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The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, Southwark Playhouse

If the below reads a little bit more like a, y'know, proper review than you're used to round these parts, that's because, well it is. i've not mentioned on here that i've joined the dark side, have i? Well, now i have. Having banged on incessantly about how all theatre criticism is rubbish, i've been given the opportunity to put my bollocks where my mouth is (no, wait, that's not quite right), (actually, it probably is). This review got buried under the landslide of Christmas shows that blanket the theatre pages in December, so i'm putting it up here as a matter of record as much as anything else, since, sadly the show's run has finished.

The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, Southwark Playhouse, London

By the end of the multinational Oslo Group's fittingly icy production, the Southwark Playhouse is so cold you can see your breath. Rainer Werner Fassbinder's unflinching meditation on the destructive power of desire, best known in its 1972 film form, here receives an intelligent, stylish revival.

Kimie Nakano and Matt Deely's spare, otherworldly design atomises the cavernous space. It is in the huge distance between its inhabitants that the drama works, in the gaps between desire and its impossible consummation. Petra, a wildly decadent fashion designer, falls in love with model Karen. At first, she stands her on a chair and assesses her, thoroughly objectifying her. But soon the power shifts; Karen is free to torment and abuse Petra in the knowledge that the further she is from the ideal Petra projects onto her, the more she lusts to possess her.

Here love is an act of pure masochism, maintained insofar as it is unfulfilled. Anna Egseth turns in a remarkable performance as Marlene, Petra's silent, much-abused servant. An ever-present observer, hovering on the margins of the action, her every look speaks a world of self-abasing desire for her mistress.

When David Tushingham's translation brings its despair to the surface, the gestural, expressionistic performance style heightens its poetry. As Sasha Behar's Petra disintegrates she becomes a self-dramatising whirlwind of spiked prose. But before Karen's rejection triggers her descent, it feels stilted - unremarkable speech weighted with an emphasis it does not merit.

Yvonne McDevitt's production changes style and tone instantaneously. At times the effect, though disconcerting, is subtle and intelligent; we are jerked back from a scene of wrought emotion by upbeat beats and dancing, only to be thrust suddenly back to the cruel reality of Petra's rejected daughter's wails. At others it jars unhelpfully.

"It's easy to feel pity. Understanding is a lot harder," Petra declares. Even as she breaks down, bitterly lashing out and descending into near madness, the production declines to work on our emotions. Instead it exerts a cold, almost intellectual fascination which nags at the mind long after the performance has ended.

Why are there no right-wing plays?

Again.

Because you haven't fucking well written and staged them, you dumb fucks.

That is all.

PS - Why are there not more plays challenging the "left-liberal consensus"?

Because, according to you, it's a fucking consensus.

That is actually all.

...if you care about the future of theatre in this country, or indeed, the present of it...

It seems Arts Council Yorkshire have cut their support to the National Student Drama Festival, declaring that they want to "refocus our investment". I just can't stress enough the extent to which there is no single thing that Arts Council Yorkshire which would be more effective in screwing up the future of theatre (and, indeed, of theatre criticism) in the UK. The Festival has until January 15th to appeal, and are putting together a petition to support the appeal.

Go here and sign the petition.


I'll put together a fuller post on the subject when i've managed to speak to some people at the Festival and get a bit more information about the situation and their plans. In the meantime, does anyone know enough html to put together a button that people might be able to paste into their blogs? i'm looking at you Davis Wateracre...

...go there...

i've just discovered a really wonderful blog: Miles Alinson's A Confrontation with Falling.

"We burn in time and produce nothing which will remain except our own disappearance. "

from the blog.

"Art is life remembering magic. It is being. It is activism. It is ritual and prayer. It is play. It is the first word. It is the antidote. It is futile. There is only the dull hum of air-conditioning units without it."

from The City, I

...go confront...

x

...does anyone speak finnish?...

Cos i want to know what they're saying about the reduced michael billington here.

...here and now, friends, here and now (part one)...

theatre is theatre and not something else because it is taking place in the here and now.

it is a sharing of that here and now that can take us beyond that here and now.

beyond even the wider here and now of our lives hereish and nowish.

it is a commonsensicle cliche to say that it does so by constructing a fictional not-here and not-now.

Distrust commonsense. And cliches.

Beyond: what if the here and nowness of theatre is itself a fiction?

i. HERE - WITH INNOVATIONS!

...can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?

Prologue, Henry V

And this is me talking. This is really me talking to you now.

Dad, bedbound, Enda Walsh

There exists a place where all the contrarieties are true

William Blake

Theatre offers the promise of a "here i am" on the part of the performer that goes far beyond the "here i am" of everyday life. In a sense it embodies nothing less than a desire to say "hello", an act which asserts the hereness of both myself and yourself. This desire in itself can be seen as a reaction against the inevitable experience of disembodiment encountered when something comes forth from within us - something like the voice. My voice is mine but it's not me. It leaves me.

Children, until they are told they shouldn't, often begin their stories with "Hello". As the voice is removed from even its origin in the body by written text, this "Hello" crystallises the pretence - the "i am not me", the "Hello. I am a lion." - of fiction which is a retreat from the self, we find a simultaneous counter-urge:

"Hello, here I am."

"I am a lion."

There are drama forms in which a character's first act is to introduce himself.

Ego sum Alpha et nouissimus.
I am gracyus and grete, God withoutyn begynnyng,
I am maker vnmade, all mighte es in me;
I am lyfe and way vnto welth-wynnyng,
I am formaste and fyrste, als I byd sall it be.

First lines of the York Mystery Cycle

(Hello God!)

There's a word for this but i can't remember it. Anyway, there's a lot of it, and to consider it unsophisticated is to miss the point that the Big Hello happens every time an actor steps into view.

Of course, we're not really talking to God. God isn't here. It's just an actor. "Hello God!" is a ridiculous thing to think. More so to say, because he can't hear you.

Oh, hang on.

It makes everything a lot easier if you've got an omniscient deity watching over the processes of representation which uneasily clunk around in between me and you. "Hello God!" we think and God hears even what's inaudible. "Hello" i say to you and god legitimates me and you by knowing that i'm here and you're there and he heard you hearing me and understanding me.

But we don't got that now, at least not at the heart of our metaphysics, so we're going to have to try again...

The "Here" in the "Hello, here I am" of the actor's entrance has at least two meanings. It's the here of this stage here, and the here of not-this-stage, maybe the "vasty fields of France", maybe a field with a single tree in it. To speak of the second "here" as a lie and the first as a truth is to ignore the special status of the theatre space. In other words, that first "here" enables the second. I can say "Hello, here i am. In France." And if i'm onstage, i won't get the response i will get if i say it in Tesco in Holburn: "No you're not." The audience allows it. The theatre is not a lie that tells the truth; the stage is what allows theatre to transcends the true/false binary. This is why we can talk about the "magic of theatre" - but this magic, unlike other magics, need not hide its workings. It's magical even as you see the pocket that the rabbit's kept in, even as it exposes to you its secrets.

But all the world's a stage ne c'est pas? Well, peut-etre, but if that's the case then where does the audience sit? For all that identity and its constituents may be a performance, they don't (always) take place in a theatre and so they don't get to bail out from the true/false party. On stage, being theatrical is mandatory. Elsewhere it's another way of saying you're being a dick.

Who or what gives the theatre this magical special status? A stage is not a stage because it's in a theatre, it does not need to be blessed like a temple or launched like a ship in order to come into being.

"You see that space there?"

"Yes."

"It's a stage."

"No it isn't."

"Well, ok, let's pretend it is."

Perhaps the contract between performer and audience goes no further than this: we agree on the fiction that this here is a stage.

update: as Paul Burgess has a really interesting piece in the same kind of area here (go to notebook and scroll down to november 10th)