Monkey in the Wilderness

I need to sleep more. This means less gallivanting around after school trying to see everything because I’m keen. Half-dead, sleep-deprived Nikesh becomes grumpy Nikesh, and grumpy Nikesh is no fun for anyone. (Of course, once I’ve caught up on sleep I’ll completely ignore this and go nuts again.)

Saw Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead on Tuesday, which was brilliant. It’s worth going for Philip Seymour Hoffman’s performance alone, but the film as a whole has great pace and is a bleak, tense depiction of the horrible things human beings will do to each other because of greed. At first I thought the structure was a bit weak, jumping around between past and present, but the more I reflect on it the more I warm to it. I have a feeling that when we get round to doing Greek tragedy at school (next year) I might need to watch this again. The title of the film comes from a great little Irish proverb: “May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you’re dead.”

Didn’t get round to seeing Dead Wedding on Wednesday in the end, because of my aforementioned state of living-deadness this week. And now I feel bad, because it got a great review over at Culture Wars. Ah well, on the plus side I saved some money. And watched Lost instead.

Last week I went to see Paso Doble at the Barbican, which, after all the press coverage, was a little underwhelming. Two guys messing around with clay onstage was amusing, and while it was certainly interesting to see this performance art piece rather than merely viewing the artists’ finished product, I couldn’t really take away any lasting impression from it. It disappeared a little bit up its own art.

I also saw a preview performance of The Lover/The Collection at the Comedy Theatre, after the Old Vic/New Voices deal allowed me to nab a £45 ticket in the dress circle for only £12. I know very little about Pinter, having never read or seen any of his plays, and seeing as we’re meant to be studying him next year at school I figured this might help give an insight into what makes Pinter so brilliant.

Not a lot, on the strength of this double bill. Or at least, not much of substance. The evening seemed a little too twee and safe for my liking, very much suited to a West End audience who were happy to chuckle away during those famous Pinter pauses, which tended to follow after lines that didn’t strike me as particulary hilarious. That isn’t to say the plays weren’t funny, or good. I just couldn’t help thinking there was underlying darkness to them that never really got a chance to break through – especially in The Lover. I’m always reading about Pinter being celebrated as a writer of comic menace. It’s a shame that this production chose to focus on the former at the expense of the latter.

I read my first Eugene O’Neill play at the weekend – The Hairy Ape – and thought it was great. I haven’t really read much American drama apart from the Tennessee Williams that I studied for A Level, and there were definite similarities between the two, especially in the incredibly detailed, poetic stage directions. O’Neill’s Yank struck me as a kind of tragic version of Williams’ Stanley Kowalski from A Streetcar Named Desire. I couldn’t help recalling the brilliant The Brothers Size at the Young Vic when I was reading The Hairy Ape and thinking it would benefit from the same kind of approach.

Also saw Sweeney Todd at the cinema with me mum. A little underwhelming. I thought it was fantastic visually, but the songs never really held me. It was a bit like Sleepy Hollow with more gore and some songs chucked in. Whereas I watched Hairspray and thought “I bet the stage version would be brilliant”, whilst watching Sweeney Todd I found myself thinking “I wonder if the original is any better?”

Coming up: Dead Wedding at the Barbican, White Boy at the Soho, and hopefully I have time to squeeze in a viewing of Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.

Oh, and I’ve started watching Lost again from where I fell off ages ago: a third of the way through Season Two. I think I might get hooked again. Which is probably just as well seeing as J.J. Abrams’ weirdfest Cloverfield is coming here very soon.

Anyone remember this sketch from Goodness Gracious Me? Anyway, this post came about after I had to read Chekhov’s The Proposal (homework for school) and started thinking how Indian the whole thing was. Hypochondriacal bachelor. Self-pitying father. Ebullient daughter. Three ludicrous characters, all greedy, all ready to argue over nothing at the drop of a hat. Classic Indian domestic drama, and probably a lot more fun to watch than a lot of straight Chekhov (okay, massive generalisation, but the last I saw was Trevor Nunn’s The Seagull, which didn’t do much to convince me that old Anton is one of those great writers for all times). I googled “Indian Chekhov” to see what else was out there. Quite a lot of interesting comparisons between famous Indian directors and writers, as it happens. I really liked this blog post though, which suggests that the atmosphere of “clenched teeth compromise” that pervades India is distinctly Chekhovian.

Indian Shakespeare is another thing that interests me, and Jatinder Verma’s excellently-written article in the Guardian got me all excited about Tara Arts’ production of The Tempest. I missed it when they toured it the first time round, but fully intend to see now that it has returned to London.

And to (tenuously) continue the India/Western classics theme, The Stage reports that Parminder Nagra is going to star with Ray Winstone in an ITV adaptation of The Changeling. Potentially awesome.

Tonight I took my mum to see A Christmas Carol (Ikrismas Kherol) at the Young Vic, and it was brilliant. It was a fantastic, South African production of a traditional English story, and it was stuffed with great images and visual ideas, and loads of great music and singing. There was so much heart and passion from the cast – Mum asked me afterwards whether this was their first performance or not because there was so much emotion on their faces at the curtain call. The same company are also doing The Magic Flute (Impempe Yomlingo), which is now sold out at the Young Vic, but has done so well that it’s transferring to the West End. If it’s as good as what I saw tonight (I’ve heard it’s better) I’ll definitely fork out to go and see it. Two really good shows in two nights. I’m very chuffed (another cheap £2 programme, too).

Before we went, we watched U-Carmen e-Khayelitsha, a South African interpretation of the opera Carmen, made by the same company behind the Young Vic double-bill. I’ve had the DVD knocking around at home for a couple of years, but never got round to watching it, so I figured today was as good a time as any. I have to be honest and say I didn’t appreciate it as much as A Christmas Carol, but that’s probably because I know nothing about opera, whereas the Dickens story is much more familiar to me. Still, U-Carmen had the same distinctly South African spirit to it, and I enjoyed watching it. i recognised a lot of the music from Carmen even though I’ve never seen or heard the opera. I’m still not sure if I’m ready to go and see an opera yet, but who knows – fours years ago I decided I was going to be an investment banker, and look how that turned out.

There are some interesting candidates jostling for the space on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. The idea behind the burnt-out car is nice and reactionary, but I don’t think the pigeon-feeders would immediately think “Oooh, the spoils of our dodgy war on terror” if they saw a knackered car. I thought Antony Gormley’s idea was a bit lazy at first, but then I thought – theatre on a plinth! There could be a whole therieth of Plinth Playth.The ‘Make Art Not War’ sign has a nice message, but looks tacky. And the Guardian was a bit sniffy about Tracey Emin’s meerkats, but I say why not? People get meerkats. Meerkats are cute. Now, if Emin planned to mount anti-pigeon lasers on the meerkat, that would seal my vote.

Also, Guillermo del Toro is rumoured to be interested in directing the last Harry Potter film. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH! (that’s a good noise). Never mind that I was pretty bored by the book by the time I finally got to the end of it, I’d watch Guillermo del Toro direct Bratz the Musical III if he decided to do it. Although, Guillermo, if you’re reading this, Empire is right, you should really sign on for The Hobbit instead before New Line goes mad and gives it to Brett Ratner.

Just went to see Statement of Regret at the National, and I loved it. I’d read a few reviews that complained that it was a bit too overloaded with ideas. Well, it certainly demanded a high level of concentration, but that’s only because it’s dealing with big issues that are not often approached in the theatre (or at least, not at the National). I think that’s A Good Thing. And yes, it was about ideas, and the discussion of ideas, but it was also a great story, fizzing with bitchy putdowns and powerful outbursts, and full of personal conflicts to complement the debate.

I was reminded of a comment about Roy William’s Fallout on the Guardian theatre blog: “to simply describe it as a play about black-on-black gun crime is as stupidly reductive as describing Hamlet as a play about Dane-on-Dane violence.” The issue of how black people deal with the legacy of slavery was clearly an important theme in Statement of Regret, but it would have been a much weaker play if this was not tied in with a story about fathers and sons, and about men struggling with their own personal, familial heritage (there was a brillliant twist right towards the end which gave me one of those fantastic “Ooooooh, shit!” moments I normally associate with films like The Sixth Sense).

I also really liked the way that problems were often shown from contrasting perspectives. For example, the protagonist, Kwaku Mackenzie, is at one point criticised for choosing to take a “slave name” (Kwaku) to replace the one he was born with (Derek). Later on, it is revealed that one of his close friends has taken the opposite step: trading his African name for an English one in order to integrate into society more effectively.

This was my trip to the theatre in 2008, and it was good modern drama – extremely current, unafraid to pull its punches and buzzing with ideas that gave me plenty to think about on my way home (as did the programme, which was great value for £2). Shameless plug: Clifford Samuel is an ex-Guildhall student, and he’s very good!

I look forward to Kwame’s next show, Let There Be Love, on near me at the Tricycle in Kilburn, which he’s also directing, and which features Joseph Marcell (that’s Geoffrey from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air!)