"Where pathos rules, the ruling class has vanished from the scene."
There are two spectacular posters in the back room of the gallery. This one is black and red and grey and has fragments of essays on the relationship between the photographic image and capital. Next to a portrait of a miner, there is a stern condemnation of the Magnum photographic agency for its contribution to a tradition that privileges the power of the emotive image. Copies of pages from old newspapers aimed at "the workers" are accompanied by statements by the journalists involved in their creation.
The split between the two sides of the poster is clear: one side is a critique of the dominant photographic approach, the other a brief history of resistance. Black versus red: but the text in the black is frequently dragged into incomprehensibility by its reliance on a specialised jargon.
"The crisis of feminism is not incidental to a matriarchal symbolism of moral interdependency..." "No mutual and reciprocal strategy is either required or envisaged..." "The visual rhetoric of consumer sovereignty is surprisingly pervasive..."
If specific quotations are dense, the overall impact is more expressive. The contrast between the charming and urgent workers' newspapers and the iconic power of the capitalist images makes the argument that an image is not neutral. Even documentary reportage has an aesthetic and beneath that aesthetic there is a political philosophy. If taste is preferring one style over another, this poster encourages the belief that taste is not merely a matter of aesthetics. Your aesthetics are your ethics.
What, then, do I make of my own dislike for the presence of specialist language? In rejecting the phrases and words so common in left-wing dialectic, am I expressing my own faith in the apparently innocent language of capitalism? Elsewhere, I have argued for more clarity, abandoning words that are general and picking the more precise. Isn't the language of the Marxist much the same as that of the scientist, finding exactly the word that matters?
Showing posts with label live blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label live blog. Show all posts
Wednesday, 23 January 2013
Stills. Economy. 4. Live Blog
I am opposite a large photograph of Tracey Emin. She has her legs open and is pulling all money into her lap. I am cross-legged and typing a reply to her.
The note to the photograph suggests that Emin is making a comment on the relationship between motherhood and unpaid labour: since her work often deals with uncomfortable areas of sexuality and female identity, the open legs and the exposed flesh are partially reminders of erotic photograph but also place this within her general interest in the way that women are represented.
However, I seem to remember Emin banging on about paying too much tax under Labour and having increasingly conservative opinions about poverty. This might be a comment on the way that motherhood is never factored into capitalism's assessments of cost, or it might be Emin's version of Harry Enfield's Loadsamoney character.
A larger photo on the next wall: Tabrizian's portrait of many (all male) city types standing in a foyer. They all look very smart and by capturing them in stillness, they have a sense of thoughtfulness and serenity in their postures. They are waiting for something - the picture was taken in 2008, so maybe they are waiting for the economic crash they helped to organise. The lack of connection between the men - no-one looks directly at anyone else - is sinister. Against Emin's consciously disordered picture, the stability and organisation of the male business boys is disturbing.
Whatever else Emin is doing, she is doing it with passion. The city crew appear disconnected from any recognisable emotion or community.
Male and female represent two polarities. On the one wall we have sex (legs apart), energy and individuality. On the other we have a group, smart clothes and seriousness.
A third image joins the conversation: Rosier took a shot of three women in an airport beneath an advertising poster (that contains three women). The gap between the real and the marketing version does not need to be stressed. In the advert, it's all sexy bodies and fun. In the real world, there's waiting about and comfortable clothes.
All versions of the way that the body is clothed by capitalism.
The note to the photograph suggests that Emin is making a comment on the relationship between motherhood and unpaid labour: since her work often deals with uncomfortable areas of sexuality and female identity, the open legs and the exposed flesh are partially reminders of erotic photograph but also place this within her general interest in the way that women are represented.
However, I seem to remember Emin banging on about paying too much tax under Labour and having increasingly conservative opinions about poverty. This might be a comment on the way that motherhood is never factored into capitalism's assessments of cost, or it might be Emin's version of Harry Enfield's Loadsamoney character.
A larger photo on the next wall: Tabrizian's portrait of many (all male) city types standing in a foyer. They all look very smart and by capturing them in stillness, they have a sense of thoughtfulness and serenity in their postures. They are waiting for something - the picture was taken in 2008, so maybe they are waiting for the economic crash they helped to organise. The lack of connection between the men - no-one looks directly at anyone else - is sinister. Against Emin's consciously disordered picture, the stability and organisation of the male business boys is disturbing.
Whatever else Emin is doing, she is doing it with passion. The city crew appear disconnected from any recognisable emotion or community.
Male and female represent two polarities. On the one wall we have sex (legs apart), energy and individuality. On the other we have a group, smart clothes and seriousness.
A third image joins the conversation: Rosier took a shot of three women in an airport beneath an advertising poster (that contains three women). The gap between the real and the marketing version does not need to be stressed. In the advert, it's all sexy bodies and fun. In the real world, there's waiting about and comfortable clothes.
All versions of the way that the body is clothed by capitalism.
Stills. Economy. Live Blog. 3
At the back of the gallery, there is a collection of postcard sized images. Between a photograph of a graffito ("let's make lots of money" in black spray paint) and an advert for investing in Eastern Poland (a beseeching child looks up beneath the caption "what will you tell your child when he asks whether you invested..."), there is a screen-shot of a Facebook newsfeed. Barclays Bank is asking "is it a home if you don't own it?"
There's probably enough in that sentence to last the rest of my review. First of all, a bank has decided to institute a major philosophical discussion about the nature of "home." I'd rather that was left to professors who might be able to provide intellectual support for the dialogue without trying to sell me contents insurance every five minutes.
I am going to assume two possible answers. Not knowing is a valuable position, but it doesn't allow me to follow the consequences of a solid response.
If it isn't a home unless I own it, that opens up all the questions about financial instability, the dangers of renting (will the landlord suddenly evict me?), the idea that without ownership, the householder is not allowed to call anywhere home, that they are merely occupying and have no sense of location and... and...
If it is a home anyway... what does that mean a home is? How do I establish a home in a rented accommodation?
But I thought of myself as very excluded by that question. Since I don't own the house I live in, I am reminded of my position as an economic outsider.
This is going to be a troubling exhibition.
There's probably enough in that sentence to last the rest of my review. First of all, a bank has decided to institute a major philosophical discussion about the nature of "home." I'd rather that was left to professors who might be able to provide intellectual support for the dialogue without trying to sell me contents insurance every five minutes.
I am going to assume two possible answers. Not knowing is a valuable position, but it doesn't allow me to follow the consequences of a solid response.
If it isn't a home unless I own it, that opens up all the questions about financial instability, the dangers of renting (will the landlord suddenly evict me?), the idea that without ownership, the householder is not allowed to call anywhere home, that they are merely occupying and have no sense of location and... and...
If it is a home anyway... what does that mean a home is? How do I establish a home in a rented accommodation?
But I thought of myself as very excluded by that question. Since I don't own the house I live in, I am reminded of my position as an economic outsider.
This is going to be a troubling exhibition.
Friday, 28 September 2012
It's a cheap act of self promotion!
Artist: Gareth K Vile
Venue: Arches LIVE 2012
Date: Sat 29 Sep 2012 |2pm onwards | Foyer| Free
Descriptions (from The Arches Website): He took confession, investigated murder, chatted to stars and was locked up in a basement for his art. Now Criticulous faces the ultimate challenge: collaboration.
Unwilling to admit that criticism is not the original art form, Criticulous fights his ego and mounting anxiety to present a series of pieces that brings dance, radio, dialectics, sculpture and the audience into his relentless quest to understand a world he did not create but reflects.
Contains desperation.
The rumour is that Vile is trying to retire me. He did that thing in the Fringe - The Passion of Criticulous - and it got me into a fist-fight with a Polish political company. I don't think it is an accident that he keeps making works that involve me either insulting people who are bigger than me, or being put into clear and present danger. The last time I went, I was performing in a lift-shaft. Health and Safety?
Oh, I am sorry. Please, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Mr Criticulous. I am the world's only performance critic. That is to say, no-one else would be stupid enough to do something like this. I have been working with The Vile Arts for about three years. I represent the attempt by Vile to break the fourth wall, from the audience's side.
This particular production - I Love Criticulous, and Criticulous Loves Me - is supposed to be the last part of the Criticulous Trilogy. It is the final Criticulous performance, in much the same way as Status Quo did a farewell tour in 1986. Get real. I'm The Vile Arts' cash cow.
You'll notice the intelligent reference to Joseph Beuys in the title. Originally, we intended to recreate the classic Live Art work, in which Beuys spent some time in a gallery space with a coyote. Sadly, we clash with Alien War in the basement, which does something similar to far more visceral effect.
You can insert the jokes here about how no self-respecting scavenger would want to share a room with a critic.
I'd like to take this opportunity to invite you to come along and find out what we've decided to do instead. I'll be blogging on and off all day, giving you little extracts of the show, reflecting on the process, making slurs and revealing showbiz secrets.
Tuesday, 14 August 2012
Murder on the Royal Mile
There is a concern in the state of Criticism.
Perhaps that should be - there is something rotten in the state of Criticism... too pretentious? Never a good idea to quote the Bard to introduce a far less worthy treatise...
I heard they found a body on the Royal Mile, three stars in the skull, two stars in the heart... not breathing, presumed dead at time of discovery...
A long roll of paper wrapped around the neck, a series of one word quotations etched into the flesh. They say that it was already in an advanced state of decomposition when it was discovered.
"The fundamental barrier to criticism as an art form is that it is merely response: it cannot generate the original material that is the watermark of fine art."
Nobody appears to be upset, but everyone is moaning. There are plenty of simple jokes, blunt and vulgar, to be passed around the playground and green room. There are even those who said the victim was asking for it.
Criticism is dead. Criticulous has been called in to investigate. Interrogations begin at Summerhall, 21 August, 10pm.
Perhaps that should be - there is something rotten in the state of Criticism... too pretentious? Never a good idea to quote the Bard to introduce a far less worthy treatise...
I heard they found a body on the Royal Mile, three stars in the skull, two stars in the heart... not breathing, presumed dead at time of discovery...
A long roll of paper wrapped around the neck, a series of one word quotations etched into the flesh. They say that it was already in an advanced state of decomposition when it was discovered.
"The fundamental barrier to criticism as an art form is that it is merely response: it cannot generate the original material that is the watermark of fine art."
Nobody appears to be upset, but everyone is moaning. There are plenty of simple jokes, blunt and vulgar, to be passed around the playground and green room. There are even those who said the victim was asking for it.
Criticism is dead. Criticulous has been called in to investigate. Interrogations begin at Summerhall, 21 August, 10pm.
Vulnerable (Top Five)
Today, I am feeling vulnerable. Whenever I leave the office, I am surrounded by posters that are covered in stars. They feel like bullets, forged by critics but used by companies to shoot each other in the war for resources. I don't like it, I don't like reducing a critical opinion to a quotation, let alone the blank, unblinking sequence of stars. I'm a pretentious type, and I like to think that criticism is an art defined in much the same way as poetry. When when the precious words that a critic has forged into linked chains of meaning are deconstructed down to a signifier of cultural worth, I am unhappy.
How can I respond? How about a top five for feeling vulnerable? Works for me...
"This piece combines puppetry with physical theatre, so you've got human actors playing opposite puppet creatures," says Ailin Conant about her show The Fantasist. "I guess it's like some kind of Jacques Lecoq / Jim Henson mash-up."
The Fantasist appropriately expresses the bi-polar experience by juxtaposing two styles of theatre: modestly, Conant insists that the puppetry is something new for her: " I kind of fantasize about the conversations that "real" puppet companies might have in the rehearsal room: What puppeteer costuming will serve this puppet best? An understated cap or full Bunraku black hoods? In our rehearsal you're much more likely to hear something like, Is this hood-thingie keeping the focus off my face, or do I just look like a wanker?"
Fortunately, this endearing self-deprecation is backed up by a ken theatricality and an emphasis on using the approaches as means to end - her description of the mash up might suggest what is going on, but it does not prepare the audience for what has been touted by a Skinny reviewer as a highlight of the festival.
Underbelly, 3- 27 August
The critical world is going mad about The Shit, a late night burst of Italian outrage and disgust. Since it has a naked women ranting and howling and screaming - the words aren't so much about their meaning but the sound they make as they scatter and shatter and settle - this is more about vulnerability being portrayed on stage. I can't help but be reminded of some of Kathleen Hanna's (Bikini Kill, Le Tigre) more challenging moments, and there is a huge poster of performer Silvia Gallerano outside Summerhall that is bracing and frightening in equal manner.
Summerhall, 3 -27 August
Songs of Lear is another Summerhall special, and another entry from Poland. It's surprising to see a company associated with a visceral theatre (Song of the Goat are another one of those central European companies who give equal weight to body and word) present what appears to be a choral concert: each episode is introduced by the director - he explains that this is not a version of Shakespeare's Lear but uses the text as "a landscape" and each scene is best read as a portrait - and the company begin in their sunday best black.
Despite the formal beginning, the forces within the text (the ingratitude of the child, the emotional violence of the father, the threat of insanity and the truth spoken as folly) gradually dominate the performers: snatches of esoteric instrumentation, invocations of Coptic song, stamping feet and an incredible, unexpected drum solo interpret the familiar story and tease out the despair and struggle that is lost in versions that rely on text and old school tricks like mere acting.
By avoiding too much plot, the characters become the focus. Cordelia's lament gives depth to a character that Shakespeare couldn't be bothered to flesh out (she's a dull paragon of honesty in the original; here, she is the victim of her father's immaturity with a series of disappointments reaching back into childhood): Gloucester is less the doddering idiot than a thoughtful courtier, sensing the approaching storms. Lear himself is spoilt, absurd and, ultimately tragic.
The production consciously avoids much of traditional theatricality. The lighting is simply a wash of one colour, the costumes are formal wear, the only props are instruments, the script is broken apart and appears only as fragments within songs. Yet somehow Song of the Goat achieve that beautiful connection with the audience: the standing ovation is deserved and proves that total theatre - using all the tricks - is not necessarily the only way to fulfil the potential of the stage.
Summerhall, 13 - 25 August
Perhaps my vulnerability was caused by seeing Dusty Limit's show last night. When he proudly announced that he is dead inside, my own cavernous interior echoed his words. The Girl with No Heart seems to plug into my own concerns, yet when Sparkle and Dark decorated their venue with origami cranes, the effect was more one of beauty than misery.
The Girl goes back to the nuclear assault on Hiroshima- itself a reminder of how ultimately vulnerable the entire human species is - and has a staging made entirely of paper. Despite the immensity of the subject, they tell a parable rather than a tragedy, and locate the power to build or destroy in the imagination and emotions of a young child.
The paper cranes came about because there is a Japanese legend that to fold a thousand cranes will lead to the fulfilment of a wish. Let's hope the company don't waste that wish on longing for a five star rating...
Bedlam, 3 -24 August
How can I respond? How about a top five for feeling vulnerable? Works for me...
"This piece combines puppetry with physical theatre, so you've got human actors playing opposite puppet creatures," says Ailin Conant about her show The Fantasist. "I guess it's like some kind of Jacques Lecoq / Jim Henson mash-up."
The Fantasist appropriately expresses the bi-polar experience by juxtaposing two styles of theatre: modestly, Conant insists that the puppetry is something new for her: " I kind of fantasize about the conversations that "real" puppet companies might have in the rehearsal room: What puppeteer costuming will serve this puppet best? An understated cap or full Bunraku black hoods? In our rehearsal you're much more likely to hear something like, Is this hood-thingie keeping the focus off my face, or do I just look like a wanker?"Fortunately, this endearing self-deprecation is backed up by a ken theatricality and an emphasis on using the approaches as means to end - her description of the mash up might suggest what is going on, but it does not prepare the audience for what has been touted by a Skinny reviewer as a highlight of the festival.
Underbelly, 3- 27 August
The critical world is going mad about The Shit, a late night burst of Italian outrage and disgust. Since it has a naked women ranting and howling and screaming - the words aren't so much about their meaning but the sound they make as they scatter and shatter and settle - this is more about vulnerability being portrayed on stage. I can't help but be reminded of some of Kathleen Hanna's (Bikini Kill, Le Tigre) more challenging moments, and there is a huge poster of performer Silvia Gallerano outside Summerhall that is bracing and frightening in equal manner.
Summerhall, 3 -27 August
Songs of Lear is another Summerhall special, and another entry from Poland. It's surprising to see a company associated with a visceral theatre (Song of the Goat are another one of those central European companies who give equal weight to body and word) present what appears to be a choral concert: each episode is introduced by the director - he explains that this is not a version of Shakespeare's Lear but uses the text as "a landscape" and each scene is best read as a portrait - and the company begin in their sunday best black.
Despite the formal beginning, the forces within the text (the ingratitude of the child, the emotional violence of the father, the threat of insanity and the truth spoken as folly) gradually dominate the performers: snatches of esoteric instrumentation, invocations of Coptic song, stamping feet and an incredible, unexpected drum solo interpret the familiar story and tease out the despair and struggle that is lost in versions that rely on text and old school tricks like mere acting.
By avoiding too much plot, the characters become the focus. Cordelia's lament gives depth to a character that Shakespeare couldn't be bothered to flesh out (she's a dull paragon of honesty in the original; here, she is the victim of her father's immaturity with a series of disappointments reaching back into childhood): Gloucester is less the doddering idiot than a thoughtful courtier, sensing the approaching storms. Lear himself is spoilt, absurd and, ultimately tragic.
The production consciously avoids much of traditional theatricality. The lighting is simply a wash of one colour, the costumes are formal wear, the only props are instruments, the script is broken apart and appears only as fragments within songs. Yet somehow Song of the Goat achieve that beautiful connection with the audience: the standing ovation is deserved and proves that total theatre - using all the tricks - is not necessarily the only way to fulfil the potential of the stage.
Summerhall, 13 - 25 August
Perhaps my vulnerability was caused by seeing Dusty Limit's show last night. When he proudly announced that he is dead inside, my own cavernous interior echoed his words. The Girl with No Heart seems to plug into my own concerns, yet when Sparkle and Dark decorated their venue with origami cranes, the effect was more one of beauty than misery.
The paper cranes came about because there is a Japanese legend that to fold a thousand cranes will lead to the fulfilment of a wish. Let's hope the company don't waste that wish on longing for a five star rating...
Bedlam, 3 -24 August
Five Star Shows
Once upon a time, the quest was to find that Five Star Fringe show. Yesterday, an overheard conversation:
"It's a five star show... please take a flyer."
"Everything has five stars this year. That doesn't mean anything."
Be clear: it's over. The fascination with stars is the product of a community caught in a bubble. Star ratings only have meaning to performers and critics. Audiences no longer care.
The joy of this blog is that I never worked out a way of giving star ratings. I am going to introduce "the vile rating", which will be on an arbitrary scale, or the Fibonacci Sequence. Until I do, I am going to offer opinions and creative responses. I am going to assume that readers of this blog, if they are smart enough to be interested in the work I write about (I mean, there's not much observational comedy here), are smart enough to be able to understand how a review works and go some way towards figuring out whether they's agree with me.
In the meantime, here are five shows with a tangential relationship to the word, concept or object "star".
Miriam Margoyles is a TV star, but also a brilliant actor. She stole the show at The Citizens Theatre last year in Day in the Death of Joe Egg, and her Dickens' Women has had The Skinny reaching for superlatives. Now she is getting on, she has become a National Treasure (as The Skinny's writer Lorna Irvine suggested), and that allows her to carry on how she pleases. This is a one person show, and she switches characters, rescues Dickens from my memories of A Level English and reinvigorates his image as a writer who could capture a character in a few deft strokes, even before he gave them a silly, all-so-meaningful name.
Dickens' Women can be enjoyed as either a contemplation on the great novelist and his gender politics, or a show case for one of Britain's great talents.
Pleasance Courtyard, 8 -25 August
Translunar Paradise is more about the moon than the stars, but this is its third year at the Fringe and it has been instrumental in the growth of the Lecoq style's popularity in Edinburgh. They use masks like they were puppets and director George Mann was inspired by both his personal experiences with grief and more literary sources.
"It was reading WB Yeats’ The Tower that hardened my resolve to actually write this play," he says. "‘That being dead, we rise, dream and so create, Translunar Paradise’. Yeats’ character, an old man embittered by loss, was the man I wanted to put on stage. I wanted to take this character (and in a way, myself) on a journey that would help him to look positively at life after death." After my fascination with suicide earlier this month, it's probably a good idea for me to see this.
Pleasance Dome, 4 -27 August
George Formby was once the highest paid film star in the UK: his cheeky chappie persona took the magic of the musical hall to the magic of the movies. All players of the tiny little four string special, from Tricity Vogue to that Ukulele Orchestra which turns up on the BBC Culture Show every six months owe Formby, although they pretend not to care. Luckily, his fans have a big gathering in Blackpool every year, and that comedian who likes football did a documentary about him.
This Formby is a one man star by a former star of Matthew Bourne's very important dance company: it's no surprise that when he does a tap dance half way through (he's enacting Formby's courtship of his future wife), he's spectacular. He's got the Formby strumming syncopation off pat, too - it's surprising how jazzy the northern japester could get. There is a lovely scene where his wife teaches him how to play off the beats, and Formby's sweetness is stamped through the middle of the performance, rather like the words in... oh, sorry... a piece of Blackpool rock.
Assembly, 3- 27 August
The company are called Drawn to Stars, so they win the next place on this list. In fact, their press release turned up as I was writing this. So, good work by somebody at their office.
The release starts off badly, because it mentions star ratings, but warms me up by the end when actor Aimee Corbett admits that she is a performance artist and went to Dartington, the sadly amalgamated college which was an English nursery for all sorts of interesting characters - Scottish Live Art Super Group Fish and Game began their careers as students there.
It gets even better when they explain that Now.Here is all about the two hundred mile hobby horse ride made by Corbett and Vanessa Hammick. They picked up a bunch of stories on the way and trained them into a theatrical celebration of "boundaries and borders, long time lovers, gun owners, grannies and angry young men."
It gets to grips with the English character - appropriately enough in this year when patriotism has made a bit of a comeback. The press release claims it is "the British character" but, frankly, they need to watch their use of that word in Scotland.
Three Sisters, 3 -26 August
My final choice has the potential to be a five star show, at least to the Vile way of thing. LAN-T003 have come from Japan, Jishin uses choreography to explore the 2011 Japanese earthquake: an ephemeral art form to examine a natural force that embodies the Buddhist idea of impermanence in a physical, immersive and immense burst? I think I'll go and see that tonight, just before I take the stage as Criticulous at Summerhall...
Zoo Southside, 3 -27 August
"It's a five star show... please take a flyer."
"Everything has five stars this year. That doesn't mean anything."
Be clear: it's over. The fascination with stars is the product of a community caught in a bubble. Star ratings only have meaning to performers and critics. Audiences no longer care.
The joy of this blog is that I never worked out a way of giving star ratings. I am going to introduce "the vile rating", which will be on an arbitrary scale, or the Fibonacci Sequence. Until I do, I am going to offer opinions and creative responses. I am going to assume that readers of this blog, if they are smart enough to be interested in the work I write about (I mean, there's not much observational comedy here), are smart enough to be able to understand how a review works and go some way towards figuring out whether they's agree with me.
In the meantime, here are five shows with a tangential relationship to the word, concept or object "star".
Miriam Margoyles is a TV star, but also a brilliant actor. She stole the show at The Citizens Theatre last year in Day in the Death of Joe Egg, and her Dickens' Women has had The Skinny reaching for superlatives. Now she is getting on, she has become a National Treasure (as The Skinny's writer Lorna Irvine suggested), and that allows her to carry on how she pleases. This is a one person show, and she switches characters, rescues Dickens from my memories of A Level English and reinvigorates his image as a writer who could capture a character in a few deft strokes, even before he gave them a silly, all-so-meaningful name.
Dickens' Women can be enjoyed as either a contemplation on the great novelist and his gender politics, or a show case for one of Britain's great talents.
Pleasance Courtyard, 8 -25 August
"It was reading WB Yeats’ The Tower that hardened my resolve to actually write this play," he says. "‘That being dead, we rise, dream and so create, Translunar Paradise’. Yeats’ character, an old man embittered by loss, was the man I wanted to put on stage. I wanted to take this character (and in a way, myself) on a journey that would help him to look positively at life after death." After my fascination with suicide earlier this month, it's probably a good idea for me to see this.
Pleasance Dome, 4 -27 August
George Formby was once the highest paid film star in the UK: his cheeky chappie persona took the magic of the musical hall to the magic of the movies. All players of the tiny little four string special, from Tricity Vogue to that Ukulele Orchestra which turns up on the BBC Culture Show every six months owe Formby, although they pretend not to care. Luckily, his fans have a big gathering in Blackpool every year, and that comedian who likes football did a documentary about him.
This Formby is a one man star by a former star of Matthew Bourne's very important dance company: it's no surprise that when he does a tap dance half way through (he's enacting Formby's courtship of his future wife), he's spectacular. He's got the Formby strumming syncopation off pat, too - it's surprising how jazzy the northern japester could get. There is a lovely scene where his wife teaches him how to play off the beats, and Formby's sweetness is stamped through the middle of the performance, rather like the words in... oh, sorry... a piece of Blackpool rock.
Assembly, 3- 27 August
The company are called Drawn to Stars, so they win the next place on this list. In fact, their press release turned up as I was writing this. So, good work by somebody at their office.
The release starts off badly, because it mentions star ratings, but warms me up by the end when actor Aimee Corbett admits that she is a performance artist and went to Dartington, the sadly amalgamated college which was an English nursery for all sorts of interesting characters - Scottish Live Art Super Group Fish and Game began their careers as students there.
It gets to grips with the English character - appropriately enough in this year when patriotism has made a bit of a comeback. The press release claims it is "the British character" but, frankly, they need to watch their use of that word in Scotland.
Three Sisters, 3 -26 August
My final choice has the potential to be a five star show, at least to the Vile way of thing. LAN-T003 have come from Japan, Jishin uses choreography to explore the 2011 Japanese earthquake: an ephemeral art form to examine a natural force that embodies the Buddhist idea of impermanence in a physical, immersive and immense burst? I think I'll go and see that tonight, just before I take the stage as Criticulous at Summerhall...
Zoo Southside, 3 -27 August
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