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A Review of Rose Tremain’s ‘The Road Home’ - Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction winner ‘08

The Road Home is the story of one man’s attempt to better his life and the life of those he loves. We meet Lev, a father and recent widower, in a cramped coach en route from Eastern Europe to London. Sitting next to him is Lydia, a character whom Lev later comes to reject physically but to whom he turns whenever he finds himself in distress. Once he arrives he learns that his friend Rudi, who assured him twenty pounds would last a week in the city, was sorely mistaken and spends his first few nights in a B&B and the yard of a basement flat. Lev is harassed by the police, mugged by youths, left by a younger woman and temporarily disowned by his family and friends in his native country.

After a short spell as a leaflet distributor Lev eventually begins working as a pot-man in an upmarket restaurant where, through the steam and grease of the kitchen he observes the hyper efficient chef, GK Ashe. Lev is sacked after starting an affair with red headed Sophie, a younger woman with celebrity friends. Although devastated by his dismissal, Lev has been covertly learning how to cook; a passion for which he realises may give himself and his loved ones a future.

Obviously this book is about outsiders. Most the characters find themselves outside the pale. Ahmed, a kebab shop owner whom Lev delivers leaflets for when he first arrives, agonises over the recent affect of the terrorist attacks on his business: ‘British people – young and old – look at me like I’m going to poison them…I just wanna stand here and weep’. Then there is Christy, one of the strongest characters in the novel. He is a wiry, Irish alcoholic divorcee who like Lev has been separated from his child. Although a white, English speaking man he empathises with his Eastern European friend: ‘life’s a feckin’ football match to the Brits now. They didn’t used to be like this, but now they are. If you can’t get your ball in the back of the net you’re no one.’

What is so striking in the narrative are the moments of tenderness and friendship that exist in an otherwise vast city of loneliness and marginalisation. Lydia, Lev’s coach companion helps him translate the job adverts and finds him both work and a room. Lev is a thoughtful gentle man, he helps Christy clean the house for the arrival of the latter’s new girlfriend. He cooks them a meal in the hope of making a good impression for Christy. He encourages Christy to fight for access to his daughter and agrees to chaperone them with Sophie, securing a custody visit from Christy’s ex-wife. Lev also befriends a lonely old woman at a care home where he works as a chef. He visits her on her deathbed when he realises her children have probably abandoned her.

However, there is another side to Lev. After their break up, Sophie calls round to the house he shares with Christy. Lev sleeps in the untouched bedroom of Christy’s daughter. Here, among the soft toys and doll houses Lev almost rapes Sophie on the floor, both of their mouths bleeding. Again when confronted with a play containing incestuous rape Lev explodes: ‘Crazy, maybe. But I’m not sick, like this play. At home I have a daughter, Maya, I love this daughter’ to which the famous Howie Preece indignantly replies: ‘Who cares?’ said Preece. ‘That’s so not relevant. Who cares if you’ve got a daughter? This is art. This is cutting edge.’ Lev doesn’t understand how such things can be considered art. He is appalled by the play, but more so by celebrity, celebration of the obscene for the sake of its obscenity. The novel has a satisfying conclusion. Lev raises enough money to return to his village, which in the name of progress is destined to become a reservoir by the building of a massive dam. He realises his Great Idea opening a restaurant in New Baryn, with himself at the helm. He hopes to change the lives of the city’s inhabitant through good food but more poignantly by allowing them the unknown luxuries of choice and experience.

The novel is in contrast to her earlier, historical fiction (as they’ve been deemed). It can’t be doubted that most British people have an opinion on immigration, whether legal, economic or otherwise and often, with the assistance of the tabloids, migrants become dehumanised locust devouring native resources. The Road Home is an example of the pride and work-ethic that many of those from outside Britain possess in their struggle for, as in Lev’s case, consistent electricity and a meal of more than sausage and boiled eggs. The penetrating scene’s of the novel are where this struggle meets the inflated decadence of celebrity London, criminal London and sexual London. Lev asks himself whether the West is any better than his remote Eastern village.

Rose Tremain’s novel shoulders past the familiar war cries of ‘they take our jobs’, ‘they take our houses’ and leaves the inexorable realisation that we are all on a journey somewhere, all dreaming of something whether its in our own or another’s country.

Steven Partridge

The Life and Death of Vincent Van Gogh

by Marcus Dilly

The Etcetera Theatre

265 Camden High St.

June 17^th – 22^nd

The Life and Death of Vincent Van Gogh is a monologue written and performed by Marcus Dilly.

The piece takes us into the depth of the artist’s soul, among his torments, his pain and his desire for expression. Inspired by the painter’s letters to his brother Theo, this work is passionately written. Dilly, in his script, is able to embrace Van Gogh’s anguish and despair, his anger at the strict and merciless intolerance of Christian religion and at the hypocrisies of his contemporary society.

On stage, the images of Van Gogh’s painting are projected onto a white sheet. The paintings alternate from period to period and vary from one mood to another. They are accompanied by photographs and videos. The screen is the inner spectrum of the painter’s mind, the mind of a mad man. It is the mirror of the inner struggle of an artist à la fin de siècle, tied by his guilt to the values of the former generation, yet thirsty for change. In this conflicted spirit, Dilly, is able to discover the painter’s agonizing soul.

All in all, the monologue is a commentary on the paintings of the man whose autobiography had already been signed on canvases. Because all that Dilly is able to collect in his monologue, we had learned from the paintings. The anguish expressed in Van Gogh’s works is not just a personal struggle; it is the reflection of the insecurity of a whole generation, too weary of the past yet too afraid of the future. It is the emblem the of the end of the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20^th century, which art critics have defined as the period in between Impressionism and Expressionism. Thus Dilly does have a point when in his piece he shows the artist’s French experience and his puzzled reaction to the lights and the colours of the impressionist productions, because in this scene Van Gogh is revealed as the very son of his own time.

Although, as I have mentioned, the piece is written with fervour and enthusiasm, its performance left me slightly unconvinced. The lines were often rushed and their pace became somewhat predictable towards the end. At first I thought this could be due to the length of the piece, which is remarkably extended for a monologue (in fact the show goes on for circa one and a half hour). Then it came to me, that it may be caused by the fact that Dilly is both writer and actor at the same time. He appeared to know the script so well, that hardly any room was left for improvisation, hence the somewhat mechanical feel.

Nonetheless, for any fans and admirers of Vincent Van Gogh this is a very fulfilling piece and I strongly recommend it.

By Liza Adebisi

Le Grand Meaulnes – Alain-Fournier

Every springtime, once the maelstrom of exams is over for another year, I deliberately set aside a day or two of newly free time to re-read a favourite book of mine, Alain-Fournier’s Le Grand Meaulnes. First published in Fournier’s native France in 1913, the novel can be seen as something of a book-end to a simpler, less cynical European age: the final, wistful note of a romanticism that would be steamrollered the next year by the catastrophic advent of the First World War, (a war that would cruelly, yet somehow fittingly, take the life of a 27 year-old Fournier in 1914).

The story is set in a small French village called Sologne, and narrated by the elusive character of Francois Seural, whose father is the headmaster of the local school. Within a few chapters a new pupil - Augustin Meaulnes - arrives in Sologne, becomes friends with the young Francois, and achieves hero-status amongst his new classmates, thus becoming ‘Le Grand Meaulnes’. One evening Meaulnes disappears without word, returning to Sologne a few days later with stories of his fantastical experiences in a mysterious, secluded estate, wherein he witnessed a bizarre masked ball and caught a tantalisingly fleeting glance of a beautiful young lady, with whom he has fallen instantly and hopelessly in love. The novel goes on to recount Meaulnes’ subsequent attempts - aided by the ever-faithful Francois – to revisit this lost domain, to reclaim the unreclaimable.

The novel is as a masterpiece of mood, and its evocative, indefinable essence is often described of as ‘untranslatable’. Such a description highlights the critic’s conundrum when trying to convey the uniquely wistful sensibility of Le Grand Meaulnes in rational explication. Any attempt to define or to categorise the novel inevitably places intolerable emphasis on the finite, and consequently fails. It is true that the book is not perfect: some of the plotting is awkward, and it’s second half is somehow less engaging than the first; but Fournier’s great success in Le Grand Meaulnes was to capture an ethereal, almost mystical landscape in delicious prose, not to create a watertight literary organism. An impossibly affecting magic imbues place, event and theme: the picturesque setting of the Auvergne school; Meaulnes’ almost visionary experiences in the lost estate; the unreclaimable Arcadia of youth. Such magic cannot be adequately illustrated by an admiring critic, only the text itself can do this. Even the title exemplifies such critical pitfalls, the ‘grand’ broadly corresponding to English terms such as ‘great’, ‘big’ or ‘important’, yet none of these words satisfactorily evoke the particular sense of ‘grand’ in the original French. Likewise, it is impossible to do justice in a few hundred words to the subtly evocative contours of Alain-Fournier’s great novel, all that one can do is to implore others to seek it out and experience those contours for themselves.

By William Armstrong

11 June 2008

Urashima Taro

Presented by Rouge28 Theatre

Camdn People’s Theatre

58-60 Hampstead Rd,

London, Nw1 2PY

Urashima Taro is an old Japanese legend about the life of a fisherman.

According to the story one day Urashima drowned deep into the ocean. He was saved by a mysterious lady, in whose house he found love and shelter. Here he was hosted in the oblivion of his past, of his old mother and of his old village.

It is a tale of the kamishibai tradition adapted by Rouge28 Theatre with Ningyō jōruri (Japanese puppet theatre) techniques.

There is an irresistible and mystique charm in the kamishibai story telling. Kamishibai stories are somewhat similar in their moral and pedagogic purposes to Aesop’s fables. Though the Japanese tales have a more accentuated dramatic tone, they present darker themes, reveal a taste for the enigmatic and the unknown, and are more evocative of remote peoples and landscapes than their Greek counterparts.

The charismatic power of this style of story telling lies in its ability to stimulate and revive the spectator’s imagination. In fact, as the plot unfolds through the naïveté of the illustrations in the e-maki (picture scrolls), you make an active effort to gaze and wonder through the imagery represented in a tiny screen, and because you make that effort you become more involved. It is all very manual; you get to see the puppet being moved by the puppeteer and the pictures being slid by the storyteller. The animation is not dynamic, nor sophisticated or technologically advanced, yet the rougher the quality of the effects, the more real the show feels and the more tangible its impression is on the audience.

Urashima Taro is told on the Camden People’s stage by a solo performer, Aya Nakamura. In the Ningyō jōruri show she is the story teller, the chanter, the mysterious lady and the puppeteer. Urashima Taro is represented by a puppet.

Nakamura is delightful in all roles.

I especially liked her when she was interacting with the puppet. She managed to create a magic parallelism between the ongoing action on the stage and the story plot. Whilst Nakamura was physically manipulating and controlling the puppet, her character, the mysterious lady, was maneuvering Urashima’s soul, feeding him sweet potions and nectars and luring him with her warm caresses. The actress gracefully swayed across the stage, bringing her puppet to life, like the mysterious lady had done with Urashima’s drowned body.

Nakamura is a capable puppeteer and a refined actor. As I saw the puppeteer direct her instrument with skill, I admired the actress react to the puppet’s every movement with meticulous attention.

Thus this legend is told: by a forthright storyteller who hides no tricks and by an intriguing player who creates the illusion of a second presence on stage. In a scene, where the lady dances with the puppet, you really wonder who is leading whom…

Like Urashima, I was fascinated and captured!

by Liza Adebisi

Pygmalion

By G.B. Shaw

Directed by Peter Hall

The Old Vic Theatre

Running until 9 Aug 08

Last Sunday I went to the Old Vic to see Peter Hall’s production of Pygmalion.

I confess that this is the first time I have seen Shaw’s play, as I have always refused to watch the more popular musical version My Fair Lady.

My abstention was due firstly to the fact that musicals do not appeal to my personal taste, and secondly to the fact that I had read this version ends in a happy marriage between Eliza and Higgins.

Pygmalion is a play about social distance and division, and please forgive me if what I am about to say may sound irreverent to happy endings, their good nature and optimistic intentions, but a wedding fails to impress me as the very plausible and honest coronation of any division.

The theme of a rigid class system, with its victims and consequences so well displayed in Shaw’s works, is still poignant to British audiences today. This is why this play overcomes the proof of time and I believe that its bleak impact, enhanced by the original non-happy ending, should be preserved.

Peter Hall’s Pygmalion, unlike the musical, is courageously faithful to the harshness of Shaw’s realism. 

Shaw’s opinions often find an aisle to freedom in Higgins’s lines. The phonologist criticizes and derides his contemporary society in all its aspects and at all its levels.

Tim Piggot-Smith flaunts to a delighted audience Higgins’s decadent enjoyment in picking on the rigorous mannerism of a shallow society.

His character is never apologetic for his almost tyrannical behaviour and he rarely shows remorse for offending or provoking. Listening to Piggot-Smith erupt into the most outrageous and hilarious comments is an absolute pleasure.

All characters are beautifully and adroitly interpreted.

James Laurenson plays a genteel Colonel Pickering, Una Stubbs is a lovely Mrs Pearce, and Barbara Jefford interprets an austere and elegant Mrs Higgins. Tony Haygarth gives the audience memorable comic moments as a cunning and colourful Alfred Doolittle and Michelle Dockery is adorable in the role of Eliza.

By Liza Adebisi

Chekhov’s Farces

By Anton Chekhov

Produced by Act Provocateur Int., www.actprovocateur.net

Lion & Unicorn Theatre, Kentish Town

2 May – 25 May

Act Provacateur presents Chekhov’s less famous one-act farces and short stories. Chekhov used to describe them as vaudevilles and regarded them as mundane, written only for lucrative purposes. Their comic element appeals to a more puerile sense of humour: their characters are more grotesque, and less solemn, than the sarcastic Solyony, the cynical Vanya and the tormented Konstantin, whom we meet in the writer’s major works. Their dialogues never rise into existential philosophising.

Chekhov’s Farces are staged by Act Provocateur as a series of episodes, with the actors alternating their roles. The short stories are brilliantly adapted for the stage by Victor Sobchak, and the scripts are funny and witty. The cast showed talent and flexibility in most scenes. Alice Fernbank’s performance was outstanding, as noted by a member of the audience, who in response to a direct approach by the performer, commented “you are a fantastic actress”. Fernbank delivered her lines with acute comic timing and cleverly employed the German accent (when playing the German wife).

Less clear was the purpose for the Russian twang used by Leander Pittis as Khirin in The Anniversary. Of course, one could argue that the accent is only there to add to the comic effect, but it is only Khirin who speaks with a Russian intonation, the other three characters in the scene don’t. This makes the exchange of lines slightly disharmonious. The choice of accent is often a debatable issue in Chekhovian representations, a dilemma of which the causes remain completely and utterly mysterious to me. If the story is set in Russia, I can’t help but wonder, why would its characters speak English with a Russian accent? They simply wouldn’t, they don’t, and they never did. Chekhov’s characters are Russian from head to toe, and it is Russian they speak. So when translated in English, only the non-Russians, like the French servant in The Foreigner, should have a foreign accent. Accents often serve to define stereotypes or to inform the audience about the characters’ social and cultural background, but when misused they veil the show with an amateurish gusto.

Chekhovian drama usually struggles to find completeness on a small stage. When you think of Chekhov’s pieces you automatically associate them with large stages with rich naturalistic backgrounds, literally crowded with actors. A vastness of setting designed to evoke the vastness of the Russian landscape and a multitude of actors to represent the multiple faces and aspects of Russian society in its heyday. The Lion and Unicorn theatre is hardly a palace and does not inspire grandiosity in any form. Yet the nostalgia for all this pomposity last Sunday failed to make its mark on me or the rest of the audience, because everyone was enjoying the cosiness in the room above the pub in Kentish Town. As a spectator you did not feel like you were peeping through the balcony of a Russian country estate or gazing through the fence of a summer garden seeing life unfold. It felt more like those light-hearted days in childhood when you were reunited with your peers to listen to a great story being told. You might have been sitting on the harsh pavement or on the wet grass, you might have been feeling claustrophobic because your neighbour might have been chewing or laughing aloud, and yet you wanted to stay and listen.

By Liza Adebisi

Breathing Corpses

The Hen & Chickens Theatre

109 St Pauls Road

Islington

N1 2NA

When you first walk into the Hen and Chickens you find yourself in a cute little pub where you can order reasonably priced food, although the drinks are a bit on the pricey side. To the left of the bar and up the stairs is the actual theatre, which consists of four rows of seats and a small black open area, ready for the performance.

Breathing corpses is a play following the lives of people affected by discovering dead bodies. A circle of murder and suicide pulls the audience into this gripping production. Darkly funny despite the circumstances, this slither of humour allows the audience to slip into the minds of the characters as we see them become slowly more unhinged in the face of finding a strangers corpse.

The intimate setting of the theatre really adds to the intense emotions playing throughout. The claustrophobic set design of metal poles segmented into squares is a clever and simplistic way of subconsciously trapping the audience as well as displaying the isolation of the characters.

Written by Laura Wade, directed by Helen Tennison and produced by Gillian Pittaway, this performance has clearly been thought through in every detail, even to the point where the set change becomes part of the story in an original way. Acted superbly by the cast, they manage the difficult task of delivering perfect comic timing in the face of such tragedy. Originally this play ran on the West End with Tamzin Outhwaite and James McAvoy, testament to the quality of this play.

If you want a good night out, this performance is certainly recommended. Both light and yet intriguing, it’s easy viewing for everyone- from those who’ve never been to fringe theatre before, to the connoisseurs. Catch it while you can as it only runs until the 24th of May but let us hope it comes back for another run soon.

By Lea Mazzocchi

Artist: Cortizone

Album: Selling Out For The Sucker

Label: Intonation Recordings

Rating: 9

Reviewer: David Houssein

Cover Picture:

Band Contact: http://www.myspace.com/cortizonerock

Track listing:

1. Stay Home
2. Cold
3. Uniform My Way
4. Get Up
5. Feed Your Pistol
6. Spineless
7. Jesus Come Up
8. Smell The Scene
9. Deeper Creature
10. White Trash
11. Isolated
12. Heavy

I like to pride myself for having vast musical knowledge based on my monster CD collection, seven years writing experience and being a musician [albeit a very bad one], but I have no idea how Cortizone managed to slip by so quietly. The magazines loved their debut ‘Selling Out For The Sucker’ and they toured with the likes of Paradise Lost, Limp Bizkit and Earthtone9, and supported the legendary Tool on their ‘Lateralus’ tour, so it’s a mystery as to why they never had the popularity and success of many of the Nu-Metal [I use this term loosely] bands of the same era.

Formed by Paul Stroud [Guitar/ Vocals], Nick Emery [Bass] and Andy Prestidge [Drums], the now defunct Cortizone played a unique brew of Industrial-tinged Metal with big helpings of killer Rock hooks punctuated by a solid and simplistic backbone. Right from the word go, ‘Selling Out For The Sucker’ hits you right between the eyes as ‘Stay Home’ is full of massive, jumping riffs that’ll have you bouncing around the place. Standout song ‘Feed Your Pistol’ is fast, furious, aggressive and comes complete with catchy scream-a-long while the downbeat, yet seriously heavy ‘Spineless’ pays homage to their Industrial influences. Cortizone are unpredictable, innovative and have such a vide variety of talents and deserve your attention. As the album draws to a close with the drowsy and aptly titled ‘Heavy’ you’ll be left feeling very satisfied.

You’re probably wondering why in 2008 I’m writing about an album released 7 years ago, by a band which imploded 5 years ago, and it’s because ‘Selling Out For The Sucker’ isn’t talked about enough or regarded as a classic and is well worthy of a place in any collection. Cortizone broke down the musical barriers of their time and after checking on Amazon, you can pick it up for less than £1. What’s your excuse for not owning it?

Oleanna

By David Mamet

Produced by Tower Theatre

http://www.towertheatre.org.uk/

Theatro Technis, 26 Crowndale Rd, NW1

Tuesday 6 May – Saturday 10 May

Oleanna is David Mamet’s output on the new politically correct code of speech and behaviour introduced in American Universities in the early 1980’s.

It is a two man show inspired by the playwright’s concern upon the issues and complications, which the new stream of thought of imposed political correctness and freedom of opinions, may bring to the academic environment.

The dilemmas and uncertainties of the younger generations, embodied in the role of Carol, are contrasted with the enthusiastic yet cynical predicament of the more experienced intellectuals, in the play represented by the professor.

All of Carol’s worries, all her turmoil and all her grievances are rooted in the level of the grade she receives from her work. All her questions are to be answered by her grade. All her hopes are hanging from her grade, and she is eager to find out what this may be from her tutor. Yet the professor likes to focus on extra curriculum subjects, like the social value and significance of education. He derides the academic organism for its short-sighted and limited views. In short he is wasting Carol’s precious time.

The conflict between the two, with one advocating a new system, and the other idealising the old safe structure, is so strong that it leads to a crescendo of disagreements, arguments and accusations. The tragic ending is unavoidable.

Mamet’s works do not usually tell a story, or more to the point, the story does not unfold through the conventional narrative succession of events. Often there is no story at all, rather, what we are presented with are models of discourses, discussions which assume the form of passionate arguments. In these, one assumption leads to a thesis that confirms a theory, which is then contradicted by an opposing theory and so on, and so on.

These discussions do not usually require a complex staging, and the number of props is reduced to the minimum.

The director, Colette Dockery, understands Mamet’s dramatic style and her production of Oleanna relies largely on the deliverance of the script.

Keith Hill as John, gives a vivid performance of the professor. Hill depicts his character as a disoriented yet very stubborn man. The disorientation is expressed by the fiddling with the objects scattered on a desk, or by the pacing back and forth in no direction; disorganized movements to betray a disorganized mind. Hill’s American accent sounds genuine. The lines are delivered with bravura and excellent use of pauses; these are voiced with “hums” and “ers” to tone the speech with more flow, or in some instances, timed to add a comic twist. Hill appears to enjoy his time on the stage and listening to him is pleasing to the ear.

Louise Bakker as Carol gives a more introverted performance. Her Carol is well portrayed as an insecure and rigid young person.

Bakker’s interpretation is sometimes hesitant.  This fits the picture of an insecure personality. Regrettably the hesitation, not always intentional, shows in the actress’s movements, which can lack completeness or imagination, and this sacrifices her motivations through a narrow channel of expression.

Nevertheless this is a powerful show, and the audience reaction on the first night was enthusiastically positive.

By Liza Adebisi

                                                                                     Liza Adebisi

1 May 2008

A Picture of Alchemy

By Michael Mallon

Resister Theatre

22 April – 11 May 2008

The Etcetera Theatre

265 Camden High Street

London, NW1 7BU

The Etcetera is a cosy room located on top of the Oxford Arms in the centre of Camden Town.

Yesterday I watched a cast of five actors perform to an audience of five people, in this small venue.

A Picture of Alchemy, written by Michael Mallon for Resister Theatre, is told on a modest stage without drapes, in front of a few red velvet benches.

The experience of the show is inevitably intimate.

It tells the story of five women, who share a male spiritual guide called Will. The women are all searching for answers, and the guide encourages them to find these answers within themselves. He watches them grow, enlightened and directed by his doctrine, and through observing them, he also finds a new enlightenment.

Most impressive is the set design, simple and adequate.

The audience is guided by the lighting through the chronology of the scenes; parts of the stage are lit alternately in order to follow the action in its temporal and spatial locations.

The script, Will’s lines in particular, are a clever aide-mémoire which echo the words of the contemporary self-help literature sold in the popular psychology section of most book stores.

The echoing effect is used elsewhere in the play. We have, for instance, the female characters who chant the learnt doctrine in unison, at the monotonous pace of a chorus, which is more typical of Greek drama than modern musicals. It is a relief to find that Michael Mallon’s comedy never really degenerates into a musical, because there are enough Wizards of Oz and Mamma Mias in the West End…and with all due respect, they run for ever. The play does involve songs on a couple of occasions, but the singing is kept to “an extravaganza of the character” or “a moment of wine bred effervescence”, it is not used as a story telling device.

Nevertheless the cast should be praised for their outstanding vocal skills, and especially for the energy they managed to maintain and transmit to a skeletal audience - skeletal, perhaps, because of the Liverpool – Chelsea football match.

Whatever the cause of the meagre number of spectators, such number is very little stimulus for the vivacity of the cast, and yet Resister Theatre animated their show with touching verve.

The characters were well interpreted and the script is original and refreshing.