During a break in rehearsals (www.jumpthemusical, you know you want to) yesterday, I embarked on my customary five minute tour of internet inspection. It goes something like this: email,to find out who's been spamming me and to receive countless facebook notifications; facebook, to re-read the notifications my email has just shown me; and then, just for the hell of it, twitter.
Yesterday two names seemed to appear more often than is usual. One, you will probably be unsurprised to hear, was Clare Balding. The other, less predictably, was Gethin Jones. Let's take the latter first.
Initially I wondered why several tweets on my feed seemed to be making reference to the easy-on-the-eye, otherwise uncontroversial Blue Petering health-shop pusher. You might be, too- it was, as it turned out, a minor twitstorm- but it illustrated rather perfectly how the flawless wonder that is the internet can sometimes be so depressingly abused by the flawed wonder that is people.
Here's how the mini-kerfuffle happened. Someone tweeted that Jones was 'no Alastair Stewart', a reference to the former presenter of a programme he now fronts. Jones was somehow made aware of this- perhaps he searched his own name, perhaps someone told him about the tweet- and decided to reply. His reply was 'No shit, sherlock. YOU get the degree for stating the obvious, well done "numbnuts"'
As a reply it isn't Wildean, and I'm bothered by the inverted commas, but it seems like a fairly commonplace exchange. Someone unfavourably compared Jones to his predecessor, Jones responded with mild irritation.
But in doing so he broke one of the internet's most unpleasant unwritten rules. The potshots, you see, only work one way. His flash of anodyne annoyance became a 'hissy fit'. People started tweeting him to say how 'pathetic','Z list' or 'self important' he was, or to affect to mistake him for Steve Jones of T4. In other words, an unremarkable exchange between two people who annoyed each other became, for some, an excuse to hurl abuse at a man who had dared to commit the double offence of (a) being on television and (b) responding in kind to someone who had slagged him off.
People who aren't in the public eye- 'real' people, if we're being tabloidy about it- get to stand behind a wall and say BUM to whoever they like. But if anyone even a smidge famous says 'Don't you say BUM to me! Bum YOU, more like!' that is a pathetic 'hissy fit'. I'm fairly sure, by which I mean certain, that there's a stinking double standard going on there.
I think it would have been wiser of Jones not to reply, and nobody ever claimed the moral high ground with the word 'numbnuts'. But I also think it was understandable- human- that he did reply. And the pearl-clutching over the fact that he may have found the tweet through 'self-searching' is particularly, hypocritically, daft. Have you never put your name into google? I know I have, and so has pretty much everyone I know. Twitter, of course, has a link to search for '@' replies so people can see what tweeters they don't follow have said to or about them. It's human nature occasionally to get curious about what might be being said about oneself, and it doesn't make Jones a preening idiot for wanting to know.
The way twitter reacts to behaviour its users consider unacceptable is now an established social media phenomenon. Stories such as AA Gill's vile playground sneering at Clare Balding (see, you thought I'd forgotten), the man who was prosecuted for making a terrorism joke on the site, the horrid article in the Express about the survivors of Dunblane or (ahem) Jan Moir on Stephen Gately, develop a momentum of their own and quickly reach a tipping point (or twipping point, as someone will doubtless one day christen it). As a way of gently reminding more established forms of media that we won't necessarily accept what we might be fed, it's invaluable. It would be a shame if that precious right-to-reply were allowed to degenerate into throwing random snowballs at people, and running to teacher when they throw one back.
Saturday, 31 July 2010
Friday, 23 July 2010
Hello, blog.
And hello anyone who's reading. I'm busy doing acting at the moment which is why I've been so scandalously lax in updating this. I presume you're all watching That Mitchell And Webb Look, are you? Good good. If you're not, there are still four more episodes to go. Phew.
I'll be back with something more interesting when I'm less tired and, indeed, more interesting.
I'll be back with something more interesting when I'm less tired and, indeed, more interesting.
Saturday, 29 May 2010
I couldn't help but wonder...
I've never been a 'Sex And The City' fan. I don't know if you're surprised by this, although I do know that if you're a film critic you're likely to be. The fact that 'Sex And The City 2' is apparently not a great film (and, let's face it, it sounds AWFUL) has given scribblers everywhere the opportunity for a good old bit of gaybashing-by-proxy.
It's something that started back in the days of the TV series. Someone noticed that the man who brought Candace Bushnell's book to the screen, Darren Starr, was gay, as was the exec producer, Michael Patrick King. At that point, someone made the not-unreasonable observation that the female characters in 'Sex And The City' sometimes talked and behaved in a way more usually seen in gay men. So far so tame.
But that tame little theory grew and grew. People- and not just people, columnists too- started to say things like 'Of course, the series is actually about gay men' which developed into 'Those characters aren't really women' and soon it became pretty much accepted that SJP and co were nothing but powerless pawns in a twisted gay game of 'hate the woman'. That opinion reached a very queasy nadir in the reviews of the film this week.
Several friends have posted a review from a Seattle newspaper on facebook; it's one of those things that has gone viral. And yes, it makes the case against the film quite brilliantly. But sitting right in the middle, there it is- the irrelevant mention of the sexual orientation of some of the producers. The film, says Lindy West, is 'a home video of gay men playing with giant Barbie dolls'. It's not an offensive remark, per se- but it is an unnecessary swipe, isn't it? I wonder how far I'd get if I described, say, the film 2012 as 'Jews playing with Action Men'?
Leave it to the good old Evening Standard, however, to go from the allusive to the flat-out offensive. Andrew O'Hagan starts by referring to 'Carrie Bradshaw and her gaggle of gay impersonators', thus reaffirming the idea that these characters, created by Candace Bushnell and exec produced by Sarah Jessica Parker, are nothing but projection on the part of some benders. Am I being oversensitive? Well, how about the description of Kim Cattrall's character, Samantha? As a preface to discussing her venality, vulgarity, and narcissism, O'Hagan chooses to sum her up as 'Stonewall on Ice'. Never mind that this is a meaningless piece of phrasemaking ('on ice', Andrew? Talk me through that) its implications are stinking; she's a deeply unpleasant character, as can be summed up by the word 'Stonewall'. You tell me if that is in any way acceptable. You explain to me how that isn't the rankest prejudice.
I'm sure that 'Sex in the City 2' is an egregious piece of film making (the scene where burqa'd women reveal they're wearing designer clobber underneath sounds particularly jawdropping) and of course many gay men have been involved in its creation. Millions more will go to see it. But I still don't think that justifies the journey our tame little theory has taken from 'it's by gays' to 'they're all gays' to 'oh, she's just vile. You know, pure Stonewall'.
Anyway, you'll have to excuse me. I'm off to dress dolls up in Louboutins for reasons hidden in my woman-hating pysche.
It's something that started back in the days of the TV series. Someone noticed that the man who brought Candace Bushnell's book to the screen, Darren Starr, was gay, as was the exec producer, Michael Patrick King. At that point, someone made the not-unreasonable observation that the female characters in 'Sex And The City' sometimes talked and behaved in a way more usually seen in gay men. So far so tame.
But that tame little theory grew and grew. People- and not just people, columnists too- started to say things like 'Of course, the series is actually about gay men' which developed into 'Those characters aren't really women' and soon it became pretty much accepted that SJP and co were nothing but powerless pawns in a twisted gay game of 'hate the woman'. That opinion reached a very queasy nadir in the reviews of the film this week.
Several friends have posted a review from a Seattle newspaper on facebook; it's one of those things that has gone viral. And yes, it makes the case against the film quite brilliantly. But sitting right in the middle, there it is- the irrelevant mention of the sexual orientation of some of the producers. The film, says Lindy West, is 'a home video of gay men playing with giant Barbie dolls'. It's not an offensive remark, per se- but it is an unnecessary swipe, isn't it? I wonder how far I'd get if I described, say, the film 2012 as 'Jews playing with Action Men'?
Leave it to the good old Evening Standard, however, to go from the allusive to the flat-out offensive. Andrew O'Hagan starts by referring to 'Carrie Bradshaw and her gaggle of gay impersonators', thus reaffirming the idea that these characters, created by Candace Bushnell and exec produced by Sarah Jessica Parker, are nothing but projection on the part of some benders. Am I being oversensitive? Well, how about the description of Kim Cattrall's character, Samantha? As a preface to discussing her venality, vulgarity, and narcissism, O'Hagan chooses to sum her up as 'Stonewall on Ice'. Never mind that this is a meaningless piece of phrasemaking ('on ice', Andrew? Talk me through that) its implications are stinking; she's a deeply unpleasant character, as can be summed up by the word 'Stonewall'. You tell me if that is in any way acceptable. You explain to me how that isn't the rankest prejudice.
I'm sure that 'Sex in the City 2' is an egregious piece of film making (the scene where burqa'd women reveal they're wearing designer clobber underneath sounds particularly jawdropping) and of course many gay men have been involved in its creation. Millions more will go to see it. But I still don't think that justifies the journey our tame little theory has taken from 'it's by gays' to 'they're all gays' to 'oh, she's just vile. You know, pure Stonewall'.
Anyway, you'll have to excuse me. I'm off to dress dolls up in Louboutins for reasons hidden in my woman-hating pysche.
Tuesday, 27 April 2010
Daughters, Reclaimed.
I don’t write much about TV round here, and certainly never anything approaching a review, for obvious reasons; a bit too close to home, and not very collegial. But having lamented the decline in quality of TV drama in a letter to the paper the other week, it would seem churlish not to hang out the bunting when something excellent and important is made.
‘Five Daughters’ set itself the extremely delicate task of dramatizing the events leading up to, and including, the murder of five women in Ipswich in December 2006. You remember, the prostitute murders- because of course, that’s how the story was told to us at the time. Indeed, when some reports dropped the p word, in favour of calling the women ‘sex workers’, columnists such as Richard Littlejohn fulminated against namby-pamby liberals and political correctness gone mad. These women were prosititutes, he insisted, and should be referred to as such. Have a look on YouTube for Stewart Lee’s magnificent response to that article; I won’t spoil it for you, but if ever I write a line even half as good as ‘One wonders what lengths Richard Littlejohn will go to in his quest for the accurate naming of dead women’ I’ll be a happy man.
Anyway, you probably, like me, remember vague details. There was the blonde on the train, caught on CCTV. There was the dark haired one, the youngest, who lived at home. One of them was pregnant. One had an unusual first name. And they were all drug addicts, of course.
The huge achievement of ‘Five Daughters’ is to take these half-remembered half-truths and gently to question and correct them, while at the same time showing us where the women came from, what made them tick, how they ended up standing on dark streets in the freezing cold in the knowledge that a killer was on the loose. To separate them from each other, and the one tragic fact they have in common. A note about the dramatization of the kerb-crawling scenes- they are unflinchingly unglamorous. Never mind Billie Piper swanning around in beautiful dockside penthouses, we’re all used to a certain shabby chic being applied even to images of street prostitution. The halo of sensual streetlighting, the sexily dressed girl in the impossibly high heels leaning into the car, a seductive smile playing on her lips… ‘Five Daughters’ shows us shivering, frightened women in parkas and fleeces, on quiet, empty, soulless streets, steeling themselves as the headlights creep towards them then muttering the word ‘business’ through the open window. It brings home the fact that, even when there isn’t a serial killer behind the wheel, the best possible outcome- the best- is that the sex will be quick and the man, kind.
But, in talking about that aspect of the series, I’ve fallen into the same trap as the media did at the time of the murders. This isn’t a drama about prositution, it’s a drama about desperation. The desperation that leads the women to the streets; the desperation of their families, both to communicate and to protect; the desperation of their friends when calls go unanswered for first hours and then days; the desperation of the police and outreach workers to fight the killers, both human and chemical. I watched the first two episodes constantly on the verge of tears (I’m being very previous publishing this today- the third episode is on this evening and may be terrible rubbish for all I know. I somehow doubt it though.).
The film-making and the screenwriting are excellent, then; but the quality of the acting is mindblowing. A glance at the cast list raised hopes- Sarah Lancashire, Juliet Aubrey, Anton Lesser, Martin Compston, Ian Hart, Jaime Winstone, Natalie Press, Eva Birthistle, Sean Harris. But scene after scene crowds into my memory, insisting on a mention. Lancashire helplessly demanding that she be allowed to collect her absent daughter’s methadone prescription, then begging, then accepting exhausted defeat. Press, as Paula Clennell, heartbreaking in her brave, guilty disappointment when her mother cancels a planned visit on a flimsy pretext. Aubrey, unbearably stoic, almost matter of fact, as she prepares to view the body of her murdered daughter, and then breaking down, her face collapsing in on itself. Aubrey also played her part in one of the most remarkable scenes I’ve seen on TV for years. We had seen Anneli Alderton (Aubrey was playing her mother, Maire) on the verge of making a new life for herself. Released from prison after serving a sentence for drug offences, she had a plan to become a mobile hairdresser. Maire and son Tom noted with relief that there was no sign of ‘blonde Anneli’. Then Anneli’s best friend Gemma disappeared, sending her into a spiral of fear, guilt, and self loathing. In the scene I refer to above, she turned up at Maire’s house out of the blue and gave her the kind of needy hug a child gives to a parent she knows she is about to hurt. Disappearing into the bathroom, she returned to her mother’s kitchen with hair dyed an aggressive, steely blonde, scraped back in challenge. Her eye make up was a declaration of war and, chillingly, she had reverted from her normal lower-middle class accent into a heightened, combative rude-girl backchat. Aubrey and Winstone were just phenomenal in this scene, the mother trying to assert her authority over a child she knows she has somehow lost, and the daughter using bravado and aggression as a mask for terror. Winstone gave a masterclass in playing the subtext, and Aubrey’s resigned but devastated expression as she emerged from behind a cupboard door to see the front door open and her daughter gone will stay with me for a long time. The wonderful, encouraging thing about all these outstanding performances is that they were achieved with restraint, with a kind of direct truthfulness borne of underplaying. After twenty-five years of exposure to the high-decibel histrionics of EastEnders and the like, it was a welcome illustration of the power of acting rather than the self-indulgence of ACTING.
The first two episodes will be available on iplayer, to viewers in the UK, and the third airs on BBC1 at 9pm tonight. Unsurprisingly, I urge you to watch, not just for its excellence but for what it has achieved. Steven Wright and the tabloids between them turned these five human beings into dead prostitutes. This dignified, honest, honourable, annihilating drama turns them back again.
‘Five Daughters’ set itself the extremely delicate task of dramatizing the events leading up to, and including, the murder of five women in Ipswich in December 2006. You remember, the prostitute murders- because of course, that’s how the story was told to us at the time. Indeed, when some reports dropped the p word, in favour of calling the women ‘sex workers’, columnists such as Richard Littlejohn fulminated against namby-pamby liberals and political correctness gone mad. These women were prosititutes, he insisted, and should be referred to as such. Have a look on YouTube for Stewart Lee’s magnificent response to that article; I won’t spoil it for you, but if ever I write a line even half as good as ‘One wonders what lengths Richard Littlejohn will go to in his quest for the accurate naming of dead women’ I’ll be a happy man.
Anyway, you probably, like me, remember vague details. There was the blonde on the train, caught on CCTV. There was the dark haired one, the youngest, who lived at home. One of them was pregnant. One had an unusual first name. And they were all drug addicts, of course.
The huge achievement of ‘Five Daughters’ is to take these half-remembered half-truths and gently to question and correct them, while at the same time showing us where the women came from, what made them tick, how they ended up standing on dark streets in the freezing cold in the knowledge that a killer was on the loose. To separate them from each other, and the one tragic fact they have in common. A note about the dramatization of the kerb-crawling scenes- they are unflinchingly unglamorous. Never mind Billie Piper swanning around in beautiful dockside penthouses, we’re all used to a certain shabby chic being applied even to images of street prostitution. The halo of sensual streetlighting, the sexily dressed girl in the impossibly high heels leaning into the car, a seductive smile playing on her lips… ‘Five Daughters’ shows us shivering, frightened women in parkas and fleeces, on quiet, empty, soulless streets, steeling themselves as the headlights creep towards them then muttering the word ‘business’ through the open window. It brings home the fact that, even when there isn’t a serial killer behind the wheel, the best possible outcome- the best- is that the sex will be quick and the man, kind.
But, in talking about that aspect of the series, I’ve fallen into the same trap as the media did at the time of the murders. This isn’t a drama about prositution, it’s a drama about desperation. The desperation that leads the women to the streets; the desperation of their families, both to communicate and to protect; the desperation of their friends when calls go unanswered for first hours and then days; the desperation of the police and outreach workers to fight the killers, both human and chemical. I watched the first two episodes constantly on the verge of tears (I’m being very previous publishing this today- the third episode is on this evening and may be terrible rubbish for all I know. I somehow doubt it though.).
The film-making and the screenwriting are excellent, then; but the quality of the acting is mindblowing. A glance at the cast list raised hopes- Sarah Lancashire, Juliet Aubrey, Anton Lesser, Martin Compston, Ian Hart, Jaime Winstone, Natalie Press, Eva Birthistle, Sean Harris. But scene after scene crowds into my memory, insisting on a mention. Lancashire helplessly demanding that she be allowed to collect her absent daughter’s methadone prescription, then begging, then accepting exhausted defeat. Press, as Paula Clennell, heartbreaking in her brave, guilty disappointment when her mother cancels a planned visit on a flimsy pretext. Aubrey, unbearably stoic, almost matter of fact, as she prepares to view the body of her murdered daughter, and then breaking down, her face collapsing in on itself. Aubrey also played her part in one of the most remarkable scenes I’ve seen on TV for years. We had seen Anneli Alderton (Aubrey was playing her mother, Maire) on the verge of making a new life for herself. Released from prison after serving a sentence for drug offences, she had a plan to become a mobile hairdresser. Maire and son Tom noted with relief that there was no sign of ‘blonde Anneli’. Then Anneli’s best friend Gemma disappeared, sending her into a spiral of fear, guilt, and self loathing. In the scene I refer to above, she turned up at Maire’s house out of the blue and gave her the kind of needy hug a child gives to a parent she knows she is about to hurt. Disappearing into the bathroom, she returned to her mother’s kitchen with hair dyed an aggressive, steely blonde, scraped back in challenge. Her eye make up was a declaration of war and, chillingly, she had reverted from her normal lower-middle class accent into a heightened, combative rude-girl backchat. Aubrey and Winstone were just phenomenal in this scene, the mother trying to assert her authority over a child she knows she has somehow lost, and the daughter using bravado and aggression as a mask for terror. Winstone gave a masterclass in playing the subtext, and Aubrey’s resigned but devastated expression as she emerged from behind a cupboard door to see the front door open and her daughter gone will stay with me for a long time. The wonderful, encouraging thing about all these outstanding performances is that they were achieved with restraint, with a kind of direct truthfulness borne of underplaying. After twenty-five years of exposure to the high-decibel histrionics of EastEnders and the like, it was a welcome illustration of the power of acting rather than the self-indulgence of ACTING.
The first two episodes will be available on iplayer, to viewers in the UK, and the third airs on BBC1 at 9pm tonight. Unsurprisingly, I urge you to watch, not just for its excellence but for what it has achieved. Steven Wright and the tabloids between them turned these five human beings into dead prostitutes. This dignified, honest, honourable, annihilating drama turns them back again.
Tuesday, 13 April 2010
It might be worth having a little look at the lyrics.
CHANGE. HOPE. FAMILIES. DECENT HARD-WORKING TAXPAYERS. CHANGE.
In the light of that 'message', being fridgemagneted and madlibbed by all three of the major parties in the run-up to the election, the choice of Keane's 'Everybody's Changing' for the launch of the Tory manifesto must have seemed like a brilliant idea. Firstly, it's totally cutting edge (it was released as recently as 2004!) plus, also, CHANGE. Everybody's changing, see? Like, changing their vote to David and his team of DECENT, HARDWORKING, FAMILY TAXPAYERS for CHANGE?
It's a shame, of course, that nobody asked Keane- whose drummer has already expressed his horror via twitter. But, if the Tories have paid their PRS money, they can play whatever they like. What's a real shame is that they didn't bother to work out that songs have lyrics as well as titles.
'You say you wander your own land
But when I think about it
I don't see how you can'
Not bad so far, I suppose. Bit BNP-ish, I suppose- 'CAN WE EVEN CALL BRITAIN OUR ROYAL LAND ANY MORE?' and all that, but otherwise neutral enough. Oh- maybe they're talking about right to roam, though? Let's see what's next.
'You're aching, you're breaking
And I can see the pain in your eyes
Since everybody's changing
And I don't know why. '
Great start to this verse, for Honest Dave and co. The country is Broken Britain- it's aching, breaking, and in pain. For a bonus, there's almost an echo of the great Billy Ray Cyrus, too. And look- Everybody's Changing! There we have it. CHANGE! HOPE!
Oh, I've just seen the last line of the verse. Surely the Tories ought to know WHY Everybody's Changing? I do hope they're not confused. Well, only one way to find out:
'So little time
Try to understand that I'm
Trying to make a move just to stay in the game
I try to stay awake and remember my name
But everybody's changing
And I don't feel the same. '
New, tough choices for a Brighter Britain. Or a description of someone having a nervous breakdown?
I can't think of a better example of the poverty of our national debate than the party which is likeliest to form the next government co-opting a song on the basis of two words, and not even thinking to check what else it said. Soundbites, kids. That's all we're going to get.
In the light of that 'message', being fridgemagneted and madlibbed by all three of the major parties in the run-up to the election, the choice of Keane's 'Everybody's Changing' for the launch of the Tory manifesto must have seemed like a brilliant idea. Firstly, it's totally cutting edge (it was released as recently as 2004!) plus, also, CHANGE. Everybody's changing, see? Like, changing their vote to David and his team of DECENT, HARDWORKING, FAMILY TAXPAYERS for CHANGE?
It's a shame, of course, that nobody asked Keane- whose drummer has already expressed his horror via twitter. But, if the Tories have paid their PRS money, they can play whatever they like. What's a real shame is that they didn't bother to work out that songs have lyrics as well as titles.
'You say you wander your own land
But when I think about it
I don't see how you can'
Not bad so far, I suppose. Bit BNP-ish, I suppose- 'CAN WE EVEN CALL BRITAIN OUR ROYAL LAND ANY MORE?' and all that, but otherwise neutral enough. Oh- maybe they're talking about right to roam, though? Let's see what's next.
'You're aching, you're breaking
And I can see the pain in your eyes
Since everybody's changing
And I don't know why. '
Great start to this verse, for Honest Dave and co. The country is Broken Britain- it's aching, breaking, and in pain. For a bonus, there's almost an echo of the great Billy Ray Cyrus, too. And look- Everybody's Changing! There we have it. CHANGE! HOPE!
Oh, I've just seen the last line of the verse. Surely the Tories ought to know WHY Everybody's Changing? I do hope they're not confused. Well, only one way to find out:
'So little time
Try to understand that I'm
Trying to make a move just to stay in the game
I try to stay awake and remember my name
But everybody's changing
And I don't feel the same. '
New, tough choices for a Brighter Britain. Or a description of someone having a nervous breakdown?
I can't think of a better example of the poverty of our national debate than the party which is likeliest to form the next government co-opting a song on the basis of two words, and not even thinking to check what else it said. Soundbites, kids. That's all we're going to get.
Monday, 15 March 2010
Possible reason for the departure of the sheep
Everyone with a blog, from time to time, does the 'weird search terms that brought people here' post. This is mine.
I wonder what the person searching for 'lil bow peep big cock' made of what he or she (let's face it: he) found?
And, more worryingly, I wonder why google pointed here?
I wonder what the person searching for 'lil bow peep big cock' made of what he or she (let's face it: he) found?
And, more worryingly, I wonder why google pointed here?
Tuesday, 9 March 2010
As everyone's mother said, if you can't say... ahh, you know the rest.
Ten years ago, almost to the day, I performed in the press night of a production that wasn’t very good. This wouldn’t necessarily have been a problem, except that the production was at the Old Vic so people took quite a lot of notice of how not very good it was. The ladies and gentlemen of the press, in particular, used some of the English language’s most potent words for ‘not very good’ in their reviews.
That’s the first time I’ve said in any public space that it wasn’t very good, that production. And in fact, in the intervening ten years the only person involved that I’ve seen publicly acknowledge its failings was its director, once in an article and once in a book (he blamed us). People wouldn’t have been very interested in my opinion, it must be admitted. ‘ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER WITH TWELVE LINES SLAMS BADLY-PACED PRODUCTION OF PROBLEMATIC SHAKESPEARE PLAY’ isn’t a headline which would have sold many papers, even in 2000. I suppose I could have stood on the Cut handing out flyers, but it was a particularly cold spring and I’ve noticed that a lot of drivers aren’t very careful how they take that corner.
I wouldn’t have done, of course. In fact, at the time, I didn’t want to be reminded that it wasn’t very good. The very small audiences in the very big theatre (after the interval the audiences tended to get smaller, which tended to make the theatre seem bigger) were doing that nicely enough. I liked the director, I liked nearly all of my colleagues, I was acting- well, saying twelve lines, anyway- at the Old Vic. Those friends of mine who came to see the show and subsequently wanted to expound at length on how it hadn’t been the best 225 minutes of their lives received pretty short shrift from me; that was the one thing that had been rammed home to me forcibly enough by that point. That, and that going to bed at 5am doesn’t always make for great matinees.
That’s why I was surprised and a little disappointed to hear about the Samuel Ramey kerfuffle. For those of you who don’t know, Ramey is one of the greatest operatic basses around, is by all accounts a thorough good egg gentleman type, and is coming to the end of a deservedly glittering career. He’s also playing a small part in ATTILA, the Met’s first ever production of a rarely-heard Verdi opera.
He thinks it’s a ‘fiasco’, and that the director paid insufficient attention to the concerns of the cast. We know this because he said so- this is where the story takes a bit of a twist- in the comments section of a review of the production on the website of a Dallas newspaper. Disclaimer- we can’t be entirely sure that this comment was left by Mr Ramey, although better-informed people than I am have insisted that it was, so let us for the sake of argument assume that it was.
There is of course nothing at all wrong with a performer expressing disappointment in a production, or in a director. A dear friend of mine was in a film a few years ago which was a great deal less good than he had hoped, a fact which he, ahem, occasionally mentions. And the substance of Ramey’s objection- a lack of attention from the director- is not too controversial either. If the phrase ‘I just haven’t been given any direction’ were banned from the language, coffee and lunch breaks in rehearsal rooms across the world would fall uneasily silent. No, what makes this particular situation noteworthy is that ATTILA didn’t close ten years ago, and is not a film which is done, dusted and distributed; it’s live and it’s still running.
I’m not about to tell someone as distinguished as Samuel Ramey (or indeed anyone) what he can and can’t say, so let’s leave aside the rights and wrongs of that for a moment. What has been noticeable, and dispiriting, in following the story online is his adoption as a kind of Mr-Valiant-For-Truth by people who hated the production, as if this kind of behaviour were an admirable blow struck for artistic integrity. By all accounts, the production stinks. But for that to be said in public by someone who is still appearing in it may strike you as unprofessional, vain and petulant (it may strike you that way; I couldn’t possibly say). You may think it would have been worth waiting three or so weeks until the production had closed, out of respect for an audience who has paid a lot of money and wants to believe that everyone in the cast is straining every sinew in the cause of an artistic event to which they are totally committed (I’m not going to say whether I think that or not). You may even think that somewhere in that cast, among the chorus, perhaps, or the extras, is someone in the same position as I was ten years ago; someone who is aware of the failings of the production but nonetheless has had enough of hearing about them, someone who might feel let down that his or her highest-profile colleague has added to the noise. Getting ready to go on stage in a production you know to be bad is a disconcerting and weird experience, as I know only too well. You may think- it’s a free country- that every other member of the ATTILA company has had that experience made more disconcerting and yet weirder by the senior pro.
It’s one of the more annoying facts of life as a performer that expressing any opinion in public beyond the bland and anodyne is usually met with derision by our dear friends from the fourth estate. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve read some journalist sneering at an actor or singer for daring to have an opinion about politics or current affairs. There’s the Private Eye column ‘Luvvies’, for the moments when actors have trouble describing the difficult-to-describe process by which a performance comes into being (or even when they don’t; a recent edition featured Robert Downey Jr expressing the hope that Arthur Conan Doyle would have smiled upon the film of ‘Sherlock Holmes’ Downey was appearing in- what a wanker, eh, readers?). And the Guardian’s dolt-in-residence recently followed a slagging of Melvyn Bragg’s v/o of a historical documentary by saying that ‘at least it was voiced by someone who knows what he’s talking about rather than an actor’, a comment which caused some consternation among the actors I know who, unlike Lord Bragg, have history degrees. It’s a shame that when, for once, a performer is being near-universally praised for speaking up, it’s for doing something which so threatens to break the unspoken contract he has with the audiences who have yet to see his performance, and the colleagues with whom he will be giving it.
That’s the first time I’ve said in any public space that it wasn’t very good, that production. And in fact, in the intervening ten years the only person involved that I’ve seen publicly acknowledge its failings was its director, once in an article and once in a book (he blamed us). People wouldn’t have been very interested in my opinion, it must be admitted. ‘ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER WITH TWELVE LINES SLAMS BADLY-PACED PRODUCTION OF PROBLEMATIC SHAKESPEARE PLAY’ isn’t a headline which would have sold many papers, even in 2000. I suppose I could have stood on the Cut handing out flyers, but it was a particularly cold spring and I’ve noticed that a lot of drivers aren’t very careful how they take that corner.
I wouldn’t have done, of course. In fact, at the time, I didn’t want to be reminded that it wasn’t very good. The very small audiences in the very big theatre (after the interval the audiences tended to get smaller, which tended to make the theatre seem bigger) were doing that nicely enough. I liked the director, I liked nearly all of my colleagues, I was acting- well, saying twelve lines, anyway- at the Old Vic. Those friends of mine who came to see the show and subsequently wanted to expound at length on how it hadn’t been the best 225 minutes of their lives received pretty short shrift from me; that was the one thing that had been rammed home to me forcibly enough by that point. That, and that going to bed at 5am doesn’t always make for great matinees.
That’s why I was surprised and a little disappointed to hear about the Samuel Ramey kerfuffle. For those of you who don’t know, Ramey is one of the greatest operatic basses around, is by all accounts a thorough good egg gentleman type, and is coming to the end of a deservedly glittering career. He’s also playing a small part in ATTILA, the Met’s first ever production of a rarely-heard Verdi opera.
He thinks it’s a ‘fiasco’, and that the director paid insufficient attention to the concerns of the cast. We know this because he said so- this is where the story takes a bit of a twist- in the comments section of a review of the production on the website of a Dallas newspaper. Disclaimer- we can’t be entirely sure that this comment was left by Mr Ramey, although better-informed people than I am have insisted that it was, so let us for the sake of argument assume that it was.
There is of course nothing at all wrong with a performer expressing disappointment in a production, or in a director. A dear friend of mine was in a film a few years ago which was a great deal less good than he had hoped, a fact which he, ahem, occasionally mentions. And the substance of Ramey’s objection- a lack of attention from the director- is not too controversial either. If the phrase ‘I just haven’t been given any direction’ were banned from the language, coffee and lunch breaks in rehearsal rooms across the world would fall uneasily silent. No, what makes this particular situation noteworthy is that ATTILA didn’t close ten years ago, and is not a film which is done, dusted and distributed; it’s live and it’s still running.
I’m not about to tell someone as distinguished as Samuel Ramey (or indeed anyone) what he can and can’t say, so let’s leave aside the rights and wrongs of that for a moment. What has been noticeable, and dispiriting, in following the story online is his adoption as a kind of Mr-Valiant-For-Truth by people who hated the production, as if this kind of behaviour were an admirable blow struck for artistic integrity. By all accounts, the production stinks. But for that to be said in public by someone who is still appearing in it may strike you as unprofessional, vain and petulant (it may strike you that way; I couldn’t possibly say). You may think it would have been worth waiting three or so weeks until the production had closed, out of respect for an audience who has paid a lot of money and wants to believe that everyone in the cast is straining every sinew in the cause of an artistic event to which they are totally committed (I’m not going to say whether I think that or not). You may even think that somewhere in that cast, among the chorus, perhaps, or the extras, is someone in the same position as I was ten years ago; someone who is aware of the failings of the production but nonetheless has had enough of hearing about them, someone who might feel let down that his or her highest-profile colleague has added to the noise. Getting ready to go on stage in a production you know to be bad is a disconcerting and weird experience, as I know only too well. You may think- it’s a free country- that every other member of the ATTILA company has had that experience made more disconcerting and yet weirder by the senior pro.
It’s one of the more annoying facts of life as a performer that expressing any opinion in public beyond the bland and anodyne is usually met with derision by our dear friends from the fourth estate. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve read some journalist sneering at an actor or singer for daring to have an opinion about politics or current affairs. There’s the Private Eye column ‘Luvvies’, for the moments when actors have trouble describing the difficult-to-describe process by which a performance comes into being (or even when they don’t; a recent edition featured Robert Downey Jr expressing the hope that Arthur Conan Doyle would have smiled upon the film of ‘Sherlock Holmes’ Downey was appearing in- what a wanker, eh, readers?). And the Guardian’s dolt-in-residence recently followed a slagging of Melvyn Bragg’s v/o of a historical documentary by saying that ‘at least it was voiced by someone who knows what he’s talking about rather than an actor’, a comment which caused some consternation among the actors I know who, unlike Lord Bragg, have history degrees. It’s a shame that when, for once, a performer is being near-universally praised for speaking up, it’s for doing something which so threatens to break the unspoken contract he has with the audiences who have yet to see his performance, and the colleagues with whom he will be giving it.
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