Things Left Unsaid to a Lover 1: I Wish You Were More Intelligent

I wrote this as a a monologue response to a playwriting workshop I did today. We were asked to write down as many "things left unsaid to a lover" in a minute and then we picked one to write something on in ten mins. Mine was, I Wish You Were More Intelligent... Maybe you'll see a version of it or the sentiment as part of a play one day.

I'm tempted to turn it into a series... There are many things in life left unsaid to lovers...

"I used to find it endearing the way that you are. That you laugh at everything, that you'll do anything your mates tell you in the pub. Just for the hell of it. I used to watch and think, there's my puppy. Now I think you're like the court's fool.

I watched you throw up, you were so pissed the other day because you downed 10 jäger bombs cos someone asked you to. It wasn't even like you lost a bet. And then you didn't sleep all night because obviously... And I didn't sleep because you didn't and there you were vomit-scented and caffeine-fitting beside me..

I think your friends take advantage of you. 

I wish that you would talk to me about REAL THINGS, you know like art, literature, politics, the news. I don't think we can survive on sex and mutual pisshead friends anymore, I just don't.

You said you've only read one book since school.

I don't think it's bad that I want more. I don't. I'm not an intellect snob. You're so kind and you make me feel safe and you are so beautiful... But it's not enough for me.

I just wish you were more intelligent..."

Attempting Adulthood

 

Today's post (a day late, soz) is a poem about Attempting Adulthood and how in your late twenties, everyone is at very different stages... I hope you like it. Please comment, share etc x

Attempting Adulthood

Don't wish your life away,
They say.
Don't wait for weekends and wine.
Be happy and balanced and like life all the time.
Go into Monday meetings with grace and a smile,
Lack of caffeine is not a reason to be hostile.
Make sure you exercise at least three times a week, but don't worry about your weight.
Squat, lunge, downward dog and eat a healthy diet, a colourful plate.
Read all sorts of books to nurture your mind.
Keep up with politics and documentaries. Be kind.
Do some charity work, perhaps.
Don't collapse.
Socialise, see art and plays and watch the news,
Don't overdo the booze.
If you're single,
You must mingle .
On Tinder and Happen and Hinge, Oh My.
You'll certainly find the girl or guy.
If you're not, then keep up with your mates
Inbetween the convos on mortgage rates.
What's your five year plan?
You've lost your tan.
She's lost her phone again, she's gone a bit wild;
Her ex is in Singapore having someone's love-child.
I can't really afford to go out tonight;
They exchange in the next fortnight.
I'm thinking of sacking it all in to go travelling
My life is unravelling...
You're still young-ish... well not old yet
Too old for drugs and student debt.
Tick-tock,
Biological clock.
I'm bored of the city, but I like the culture and food at 3am
When do you ever use them?
I have a cleaner but shop at Asda and Primark.
I won't queue for clubs anymore, but I'm still scared of the dark.
Nothing's solved with drink, aimless spending or a late-night screw.
As the cliche says, just do what's right for you.
**

#The100DayProject #100DaysofWriting, Day 10

Teh Internet is Serious Business at the Royal Court

Hi my name's Jessica and I'm an addict. My drug is the Internet in all its forms. It's Twitter and Facebook, Flickr and Instagram, LinkedIn, Google, Wikipedia and Pinterest. It's blogging, it's tumblr.  It's memes and virals, YouTube videos and Buzzfeed. I binge and purge on blogs and share, share, share. I spew my soul on Blogspot, I repeat code with glee. A share, a like, a follow, a retweet and I tremble with pleasure. Take me away from my phone or some sort of virtual hug and my fingers itch, knees weak, arms are sweaty. Take me away from my wifi and GPS and I know not where I am.... 

Seriously though, the Internet, is a serious business and most of us know it, though we regularly ignore it. Through the collective efforts of Tim Price's script and Hamish Pirie’s production, the Teh Internet is Serious Business at The Royal Court, tries to illustrate where we are with the www. 

The Nether at Royal Court

I can't use a witty title for this one because honestly The Nether by by Jennifer Haley was one of the most disturbing yet absorbing plays I've seen in a while. Following the recent spat of celebrities, politicians and more who have been uncovered as paedophiles after years of cover-ups and enabling by "those who didn't tell"; this play's subject is right at the heart of the public conscience at the moment. 

Its subject matter however is not really paedophilia, though the most horrifying of crimes is the vehicle used to lead the audience to the questions it asks; namely, on the Internet and virtual reality and morality. 

In summary, the Nether is set in a future where the Internet or the Nether as it is now called is an entire immersive world where people can log in and exist (much like The Matrix) in a virtual reality with their own chosen persona or avatar. Here they can live out their fantasies as they cannot in real life, look like they want, be with who they want and create realities that are the most aesthetically pleasing to them; a virtual wonderland if you will. For the reality that now exists in the play's present time is a grey world with no trees or natural spaces. 

The play focuses around a character named Sims or 'Pa' in the Nether who has created a server that is unreadable by the loose authority that polices the Nether, yet they know what goes on there. In the primary scene he is being interviewed by a Detective Morris, unsure how he has been found out.

The action switches between the present interviews, with Sims and another character Doyle as Detective Morris questions them endlessly about the goings on in the Nether and in particularly "Pa's" Victoriana throwback, the Hideaway to goings on in the actual Hideaway.

Here is where the play becomes magnificent really, because the set design and lighting takes us into a truly beautiful world, where there's green and trees everywhere and hyper colours and lightness. The Hideaway is almost abnormally beautiful and the use of light displays that show the matrix beneath it are also impressive.

Here we meet "Iris" - one of four children who live in the Hideaway to service the needs and pleasures of those who visit; "Pa" and another visitor "Woodnut" who seems to fall in love with Iris. The play continues from here as the characters nuances are shown and we get to grips with the question of whether such virtual behaviour helps or hinders these type of people when they go about in their in-world (real) lives. Does it not cause them to want to behave like this more? Additionally, Jennifer Haley has made the adult behind avatar Iris, in-love with Pa... which confuses us further.

"I've read the studies. No one has been able to draw a conclusive correlation between virtual behaviour and behaviour in-world."- Sims/Pa

The Guardian* subtitle says, Does inclination pre-exist exposure? This is again one of the questions that has continuously reappeared when referencing online and gaming behaviour, but the influence, the influence though.. there must be some the papers shout. I would hasten to agree with this even though nothing has yet been concretely proved it.

I was uncomfortable throughout the play, with the subject matter, with the young girl actress who played Iris (Isabella Pappas on my performance) being so affectionate with these old men. The production forces you to confront this fear and discomfort. 

However, to me, what it is really about is philosophy - if you make a certain choice or do a certain thing that is wrong - even in a virtual world, you have still performed this act. The tree has fallen in the forest even if you do not see it or hear it. That is my opinion. That is all. Others would disagree. There's also always disagreement about what is right and wrong, so there's that too. 

I would give the production, script, acting and especially set and lighting five stars and fully recommended The Nether. Expect to be blown away though.. I think I came away from it a little more fearful, a little more aware and winded by our current world.

The Nether is at the Royal Court until August 9th 

Images are (c) Johan Persson 

*The comments on this Guardian article show how much the subject riles

Where are All the Girls Going? In Praise of A First World Problem at Theatre 503

Do you ever wonder what really goes on in a girls' boarding school? Milly Thomas's new play, A First World Problem answered many of these questions in its 10 day run at Theatre 503.

Maybe it was so good for me because I recognised it. I'd been in one of those girls' boarding schools. Aged 11-18, packaged up with tuck box and hockey stick and deposited in the premier Krug (mine was more like Waitrose own brand) of women's educative establishments. Actually, that's unfair because I asked to go, yearned to go after I had read endless Enid Blyton novels as a child and I was lucky enough to be able to. But I saw endless girls that had been packaged up and left and it does the most wondeful things to some and the most terrible to others. 

I'm not saying this is typical teenage life in the UK today, it's obviously not. However, what you see in this production is a slice of upper-middle-class adolescence, a tiny microcosm of how things are in the modern day teenage brain. It's Lord of the Flies with Oestrogen and St Trinian's with anal.

We're white, we're westerners, we're girls and we're rich, of course we're fucking miserable. The standards are just too fucking high for us to be anything else.

Firstly I would like to iterate that the script is wonderful. The playwright and star, Milly Thomas has captured the bite and humour of privileged teenage girls' speech in its rawest form. Like Alan Bennett's The History Boys, no word is futile, it's pacy , shocking and laugh-out-loud fucking hilarious. 

The three actresses played the six characters with finesse and real physicality. I believed Molly Vevers sexy, broken-down, student-touching history teacher, Steve so truly that I almost fancied him myself, certainly understanding why Hebe (Milly Thomas), the protagonist wanted him. 

The general premise is this, three friends at school in their final year going through the confusion and angst of teenage womanhood with a bucket load of money, top class education and a impending pressure to get into Oxford as they are their parents greatest "investment".

Issues covered along the way include drugs (mostly ketamine), eating disorders, self-harm, pornography (including woman's enjoyment of it), masturbation, anal-sex, the female orgasm, bullying, racism, casual snobbery, lesbianism, Sado-masochism, friendship, abuse, student-teacher relations, depression and relationships. Yet none of it is too much. The script is so good that it makes valid, lucid observations on these issues without the audience feeling like they've stepped into a lesson/government lecture/gangster film. It doesn't glamourise, it plays with words so that you accept these things as normal and yet asks questions about why this is. And it's so witty (did I mention that) yet warming and soft at the same time. 

HEBE: It's like anything here. You're totally allowed to be depressed, bulimic, clinically anxious, anorexic, addicted to pornography, a binge-eater or a self-harmer or a card-carrying member of the BNP, you're like, totally allowed to be those things, but you just can't talk about it. You've gotta just. Ssh. 

You can talk about it with, like, one person. Maybe two. But you're pushing your luck with that.

When I got here I remember wanting to tell someone that I was unhappy and I wanted to go home but I cottoned on quick. Thank fuck. Not like poor Amelia. She'd be great fun if her very skin didn't weep issues. You see her walking around with a tear stained face, lugging too many books around that she's not going to read, trying to make people laugh, with superficial scars all up her forearms and when I see them it doesn't make me feel sorry for her, it makes me want to shake her. Like, bitch, don't you think we're all fucking miserable?..Could you not cut yourself on the scalp or the tops of your thighs or inside your vagina where no one can see like the rest of us? How can one person be so selfish?

It would not surprise me if Milly Thomas went all the way as a playwright. Certainly if she writes as well on anything else as she does on this subject, she will go far. As someone who is trying to write a play myself, I yearn for her succinctness.

Overall, I was left feeling positive at the talent displayed. If this is what these schools have given the artists in this piece, then perhaps it is worth the aching pressure and damage at the time.

The increase of pornography as a sex manual is worrying, as is the confusion and insecurity clearly felt by some of these young women, but really is it just like any other enforced same sex small society. The bitches and bullies may rule for a bit, but eventually life and/or their own humanity/insecurity has a funny way of outing them. 

What most worries me is that these girl-women are in some of the most privileged positions our country offers and if this is what they are experiencing in terms of sexism and moral-confusion, I dread to think what may be rife in educational establishments of their much less privileged counter parts. 

HEBE: Maybe, it's not normal.

HUGO: What? Anal?

HEBE: At our age. Maybe, it's not normal.

I would finish with, watch out for any of Milly Thomas's future runs or work. She is extraordinarily talented and I hope A First World Problem gets a longer run in a larger venue, because I want more people to see it and I for one, would see it again. 

A First World Problem was at Theatre 503, Latchmere Road 

*Thanks to Milly Thomas for sending through the quotes

I Love Big Brother: 1984 at the Playhouse Theatre

George Orwell's 1984 is probably one of the texts’ that has most affected me in my life. I cannot say I have always loved it or that I did not struggle with its politics and deceptive language the first time I read it at 14 or 15. I loathed having to read the sections of O’Brien's book certainly. But I understood it and its suggestions burned deep within my psyche as a teenager, in a mind already troubled by pigs that looked like Stalin (aged 13). It was the beginning of my fervour for dystopian novels that lasted a few years, perfectly echoing my cynical teenage ways and I read my way through Atwood and Huxley, Burgess and HG Wells. 

Since GCSE coursework, I picked it up a couple of times at university for references but never read it properly again. Somehow it haunted me and the less than pleasant nature of the subject and the gruelling energy required for digestion somehow stopped me from rereading it. It's been 14 years. 

When the Headlong production at the Almeida Theatre received rave reviews, I knew I wanted to see it (it was at the Nottingham Playhouse prior to this). I knew that its relevance in today's screen-filled, observed world was almost not worth mentioning to the educated; I just wanted to see how it would be produced. Would it still shock and make one question everything. Or was I just older and less cynical now, hardened against Orwell's didactic warnings. Ready just to observe the way it was interpreted. Was I hell. 

I finally got tickets to the production when it transferred to the Playhouse Theatre on the Embankment and went in with no pre-conceptions with my standard theatre friend D. Light Wednesday viewing we knew it would not be,

“Will we be very depressed do you think, afterwards?”

“Most likely,” I answered, “but in the good way, the Byronic way, the I’ve just got angry about the world, but at least I’m involved way.. You know.”

The thing is, relative to Orwell’s message in the novel is, it did not depress me. Relative to my viewing of the great 1984 film Nineteen Eighty Four with John Hurt and Richard Burton, it did not either. This play is sharp and certainly encourages reflection, but it did not out and out depress me.

The creators, Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan have created a nimble yet intelligent adaptation. The set by Chloe Lamford is fabulous and so simple, one backdrop really, until Room 101, with a small bedroom partition as the sluttish “room with no screen” in the place that time stood still. The use of lighting, sound and video projections is also perfectly apt for this production, used wisely and well. Cracking through the senses at the exact points necessary and propelling Orwell’s far-too cliché-cluttered Room 101, back to its original terrifying form.

From the beginning of the play the presence of a crowd of people, unrecognisable characters who seem to be discussing Orwell’s novel, work as an impressive narrative tool... almost Brechtian, I thought, so aah... yes we are observing fiction here... This became more confusing as the play went on as characters in the “book club” seem to also be part of Winston’s life and unravelling. Nothing new there you may say, multiple roles, but it felt more uncomfortable, like they were sort of living part of his story as they discussed it, or had already lived it. Was it a novel or a case study or a history book, we may never know.

 

 

The lead actors, Sam Carne as Winston and Hara Yannas as Julia were also affective. Though both far too attractive, from what I remember of the novel, this did not affect your belief of them. Carne particularly plays Winston as the reluctant hero that we all know him to be. With a stuttering sort of character, never knowing whether he is in or out, or what he knows, seized by fits of passionate hatred and lulls of quiet dissonance.

The themes we know and love are still there. The demise of language into newspeak, something which thankfully worries me less now as it did 14 years ago, as I see more and more words enter our dictionaries; no snobbery against the #selfie please and thank-you. Yes, doublethink, well we know this can happen.

Screens, screens and watching us ALL THE TIME, for the paranoid luddites this will certainly ring true, for the normal person who browses the internet, this will feel like a nagging headache. Yes we should be careful. Even in the room with no screen they are seen. 

 Love. Is it there? I wasn’t convinced in this production, but then I never have been. From the moment I first read 1984, I did not believe in the love between Winston and Julia. She is his soapbox, his humanity, the one who shoves him from the comfort of thoughtcrime to out and out treason and hatred of Big Brother. But love, I don’t know. In this production, she very obviously personifies human desires, wants, needs, all the things banned by Big Brother. Chocolate and sex she is... To be honest, I always thought Orwell was a little unfair on Julia; he seems to hate her and love her equally. She is brave but where is this directed. Can we really believe that someone in that circumstance would only care about their animal wants while risking so much... but that’s just me.

A particularly resonating scene of the production for me was the two minutes hate, a government form of brainwashing by whipping the subjects into a frenzy of hate against the party enemies by showing them shocking footage. This is something where live action beats the page and although we all know about extremist regimes that practice this. It was recognising similar traits in our society that shivered down my spine. Hatred of particular groups or people is all too easy when we are looking for someone to blame.

Room 101... the terror, the torture the mind. This was also a chilling scene as I said. The set resembled a mental institute and reminded the audience or certainly me of the egocentric nature of our fear and our rebellion. Especially exaggerated in this production,

 “If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”

Well, yes and this is the route of all the fear of Big Brother, if he can change in our inner thoughts, then we are doomed.

I do not know how the creators of this production managed to fit so much into 90 minutes. Even those with no knowledge of Orwell’s novel would comprehend and consider the messages in this play... Go see it. It’s a must.

1984 is at The Playhouse Theatre, London
Running until 23^rd August.

I Love You: Secret Theatre Show 5

Basically, I am not really sure what I am going to do when the Secret Theatre series is over and I don't even know when that will be because it's all secret and that. I have developed a full blown fangirl obsession with the shows and the company. It's a proper crush... After I saw Show 5 last Thursday, I proceeded to:

1).Tweet the Lyric immediately and asked them for the soundtrack so I could play it on my iPod on my commute

2). Google, Google, Google for signs of Show 6? And for news of the tour...

3). Stalk all the actors and actresses I could find on Twitter and try and find out which ones were single/might want to make new friends/would potentially slip me a tongue when pissed/stalkable in local bars as I only work in Chiswick. ;) #lol Because I love them all.

4). Also stalk the writers..as a writer and a wannabe playwright.. I need some of what they're drinking.

5). Work out when I could possibly see it again...

6). Dance to Proud Mary until I fell over

You see everything changed for me after Show 5... After I had been to see Show 3 and Show 4 (read the reviews, they are pretty sensible compared to this one) I knew I was a Secret Theatre convert and that now I had to see every one. I was even annoyed about the fact I missed one and two... (Though just mildly irked, now I am enraged).

 

A Series of Increasingly Impossible Acts - what Show 5 is otherwise known as - has left me all teenage and trembly and happy and light. It's not as emotionally powerful as Show 3 or as clever as Show 4 but it taps in to humanity and fear and failure and friendship and love. 

Show 5 is set in the Lyric rehearsal room and every night there is a different protagonist... a typical Secret Theatre twist which I believe (here is a tiny bit of sensible critique stuff here) must keep it alive and kicking every night, full of the energy of the unknown... The audience pick it out, so they can't even cheat... not that they would need to as they're all so talented (I told you, massive fangirl)

My protagonist was the fabulous Katherine Pearce (Kat) who I knew was talented and able to transform herself, from the previous two productions. In this, she was I imagine a played up version of herself. Everyone else was supporting in more or less roles. Everything centered round Kat and her trials, tribulations and difficult times in life and love and friendship. 

Some of the sketches were more narrative: sex, first kiss/ first date, falling in and out of love and being destroyed by it, cheating. Others were more metaphoric or symbolic: an obstacle course that was undertaken several times throughout the play at first alone and then helped by the whole cast; an odd sort of shrink session; a wrestling game involving fears and stripping. A shiveringly warming version of Sincerely by The Moonglows sung by Hammed Annimashaun, a dance to Proud Mary which I really had to force myself not to join in with... Each little excerpt bringing tears, laughter and recognition from the audience.

90 minutes shot by and I wanted more and I wanted to see all of the cast members take the protagonist role, because I felt like they were giving us a slice of themselves and a themselves that everyone in the company knew too. The Secret Theatre group have created something together.. and all these individuals have joined to create and perform it and they've got to know each other.

When I was a child and teenager, I used to be in all the school plays... used to love the rehersals, the comraderie, the thrill and then after the final performance for at least a week after I would cry and cry and feel miserable that I could never get that feeling back or work and act with those people again - not in that exact same circumstance... It was like a small piece of magic and then gone. Then after a week I'd forget about it.

I hope these lot never do.

Secret Theatre Show 5, The Lyric, Hammersmith

Now until May 29th


Here is the Soundtrack for Show 5


Here are The Secret Theatre Crew:

Nadia Albina @NadiaAlbina -

Hammed Animashaun @HamzDaActor

Cara Horgan

Leo Bill @SerpicLeo

Matti Houghton

Adelle Leonce @AdelleLeonce

Katherine Pearce @KattiAnn

Billy Seymour @SeymourBilly

Sergo Vares

Steven Webb @MrStevieWebb

Love them all <3

Images are (c) The Secret Theatre Group

Martine, Shaken and Stirred at The Finborough

The first thing I will say is that this production at one of my favourite theatres in London is only on for another three days. There are five performances left including a Saturday matinee and the final one on Saturday 17th May. This final performance is the only one that has seats left apparently. So, I'm going to make this a quick review because otherwise I won't finish it tonight and then people might not have time to see it... which would be a shame as it's haunting and sad and lovely too. So apologies in advance for the rambling and if it makes no sense.. sorry it does in my tired brain.

I would start by saying that many of the productions I see are very, very modern and the scripts are new and sparse, the narrative often just a shadow amongst dissonance. Sometimes I find myself straining to comprehend anything about these plays, but a desire to be very very loud and very very new. Not always the most impressive thing.

This is Martine, written in 1922 by the French playwright, Jean-Jacques Bernard; the script this production are working to was translated in 1985 for The National Theatre by John Fowles. There has not been a production of it in London since. This version is fabulously directed by Tom Littler of Primavera Productions and my local, Theatre 503.

It is a simple story, boy returning from war meets country girl, boy and girl fall in "love" among fields and hay, boy leaves girl for cleverer, more pulled-together ex-fiancee. Country girl is heartbroken and left alone and married off to a bullish man she hates, well aware that she is enslaved to a life of misery and infants.

Yet is far from simple too. 

Bernard was the leader of the movement of the art of the unexpressed in theatre and this translates easily to his actors in 2014. The performances are so subtle yet emotional that one can not really believe it. The women especially impressed: Hannah Murray as country girl, Martine plays her with delicacy and eroticism and awe whilst still being jovial enough for a giggle or two. She switches from barely concealed passion to resigned numbness, always with the audience in her heart. Leila Crerar as the fiancee is such a witty, pretty hoot that you understand why Julien (Barnaby Sax) chooses her. I wanted to be her best friend. Susan Penhaligon as the matriarch of the play whom everyone else revolves around is warm and engaging and yet quietly cruel in the end.

Essentially I thought two things as I left the theatre, the first is that everyone loves Martine, needs her, wants her around and she runs on after them all. Even Jeanne the sparky fiancee craves her company whilst her (eventual) husband is at work and then cannot bear once he returns. They all leave Martine in the end, except her husband who loves her but can give her none of the romance or glamour that she enjoyed for a few short weeks with Julien. But a little part of me wanted to shake her... at the end.. even though I know how difficult and different it was in those times for women. A little part of me wanted her to scream at the end and throw them all under the ship.

The second was exactly that... as women in the West, look how far we've come and how much we have. For most of us, marriage is no longer our only choice, stuck our entire lives thinking about two weeks one summer a million years ago when we loved a boy.. who married someone else. 

And yet... and yet.. nothing has changed really, as there will be unrequited love and love between different social groups or "intelligent levels" or interests. Some people will always leave others and some people will still marry for convenience. These days we are just LOUDER about it.

If you get the chance to see Martine, I wouldn't miss it. It's a lesson in subtlety and fleeting love and sacrifice and the acting is commendable. I'd book future plays purely on the merit of those three female performances.

Martine at the Finborough Theatre until 17th May

118 Finborough Road
London
SW10 9ED

020 7244 7439 

finboroughtheatre.co.uk 

Images (c) Finborough Theatre

Flights of Fame: Birdland at the Royal Court

   

"Do you want to go and see 'A piercing new play looking at empathy, money and fame' - Birdland, it is at the Royal Court newish... I know it's a Monday but..."

It's fair to say our seats were pretty far back, but when you go online for the £10.00 day release tickets for a new play at 9.07 instead of dead on 9.00, that is loath to happen. Theatre-friend D and I were reasonably early and she was so suntanned in the greyness of rainy Sloane Square that I felt positively cement coloured next to her.

"India good was it..Let's get some wine... 

Also, I can't believe Peaches Geldof has just died, I nearly threw up on the way here. It's just so terrible."

"I looked after her dog once you know.. When I worked for that designer."

"I know.. Can you move under the alcove please it's raining quite a bit now... Isn't it weird that we feel so sad about it when we didn't even know her. I cried a bit and I felt guilty for crying, cos we don't like know her... Can I have my lighter back please"

This was how are evening started. Grey and morose. I knew it wouldn't be a cheery one either "the perils of fame" having been bandied around a bit in reference to Birdland. To be honest none of the plays I go to see seem to be that cheerful. The man behind the bar told us the set was impressive, though.. that was something. Indeed our seats were so far back and with both of us being blind as bats you see. It was like a Van Gough version.

"That's why we can't book last minute.. we're too vain to carry our specs around all the time..."

D's blinder than me...but we could make out the impressive stage from the start, all water - a sort of moat actually, blue lighting and upright wooden structures and I could make out the faces of the "company" of characters. You know thems... all in sunglasses and trendy outfits and signifying the mood around the lead character. Such a modern narrative tool but actually Shakespeare did it OK.

 And how did I not know Andrew Scott was playing the lead... I am such a fan of his acting and his weird, weird voice and face. Famous as Moriarty in Sherlock opposite beautiful Benedict and I remember him in the Hour too, but really he's a prolific theatre actor. He's got such a way with being evil and twisting his face and body up... such a physicality about him..

The play tells the tale of the last week of a very famous rockstar's third tour. Fame has already gripped this guy, there's no going back. He's bored, cruel, jumpy and slightly insane.

 

He treats money like water, he boredly copulates with any female that he tosses his eyes at.. Including his best friend's girlfriend who then kills herself. He takes a member of the female hotel staff from Moscow to Paris because he can.

His character is really very hard to sympathise with. Wired that he is. Consumed by fame that he is.

He hates the fame. Hates not knowing he is. Hates the photos and yet he loves it too. Loves his own power.

In a conversation with his father who's asking him for money he is shocked over he value of £1000.00 to his father. It's not uncharted territory.

“Everything can be quantified. All worth can be quantified. Artistic worth. Human worth. Material worth. Everything. Some food is simply better than other food. Isn’t it? Some clothes are better than other clothes. Aren’t they?” - Paul

Of course he ends up in a sticky end.. Sleeping with a minor, facing jail time, owing his record company millions and do unable to quit.

What is incredible is both the acting of Andrew Scott and the wonderful set. As the perils of fame suck Paul further into its clutches, the stage submerges, tilted into the surrounding water.

Other cast members are ghostly as if unreal and we live through his manic mind, never sure if what we believe to be happening actually is.

The physicality that Scott displays as Paul is all part of it as well, jerkily dancing throughout. The bird that he is, pulled by the winds of fame like a dark Icarus, too close to the desired prize, or the black swan whose lost all memory of the white.

Overall I would recommend this play to anyone who is interested in the nuances of fame or who wants to see an excitingly staged production with a lead actor that takes up the stage with his entire physical presence. Drugs, sex, ghosts, suicide, paedophilia, blackmail, loneliness it has it all. Who'd want that. 

It wasn't cheerful is for sure. We sat soggily in the bar next door after the performance, not perky, watching Sloane Square go home, thankful we weren't famous. 

Birdland
Written by Simon Stephens
Directed by Carrie Cracknell
3 April - 31 May

at

The Royal Court
50-51 Sloane Square
London
SW1W 8AS

020 7565 5000

www.royalcourttheatre.com

Images (c) Richard H. Smith
Video (c) The Royal Court