I'm not sure why I was so disparaging about the hilarious fireplace, with hindsight it added a delightful element of absurdity and in the moment, I laughed with joy, not critical cynicism.
The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
ADC Theatre, 2007
Phallic unicorns, aubergine mink coats, growling teddy-lions and odes to sticky confectionary; all this and many more delights have puffed their way from the Edinburgh Fringe to the ADC Theatre in Charlie Arrowsmith’s rendering of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. In his programme notes, Arrowsmith cannot make up his mind whether he would “rather be the child caught in the spell or the magician casting it”. The change of space has certainly brought new challenges to this production, but has he mastered the role of the theatrical magician or simply found himself caught in the spell of the venue’s spectacular tricks and gimmicks?
Children and students of Cambridge were clearly delighted to see this popular fairy tale of childhood escapism and adventure on stage, as we are spirited away from the plum-cheeked world of WWII evacuees to the fierce wonder of Narnia, where beavers knit cardigans and omnipotent lions leap through the sky. The orchestra, whose accompaniment was even slicker than in Edinburgh, is exposed to the audience when we reach Narnia. This was a smart move, drawing attention to the impossibility of staging the story without acknowledging the artifice of theatre. It is a shame, however, that this aspect of stagecraft did not steer the production throughout, as much potential for transposing the fantastic to the reality of the stage was lost in unnecessary backdrops and uneventful scene changes, such as Professor Kirk’s fireplace that briefly appears behind him and is made laughably redundant as soon as he says: “Welcome to my study”. The machinery of the ADC has compromised the welcome simplicity of Edinburgh and leaves the concept half-baked and unsatisfying.
The slog in Edinburgh has evidently paid off and there were thrilling moments of group splendour, most notably in the menacing ‘Come to the Carnival’ number when Aslan is slaughtered. Much of the physical performance was convincing; David Walton’s Mr.Tumnus sustained a wonderful satyr’s shuffle, but, as with the design, there could have been so much more, as the audience were short-changed by an uninspiring giant teddy-bear when Aslan (Sami Abu-Wardeh) plods across the stage. Striking performances came primarily from satanic characters: a wickedly sassy White Witch (Megan Prosser), a pleasingly repellent dwarf (Lowrie Amies) and Rob Frimston’s dead-pan comic timing and sour flippancy as the prodigal brother, Edmund.
Thanks to the enthusiasm of the cast, excited gasps and applause from the audience proved that this production has managed to catch many a child in the spell of C.S.Lewis’s story. However, excluding certain new ‘explosive’ additions to the set, the show neither fully exposed its machinery nor entirely struck the audience with the smoke and mirrors of its magic, creating clumsy moments in an otherwise vibrant and entertaining children’s show.
Wednesday, 25 June 2008
1984
A review for The Cambridge Student. I never really liked reviewing other students. Our constraints on time and general quality were obviously far more restricted than in other theatrical environments. But as I had also seen some awe inspiring theatre at University there was some kind of yardstick that I assumed would warrant me the use of horrible words like 'chemistry' or 'failure.' We all have to cut our teeth somewhere.
1984
ADC Theatre, 2008
It’s a shame that last week’s Motortown didn’t have an audience as large as this one. Enthusiasm for the opening night of 1984 at the ADC is testament to the inevitable nostalgia that swells through any intelligent mind, fresh from adolescence, whenever George Orwell’s masterpiece of dystopian horror is mentioned. As Winston Smith slurps his ‘Victory Coffee’ on stage, US troops are being served their ‘Victory Fries’ in Iraq. Orwell’s prophetic imagination never ceases to find itself frighteningly relevant to the world of today. This obviously poses a challenge to those who want to resurface this familiar text on the stage, a challenge which, as Emily Cook recognises in her programme notes, should avoid clichés and the obvious (i.e. CCTV cameras) whilst engaging its audience by making it “think” and “feel”. Unfortunately, the production, despite its inspired aesthetic, failed to grip the audience enough to do justice to Orwell’s important novel.
Becky Homer’s design was unmistakably the star of the show. 1984’s theme of the repetitive ‘branding’ of the mind through doublespeak is cleverly employed through the simple and effective colour scheme of red and white, a ‘brand’ of design that creeps into the audience’s consciousness from the publicity posters to the haunting minimalism of Room 101. As a large screen informs us that “Big Brother is watching”, the characters below recall the dictums, “War is Peace” or “Freedom is Slavery”, which are draped in red and white above them, we can’t shake off the feeling that no one on stage is safe to think freely. Winston and Julia’s secret hideout is assembled without a blackout which presents it as a dangerously exposed and easily destructible space physically mirroring the fragile optimism of their illegal affair. It was a pity that Ed Rice and Jenny Kenyon, promising in their individual performances, were unable to provide these scenes with enough of a convincing chemistry for us to care. Dan Martin brought some welcome humour to his snotty and foppish portrayal of Parsons. Rice’s Winston Smith contained flashes of inspiration with a characteristic hunch and effortlessly aged expression, as did Dave Walton who brought a sober and chilling menace to his O’Brian. But as a group there was an evident lack of tenacity and variation which dragged the production down to a generally sluggish and laboured level of performance.
In spite of the inventive staging, which certainly helped us to “think”, the execution of the piece failed to stir our emotions enough for us to care about the protagonists. We might as well just read the newspapers if we want a chilling portrait of our times.
1984
ADC Theatre, 2008
It’s a shame that last week’s Motortown didn’t have an audience as large as this one. Enthusiasm for the opening night of 1984 at the ADC is testament to the inevitable nostalgia that swells through any intelligent mind, fresh from adolescence, whenever George Orwell’s masterpiece of dystopian horror is mentioned. As Winston Smith slurps his ‘Victory Coffee’ on stage, US troops are being served their ‘Victory Fries’ in Iraq. Orwell’s prophetic imagination never ceases to find itself frighteningly relevant to the world of today. This obviously poses a challenge to those who want to resurface this familiar text on the stage, a challenge which, as Emily Cook recognises in her programme notes, should avoid clichés and the obvious (i.e. CCTV cameras) whilst engaging its audience by making it “think” and “feel”. Unfortunately, the production, despite its inspired aesthetic, failed to grip the audience enough to do justice to Orwell’s important novel.
Becky Homer’s design was unmistakably the star of the show. 1984’s theme of the repetitive ‘branding’ of the mind through doublespeak is cleverly employed through the simple and effective colour scheme of red and white, a ‘brand’ of design that creeps into the audience’s consciousness from the publicity posters to the haunting minimalism of Room 101. As a large screen informs us that “Big Brother is watching”, the characters below recall the dictums, “War is Peace” or “Freedom is Slavery”, which are draped in red and white above them, we can’t shake off the feeling that no one on stage is safe to think freely. Winston and Julia’s secret hideout is assembled without a blackout which presents it as a dangerously exposed and easily destructible space physically mirroring the fragile optimism of their illegal affair. It was a pity that Ed Rice and Jenny Kenyon, promising in their individual performances, were unable to provide these scenes with enough of a convincing chemistry for us to care. Dan Martin brought some welcome humour to his snotty and foppish portrayal of Parsons. Rice’s Winston Smith contained flashes of inspiration with a characteristic hunch and effortlessly aged expression, as did Dave Walton who brought a sober and chilling menace to his O’Brian. But as a group there was an evident lack of tenacity and variation which dragged the production down to a generally sluggish and laboured level of performance.
In spite of the inventive staging, which certainly helped us to “think”, the execution of the piece failed to stir our emotions enough for us to care about the protagonists. We might as well just read the newspapers if we want a chilling portrait of our times.
Othello (Grandage, 2008)
A 'critical analysis' of this recent Othello I submitted for my MA application. At least it got me a place.
Othello (Dir. Michael Grandage)
Donmar Warehouse, Jan 3rd 2008
The casting of Grandage’s Othello may have created a sell-out production but it gains artistic merit by not ‘selling out’ to the popularity of its Hollywood celebrities. Here is an ensemble piece that effectively weaves together the cinematic approaches of McGregor and Ejiofor with the more theatrical styles of other actors, most notably the younger Tom Hiddleston and Edward Bennet as Cassio and Rodrigo. Michael Billington suggests in The Guardian (4.12.07) that this Othello can be viewed as a ‘refreshingly classical, aesthetically harmonious production’. It is ‘refreshingly classical’ because its approach recalls ‘classical’ themes such as honour, nobility and dignity, traits which all of Iago’s victims, even, to some extent, Rodrigo, possess in this production. This is refreshing, not because we are, as Billington goes on to say, seeing a ‘play restored to its seventeenth century origins’, but rediscovering these universal themes through a distinctly contemporary production.
London theatre critics have tended to begin their reviews by expressing their disappointment with Ewan McGregor’s Iago, going on to conclude with a passage of surprised praise for Chiwetel Ejiofor’s ‘superlative Moor of Venice’.[1] This critical approach is understandable in view of the post-Romantic history of interpretation that Iago has accumulated over the centuries, and since this once unconventional prioritising of character has become a tradition, it is inevitable that the more conservative critic will, as Charles Spencer does in The Telegraph, find their expectations of a show-stealing Iago unfulfilled and reduce their argument to an assortment of ‘this character ought to be...’ clauses.[2] By bringing to the production his own interpretation of Othello, in which Iago is unquestionably the ‘motor’ that ‘powers the plot, reducing the noble Moor to savagery’, McGregor fails to deliver Spencer’s crystallised image of the villain. The other expectation of McGregor, this time primarily from the archetypal schoolgirl, is that he will live up to his mythical stature as a film star and intoxicate the 250 seats of the Donmar Warehouse with his celestial presence. On both accounts Grandage has managed to avoid these expectations which not only makes the performances refreshing but is an apt real-life metaphor for one of his central themes: characters that find themselves unable to sustain invisible, and sometimes unobtainable ideals. Cassio’s crisis in II.iii, carefully and earnestly construed by Hiddleston, is at the heart of this production:
I have lost my reputation, I have lost the immortal part of myself—and what remains is bestial.
This anxiety of Christian morality has been replaced in the 21st century by the anxiety of the celebrity. The Western polis seems to care more about its fallen or fallible celebrities than political protagonists; an issue that is implicit in a production that has two Hollywood actors playing a General and his Ancient of the Venetian army. McGregor’s refusal (or inability) to dominate the Donmar with a mystical performance appropriately questions much of the eager audience’s preconceptions of what Othello is and what a celebrity actor should be.
The overlapping of the cinematic and the theatrical is present throughout the production and playfully fuses the realism and expressionism that are present in both forms. Instead of diminishing the play’s theatricality, the cinematic elements help to reinstate the power of its live performance. Incidental music occurs throughout and is almost patronising to the audience when a subtle rumbling accompanies Iago’s monologues or Cassio’s uncomfortable succumbing to the devil drink, but its presence is a part of the external force of nature that encircle the victims of this Tragedy; the wind that knocks at Desdemona’s chamber smoothly blends into the ethereal music of her Willow song and draws a parallel between the manipulative tools of the cinema and those of Nature.
Grandage finds an effective balance between subtlety and clout, for example, the double act of Rodrigo and Iago, no longer the fop and the villain, characterises McGregor’s Iago with more anxiety than control. Edward Bennet’s voice is noticeably thicker than McGregor’s and commands more attention than McGregor’s soft diction, but rather than being a hindrance this helps to create a challenge for Iago. In IV.ii Bennet delivers his complaint, ‘I do not find that thou deal’st justly with me…’, more like an embarrassed gentleman than a gullible dupe; accompanying the mistrusting line ‘Is that true?’ with a sharp, pointed finger towards Iago. This scene is refreshing with its sense of danger for both characters and also demonstrates the differences between actors of the cinema and the theatre. This contrast is also at work between Cassio and Iago in the ‘reputation’ scene when the conviction of Hiddleston’s performance, the strong timbre of his voice and his defeated self-loathing, overshadows McGregor’s subsequent monologue which is hidden beneath his soft toned delivery. Softer tones are by no means anathema to Othello and one of the principle merits of Ejiofor’s Othello is his masterful command of silence, pauses and a noble tenderness that make lines like ‘I’ll tear her all to pieces’ all the more earnest for his restraint; the contrast with an audience’s preconceived ideas of, or familiarity with, savage and coarsely delivered Othellos makes his performance stand out. The effect of McGregor’s underplaying, regardless of any weakness as a Shakespearean actor, pushes Iago further into the shadows and, sustaining the productions’ concern with external, natural forces, makes the effect on his victims an external force that they cannot escape from. Othello’s epileptic fit is anticipated by involuntarily trembling hands and following a quiet and introspective succession of ‘handkerchief, confessions, handkerchief’ Ejiofor falls to the floor as if suddenly knocked out by the external force of jealousy. The dignity that Bennet gives to his Rodrigo makes his duping appear out of character, as does Hiddleston’s succumbing to drink. These performances are not inconsistent and inaccurate but, together, they display a terrifying drama of forces that cannot be controlled and threaten to defeat the most honourable of personages.
The Tragedy of Othello, in Grandage’s production, is about an incompatibility of private, domestic ideals with public duty, a discomfort that is compellingly paralleled with the move from the immortal and widely viewed medium of the cinema with the risky and ephemeral field of the theatre.
[1] Susannah Clap, The Observer (9.12.07)
[2] Charles Spencer, The Telegraph (5.12.07)
Othello (Dir. Michael Grandage)
Donmar Warehouse, Jan 3rd 2008
The casting of Grandage’s Othello may have created a sell-out production but it gains artistic merit by not ‘selling out’ to the popularity of its Hollywood celebrities. Here is an ensemble piece that effectively weaves together the cinematic approaches of McGregor and Ejiofor with the more theatrical styles of other actors, most notably the younger Tom Hiddleston and Edward Bennet as Cassio and Rodrigo. Michael Billington suggests in The Guardian (4.12.07) that this Othello can be viewed as a ‘refreshingly classical, aesthetically harmonious production’. It is ‘refreshingly classical’ because its approach recalls ‘classical’ themes such as honour, nobility and dignity, traits which all of Iago’s victims, even, to some extent, Rodrigo, possess in this production. This is refreshing, not because we are, as Billington goes on to say, seeing a ‘play restored to its seventeenth century origins’, but rediscovering these universal themes through a distinctly contemporary production.
London theatre critics have tended to begin their reviews by expressing their disappointment with Ewan McGregor’s Iago, going on to conclude with a passage of surprised praise for Chiwetel Ejiofor’s ‘superlative Moor of Venice’.[1] This critical approach is understandable in view of the post-Romantic history of interpretation that Iago has accumulated over the centuries, and since this once unconventional prioritising of character has become a tradition, it is inevitable that the more conservative critic will, as Charles Spencer does in The Telegraph, find their expectations of a show-stealing Iago unfulfilled and reduce their argument to an assortment of ‘this character ought to be...’ clauses.[2] By bringing to the production his own interpretation of Othello, in which Iago is unquestionably the ‘motor’ that ‘powers the plot, reducing the noble Moor to savagery’, McGregor fails to deliver Spencer’s crystallised image of the villain. The other expectation of McGregor, this time primarily from the archetypal schoolgirl, is that he will live up to his mythical stature as a film star and intoxicate the 250 seats of the Donmar Warehouse with his celestial presence. On both accounts Grandage has managed to avoid these expectations which not only makes the performances refreshing but is an apt real-life metaphor for one of his central themes: characters that find themselves unable to sustain invisible, and sometimes unobtainable ideals. Cassio’s crisis in II.iii, carefully and earnestly construed by Hiddleston, is at the heart of this production:
I have lost my reputation, I have lost the immortal part of myself—and what remains is bestial.
This anxiety of Christian morality has been replaced in the 21st century by the anxiety of the celebrity. The Western polis seems to care more about its fallen or fallible celebrities than political protagonists; an issue that is implicit in a production that has two Hollywood actors playing a General and his Ancient of the Venetian army. McGregor’s refusal (or inability) to dominate the Donmar with a mystical performance appropriately questions much of the eager audience’s preconceptions of what Othello is and what a celebrity actor should be.
The overlapping of the cinematic and the theatrical is present throughout the production and playfully fuses the realism and expressionism that are present in both forms. Instead of diminishing the play’s theatricality, the cinematic elements help to reinstate the power of its live performance. Incidental music occurs throughout and is almost patronising to the audience when a subtle rumbling accompanies Iago’s monologues or Cassio’s uncomfortable succumbing to the devil drink, but its presence is a part of the external force of nature that encircle the victims of this Tragedy; the wind that knocks at Desdemona’s chamber smoothly blends into the ethereal music of her Willow song and draws a parallel between the manipulative tools of the cinema and those of Nature.
Grandage finds an effective balance between subtlety and clout, for example, the double act of Rodrigo and Iago, no longer the fop and the villain, characterises McGregor’s Iago with more anxiety than control. Edward Bennet’s voice is noticeably thicker than McGregor’s and commands more attention than McGregor’s soft diction, but rather than being a hindrance this helps to create a challenge for Iago. In IV.ii Bennet delivers his complaint, ‘I do not find that thou deal’st justly with me…’, more like an embarrassed gentleman than a gullible dupe; accompanying the mistrusting line ‘Is that true?’ with a sharp, pointed finger towards Iago. This scene is refreshing with its sense of danger for both characters and also demonstrates the differences between actors of the cinema and the theatre. This contrast is also at work between Cassio and Iago in the ‘reputation’ scene when the conviction of Hiddleston’s performance, the strong timbre of his voice and his defeated self-loathing, overshadows McGregor’s subsequent monologue which is hidden beneath his soft toned delivery. Softer tones are by no means anathema to Othello and one of the principle merits of Ejiofor’s Othello is his masterful command of silence, pauses and a noble tenderness that make lines like ‘I’ll tear her all to pieces’ all the more earnest for his restraint; the contrast with an audience’s preconceived ideas of, or familiarity with, savage and coarsely delivered Othellos makes his performance stand out. The effect of McGregor’s underplaying, regardless of any weakness as a Shakespearean actor, pushes Iago further into the shadows and, sustaining the productions’ concern with external, natural forces, makes the effect on his victims an external force that they cannot escape from. Othello’s epileptic fit is anticipated by involuntarily trembling hands and following a quiet and introspective succession of ‘handkerchief, confessions, handkerchief’ Ejiofor falls to the floor as if suddenly knocked out by the external force of jealousy. The dignity that Bennet gives to his Rodrigo makes his duping appear out of character, as does Hiddleston’s succumbing to drink. These performances are not inconsistent and inaccurate but, together, they display a terrifying drama of forces that cannot be controlled and threaten to defeat the most honourable of personages.
The Tragedy of Othello, in Grandage’s production, is about an incompatibility of private, domestic ideals with public duty, a discomfort that is compellingly paralleled with the move from the immortal and widely viewed medium of the cinema with the risky and ephemeral field of the theatre.
[1] Susannah Clap, The Observer (9.12.07)
[2] Charles Spencer, The Telegraph (5.12.07)
Othello (Edinburgh, 2007)
Othello
Ctoo, Edinburgh, 2007
“A white Othello? How are they going to pull that off this time?” It is the inevitable challenge that any company, daring to put on this play with an all white cast, have to face. This semi-professional youth theatre company from Kent have opted for a bold approach by reinventing not only the Moor’s skin colour but the play that he inhabits. Translated into “The Shade”, Othello’s “thick lips” are now his “red eyes” and instead of “bright swords”, the battles in Venice and Cyprus are fought with “hard guns”. A disfigured albino is now the valiant general of the Venetian army; a brutal and salacious invading force that inevitably recalls the scummy dregs of the British military. On the whole it is a very convincing rendition and, aside from a few painful faults, the audience were treated to a refreshing and relevant night’s entertainment.
The director has found every means to entrench this play with the violent and promiscuous haze of an army with nothing to do, Sam Mendes recent film, Jarhead, provides a similar parallel. From Iago’s tempting of Rodrigo with filthy top-shelf porno, to the ear-bleeding soundtrack of metal music, the audience are engrossed in an immediately lascivious and darker world than we already expect in productions of the play.
From the fiercely charged and sparsely lit opening, it is clear that this company know what they are doing. They are rightfully rapid in their delivery of the verse, perhaps a little too rapid, but more often than not they can be forgiven by the convincing and unique power of their performances; such as the lanky and docile Rodrigo or an unexpectedly cunning and ambiguous Cassio. Iago has none of the moral ambiguity that some modern productions might opt for, he is quite simply a malicious bastard, jealous and spiteful towards the “Shade” and unforgiving in his vulgar brutality. He is given many brilliantly vicious moments, most memorably when he unscrupulously pockets the scattered money that Othello throws at Emilia in the “brothel” scene. The red-eyed Othello is both strong and uniquely lizard-like in his characterisation and would almost be entirely believable if the Desdemona was not so weak; a dreadfully plain performance with a delivery that resembled a toddler wagging her tongue. Unfortunately this single flaw dragged the production down and left me unconvinced and dissatisfied with such a mis-matched performance. But misfired casting aside, this was an impressive and strong production that breathed a new and brutal life into this challenging and difficult play.
Six Women Standing Against A White Wall
A review from last year's Edinburgh Fringe. The problem with this piece of writing is its use of the 1st person plural-as it was a performance specifically about the individual's response to theatre, how can I possibly say that 'we' feel anything at all? Just take 'we' as a royal 'we.'
Six Women Standing Against A White Wall
Little Dove Theatre Arts
Csoco, Edinburgh, 2007
Edinburgh fringe. As a spectator of dozens of shows in intimate spaces where performers are forced to desperately seek and gain your attention, it is our responsibility to react and respond. Remember that diabolical Julius Caesar when you deliberately let your buttons clang against the metal chairs whilst making your proud exit; or those loud, slow, measured claps you delivered as tears streamed down your cheeks after watching a 50 year-old woman, tap-dancing in a wheelchair. The overwhelming amount of performers on show leads to an overwhelming amount of reactions; often we are moved, frequently we are indifferent and at times we allow ourselves to enter our safe cocoons and pretend that, as a member of the audience, we have the right to be invisible whilst a hammy Brutus or fist-chompingly unfunny comedian bears his inescapably naked soul for an hour. Six Women Standing Against A White Wall demolishes all theatrical cocoons and boldly reinstates the roots of theatre; for theatre to happen it needs an audience and by requiring them to participate we learn, and feel, how it is a profoundly mutual experience.
The concept is simple. Two times a day, six-women (on a rota of over twenty performers), encased in the characteristic white powder of Butoh dancers, slowly and ritualistically file their way through the room and take their places before, you guessed it, a big white wall. Ironically, a rope barrier hangs between the audience and the performers, reassuringly accompanied by the sign “Please Do Touch”. We are immediately reminded of Dadaist anti-art and delight in our self satisfied recognition of everything that the performance is subverting. To an eclectic assortment of music, the women stand side by side, quivering and shaking as if their bodies were about to unleash some terrible silent beast whilst they plead for touch, mouths open, arms outstretched. Once the initial satisfaction of seeing something unique at the Fringe has resided within the audience, we are left with the horrifying prospect of responsibility; it soon becomes a test of endurance. “Are they really going to stand there like this for a whole half-hour if no one gets up and touches them?” The answer is: yes, they would. But the real question is “Are we really going to sit here accidently spilling wine over the floor like this for a whole half-hour and not touch them?” The answer could, in theory, be yes, but as an audience, we are terrified of collective embarrassment and, although it took a good ten minutes, we finally gave in to our responsibility to reciprocate. The only way to truly experience and ‘understand’ this show is to go up and touch the women. When you throw away any anxieties about possible taboos you might find yourself committing, you realise that ‘touch’ and the physiological need for touch is essentially innocent and fundamental to being human. The women absorb everything that you have to offer them through touch; the less you do the less they respond. It is up to you to navigate the performance which becomes an ultimately personal and intimate experience between yourself and the performer; something that all good theatre should give us with as we participate in the ritual of performance.
Tuesday, 24 June 2008
A Case for Buster Keaton
This article was written for Lady Clare (2008) Clare College, Cambridge's annual magazine. Here it is complete with its original first paragraph which had to be cut from the final publication due to length.
Luis Buñuel once described Buster Keaton’s 1927 film, College, as ‘beautiful as a bathroom, vital as a Hispano.’ I don’t really know what this means, but as a sample of the abundant surrealist praise for Keaton’s films in the twenties, it signifies his unique place in 20th century art—universally appealing to the modern consciousness, but perpetually obscured by those who want to juxtapose their aesthetics onto his. In a short film from 1920, The Goat, Keaton is accidentally photographed instead of a notorious serial killer who subsequently escapes from prison. In the place of Dead Shot Dan, Buster is plastered all over town and printed in the newspapers—one glance at his incriminating face and ladies flee in terror, bounty-hunters shoot their guns at him and the traditional automatic cops raise their truncheons. Poor Buster, he’s not the man they think he is.
Yet, it is no coincidence that Buster Keaton has been used, misused, reshaped and stolen by the most important artists of the last century, from the Breton to Beckett. Garcia Lorca’s early surrealist ‘play’, El Paseo de Buster Keaton (1925), follows ‘Buster Keaton’ through a promenade of infanticide, floating bicycles, straw-hat-eating black men and a woman with ‘celluloid eyes’ and crocodile shoes. It is an ‘impossible’ scenario, more of a reverie than a play, and its extrusion of gravity and logic, such as a one-dimensional bicycle that ‘can go into books and stretch itself out into bread ovens,’ reads like a pataphysical parody of Keaton’s grounded use of physics. Lorca’s marriage of Keaton with surrealism was undoubtedly inspired by films like The Playhouse (1921), which uses spliced shots to create nine performing Busters, and Sherlock Jr. (1924), perhaps one of the most important films of the 1920’s, in which he walks into a cinema screen. But both of these films, as unreal and inventive as they are, exploit the trickery of the medium rather than create illusions. Like the clay horse that he sits on to hide from his pursuers in The Goat, Keaton’s work is predominantly ruled by gravity and will collapse, however fantastically, within the physical logistics of reality.
His most categorical tryst with gravity is the famous “Falling Window” gag. Steve McQueen won the 1997 Turner Prize for his film, Deadpan, which recreates the sight of a wall that falls on the unsuspecting clown, saved by an aptly positioned window-frame. This iconographic trick, used in three of Keaton’s films, has been variously replicated such as in Disney’s Aladdin and, most recently, in the US-sticom, Arrested Development. From a sting-and-pulley operated dinner table in The Scarecrow (1920) to a miraculous and heroic transformation of domestic objects into a rapid assortment of sporting tools in College, Keaton proved himself to be a master of the fantastic and the ridiculous, but in a way that remained truthful to reality, the objects and the spaces his characters encounter.
In Neighbours (1920) the majority of the film’s action takes place in a symmetrical environment—two tall houses with a fence and a telephone pole in between them. The plot revolves around the musty comedic trope of young lovers whose parents violently disapprove of their romantic entanglement, but by creating a space that mirrors the conflict of the plot, Keaton welds the film with an extra layer of physical meaning. As he leaps out of a window, to escape from his fiancé’s Neolithic father, Buster slides away on a clothes line back into his house. But on re-entering the house he finds himself diving headfirst down a stairwell, out through the ground-floor window and onto another clothes line, propelling him back to where he started, hurtling into his future father-in-law’s stomach. The brute force of patriarchal aggression has trapped the rebellion of youth into a perpetual whirligig of graceful hazards, if they’re ever to get married they must escape. And they do, on top of a human ladder formed by two friends who appear simultaneously out of the windows.
As with all of Keaton’s films, it is this intricate, dangerous and fantastically realised dance with bodies, objects and spaces that tells stories and makes us laugh. Antonin Artaud once described Keaton’s ‘excitement of objects and forms’ as ‘the convulsions and surprises of a reality that seems to destroy itself with an irony in which you can hear a scream from the extremities of the mind.’ More technically ingenious than Chaplin, Buster Keaton, with his melancholic, deadpan face, plots a silent world that infuses reality with wonder, the banal with the fantastic and without an ounce of sentimentality, reveals the ceaseless machineries of human desires and impulses through his earnestly comic art.
Luis Buñuel once described Buster Keaton’s 1927 film, College, as ‘beautiful as a bathroom, vital as a Hispano.’ I don’t really know what this means, but as a sample of the abundant surrealist praise for Keaton’s films in the twenties, it signifies his unique place in 20th century art—universally appealing to the modern consciousness, but perpetually obscured by those who want to juxtapose their aesthetics onto his. In a short film from 1920, The Goat, Keaton is accidentally photographed instead of a notorious serial killer who subsequently escapes from prison. In the place of Dead Shot Dan, Buster is plastered all over town and printed in the newspapers—one glance at his incriminating face and ladies flee in terror, bounty-hunters shoot their guns at him and the traditional automatic cops raise their truncheons. Poor Buster, he’s not the man they think he is.
Yet, it is no coincidence that Buster Keaton has been used, misused, reshaped and stolen by the most important artists of the last century, from the Breton to Beckett. Garcia Lorca’s early surrealist ‘play’, El Paseo de Buster Keaton (1925), follows ‘Buster Keaton’ through a promenade of infanticide, floating bicycles, straw-hat-eating black men and a woman with ‘celluloid eyes’ and crocodile shoes. It is an ‘impossible’ scenario, more of a reverie than a play, and its extrusion of gravity and logic, such as a one-dimensional bicycle that ‘can go into books and stretch itself out into bread ovens,’ reads like a pataphysical parody of Keaton’s grounded use of physics. Lorca’s marriage of Keaton with surrealism was undoubtedly inspired by films like The Playhouse (1921), which uses spliced shots to create nine performing Busters, and Sherlock Jr. (1924), perhaps one of the most important films of the 1920’s, in which he walks into a cinema screen. But both of these films, as unreal and inventive as they are, exploit the trickery of the medium rather than create illusions. Like the clay horse that he sits on to hide from his pursuers in The Goat, Keaton’s work is predominantly ruled by gravity and will collapse, however fantastically, within the physical logistics of reality.
His most categorical tryst with gravity is the famous “Falling Window” gag. Steve McQueen won the 1997 Turner Prize for his film, Deadpan, which recreates the sight of a wall that falls on the unsuspecting clown, saved by an aptly positioned window-frame. This iconographic trick, used in three of Keaton’s films, has been variously replicated such as in Disney’s Aladdin and, most recently, in the US-sticom, Arrested Development. From a sting-and-pulley operated dinner table in The Scarecrow (1920) to a miraculous and heroic transformation of domestic objects into a rapid assortment of sporting tools in College, Keaton proved himself to be a master of the fantastic and the ridiculous, but in a way that remained truthful to reality, the objects and the spaces his characters encounter.
In Neighbours (1920) the majority of the film’s action takes place in a symmetrical environment—two tall houses with a fence and a telephone pole in between them. The plot revolves around the musty comedic trope of young lovers whose parents violently disapprove of their romantic entanglement, but by creating a space that mirrors the conflict of the plot, Keaton welds the film with an extra layer of physical meaning. As he leaps out of a window, to escape from his fiancé’s Neolithic father, Buster slides away on a clothes line back into his house. But on re-entering the house he finds himself diving headfirst down a stairwell, out through the ground-floor window and onto another clothes line, propelling him back to where he started, hurtling into his future father-in-law’s stomach. The brute force of patriarchal aggression has trapped the rebellion of youth into a perpetual whirligig of graceful hazards, if they’re ever to get married they must escape. And they do, on top of a human ladder formed by two friends who appear simultaneously out of the windows.
As with all of Keaton’s films, it is this intricate, dangerous and fantastically realised dance with bodies, objects and spaces that tells stories and makes us laugh. Antonin Artaud once described Keaton’s ‘excitement of objects and forms’ as ‘the convulsions and surprises of a reality that seems to destroy itself with an irony in which you can hear a scream from the extremities of the mind.’ More technically ingenious than Chaplin, Buster Keaton, with his melancholic, deadpan face, plots a silent world that infuses reality with wonder, the banal with the fantastic and without an ounce of sentimentality, reveals the ceaseless machineries of human desires and impulses through his earnestly comic art.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
