Theatre

Shark Tales: The Leonardo Question and Some Stories

Alan Hindle | Saturday 3 July, 2010 13:45

Formaldehyde isn’t dependable. Drinking it guarantees a hangover, if you live, but try pickling an entire shark in the stuff. Damien Hirst famously submerged Jaws in preserving fluid for his Turner Prize-nominated piece, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, but it rotted away and had to be replaced. The shark made Hirst rich, stinking rich, stinkier than a putrid fish. Today he sells paintings of spots somebody else does because he can’t be bothered and diamond-encrusted skulls for millions of pounds.

In The Leonardo Question, two visitors to a contemporary art gallery discuss Modernity, from the moment Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon ripped the world to pieces and slapped it savagely back together. Marcel Duchamp, Peggy Guggenheim, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Hirst and Tracey Emin swarm the stage spouting soundbites. Written and produced by art dealer Caroline Wiseman, Leonardo ponders who will be the next “master”, following da Vinci and Picasso. What it’s really asking is whether there can be another master in an age when artists don’t even know how to paint spots.

Three actors take on the glorious monsters of a century of art. Patrick Rogers, Kyle Ross and Clemmie Reynolds have only moments to present a brief sketch, a caricature of monumental egos, before they have to change their wig and move on. There is no drama here, and little depth. The actors have fun when they let loose (except in the case of Warhol, when the laughs come from seeing how constrained and empty he was) but they are working with quotes, portraying iconic, iconoclastic personalities too large to contain for a passing moment. Only Peggy Guggenheim is allowed a human dimension. Wiseman’s script, admittedly her first, is neither quite polemic nor historical drama but merely gives the audience a spirited tour of 20th century art in preparation for the second half of the evening, a post-show dinner and chat with a visiting art historian/academic. Here you’ll find the real drama, especially if you make some yourself, hammering out your opinions over vino and a Rosemary Branch meal. Try the fish.

The stairs leading down to Black’s gentleman’s club are thick with flies. Once this building housed Dr. Samuel Johnson’s The Club (according to allinlondon.co.uk, though I thought The Club was at The Turk’s Head on Gerrard Street) where he and his mates gathered to tip fine booze toasting each other’s triumphs, both literary and concerning the prostitutes of neighbouring Meard Street.

In the corners of these small rooms today, Some Stories are being told of a different sort. A woman tells a young, stonily silent girl about her mother, for whom she pretended to be her dead twin brother all her life. A child-murderer dissolves before our very eyes, but does he kill because he is dying or is he dying because he has killed? A woman leaves a flood of messages on answering machines, tying up her loose ends like ribbons around parcels of guilty despair. A young, simpleminded girl, who just wants to be liked, is invited to a party where only a few boys await her.

The theme of violence towards children runs heavily through all these stories—like the very darkest and most vivid fairy tales. All four hold a moral potency, however, in Blue Rabbits, Flora Spencer-Longhurst gives the most powerful, frankly terrifying performance. The other stories are told by grown-ups, but in Blue Rabbits our protagonist is a fragile, hopeful little girl and we know from the previous three tales that nothing good can come to her. Spencer-Longhurst looks about 12 herself (I had to check the programme—yep, she went to Manchester University) and when she stares at you with her huge dark eyes and faltering smile, just before she relives her rape and confusing pregnancy, your heart breaks.

Some Stories has finished its too-brief run, but producers Cheap Seats have other shows planned for October.

AIDS and HIV have been tempered by drugs and treatment, but they haven’t gone away, and lives continue to be lost and mourned. Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens is a charity fundraiser on behalf of the Terrence Higgins Trust, running from the 10-28 August. This huge show features fresh material by writer Bill Russell, and producer John-Jackson Almond has pledged at least £5 of every £25 ticket will go to the fund. Promotion, as simple as word-of-mouth, and cash are what they need, starting now, and anyone interested in contributing can go to www.camdentheatres.com, or contact Almond through Shaw Theatre’s website, shaw-theatre.com.

---