Alan Cox for drawing my attention to this beautiful thing from Second City Television *. Also thank you Canada, for realising Victor Spinetti is a thing. The winner of this sketch has to be Dave Thomas whose "Richard Hariss" is good enough to raise the question of why Richard Harris impressions are not now more prevalent. All it should take is for someone to get it right - see Christopher Walken impressions post Kevin Spacey doing it at the Oscars, or Blair post Bremner... (We're still waiting for a decent impression of any of the current cabinet by the way. What happened?)

* SCTV's alumnibunch include Rick Moranis, Catherine O'Hara, Harold Ramis, John Candy and Martin Short. I first encountered them on network awesome where their eight-minute-long sketch pitting Vikings against Beekeepers alerted me to their esoteric fabness.

P.S. It's only after posting this I realised the new Pope's called Francis. Which if you come and see Ring... you'll... well, you'll see. Rosenberg just keeps nailing that zeitgeist.

Break a Leg.

Do you trust these two men? I do. But it might be more fun if you don't.

David Rosenberg & Glen Neath in conversation about RING

from Susanne Dietz on Vimeo.

Tonight the show formerly titled "Ring Piece" opens at the Battersea Arts Centre. I'm just about to head in and rehearse it now - typing this surrounded by boxes, but not as many boxes as I need. I've been very much in Limbo over this past fortnight: between homes, between jobs, between drafts, and hanging around Lanna house-sitting Schrodinger's cat in a beautiful flat in Mudchute that overlooks the Thames and little else. This handsomely-paid, two-and-a-half-week run of Ring has been the one fixed point in all of that. And now it's here, whatever it is.

Perhaps it's best described as a social experiment. That at least avoids spoilers. David and Glen seem happy with how it's gone so far, at least. Here's the former making some of it in a sandpit in Victoria Park which we broke into a few evenings back, lit by his own device. David's turf. He told me the only way in was down a slide. This turned out to be a lie. The slide seemed massive. You can just make it out on the left. 

Anyway I'd better go. I think I know my lines. I'll write more soon. I'm excited.

See you there?

RING by David Rosenberg & Glen Neath from Susanne Dietz on Vimeo.

What I saw in "The Architects"

I was walking a little oddly yesterday, because I'd just done a photoshoot for David Rosenberg promoting his latest piece, the Glen Neath-scripted Ring. (Had David tried to call it "Ring Piece"? Of course he had.) None of which really brings me to this write up of Shunt's latest show, which ended last Saturday, but the post's late enough and at least I don't have to worry now about spoilers...

I loved "The Architects". I saw it tonight (for "tonight" read January 11th) and Keeps and I got back from Venice only yesterday, so my bar for using the word "love" is pretty high. 

 It was giddily rewarding to turn up, having felt so thrown by my non-involvement in this one, and be returned to the days when shunt was just a company I followed, and to find that they are still by far my favourite makers of pretty much anything. Critically they do themselves no favours by wearing their genius round their ankles I suppose, but good, it's still there on display, if only those without a sense of humour wouldn't be so squeamish. And still thrown, of course I come away wanting to tear off the stuff I think keeps it from being perfect, but that's what fans do, and here "perfect" doesn't mean something small and achievable, it means that thing which alerts you to what it is you should be wanting, which is massive. 

 The myth of the Labyrinth was the starting point this time, and I've long thought the labyrinth is shunt's real medium (there's a quote somewhere in Ken Campell's "Violin Time" which I can't find now, about how great it would be if the National Theatre could create works backstage). But there was also an interest in the myth of the feral child that goes back to devising of  "Money", which clearly informed the depiction of the Minotaur.

 

 

 Yes, we saw a Minotaur! And we got fed to it. Or at least in the perfect show in my head we did, as soon as it was revealed to us we'd never left the labyrinth (and the hollow cow wasn't the only commission in which people get screwed). But what do you do with an audience once you've killed them? "You kissed our children goodbye" the monitors said, and I realised that having been treated to the simulation of a cruise, only now were we really being made to feel like heroes, because now we were being sent to our deaths. Except it turns out we weren't. There was still some stage fighting and aeriel stuff simulating dying to get through, but in amongst that sudden shift in vocabulary was the glorious revelation of our killer: a child with a terrifying mask that hid an even more terrifying face, who looked lost and then lobbed a brick. 

 I remember Gemma talking about the seeds of it last year. She said the Athenians would never have seen anything like Minos' palace at Knossos. Of course it seemed like a Labyrinth. She said that "bull" meant what "wolf" meant, that "minotaur" maybe simply meant "feral", that Daedalus who designed the palace said to hold the Minotaur also, less famously, designed the cow-shaped contraption said to facilitate Queen Pasiphae's impregnation by a bull in the first place. And I knew the myth, the Athenian virgins sent by boat to be sacrificed, and I left for New Zealand imagining a pamphlet found through the letterbox entitled "Why We Eat Children". 

 So I knew all this, and maybe – maybe – this gave me the edge over the rest of the audience, but really it was all there in the show, SPOILER alert and all. Having sounded that, I must admit the spoilers I read probably helped my enjoyment, if anything, since I knew enough to time what in hindsight seems the best entrance, and to find what I suspect was the best seat. In fact, I'm pretty sure the show is unspoilable. No spoiler can prepare you for that scenery. It's no insult to go on about the scenery if your medium's a labyrinth, and Lizzie Clachan's scenery here is unbeatable (and I've just got back from Venice, remember.)

Nige?

 It was so simple, although making it that simple must have been complicated (Kudos, Louise Mari). And it was funny, really funny, and when your jokes involve two hundred and fifty moving subjects, blackouts and a live band, that too must take a while to get right, longer than any critic will give you. I hear there was only a month's rehearsal this time, an altogether more affordable working method I guess, and one that produced similarly happy results over a decade ago with the Tennis Show, my first experience of working with shunt, and again a beautifully simple idea. So this seems the way forward, and that it didn't include me I find a bit worrying. But not while I moved through it. Or sat at the back, in the corner, basking in the kind of isolated fantasy landscape Chris Goode probably finds so resistible, but for whose construction I only ever feel a child-like gratitude. And here, that construction is the subject. I mean, it's called "The Architects". It's the kernel of a myth told to us – and with us – smartly, lightly, meticulously, hilariously. Is anyone else doing this? I got it and I loved it.

Right, there's a "Sightseers" review knocking round here somewhere as well...

He too woke with his head in the toilet of an inconceivably large house he must have once commissioned, with the odd rope hanging between platforms, and walls you couldn't see, "If I was a Rich Man" playing in every wing, and his very own Nightmare Room.