Justin Bond is Close to You

Justin Bond is Close to You
La Gayola – The Queer Up North Spiegeltent
27 May 2010

The name is Bond, Justin Bond.

In this show the great genderqueer artist sang his way through all the songs on the Carpenters’ album Close to You.  There were some additional songs, namely Ticket to Ride, a Patti Smith song and a couple of Bond’s own compositions, one taken from Shortbus.

As you might have expected, the performances were terrific: moving and energising and compelling.  Perhaps what you wouldn’t have expected, though, was the wit and engaging banter between the songs; they more than anything made the show an abundance of fun.

Clearly, Justin Bond is licensed to thrill.  Mind, the only fatal weapon on show was Bond’s dance moves.  Step well back.

MUST: The Inside Story

MUST: The Inside Story
By Peggy Shaw and Clod Ensemble
Library Theatre Company, 25 May 2010

Shaw’s mesmerising performance flowed from beginning to end.

She touched upon the body as intimate stranger, our own portion of nature.  Her own body and what had happened to it (accident and injury), the manipulation of the bodies of those close to her (her mother’s ECT in the ‘50s, the recent death of her sister), the body of the earth.

In constraining identity and making what or who we are possible, the body is pretty much key.  That much is obvious, perhaps too obvious.  For it has until fairly recently (I’m thinking in particular of Maxine Steets-Johnstone’s work and the so-called ‘corporeal turn’) been curiously overlooked.

How Shaw worked: a stream of striking poetic images, delivered with panache.  Gusto, a vividness of presence, is what she showed in abundance.  There was music, also, and a series of archive medical images (of the heart and the microbiology of the blood and diverse innards) and an animation involving skeletons in a cemetery.

It is not often that a play or performance piece can so aptly be described as ‘excoriating’.  Let us therefore rejoice in the fact that here the word fits like a glove.  And let us also rejoice in the existence of the astounding Peggy Shaw.

MUST – The Inside Story is showing at the Library Theatre in Manchester until 26th May, as part of the Queer Up North festival.  Details here.

The Philadelphia Story

The Philadelphia Story
Directed by George Cukor
USA, 1940
Cornerhouse, 23 May 2010

A great movie, though one that wears its prejudices on its sleeve.

You know the story, or at any rate you should: Katharine Hepburn’s ice maiden must learn that without love and forgiveness she cannot be a real woman, little matter that forgiveness may not be warranted in a particular case or two.  Sundry rationalisations (e.g. concerning infidelity) are presented as wisdom.

There is one neat line, which goes something like: ‘You should never make your mind up about people.’  But even the person who utters it doesn’t apply the rule impartially.

By a sizable measure, this is James Stewart’s movie.  He plays Macaulay Connor, a short story writer-cum-journalist, who woos Hepburn and seeks out her ex-hubby (Cary Grant) for one of those classic man-to-man conversations.  His lines are the most eloquent and he shines in every scene.  Has any woman been more highly praised than Hepburn, as when Stewart talks about those inner fires banked deep inside her?  All the other actors are pretty good, actually, it is just that Stewart is even better.

A movie that is amusing,  intelligent (mostly), moving and (what’s that other word?) yare.  Yes, very yare.

Lan Yu by Stanley Kwan

Lan Yu
Directed by Stanley Kwan
Hong Kong & China, 2001
Cornerhouse, 24 May 2010

A film devoted to a dead youth and a rising and reborn city.

Kwan’s film is an elegiac love story but it also charts the changes wrought in China during the ‘80s and ‘90s.

When Lan Yu (Ye Liu) meets Chen Handong (Jun Hu), they are immediately attracted to each other.   Lan Yu is a boy from the country while Chen Handong is a powerful and capable businessman, a major player in China’s emergence as a world economic power.  For a while all goes smoothly, then matters turn serious, a heart is broken, one marries or tries marriage (it doesn’t suit), a heart  is again broken (a different one this time) and after these and other travails…

The two leads are terrific (they are great criers, an underappreciated art) and there are some fine scenes, such as the bicycles whooshing past Chen Handong’s car as he rushes to Tiananmen Square where Lan Yu has been demonstrating.  Jimmy Ngai is a splendid screenwriter.

It is in the new Beijing that Chen Handong finds traces still of his lost boy (Lan Yu had gone on to work in construction and as an architect), rather like Wordsworth in the Lucy poems.

This was apparently the first UK screening of Stanley Kwan’s film.  It was shown as part of the Queer Up North festival.

American: The Bill Hicks Story

American: The Bill Hicks Story
Directed by Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas
UK, 2009
Cornerhouse, 23 May 2010

A documentary concerned with the great American stand-up comedian, Bill Hicks.

It traces his career from early gigs in Houston right through to widespread acclaim in the UK.  Though known and appreciated in the USA – he appeared on national TV on more than one occasion – it was in Britain that Hicks’ special qualities were most recognised.

In the USA he was pretty much one among many, maybe a bit edgier than most.  While in Britain, and particularly in the Revelations show, he was given the time and resources to show what he was made of, to present himself fully.  And he more than delivered, he shone.  At that time, it seemed as though he emerged fully formed and out of nowhere.  Where had this guy come from?  Why hadn’t we heard of him before?  He shone, and that in spades.

There is footage here of Hicks in action, including excerpts from a few of his early gigs in Houston, but this documentary isn’t really a ‘Best of’ compilation: it tells the story of a life.  The story is told by family and friends and fellow comedians and through ‘animated’ photographs rather than through stills (ordinary photos) and voiceover or talking heads.  Hicks was clearly a man of intelligence and character (he beat booze and drugs and depression) but he died of cancer at an early age.  He touched other people’s lives, mind, which is kind of the point of living.

This fine documentary will ensure that that he continues to reach others.

Signs of a Star Shaped Diva

Signs of a Star Shaped Diva
By Nona Sheppard
Graeae
The Studio at the Royal Exchange Theatre, 20 May 2010

Quite simply, a treat.

An awful lot of great songs.  A love (or anti-love) story to hang them on.  The wonderful Caroline Parker bringing it all to life.

Parker plays Susan Graves, an undertaker who discovers, through signing a song at a funeral, that there is a butterfly inside her yearning to be born: Tammy Frascati, cabaret artiste.

Go and see this show if you want to hear a stack of great songs from Ella, Dusty, Gloria and their sisters.  See it also if you want to have a laugh or five, shed a tear or two, have a bit of a sing-along and go home happy.

And if you are looking for an archetypal story of how a diva or torch singer is made you won’t go wrong either.

Signs of a Star Shaped Diva is showing at the Royal Exchange Theatre until 22 May.  Details here.

Road Movie @ the Library Theatre

Road Movie
Written by Godfrey Hamilton and performed by Mark Pinkosh
Starving Artists
Library Theatre Company, 19 May 2010

The words you remember are ‘I want a cure and I want my friends back’ and they are spoken by Joel, Mark Pinosh’s principal heteronym.  Although a monologue, Pinkosh brings to life myriad characters in turn, Joel being the sole abiding presence.

Pinkosh is electric on stage, his face intense and incredibly expressive, his arms animated and urgent, as he brings Joel and Scott’s story fully to life.  Faux-naif and faux vain, he was.  Despairing and then joking, playing the audience for all he was worth.

Those who help us are human too – they have the same resources we do, no more.  One take-home message.

‘I want a cure and I want my friends back.’  Yes, but if only one wish could be granted, which would you choose?

Road Movie is showing at the Library Theatre in Manchester until 22nd May, as part of the Queer Up North festival.

Northern Broadsides’ The Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales
By Geoffrey Chaucer
A new version by Mike Poulton
Northern Broadsides
The Lowry, 18 May 2010

It’s a long, long road…

This is as vital and bawdy and funny and moving and ultimately redemptive a stage version of Chaucer’s great work as you would wish to see.  There’s some terrific stuff to be had on stage here.

If you are looking for a modern edition of the text, I can recommend Peter Ackroyd’s retelling, which was published just this year.

The Canterbury Tales is currently touring the UK until mid-June.  Tour dates are here.

Pygmalion @ the Royal Exchange Theatre

Pygmalion
By Bernard Shaw
Royal Exchange Theatre, 17 May 2010

Cush Jumbo as Eliza Doolittle. Photo - Jonathan Keenan.

This is a fine production of Shaw’s play about social class, cultural appropriation and much else besides.

The cast were perfect, what with Cush Jumbo as the spirited Eliza Doolittle and Simon Robson as the brusque Henry Higgins.  Ian Bartholomew as Alfred Doolittle, Eliza’s father, was if possible a little more than perfect.  His spiel about being a member of ‘the undeserving poor’ and proud of it pretty much brought the house down – as it may well have done in 1914, when the play was first performed.

One thing you have to give Shaw: he had a clear-eyed view of society and no time at all for hypocrisy.  What would he have made of the current cant about ‘hard-working families’?

Throughout, the play shimmered with wit and intelligence and it evoked Conan Doyle (Higgins as Holmes, Colonel Pickering as Dr. Watson), Stevenson (the Prince Florizel stories) and Chesterton (for it has a fantastical quality) in equal measure.  It vibed Victorian/Edwardian opulence cheek by jowl with grinding poverty.

Do go and see this splendid version of a classic play.  You have until 19 June to do so.  Details here.

Vincere

Vincere
Directed by Marco Bellocchio
Italy & France, 2009
Cornerhouse, 14 May 2010

Vincere relates the scarcely known story of Mussolini’s first wife, Ida.

Beautifully crafted and possessed of a grand narrative sweep, the film‘s lynchpin is a compelling lead performance by Giovanna Mezzogiorno.

It reminded me strongly of Eastwood’s Changeling: both films feature lone women (who happen to be mothers too) subject to institutional/societal authorities.

Ida’s predicament commands one’s attention, even though on occasion one thinks, ‘That Mussolini bloke is a posturing little shit and you’re well shot of him, girl.’  Or words to that effect.

Was the young Mussolini a sincere activist, a more attractive (or deceptively attractive) personality than he became in later life?  This film would have you believe so.  Yet Hemingway, when working as a journalist, interviewed Mussolini and saw straight through him.  He wasn’t fooled at all, and nor should we be.

See this film for Mezzogiorno’s dazzling central performance.  She is wonderful.