DEAR LUPIN - WE REALLY NEED TO TALK ABOUT THIS FATHER - SON THING...

You will have noticed I have a penchant for real life stories. I am not going to go over it again and again. But what I possibly love the best about this kind of true story is when art and real life come together and touch. I don’t know, we don’t have enough art in our real life I reckon, even though real life is more artistic than one might think. I was attracted to Dear Lupin principally because it’s the story of father-son duo Roger and Charles Mortimer as brought to life by real life father and son duo James and Jack Fox. I had very little knowledge of the book and the story it told but honestly just wanted to see how and if the real father son relationship bled into the performance, and how. Well it does. And it’s adorable.

But before we get to that bit let us back track for two minutes and take a look at the story – the real life story – that started all of this. Because be it a film or be it a play, it all begins with a good yarn…

Roger Mortimer is a racing journalist. He has a wife and three children and they live a reasonably comfortable if slightly eccentric life in the British countryside. Most life events chug along as normal and expected, but there is one notable exception. Charles, Rogers oldest and  most wayward offspring. Over the years Roger desperately tries to keep Charles (a.k.a. Lupin) from going off the rails but never judges or condemns. He does this through a collection of around 150 letters written throughout the years that Charles makes into a book after the death of his father. It is this book that we can now watch as brought to life by James and Jack Fox at the Apollo theatre today. 

I won’t go into the details of the story. Yes the story is quite a yarn but not in a Mission Impossible, fast trains and explosions kind of way. Nor is it even like Motherf**ker in the hat, as reviewed last week with the raw emotion on constant and unabashed flow. It is a very, very British tale of emotion of equal quantity hidden under mannerisms and understatements. And yet Roger clearly has a way with the written word and Charles is completely candid in telling the ins and outs of his rather tumultuous life so it only takes a very small amount of reading between the lines to see the enormous amounts of affection flowing between the father and son. It’s definitely a touching affair throughout. But don’t worry – you will be laughing out loud a lot more often than wiping away any tears…

The performance itself is quite a brave one on many levels. In the first place, this is a matter of storytelling as much as it is acting – there are no re-eanctments of scenes from the letters, but the letters are read (quoted rather) explained and the bare bones of it sketched out by the two man cast who support the story with vigour, talent and ease throughout. James Fox embodies the middle aged English gent of a certain era to perfection so it is a joy to see his quicksilver acting talent shining through in the little moments on stage. Jack Fox , our main narrator – as in the book – is both an engaging storyteller and clearly set to do great things in the world of acting but although the technical prowess and bravery is only one side of the performance that touched me.

It is no great spoiler to point out that the play follows Roger Mortimer all the way through his life to the point his health fails and he passes away. Judging by the alternating hugs and hand-shakes between father and son while they were taking their bows it is as emotional a moment as I imagine it to be – especially for Jack I would imagine. He must, after all, watch his own father die very convincingly on stage in front of an audience for the entire run. THAT is what I call brave.

Dear Lupin is a warm and wonderful story for parents and offspring of all ages, for the good and the wayward alike. Ok so it doesn’t have bells or whistles. It has, in its stead, a heaving mass of talent, emotion and love – and don’t forget a simply cracking yarn… You want to catch this one before it ends.  No really, you do. 

ESSIE AND IRREGULAR UPDATES

Yeah. Yeah I know. I should take one darn date and stick to it. Not just post updates willy-nilly whenever I feel like it.

But this play... It gave me a serious case of the feels. It made me think and write a lot of stuff... More to the point it's closing on the 20th of August.


I simply had to get the word out there. You have to check this one out.

Here's why.

Love and feels,

Essie

BETRAYAL, CATHARSIS AND A MOTHERF***KER WITH THE HAT

I just want to give you a heads up – this may turn into a play review blog at some point. Oh I still watch films. I will still be uploading film reviews for a while yet. I have several “ready to go” just in case as we speak. There will be more, from cinemas, from DVDs and from the past, like last week. But this whole theatre thing is just… Acting is just… I don’t know man. It’s changing me. It’s altering me as a person and it’s doing it in the best way possible. I’ve never spoken to you guys - though goodness knows I have almost begged you to comment and talk to me – but  the stats all tell me you’re out there though and that you keep coming back. It’s been a good few years for at least some of you so you know, I consider y’all friends. So I don’t mind telling you all of this. I don’t know, there are moments, or indeed entire days where I feel the exercises, the work, the plays and the playing shakes loose and shakes out bad stuff that have been clinging to my insides for years. I don’t know man,  this is a very strange time in my life. But I love the journey and am on and can only imagine it leading somewhere good. 

I got into writing all of that because watching The Motherf***ker with the hat was so cathartic. The play is unashamedly big and loud, tackling heavy subjects like addiction, betrayal, relationships that are breaking down and love lost and found, the play storms onto the stage from the first minute, laughing, crying, howling and stamping its feet. And the conviction is such, the characters are so real and the story so gripping that from the first moment, you as the audience members get swept up in the whirlwind of emotions it portrays…

Our hero is Jackie ( Ricardo Chavira). He has just come out of prison and is on the way to kicking his alcohol addiction. He lives with his girlfriend Victoria (Flor De Liz perez), with whom he has been together since 8^th grade, he has just found a job… In short, Jackie’s finally on the home straight – or so it seems… Until he gets home one day… And there’s this hat… What follows next is Jackie’s attempts to get his life back under control. Because if he loses it… Well he may very well loose it for good…

Ok, I’m going to try and write the following analysis with as few spoilers as possible. But be warned, I may miss a trick. In which case I apologise.

It is interesting to watch Jackie go through several different types of betrayal . First there is the betrayal on the romantic side. Well, it’s horrendous and it’s painful but we have all been there,  right (well, quite a few of us have)? It’s one of the main reasons a relationship receives a blow. Sometimes the relationship heals, sometimes we move on, but at least we’re kinda ready for it…

What we are, more often than not less ready for is betrayal from our heroes. The people we set up in our heads as examples. This can be one of many things, it can either be your celebrity idol you meet one day and turns out to be a complete jerk or someone in your life that you idolise and hold on to in some way and you wake up one fine day and realise that this person was only human, just like you. And do you know what; they may not even be a particularly nice human. That’s normally to be expected, after all it’s a distinct possibility with humans… But where does that leave you if they are the person you modelled yourself on for any amount of time? If you turned into something unpleasant without noticing it, that’s definitely one problem… It can feel like quite a kick in the teeth though if the person you were imitating was in fact a complete front… 

Now if I told you that the play tackled issues like this in the context of addiction and prison, and that it does it in two hours without a single recess, you may be forgiven for thinking it would be incredibly heavy and hard to watch. It’s not. The play expertly points out the absurd and the right out hilarious in the potentially “heaviest” situations. And if those aren’t quite enough for you, there is Julio (Yul Vazquez) . While he is clearly there for comic relief, he still successfully walks the line between the serious and the hilarious. On the night I watched, in some scenes practically every line he uttered was greeted with laughter. And yet he was never, ever “absurd”. He was just what the otherwise quite heavy and emotional content of the play needed.   

I have so much more to say about this play. It definitely did NOT receive six Tony nominations for nothing… I haven’t even got round to Alec Newman who was awesome but whose character I can’t really mention (I mean I can but you know, it’s tricky) for plot twist reasons. Then there is the scenery and how the transitions take place on stage between scenes but I want that to come as a complete surprise too.

In short, this is one of the most powerful plays I have seen in a very long time. And as I write this review it has just under a week left at the National Theatre in London with the run ending on the 20th. I’d say don’t miss it. 

WHAT ESSIE HAS BEEN DOING THIS WEEK

Howdy folks.

I know, I have been pretty shit about my timings with this blog. I am sorry. I really am.

But you know what, it's back on track. I've even got a written schedule for it and things. It's going to be good. More to the point though, it's going to be regular.

There will be a few plays scattered in there too by the way. That's a new thing that made it's way into the blog. I think I'll keep it - unless if you'd rather I didn't. Just say if that's the case.    

I've slumped into a kind of summer laziness to be brutally honest with you. I'm not leaving town this year but I am trying to rest the old machinery a little bit. That's partly why my scheduling has gone to pot I think. The other half - more specific to this week - is the fact that the wifi in my house has been down for almost a week. And since I don't work with a computer, there all my writing was, stuck. On my laptop. Waiting for me to lug it to the nearest coffee shop. Oh well, luckily it didn't come to that...

Anyway, check out my review of - in some circles - cult classic Dancer in the Dark. Next week I'll be up to some theatrical mischief - and by next week I do mean wednesday in case you were confused - so stay tuned...

much love,
Essie

AND NOW, A LITTLE MUSIC... "DANCER IN THE DARK"

We all know what Lars von Trier is like by now. His films are dark, not for the faint hearted and heavy with the kind of twist that makes you go “oh surely not… Oh NO! He did!”. You (or at least I) need a stiff drink afterwards more often than not. So the fact that he had made a musical starring Bjork does not exactly make one think  “It’s The Sound of Music all over again…” In fact, like a lot of von Trier’s films, Dancer in the Dark comes with a warning – it is notoriously difficult to watch. None of the usual blood and gore and shocking visuals this time though… Von Trier is playing around with our emotional landscape and reminds us what horrible beings we humans can be…

Selma (Bjork) is an immigrant living in the United States. Her life is hard – her single solitary purpose in life is to build a future for her son. To this end, she works hard in a factory, saves every penny she earns and plans for the future… Her one escape from her toils is old fashioned Hollywood films and especially musicals – she even acts in the factory’s acting club… However, Selma has a secret… Time is running out for her and she has to use all her strength if she wants her son’s future to end up the way she hopes it will. The problem is that human beings – even the friendliest looking ones – are unreliable beings and… Well the long and the short of it is that you can never, ever know who you can really trust…

Alongside Bjork, whose striking voice and musical talent are the exact “secret ingredients” this dark musical needs, we have the legendary Catherine DeNeuve starring as Kathy, Selma’s friend and right hand woman at the factory. I almost couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw her, she is as ever, a pleasure to watch. And incidentally, please don’t get hung up on the fact that the film is “technically” a musical. True, there are quite a few very striking musical numbers in there but given Selma’s dreamy, almost otherworldly nature –  a nature that Bjork portrays so very well – it’s hardly out of place and any Bjork fans will follow her with quiet enjoyment as Selma drifts off into her own little world…     

And if you really hate musicals, well, at the end of the day the musical numbers that DO exist are Bjork songs, so it’s all a far cry from the face-splitting smiles common to this kind of production. To be honest with you, the second big difference is the atmos. As we all know musicals tend to be BIG. I mean, the good guys are practically angelic and the bad guys are “evil”. In Dancer in the Dark, it’s not so much an extreme of any kind but a sense of painful pathos that reigns supreme. We have a villain we simply can’t help pitying, a prince charming who annoys us – and yet we can’t help backing – and an heroine struggling against it all, not only ailing but also proud to a fault, refusing to ask for help, which ultimately leads to her demise… And the best bit ? It’s all set in rather oblique contrast to The Sound of Music, the musical Selma and the factory theatre company is putting on. Selma’s positivity and stoicism in the face of mounting odds is greatly comparable to Maria’s, the sad difference is that this story is very much set in the modern world. For all her sweetness Selma is ultimately consumed by the system and no pity is shown to her – at least not by the people who can have any influence at all over her destiny.

So first of all for Von Trier and Bjork fans, but also for fans of musicals – who want to see a bit of a different take on their beloved genre - and non-fans of musicals alike this is a must see. I am not saying you will find it easy to watch – but you won’t regret having done it either… 

A PLAY ABOUT HAVING ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD... "CONSTELLATIONS"

 Shall we give this play critiquing another shot…  ? And I’m going to be honest with you folks, I’m a little taken aback at how all-consuming this passion for acting and all things theatre has become… It has literally taken over everything now, so much so that I am surprised at myself. Only thing is, I’m going to have to try and figure out a way of making money from this soonish, otherwise it’s going to cease to become economically viable. Ehm – but less of that. Let’s talk about Constellations.

This is the “second” incarnation of Nick Payne’s critically acclaimed play. The original cast – Rafe Spall and Sally Hawkins – have been replaced by relative unknowns Joe Armstrong and Louise Brealey. Thumbing through reviews I can see the critics have inevitably enjoyed comparing the two different casts and finding the new cast, not big stars like their predecessors, lacking. I haven’t seen the previous performance so I plan to do away with all that. Let’s go back to the basics of what this blog was all about. A novice finding her way in an art form and writing her impressions without the aid of flowery language and “flim-flammery” .

Alright. So what is this play about? We are all (at least vaguely I assume ) familiar with the theory of multiverses. It is, to put it succinctly, the theory that every decision we ever make and never make coexist in a series of parallel universes. Constellations takes on the rather daunting task of bringing this theory to a stage. No, it’s nowhere near as heavy as you think. It’s a two -man show revolving around a couple, Beekeeper Roland and Marianne, a scientist. They are a couple – or at least, they are in some universes.   We watch the key moments of their lives, and their relationships play out in at least some of their infinite possibilities. What follows is an avant-garde tragicomedy about hellos, goodbyes and the nature of love and time…

Now, I am fully aware that it sounds like it may turn into incomprehensible gobbledegook, rest assured it is neither too full of itself nor trying too hard. The scene (at this point much photographed) is striking in its simplicity and the play itself in the same way relies solely on the performances of its actors which are electric yet very down to earth and relatable. Whatever else they are Roland and Marianne are completely real, and more strikingly, they remain so through the number of incarnations they go through throughout the play. In fact, of course the story was engaging and fascinating but it wasn’t the bit of the play that engaged me the most. Watching the smoothness of the transitions Armstrong and Brealey go through as they zip backwards and forwards in the multiverse playing first once scene and then the other was hypnotic and, to put it bluntly, mind blowing.   

You might argue that the topic itself is hardly new. The now almost cult film Sliding Doors starring Gwenyth Paltrow is but one example of films that explore alternate stories and consequences of actions… But Constellations, able to distill the heart of the story into the performance of its actors and dispense with considerations such as continuity, scenery and costume (Roland and Marianne wear the same clothes throughout, as opposed to a film where the characters would inevitably “have” to change looks for every reality) can portray a dizzying number of possibilities. The play is quick and intelligent and invites its audience to be the same. It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the same experience as the “dreamlike” state of watching a film passively analyzing. In a live show you are part of the action, part of the show. But then again, theatre has always been about  - and for – audiences that want a bit more brainwork for their buck… Some forms of theatre have been, anyway…     

I don’t know what I think of multiverses, cosmology aside. It has always felt a bit like reincarnation for atheists to me. You know, that need to feel we don’t quite vanish when we die, that we continue existing somewhere without going into the whole Religion, Heaven, Hell side of things. But Constellations definitely and strikingly explores the consequences of our actions and seeks out the answer to the question “what if…” I am pretty confident you will come away touched  yet renewed (there are some true-blue laugh out loud moments) and possibly wondering about your own what ifs… As I finish this article I have just become aware that the production at Trafalgar studios that I watched has now come to an end... But who knows - maybe in another universe...