Why is it that your feet always sweat more when you've got a hangover? Any ideas?
Most of the Film Unlimited posse have headed back home by now. Cheryl spent part of her final day yesterday waiting in the Traverse returns queue for a spare ticket for Wiping My Mother's Arse, which she saw with myself and the Pals. In conversation with the box office staff, she found out about the hellish time that the success of Gagarin Way has been giving them. The debut play of writer Gregory Burke, it received lots of friendly press coverage before its opening, and universally ecstatic reviews afterwards. Tickets are rarer than rocking horse crap as a result, and the box office is fending off callers by telling them to contact the National Theatre in London, as the play's transferring there in September. Except the National called up the other day and begged "stop telling people about the London run, we're sold out too".
Does the play deserve this level of hype? Pretty much. Sure, it has all the hallmarks of a debut play: it tries to cover the whole of human existence in ninety minutes, using a combination of flashily profane dialogue and extreme violence. It's as much a calling card for Burke as Reservoir Dogs was for Tarantino. But thanks to a hell-for-leather production by John Tiffany and excellent acting from the cast of four, it succeeds admirably in what it tries to do. It's about two factory workers, twitchily psychotic Eddie (Michael Nardone) and hardline leftie Gary (Billy McElhaney), who've decided to pool their respective talents and take on the might of international capitalism. With the help of security guard Tom (Michael Moreland), they plan to kidnap one of the factory bosses and execute him to make a political statement. But once they've actually got Frank (Maurice Roëves) tied up in a warehouse, things somewhat predictably fail to go as planned.
Based around a powerhouse performance by Michael Nardone as Eddie (a fascinating bundle of nervous energy looking for all the world like a young Glaswegian David Thewlis on speed), the main flaw of Gagarin Way is its occasional tendency to stop for obvious setpiece bits of dialogue. For example, the opening discussion between Eddie and Tom about Sartre doesn't really advance the plot or the characters all that much: however, it's funny as hell. "Being and Nothingness is a good fucking title for a book ken. But he has tay give them snappy titles tay get them shifted before folk discovered the shite that was inside."
Within the single warehouse set, the four men hurl around dialogue as digressive, aggressive and hilarious as the above example. They discuss employment, multinational capitalism, violence, the Soviet space programme and a theme park based on the Blitz... but all the while you're left in no doubt that at some point someone will end up dead. Burke wrong-foots the audience a couple of times about which way things are going to end: initially I was a little unsatisfied by the ending, but the more I think about it the more I realise this was just my expectations being fiddled with by a writer who knows exactly what he's doing. Both he and Nardone should be followed closely in the future.
Toby Jones has a pretty familiar face: look at it, you've probably seen it on telly or in the movies recently. As a jobbing actor, he frequently gets to play minor roles, and in 1998 he was offered one in the movie Notting Hill, as the assistant to Hugh Grant's bookseller. By the time of the film's release in 1999, all traces of Jones' presence in the movie were lying on the cutting room floor. Missing Reel is the story of this year in Jones' life, and the simultaneous problems he had trying to find a new home for himself and his girlfriend.
This is more than just a standard luvvie monologue, though. Jones is accompanied by sound effects performer Ayse Tashkiran, who leaps energetically around a stage full of noisemaking equipment to provide an audio counterpoint to his tale. It's not an original idea - performance artist Annie Griffin similarly used an onstage foley artist in one of her performance art pieces a few years ago - but it does give the show a visual and verbal lift beyond Jones' mildly amusing story. Even if you don't particularly like Notting Hill very much, his escalating paranoia over his Stalinesque erasure from the final cut - and his conclusions about why it had to happen - make for a gently inoffensive afternoon's entertainment. (Although you may find below that one or two of the Pals found the show so offensively inoffensive that they'd like to see Jones dead.)
The departure of the FUers from Edinburgh reminds me that I really haven't seen all that many films this week, so I decide to catch a couple at the Cameo back to back. First up is the Norwegian comedy You Really Got Me (Amatørene). Jan, to be honest, has a shit life. His cafe attracts no customers, and the landlord's threatening to evict him at the end of the week. His girlfriend's walked out on him. He's living alone in a horrible apartment with his bullying father. At his lowest point and about to end it all, he suddenly comes across the rock star Iver Mo [dead link] tied up in a remote shack: Iver's been kidnapped, and his captors are temporarily out of action. Jan could set Iver free, but he really could use the cash right now...
Director Pål Sletaune had an international hit a few years ago with the glum comedy Junk Mail, and You Really Got Me works in a similar way, only better. The tone is reminiscent of the films of Finnish prankster Aki Kaurismaki, using muted colours, scruffy design and low-key acting to produce a downbeat atmosphere which makes the jokes even funnier when they happen. Fargo is being bandied around as a comparison point in the Festival programme, but that's not really fair: Sletaune has a little more heart than the Coens, so although the comedy may get a little black at times, you know nothing particularly horrible's going to happen to these people. There's no sign of British distribution for this film yet: hopefully this screening will change that.
At some point during the screening of You Really Got Me, there's a change in personnel for Spank's Pals. One of our Muses leaves the party (see you, Michele), and fan favourite Old Lag comes in to replace her. He's actually waiting in the Cameo foyer when I come out of the movie, carrying all his worldly possessions with him, waiting in the returns queue to get a ticket for Hedwig And The Angry Inch. Regular readers of the letters page will be aware of Hedwig, since our International Showbiz Correspondent Carole brought the off-Broadway production to our attention a couple of years ago. Since then it's played all over: a run in London's West End wasn't quite as successful as people hoped, but a Fringe production is currently packing them in at the Assembly Rooms. And now writer/director/star John Cameron Mitchell has brought his creation to the big screen.
Hedwig (played by Mitchell himself) spends his childhood living with his mother in East Berlin, listening to rock music on the radio and trying to get out of the country. A chance for escape presents itself when he falls in love with an American GI: so he arranges for a sex-change operation so that the two of them can get married and go to America. (The operation is a bit of a mess, hence the Angry Inch of the title.) Over in America Hedwig ends up quickly dumped, and consoles himself with a career as the world's most glamorous rock star.
Mitchell's original play was a monologue with songs, a depiction of a single concert in which Hedwig played all the characters he met in his rise to stardom. The most amazing thing about the movie version is how effectively he's opened this up into a multi-character epic stretching across two continents, following Hedwig from gig to gig as he stalks his enemy Tommy Gnosis. The result is genuinely cinematic. The songs themselves are terrific and are beautifully staged: the animation accompanying The Origin Of Love is a particular highlight. The best movie I've seen at the Festival so far, and good pervy fun for all the family. (Speaking of which, in a post-screening Q&A, Mitchell revealed that his next project is a childrens' story about a grandmother with a gigantic magical Mellotron.)
Finally, one last return to the Traverse Theatre. Bedbound is the latest work from the Irish writer/director Enda Walsh, best known for the Fringe hit Disco Pigs. Two characters, a father (Liam Carney) and daughter (Norma Sheahan), are trapped on a bed within a single tiny set. (The reveal of that set at the start of the play is a lovely little visual coup in its own right.) In a series of alternating stream-of-consciousness monologues, he keeps going back to the past and his history in furniture retail: while she remains imprisoned in the present, trying to make sense of the illness that keeps her confined to her bed.
It's hard to imagine a greater contrast with the fluffiness of Missing Reel, which played in this same room earlier in the day. The intense language takes a little getting used to, particularly in a late night slot like this one: but once your ear's become tuned to the speed and the rhythm of the words, this is a fascinating 50 minutes played to perfection by the cast. As The Artist Formerly Known As Christine pointed out afterwards, it's a distinctively Irish sort of play: no other nation could produce a piece so obsessed with the sound of its own voice, while still managing to provide a genuine emotional kick by the end. Due to a screw-up in the Fringe programme, most of Edinburgh is labouring under the delusion that Bedbound finished its run on August 12th: in fact it's running all the way through to the 26th, and deserves to be seen if you have the chance.
Notes From Spank's Pals
Rob D - Mac Tontoh and the Kete Warriors. Wow, what can I say? When we went into the gig and saw it was being held in what looked like a brothel in front of a small crowd, I wasn't hopeful. Mac and the gang just held on in there though, and had me leaping around and shouting "yo!" in a vodka and Red Bull fuelled frenzy. A great opportunity to sweat off the twenty-seven pizzas consumed this week.
SeaPea - Gagarin Way. Every current idea captured in this new playwright's offering. The morning did not start well with our seats being kidnapped by two older ladies - but real life imitates art. Play revolves around a hostage situation: very funny. I hope to see this playwright's work two years on. Burke produced some memorable sequences - hostage chap (living in Surrey actually) gradually reverting back to Scots accent. And of course the hat. Clothes are playing an important role this year.
Rob D - A one man show consisting of a man in his underwear performing Berkoff's Hell (very good, half an hour long) and Dostoevsky's Dream Of A Ridiculous Man (not so good, lasts over an hour). The Berkoff is about a man whose partner has left him because he's a boring, antisocial git. As a result he gets so lonely that he takes 100 Valium and a bottle of Scotch, and ends up in a hell where he's terribly lonely because his partner's left him... The piece has some typical Berkoff humour, and after listening to it you stop feeling sorry for the man and realise he's just a hopeless case. The Dostoevsky is about someone having a dream about the corruption of a perfect society - typical light-hearted Russian prose (not). I enjoyed it at the time, but in the cold light of day I've realised that the delivery was a bit flawed. The Dostoevsky was spoken in the manner of an am-dram Shakespeare villain (think "now is the winter of our discontent" etc), and the Berkoff sounded as if it was performed by Marvin The Paranoid Android from Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy.
Nick - Missing Reel is a one man show with a difference. The foley artist, who does sound effects for the show, shares the stage with the actor Toby Jones. Toby is a bit part actor who got a day job on the film Notting Hill and decided to write a play about it. Nothing wrong with that you might think. But calling it Missing Reel sort of suggests the part was 10-15 minutes long, when in reality it was 10 seconds long and it was cut. This is theatre for the daytime TV viewing public, very bland and only mildly amusing. Something you do not expect the Traverse or the West Yorkshire Playhouse to be doing, very disappointing.
Rob D - Samuel Oyediji was an amazing show. This guy sings, mainly in Yoruba, and plays the talking drum and an occasional tambourine. But as he starts a song, he is sampling his own performance. As the song progresses he builds up an accompaniment consisting of samples and loops of the harmonies and drum beats that he produced seconds before, until the room fills with swooping layers of voices. Think Leftfield performing Thomas Tallis. Absolutely sublime.
SeaPea - Amazing how the best playwrights have surnames beginning with B. Beckett, Bhakespeare, Balbee and of course Steven Berkoff. By hook or by crook I wanted to get to this Book Festival talk. And I did. However, he was not a happy man this time and I was not happy for him. Bought the book though.
Rob D - Ever thought that the harp could be played in new and interesting ways? Ever looked for a musician who could possibly have a smaller harp, maybe with electric pickups, possibly with a shoulder strap so they could move around the stage? If you've looked for something like this then keep looking, and, whatever you do, don't go to see Hip Harp Fantasies - it's bloody awful.
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