Spank's Edinburgh Diary, Monday 20/08/2001
Aren't Spank's Pals wonderful people? Really. I mean it. Here they are in Edinburgh trying to have a relaxing holiday, and I'm asking them to write reviews to pad out my tawdry little web page, like they haven't got better things to do. And they write them. You saw all those Notes From Spank's Pals at the end of yesterday's diary, didn't you? Well, those were sitting on the kitchen table at 10.30am in the morning as 13 pages of handwritten notes all ready for me to type up. And I'm fabulously grateful for them. I thought I'd better mention this up front, as I may have seemed less grateful at 10.30am, when I staggered out of bed hung over after five hours sleep to find I had an entire morning's worth of typing in front of me. But I really am grateful. Thanks again, guys and guyesses.
I eventually get the diary uploaded at half one in the afternoon, so it's a comparatively late start to the festivities today: my first show turns out to be Doreen at quarter to four. This comedy show currently has an aggressively minimalist advertising campaign running in town. Stickers reading 'This Is Not Doreen' are plastered all over every item of street furniture within a half mile radius of the Gilded Balloon. Fliers have been produced which consist entirely of the text 'Look How Crap Doreen's Fliers Are'. And the posters say nothing more than 'Buy Tickets For Doreen', with no indication of what it is, where it's happening or even where you can get these tickets. It's a strange sort of ad campaign that seems to be designed to not draw attention attention to itself. The only reason I even noticed is because Doreen is by Chris Head and Barry Ferns, the creators of the Chris Morris style sketch show The Leisure Virus, which showed so much promise two years ago.
It's difficult to know what to say about Doreen, for various reasons. Basically, it deconstructs the comedy sketch show with extreme prejudice. The warmup section at the start is a series of farting noises. When this doesn't warm up the audience sufficiently, it's replaced by a short monologue reminding us of the inevitability of death, which is even less successful. By the end of the first fifteen minutes, the performers seem quite proud of the fact they've performed precisely one joke. And it proceeds in this fashion for some time, with occasional breaks for self-doubt and concern about the weakness of their material. Basically, they're satirising the business of comedy by performing a bad comedy show, which you can appreciate is an extraordinarily dangerous thing to do.
Beyond that, I won't say any more. But Doreen is an interesting, flawed experiment in audience manipulation: in its quiet understated way, it's as dedicated to attacking the paying punters as Scott Capurro was last night. At times, this show looks you in the eye and actually dares you to walk out, an offer that at least a dozen people took up at this performance. Don't follow them: the final pay-off easily justifies the show that precedes it.
From there it's off to the Book Festival to see anti-globalisation goddess Naomi Klein, in conversation with Will Hutton. Klein is jet-lagged to buggery, and wearing a pair of glasses that give her a curious Mumsy Vixen look, but is still as articulate and amusing as you'd expect. She seems entertained by the attack on her in this morning's Business AM, claiming that she's now become a brand name for the anti-consumerist movement, and that her coming here to sell books is no different from Nike trying to sell us shoes.
As Klein is quick to point out, that's a major oversimplification. The bestselling No Logo was about the privatisation of ideas: the way that any idea can be picked up and used as brand fodder, to the extent that Gap are currently running an ad campaign based on an anarchist theme. The book looked at the way we could use brands as a portal into global capitalism, our way of gaining access to the workings of the world economy. Her talk today looks at what's been happening since the book was written: in particular the rise of economic protests and the pressure on the major financial institutions. Klein's ear for corporate bullshit is quite finely tuned, so she was delighted to receive a recently leaked World Bank memo in which they complained about their 'lack of trust capital'.
The protests obviously take up a large part of the discussion, notably the fatal events at Genoa recently. Klein talks about the way that Generation X, who had been completely written off a few years ago, has suddenly found a way of developing a political conscience: and they're getting pepper-sprayed (or worse) for it. But what she describes as a 'movement with no name' continues to grow in strength, a mass convergence that combines elements from past attempts at public dissent and learns from them, particularly in its lack of a hierarchical structure. ("The only people who think I'm a leader for all this are journalists.") In the end, she thinks some form of globalisation is possible, providing a mechanism exists for setting international goals: at present, it's a conspiracy of centralisation where the poor nations have to play by the rules and the rich nations can ignore them whenever they like. A thought-provoking and enjoyable afternoon: I'm glad I didn't go ahead with my Situationist prank of watching this while drinking a cup of coffee from the Book Festival's Starbucks stall.
Off to the UGC gigaplex next, the main commercial venue for the Film Festival since the sad loss of the ABC Lothian Road. Bangkok Dangerous is the latest example of the sudden interest in Thai cinema in the UK, following in the footsteps of the charming volleyball comedy The Iron Ladies and the outrageous camp of Tears Of The Black Tiger. Written, directed and edited by the Pang brothers (the splendidly named Danny and Oxide), it's a somewhat typical Asian heroic bloodshed thriller. Kong is a lonely deaf and dumb hitman, who's as ruthlessly efficient as hitmen in these things tend to be. He lives with his best friend Joe, who taught him everything he knows but is now out of the game following an injury. Joe's ex-girlfriend is the go-between who passes the jobs onto Kong, while trying to rekindle Joe's love for her to little effect. But when her boss' minions start taking more than a professional interest in her, the scene is set for over-the-top gunplay and the inevitable Righteous Vengeance.
Bangkok Dangerous has been getting rave reviews, but in the end those of us with some experience of Asian action cinema have seen it all before. It draws on the obvious sources of inspiration like John Woo and Wong Kar-Wai, but can't quite manage the melodramatic emotional sweep of the former or the downbeat cool of the latter. But there's no denying the flashy style of the Pangs. Visually the movie uses every trick in the book: variable speeds (sometimes two speeds within the same frame), different film stocks, freeze frames, digital effects, the works. And the sound mix is even more impressive: good use of absolute silence to help us appreciate Kong's point of view, and a spectacular surround-sound tinnitus effect to underline Kong's girlfriend's shock when she sees him fire a gun in anger for the first time. More of a calling card movie than an enjoyable one in its own right, but I'll be curious to see what Danny and Oxide do next.
To finish off the day, 2 Way Mirror's stage production of Reservoir Dogs: or as it's more accurately named in the programme, Reservoir Dogs (A Tribute). Because this really can't be considered an adaptation of the movie: it's more an attempt to recreate it on stage, in the manner of tribute bands like The Lithuanian Nirvana playing your local pub. We all know the story by now: Joe Cabot sets up a gang of five crooks to perform a jewellery heist, giving them all colour-coded names for security purposes. The heist goes completely and bloodily tits up. Back at the scheduled meeting point, the four remaining gang members try to work out who could have sold them out to the cops, and the trust between them all starts to break down horrifically.
On the page, it would look like Reservoir Dogs would play splendidly as theatre. A limited number of sets, a lot of dialogue, and a pre-sold audience of fanboys (and fangirls) who know the original inside out and will be happy to see any attempt to perform it. Except it isn't that simple. This production shows that Quentin Tarantino's talent isn't just in scriptwriting: he can also direct actors to say these sometimes mannered lines and make them sound like they just appeared in the characters' heads. Ricardo Pinto (who directed and adapted this version) can't do that: he's relying too much of our memory of the original to get us through some incredibly flat line readings.
The other major flaw in this adapation is the restructuring of the script. Presumably because it'd be too difficult to set up the scene changes for Tarantino's original flashback-heavy structure, Pinto has reshuffled all the scenes into chronological order. This destroys some of the tension - the film was careful to only give us backstory when we actually needed it, rather than dumping it all on us at the beginning - and means that there's an incredibly long static second half consisting entirely of the post-robbery warehouse scenes. The accents are all over the shop, as nobody's quite decided whether they want to impersonate the movie characters (Robert Cohen doing a low-rent Steve Buscemi, if that's possible) or do something original (Michael Halden's entirely non-fat-and-shouty take on the Joe Cabot role). And who cast that guy with the inexplicable Italian accent as Mr White? (played by... er... Ricardo Pinto. OK, that explains it.) There may still be a stage play lurking within Reservoir Dogs, but this ain't it.
Notes From Spank's Pals
Lesley - Well, Manic Opera got a far far more appreciative audience for their final show today [compare with yesterday's Late 'N' Live - Spank]. OK, predominantly middle-aged liberals with a smattering of the younger generation. The Manics' wicked, dirty songs went down a treat with all - but the couple of kids in the audience seemed to have been smuggled out quite early on. The Spiegeltent could have held a few more punters: next time they're around I dare a few more people to cross the threshold. If this is entertainment for the middle-aged, ain't nothing wrong with that. Not a hint of smugness anywhere, and we enjoyed songs which made some of the young vaguely uncomfortable.
The 3 Muses - Dracula. What a scream! We just couldn't stop talking about it. The venue was vampirish, the set superbly imaginative and the gore just ghastly. Well done gals - great performance! But guys! - the pace, the delivery?! OK, we get it: weak men, strong women must equal early feminist erotic exposition. It would help if you'd read the book or at least had a helpful muse to explain the plot to you. All in all, worth seeing - plenty to get your teeth into, and no nightmares afterwards. By the way, the Muses give the Gallery Bar five stars, but please shhh! during the performance!
Rob D - You'll get some words from SeaPea on Berkoff's Women as well. Since it's by Berkoff and it concerns women, you need both sides of the story... Linda Marlowe does several monologues from the female characters in Berkoff's plays such as East, Decadence, Greek. She's worked with Berkoff for years and should know what he's trying to say. The first part from Decadence was stunning - Linda Marlowe must be in her late sixties by now, but her performance was truly trouser-stirring. She did mother and daughter from East and wife from Greek as well: these weren't so good as she talks with a horrid 'Hampstead' accent that sounds all wrong when she's doing East End characters. We saw the fox-hunt scene from Decadence at Pick Of The Fringe yesterday, and I reckon she does it just perfect. The scene that really impressed me was the Sphinx from Greek - she is sexy, spiteful, violent and completely understandable, even to a bloke: she picks on male members of the audience and calls them worms, shit and worse. At the end she seems to apologise by saying "hope I didn't frighten you", then gets straight back into character and shouts "I bet that's why your wife put you in the front row!" Very touching, very scary, very sexy, and only on once so you've missed it - sorry.
Lesley - Synopsis of Japanese dance Shinla.
Scene 1. The end of the Edo era in Japan, the writer - a woman - looks for new values.
Scene 2. The writer starts writing when fugitive Warrior's Sister - her other self - enters.
Scene 3. The Master Warrior dedicates his soul to a sword.
Scene 4. Fugitive Warrior chases Master Warrior to seek revenge (sic).
Scene 5. Fateful duel. Fugitive Warrior defeats Master Warrior. Contented, he then kills himself.
Scene 6. The writer tries to understand.
Scene 7. The writer explores her inner self.
Scene 8. Dance of the sword.
Scene 9. The writer tries to attain satori.
Scene 10. The writer discovers new values.
Fine scenes 1 to 5, then it all went self-indulgently obscure. Technically the dancers are excellent, and the characters look really good. The shape of the story in the first half had powerful visual images and movement, yet nothing after that conveyed anything of interest to me at all.
Nick - Why is it every Festival, I get the urge to be arty and go see some dance and physical theatre? Shinla was truly buttock clenching. The choreographer, who also appeared in the show, apparently fancied crossing Charlie's Angels with traditional Japanese theatre styles: and she had a great time, while the audience fell asleep. There were some lovely moments when the dance appeared traditional, and then enormous longeurs of self-indulgent tosh that made you wish you were shopping in John Lewis just up the road.
2 of The 3 Muses - Animal Farm. You know how critics describe shows as spellbinding, riveting, a tour de force? Well, this performance was it. Lizzie Wort's facial expressions, her physicality and her vocal projection all left us feeling totally exhausted. The Muses' brief conversation with Lizzie afterwards revealed she'd had a late night the night before. Incredible! Is she human or just plain animal? Very highly recommended.
Lesley - Theatre de L'Ange Fou presents Entangled Lives... which "explores the conflict in each of us of the unconscious impressions reflecting through our present lives." (...so there...) "Inspired by Jean Tardieu's Mister Sir, this contemporary mime play enters into a unique poetic dramaturgy... it combines the emotional power of movement with the musicality of seven different languages: captivating, strange and funny." On the whole Yes, though my attention drifted occasionally. One thing I'm convinced of watching this and Shinla (see above): there must be some powerfully good dance and movement teachers out there.
Rob D - Glengarry Glen Ross. You know, it takes a certain amount of conviction, anger and maturity to use the phrase "cocksucker" in the context of a business meeting. Jack Lemmon managed it fine in the film, but the cast of this play weren't much more than kids, and delivered their lines in a deadpan and unconvincing sort of way. Throughout the play I felt I could have done it better myself. There were two "laughers" in the audience as well - I know the play is meant to be a comedy, but do people really need to guffaw at each line?
August 21st 2001
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