Mark Higginson

staccato signals of constant information

Salome at Theatre Royal, Brighton

My wife and I went to see a production by Headlong Theatre of Salome by Oscar Wilde at the Theatre Royal Brighton last night. It. Was. Just. Awful.

First off we have the image used on the poster promoting the play. To us this suggested a roaring twenties decadence. Our mistake to assume that the imagery used to promote the play actually had anything to do with the production or that the person in the image was actually one of the performers. If you set an expectation it is a poor decision to fall below it. The next immediately obvious problem that should have been fixed in casting was that apart from Jaye Griffiths as Herodias none of the rest of the cast could either act or were suitable to play the interpretation of the role they were in. Con O'Neill, "one of Britain's most exciting theatre actors" according to the blurb, as Herod could have been interesting as a despot with a Napoleon complex. As it was he just couldn't hit the notes the role demanded. He shouted. He showered the rest of the performers in a non-stop barrage of spittle. He over-acted in a way that made us embarrassed to a point of being unable to watch. Zawe Ashton, playing Salome, was similarly poor, a "star of tomorrow" according to Screen International she exhibited no star characteristics. The idea of playing Salome as a spoiled teenager should have remained just that; the juxtaposition of the description of her as "... like a dove that has strayed . . . . She is like a narcissus trembling in the wind . . . . She is like a silver flower" with the coarse and unrefined character as portrayed fell flat. The Dance of the Seven Veils, performed here as a fumbled striptease, was the prime example of ideas that you could see the reasoning behind but just did not deliver the requisite emotional impact.
 
Ultimately the failure of the production arises from a series of logical but inappropriate directorial decisions by Jamie Lloyd that add up to an interpretation that grates on the eyes and ears. The language has been obscured by yelling, the lightness of touch that would contrast with the horror we end up experiencing is reduced to incoherence by the heavy-handed execution of set, costume and acting. Where the direction deviates so markedly from the text it takes real ability to play-off these differences, something not in evidence here. Avoid.
 
There's a better written review over here by Webcowgirl that goes into more detail if you'd like to know more.

An introduction to earthships...

Last week I attended the excellent Self-building an earthship course run by Brighton Permaculture Trust. I've long had the idea I wanted to build a home with straw bales and have been inspired by my friends Simon and Jasmine whose amazing work I blogged about back in 2006. They're now an instrumental part of the Lammas project, have constructed another roundhouse and will be building an earthship for themselves. This form of construction is one I've found more and more appealing as, if approached correctly, is environmentally responsible throughout the build and subsequent years of habitation. It safely locks away used tyres, a material that would otherwise be considered hazardous, is a passively heated design requiring no energy input other than that of the sun and allows for the recycling of water and waste, turning this into food as a component of the design.

I regard the term 'eco' when appended to building work with the same jaundiced eye I apply to the notion of being 'green'. It's thrown around casually in mainstream discourse on programmes such as Grand Designs as part of the aspirational pornography that underlies the message of the show. Usually each project is underpinned by tonnes of concrete with a mere nod to efficiency in the form of a costly technologically controlled heating system or other expensively produced components. Environmental credentials are worn as a direct display of wealth and privilege dressed up as a courteous modesty, the very antithesis of the ethics that need to be at the core of modern construction if the embodied energy of the building is to be brought into anything like a sustainable frame of reference. Earthships can answer these considerations in both the short and long term if insulated properly, cement is avoided when more suitable alternatives will do and if materials are chosen carefully, always adapting to local climatic conditions. 

There is a difficult balance to strike here between wanting to see this kind of design become the favoured form of dwelling but without seeing the values that make it a viable alternative become co-opted and reduced in significance. Earthships are intended to be a philosophical outlook as well as an efficient, practical and enjoyable part of our habitat. 

Read Wikipedia's definition of an earthship.

You may also find the books Building with Straw Bales and the 50 Dollars and Up Underground House Book of interest.

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The village green

I read on Schnews and Corporate Watch that the Big Green Gathering has been bailed out of its financial difficulties by a joint venture involving "AEG - the largest sports and entertainment corporation in the US, owning arenas, cinemas, newspapers and sports teams". It reminded me of what was said in The Rebel Sell about the counterculture being the vanguard of capitalism. The Big Green Gathering say that they:

"... developed organically in response to a desire from people within the green movement for a festival that was focused on Green issues. Now we have somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 people expected this year. Staying Green is now a bigger challenge than ever."

Quite. I'm reminded of something the character Cayce Pollard says in William Gibson's Pattern Recognition:

"It's about a group behavior pattern around a particular class of object. What I do is pattern recognition. I try to recognize a pattern before anyone else does." "And then?" "I point a commodifier at it." "And?" "It gets productized. Turned into units. Marketed."

Which brings me onto this scene that I witnessed today:

Lunatics in repose
The village green of the 21st century

Your eyes are not deceiving you. There is not some visual trickery at work. This photograph actually shows people sitting in deckchairs on a piece of artificial turf on a sunny day in the middle of Brighton. It causes my brain to disengage and spin uncontrollably. This is some weird copy-of-a-copy where there was an error in the duplication process so all we're left with is this ersatz thing that has had all meaning removed. I actually saw a flyer the other week advertising events happening in this location; a place where I'm entirely unclear as to whether it is a public space or private land on which the public are permitted to roam between chain coffee shop, chain hotel, chain cocktail bar, chain sushi restaurant and chain grocery store. You can see another chain logo reflected in the monolithic front of the library, which I suppose is intended to define this 'public' rather than commercial abomination in the middle of the North Laine that is without trees, grass or any pleasing natural form. We've not only sacrificed the places where we once gathered together but have also sacrificed our very ability to gather together freely.

Malcolm Gladwell... the half-asleep tour

I was going to skip writing about this at it was dull but if nothing else it's worth putting in a supporting link to Chloe's excellent assessment of the phenomenon of Malcom Gladwell. I do not use the word lightly. Anyone who can fill Brighton Dome with paying punters and say absolutely nothing for an hour is a phenomenon. Something is going on here that evokes curiosity; possibly leading to a Gladwell-esque observation about the human condition.  I think that it isn't that he tells anyone anything they don't know, it's that he tells them things they already know but makes a certain kind of person feel cleverer for having been told that they know them; in this case through the medium of a spurious and unengaging story.

That said, Gladwell did try and distract us by saying he was going to tell us about something we didn't know anything about which I thought was a tad presumptuous. Even moreso when he launched into a description of the battle of Chancellorsville in which the Yankees and Confederates faced each other led by General Hooker "... and General Lee" said Matt from the seat next to me. It turns out Matt knows a lot about military history. Gladwell's subsequent asides on the most recent Iraq War based his conclusion on the official reasons for the conflict and his sprinkling of commentary on the financial crisis felt like no more than a nod to keeping up with current events.

I wanted drama, intrigue, a performance! What I got was flat. No fizz. No sparkle. Judging from the queue waiting for the book signing at the end a lot of other people there would disagree. No fuss no muss I guess, except for the fact this kind of pop sociology can lead one to trite conclusions about behaviours that are vastly more complex and do require one to look a little deeper into one's own motivations.  Ultimately his talk lacked depth and was not about provoking new ideas; it was about flattering the audience's credulity and his ego just a little more than that. What we all really need is to have our ideas challenged, critically and frequently, but then I suspect that wouldn't fill so many seats.

Further reading:
Is the Tipping Point Toast?
How your friends' friends can affect your mood
The dumb, dumb world of Malcolm Gladwell

1 original comment:

Mark, agree strongly “tick”.
Thanks for the link to the register article. Weird Wogan antiques kid and Napoleon Dynamite pictures hilarious.
Comment by Chloe — 27 June, 2009 @ 10:29 am

Elephants in the Pavilion Gardens...

Elephants in the Pavilion Gardens
Elephants in front of the Brighton Dome

This was a nice surprise to see this morning. Check out the topiary! Each sculpture appeared to have been sponsored by a business in support of an elephant charity.

Close-up of elephants in the Pavilion Gardens
Elephants in the Royal Pavilion Gardens

It was lovely to see people wandering in and reacting with big smiles when they saw this herd in the Royal Pavilion gardens. Be good to see this sort of thing more often; it brightened my day.

1 original comment:

Have just purchased one of the above baby elephants. Hopefully being delivered tomorrow to Pavilion Gardens Cafe. Want the elephant to help raise funds towards improving the Pavilion Gardens for the public.
Comment by David Sewell — 11 December, 2008 @ 9:09 pm

The Rebel Sell...

I recently finished reading The Rebel Sell by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter. In the book the authors attack the notion that there is a counterculture that exists in opposition to the machinery of capitalism. I remember reading No Logo a few years ago and not being able to meaningfully resolve the way I was both indignant at the stories of exploitation while simultaneously being one of those individuals purchasing the consumer goods produced in those conditions. The Rebel Sell did a good job of putting this in perspective so is well worth a look. I particularly liked the notion of conspicuous consumption coined by Thorstein Veblen back at the turn of the 19th century. Rather than dribble on about the book I thought this photo I took of a shop window in Brighton's North Laines summed it all up rather neatly:

AK47 Killing Capitalists Since 1947

Presuambly it hasn't been killing slogan-bearing t-shirt printing capitalists nor the running dogs who purchase such merchandise or this rubbish wouldn't be assaulting my eyeballs. It could be a massively ironic statement on the part of the window-dresser, but I very much doubt it.

Spring snow...

Today I sat in the gardens of the Royal Pavilion having lunch with Cindy in the sun. On Sunday we were watching it snow. I found it so nice that my friends and I were all keen to get outside and make the most of the fresh snowfall; mainly throwing it at each other and making snowpeople.

Tulip_in_snow

1 original comment:

Lovely photo – combines Winter and Spring beautifully.
Comment by Irena — 12 April, 2008 @ 1:57 pm