Karine Polwart. Wind Resistance. Celtic Connection 2017

Karine Polwart. Wind Resistance. Tron Theatre, January 2017. Review

Karine Polwart's Wind Resistance was first performed at the Edinburgh International Festival last year, and now finds its way to Glasgow as part of this year's Celtic Connections festival.
I had tried and failed to get tickets for it last year so was pleased to see it being revived.

Written and performed by Karine Polwart, with input from David Greig and directed by Wils Wilson, Wind Resistance is a mixture of story-telling, folklore, traditional, and original songs all woven together around the musicality of Karine Polwart's voice. Twenty four hours on I am still digesting all that it contained.

The starting point is Fala Moor in Midlothian, close to where Karine Polwart lives. From describing the vista that opens up in front of you there, to crouching down and inspecting the smallest moss over the course of 90 minutes she explores the inter-connectedness of land, people and society. The mixture of personal memories and the story of a couple who lived 100 years earlier on a farm close to where Karine Polwart now lives give a humane heart to the piece. The songs give the whole story a feeling that we are sitting around a campfire on the hillside hearing secrets and tales in the oral tradition, passed on to us.

The skein of pink footed geese that arrive on the moor in autumn from Greenland are the visible proof of the benefits we can all gain by sharing the load. I laughed as that led us into an excuse to recall the Aberdeen's 1983 European Cup Winners' Cup winning team, as then manager Alex Ferguson is a big fan of that metaphor. Karine's enthusiasm for that team was shared by non-Old Firm supporting classmates of mine in 1983 who started following Aberdeen and Dundee United around that time (I stuck with Partick Thistle - whose laughing now?).

It is also a story about womanhood and childbirth that manages to avoid any tired "mother Earth" tropes. The warnings about the current atomisation of the health service are clear. It is a humane piece and focused on the benefits we all get from society pulling together, looking after our wild sites and each other. Like the geese I was lucky enough to be in Greenland recently, where the effects of global warming are visible in front of your eyes, and not acting is clearly no longer an option.

A timely warning against isolation and individualism. If you get the opportunity to see it, I would encourage you to grab it (and take a hankie).

The Suppliant Women. Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh , October 2016. Review

The Suppliant Women by Aeschylus. A New Version by David Greig



Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh on a sunny October night

As the new Artistic Director of the Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, David Greig has begun his stint in this role by creating a new version of an ancient Greek play. Written 2500 years ago by Aeschylus, it is one of the world's oldest plays and yet the subject is chillingly contemporary. In fact many of the lines from the original play (which I recently wrote about here) fit perfectly in describing our world today.

Edinburgh Castle in October

On a crisp autumnal night in October we made our way through from Glasgow to the Athens of the North to see The Suppliant Women. Aeschylus' play is the first part of a tetralogy telling the story of The Danaids, a tale well known to the audiences of Athens that first saw it performed in around 470BCE. The Suppliant Women is the only surviving part of Aeschylus' Danaid Tetralogy. It tells of the 50 daughters of Danaus, fleeing across the sea from near Syria, escaping from forced marriage to their cousins, the sons of Aegyptus. They land in Greece at Argos and seek asylum. Although they may look foreign, they tell the people there of how they are descendants of the Argive heifer goddess Io, basically "we're all Jock Tamson's bairns".

Theatre of Dionysos, Athens

The play was first performed in the theatre of Dionysos in Athens, where the wealthy sponsors of the plays would carry out a libation before it began. This is a tradition which has been resurrected for The Suppliant Women, with different MPs and MSPs this week having performed the libation each night on stage at the opening of the play. We were told where the funding for our play came from, and the gods are offered an offering of wine (Dionysos was not just the god of theatre). It is a smart reminder of where the funding for theatre such as this comes from (largely the people, the demos, as it turns out). In that respect they are missing a trick in fully achieving the 30p in each £10 funding provided from the theatre bar by running it as a 90 minute piece with no interval, as I missed the chance to chip in an extra £4 for a wee tub of ice cream. We are asked to see if we can see anything of our current times reflected in the mirror of this old piece of theatre.

Theatre at Epidavros

With ancient paintings of theatre performances and Aeschylus' words themselves really all we have now to go on, what did ancient Greek theatre actually look and sound like? When you look at the scale of the theatre of Epidavros, despite its famous acoustics, it is hard not to imagine that music and a raised chorus of voices would be required to lift the sound to the cheap seats at the back. The Suppliant Women is unusual because the chorus here plays a large part in the story as a character. In David Greig's telling of the story they set the mood from the moment they stride on stage, rhythmically beating out the metre with their feet.

The stage is stripped back and open. The play is set in ancient times. The modern, casual dress of the chorus keeps us in the present. The chorus themselves is made up of local volunteers with professional actors Gemma May, Omar Ebrahim and Oscar Batterham taking the lead parts. The chorus though, the suppliant women themselves, are a fantastically well choreographed, ebbing and flow, huddling and scattering ensemble. The fact that the asylum seekers are here drawn from our local community emphasises the feeling that they are our kin. Written by David Greig, directed by Ramin Gray and with music composed by John Browne, the team behind The Suppliant Women have already worked together successfully with The Events. When that play toured it triumphantly used local choirs on stage as part of the piece, and with the Suppliant Women again local people will be used. The chorus in Edinburgh will be replaced by people of Belfast and Liverpool when the play moves on.

The rhythm that started with the marching feet carries on through the play in the pulse of the language and John Browne's music, played by two musicians. I am no expert of ancient music but it feels and sounds true, equally Eastern and at times like a mournful Celtic keening. Particular credit must go to the Aulos player whose playing was very evocative.

Aulos player from Ancient Greece

When the women are met by King Pelasgus of Argos (Oscar Batterham) he is suspicious of these foreigners and the troubles that they might bring. Sharply dressed and with a politicians measured assessment he decides to put it to the people of Argos to decide - the word democracy is first found in Aeschylus' writing. It falls to a man, their father to make their case in the city, whilst the women still fearing violence against them from men stay in the safety of the holy temple they have come to. Their father warns them that people will fear them, they should "always be modest", "defer" to people, keep your head down and don't cause trouble.

Only this week the people of Hungary were asked to vote in a referendum on whether asylum seekers should be allowed into their country. Whilst 98% of Hungarians who voted stated that they would not allow refugees entry to their country, most people in the country managed to scupper the vote by not participating. I don't need to labour the point that the words from 2500 years ago seem again and again to echo to our times. Even when the people of Argos vote overwhelmingly to welcome these people in need (and more than that, to fight to defend them if required) dark clouds (or sails) are on the horizon and the men from their homeland arrive to drag them back by force. The older women of Argos welcome the women, but with the coda that they should not scorn Aphrodite but welcome men and lust as that is the way of things. The suppliant women display a more independent streak, as they leave the stage with their exiting ode (Exodus).

In a week where Theresa May's Conservative party asks employers to report foreign workers, overseas doctors are being told they are no longer welcome and there will be a crackdown on overseas students and visas, it is clear that Danaus' warning to his daughters that people fear foreigners is as resonant today as it was for the original audiences. The people of Argos are shown to have done the right thing in the play, aware of the potential consequences. We clearly still need taught this lesson.

On top of the language, words like drama, democracy and exodus that came from the Ancient Greeks, I am astounded at the modern parallels being found in the stories of ancient plays of Aeschylus. Recently the three plays of The Orestiae was retold (as This Restless House) by the Citizen's Theatre. Working with a smaller fragment of source material The Suppliant Woman packs a mighty punch. It is also the nearest that I have been to encountering what the ancient Athenians maybe saw. Stripped of marble columns and chiffony robes, the words are allowed to sing out. If the aim of David Greig's time at the Lyceum is to bring poetry and community into the theatre, he is off to a flying start.

I would really encourage you to go and get a ticket for this if you get the chance.

As it is national poetry day today, I will finish with a short poem from a modern Greek poet and playwright - Stamatis Polenakis, called Elegy.

"Nothing, not even the drowning of a child, 

stops the perpetual motion of the world. 

I know that today or yesterday some child drowned; 

a child who drowned today or yesterday 

is nothing - an inanimate puppet 

in the hands of God, a short motionless poem 

in the perpetual motion of the world."

The Suppliant Women by Aeschylus

The Suppliant Women by Aeschylus

I have previously written about how much I enjoy seeing the works of ancient Greece in our theatres when I wrote about the National Theatre of Scotland re-working The Oresteia by Aeschylus earlier this year at the Citizens Theatre. The resonances in the modern world of these works first performed 2500 years ago are crystal clear. Barely five months later and Aeschylus is soon to be back on the stage in Scotland with The Suppliant Women being performed at the Lyceum Theatre in October 2016.

"Aeschylus. Translation & Lexicon"

The old edition of Aeschylus translations which I have at home starts with a quote on the frontispiece from an earlier translator. In a preface to his 1824 translation of Aeschylus' Agamemnon, John Symmons, complaining about the challenges he faced wrote...

"The times, customs, religion and manners are changed; words which vibrated to the ear, and went straight to the heart, of an Athenian, causing a thrill through their crowded theatres, are known to us only by the dim light of lexicons, context, and glossaries; and even when understood, we search in vain for corresponding expressions in or own language."

Knowing that I was definitely planning to go and see the new version of The Suppliant Women at the Lyceum Theatre by David Greig I read through Aeschylus' words today. One thing that jumps off the page from the off is the fact that the "the times, customs, religions and manners" do not seem to have changed so much.

The Suppliants is the first, and only surviving part, of a tetralogy of plays telling the tale of the Danaides. These 50 women, the daughters of Danaus, leave their home near Syria and flee across the Mediterranean Sea in boats and land in Greece. They are being pursued by 50 sons of their uncle Aegyptus who wish to force them to marry. When they arrive in Greece they seek asylum in Argos. King Pelasgus is reluctant to take them in but puts it to his people who welcome them warmly. As a Herald from Aegyptus arrives to drag them away, King Pelasgus threatens the Herald and takes the women into his city.

The Supplicants by Aeschylus

The echoes in our world of today barely need spelled out, but let me do just that. There are many translations and editions of the story but I am quoting from the one that I have. This was a kind gift to my wife from an old family friend many years ago; a 19th century edition of 2500 year old plays, given to a 14 year old.

Unusually for a Greek play the chorus play a part as characters in the story, here made up of the 50 women fleeing their homeland. In the opening lines they tell of their journey.

"wafted here in ships having set sail from the mouths of the Nile.....having left the divine land bordering on Syria, we fled."

Refugees arriving in Lesbos

If this scenario is unsettling in its familiarity, the language that the chorus use to describe those whom they are fleeing is similarly disquieting in its modern echoes.

"...the male-abounding insolent swarm, sprung from Aegyptus..."

Whilst he was British Prime Minister, David Cameron was accused of dehumanising migrants by describing those trying to get to Britain to seek a new life as "a swarm of people coming across the Mediterranean". This type of language, relating to insects rather than people, was then quickly picked up and used again in subsequent days by Nigel Farage, and the Daily Mail and The Express newspapers. Comparisons were drawn between the way The Daily Mail described refugees coming to Britain today to the inflammatory and irresponsible way it described Jews fleeing Nazism as "pouring into" Britain from Germany in its pages in 1938.

Daily Mail newspaper articles in 2015 and 1938

The women hope that the local gods have been kind to them by allowing them calm waters to cross the sea and they humbly plea for help from Jove at his altar, suppliant, laying boughs here.

"...fearing my friends, if there is any one who cares about this flight of ours...But there is even to those who fly from war afflicted an altar, a defence..."

...a "surer defence than a tower" they hope. They invoke Apollo, a god who like them was "once exiled" from heaven. King Pelasgus arrives, suspicious of their foreign appearance.

"Of what country is this band that we address, not Grecian in its garb, delicately clothed in barbaric robes and many folds of dress...you are more like to Libyan women"

Syrian women arriving in Greece

When they make their case for help Pelasgus is torn between the possible consequences whichever way he acts; fearful of bringing danger upon his city or the shame of not welcoming strangers.

"...lest at any time the people shall say, if perchance any thing fall out not such as we desire to happen, honouring strangers you have destroyed the city."

When the women threaten to hang themselves from the temple walls, King Pelasgus puts it to the people of the city, who vote wholeheartedly to accept the women, and threaten exile for those that do not.

King Pelasgus asks them to leave their suppliant boughs at the temple "as a sign of their trouble." To me this phrase just made me think of the piles of (often useless) life-jackets lying on beaches in Lesbos, the modern sign of the troubles today's refugees have faced. Bound to people and clutched by people making perilous crossings, more in hope than expectation that they will bring some safety.

Life jackets on a beach in Lesbos, Greece

The Herald of Aegyptus' sons arrives to demand their return. In fear the women call out about the fate they fear awaits them in their homeland.

"There await us draggings, draggings and stabbings, bloody deadly cutting off of heads."

King Pelasgus dispatches the Herald sent from their pursuers, demanding he show respect for the gods and the will of his people. He offers the homes of his city to take in the women. They enter the city walls and safety, but know that they cannot tell what fate lies ahead for them. They are in the hands of the gods. Their father, Danaus, cautions them.

"But every one bears a ready evil tongue against a stranger, and to speak slander is an easy thing."

I was going to put a photograph of Nigel Farage here to illustrate the point, but instead an image of refugees trapped at a camp near the northern border of Greece. Here they face further hardship, suspicion and help seems in short supply. A modern chorus whose voices seem to be going unheard.

In last week's newspapers Scottish local authorities were being praised for welcoming their 1000th Syrian refugee to the country, a third of the total which the UK has accepted. However in Greece, a country struggling with a crippled economy, 856,723 refugees arrived in 2015, like The Suppliant Women, by sea. The attitudes and fears of the rulers and people of ancient Argos are playing out there on a daily basis. The scale of the situation is difficult to grasp.

In modern Greece the ancient, crumbling walls of Argos still sit atop a hill in the Peloponnese, but in the time of Aeschylus the audience would know them well, the city where the women sought help. Like the words of Aeschylus, these ruins still speak to us today, and his words speak with an alarming authority, a comment on recent events in the Mediterranean.

The walls of Ancient Argos, atop a hill in Greece today

The spectacle of Ancient Greek theatre is lost to us, as are many of the major works. Things go badly for the Danaides in the next stage of the story, but we will never know how Aeschylus told this part of their tale. 

Theatre of Dionysus, Athens, where Aeschylus' plays were often performed

With the original in mind, obviously the piece of theatre being created at the Lyceum Theatre will use this as a springboard for a novel work. Re-uniting writer David Greig, director Ramin Gray and composer John Browne who worked together to produce The Events, it would appear a nod to the music of Greek theatre is being planned. So it is with great anticipation that I aim to make a birthday trip to Edinburgh to see the work of Aeschylus on stage again.

Tickets are available at the Lyceum website (but do seem to be going fast).

Lanark: A Play In Three Acts. Citizens Theatre Company

Lanark: A Play In Three Acts. Citizens Theatre Company. Glasgow, August 2015

(David Greig's adaption of Alasdair Gray's "Lanark" had it's preview showing in Glasgow last night and this is a brief review. If you haven't read the book before going to see the play, and don't want to know the story, look away now as it may contain some spoilers.)

Saturday 15th August promised to be an exciting day. First up Partick Thistle were taking on Kilmarnock in the afternoon at Firhill, followed by the opening night of Lanark, Alasdair Gray's classic book adapted as a play by David Greig at the Citizens Theatre. Both left me with the same nervous feeling of anticipation, hoping that they would live up to my hopes.

The players take their place at Firhill

At Firhill the one character that never disappoints is that one created by an artist. Kingsley the mascot, the work of David Shrigley. This surreal, untalking vision wanders around the ground before games and is greeted as if it is perfectly normal to raise a smile at a piece of spikey sunshine walking around in Maryhill. More people around Britain, around the world even, are able to imagine a club called Partick Thistle from Glasgow now because of the work of an artist (and the ongoing efforts obviously of the man inside the costume). The Guardian had a photographer following Kingsley around for a couple of hours yesterday, so it still goes on.

The football itself was a piece of theatre in three acts. In Act One Partick Thistle were all over an agricultural Kilmarnock team for half an hour, but despite numerous chances only managed to get one goal. Those in the audience who have seen this type of performance before could guess what the final act would bring, as Kris Boyd warmed up on the touchline like Chekov's gun. In Act Two Kilmarnock equalised, and before the interval could have been ahead. Then the referee nudged things along by reducing Thistle to 10 men. In Act Three we were amazed to find hope as Kris Doolan put Thistle in the lead, before Kris Boyd came off the bench to inevitably snuff it out. It was a great game of football...for the neutral, but left a feeling of injustice and of a missed opportunity for those of us of a Partick Thistle persuasion.

"Man is the pie that bakes and eats himself, and the recipe is separation." - Alasdair Gray, Lanark

I don't think Alasdair Gray had the Firhill pies in mind when he wrote that, which today could generously be described as "well fired".

"Boo!"

As a huge fan of his work I've written about Alasdair Gray before, when a series of events and exhibitions celebrated his 80th birthday last year. That year focused largely of his artworks. His first novel, which cemented his reputation, is "Lanark: A Life In Four Books". First published in 1981 it was apparently written over several decades and, as is the case in most of his books, has both words and pictures provided by Gray creating a unified vision. It tells the parallel and intersecting stories of a young man, who takes the name Lanark, awakening in the sunless city of Unthank (which has a passing resemblance to Glasgow), and of a young man called Duncan Thaw (who has a passing resemblance to the author). "A life in four books" their stories are told in the order of book three, one, two then four, with Duncan Thaw's story being sandwiched in the middle of Lanark's when read this way. Neither men truly fit in or understand their worlds, which seals their fate. In an extended epilogue the "author" meets Lanark and discusses the book and the plagiarisms he filled it with (some real, some invented). He tells Lanark that...

"The Thaw narrative shows a man dying because he is bad at loving. It is enclosed by [Lanark's] narrative which shows civilization collapsing for the same reason" 

The book is full of nods to other stories, artists, authors and ideas. An "index of plagarisms" in the margins of the epilogue contains refences as varied as William Blake, Joseph Conrad, Walt Disney, Tom Leonard and HG Wells. Of note is the mention of Robert Burns

"Robert Burns' humane and lyrical rationalism has had no impact on the formation of this book, a fact more sinister than any exposed by mere attribution of sources" 

The artwork of the separate book frontispieces also references those that have gone before such as this from "Book Four". The frontispiece of Hobbes Leviathon is redrawn with a landscape of Scotland in the foreground, complete with Dunoon, Faslane and the Forth Rail Bridge. (If you want a colour print of this beautiful image to own, Alasdair Gray recently reworked these for the Glasgow Print Studio).

Hobbes Leviathon, Lanark Book Four

In this spirit the theatre company have created a wee Pinterest board of plagarisms that they may have used, and they suggest that you look out for more in the play.

One of the main characters in the story is Glasgow, with the necropolis in the East End featuring as a gateway to another world (or to a building resembling Stobhill Hospital if you prefer). The book is witty, political, confusing, poignant, frustrating and brilliant. When I heard that David Greig and the Citizens' Theatre planned to make a stage version of the book the obvious question was "How the hell are they going to manage that?" Some of the challenges that they faced are maybe evident in the fact that the first preview night at the Citizens' had to be cancelled, meaning we were watching it tonight on its opening night in Glasgow, before it transfers to the Edinburgh Festival. David Greig seemed to me a perfect choice to interpret the book. He has had success with adaptions as diverse as Euripides' The Bacchae with National Theatre of Scotland and a musical version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I've enjoyed his plays Dalgety, Dunsinane, The Glasgow Girls and The Events. If you don't already follow David Greig on twitter I would heartily recommend it for terrible puns, political rants and energy sapping tales of his hill running exploits. His works are the kind of things a country can produce when art is funded and supported. To quote Alasdair Gray...

“People in Scotland have a queer idea of the arts. They think you can be an artist in your spare time, though nobody expects you to be a spare-time dustman, engineer, lawyer or brain surgeon.”

In the year that the Citizens Theatre celebrates its 70th anniversary "Lanark: A Life in Four Books" now becomes "Lanark: A Life in Three Acts". Of note in the theatre tonight there was a palpable buzz of excitement amongst the gathered audience. Also they were a more diverse crowd than you often see in the theatre with both young and old drawn to it.

The solutions that they have found to some surreal passages in the book is evident from the first minute with the clever use of projections and animation throughout, often with a nod to the authors original artworks.  Sandy Greirson, who recently played Ivor Cutler on this stage, plays the role of Lanark, and seems to fit the role well. Never manic or hysterical, he presents an essentially good man beneath an emotional carapace.

“He watched them with the passionate regret with which he saw them play football or go to dances: the activity itself did not interest, but the power to share it would have made him less apart.” - Alasdair Gray, Lanark

Jazz tinged music adds an atmospheric sense of place and time as Lanark and the audience arrive in Unthank and a huge degree of choreography goes into revolving the seemingly simple stage set to create a variety of scenes. Greirson is supported by a fantastic ensemble cast, with several well-kent faces from the Scottish stage (Andy Clark, George Drennan, Jessica Hardwick, Paul Thomas Hickey, Louise Ludgate, Helen Mackay and Gerry Mulgrew. Camrie Palmer and Ewan Somers). The first act (Act Two, obviously) finds Lanark trying to work out who he is, trying to fit in and find love in a world where people inexplicably disappear. As his itchy patches of skin inexorably reveal themselves as dragonhide, a metaphorical carapace made real, he descends in a literal sense to a futuristic (in a 1970s Logan's Run type of way) Institute, where those who seem to run the world reside. 

The second act (or Act One - keep up), connects Lanark to Duncan Thaw, the real life of a "Proletarian snob" from the east end of Glasgow determined to be an artist. The cast lead Thaw through his life from the scaffold that becomes Ben Rua and his workplace on an epic church mural. A child with asthma and itchy eczema becomes a man unable to find love and falling into despair and mental illness. Again the script and Greirson don't play this with melodrama but with pathos and an ebbing away of hope.

The final act thrusts us back to Unthank after the characters wander aimlessly and surreally across the Intercalendrical Zone, where the actors break through the theatrical "fourth wall". Whilst civilisation is descending into chaos Lanark must try to save his city and try to connect with his wife and man-child (Ewan Somers doing an impressive turn in the style of Baby Brent from Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs). In the book Gray smashes through the fourth wall with his epilogue to talk to Lanark, on stage this is done in a clever and incredibly imaginative way which chimes so well with the book.

It is a book rammed full of ideas, images, metaphors and devices and it feels as if almost everything in the book has managed to find a place in the play. If you asked 100 different uber-fans of the book which bit had to be kept in for the play you might get 100 different replies. Whilst satisfying the geeks, the play also opens up the book to those who have never got around to reading it in a way that is accessible, whilst entirely in keeping with the unique spirit of the original. That feat may have taken almost four hours of work this evening by all involved in the production, but it was a fantastic and mind-spinning evening of theatre.

"Glasgow is a magnificent city," said McAlpin. "Why do we hardly ever notice that?" "Because nobody imagines living here," said Thaw... "Think of Florence, Paris, London, New York. Nobody visiting them for the first time is a stranger because he's already visited them in paintings, novels, history books and films. But if a city hasn't been used by an artist, not even the inhabitants live there imaginatively." - Alasdair Gray

I hope that these words by Alasdair Gray are no longer true and that his works help ignite the creative energy of Glasgow and its people. The play certainly feels like it adds to this legacy.

Alasdair Gray's mural on the wall of Hillhead subway station, Glasgow

Death and the Poet

Review: The Events by David Greig, Traverse Theatre

Review: The Poet Speaks, Philip Glass and Patti Smith, Edinburgh Playhouse

I took my first Edinburgh festivals trip along the M8 this year to take in Patti Smith and Philip Glass, but before that managed to squeeze in a visit to the Traverse to see David Greig's new play. On a late summer evening Edinburgh was looking very handsome I have to say.

Edinburgh

The Events deals with the aftermath of a mass shooting, where a survivor, played by Neve McIntosh looks for answers to the inevitable question - "Why?". There appears to be an understandable searching for a reason after these events (I'll use his word), people asking "why did it happen?", desperate to understand, to find some meaning in a pointless act. On Channel 4 just now the drama "Southcliffe" follows the lives of the perpetrator and the victims of a mass shooting in a fictional English market town. However when we get specific in this fiction, the close up attention to the detail of their lives in this TV drama, it begins to feel unreal, manipulative and fake as many real people have gone through these terrible incidents in the real world in their own individual ways. You end up thinking "that pub looks too busy" or "would you really say something like that?". You cannot help but think that the feelings that people affected do experience are unique to them and just unimaginable to someone who is not them. I'll watch Southcliffe to the end but it seems unsure what story it is trying to tell.

Rather bizarrely David Greig took a trip to visit Norway, researching the aftermath of the Anders Breivik shootings whilst writing the stage adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This led to some alarming (and incorrect) reports that he was writing a musical of the events which occurred in Utoya that day. What he did write was this play, The Events, which is showing just now at the Edinburgh Fringe before transferring to London. It does feature singing, but in the form of local choirs playing a Greek chorus to the story. The Events used similar devices to Southcliffe with flashbacks and different characters, played with gusto by Rudi Dharmalingham, flitting in and out. However the story here was more focused than the TV drama and the amateur choristers gave a stumbling feeling of real life to it all. The play worked well whilst walking a tight-rope of the sensitivities around the issues raised within it.

As Allen Ginsberg said in Father Death Blues,

Suffering is what was born

Ignorance made me forlorn

Tearful truths I cannot scorn

 

The many faces of Neve McIntosh

One last aside. Neve McIntosh's twitter profile reads "Actress and part time Lizard Queen!!!!". Is she at risk of being typecast? One minute she's tortured, guilt-ridden, lesbian vicar, Claire. Next she's Victorian sword-wielding, crime-fighting, lesbian Silurian, Madame Vastra who she plays in Doctor Who. Well, maybe not.

The other performance I'd specifically wanted to see in Edinburgh tonight was Philip Glass and Patti Smith's "The Poet Speaks", an evening in tribute to Beat Generation poet Allen Ginsberg. He died in 1997 and was a friend to them both. They've been doing these evenings together for a while now and it was the concept rather than any of three constituent parts (Glass, Smith and Ginsberg) that drew me to this show. The work of Philip Glass I have enjoyed without ever feeling particularly engaged by it, since I first heard it in Glasgow in 1990 (1000 Airplanes on the Roof - the projected backdrops is about all that I remember from that night). The "Beat Generation" is no more my generation than the flappers and Anita Loos were the generation of Ginsberg, Kerouac and William Burroughs. Their work has never grabbed me particularly and I find their books a bit self-obsessed.

Likewise, Patti Smith I think you either get or you don't get and I'd probably put myself in the latter camp (in much the same way that I "don't get" Jim Morrison). I struggle to see her as the "Godmother of Punk" that she is sometimes painted as. I like "Because The Night" as a Bruce Springsteen song rather than as a Patti Smith song and wouldn't be surprised to hear "People Have The Power" on a soap powder advert. It just doesn't seem to have any fire in its belly, the way a Gil Scott-Heron song or poem just does. My personal perception of her is more of a rather humourless, self-important individual who was in the right place at the right time to be part of a scene which on the whole generally leaves me a bit cold.

Patti Smith and Philip Glass

So I came to the Edinburgh Playhouse, which was filled to capacity, hoping to be proven wrong. Despite Ginsberg looking down on us from the projected photographs of the backdrop this was mainly about Patti Smith and Philip Glass. The meaningless, shamanistic ramblings of the shooter in The Events were rejected by Claire's choir for the gibberish that they were. Patti Smith however is someone who still appears happy to embrace the shamanistic affectations and eastern mysticism. She started the evening with her own poems which meandered through vague Earth-mother and Buddhist tropes (Notes to the Future, The Blue Thangka) whilst Philip Glass accompanied her on piano. Ginsberg's Witchita Vortex Sutra had more bite to it. She then read some of her favourite poems from Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses. Never can The Land of Nod have been read with such portentous earnestness. It ends with the line "The curious music that I hear" echoed in the line "Some strange music draws me in" in the verse of her song Dancing Barefoot which she followed it with. She repeated this trick with two other RLS poems (eg Looking-Glass River leading to her singing Pissing In A River with some gusto). Dedicating John Lennon's Beautiful Boy to Kate and William's wee George was a bit "yeuch". What was striking was the rhythm and pace Stevenson's poesy demonstrated in contrast to the earlier free verse.

Allen Ginsberg

More rhythmic again was Philip Glass who came back for an impressive run through excerpts from Metamorphosis and Etudes. Then Ginsberg's poems got a look in again towards the end with a rendition of the touching poem Aunt Rose and the strident anaphora marching out in Footnote to Howl and On Cremation of Chogyam Trungpa. The night was finished off with Tony Shanihan on guitar, Philip Glass on piano and Patti Smith singing her soft rock anthem People Have The Power, definitely a bit of a curio.

She certainly has a stage presence, but her serious, humourless, declamatory style (even when reading children's poems) I found a bit wearing.