Arches Live

The ethos behind The Arches programming is often translated as “the freedom to fail”. It’s an unfortunate phrase, suggesting that artists have a chance to take the piss, rather than explaining that a festival like Arches Live! allows  performers to take risks and step out of their own comfort zones. Since they have let me have a crack at developing Performance Criticism, and I was really out of my comfort zone there, I am positive about this credo, whatever way it gets expressed.

Since I spent most of Arches Live! in a black box, I only managed four shows out of the thirty odd. I’ll start with the usual caveat: AL! is best enjoyed as a block, not as individual pieces. There’s no real way to tell what will tickle your fancy from the short blurbs or even my magisterial previews. Even the audience has to take risks.

My evening of watching took in a gore-splattered pantomime (The Ratcatcher) anti-musical theatre (Gideon and the Woodentops) and an NTS supported journey into spiritualism (The Medium). Even if they had been all as shitty as The Ratcatcher’s shreddies, that’s still a better night than listening to Radio 3, alone, again.

As a quick survey of where Scotland’s young performers are at, AL! suggests that they are influenced by hip-hop, musique concrete, the bouffon (a sort of predatory clowning), discarded religion, radio plays, taut acoustic rock and the absurdity of actors’ lives.  If Ali Maloney, the Kielty Brothers and Ross MacKay stay true to their visions and become the future establishment, 2025 ought to see a Christmas show at the Lyceum that retells the story of medieval witch trials on a stage of dog-shit with a forty piece orchestra of metal pipes and acoustic guitars.

That’s a good thing, in my opinion.

Mahoney’s Ratcatcher kicks off, half an hour of grubby ranting and grotesque barbarism. A swipe at celebrity culture, it enjoys The Arches’ unique dungeon atmosphere, presenting two characters happily at home in the sewer. And while these apparitions are gap-toothed and obsequious, their self-abasement is torn  between a desire to entertain and be socially useful. Their limited ambitions may have prevented them from seeing themselves as anything more than a potential sweetmeat for their betters – and the baroque violence of the language mirrors the degradation of their situation- but Mahoney is working on a genuine punk rock pantomime. Ugly, politically astute and satirical, Ratcatcher is a note towards a contemporary revival of the grand guignol.  

Gideon and the Woodentops is a stunningly accomplished musical. Of course, the Kielty brothers pretend it is an “anti-musical comedy”, hoping to avoid the stigma of Broadway success and triviality: nevertheless, a cast proficient in both singing and acting and rocking out the acoustic guitars makes this scaled down, episode tale of religious persecution an easily accessible treat. An antidote to the sentimentality of much musical theatre and discussion of Scotland’s past  - the humour of a murderous Gideon turning actors into Bibles is founded in an anti-Puritan history lesson – it is not difficult to imagine this touring and wowing audiences across the country. That is, until they visit the Borders, where the incest jokes might lead to them sharing their characters’ sad fate.

Last stop is The Medium. Ross MacKay is a puppeteer – the most moving moment is when he uses his skills to animate a mail bag – striking out into an uneasy combination of historical and personal reflection. Spiritualism is given a quick debunking while MacKay considers his own religious past: deep in the narrative is his internal battle between secular compassion and the values from an immature Christianity. As a work in progress, The Medium maintains an unsatisfying tension between the personal and historical aspects, at times jarringly honest, sentimental or shallow.

The next day, I sat on a panel discussing the economic impact of the credit crunch on the arts. For a while, it turned to the role of the critic – thanks to my insistence that the critic is more important that the object of critique, most likely. I blathered about the need for a dialogue between artists and journalists, which I am now calling to avoid starring these shows.