SPOILER WARNING

 

 Back in the office at Money I've just been told the Lounge, which closed, stripped, on Saturday (above), may now be getting another extension until March. Nigel's face when he heard the news was... did you see that Doctor Who on Sunday when David "Oh nwoh, oh no nwoh, I'm sorry, I'm so, swoh sorry" Tenant went and saved Lyndsay Duncan's life at the last moment, even though the time and circumstance of her death had been QUANTUMLY ORDAINED, and so do you remember how she reacted? Like that. Shunt and me and Nigel's brains will hear more tomorrow, but yeah there may be murk at the end of the tunnel yet. Whoop awe. 

 

 

"Under these arched bricks... we have communed with people from all over the world, discussed in all languages, and understood each other."

Mateusz Odrobny

The Wallpaper at Brady's

(originally posted on myspace here)

This is my twitter wallpaper. It comes from Brady's, in Brixton. Yes that's another thing that happened last month, I started tweeting. Because John Cleese does. Once I tweeted Tom Waits teetering, but it's not a page I particularly recommend you visiting. However if you get the chance to see inside the building I actually took it from, visit that. This is Brady's below. I'd see the clock face at eye level whenever I went swimming, but for my nine years living in Brixton I never actually saw inside Brady's. You didn't go inside Brady's:

I'm posting this between shows from the low-lit office of "Money" once again, dressed in my riot gear and balaclava. I can hear a woman's voice from the other side of the Venetian blinds go "No, it's a real person. That's fucked up!" Well them's the breaks, miss. By tomorrow I'll need to have written fifteen minutes of material for That Mitchell and Webb Look, from scratch, but I promised to post shots of a site that the Shunt Lounge (closing tomorrow - TOMORROW) had considered relocating to, and Friday the 13th's an apt a date as any. Because what Brady's looked like on the inside did not disappoint:

Okay but I bet that wasn't really a torture room. 

Okay but I bet there weren't really witches... This is three or so months ago. We'd taken a break from rehearsing Money to be shown around and it was probably the first time I'd returned to Brixton in daylight since the fire. I felt very at home. Very excited.

"Oh, Jimi Hendrix was born in this room, you say? Wow. We're all vampires anyway."

Ooh! And what's under the mattress in the corner? Actually forget that what's the other side of that window?

I see.

"Wow! Let's leave!"

And the view?

Oh I loved it. Imagine if we moved there! And then imagine if I moved back! We're not moving there though... BUT - Actually I'd better get my balloons, it's showtime. We shall continue this anon. Bye bye, Brady's. Hit it Dr. Buckles! Loveyoubye.

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!

But the future need not forbode.

 

We open on Tuesday and the fever and the cough are still tediously here. I was well enough for a run-through of the show today but there's still a lot not in place, cramped confusion elsewhere, and a baffling egginess in the playing of stuff that had found a nice place to itself months ago. I didn't enjoy a second of it. And that's particularly annoying as there's a lot of stuff here I should be finding incredibly enjoyable, just the kind of stuff I want to play. No actually, what's annoying is that the thing's so NEARLY there, but only if done by us at our best. Done badly, it's meaningless.

I left early to try and get my hands on some anti-biotics in Soho, failed and headed over to Whitechapel for a flat-viewing and some Soothers, by which point I was fumbling for the correct change like a boxer for beads and saying "B'bye" everywhere. Anyway here's something I should have posted ages ago: Apparently around the time of Zola writing "L'Argent" all the best brains in Paris had written off cities as a thing of the past. "Where are we going to put all the shit?" I think was the main issue. Their vision of the future was very close to Disney's it turns out...

  

(originally posted on myspace)