Shakespeare Our Contemporary

I'm still haunted by Sunday's King Lear. Any number of unforgettable moments. Just one, for now: the audience's knowing laughter on, Get glass eyes, / And, like a scurvy politician, seem / To see the things thou dost not. 

How did WS know so much about Brexit four centuries before it happened?

Just Listening

Odd coincidence: after writing a little bit yesterday about an article detailing, very convincingly, the therapeutic benefits of walking, which I've always been sort of aware of but never quite able to articulate, today I find myself writing about a tasty post on Open Culture alluding to the therapeutic benefits of listening to music, specifically of the ambient variety, which, again, I've always sort of known but never quite made concrete to myself, if you know what I mean.

So the weird stuff I discovered as a teen has been doing me good, despite the efforts of so many of the great and good to get me to turn it down. (Got to confess, though, when I first heard Fripp and Eno's Evening Star, which I picked up free as a review copy for a university newspaper, I seriously wondered at first what my two heroes were up to. Now I know. (Inventing ambient music as well as blowing easing my mind.)) (The version I link to above is not, of course, the one essayed by the Frippster and his chum. But it stands as evidence, if it were needed, of the genius of the original. Listen, and be healed.)

Just Walking

Still don't feel sufficiently recovered from my recent bout of back trouble to dare to go to the gym. Missing it keenly. But felt better today on perusing an excellent article related to the health benefits involved in walking, of which I deliberately do as much as possible at work (and IRL, as they say, when I get the chance.)

The article served to confirm things I've intuitively felt since those long-ago days when I went wandering around Manchester and environs, partly to save on bus fare, but mostly because I felt I just had to. What a strange kid I was: entirely gormless in most respects; oddly wise in others.

Transformation

I studied King Lear for 'A' level and I've taught it in the classroom for several years. I suppose I'd say it was my favourite play, if that term means anything. I certainly can't think of any other play with quite the same power. Yet I've never actually seen it 'live' in the theatre. In fact, I think I've only ever watched two productions of it (both on telly) all the way through: the BBC version with Michael Hordern as the mad king, and the Olivier version done for tv a few years later. That is, until today. I've just come back from watching one of those National Theatre filmed versions they show at the Esplanade starring Ian McKellen in the titular role (which I think he played a few years back in the same theatre, and which I missed then due to bad timing and tickets running out.)

I thought highly of the BBC version, in which Hordern was typically excellent. If I'm not mistaken it was directed by Jonathan Miller and he rendered a very straight reading of the play, but did so with genuine depth. I wasn't as impressed with the Olivier version - which garnered a heck of a lot of publicity at the time. I remember it as a fairly stodgy version, though Olivier was excellent and I was moved, as always.

Today's experience of watching the play put previous viewings well into the shade. Sir Ian was just astonishing, which I kind of expected, but the whole production was brilliant, taking many, many chances with not a dud moment (or a dull one.) A powerful, strident Cordelia, a female Kent, the Fool as something close to a comedian from a working man's club. It sounds gimmicky, but everything worked. A play I've had in my head since I was seventeen suddenly became something new, yet recognisable, something rich and strange and achingly familiar at the same time.

Transformations

If someone were to ask me which is my favourite amongst all the shows I've had a hand in creatively, the answer would be immediate and simple: the one I'm involved in, at any given time. I know this sounds glib, but it happens to be true. The intensity demanded by any production results in complete, almost obsessive, absorption and over time I've come to realise the attendant transformatory power (magic, really) is so invigoratingly palpable that whilst it lasts it can be close to intoxicating. I'm talking about the power of a script becoming something real and living on a stage; the ways in which all involved in generating the drama are rendered changed in some way by it, especially relative youngsters; the reality of having one's world widened by acts of necessary empathy.

I suppose all forms of performance art possess something of this power. Great dance, great music does something to you. But it seems to me that only drama can lead us with something akin to surgical precision into an understanding of the minds, the emotions, the sufferings, the joys of others. We should be better people for our involvement in it - as creators, if we're lucky, and as spectators. If we fail to be so then it would seem a kind of betrayal.

Mind you, I feel obliged to confess that one transformation just worked on me now our most recent work for the stage has come to an end (and a highly satisfactory one at that, I'm pleased to report) was very noticeable this morning. After three weeks or so of waking early with a distinct awareness of energy emerging from somewhere to deal with the particular day ahead, this morning I struggled to overcome a not unpleasant lassitude of a very high order. I did get some things done, but with a ponderous deliberateness quite foreign to my recent experience. Yes, I'm back down to earth.

Out Loud

Ultra-busy these last few days mainly because of the show, but I never mind this kind of busyness since 1) it has a point and 2) it's actually rewarding. Part of being busy is physical, which is no bad thing since I'm still aching a bit in my left leg, so the gym remains out of the question and all the running around means I'm getting some kind of exercise. The bigger part, however, is mental and that's the really tiring aspect of it all, though also that's where the exhilaration lies.

There was a moment yesterday when I needed to attend a meeting ahead of a rehearsal that I found myself talking out loud in an attempt to focus on the key things that just had to be done, plucking them somehow from the mental storm that engulfed me. (A bit over-dramatic that, I know, but it's not a bad attempt to capture the flavour of my thoughts at the moment in question - though it fails to acknowledge that I was quite enjoying wandering through the storm.) The problem is that the talking out loud took place in a fairly public place, and I reckon a couple of colleagues thought I'd finally lost it completely.

The funny thing is that the last time I can remember very consciously and deliberately talking aloud to spell out my intentions was when I was a nipper being looked after by my gran. Yes, it looks like second childhood is finally upon me. Quite fun really.

That Kind Of Day

William Blake: One law for the lion & the ox is oppression. (From The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.)

(Yes, it's been that kind of day.)

Other Places

Was glancing in my journal of 15 years ago and came upon this for 23 July, 2004:

More on Darfur on this morning's news, before I set off to work. A child's funeral. Women asked to raise their fingers to indicate how many family members have recently died.

Struck me that I'm not at all sure how the situation in South Sudan has played out over the years. Embarrassed not to know.

Thinking now of what's going on now in Hong Kong, and the possibilities 15 years hence. More cause for deep concern.

Feel blessed to be where I am, but that's no excuse for indifference.

Out Of A Can

Is that laughter real? asked Noi just now from the kitchen where she was preparing dinner, in relation to a Malay comedy programme that I wasn't really watching. I knew immediately what she meant. There was something very artificial about the reactions of the non-existent studio audience. Yes, canned laughter, and done very badly. Which is particularly odd since, as far as I can remember, Malay variety shows of this ilk don't make use of it, at least, not nowadays.

In fact, part of the enjoyment of this kind of show is the very distinct quality of the audience response - often raucous, and over-the-top in a likably extreme sort of way. The sound of people having a genuinely uncomplicatedly good time. The performances call for it being profoundly unsubtle, something akin to the healthily daft traditions of English Music Hall of the old days or panto as it is now, and ever was.

The actual show, entitled J.K.K., I think, looked quite well done, but the falsity of the laughter made it close to unwatchable, at least for me, when I finally gave it a bit of attention. Must say, I was puzzled as to why an actual studio audience wasn't involved. I suppose they saved some money somehow, but at quite a cost, or so it seemed to me. 

Great Television

It's rare I get frustrated over missing something on the telly, but this morning I was reminded of the fact that sometimes I'm not able to watch material of real quality, essentially due to the pressures of work, and I'm the poorer for it.

I was getting some necessary marking done, before going off to rehearsals for our forthcoming show, and had put Sky News on in the background just to get a sense  of whether anything big was breaking in the bigger world. In fact, it wasn't exactly news that was on, but a documentary on the Chernobyl disaster, obviously drawing on the interest sparked by the recent dramatization for tv of the event. In fact, it incorporated footage from the show into its narrative of what took place, though it was dominated by shots of the desolation of Chernobyl and environs today and interviews with survivors. Rightly no cheesy voice-overs were used as the survivors told their disturbing, moving tales, with just subtitles to assist. But since I was marking I couldn't really follow anything. I kept pulling myself away from the scripts, usually on completing a paragraph, to try and get the gist of the programme, but this was highly unsatisfactory.

It was brilliant, compelling stuff. Totally gripping, except I couldn't afford to be gripped. And the same was true, I remembered, of the dramatization. I watched a chunk of the last episode knowing it was so good that one day I'd sit and watch the whole series. But when that day will be, I sadly know not.