I'm Uneasy... Not Like Sunday Mornings...

Never let it be said that I can let things go. After the generous response to my article in which I bemoaned my inability to enjoy populist theatre, I've come up with more self-indulgent and pompous thoughts.

Can we blame media structures?

It was probably inevitable that I would blame other critics for my failures - I suggested that reviewing was becoming a synopsis with adjectives, with a lack of detailed argument.

To be fair, this isn't all criticism, and it is not just print criticism that does this. I ripped off a piece by Catherine Love last week, and it had plenty of detail, historical knowledge and sharp analysis. While I am sympathetic to the idea that the minimal space given to theatre criticism in newspapers can encourage 'potted reviews' (and that the pressure of on-line immediacy discourages expansive writing (TL;DR)), it does not necessarily mean that reviews are always cursory. I generalised from a specific instance because I have a vague idea that reviews are getting briefer.

So, the structures of the media are a factor, but not the whole story. What is regarded as acceptable as a review might be, though.

This might have been an attempt to address the moaning about critics and their role which kicked off after that Stage article. 

Who the hell are you to judge?

I admit that I have been guilty of lazy reviewing. If I wanted to, I could present a list of 'bad practices' taken from my own work. So, yeah, I'm a hypocrite. However, I do suffer from regular and painful abscesses, which can be regarded as a punishment. It's no excuse, but feel free to relish the thought of Mr Academic Big Shot here whining like a baby.

What's wrong with populism?

Nothing. Please don't apologise for liking something just because I don't find Diderot's theories in it. Part of my conflict comes from the disjuncture between my opinion and the majority response. I'm working out how to recognise that difference without surrendering my opinions or being patronising. 

I could point to my long and tedious history of criticism, and mention that I have very... distinctive tastes. For those who follow criticism, that's a bonus.  For those who don't, who surf onto my opinions, I'm a guy with a stick up his ass (see previous point).

No, what's wrong with populism?

It permits weak productions to get away with shoddy theatricality. I approve Our Ladies for not over-sexualising the young women (the costumes never went Britney, for example). But I also worry that the presentation of working class lives - and frankly, given that the play ends with one girl still in conflict over her sexual desire and another pregnant, pretty difficult lives - for entertainment is problematic. 

I'll wind myself into a knot here. I struggle with political theatre, and the self-awareness of Our Ladies' heroines is admirable... but I couldn't help but think: this is a play about young women who are being fucked over by an economic system that limits their options and aspiration. Yet, at the end, they sing some Bob Marley and every little thing's gonna be alright. 

These particular anxieties - theatre as valve for frustrations, the working class as a vaudeville routine - applies to serious agit-prop, too. And, like my relationship to 27 and Iphigenia in Splott, it is unresolved. 

Unlike populist theatre, I'm uneasy.

What I Mean When I Talk About Class...

In the aftermath of The Glasgow Effect excitement - it's the weekend, so the print media is giving it some, still - Loki commented that many commentators will discuss any aspect of the stushie as long as they don't have to talk about class. Since my current catch-phrase is all art is bourgeois, it's probably time for me to define my understanding of class consciousness.

The Bourgeoisie
According to the Urban Dictionary, the bourgeoisie was actually a legally defined social status during the French Revolution. It's most popular usage is within Marxist critiques of society, which identifies them as being the owners of the means of production: they are the people who own the factory, invest in the company, tell other people what to do. 

Sometimes bourgeoisie  is used as a synonym for...

The Middle Class
Although I see 'middle class' as being a wider category, since it doesn't just include the owners of production, but those groups who stand to gain from a society dominated by capitalism. So Doctors, Teachers, people who get a good wage, that kind of lark, are middle class without necessarily being bourgeoisie. To mark this collaboration with the bosses, I use the adjective

Bourgeois
I read somewhere or another that bourgeois society  is another way

of saying capitalism. I tend to use it to describe anything that works to the advantage of capitalism, the middle class and the bourgeoisie. 

I do this because I read some Diderot, and think I can see how his massive project was an attempt to define reality to the advantage of these groups. Bourgeois was once a revolutionary energy, aiming to break the hegemony of the absolutist state or aristocrats. Now it is the dominant culture, having created the social framework within which most activity happens. 

That's why I say all art is bourgeois, since its terms have been established by a bourgeois culture. 

The Working Class
This is where I get stuck, perhaps because recent models of capitalism try to dissolve the boundaries between working and middle class. 

There are a bunch of easy stereotypes that can stand in for the working class. I don't like them (the stereotypes, not the class). So I jump to something more specific...

The Proletariat
Marx liked a bit of this... the proletariat are the urban group who do not own the means of production - the exploited masses who have nothing to lose but their chains. Again, working class can be used to mean proletariat, but at least the fancy French word has a bit of political context. 

I've got a few more words to explain, but I'll pause here for a bit. I think my Waitrose soup and Lidl toast are ready. 

The Queen's Speech

In keeping with the spirit of Christmas, I won't be sending any cards this year: I've just bunged a couple of quid to some charity so I don't have to bother writing and sending a bunch of generic greetings. And I can tell you that I gave to charity instead, and you can bask in my generosity, knowing that the gap on your mantelpiece is actually paying for some dog-food or something!

However, I realise that this might disappoint some people, so I'm reviving another Yuletide tradition: the annual report from the family, photocopied and slipped inside a Christmas card, full of details about how amazing my family is, and all the cool things we did in the past year. 

Only I don't have a family, so it'll be the fragmented selves that torture my daily life with their nihilism, suppressed violence, frustrated desire and existential despair!

Happy Winterval!

I thought it might be nice to offer a selection of cards, so you can cut out and keep them. If you want. Not really too bothered at this point.

Anyway, it's been an amazing year for the Vile Arts! Our chief critic and primary consciousness (not forgetting his physical manifestation) was homeless for two months at the end of the summer! 

Not only did this give Gareth the chance to tell everybody about his situation, it led to some hilarious misunderstandings with members of the Revolutionary Communist Party, who insisted that he wasn't really homeless - in much the same way as they aren't really serious about smashing the state! Quipped GKV: 'it just goes to show that I'll never really be destitute, just as long as I don't conform to some hideous stereotype of poverty!'

This did have a happy ending though: Gareth has been admitted to study at Glasgow University. Although his thesis concerns comic books and theatre, he's out-sourced some of the workload to other members of the Vile Collective. Consequently, Mad Cyril has submitted a first draft of All Dramaturgs are Bourgeois: Conversations between Diderot and a Lap Dancer. 

Speaking of Mad Cyril, we're delighted that his series in Japan - Gor Blimey - has been recommissioned for a second series! After he got banged up for a few months - don't worry, Yewtree wasn't involved! - Cyril became a celebrity in the Far East, with images of him throwing a bin through a sushi shop window making the national news! 

Anyway, Cyril got his own show out of it: based on that Channel 4 racist classic, Banzai, it encourages viewers to gamble body parts on the outcomes of a series of competitions. The highlights of the last season included a whelk eating contest, a 'who loves their mum the most' shoot out (with Babs Windsor and Katie Price as the mums, no less!) and a Feed the Japanese Mick Jagger Lookalike with Mushrooms phone-in! 

We even got Shaun Ryder to do some indents, saying bits out of Performance. Rumour has it that Guy Ritchie wants the film rights.

Stay tuned for more news (or check out YouTube to see Mad Cyril's trailer for season two, which features lots of flashing colours, psychedelic flying dustbins and Cyril's catchphrase Do You Want To Get Sucked In).

Criticulous, meanwhile, has been keeping a low profile. With The Vile Arts going academic, he's been locked in the CCA cleaning cupboard until he can explain what research as practice means.

He did manage to escape for a couple of appearances though: who can forget his routine on The Limmy Show? Apparently, even though he just stared at the camera and explained how he was rejecting existentialism on the grounds that having a body was a form of essence and therefore its humanistic manifestos were inherently contradictory, no-one seemed to notice it was him and not one of Limmy's sketches!

Apparently one BBC producer said that he might as well take over the writing for the entire series, since Limmy was still trading on the goodwill from his old on-line videos, and they were squeezing his comedy into a medium that undermines its humour already! 

Criticulous is already promising an epilogue to his Trilogy, although his original concept - an intimate performance that is a mimetic version of a date - has been rejected by Creative Scotland and around seventy-six women he asked in the CCA in one evening!

Py-thagoras in the Sky

Out of Touch

There are two shows currently cutting about in Scotland - Tipping the Velvet (Lyceum) and The Choir (The Citizens) - that make me wonder whether I am really out of touch. Both are them are well performed - in fact, the casts are uniformly excellent - and have moments of theatrical brilliance (in Tipping, it's inevitably the spinning aerial sex scene spectacular, during The Choir, the script suddenly dumps the musical numbers for a series of harsh arguments that won't shame a social realist drama). And both have received critical acclaim (five stars in one case). 

I just can't get on board with either production. It's not just that they don't conform to my ideal of experimental drama - they are, in places, challenging boundaries of form. In my worst temper, I'd say that they represent the worst of theatre: lacking dramatic tension, pandering to the audience with easy stereotypes and a lack of character development that renders the hard work of the actors redundant.

Yet they are popular. I'm out of touch. I don't know what counts as 'good' in Scottish theatre. I am doggy-paddling against the tide. I left both productions wanting more. Is this just a problem of managing expectations?

It's a question of ontologies...

So... what I think is happening here... I'm interested in the idea that every art form has a particular ontology. Roughly, for a post-modernist like me, an ontology is the closest thing to an essence I can imagine.

It's something like 'the way something exists', the qualities it has. It's tough to describe the ontology of an object, so here's a chart that is no help at all.

Bear with me... I'll elaborate on why The Choir and Tipping the Velvet didn't work for me. Hopefully, that will make sense of my opinions, and allow readers to decide why I am wrong.

After that, I'll prove there is no wrong and right, anyway.

Anyway, back to Tipping.

Variatio 30. a 1 Clav. Quodlibet Pissed Up or Pissed Off

Jeremy Denk has a word....

Varario 25 a 2 Clav; Donne and Dusted

Variatio 2. a 1 Clav: Like Dancing Around Architecture...

Variatio 1. a 1 Clav: Take That and Party

Cut it out, Johann, I'm trying to be a tragic romantic poet over here. I liked it in the Aria, when it was all slow and sorry, like a voice gasping for breath before speaking softly. And now this: a jolly little tune that marches up and down the keyboard. 

There's a guy in the studio next door who is either rehearsing a gritty Glaswegian drama or having a serious row with the voices inside his head. I'm nursing a hangover (not so much from alcohol but at the shame of not getting into the Art School), and he keeps shouting at someone to fuck off. Meanwhile, Varatio 1 is rolling over and over like a clockwork machine. 

Apparently the player does cross-over hands and everything, like Liberace or Bobby Crush. According to Wikipedia, some critic says its a polonise, a dance which now gets illustrated with pictures of old people doing a conga line. And, yeah, it's got that forced jollity about it.

If you put it on repeat, it slowly drives you insane. After the restraint of the Aria, it's like opening a window and looking out to see thousands of cartoon characters performing task-based choreography. 

Here's a version on the harpsichord, which really gets that mechanical pulse... although the visuals could be a little migraine inducing.

Aria: Can Music Save My Mortal Soul?

When I am not behaving like a character from a Tom Wait's song, I'll run towards the past in vague hope of finding succour for my battered heart. The alternative is shaping my life as a bitter anecdote, which is funny for about as long as it takes to listen to the Aria  from the Goldberg Variations.

Funnily enough, my anecdotes usually go through thirty versions until returning to their original form (only now imbued with the soul-crushing misery of a mind that has been trying to use words to disguise a clear repeated motif of melancholic despair). And that is just like the Goldbergs. I am the J.S. Bach of romantic failure.

I associate Bach with the baroque - a twiddly, over-ornate and under-emotional era of music, in my dumb précis of the eighteenth century  - but The Goldberg Variations are more sly and tentative. The theme - an aria,  but without singing, just a solo keyboard - echoes the melancholy of the great miserabilists (Dowland, Children of God era SWANS), with the distinctive trills hesitant, and the melody picked up over a steady bass. 

In former Olympic weight-lifter Kimiko Douglass-Ishizaka's interpretation (the one that is free on-line), it is as if the melody is being pushed reluctantly onwards by the almost aggressive bass.

Apparently, it is all about the bass: it's based on the sarabande, a dance that was banned in Spain and was popularised by dancing ladies with castanets. Check out this filth...