Freely adapted

In the long aftermath of the death of Michael Jackson, Giulia Merlo reviews Medea 4.0, which uses the gory classical tragedy to explore the process of selling celebrity. And Miriam Gillinson finds Dylan Tighe’s award-winning production, Medea/Medea rather too gimmicky to be convincing. Meanwhile Matt Trueman reviews Hampstead Theatre’s production of Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme.

As part of the Manifesto Club’s Freedom Summer, members of the Brighton Salon held a discussion last week on the city’s clampdown on drinking in public places, followed by a ‘protest picnic’ on the beach. Sean Bell reports. And the new issue of Blueprint magazine carries a special feature on the hyper-regulation of public space, with a lead essay by Culture Wars editor Dolan Cummings.

3 July 2009

Selling Medea

Product Medea 4.0, Cock Tavern Theatre, London

How do you turn Medea into a desirable, advertisable product? And how do you make people want every little piece of her? First of all, you turn her into a victim. The sheer violence, masqueraded as care, with which the four women of the marketing company abuse Medea physically and emotionally, making her into a savage, tangling her hair and smearing her face with dirt, is perhaps the strongest point of the production.

A fake budgie in a new cage

Medea/Medea, Gate Theatre, London

If only it could have stayed like this – all eerie restraint, insinuation and confusion. But the show can’t stay still forever and the director and his new directions start to take over. Tighe opens up his box of tricks and scatters them everywhere – we get elaborate vignettes, prolonged silences, miming, moaning, birdsong, babies crying, manic laughter, the constant ping of a microwave.

A war on two fronts

Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, Hampstead Theatre, London

Against Michael Taylor’s ever-changing sky, John Dove’s production is too reliant on the inherent nobility and tragic waste of the man in uniform. Rather than truly making us bleed for the characters presented, it tugs at our sadness of the abstract idea. These soldiers are too often manikins stilly representing a generation.

Accidentally empathetic

The Adventures of Wound-Man and Shirley, New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich

What Chris Goode has achieved is a story with so much to say that you needn’t notice quite how spectacularly well he’s saying it. With such gentle efficiency, heartfelt charm and modest deference, Goode could has all the makings of a ‘freelance social interventionist’ himself.

Policing the Brighton public

Brighton Salon, Thursday 25 June, and 'protest picnic', Saturday 27 June 2009

After discussing many aspects of the booze ban in Brighton last week, it struck me that many of us were thinking about how this law might be fought in a legal way. I think that bringing it out into the open and forcing the council to defend it, politically, has a much better chance of reversing the DPPO sooner than any challenge in the courts.

They’re kids! They tell people!

Columbine, by Dave Cullen (Old Street Publishing)

An interview with Dave Cullen, author of a definitive new account of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, exploring what really happened, the role of the media in perpetuating myths, and the peculiar truth about psychopathy, terrorism and self-aggrandizing violence.

Theatre, Life, Death, God, Love and Faith - yet an un-Bergmanesque Bergman

A comparison of the film and television versions of Fanny and Alexander, by Ingmar Bergman

As with many Bergman characters, Helen’s profession as an actor is her life. Among the deleted scenes are several soliloquies where she says that her life is a masquerade, putting a shocking spin on what is seen in the film version.

Kak kak kak

Harare North, by Brian Chikwava (Jonathan Cape)

It is striking how tenaciously he clings to the ideas instilled in him, refusing to believe the horrors that are reported about the actions of Mugabe’s party.

Woman inside man describes woman

Novel about my wife, by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury)

Perkins inhabits the male mindset utterly convincingly, drawing her male narrator with total commitment.

Ukranian in New York

One more year, by Sana Kraskikov (Canongate)

Krasikov’s women do not quite fit into their new surroundings; they stay within their communities, regarding the Americans they encounter with a certain mild derision.

Gulped down gratefully

As You Like It, Globe Theatre, London

We are swept along by a carnival of lust, action, poetry and music: entertained by two sparring lovers, entranced by a shepherd’s philosophising and unexpectedly stopped in our tracks by a painful and delicate song.

A zest for knowledge

Arcadia, Duke of York Theatre, London

One leaves the show reeling - the brain buzzing even if the heart isn’t quite soaring – determined to question everything we once held true, to examine life anew and revel in all its certain uncertainties.

Singing isn’t enough

Been So Long, Young Vic Theatre, London

Walker has talent but it was never going to be unearthed in this type of show. The actors have charm but they belong in straight musicals and not this musical play. And although The Young Vic’s programming shows guts, it needs to make sure its shows have the goods to back these gutsy choices.

Moving on the human rights debate

Human Rights and Social Movements, by Neil Stammers (Pluto Press)

Although Stammers makes a powerful and timely case for revaluating our ideas of human rights independently from the state and the law, a more critical approach could easily have led him to conclude that NGOs in fact enforce this connection rather than challenging it.

Fight and faith

Twenty-somethings and the recession

Playwright Ella Hickson, whose new play Eight explores the discontentment of privileged twenty-somethings, argues the recession will prove a stern test for a generation unused to hardship and lacking strong beliefs, but also an opportunity to work out what really matters and might be worth fighting for.