On Tuesday there was a suicide sandwich: Beachy Head (all about suicide) and Daniel Kitson's The Interminable Suicide of Gregory Church (all about suicide indefinitely postponed) either side of comedy, laughter and song from Adams and Rae, who had little to say about perpetrating one's own death.
On Wednesday Faust began with our hero contemplating suicide.
On Thursday the most powerful scene in Chronicles of Long Kesh featured the prison officer contemplating suicide.
I'm looking out for Friday's dose, though somehow I doubt that Long Island Iced Tea will provide it.
Showing posts with label suicide. Show all posts
Showing posts with label suicide. Show all posts
Friday, 21 August 2009
Wednesday, 19 August 2009
BEACHY HEAD
18/8/09, Pleasance Dome (Edinburgh Fringe)
At last something really, really good. A rumination on suicide featuring a man who jumps off Beachy Head, his wife, the Eastbourne pathologist who deals with the consequences and the two film-makers who accidentally capture footage of him leaping.
It reminded us of Katie Mitchell's After Dido, seen at the Young Vic, for its use of video and the way props and equipment were seamlessly wheeled on and off. It was very slick and well-rehearsed. But on this occasion (and unlike Dido) the paraphernalia was justified, the video integrated into the piece.
And there were some beautifully simple touches in the staging too, like the large wooden board flapped up to create a draft, mimicking the wind as an actor stood at the cliff's edge.
S pointed out the excellent use of music, almost throughout, which you don't often get in the theatre. And the clever scene in which the film-makers try out different bits of music as possible background for an interview, thus deconstructing what the play as a whole was doing.
I found it absorbing and technically impressive; D and S found it moving as well, especially a scene in the phone box at Beachy Head in which the suicide talks to the Samaritans, just about the only time we hear his voice at length. It's the scene which explains his motivation (along with a children's story left behind in a notebook, which his wife later reads) and that was gratifying too: the writers might have left the whole thing a puzzle, and it would have worked perfectly well, but would have been less satisfying.
I thought the dialogue took second place to the production and the performances, while perfectly decent, weren't showy. But it was highly informative (especially in the pathologist's monologues) and S pointed out moments of poetry. When the wife sees the footage she remarks that at the top of the cliff he was Stephen; at the bottom just a body.
I took a professional interest in the film-makers' ethical dilemma: whether to keep and use or to delete the footage in the first place; when and how to tell the wife that they had it (they flunked that one badly).
They call themselves Analogue Productions and devised the show between them. Hannah Barker (who played the pathologist) and Liam Jarvis directed it, from a script by three writers including Emma Jowett who played the wife. Original music by Simon Slater. Sound design by Alex Garfath. Multimedia design by Thor Hayton. Look out for them.
At last something really, really good. A rumination on suicide featuring a man who jumps off Beachy Head, his wife, the Eastbourne pathologist who deals with the consequences and the two film-makers who accidentally capture footage of him leaping.
It reminded us of Katie Mitchell's After Dido, seen at the Young Vic, for its use of video and the way props and equipment were seamlessly wheeled on and off. It was very slick and well-rehearsed. But on this occasion (and unlike Dido) the paraphernalia was justified, the video integrated into the piece.
And there were some beautifully simple touches in the staging too, like the large wooden board flapped up to create a draft, mimicking the wind as an actor stood at the cliff's edge.
S pointed out the excellent use of music, almost throughout, which you don't often get in the theatre. And the clever scene in which the film-makers try out different bits of music as possible background for an interview, thus deconstructing what the play as a whole was doing.
I found it absorbing and technically impressive; D and S found it moving as well, especially a scene in the phone box at Beachy Head in which the suicide talks to the Samaritans, just about the only time we hear his voice at length. It's the scene which explains his motivation (along with a children's story left behind in a notebook, which his wife later reads) and that was gratifying too: the writers might have left the whole thing a puzzle, and it would have worked perfectly well, but would have been less satisfying.
I thought the dialogue took second place to the production and the performances, while perfectly decent, weren't showy. But it was highly informative (especially in the pathologist's monologues) and S pointed out moments of poetry. When the wife sees the footage she remarks that at the top of the cliff he was Stephen; at the bottom just a body.
I took a professional interest in the film-makers' ethical dilemma: whether to keep and use or to delete the footage in the first place; when and how to tell the wife that they had it (they flunked that one badly).
They call themselves Analogue Productions and devised the show between them. Hannah Barker (who played the pathologist) and Liam Jarvis directed it, from a script by three writers including Emma Jowett who played the wife. Original music by Simon Slater. Sound design by Alex Garfath. Multimedia design by Thor Hayton. Look out for them.
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
DEATH AND THE KING'S HORSEMAN
21/04/09, National (Olivier)
2hrs 20 mins. A big play (in all sorts of ways) by Wole Soyinka, about the clash of cultures in colonial Nigeria. Reviews were mixed: we thought it was a cracker.
I've left it too long (nearly three weeks) to write this up, so this is an impressionistic account.
Lots of movement and dance, combining the work of a Nigerian called Peter Badejo and the western choreographer Javier de Frutos. Especially liked the white folks' ball, with everyone in 18th century fancy dress and the numbers swelled by dancers bearing dummies on milkmaids' ... things (yokes?).
The principal setting an African market with loads of people, colourful costumes and an extraordinary central bit of set from which at one point long lines off which hung clothes were stretched out to the far corners of the set.
The colonial Brits were played by black actors in white face, in a neat reversal of the old convention that had black characters played by blacked-up whites: it worked well for the most part, not least because the colonial officer was played by Lucian Msamati, a wonderful actor we've also seen as Arturo Ui at the Lyric and in a top-notch play about Rwandan genocide at the West Yorkshire Playhouse called The Overwhelming. They are of course British actors, so the fact that they can do upper-class British accents should come as no surprise. Only one failed to convince: a young subaltern was far too thickset.
At the heart of the play was a nice ambiguity: a month after the king's death, on the day of his burial, the king's horseman is due to commit ritual suicide to escort him into the afterlife. But he doesn't. Is it because the Brits, appalled at the notion, have stepped in to foil him at the last moment? Or because he finds life (and his new wife, taken for the occasion) too appealing to leave? The question is left open.
At the play's tragic end, though, the horseman's son, sent off to London to train as a doctor, commits suicide in his place and the old man hangs himself.
Rufus Norris, the (white) director, apparently spent some years in Nigeria as a young child.
Claire Benedict, an actress I haven't always warmed to, played the part of the wise old woman with tremendous authority. Nonso Anozie (new to me) played the horseman with enormous relish.
The language was poetic, the accents quite thick and it took a while to get attuned to. But once attuned, it was rewarding.
2hrs 20 mins. A big play (in all sorts of ways) by Wole Soyinka, about the clash of cultures in colonial Nigeria. Reviews were mixed: we thought it was a cracker.
I've left it too long (nearly three weeks) to write this up, so this is an impressionistic account.
Lots of movement and dance, combining the work of a Nigerian called Peter Badejo and the western choreographer Javier de Frutos. Especially liked the white folks' ball, with everyone in 18th century fancy dress and the numbers swelled by dancers bearing dummies on milkmaids' ... things (yokes?).
The principal setting an African market with loads of people, colourful costumes and an extraordinary central bit of set from which at one point long lines off which hung clothes were stretched out to the far corners of the set.
The colonial Brits were played by black actors in white face, in a neat reversal of the old convention that had black characters played by blacked-up whites: it worked well for the most part, not least because the colonial officer was played by Lucian Msamati, a wonderful actor we've also seen as Arturo Ui at the Lyric and in a top-notch play about Rwandan genocide at the West Yorkshire Playhouse called The Overwhelming. They are of course British actors, so the fact that they can do upper-class British accents should come as no surprise. Only one failed to convince: a young subaltern was far too thickset.
At the heart of the play was a nice ambiguity: a month after the king's death, on the day of his burial, the king's horseman is due to commit ritual suicide to escort him into the afterlife. But he doesn't. Is it because the Brits, appalled at the notion, have stepped in to foil him at the last moment? Or because he finds life (and his new wife, taken for the occasion) too appealing to leave? The question is left open.
At the play's tragic end, though, the horseman's son, sent off to London to train as a doctor, commits suicide in his place and the old man hangs himself.
Rufus Norris, the (white) director, apparently spent some years in Nigeria as a young child.
Claire Benedict, an actress I haven't always warmed to, played the part of the wise old woman with tremendous authority. Nonso Anozie (new to me) played the horseman with enormous relish.
The language was poetic, the accents quite thick and it took a while to get attuned to. But once attuned, it was rewarding.
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