In which I deconstruct my love for you...

There is no law, whether natural or not, which forbids talking about things.
Roland Barthes, Mythologies

Barthes says that myth is a type of speech, then goes on to explain what he means by speech (an image can be speech). Everything, pretty much, can be myth: this is where I got the idea that myth is a story with meaning (as opposed to being a bunch of nonsense, or a story for kids, or an easy way to dismiss anything that I don't accept).

Barthes uses red roses as an example: I use them to signify my passion. Then he breaks it down, to show how the roses have been   passionified.

Here are some lovely red roses, just for you. Barthes divides the experience of the roses (let's not get into whether ceci n'est pas une rose) into two parts: the experiential level and the analytical. The experiential part is being in the world and seeing the roses - and feeling the emotional rush that I hope they bring, smelling them, seeing them - and the analytical part, which is a bit like sitting in Morpheus' ship and watching the roses as information on a screen.

You know what, I've just remembered, I have given real roses to people and they have appeared not to know what I was trying to say. Because I consider giving someone roses (with a big shit-eating grin) to be telling a story, a myth. And that story is I love you. 

Barthes says the roses are a sign. He's obviously wrong about that - a sign has less flexible interpretations, and if my rose giving has been repeated read in different ways (ranging from he's a bit creepy to what a nice gesture), it can't have the weight that Barthes reckons a sign has. 


Wait, I think I'm getting lost in romantic bitterness, again.

Okay, I am giving you some roses, and this is a myth. The myth is communicated by the associations of the roses. Myth is about communicating. I am communicating the stirrings of my libido. Or maybe the love of which I speak is a yearning to share higher experiences with you, like Plato says. They are red, the colour of blood, of passion, of desire, of Eros...

I'm assuming that we share a language, a mode of speech, in which red is sexy and roses correspond to desire and if I had gone for white roses, the desire would mean something else, but red, look, it's libidinal, for Aphrodite's sake are you getting the message?

If these roses were to decay and we could see things as they are and not through a glass darkly then perhaps they would dissolve into remains of a physical object and a detritus of the passion promised by the myth, which is made by the shared mode of speech, implied in bud and colour and not existing except on that higher plain, the analytical one where Barthes sits and reads, sits and judges.

ROSES PLUS PASSION EQUAL A SIGN.

Well, I though it was nice gesture, and a bit easier than actually saying the words. No, I haven't got any wriggle room to back down, but I'm also saying I'm the kind of person who gives you roses, and wouldn't it be nice to hang out with that kind of person? I am weighting the roses with meaning. The rose is a sign that points to me. 

Whatever. Anyone want to buy some roses? I've got some going cheap.

Giants in the Forest: The Absurdist Drama

It seems that trains have become the new enthusiasm for theatre-makers: before Robert Dawson Scott's Great Train Race arrives at the Oran Mor, a mysterious performance took place somewhere between Drum Castle and Aberdeen. Using the decaying remains of a platform on the old Deeside line, five actors improvised a brief commentary on the changing landscape of the railway cutting.

Visual theatre, which uses the combined aesthetics of dance and puppetry to focus on the image as the primary vehicle for communication, has achieved an enhanced status thanks to the work of manipulate or Scottish company Tortoise in a Nutshell. Yet the use of masks in this production, Ghosts of Factories and Commuters, owes as much to the Giant Heads situated around the country as to more theatrical styles. Oversized and largely silent, three masked beings sit on the edge of the platform and observe not the improvised skits of the remaining duo (dressed in Lycra cycling gear) but the impromptu audience who have gathered.

The skits themselves are largely irrelevant: one concerns a father telling his son how one day he'll understand the beauty of a steam train, while the son shouts that he like the Advanced Passenger Train better (the irony being that the APT, heralded as the future, was soon discarded by British rail); another addresses the regret of a mother when (presumably the same) son decides that he wants to abandon his career teaching Latin for 'something to do with a paradigm shift.'

But the observation of the Heads is the key. Never distracted by the fuss behind them, they respond only to movements in the audience. Gradually, they become slower, turning slightly towards the left or right. By setting themselves at the centre of the platform, in front of the duo, they become both frame and interruption to the action. Even when the improvisations stop, they remain, breaking the traditional finale and stretching the performance beyond its boundaries.

There's an echo of the theatre of cruelty here - the refusal to signal the end of the show, trapping the audience in place. But more importantly, they realign the nature of the audience's attention. Not longer is the bustle, the script or the action the point. Instead, the image is the thing, the lack of movement, the calm.

There are moments when they appear to be on the point of talking - yet they stay silent. Meaning is not presented, but seems to dangle behind their eyes. Like a painting, or an installation, Ghosts demands attention without rewarding it.

A Night at A&E @ Victoria Hospital

Although it has the length of an early twentieth century interpretation of Chekov - and the language might as well be in Russian - A Night At AandE ends with an interlude of intimate physical theatre that might even make Red Bastard stutter. Divided into three distinct phases (The Minor Injury Clinic, The Waiting and The Cubicle), A Night at AandE has been refined over fifty years - experimental versions were staged during the Second World War, and the current version was heavily defined by the agit-prop performance of the 1980s in response to Conservative economics - it stands as one of British Theatre's defining runs: as persistent as The Mousetrap, and as predictable as Macbeth.

Its attraction is perhaps in the rotating cast of characters. The claim that 'all life is here' might be spurious, yet the current line-up does reflect Scotland's distinctive multi-cultural identity). The receptionist, who has provided much of the dramatic tension in earlier versions, is now doubled up. However, the decision to encase her behind bullet proof glass shifts her from the Kafkaesque harridan of the 1960s version to a more vulnerable presence.

Ricky, waiting on his daughter, has become more important: his haggard appearance, home-made tattoos and swigs from a blue plastic bag mark him out as an outsider. The smart Asian business man, and the young couple sitting in comfortable silence, provide a marked contrast to Ricky's wired anxiety and, ultimately,  the climatic formal agon.

A Night At AandE is one of the earliest examples of immersive theatre - its influence on Punchdrunk or You Me Bum Bum Train is obvious. But where much performance is contact to make this immersion the focus - sometimes reverting to a simple experiment in style - A Night proposes that this immersion is merely a tool towards a great appreciation of the central theme. Traditional productions emphasise the irony of the human intelligence, so limitless and free, being contained within a frail body. 1973's edition (subtitled Mummy Told You Not To Touch The Iron) referenced Beckett's Godot by expanding The Waiting to four hours - the audience shivering on a bed in a corridor.

2013's interpretation subtly incorporates current anxiety about immigration. When Ricky launches into his racist tirade, the script is predictable (they are 'coming over here to use our NHS') and hackneyed: the quality of his language, however, undercuts any possibility of sympathy. Having built Ricky up as the plucky outsider (drunk but polite, and evincing a convincing concern for his daughter), he is suddenly revealed as the villain. His statement is made all the more ignorant when the hero of the third phase is revealed as a female Asian doctor.

This play is perhaps one that most people are happy to ignore - like a local attraction, its omnipresence can blur its fundamental importance. Fortunately, the new cast, and the current director, have discovered that its essential meditation on the nature of health and sickness in a universe apparently governed by chance can be adapted to examine the underbelly of contemporary values.

A Bit of A Diversion from Ben Walters (2)

It seems unfair on Ben Walters to use his intelligent provocation on 'class war' in cabaret to address concerns about the direction and development of British burlesque - he is clearly more concerned with examining an internal conflict within cabaret, and pointing out a possible resolution. However, when he replies to some short-sighted critiques of burlesque by asserting that there are 'legitimate political and aesthetic critiques to be levelled at certain aspects of burlesque, as there are critiques to be levelled at certain aspects of drag or circus or any other form of performance,' he is missing a crucial point. Burlesque has a particular history, and a particular set of concerns, some of which are not shared by circus or any other form of performance. 

The really big argument around burlesque is whether it is a post-modern form of feminism or a return to the golden age of exploitation and objectification of women. Individual circus shows might be accused of sexism. but there is no play in the idea that circus acrobatics are fundamentally sexist. Burlesque deals with the erotic, in the way that drag deals with gender identity. Simply making different art forms share similar values is avoiding the issue. 

Walters isn't worried about this issue within the remit of his speech, and that's fine. However, it's worth examining a few burlesque shows to see whether there is any basis for the criticisms that Walters dismisses.

The main complaint seems to be that the burlesque routine is purely about striptease: Armstrong refers to 'old strippers,' and the unnamed cabaret show has a song that mocks the burlesque as being fodder for sexual fantasy and nothing more. Two shows in this year's Fringe - In Flagrante and Ballesque made an effort to advertise themselves as being about more than mere titillation. In Flagrante claimed to be subverted ideas about women in uniform, and Ballesque made much of its cast's dance training (they conform perfectly to Walters' idea of artists who come from 'above' cabaret).

 photo - Kaveh Kardan

In Flagrante has the most to defend in this regard: the various routines involved a fair amount of BDSM paraphernalia, and most of the dancers spent most of the time with their breast on display. Having a poster that featured a massive bum - an icon shared with Chas Royal's Best of Burlesque - did little to suggest that their Fringe blurb, which promised subversion and feminism, was anything more than a gloss on what Broadway Baby called 'the sexiest show on the Fringe.'

Ballesque, ironically, had far more depth than its posters suggested: instead of a non-stop erotic cabaret as promised, it had a plot and characterisations and everything. There was little nudity: the topless scenes were limited to a cheeky parody of Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake (and so it was guys, not gals baring breasts), and the most explicitly erotic routine was in the style of Bob Fosse. Aside from the setting - a nightclub that was the afterlife - and the format (each scene had the shape of an act) - there was little here that connected to burlesque. 

What both of these shows did share was a limited interest in pushing the boundaries of choreography. Whether the In Flagrante troupe were posing as pony-girls, or the Ballesque girls (and they were young) were doing their Fosse number, there was no sense of originality or pushing the dancers. Like the burlesque acts in Royal's Best of Burlesque, the routines were predictable and familiar. In Flagrante  may have claimed contemporary dance as an influence, and Ballesque had a cast of trained dancers, but neither show had the hallmark of the experimental or challenging physicality.

They also lacked depth: and this is where In Flagrante  entered into dangerous territory. Having claimed to be subverting stereotypes, the obviousness of the routines is all the more disappointing. One number mocked 1950s' housewife stereotypes by sexing them up: another parodied the  'food pornography' of modern cookery programmes. Yet neither went beyond the simple concept, and could be consumed as simple erotica. It's not accurate to call it sexist - an analysis of the creative process would be necessary for that. But it falls short of 'subversion' and certainly does not represent a feminist burlesque.

Ballesque did rather a little better due to its surface glamour. Some fairly weak performances - the male lead did not convince as a lusty heterosexual chasing the female lead, although their tango was passionate to the same measure that their dialogues were limp - prevented the production from grappling with the implications of the plot. Calling one character Sadisto and packing the stage with stereotypes suggests that the plot was an excuse for the routines. 

However, in both cases, the use of burlesque tropes (corsets, tassels, vintage fashion, comedy combined

with nudity) was mirrored by the presence of exactly those problems that burlesque has come to attract. Limited choreographic imagination; titillation over the use of eroticism to provoke questions (a half-naked traffic cop is not a smart satire, it's a fantasy routine); the costume being more important than the idea and the slight humour, or pay-off, excusing a routine that lacks structure or cohesion. 

Stripped of its pretensions, In Flagrante is a solid erotic show in the tradition of the French nightclubs like The Crazy Horse. Ballesque  is a not too bad production by young performers. But neither can make any claim to being ground-breaking, unless the very idea of erotic entertainment lasting more than two minutes is subversive. 

In both cases, and this also applies to The Best of Burlesque, the erotic elements become uncomfortable because they point to nothing more than themselves. Going back to the nastily phrased accusations of Walters' anecdotal performers, this is the problem: much burlesque is preoccupied with the sexual, but not in transforming it into aesthetic quality.

This is not the same problem as circus - and it is not the same problem as Live Art (which has a much bigger issue with self-indulgence). And it is unfair to label one art form as 'worse' because it deals with a particular area.

Of course, The Wau Wau Sisters were at The Fringe this year, with their 'sequel' to The Last Supper. While it might lack the scatter-shot ferocity of The Last Supper, Naked As The Day... retains that particular energy and attitude that defines what feminist burlesque would look like. 

No Answers and Some Lies

As I flutter around a broader analysis of Scotland’s performance landscape, I am starting to realise that some of the questions I need to ask are economic. The plethora of works in progress, or the alliance of various productions within a festival format, are perhaps the result of the specific economic conditions of 2013. My complaints that they don't represent a full range of possible performance presentations, or that they are a form of aesthetic cowardice, are undermined by the likelihood that they are the result of financial constraints.

Aside from my prejudice against Marxism, it has a fairly coherent attitude towards art. All art is created from the economic base. Art made in a capitalist society will embody capitalist values. Both Maria Miller's speech on the importance of art that has a financial return and Rob Drummond's sarcastic response in The Riot of Spring share a common foundation. Perhaps that's what David Cameron meant when he said "we are all Thatcherites, now." 

Applying this hypothesis is to go beyond the simple idea that the level of funding dictates the nature of the performance. It suggests that any message contained within the work will be part of the broader message of the society that has created and observed it. 

In other words, be as leftist as you like, chump. You are still on message. 

Unfortunately, I don't like to discuss the money. That's mainly because I don't really understand how wealth is created. I have a vague idea that it is something to do with the equation involving human activity and natural resources. I do have a good conspiracy theory, instead.

Let's assume that there is a consciousness behind the monstrous display of global capitalism. I'll call it Leviathan, and make it very clear that it is not the Elders of Zion, the Freemasons or the Rotary Club. It's a philosophical postulate that has no ontological basis, also known as a metaphor.

This consciousness has some kind of purpose: survival, I guess. And part of its survival is to make people work hard for its benefit. It has its benevolent moods, but every so often, it needs to remind the people who is the boss.

So it decides that it is time for s credit crunch. There needs to be too little money to do around. It pretends that there is scarcity. Being a Leviathan, it controls the media, and tells that to put out the message that cash is tight.

Then it cuts arts funding, convincing the artists that the credit crunch is real. 

At this point, the artists start to get interested in poverty, and DIY, and leftist politics. They make work that expresses their anger at the state, at the stock market, at the arts minister who has such a dry vision of creative value.

Being artists, they witness more than suggest solutions. A piece like Chalk Farm doesn't have an answer to the problems of alienation, but it does represent a certain experience. And this experience is made more real by being in fiction.

(If you let the Leviathan metaphor pass, that last sentence will have to wait...)

So, while the art appears to be against the dominant ideology, it actually reinforces its power to dictate the agenda. 

The Past is Haunting Me Like Marxist Language

There is a spectre that haunts the contemporary arts. It whispers dark mockery in the ear of the conceptualist, hobbles the choreographer and detunes the melodies of the composer. Anxiety of influence isn’t merely the late night panic attack striking down the critic as he tries to say something original about yet another rendition of Macbeth. It grows in a straight line from 1913’s Rite of Spring, which both heralded the arrival of the contemporary age and offended a conservative public, through to Andy Warhol and the 1960s, when it became the popular and froze a generation into a series of strategies that replaced genuine experimentation.

The failure of originality has become a strategy in itself. The current celebrations and reflections on The Rite’s anniversary only underline how this moment in the arts’ history has become a symbol of potential and a headstone for experimentation. Rob Drummond’s Riot of Spring was a sideways look at the way in which Stravinsky’s music has become part of the establishment – the music is now protected by copyright to such an extent that even displaying the score on stage is illegal. Meanwhile, Gob Squad’s Kitchen simultaneously praises the potential of Warhol’s cinema and mourns the loss of the innocent spirit that allowed such bold experiments.

Post-modernism, still a vital interpretative philosophy doesn’t help. The emphasis on a diversity of opinions and its distrust of sincerity can encourage artists towards trivial positions – any grand narrative is fundamentally dishonest. Taylor Mac, as part of his recent show at The Arches, observed that self-consciousness has destroyed the unashamed intensity that drove much of the pop music before the 1990s: the irony that permits the most absurd lyric to be readmitted to the musical cannon also cripples the modern song-writer. The continued distaste for U2 is as much about their brazen sincerity as the predictable sound of their latest album.

Simon Reynolds pokes around in the contemporary confusion in his book Retromania, but the problems he detects are not limited to music. Indeed, although he takes up the story implied in the name of indie-dance also-rans Pop Will Eat Itself, pop music is the art least damaged by the trend towards recycling of ideas.

Even in its early years, rock’n’roll was all about reworking older ideas, and the cult of the artist maintains at least the aura of originality. Drummond, in an interview before his Riot, talks about the impossibility of creating something genuinely new. Like many theatre-makers, he is interested in experimentation. Yet he is honest enough to recognise that he is caught within a tradition, and that “the new” is usually a mere variation on a theme.

Gob Squad are even more explicit in Kitchen. Basing their performance on a series of Warhol’s films – including the one about the blow job, Kitchen itself and his series of screen tests – they are simultaneously sentimental about the freedoms of the 1960s and ambivalent about its social and aesthetic impact. While their Kitchen takes on a diverse range of themes, including the battles between youth and experience, audience and artists, it seems to mourn the last moment in which true experimentation was possible.

The signs of an artistic culture in crisis, a crisis that can only come about when there is a sense that everything has been done, are manifold. Last year, every other production at the Fringe seemed to be a version of Macbeth. Never mind that some versions – Song of the Goat’s polyphonic spree, David Greig’s imaginative sequel Dunsinane – added new readings. A proliferation of Shakespeare hints at a theatre tied up with the past and lacking confidence in the present, or even the recent past. It’s more miserable in that Macbeth has elements that are utterly irrelevant to contemporary life – the plot is driven by a concern about regal hereditary, a matter of interest to Prince Charles but not leaders of terrorist cells.

Then there are the works-in-progress. Again, this isn’t a question of individual pieces relative quality: far too much work is being offered in a tentative, incomplete state. That critics have taken to treating works-in-progress as completed is problematic: there have been five star reviews of shows that are being presented with actors still reading from the script. Combine this with the pieces that explicitly take other works as their guiding idea, and theatre isn’t just eating itself, it’s becoming a middle class version of Two Girls, One Cup.

And the festival is becoming the unit of artistic presentation: plays are clustered together, hiding from individual exposure. All of these strategies are valid, intriguing, and there are good performances in the mix. But taken together, they suggest a certain aesthetic cowardice.

It’s worth saying that no individual work of art – especially those that get mentioned here – is necessarily an act of cowardice in itself. And the strategies being used by the artists don’t imply a capitulation of either ambition or seriousness. Rather, there are trends in art that reflect a cultural malaise. It’s bold to attempt any analysis of this malaise, but sitting through five or six plays that use reproduction of past songs to make a political point tends to lead to grand statements. And if the problem is a lack of ambition, perhaps it is time for a critic to make a ridiculous and large theory, the better to be shot down by artists making work that argues with the contention that “art is being hamstrung by its own self-conscious awareness of the past.”

END OF PART ONE

Oh Please, Just Stop: Critical Process Pondered. Again.

In a recent article in The Metro, when asked to respond to the increased importance of social media in the critical process, Barry Norman claimed that "the biggest obligation is to the readers, viewers and listeners," and defines honesty as the criteria for a "good reviewer." While it is a clear and solid piece of advice for critics, it doesn't really address the article's core issue - that the internet has allowed everyone to think that they are a critic. His subsequent comment ("the professional critic should have seen a hell of a lot more films than the amateur") gets closer to the point, although whether my obsessive viewing of Pasolini really helps me to judge  Iron Man 3 is a moot point.

Being prone to introspection, Norman has set me off thinking about the purpose of criticism. Since The Metro article ends with the opinions of a film PR, there's the underlying assumption that a review's main purpose is either attracting or warning off potential audiences. That works for film (and albums), which might explain why movies and music get more space in traditional press. Unfortunately, there's a fair proportion of theatre that won't get long enough runs to need a glowing press commendation.

It is a pretty esoteric question - why do I think theatre criticism is worth spending my life on? - but it might answer some of the questions about my own subjectivity. Sure, my enthusiasms for Jesuit spirituality, scientific method and classical Greek theatre are bound to inform my opinions - as are the relative tightness of my belt and the comfort of my seat. But in the last few weeks, I have noticed that my opinions on certain performances, which aren't necessarily in accord with either audience reaction or the other critics (whom I respect), can be related to my belief in the nature of criticism.

Admittedly, I probably took my faith a little far when I shouted that the job of the critic is to be a witness ("in both a legal and religious sense," I hollered, much to the bemusement of my fellow passengers on the train into Glasgow). And it does go back to my undergraduate study of ancient tragedy: I regard art as the place where ideas get discussed, and the critical process is the further discussion of those ideas.

So, something like Poke or Wuthering Heights (both winners of The Arches Platform 18 Award) are both "my kind of theatre." It's not even that I agree with the politics in the pieces - Poke's representation of masculinity frightens me, because it might be true and the penis might be mightier than the mind. But against Scottish Ballet's revival of Highland Fling, they are all about forwarding conversations. I've been deliberately mentioning them in fragments across the blog, never making any real aesthetic judgments but alighting on ideas, letting them sit. Highland Fling, meanwhile, is a bit of a laugh, but I am not sure it has that much to say about Scottish identity or the nature of erotic fixation - a more aesthetic analysis would be closer to the choreographer's intentions.

I have also been left feeling uncomfortable about plays that inhibit the conversation around a subject. Quiz Show is full of fantastic facts - yet to discuss its core issue is to give away the twist in the tale. At risk of invoking Plato (and revealing my relative idiocy), I have a moral problem with this - not an aesthetic one.

But this is my problem - not theatre's. It might help to explain why I prefer certain productions, or excuse my frequent failure to include those essential features of the review ("this actor was good, that director was imaginative"). I am throwing out a few questions - the joy of a blog is never concluding, never conforming to the format of beginning, middle and end...

Love is More Than Socks

He's back! Mark "Mr Socks" Hall has sent me another email. But this time he has bad news. "The Equation of Love makes depressing reading for singletons," he says. ""We've sat down and done the actual maths, and if we're correct, it's a wonder that the human race has actually managed to survive this long."

Perhaps stung by my accusations that his last missive lacked hard science, Mr Socks has gone mathematical. Checking out the 2011 census, Mr Socks has spotted that the number of single adults in the UK rose to 15.7 million, while the number of married couples hardly moved at all. 

I could do with the base levels to those figures, those. Did it rise from 15 million? One million? Statistics is about more than numbers. 

Anyway, I see Mr Socks' point. For anyone interested in the perpetuation of the human species, conservative moral values, the family as the basic unit of society of selling specialist millinery, this increase in single people is a worry. 

He moves onto the nitty-gritty, with one of those lists he seems to love. He calculates the number of things needed for "the average long-term relation ship" to come to "fruition."

I am not sure what he means by fruition. First base? 

Anyway, here's the list: check them off and see whether you've made it.

22 meals out as a couple (does that include kebabs after a John Zorn gig?)

Five meals out with friends in groups of four or more

Two holidays

Meeting the parents

Stay at the parents' house twice

Seven major arguments

Finding approval of at least 55% partners friends and relatives

At least £3000 spent on gifts

I am actually a bit disappointed. He hasn't really worked the socks into this one. Even his pitch is a little limp at the end. He makes a salient point that the consumer society has adopted a disposable attitude and apparently applied it to relationships. I'm sure he could have made a contrast with the importance of a monthly good quality sock delivery.

Actually, I think I have worked out what he means by fruition. He means marriage, or a civil partnership. And I notice that he isn't being quite so heteronormative this time: the couple is not necessarily a man and a woman.

"We've taken it upon ourselves to help gentlemen find and keep their ideal partner, or this nation is facing ruin," Mr Socks concludes. "Socked.co.uk isn't just a sock subscription service. We're here at socked.co.uk day in, day out, offering genuine advice on how to be a proper, caring gentleman who can stick at a relationship."

Is it okay if I admit that I find Mr Socks rather charming? I know my obsession is a total sell-out to some rather transparent marketing, but I've seen his website now. Seriously, he's brilliant. He's going for that whole Chap movement. He might even get Mr B to sing a song about him...

Robocritic's New First Prime Directive

There's a reason why Robocritic was fitted with a human, and not just made purely out of metal and software. Imagination is a crucial quality in the engagement with art - without it, most plays would just turn into a bunch of people running about on stage, and paintings would become blobs of meaningless paint on canvas.

Unfortunately, the original prime directives militated against the exercise of imagination, leaving a series of failed critiques littering Robocritic's hard drive. He thoughts on A Chorus Line, for example, consisted of repeated complaints that the characters kept dancing and singing for no good reason.

Three new prime directives have been installed, but these are more by way of suggestion than absolutes. Each of these statements have been hardwired into Robocritic's consciousness. They are always true, he believes, and always applicable. But unlike the original directives, they do not correspond to definitive statements and can be interpreted without the need for the installation of a post-modern deconstruction chip.

Prime Directive One

Monsters Inc is a really good film because it relays an important moral in an entertaining fashion. In fact, it has that wonderful quality, when the point being made correlates with the format of the film. Presenting the idea that laughter is a better fuel than fear for the Monsters' energy need, it relies on comedy rather than terror to get the message across.

The first soundings are good. Robocritic now insists that the structure of A Chorus Line now explains why the cast keep bursting into song: they are at a rehearsal for a musical, and it would make sense for performers, trained as triple threats, would best express themselves through their training. He also agreed that the choice by Glasgow Music Theatre was a wise one, since the community nature of the production (being inclusive and consequently having varying abilities) is not only protected by the scenario - it's an audition and perhaps some performers would have less skill in one or more area but the range of parts means no one performer has to shoulder the entire success or failure of the production.

A print-out of Robocritic's feelings on Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares is also positive. If Celtic Connections is now more concerned with the connection than a strict Celtic music theme, the emotional connection made by the beauty of the Bulgarian State Radio and Television Female Vocal Choir is a more persuasive argument for international collaboration than an essay on the United Nations.