Tuesday 16 May 2017

A Critic Descends to the Fringe


Fairly soon, this blog will be dominated by the 'dramaturgy database', a crazy wheeze that I invented in order to show off how much coverage one person could do, if he abandoned any hope of a social life. As that happens, my personal voice is effaced, and I am pretty sure that giving my opinion was one reason why I became a critic.

So... here we go... 

I became enthusiastic about theatre because I experienced certain emotions at certain events. These experiences persuaded me that theatre was a place where my alienation from my own existence could be - if not defeated - at least placated for a moment.

It goes back to my childhood: Michael Pennington as Prince Hal, rejecting Falstaff with a regal pause and a whispered 'I know you not'. Then Les Ballet C de la B's VSPRS, and the twisting and convulsing of dancers who, in some obscure way, reflected the movements of my soul. More recently, there was Matthew Lenton's kind of opera, The 8th Door, which dissected the passage of desire through the mediation of the social media machine (itself a metaphor for the personality, a facade of a self reflecting an interior anxiety...)

It is just fragments... moments in narratives, coup de théâtre, a resolution or tension heightened. 

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