Heroic horizons

This week on CW, Karl Sharro challenges the low horizons of London mayor Boris Johnson’s anti-high rise policy. Mark Carrigan argues that contemporary cynicism about heroes, reflected in everything from The Wire to The Dark Knight Returns, merely perpetuates the dearth of heroism. And in London theatre Matt Trueman reviews an imaginative Measure for Measure at the Almeida, Miriam Gillinson admires Judi Dench in the Rose Theatre’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Giulia Merlo reviews a new translation of Thomas Bernhard’s controversial Heldenplatz at the Arcola.

Next week, coverage of the London Word Festival, Hoggart’s Uses of Literacy revisited, Muslim cinema, and Alice in Wonderland.

4 March 2010

Shiny red shoes

Promises Promises, Soho Theatre, London

Promises Promises is not at all a play about an issue, nor a tirade against the follies of dumbed-down multiculturalism. Instead, it is a voyage to the centre of Miss Brodie, which moves swiftly and masterfully from comedy to gothic horror story, passing through Miss Brodie’s projection into six-year-old Rosie (or Nadifa), with a definite touch of doppelgänger motives.

‘You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain…’

On late modern heroism

The virtues the Rocky films portray have a long moral history in Western culture and yet for most of us the narrative which portrays them is one we struggle to take seriously. But contemporary cynicism helps, in a sense, bring about the reality it purports to reflect.

A man most notoriously absolved

Measure for Measure, Almeida Theatre, London

This is a production driven by canny characterisation rather than design. What it offers, even where some are less persuasive than others, are interesting subversions of classic roles.

The not-too-subtle symbolism of the suitcases

Heldenplatz, Arcola Theatre, London

‘The Viennese are Jewhaters and will remain Jewhaters to all eternity’; ‘this Austrian stupidity is utterly repulsive’; Austrians are nothing else but ‘six and half million feeble-minded raving mad people/screaming incessantly at the top of their voices for a director’ - and the director, who had already come once, will come again and ‘give them the final push down the abyss’.

The Mayor who sets his sights low

Why Londoners should challenge the low horizons of Boris Johnson, and champion the building of skyscrapers

Boris Johnson has used his powers to galvanise the anti-high-rise sentiment into an object of policy. So far, he has gotten away with this unchallenged. But it is incumbent on us, those who welcome the prospect of transforming London’s skyline into an exciting scene that represents the city’s dynamism, to publicly challenge this short-sighted and un-ambitious policy.

Youthful, innocent and free

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Rose Theatre, London

Judi Dench’s playfulness is systematic of the light, whimsical feel to Peter Hall’s absorbing Rose Theatre production. The show is underpinned by a desire to have fun with Shakespeare; a quality that is sometimes lost in more ‘complicated’, modern-day productions.

‘Democracy’ without politics

When The People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation, James S Fishkin (Oxford University Press)

Fishkin seems more interested in extracting approval from the public in order to legitimise the power of the elites, than in giving the public a role in political change. Democracy should mean that power is challenged and limited in response to political decisions, not confirmed in advance of them.

Why can’t we all just get along?

My Name is Khan, directed by Karan Johar (2010)

While the love story is moving and there are some emotionally powerful scenes, the film’s central message is finally just banal. As a boy, Khan learns from his mother that the fighting between Hindu and Muslim is pointless and wrong since there are only two kinds of people in the world, ‘good’ people and ‘bad’ people. The only result of hatred and intolerance is, we learn, many mothers’ tears.

The only thing that could ever reach me

Adisa 1968: the year that never ended, Barbican, London

The sense is more one of self-belief, but one which can at times genuinely push out into the world. A touching moment is when this young man discovers new types of music, reggae, afrobeat…classical!

Where’s the beef?

Manchester Question Time organised by Total Politics, City Inn, Manchester, February 2010

Although Total Politics and these Question Time formats are responding to this depoliticisation, the overly posh approach that emphasises style over substance, with politicians rather desperately trying to win approval through self-flagellation, isn’t going to solve it. Alas it will need some real politics and a sharp and critically honest assertion of self interest and how best we can achieve it.

The comedy (and tragedy) of class

The Gambler, Royal Opera House, London

Alexei starts with unrequited love and a social situation that leaves him few options. Babulenka starts with gambling for (whisper it) sheer fun and then loses her fortune almost wilfully to spite her callous relatives. Are these stories not more interesting and more believable than broad-brush comparisons with zoo animals?

‘A slumber-party vibe’

Jonny Sweet: Mostly About Arthur, Soho Theatre, London

Indiscriminate and meandering it may be, but Sweet just about manages to pull it together somehow. Perched firmly on the spectrum, he fidgets his way around the stage, shattering social conventions and manhandling his audience like a safari chimpanzee.

Roundabout cabaret

Tim Key: The Slutcracker, Soho Theatre, London

In an assortment of petite poems and mumbled musings, Key offers a pointillist portrait of modern, urban existence. ‘Tanya googled herself / Still nothing,’ reads one. Others cover thrill-seeking colleagues skinning eels in their lunch-break, the moments in which relationships crack, and ‘the thorny issue of dew’.

Embracing the inner Madonna-whore

Women, directed by Vanessa Engle, beginning on the BBC 8 March 2010

Indeed, it’s this ambiguous legacy, seen most clearly in the superficial tension between choice and moral prescription, especially around the family, which points towards a deeper lack of direction that comes through in the present day – where it seems there’s been a return to more conservative gender roles albeit updated - the ‘yummy mummy’, the WAG, even Michelle Obama is considered a sort of fashion icon.

Transparency works both ways

How public scrutiny of power is becoming the power to scrutinise the public..

If the public is treated as if mere information is required before the correct view of its significance can be arrived at, then attempts to engage the public with big ideas or really change their attitudes will fail