Theatre and Culture from Scotland, starring The List's Theatre Editor, his performance persona and occasional guest stars. Experimental writings, cod-academic critiques and all his opinions, stolen or original.
Mark E. Workman's Dramaturgical Aspects of Professional Wrestling Matchessuggests a dynamic tension in the spectatorship of professional wrestling: the event can be interpreted either as a straight up performance - with the result predetermined - or as a sporting event, in which the outcome is open-ended. The contemporary description of wrestling as 'sports-entertainment' echoes this suggestion. Aside from presenting a possible differentiation between sport and art, Workman postulates a dynamic tension within wrestling, a parallel battle to the actual fight, between authenticity (sometime known as 'the real') and theatricality (fictionality, I suppose). His allusion to the 'frames' of Goffman implies that the decision by the spectator to interpret the wrestling event is influenced by the circumstances in which it is presented. A couple of guys throwing down on Sauchiehall Street, for example, is revealed as authentic because it happens in a public place. The 'squared circle' of the wrestling arena, however, imposes theatricality on a pagga between Giant Haystacks and Big Daddy.
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.
An idea that comes up again and again - especially when I interview Andy Arnold - is that theatre has a special place for the discussion of public concerns. Whether this existed in the earliest days of staged performance, I can't say (if it did, the Athenians of the fifth century had a few issues with patricide and mother-fucking). Of course, I think Diderot started it off. His writing on theatre - especially when he tries to explain why his plays are quite good, actually - emphasises the important of reflecting the worries of society. He invented a new genre, known as the drame, to make this point. Even Kenneth 'Whiplash' Tynan, patron saint of critics and swearing on TV, argued with Ionesco that theatre is always political (the example he gave of how far political decisions impinge on life was, inevitably, in the purchase of cigarettes). He was not keen on what Arnold calls 'existential theatre', which privileged existential angst over more specific anguishes.
While I am uncomfortable with my responses to The Citizens' recent Endgame, I believe that my complaint against its familiarity reflects my assumption that theatre ought to challenge the audience. Beckett is obviously a master playwright, and Endgame's vision of a post-apocalyptic world straddles the divide between abstraction and more specific paranoia (a hostile universe and a nuclear winter respectively). Although Dominic Hill did a solid job, getting great performances and playing out the script with clarity, I thought that Beckett's nightmare is too familiar, and draws heavily on 1950s' fears. The Beckett estates' conservatism on matters of interpretation - manifested in Hill's production - leaves Endgame as a period piece, lacking the immediacy of Hill's direction of, say, Crime and Punishment. It allows the audience off the hook, to read the event as performance rather than a critique. That is, it's easy to eulogise the actors, enjoy the words and revel in the dystopian rather than embrace the challenge of a play that reflects contemporary alienation. Back with Andy Arnold, who recently directed Beckett's Happy Days: his choice of Mike Barlett's Cock was a far more bracing confrontation with the audience. Given its frank discussion of sexual identity, it did respond to modern dilemmas. Its basic premise - a man torn between male and female lovers - reveals a society more comfortable with observing same-sex relationships, but also going beyond a simple message of positivity. Despite sharing a certain bleakness with Beckett, it conforms to Diderot's ideal of the bourgeois comic tragedy. There were laughs, but the protagonist ended up alone on stage, the darkness slowly encroaching. Cock was more uncomfortable than Endgame. It is set in a familiar domesticity which becomes more sinister than Beckett's blasted planet both because it fails to recognise wider catastrophes (the characters do reflect on their self-absorption) and it is more difficult to 'other' the characters' experience. Most people haven't existed in a post-apocalypse twilight. They have had dinner parties and worried about their ambitions and desires. However, my reading of both plays is predicated on the assumption that 'theatre ought to challenge'. It's a variation on Diderot's claim: contemporary social relevance does not need to be provocative. One function of the critic might be to recommend productions - hence the star rating. My reviews are aimed at audiences who are, at least, in sympathy with my assumption. Endgame and Cock were well worth the time and money, although Gareth Nichol's Blackbird at The Citizensticked the box harder. Whether the purpose of theatre is to annoy the hell out of the audience is not necessary proven... the production of Cleansed, which is apparently ever so shocking, has bought back some public debate about the acceptability of on-stage violence. And sometimes, as Vanishing Point are currently showing in The Destroyed Room, breaking the format can be a powerful way of shoving the shit right in the audience's mush.
When Nick Kent interviews Shane McGowan (The Dark Stuff) and describes the experience of The Pogues on tour with the increasingly addled singer, he doesn't make any qualitative judgments. It is accepted that McGowan is a gifted songwriter ('you've got a God-given talent') and even in the face of his band's frustration, he is the star of the show. Nick Kent's compilation of articles is a clear-sighted meditation on the status of decadence in the rock world. At some point, the heroic levels of drug-taking, drinking and obnoxious egotism might have counted as 'revolutionary', but Kent is intelligent enough to recognise how predictable this trope became. McGowan is a late entry into the annals of rock'n'roll debauchery: his glory days were the late 1980s into the 1990s, and he was soon eclipsed by the aesthetics of electronic dance music. Everyone got to neck the pills in that revolution.
Yet rock criticism has never been about assessing the quality of the music. It might lend a bit of context to an album or concert tour, but it is more frequently about the personalities behind the art. There is nothing surprising in Kent's chat with McGowan - he admits as much - and it operates to emphasise the established version of the artist-as-alcoholic/hedonist. Although Kent is often a good writer, he works in a medium that has little interest in critiquing the art: at its worst, it is hagiography, at its best, it is a character study. And it rarely gets to grips with the context or nature of the art itself, unless Simon Reynolds has got a bit of time on his hands, as in Retromania. Is this criticism as a process to maintain an accepted narrative?
