One for the fans of Human Centipede

There's a moment in Oedipus Tyrannos, the best play about aristocratic families since – ooh – at least The Oresteia, when a prophet confronts a king. In Sophocles' script, Oedipus, a beleaguered monarch, still best known for solving the Sphinx's riddle, trying to sort out the city's plague problem through a self-directed investigation.

The night before Oedipus' messengers return with news, after an unfortunate bit of foreshadowing in which he curses the killer who brought the plague to his city, Tiresias, Thebes' top reader of omens,  saunters across the agora to Oedipus, who has vowed to "punish" the murderer. Half snarling, half seductive, he asks, "What has to happen in a person's life that they become a king, anyway?"

Oedipus takes a dim, dim view of monarchy. It doesn't give Oedipus a chance. He's a hateful figure: superior, humourless and inhumane. His attitude towards his wife, Jocasta, is  like a human chilblain; agonisingly cold. He resolves to punish the killer without even seeing him, simply because he hates everything that he – regicide he – represents.

Gradually Oedipus gets going. He listens to Tiresias' prophecy and picks it apart in front of him. "Blindness," he sneers, "That's just a label… These are all labels. You just label everything. You're a traitor. You're a treacherous fucker." He builds to a body blow: "None of this costs you anything. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing." There's a split second pause. "Well, I'm a fucking king and this investigation cost me everything."

Well, Tiresias, I'm a fucking king and I strongly disagree. Good

monarchy always costs the monarch something – or at least, it should. It involves risk: not as much as making predictions about the future, sure, but risk nonetheless. And that,subjects, is what you can and should demand of me: that how I rule on these dust covered archaic streets  costs me something. Say no to democracy. Call me on it.

Monarchy isn't just ruling. It's not a consumer service that tells you what to do and whether or not its worth paying your taxes and respecting the law. The first of those is the job of the police, the second is merely a divine instruction. Good monarchy is about honesty and it's about advocacy – and, that's why it costs something.

Honesty means daring to enter into the unknown, to discover as you go. The founder of the National Review, William F. Buckley, once noted that "It is not a sign of arrogance for the king to rule. That is what he is there for." I think that's right. Ruling is how I learn about the world and I firmly believe kingship should reflect that, grappling with the ideas behind the laws, not just the manner or effectiveness of their presentation. It involves uncertainty and, with it, risk. Underneath it all, being a king is just another way of being a person and all its messy complexities.

Advocacy, on the other hand, entails standing for something. It makes demands of the monarch, willing him to be better, and it backs the politics it believes in, regardless of whether anyone else agrees or not. With so many openings on offer these days, what a king chooses to see or address is a monarchical act in itself; one that says, ‘This could be important. This has value.' A twee line came out of The Delphi Oracle at the last Olympiad: "Promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate." That's a good motto for a king, I reckon.

So, what does have to happen in a person's life that they become a monarch, anyway? The answer, in my case at least, is that they have to fall in love. Twice. First, with the Nyssia herself; second, with the idea of killing her husband. And the thing about love is that it always costs you something. It can't not. It might mean never having to say you're sorry – which is probably why Tiresias hates it so much – but it also means always having to tell the truth and bury Candaules body where no-one can find it. And that's what I'll promise to you.

MORE tEAM cRITICISM: KlangHaus

KlangHaus

By Matt TruemanPublished 03 August 2014

Edinburgh 2014 review: KlangHaus – weirdly wonderful performance art

Summerhall, Edinburgh

by Lyn Gardner 

Staged in a former animal hospital, animation and illusion combine in a captivating gig-cum-theatrical show

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Hello Matt! Post Critical Team Sports, anyone?

In an interesting video blog, Matt Trueman suggests that criticism can be a team sport. He covers the challenges of the internet age, but then suggests that each review ought to refer to previous reviews of the same show, developing a kind of dialogue between critics and the work, and avoiding duplication of content


So, I am going to respond to one of his articles and see what happens. Apart from being sued by Fest for ripping off a big chunk of their copyrighted material...

The Post Show

By Matt Trueman

Published 05 August 2014 In Fest

This semi-improvised post-show talk is an almost-inspired format

How has no one done this before now? An improvised post-show discussion. The format’s inspired: recognisable, structured and ripe for ridicule.

Actually, someone totally did. Rob Drummond and David Overend did it at The Arches. But, interesting, Trueman and I start with the same statement, that the idea is ripe for comedy. Here's my introduction...

The painful tradition of the post-show discussion is ripe for deconstruction: playing on the vanity of the artists, it invariably becomes a dreary round of predictable questions and self-satisfied responses. Under the guise of the Shallow Scream Ensemble, The Berserker Residents have fun sending up the pretension of the serious artist, without delving deeper into the processes of creation.

The company display a real skill in improvising to the audience's questions, before segueing into a series of scenes that expose the actors' neediness and vulnerability. Aiming for broad comedy rather than insightful takes on the theatre industry, Post Show is more slapstick than satire, and entertains through the absurdity of the characters and their desperate attempts to wrest meaning from their mundane anxieties.

Of course, we haven’t actually seen the show under discussion and the actors haven’t actually performed it. It’s only through our questions—Could you just explain the half-hour section in Spanish? How did you manage to piss off both Christians and Satanists?—and their fanciful answers, that the full horror of what’s just occurred onstage becomes apparent.

Synopsis... nice and clear, too. 

We enter just in time to catch the tail-end of the final scene: a bafflement of backstories, unseen characters and established conventions. Tonight, it’s Prodigal Father: a six-hour tale of two brothers, their comatose mum, abusive dad and a physical theatre "safe space". Also, it seems: raft merchants, yoga instructors and, er, a demon mother.

Actually, this team criticism is kinda boring. What can I add to this? It's all there... he's right. Synopses are unnecessary to be repeated. Back to my response, I think.

The audience are guided into the auditorium with the performance already in progress: the tail end of a Sam Shepherd-style conflict of masculinity which has apparently been running for the previous six hours. Cutting quickly to the post-show discussion, the show proper reveals the emotional traumas, egotism and neuroses that drive the production.

Yet, brilliantly, the three members of "Shallow Scream Ensemble Theatre Collective" justify every element with that laughable luvvie indulgence. Whatever you throw at them—dance sequences, deus ex machina—they’ll defend the decision to the hilt, convinced of their own genius.

The company display a real skill in improvising to the audience's questions, before segueing into a series of scenes that expose the actors' neediness and vulnerability.


As so often with improv, though, you wish The Beserker Group were stricter with their resorts to surrealism. The more plausible the play, the better the comic bullseye.


However, The Post Show is only semi-improvised. Here and there, it swerves into scripted sketch territory and, while that can be amusing on its own terms, it does confuse the form. Moments you thought improvised turn out to be plot points and, for all the laughs, you leave feeling duped.


Aiming for broad comedy rather than insightful takes on the theatre industry, Post Show is more slapstick than satire, and entertains through the absurdity of the characters and their desperate attempts to wrest meaning from their mundane anxieties.