Man Moue Rove Or 2 @ Traverse

http://www.traverse.co.uk/whats-on/event-detail/443/double-bill-squish--box-fresh.aspx

More Wrestling and an apology

First of all, an apology. I discussed Insane Championship Wrestling purely in the context of masculine displays of power. It has been pointed out to me that women are part of this line up, too.

Once again, the unconscious bias of patriarchal hegemony has expressed itself in my blog. I'd like to defend myself on the grounds that... well, frankly, I didn't read the press release properly and I'm not going to argue with wrestlers.

Funny thing is, they are going over to Studio 24: the last time I was there, it was probably at the lamented 1990s club night, Sativa. I was dancing to a different drummer back then - a whole troop of them.  And the whole point of this event is that it is the first joint show between ICW and their sister promotion, Fierce Females. Way to miss the point, Vile.

Although I haven't watched the wrestling since Big Daddy flattened King Kong Kurt, I feel the stirrings of the old enthusiasm. ICW has a team called The Bucky Boys. Take that, Edinburgh. Plus there is a death match.

When Rob Drummond did Wrestling  at The Arches, he reminded me of the poetry in the square circle, the displays of power that make me believe that those comics I love aren't necessarily just fiction. The passion of the tragedy, man pitting himself against man, woman against woman and then, the inter-gender tag-match.

Let's rumble.




The Card

Grudge match
GRADO vs. RED LIGHTNING II

Inter-Gender Tag Team DEATHMATCH!
Jack Jester & Kaylee Ray Vs. Mikey Whiplash & Carmel

Tag Tag No.1 Contenders
The Bucky Boys Vs. Fight Club

James Scott Vs. Noam Dar

Contract signing with BT Gunn and Chris Renfrew

Fierce Females Championship Tournament Qualifier
Vyper Vs. Noire

6-Way Elimination Tag
April Davids Vs Nikki Storm Vs Leah Owens Vs Kasey Owens Vs Kirsty Loveign Vs Fiona Fraser

ICW Zero-Gravity Championship
Andy Wild (c) Vs. Wolfgang

Fierce Females Championship Tournament Qualifier
Sara Vs Rhia O'Reilly

Another apology

I don't read my own writing very often - not only is this pretty evident from the atrocious grammar, which a simple check would expose, but I find it as difficult as listening to my recorded voice. However, unless I have a look at this blog now and again, I doubt it will ever get any visits.

For various reasons, I am in a reflective mood - it might be the outbreak of post-herpetic neuralgia, or just the painful mistakes I made in another article last week. But I flicked over a few pieces, and picked up on two problems. If you haven't stopped reading yet, now might be a good time... unless you fancy joining my self-indulgent journey into critical doubt.

First stop: Love Hurts by Random Accomplice. About half of my review is concerned with the representation of mental illness. I castigate the author for giving a character an ill-defined mental illness (this is despite alluding to an ill-defined mental illness in my life. Well, critics are meant to be hypocrites. And the doctor hasn't told me what I have got, either).

It is a fairly consistent theme in my criticism: theatre often represents madness as a theatrical trope rather than a specific disorder. I hated The Wonderful World of Disassocia on the grounds that it didn't look like any breakdown I could recognise: Crazy Gary gets it for similar reasons.

Love Hurts is - as I do point out - a strong entry in Random Accomplice's compendium of effective theatre and a brave new direction for Johnny McKnight. If I had given it a star rating, it would have been a four. I am not sure that my review is undermined by my insistence that I need to know the clinical diagnosis of the protagonist. It mattered to me at the time.

But it is a quirk of my personality: I also get pissed off by lazy representations of religious belief, racial stereotyping, lazy humour, Coldplay albums, the lack of respect given to criticism. I know that I deliberately keep a blog so that I can indulge my obsessions without giving them the full weight of an "official review". Then I bang on about blogs being as valid as printed articles and say that criticism is about subjectivity.

Hopelessly confused, anyone?

Then I went into my assault on Terminus. Like with Disassocia, I was really out of the critical consensus with this. I was hating on a play that had been acclaimed across nations. And my first words?

It is everything I don't want theatre to be.

There's a bravery in taking such a bold stand, but it stands against one of my key definitions of what differentiates criticism from opinion. Instead of assessing a play on its own intentions, I was judging it against my desires. I'm not sure I can support myself on this one.

I tried the usual excuse: I was clearly revealing my bias. That works, as long as I don't expect the review to be taken seriously. And I know this isn't the first play that I have recognised as being outside of my interests. My usual tactic is to stay silent.

I want to find a justification for both of these reviews. Let me see...

My recent definition of a critic is a writer who assesses work against its own intention. I don't think either of my reviews were works of criticism, then. They were opinion.