Category Archives: Non-Fiction

Negative Space – A Review

This is a review of a play that we went to see and was submitted as part of an assignment in my first year at Edge Hill University.

 

Negative Space is a stage production from the Reckless Sleepers, a UK/Belgium based theatre group.  The Reckless Sleepers have a philosophy about their work in which they embrace mistakes and accidents as part of the performance in the hope that it will add to the piece or help describe it in a way not thought of before.

This latest production is something of an oddity.  For a start, there’s no dialogue at all, the whole thing is pure physical theatre.  It takes place on a stage where, it’s fair to say, the real star of the show is a plasterboard cube in (and through) which the actors perform.  The performance begins with a single actor stood alone in the cube.  Not long after, another actor drops in from over the top of the wall and pretty soon there are actors everywhere, pulling and pushing at each other, leaving through holes in the floor or using ladders to climb out of the cube.  The whole thing was a little confusing, but I think it was meant to be some kind of love story.

Things started to become a little more interesting when one of the actors came crashing through one of the plasterboard walls and onto the stage.  From that point on, the whole performance became an orgy of destruction, slapstick and comedy violence.  From a fairly underwhelming start, the performance suddenly found some life.  Unfortunately, once you get over the initial surprise and delight of them smashing up the set, it loses its ability to hold the audience.

I couldn’t help but get the feeling that Reckless Sleepers were trying too hard to make art for art’s’ sake.  The performance just didn’t seem to have any direction and if there was supposed to be a plot, I couldn’t figure one out.  Overall I was left with the feeling that, yes, watching a group of people smash up a plasterboard room is quite cathartic, for a little bit at least, but ultimately I was expecting a little more substance with my style.

If you like your theatre to feel avant-garde while not really innovating at all, then perhaps Negative Space will be the show for you, but if you’d prefer something with a lot less pretension and a lot more plot, then I think you would be disappointed with this one.  It’s an interesting idea in theory, but in practice it turns out to be the equivalent of paying good money to watch plasterers work.  Now if they’d all been dressed as plasterers and the pseudo love story unfolded from that, it might have been a little more interesting.  As it stands right now though, Negative Space was disappointing, underwhelming and ultimately as flimsy as the plasterboard walls themselves.

Shopping and F**cking – A Review

Written as part of an assignment in my first year at Edge Hill University

Warning: Contains swearing.

 

Mark Ravenhill is a British playwright whose second play, Shopping and Fucking, propelled him into the forefront of contemporary theatre in the 1990’s.  He has since gone on to great success in the theatre, due in no small part to the popularity of this play.

Shopping and Fucking is a shocking and cynical look at the disposable world of 90’s England.  It opened at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1996 and was a major part of the Nineties movement known as ‘in-yer-face theatre’.  Despite the play now being 20 years old, it still manages to resonate the shock factor that put it in the forefront of the movement.  However it has to be said that a modern audience may not be as shocked with the complexities of the relationships between the characters in the play (who are, amusingly, named after members of the boyband Take That).  It’s a testament to a (little) more enlightened age that the relationship between Lulu, Robbie and Mark doesn’t seem as shocking or strange in 2016 as I imagine it did to a theatre audience in a time when homosexuality and pansexuality were not as accepted as they are today.

The plot of the play revolves around four characters; Mark, who used to work in the city but is now a recovering drug addict, Robbie, Mark’s jealous and insecure lover, their girlfriend Lulu and a sexually abused teenage prostitute called Gary.  Mark meets Gary and pays him for sex which serves up one of the plays many shocking scenes.  An unforgettable bedroom scene which includes analingus and blood.  This play is definitely not for the faint of heart!

Lulu goes for a job interview at a tv shopping channel where her sleazy boss gets her to audition topless before convincing her to sell Ecstasy for him.  Lulu agrees and involves Robbie in the dealing too, but when Robbie practically gives all of the pills away, they find themselves in trouble to the tune of £3,000.  After trying to set up a phone sex line, Mark introduces them to Gary and the four of them are faced with a life altering choice.

The themes behind the play, those of the disposable nature of the world and the fact that everything is treated as a commodity, still have relevance in the world today.  Perhaps even more so, as the slightly far fetched world in which the play is set resonates uncomfortably in the even more throwaway and commodity rich world of today.

Perhaps then, the most shocking thing about Shopping and Fucking is not the ‘in-your-face’ sexuality of its characters, or the pints of blood and sadomasochism.  Maybe it’s the fact that Ravenhill was onto something twenty years ago, he tried to warn us and we didn’t listen?  Whatever the answer, the play is hard hitting and darkly humorous, so if you’re not easily shocked and you have a strong stomach, I’d recommend watching Shopping and Fucking.

Kids – A Review

Written as part of an assignment in my first year at Edge Hill University

 

In 1995, Larry Clark arrived on the film scene with his directorial debut, the controversial film Kids.  Written by Harmony Korine, the film, styled as a documentary, explores the lives of a group of teenagers in New York City.  Hard hitting and challenging to watch, showing an unflinching view of teenage life in the mid 90’s, Kids has the feel of a dogme film about it.  

The film opens with a long and graphic kissing scene involving Telly (Leo Fitzpatrick), the unforgivable and irredeemable fulcrum on which the whole movie turns, and a young girl in her bedroom.  The stuffed animals and juvenile quality of her room isn’t lost on the camera, despite the tight angle it’s constrained to.  Telly is trying to get the girl to sleep with him, having set himself the task of deflowering as many virgins as he can.  He says all of the right lines to make her feel special and convinces her to sleep with him.  We next see him on the street, boasting about his conquest and allowing his idiotic, sycophantic friend Casper (Justin Pierce) smell his fingers as proof of the deed.

This type of vulgarity is rife throughout the film, as the boys and their friends talk about drugs and sex almost constantly.  The roughness and frankness of the script is what gives the film its biggest impact.  Much of the script, though written by Korine, seems improvised which adds to the documentary feel of the film.  Leo Fitzpatrick says of Korine’s writing “Harmony was such a good writer and it was so natural…A lot of what we talked about in the movies we talked about in real life.”

Across town, Jennie (Chloë Sevigny) and her friend, Ruby (Rosario Dawson) are getting tested for STD’s at a clinic.  It’s here that Jennie is told that she’s HIV Positive and since Telly is the only boy she’s ever slept with, it could have only been contracted from him.

So begins the basic plot line on which everything else in Kids hangs.  It’s not an overly complicated plot; Jennie spends the whole film trying to track down Telly to tell him the bad news, but the film doesn’t require a complicated plot.  Instead it serves as a skeleton on which Clark and Korine hang their uncomfortably realistic cautionary tale.  Sevigny, in her debut role is just as powerful an actress as she always is.  Her portrayal of the naive and scared Jennie is brilliant, compelling the audience to feel both sympathetic and protective for her as she travels New York City in an ever desperate hunt for Telly.  

Ultimately though, despite her central part in the plot, even Jennie is just another tool that Clark and Korine use to show the disregard the boys have for everything around them.  Despite Sevigny’s acting prowess, Jennie is never more than a victim.  She is given drugs by a boy at one party and when she finally tracks down Telly, only to find him in bed with another young virgin, she falls into desolated unconsciousness in an armchair, where she is raped by a drunk and high Casper.

It is a testament to Korine’s writing and Clark’s refusal to pull punches that Kids still manages to shock nearly twenty years after its release.  It is never an easy watch at any stage and it feels purposely hard to feel any sympathy for the characters.  While the film will surely be in very bad taste for some viewers, there is no doubt that the hand held camera work and the punchy, hyper-realistic script provide a bleak and horribly reflective view of youth in 90’s New York.  

Review of Chronicle of a Death Foretold

This novella by Gabriel Garcia Márquez, one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, who won the Nobel prize in Literature in 1982, paints a picture of life and death on the coast of Colombia in the mid-twentieth century. In doing so, he gives us a glimpse at the culture and attitudes of his home country at the time. If you can get past the impassive way it is told, then there is much to be discovered between the pages of this book.

First published in 1981, Chronicle of a Death Foretold tells the tale of the murder of a wealthy Colombian man by the vexed brothers of a woman he has allegedly deflowered. This man, Santiago Nasar, goes about his day unaware of the danger that the deflowered bride, Angela Vicario, has placed him in. Through interviews and conversations with the residents of the village, we are guided through the final hours of Nasar’s life and shown the multitude of ways the murder could have been prevented.

Nasar is somewhat of a lothario; Good at running his ranch, interested in firearms, drinking and has more than an eye for the ladies. Because of that, it is easy to see why no questions were asked when he is accused of deflowering Angela Vicario. The way information is relayed to the reader about Nasar is unreliable and contradictory. For instance, Victoria Guzman, the cook says, “He was just like his father … A shit.” The narrator’s sister, on the other hand, speaks favourably about him: “I suddenly realised that there couldn’t have been a better catch than him” and “Just imagine: handsome, a man of his word, and with a fortune of his own at the age of twenty-one.” This makes it hard to get a definitive idea of the character and feels like a barrier to having empathy for him. Nevertheless, by the end of the book I did feel sorry for Nasar due to the brutal nature of his murder and the number of times the death could have been prevented.

Angela Vicario, by comparison, is initially presented as quiet and beautiful, a little socially awkward and a little immature. It is her fear of her mother and brothers’ rage that causes her to utter Nasar’s name and by doing so, set the tragic events in motion. As potential antagonists go, Angela is subtle and not entirely irredeemable but because it is never revealed whether her accusation is true or not, she serves well in her role.

Thematically, the piece explores the nature of honour, as it existed in that society in the mid-twentieth century. It does so by showing how the villagers could have prevented the murder and stopped the brothers, but chose not to, preferring to believe that the brothers were justified in seeking retribution. While the novella has a historical setting, honour killings are still very prevalent in modern society, whether in Colombia, the United Kingdom, India, or anywhere else in the world and so the theme of the novella is still as important today as it was both when it was set and when it was written.

Márquez’s use of repetition, constantly bringing the awareness of the reader back to the murder with lines such as, ‘On the day they were going to kill him’ and ‘until he was carved up like a pig an hour later’ helps to heighten the shock and brutality of Nasar’s murder. His presentation of everything as cold, hard facts serves the narrative well and keeps the plot rolling along, despite its nonlinear nature. Personally, the shock of the murder was removed for me by a detailed autopsy scene halfway through which seemed out of place and took away a lot of the impact from the later scene.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold is powerful, darkly humorous and descriptive, though the dispassionate nature of the narrative sometimes jarred with the colourful and poetic descriptions of the village and its people. It also seems as if the villagers react in an unrealistic way when confronted with evidence that the murder will take place, such as when the butchers in the meat market are told by Pablo Vicario, “We’re going to kill Santiago Nasar” and even though they can see the brothers are sharpening knives, nobody seems even slightly concerned.

Yet, today in the media, we see inaction by witnesses and bystanders, content to record and capture on their smartphones, rather than step in and stop a tragedy from occurring, as seen in 2009 when a fifteen year old girl was assaulted and raped outside of a homecoming dance in front of more than fifteen witnesses. With this in mind, the themes and questions explored in this novella seem more relevant today than they did in 1981. Put down your smartphone, read this book and ask yourself, what would you do?

There and Back Again…

Originally published in a slightly altered form on tentonhammer.com

When I think about what books mean to me, I always remember back to when I was a child and my parents had a few books from the 1950’s full of amazing facts about how things worked. These books were my first experience with the potential of the written word; they showed me all of the things I could discover about the world around me and more importantly, they showed me worlds that could be my playground. Places I could only dream of flowed from the pages and into my imagination, inspiring me to dream of far off places and of goals worth fighting for.

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