“a slow burner, with characters being introduced delicately and conversations packed with intricate descriptions”
‘Dead Poets Live’ is a highly original series of readings of famous poetry, read by actors and performers to a live audience. Previous performers include Jason Isaacs, Tom Hiddleston and Glenda Jackson, and performances are held at the wonderfully stylish and eerie Print Room at the Coronet. This week, James Joyce’s short story ‘The Dead’, the final story of his famous Dubliners series, is being presented.
There is something magical about having a story read to you in a room full of strangers. You are at once provided with the intimacy of a bedtime story with the communal experience of a theatre show. Patrick Kennedy does a wonderful job of leading us through this dense short story, in which a group of eclectic Dubliners all meet up for a big Christmas meal. An array of characters is presented to us by Kennedy in a charming and comforting performance. We experience drunken anecdotes around the dinner table, as well as more poignant discussions on Irish identity, and a haunting conversation between a man and wife (read superbly by Annabel Mullion) on past lovers, mortality, and the ending of days. This charming and harrowing tale is complimented superbly by the set: a bare room with tattered windows, a writing desk and a lone bed that appears to have come straight out of a Sean O’Casey production.
‘The Dead’ is one of Joyce’s longest short stories (it is considered by many to be closer to a novella in length), and it therefore requires attention and concentration from an audience to keep up with the story. The piece does not have as much immediacy as a shorter poem does, or indeed an action packed play. It is a slow burner, with characters being introduced delicately and conversations packed with intricate descriptions and inner thoughts from the author. If you are able to keep up, however, you are rewarded with a truly unique performance piece that brings a whole new element to a marvellous piece of literature.
“Kennedy has created something quite spectacular. His directorial decisions are often as surreal as the source material.”
Grimeborn is the annual East London opera festival which coincides with the world-famous Glyndebourne Festival. Founded by Mehmet Ergen in 2007, the festival held at the Arcola Theatre is considered a dynamic alternative to the traditional ‘summer season’. And, try as you might, I’m pretty sure you can’t get more ‘alternative’ than “Elephant Steps”. Written fifty years ago by Grammy winning and Tony nominated composer Stanley Silverman and American avant garde pioneer Richard Foreman, this show still feels outlandishly experimental.
Aptly subtitled ‘A Fearful Radio Show’, it is like randomly turning the dial of an old transistor radio. An eclectic (aka ‘chaotic’) cruise through a mix of renaissance, ragtime and rock; picking up on its way scraps of madrigal, tribal and incidental; a pinch of electronica and a nod to the Beatles and Bernstein. Oh, and Stockhausen, Kirchner, John Cage and Frank Zappa and… you get the idea.
The plot is as strange as the music. I’m often sceptical about programme notes that try to shape an audience’s interpretation of the show, but in this case, director Patrick Kennedy’s advice is spot on: “don’t try to understand”. At just over an hour long, it is as futile to waste time working out what is going on as it is to attempt to interpret dreams. The trick is to enjoy the limitless possibilities. And with his top-notch cast of eight blending the beauty of opera with the grit of rock, supported by a ten-piece band playing twice that number of instruments; Kennedy has created something quite spectacular. His directorial decisions are often as surreal as the source material. But like the source material, there is no real theme throughout – musically and textually. Without a solid frame, it is all too easy to lose focus, and interest. The score shifts from harmony to discord in a beat; from the relative accessibility of the pop and rock numbers to the atonal dissonance of the more unusual songs. And in between is the whole gamut of modern music.
Perhaps there is too much variety. It is very much a lucky dip, but if you keep turning the radio dial you will undoubtedly come across a station that appeals to your taste. This is a show that is in equal parts genius yet maddening too. It requires a stretch of the imagination but stretches your patience. It is exhilarating and powerful, but underlying it is a whiff of ‘the emperor’s new clothes’ and we occasionally wonder if we are being taken for a ride. Perhaps the cacophony of thoughts it leaves you with is intentional. Whatever the answer, and I suspect there is none, it is a quite unmissable production. Especially as each performance in this all too short run at the Arcola is followed by the chance to meet the composer Stanley Silverman in person.
