Out & about! Vienna, Belfast, & a phantom landscape

Bristol Old Vic director Tom Morris pulled off what many will consider an impressive coup when Mark Rylance agreed to develop his own personal project with this theatre company: the result is Dr Semmelweis, the true story of the doctor who found a way to fight the virus killing women in childbirth in the 19th Century. With hindsight it seems quite extraordinary that hundreds of women died because the experts in charge hadn't thought that washing their hands after dissecting cadavers before thrusting them into the bodies of women in labour might be a good idea, but this was the revolutionary and life-saving concept that Dr Semmelweis came up with before sadly parting company with his sanity, along with his wife and reputation.  This is a stunning production and we in the southwest are privileged that Mark Rylance brought his personal project - which actually predates the current pandemic - to Bristol Old Vic.  News is out now that Tom Morris is stepping down as artisic director of the theatre he steered to high international reputation during the last 12 years - I can't believe it's actually that long since I persuaded Tom to a breakfast meeting at the quayside to talk about his plans for Plays International. Under his steerage, Bristol Old Vic has been transformed physically as well as artistically: this production, with its emphasis on essential innovation against all odds, is curiously apt despite the personal tragedy of Dr Semmelweis himself. 

It's not a straight-foward hurtle from obstetrics to madness, however: there is much reverie and wafting dance, mostly by dream images, en route, and some violent rows as the pioneering Hungarian doctor is obstructed by the hostility of his superior (Alan Williams) and by his own unfortunate manner: an incoherence mingled with arrogance and, sadly, the approaching insanity which finally claims him. Mark Rylance is mesmeric in this role, managing to hold the audience's hopes that he may battle through his own crazy notions just as he battled through those of the hospital authorities', and come through somehow in the end. The set, conceived by Ti Green, effectively evokes an alien clinical environment while also providing balconies where the ghostly mothers, murdered by bad science, dance around in the mind of tortured, obsessive, Dr Semmelweis. (Choreography Antonia Franceschi, diaphanous costumes by Ti Green.) Oh, and a big shout-out to Ewan Black, playing 'off book' so seamlessly he had special applause at the end.

Ethereal dance-drama without spoken exchanges now, as Mark Bruce Company premiered their new production Phantoms at Frome's Merlin Theatre. This triple bill delivers all the intense atmospheric imagery and phenomenal skill in movement and mood that we've come to expect from this company. This was a triple bill, opening with two shorter pieces: Green Apples featured music by White Stripes as two dancers relate intensely to each other, and Folk Tales evoked quirky narratives of loves, betrayals and handed-on stories from the tapestry of our past. The final piece in this triology, Phantoms, opens in a landscape of beasts & strange savagery as well as extraordinary beauty in movement and connection. Ever-changing lighting effects & set details enhanced the mood of a dream - or a nightmare - of startling intensity. Phantoms will be touring nationally: we're privileged to have hosted the first performance in Frome.

 On to the movies now, and I have to admit I was disappointed in Belfast. It's set in 1970, just at the start of the the Troubles I remember well - living with a toddler and a baby in the centre of a city suddenly overtaken with civil war isn't something you readily forget - and this story opens with a barrage of street conflict as catholics in a 'mixed' street are assaulted with firebombs. So far, so nightly news. After that it goes a bit cute and goey. The boy is supposed to be nine, I discovered later, having taken him for much younger throughout. He's mad about the movies so we get snippets of popular 1970s films in full colour, to contrast with the monochrome of the backstreets - a set, not the actual streets, because Branagh was filming throughout the pandemic, which might explain the vaguely un-city-like feel of much of it. "Anybody who turns to “Belfast” for a delve into the roots of the Troubles in Northern Ireland will be frustrated," warns the New York Times, and it's true. Anyone who hopes for more insight into Branagh's formative years than a sentimental youthful crush and a passion for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang will be disappointed. What annoyed me most was the failure to show just how much Northern Ireland is another country, with a language & values that have little in common with the mainland. For an instance, young Kenneth & his cousin discuss how hard it is to know who's Catholic in their Protestant street. Excuse me?  That's like having a couple of south London kids discussing how to work out which of their mates are Caucasian and which Jamaican. Trust me, they know.  "A syrupy memoir offering little insight into a turbulent time," is one trenchant observation on  Rotten Tomatoes, though the Daily Mail thought it was 'an absolute joy.' 

For a more realistic view, also through unaware eyes, you might want to read The Price of Bread, the true story of a young family living in central Belfast when the Troubles erupted, as seen through the eyes of an English girl who came to live in this conflicted city with no idea of the ingrained realities and only hopeful hippy idealism to counter the terrifying hostilities exploding on the streets. You can get a copy from me, or Hunting Raven Books in Frome, or my publishers Hobnob Press - or any other outlet. It's about what it was like when the city streets were filled with blockades, when it wasn't safe to take children uptown, when red-white-and-blue were painted along the kerbs of the backstreets as a  warning, and the colour of your coat could mean the difference between an attack and a safe passing. That's the Belfast I remember. 

And finally... the absolute joy of packing up the jigsaws that cover the floor and rejoining the real world! A bit wobbly - a little bit woah! & a little bit wha? - but definitely in that lovely land called Beyond Covid.  Huge condolences to everyone who had it worse than me, massive thanks to everyone for their gifts & kindness. Here's a Frome market stall in Saturday sunshine, where Tom from Bristol Fungarium is selling chinese-inspired tinctures from mushrooms. Being a Leo, with an affinity for lion imagery, it wasn't surprising that the lion mushroom was the one that chose me: this amazing fungus looks like a massive exploded brain, but if it helps me get my house back to some kind of order and cleanliness, that will be magic indeed.  

Bristol's theatrical MAYFEST is over for another year, ending on a blue-sky high with champagne and balloons in Queens Square while sounds of Happy Mondays (live) float along the dockside. I didn't see many shows this time but did catch the Saturday matinee of utterly awesome Valentijn Dhaenens' monologue Bigmouth at BOV Studio, en route to Soho Theatre via Belgium, Finland and Edinburgh collecting awards and accolades all the way. The notion behind this SKaGen production is uniquely simple: extracts from public speeches made in situations of confrontation over two thousand years are combined in a dramatic medley of courage, bravado, optimism, resignation, inspiration and bigotry, with the only common element a passionate self-certainty.
From Socrates calmly defending love over might when sentenced to death in 399 BC, to George Bush promising vengeance for the Twin Towers (mingled with similar sentiments at the New Orleans disaster as if the hurricane too had been launched by muslim terrorists), this kaleidescope of historical fragments includes Malcolms X and Luther King,  bin Laden, Kennedy, Reagan, Goebbles and more including obscurely Pericles and Republican political commentator Anne Coulter, whose bigotry is so absurdly extreme I wouldn't be surprised if she claimed she could see Mecca from her bedroom window.  In what's rightly been acclaimed as a power-house performance, Valentijn uses only a long desk with a row of mics to recreate their words, sometimes with translation and always with extraordinarily convincing accent and tone. For coherence, there's a blackboard style projection list from which each name is erased when Valentijin moves to the next. Some speeches are given solemn gravitas, like Osama bin Laden's 1996 fatwah against America which is couched with unexpected dignity; some are darkly comic, like the contrast between Goebbles' quiet menace and General Patten's rowdy vulgarity. Some juxtapositions surprise, like the celebration of Congolese independence immediately following a sanctimonious abdication speech by the Belgian king. “We’re going to make the Congo the centre of the sun’s radiance” Lumumba promises, chillingly evoking Coleridge's ironic words in Ozymandias:"Look on my works ye mighty, and despair." Nothing beside remains...
There's electrifying musicality too, through sound design by Jeroen Wuyts (who also created the atmospheric lighting) and US presidents rattle off their histrionic pledges over a fastpaced dub version of I like to be in America...  How do you end a tour de force like this? Valentijn's choice is to descend to the audience and sing Nature Boy, acapella, following the words on his blackboard like a child at a panto, repeating the final lines: The greatest thing you will ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.  He left the full-house audience reeling but not too stunned to cheer throughout his three curtain calls. Five stars.

By contrast the Bristol Old Vic evening show by Clod Ensemble fills the stage with people and movement for their polished, self-assured, performance Zero, wordless apart from a specially-composed musical score performed live, and occasional topical soundbites. One of these was that gone-viral Youtube clip when the guy pushes his reluctantly-rope-swinging girlfriend off the cliff, though deprived of its famous “I just got dumped!” final line. Maybe they didn’t want specific outcomes for their 'Tragedy in 5 Acts' which seemed to be generally about frustrations and accumulative damage of relationships. Life's a bitch, and then you die, as Bertolt Brecht put it. I think you can buy that on a mug, too.