These are the shows I'm planning to see (so far) for September:
3 September (Wednesday): Matthew Bourne's Portrait of Dorian Grey - Sadler's Wells
12 September (Friday): Wayne Macgregor's Ignite festival at Covent Garden (this is over three days so I'll just go when I can manage).
15 September (Monday): The Pinter double header at the National, Landscape and A Slight Ache. The Whingers didn't care for Ache but that's no surprise - they're not major Pinter fans. Me, I love Pinter, and I like seeing two short plays back to back, so off I go.
16 September Tuesday: one of the Norman Conquest plays at the Old Vic. I'm not super enthused about this as I detested the last play I saw by Alan Ayckbourn (Absurd Person Singular, such a dud!), but it was an invitation from the Whingers so I said yes anyway.
17 September Wednesday: Zorro. This initially gave me The Phear, but the Whingers said it was great, so I'm going. (Actually it's a bit of a surprise that they said it was great, since they're far less enthusiastic than the average punter, but since they haven't let me down yet with their recommendations I'm going to give this thing a shot.)
19 September Thursday: Small Craft at the Arcola. I suspect this is just a ploy for me to go out and get more good Turkish food in Dalston, but, whatever, the people at the theater don't care why I come as long as I pay for my ticket (and I do like Tennessee Williams).
23 September Monday: Kamishibai theater at the Barbican. I like Japanese theater (this sounds like their version of Punch and Judy) and culture so I wouldn't want to miss this.
25 September Wednesday: supposedly a trip to the ROH to see Callisto, if I can find tickets I can afford.
30 September Tuesday: Stevie Wonder at the O2. It's a birthday present for my husband (and likely the most expensive night out we'll have all year, which is why I'm bothering to mention it).

Finally: October 1st is Merce Cunningham at the Barbican, and though it's not actually in September, I'm starting October with another long bout of being out of the country, so I thought I'd include it in this list. The last person I took with me to see Merce was apparently damaged by the experience ("Did you know it was going to be like that?") so I'm being more particular and sticking to going with my husband, who, like me, thinks that Merce is one of the true grand masters of modern dance - a living treasure of American culture - and we are excited that we can continue to watch his already excellent art evolving in real time.

Holy shit, and I just found out that Autumn: Osage County, the single play I've been most dying to see for the last year, is coming to the National in November! Heads will roll but I WILL see that show!

The Only Girl in the World is the story of the last woman killed by Jack the Ripper. When I took the London Walks Jack the Ripper tour last summer, I found the tale of this Mary Jane Kelly just extremely sad. She had a boyfriend; he, if I'm not mistaken, had just paid to get her out of the workhouse so they could live together; by all accounts they seemed to be trying to crawl their way out of poverty, fingernails against brick. The house they had lived in had been torn down (and is now a parking garage); the description was of a shoddy little building that probably couldn't hold the heat in to keep the tenants warm and roundly deserved to be replaced with something a little more solid. She seemed like she might have had a little bit of hope for her life, and certainly someone who missed her, and I found it heartbreaking that it was all taken away from her so quickly.

The play itself seems in many ways to be a character sketch of Mary Jane (Jennifer Kidd) and her boyfriend Joe Barnett (John Wark). Mary Jane is a bit of a drunk, quite rough, and very much aware that she needs to take care of herself in a world where no one can be relied on to take care of her - but she loves life enthusiastically and finds a lot of joy. Joe is a hardworking guy who is trying to just get by and is amazed by this gorgeous creature who has taken an interest in him; you can see where he would want to do anything to keep her happy.

The play makes it out that he's not aware of how she's been making a living and doesn't seem to focus too much on what happens to the money he had at the beginning of the play and winds up squandering. Mary doesn't come off as using him, but rather thoughtless about the fun they've been having; and when they run out of cash, while she pushes him to work, she also tries to deal with the situation reasonably. The extreme poverty of the era really seeps through, and the fact that once you slip off the ladder of respectability and trust and middle-classness, it's almost impossible to climb back out. Mary seems to mock Joe for his pretensions or attempts to not be dirt poor; Joe, whether he achieved the lowest rung or not, doesn't want to slip the rest of the way back off.

My fear was that this play was just going to be this terrible "Oh the spooky drama of the soon to be stabbed girl!" or some overly political "Prostitutes! No one treats them like people!" but instead it showed what I thought were two complicated, not-perfect people just trying to get by in a life that didn't have a lot of romance in it. The two saddest moments for me were when they quoted the prostitute (Dark Alice?) who'd been killed trying to make enough money to get a place to sleep for the night, who laughed as she went back into the night to make her few pence; and when Joe tried to make Mary stay in and she said (in with a bunch of other dialogue), "I'm hungry!" The point was made and it didn't need to be any stronger than it was.

Overall, quite a good show, and I'm really glad I made it all the way to the far east end of the London theater scene to catch this - and the dinner beforehand at 19 Numara Bos Cirrik was super tasty and a bargain at 30 quid for three people with leftovers.

(This review is for a performance that took place on Friday, May 23rd.)

Anyway, I studiously avoided reading anything that might give me too much of a clue as to the actual plot of the show beforehand as I enjoy having a show unfold and surprise me - I figured the 5 star recommendation it had got somewhere was sufficient, plus Ibsen, for me to watch. The play, in a nutshell, is this: there is a woman, and she is feeling trapped in her marriage. She has stepchildren who seem extraordinarily unsympathetic to her, and, to top things off, she seems like she might be going mad.

Well! Quite the light evening's entertainment, to be sure. For me, for some reason, the whole show was coming in through the filter of these two articles I read in the New York Times this week about love in Saudi Arabia. The men, for example, would have found it completely fit for a man to tell a woman she's not a free actor, and that he will decide what is good for her and "protect" her: while the women, I thought, would agree that women are naturally less rational than men.

But they would have had a lot of problems with the rest of the story. The concept of a woman wishing to be a free agent, I think, would not resonate in the least; the thought that it might not be agreeable to essentially "sell" yourself in order to have a roof over your head would also seem mysterious; the odd behavior of the girls (not to mention the wife, Ellida, played by Lia Williams) would certainly have drawn note. I found it all a bit late Victorian feminist, but with a sort of unexpected (and illogical) ending - and very much enjoyed the idea of a play about someone who was on the verge of cracking up throughout.

That said, I think I found more problems with the script than anything else. It just seemed ... clunky. People kept announcing other people were about to come on stage, then announcing that they were going to leave. The young, wannabe artist had no real purpose in the show other than to show the selfish side of men (I think) and had utterly corny lines (and pulled faces); the younger daughter (Hilde, Fiona O'Shaughnessy, apparently from the Irish side of this family based on her thick accent) seemed to change her feelings too quickly. The foreshadowing at the beginning (the bit about the painting) was like getting hit with a blackjack in terms of its subtlety, then further added to this point by having the actor say, "The idea was given to me by the lady of the house!" Please, as if the fact that she swims in the ocean every day wasn't enough clue for us to link her with a mermaid!

While the acting was generally good, Ms. Williams seemed to be pulling rather a lot from Lady Macbeth with all of her hand wringing and twitching. Her face was beautiful to watch but I wanted more of a buildup - as it was, I was completely incapable of thinking anything but madness lied in her future.

Overall I think this was a good production but not one of Ibsen's finer works, and the 75 minute journey home a bit of a pill - good enough if you like Ibsen or are in the neighborhood, but not worth seriously deforming your week to go see.

(This review is for a performance that took place May 15th, 2008, my fifteenth anniversary.)

            

Environmental vocabulary is thrown around all too often these days – Global Warming, Green Issues, Carbon Footprint, Carbon Neutral, Recycling Initiative Etc, where those who use the words lend very little integrity to them. Numerous large companies have come under scrutiny for their advertising of 'green' standards and policies, which is simply just awareness rather than action and so a misleading appearance happens on a regular basis.

In theatre, environmental policies come very few and far in-between. As a keen environmentalist myself, an avid recycling and water re-usage fanatic as well as a general responsibility for the earth, I make no hesitation in saying that my theatre counterparts fall very far behind. Our responsibility as ambassadors of the world at large is very poor when it comes to "being green." I say it is our responsibility, under the circumstances that as theatre as a voice, we have a social integrity to recognise and represent some archetypal views and the environment is always high on the agenda.

I'm not proposing that there should be lots of plays consisting of tree-hugging, one shower a week and drinking our own wee, rather that throughout the production process, we can be more environmentally responsible. For example, implementing some sort of policy that helps a company to consume less - using less paper, recycling props and scenery and consuming power only when necessary; switching off lights when not in use. This applies to companies whoever they are - theatres, arts centres, music establishments, artists, performers, producers Etc, to which it goes without saying that the economic effect can only be positive.

This is all very obvious and easier said than done, but the point I'm trying to make is that pure awareness will have a knock-on effect to help facilitate future projects in terms of environmental responsibility.

A massive example of this is the Arcola Energy project at the Arcola Theatre in Hackney, North London. This is the scheme where they “aim to make Arcola the worlds first carbon neutral theatre.” A huge effort has been made possible under the guidance of the theatres’ executive director Dr Ben Todd who is also a consultant to the fuel cell industry. Through his and the theatres’ work, they have installed a hydrogen fuel cell to power the main part of the venue, including bar and main house. As well as the cell they “will be installing biomass heating, solar panels, fuel cells and state of the art energy saving technologies throughout the building.” This is a standard that we can all pursue to reduce the impact on Global Warming – the key achievement at the end of the day.

Furthering this, also one of the reasons for Arcola’s excellence, is the Greening London Theatre initiative – October 2007 Press Release:-

The Mayor has announced that he is working with London's theatres to reduce their carbon emissions. Speaking at Somerset House where he helped launch the new energy efficient lighting scheme at the National Theatre, the Mayor announced a partnership across the London theatre sector with a shared goal of making London's theatres more energy efficient.

Read the full release.

As you can see it isn’t only the Arcola Theatre making a difference; however they are the only body to openly publicise changes and undertake a genuine accountability into helping the environment. Arcola is an off-West End theatre where economic and financial tackling is an all time reality – yet they still manage to achieve something so wonderful. It is about time that more companies followed their lead and should make aware and fully implement green changes into their day-to-day running.