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Post by Deleted on Jul 22, 2018 10:32:32 GMT
Tell us more, xanderl. Over breakfast, Mr Foxa continued his complaints about the play, including the rather unique observation: 'And that postwoman saying she was off to do the afternoon post. Where in the country do they still have an afternoon post? It's arcane!' good observation from Mr Foxa. For all that posters like Pirelli go on about how this play represents our sense of the world being destroyed or whatever, my feeling on watching this play was how out of touch the writer is. The scene when they are all refugees made me gag because we all know that people are actually experiencing that right now and his response is to treat it like a video game. |
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Post by foxa on Jul 22, 2018 10:43:19 GMT
That's interesting Cleostryker - the line that I hated was 'And your unborn child' - spoken the way it was and treated so lightly. So gauche.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 22, 2018 11:14:07 GMT
Tell us more, xanderl. Over breakfast, Mr Foxa continued his complaints about the play, including the rather unique observation: 'And that postwoman saying she was off to do the afternoon post. Where in the country do they still have an afternoon post? It's arcane!' good observation from Mr Foxa. For all that posters like Pirelli go on about how this play represents our sense of the world being destroyed or whatever, my feeling on watching this play was how out of touch the writer is. The scene when they are all refugees made me gag because we all know that people are actually experiencing that right now and his response is to treat it like a video game. I’m reporting what others have said. Take it up with them! |
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Post by jadnoop on Jul 22, 2018 11:34:20 GMT
Reminded me of the films of Roy Andersson crossed with a panto. Uh oh. I was all set on giving this a miss given the critical panning it has had, but this single line has piqued a little interest in me... |
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Post by foxa on Jul 22, 2018 12:10:03 GMT
Despite what I've written above I wouldn't say that you shouldn't go see this. (Sorry, what an ugly sentence full of Trumpian double-negatives!) I did get something out of the afternoon - even in thinking about what theatre is and what I like. Also I will say it again - I really liked Francesca Mills' performance. Mr Foxa and daugthter Foxa had seen her in The Two Noble Kinsmen at the Globe playing the Jailer's daughter and had thought she was fantastic in that. I enjoyed everything she did in this.
I don't know Roy Andersson's films and I didn't find this very pantomimic (word?) I saw a big influence of Peter Handke's 'The Hour We Knew Nothing' which was on at the National a while back, which was also set in a market square, but was far quieter/subdued/gently whimsical.
Xanderl - good and correct point about Tombola. It was indeed a raffle!
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Post by Deleted on Jul 24, 2018 13:54:24 GMT
Well. I can now say that I've appeared on the stage of the Royal Court. I resisted the temptation to give a bow to the great unwashed after receiving my raffle ticket but got distracted by deciding whether to go for an ice cream or not. Raspberry Ripple or Mint Choc Chip from a supermarket tub were the options. I decided against it. I did not win the raffle, probably karma for not buying an ice cream. One raffle winner in particular seemed very excited to win and almost ran to the stage in a 'Price Is Right' fashion. I don't think she gets out much.
As for the play, I can't really say that I know what I was watching. There is a lot going on. Some of it was funny, other parts dragged somewhat and there's an 'Atrocities' dance break which is initially amusing but does seem to go on forever. On the plus side, you get lots of lovely theatrical tricks, some pyrotechnics AND not one but TWO little tanks. The first appearance is really rather a joy. An appearance by an angel is very funny indeed, there are some very cute fluffy dogs (not real), a soldier who is very light on his toes and the exits of any characters who die is delivered with deadpan delight from the cast who work VERY hard. I especially liked Sandy Grierson who could make me giggle just with a little glance.
It's all pretty bonkers really. I heard two old duffers on the way out who hated it while the yoof (as I believe they are known) seemed more open to it's absurdity.
Oh and if you don't like loud noises then don't go. Really, don't go. I couldn't even begin to pre-warn you where they appear, there are so many.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 27, 2018 9:52:40 GMT
“Reminds me of that fella back home who fell off a ten-story building. As he was falling, people on each floor kept hearing him say, "So far, so good."” The Magnificent Seven.
I did get to see this after all, yesterday afternoon, having travelled down a bit earlier, and glad that I trusted my own instincts as I liked it a lot (and this is still getting a vociferous online appreciation, so is reaching at least some of its audience).
Angry play. Complacent audience.
I don’t think they really got that this was aimed at them. ‘i’m alright’ is the constant refrain and serves as the approach to life of far too many. We see our country, and beyond, sliding into disaster and, like the person falling, there’s an inevitable point where you reach a sticky end. Stylistically on point, the play as written shows real talent. The directing, however, is where some problems arise. Having done some good work, such as Pygmalion, elsewhere, I never got the impression that he knew how absurdism works. It isn’t that common nowadays but it needs reality in its delivery and depth not surface. The sheen of comedy that is aimed for, with lines sounding like laugh lines, isn’t the best approach. Audiences are confused by tone and it’s a place of anger and despair that the play springs from so it is better when that underpins the absurdity. He got that in parts but it was inconsistent. What he did do well was pacing and the switch from frenetic to glacial and so on worked well.
Just a few touchstones, all of which I appreciate but, if you don’t, then you are likely to disagree with all of this. Spike Milligan, especially his post apocalyptic play ‘The Bed Sitting Room’, which is one of the earliest plays that I read/saw and truly loved. Vic Reeves’ Big Night Out. Thornton Wilder’s ‘The Skin of Our Teeth’, maybe the best absurdist play written in the English language.
A highly political play, but a production in danger of hiding that.
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Post by crowblack on Jul 29, 2018 13:00:58 GMT
I feel awful writing this because the cast were doing their best, but Jesus, this was Springtime for Hitler-level bad.
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Post by crowblack on Jul 29, 2018 13:14:01 GMT
But it wasn't. It seemed to suggest events were as random as lightning bolts*, unemployment just happens, terrorist attacks just happen, wars just happen, and 'sides' are just arbitrary colour schemes. FFS! A line about jealousy over avocados rather than addressing the whole herd of elephants in the room. The current world situation is not random or 'absurd' - its various strands have been a long time brewing. And to cap it all, a whole ship filled with helium, a finite resource about which future generations will go "what - you used it to fill party balloons??" *And a meteorologist will doubtless point out the complex patterns that lead to them, as well. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2018 14:56:46 GMT
But it wasn't. It seemed to suggest events were as random as lightning bolts*, unemployment just happens, terrorist attacks just happen, wars just happen, and 'sides' are just arbitrary colour schemes. FFS! A line about jealousy over avocados rather than addressing the whole herd of elephants in the room. The current world situation is not random or 'absurd' - its various strands have been a long time brewing. And to cap it all, a whole ship filled with helium, a finite resource about which future generations will go "what - you used it to fill party balloons??" *And a meteorologist will doubtless point out the complex patterns that lead to them, as well. Life is beyond our control, things just happen without any will of our own. The things that happen and which shape our lives are purportedly the fault of someone else, the politicians, those who control the message through media or business etc, although absurdists would posit that even they are not in control. How can anyone think that any of this is by design? This is not a literal, logical style and reading it as such and attempting to make each thing connect to reality is futile. Beckett wasn’t making a social commentary by putting characters in dustbins, Arrabal didn’t think people would would picnic on a battlefield. It’s one of the central pillars of absurdism, based as it is on nihilism and the existentialists. If people look for politics as in left/right wing then they are going to be lost, this is a cri de couer at the idiots who claim that they can do something or ‘take back control’. No, the characters were not ‘alright’ and an acceptance of their powerlessness would at least have enabled them to face that as a community rather than individuals whittled down until there was just one person who was still ‘alright’. |
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Post by crowblack on Jul 29, 2018 15:13:17 GMT
If people look for politics as in left/right wing then they are going to be lost, this is a cri de couer at the idiots who claim that they can do something or ‘take back control’. I disagree. I came to this just after reading Tish Murtha's passionate 1980 letter that accompanies her photos of youth unemployment in the late 70s. If you're in London, go along to the photographers' gallery and have a look. Read her letter, especially the last page. This isn't Candide's earthquake. All the things happening in the world today have human causes and can be changed by humans if they try. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2018 15:24:24 GMT
If people look for politics as in left/right wing then they are going to be lost, this is a cri de couer at the idiots who claim that they can do something or ‘take back control’. I disagree. I came to this just after reading Tish Murtha's passionate 1980 letter that accompanies her photos of youth unemployment in the late 70s. If you're in London, go along to the photographers' gallery and have a look. Read her letter, especially the last page. This isn't Candide's earthquake. All the things happening in the world today have human causes and can be changed by humans if they try. I disagree, the world is too complex to be controlled. I wish that were not the case but experience has told me that the best we can do is tinker at the edges. |
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Post by crowblack on Jul 29, 2018 15:51:06 GMT
the best we can do is tinker at the edges. We made a concerted effort to improve things in the postwar period, despite it being a society physically, financially and emotionally shattered by war. Today's humans are far more comfortably off and in a better position regarding health, wealth and wellbeing to actually plan for the future and make the serious changes needed for their long-term survival and happiness, but are instead sitting there like the dog in the burning house in that meme. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2018 16:29:50 GMT
Yet all that had to be done within a particular system that thousands of years had led to and which would take a similar time to change. I appreciate that that sort of long term view is not exactly in tune with most. I do think we are getting close to a Malthusian catastrophe which would be prove to be more than a minor tinkering, however, sometime in the next century.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2018 17:06:38 GMT
If people look for politics as in left/right wing then they are going to be lost, this is a cri de couer at the idiots who claim that they can do something or ‘take back control’. I disagree. I came to this just after reading Tish Murtha's passionate 1980 letter that accompanies her photos of youth unemployment in the late 70s. If you're in London, go along to the photographers' gallery and have a look. Read her letter, especially the last page. This isn't Candide's earthquake. All the things happening in the world today have human causes and can be changed by humans if they try. I agree with you, Crowblack. The Cardinal references Beckett, but Beckett certainly knew which side he was on during WW2 when he worked for the resistance. He had a reason to write the plays he did because he committed to a cause, lived with the fear of being caught. What is Mullarkey committed to here? |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2018 18:14:45 GMT
“It was boy scout stuff” as Beckett said, he became very anti militaristic and wary of his exploits being used by others. A devastating war may be useful in order to be able to accurately measure our humanity in extremis but, as he became aware, the same system was rebuilt after the last one, without much improvement.
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Post by crowblack on Jul 29, 2018 20:40:07 GMT
without much improvement. You don't really believe that, do you? That the life chances and expectancies for a woman, a working class person, an ethnic minority in Europe are just as bad now as they were in 1939? |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2018 21:37:26 GMT
“It was boy scout stuff” as Beckett said, he became very anti militaristic and wary of his exploits being used by others. A devastating war may be useful in order to be able to accurately measure our humanity in extremis but, as he became aware, the same system was rebuilt after the last one, without much improvement. Beckett was probably downplaying his role in the resistance because he probably knew others who did much more than he did, but the truth is that he and his partner just about escaped the death camps and many of his friends were killed in them. Beckett’s absurdist poetics were rooted in a horrific reality. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2018 22:26:38 GMT
without much improvement. You don't really believe that, do you? That the life chances and expectancies for a woman, a working class person, an ethnic minority in Europe are just as bad now as they were in 1939? No, they are better, but the division is still wide in each instance and, looking around the world, the advancement is limited to only a part. I could easily say that I’m alright but to look outwards would tell me instead that I am very much privileged in comparison to the major part of the world’s population. On Beckett having the aecond world war to define him, his work is a denial of heroism and progress; what was a greater spur to his writing was its destruction and failure, leading to a nihilistic view of humanity and our inability to change. My outlook is clearly less positive than many, reflecting my cynicism at the state of the world. Theatre and the arts, however, are a joy to me and cynicism and ennui don’t get much of a look in there. |
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Post by crowblack on Jul 30, 2018 9:55:06 GMT
I was talking about Europe, and this play has a VERY European outlook despite supposedly being about the state of the world. It completely ignores the Elephant in the Room, religion, and the supposed cycle of violence it depicts is something that is now largely in those parts of the world that have not been through an Enlightenment or modern industrial revolution with the complete change in lifestyles and - crucially - rights for women that are part and parcel of that. Put simply, when women have control over their own bodies and don't have to spend their lives having kids, there aren't the huge numbers of aimless/hungry/angry/desperate young people to be cannon fodder for wars or economic/political exploitation. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 30, 2018 11:02:48 GMT
What is, on the surface, ‘European’ is easily read as global and the disconnection between the two is made clear as the ‘Trumpton’ setting makes the happenings unthinkable, as opposed to commonplace elsewhere. You are not going to be given direct referencest. Religion is very much there beneath the surface, for example, in terms of belief systems which sustain/divide.
I would love for us to be different to the parts of the world that you reference but, under a very thin veneer, I don’t think we are. The idea that we don’t have huge numbers of aimless etc. young people? Not in my part of the world where one of the only ways ‘out’ is the forces or, when they can get a job, zero hours contracts. We wilfully overpopulate by having too many children, it’s not going to end well, we are much sicker than we acknowledge.
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Post by crowblack on Jul 30, 2018 11:17:50 GMT
Religion is very much there beneath the surface I didn't think it was at all. The red bandana, blue bandana thing reminded me of Swift's Big and Little Endians but that kind of satire does not apply to secular Western Europe now. My neighbour regards the atomic bomb as the peacekeeper - having just finished fighting in Europe, and with many friends dead, he was about to be sent to Japan. The threat of nuclear annihilation as peacekeeper works if you have a population who don't believe in an afterlife. As a child growing up i the Protect and Survive era, despite my Gothy pessimism I thought no-one is mad enough to push the button because in their heart of hearts they don't believe they'll be going to a 'better place' if they do. The people fighting in the Middle East and blowing kids up in Manchester do. They want to bring about some sort of apocalyptic showdown. Norman Cohn's 'Millennium' series are fantastic books for understanding that mindset but it's not a mindset that still exists much in the West, apart maybe from the religious Eastern fringes. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 30, 2018 11:29:43 GMT
We are clearly of very different minds. As I also grew up in the cold war era of potential nuclear annihilation the idea of it being feted as creating peace is horrifying. We are still one small step away from oblivion and, in recent years, we have edged closer to it. You may disagree. The Middle East is a sideshow, any apocalyptic event would be perpetrated by people who think they can win it, those who wield the greatest firepower, not because they want to go to ‘paradise’.
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Post by crowblack on Jul 30, 2018 12:02:51 GMT
The Middle East is a sideshow I suggest you read Norman Cohn's books - he wrote them after serving as a translator at the Nuremberg trials and was interested in the nature of Millennarian thought. It's an aspect that is weirdly sidestepped in so many 'school' accounts of history yet when you go back and look at the writings of the time they are saturated with such beliefs. The Middle East isn't a sideshow - we've based our civilization in recent decades on petrochemicals and that has led to a very awkward situation regarding who we are beholden to and what they do with the money. It's a region where my father worked - along with the USSR, Africa and South America, so we've always been very conscious of its politics. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 30, 2018 12:31:33 GMT
The Middle East is a sideshow I suggest you read Norman Cohn's books - he wrote them after serving as a translator at the Nuremberg trials and was interested in the nature of Millennarian thought. It's an aspect that is weirdly sidestepped in so many 'school' accounts of history yet when you go back and look at the writings of the time they are saturated with such beliefs. The Middle East isn't a sideshow - we've based our civilization in recent decades on petrochemicals and that has led to a very awkward situation regarding who we are beholden to and what they do with the money. It's a region where my father worked - along with the USSR, Africa and South America, so we've always been very conscious of its politics. Did Cohn say that any apocalyptic event would come from the Middle East? Global resources are an issue but the political positioning as a result is a transitory thing and that part of the world is not powerful enough to wreak havoc on that scale. A much larger problem that might emerge from there is the one of climate, the likelihood of mass migration and rupture of the food chain is one of those high level events that have been the cause of earth’s real and lasting changes. |
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