Tennessee Williams: A Streetcar Named Desire: The Young Vic

until 19 Sep 14 (ticketed)

This is a play that though now a classic, in the 40s was deemed pornographic and shameful, proving exactly the point the play was trying to make.

It is a play of exposing pretences - the pretence of theatre itself, the pretence that domestic violence is a form of passionate love, the pretence of the fragile heroine to hold on to a never existent grandeur, the pretence of the alpha males of being strong, the pretence of a society that still often forces homosexuality to the shadows and honest men to deception. The pretences fall, and the broken heroine stands in the end destroyed but triumphant, she has the audience affection. The strong, on the contrary, stand despised.

It is such a thin line to write, direct and produce a play or a film where extreme violence towards women is not portrayed in a way that is actually voyeuristic or even misogynistic in effect. It is a very thin line, as well, to write or play the character of a broken alcoholic, delusional lost soul stumbling all over in their free fall, without presenting a caricature.

Maybe it needs a writer that writes out of care for someone they love, like Tennessee Williams did, having as it is said, never forgiven his family for his sister’s failed lobotomy.

Maybe it needs a ‘degenerate’, like himself, to write about the tragedy of other degenerates and their betrayals.

Someone that maybe has loved abusive men to write about abuse.

Someone alcoholic, to write about alcoholism stripped of moral judgement.

Maybe, in the end, it takes a writer that writes out of love for other souls, not out of pity, to write Blanche DuBois.

But it definitely also takes a most insightful casting decision and an outstanding, remarkable performance by Gillian Anderson to make Blanche breathe again, her sweet alcoholic breath of sadness and pain onto us, reaffirming her right to never be forgotten, her and all those other lost souls, standing and dancing, unrepentant, under a discobole while we only see a cheap, flat, kitchen light.


more info: http://www.youngvic.org/whats-on/a-streetcar-named-desire
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/a-streetcar-named-desire-young-vic-review-gillian-anderson-gives-shatteringly-powerful-performance-9634804.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Williams

RIFT: Macbeth: The Balfron Tower

until 16/08

By entering RIFT’s remarkable, immersive interpretation of Macbeth you have to be prepared to spend a night having left behind your phone, possessions, any contact with the outside world and your individualism. If you cling to these, like the characters, you will be left blind to all that is happening around you. Brutalism and gore, London and theatre at their best. For this night, you belong to the Tower.

Wonderful acting, playful improvisations complimenting the fully respected original, the set is reality and reality is the set, executed and choreographed exceptionally.

Thank you to RIFT and the Balfron Tower residents for their patience with the outsider, noisy, excited us.

Sleep no more, indeed; as, if you are lucky enough to be in a lovely group like I was, there will be no sleep. The apartment is now the set for you, stories and lives shared for this one night, how easily we now know each other for years, how obviously there cannot be any sleep when surrounded by these views, sets of their own accord.

Woken up tired, confused, hungover or still drunk, on a top bunk bed by the sweet hot light of a Summer Sunday I feel bliss. The dirt on the windows only helps to make the edge of the world blurred and even more dreamy. Breakfast with the new friends, goodbye, the Tower has been so kind.

You used to scare me, now I adore you. I wish these views and corridors and rifts and utopias of yours, even if sometimes soured, stay with you and your patient residents. Not sold shamelessly and shamefully to the affluent classes. I hope and will try to ensure that this summer hot light is reserved for you all, not for spreadsheets and flat whites.

You gave me shelter and a night to keep in memory forever, safe. How can you thank a building but in dreams?

Dreams that money can buy.

More info:

http://macbeth.in/
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/balfron-tower-art-fetishising-estates-157
http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/jul/06/macbeth-review-rift-balfron-tower-london
novaramedia.com/2013/08/social-cleansing-in-tower-hamlets-interview-with-balfron-tower-evictee/