The artist as art - Mr Brainwash comes to New Oxford Street

Mr Brainwash
The Old Sorting Office, New Oxford Street, London.W1
Until August 29th

LA-based street artist, Thierry Guetta, aka Mr Brainwash, has risen to international eminence over the last decade. He featured in Banksy’s Exit Through the Giftshop and also designed the cover for Madonna’s Celebration album in 2009.

In his first UK solo show, Thierry has taken over the gigantic vault-like Old Sorting Office, transforming the former Post Office property into a wonderland of brash large-scale installations.

Several life-sized horses, washed with primary paint overlook popular icons, depicted in collage and vinyl.

The crowds can’t seem to take enough photos of the work on display which is a spectacular and tangible narrative about the process and defiance of performance art. The artist has clearly had as much fun creating a giant gorilla out of tires, as more intricate iconic portraits and tableaus.

Brainwash also clearly loves paint, which is dripped, splashed and drenched over otherwise perfect Conran chairs and tables, using the empty paint cans to then assemble new sculptures.

Attendees are generously lavished with posters and postcards as they leave.

Follow this writer at @sssukiii

Boris Johnson dad-dancing as poorly recorded from telly on an iPhone

Boris Johnson can’t help dancing to the Spice Girls during the 2012 closing ceremonies.

Fringe Batch 3

During a show, three cell phones went off and the guy next to me was checking his texts. I wish I had an EMP device strapped to my back, sending out nuclear powered electromagnetic pulses to kill computer chips whenever I wanted. I’d have cancer in a week, but it would be worth it.

Dead Static
In the far future two men wake up on a disabled spaceship hurtling towards an asteroid belt and inescapable death. And almost immediately start arguing. Tyler Smith, a famous rogue (“Are you sure you’ve never heard of me?”) and Gary Patches, one of the most likeable idiots ever upended onto a stage, have only one thing in common. They have both pissed off the all-powerful galactic fascists, The Syndicate, and they appear to have been condemned to death in the most expensive, indulgent, unnecessarily complicated, amusing way possible. There is actually one possible escape route, and our heroes do everything possible not to find it.

Cliff Chapman as Tyler and Adam Joselyn as Gary are two excellent clowns in what is not quite as existential a play as Waiting For Godot, but certainly even funnier a space comedy than Red Dwarf. If author Steve Jordan is actually aiming for a worthy TV pilot then he has one. If enough episodes could be written as brilliantly (and performed as well) then he would have the makings of a classic series.

Dead Static, rare for a Fringe play, was sold out and then some on its first night (and tonight!), so book quickly for Sunday if you want to see it before it winds up on your screen.

Fringe Batch 2

Coin Operated Girl
Travelling the world on private jets wearing nothing but a g-string and a chinchilla snugglewrap. Wined, dined and supine in stretch limos featuring chandeliers and jacuzzis, bound for opulent hotel rooms and rampant, subtle, elegant, animalistic sex smothered in truffle-scented massage oil and rose petals. Yes, the life of a theatre critic for Snipe is certainly glamorous. But what about the lives of professional escorts?

MIranda Kane decided to become a high-class lady of the p.m. for the fun of it, but whether because of her intelligence and business smarts, or because she is just a sweet adventurous gal, she actually managed to keep having fun at it. She loves sex and can find something attractive in pretty much everybody. Under the pseudonym Melody, she joined what was then the small ranks of BBW (Big Beautiful Women) sex workers. Seven years later we have Coin Operated Girl, essentially an educational lecture about her experiences in the biz.

Obviously the sex industry is fraught with misery. With women desperately trying to get by, surrounded by ruthless, abusive men. The business is generally an unhappy one. But COG suggests it could be better. An organised, unionised, womanised escort service could provide for lonely and kinky men while still providing safe, financially viable, emotionally supportive employment women who choose it, rather than find themselves forced into it for whatever reasons.

Enough lecturing from me. Miranda/Melody does an infinitely better job, simply by telling her stories, answering questions, and raising the frilly veil on a mythologised/demonised world. Kane is bubbly, funny and completely open. She’s also a firm mistress. Going to the toilet during her show is permitted, but don’t expect to escape a razzing when you come back.

Shelter
Three short plays by young playwright Ash Rowbin, focusing on what twenty-somethings are concerned with today. Judging from these one-acts, Strangers, Lovers and Lost Friends, what the kids are worried about is getting old and middle class as fast as possible.

In Strangers a girl who once dreamed of being a Tory politican flirts in a park with a somewhat sketchy guy with no dreams at all. Talking like they’re in a play they negotiate what love and identity mean in the new media age. “Anything is possible.” “You really believe that?” 21 and already burned out.

Lovers sees a couple arguing about the future. She wants a house in the country, kids, a solid career, a pony, a stick-shift convertible, a zeppelin, a gold-plated butler and her own moon. He pulls pints in a bar and is happy. She wants him to want more and he wants her to want what they have. 23, and ambitions are already crashing.

Three former school chums/ ex-roomies reunite for another friend’s wedding. The one who studied and worked hard is now a junior editor at a publishing firm. The one who goofed off now works at a call centre. Unrequited love or perhaps the green eye of envy seeps in and bubbles under what should have been a light hearted reunion. Bitterness rises to the surface. “Why did you want to grow up so quickly? Someday you’ll go on Facebook and look back at pictures of us and you’ll feel regret that you didn’t stick around.” But it’s the goof off who is clearly the lost soul here. 25, and your life is over if you didn’t ignore your youth to work on your middle age.

In the 70s sci-fi film, Logan’s Run, citizens are implanted with a device, a red lightbulb in their hand, that turns black when they turn 30. They are then rounded up and executed. In the original 60s novel the bulb went black when they hit 21. Apparently in the real world of the twenty first century the light dies as you leave school.

The performances varied and the script seemed to take one side of each argument and gives its deliverer the best lines. Characterisation is thin, as often happens in polemic plays. It’s just a shame that the issues this play is presenting seem so… shallow.

Snipe Likes: Kody Nielson

How great is this – fuzzy, superbly paced pop-psychedelia courtesy of New Zealander Kody Nielson (brother of Unknown Mortal Orchestra head boy, Ruban). Debut album Electric Hawaii is out now on the ever-reliable Fire Records and you can catch Nielson, plus band, at the Shacklewell Arms, October 29 and 30.

London agenda for Friday 10 August 2012

1. View the most unique exhibition of contemporary automata you’re likely to see at Space Station Sixty-Five [Le Cool]

2. Watch Brian Blessed, Stephen Fry and Eddie Izzard breathe. At Sporting Stories before Bedtime. [Run Riot]

3. Lay the city out on your feet at Matteo Pericoli: London Unfurled [Flavourpill]

4. Listen to the forward thinking house and techno production of Kowton [Don’t Panic]

5. See what the Church of England usually charges an arm and a leg for at St. Paul’s [Ian Visits]

6. Visit the Mile End Floating Market [Tired of London]

7. See Parakeet at the Shacklewell Arms for free [London in Stereo]

This Yorkshire Olympic medal thing needs to stop

Snipe is a London blog, but sometimes national issues of such grave importance arise that it’s necessary to widen our scope.

ITV news has a story up called Yorkshire map marks Olympic glory. It says:

“A new map for tourists that highlights Yorkshire’s overwhelming Olympic success will be launched today.”

I’ve seen numerous tweets from excited Tykes extolling Yorkshire athletes and imagining where Yorkshire alone would rank in the medal table. The county’s athletes have done amazingly well; congratulations to them all.

And yet take a look at the map above, from the Ordnance Survey (crown copyright etc etc). There’s a medal-less gap in the middle which roughly equates to the Pennines. Both sides of that gap have done well, haven’t they? It’s just that one side doesn’t feel the need to trap on about it like Geoffrey Boycott after one too many rhubarb ciders.

The Guardian – Ordnance Survey map of Team GB medallists

Snipe Likes - Perfume Genius - 'Take Me Home'

Take Me Home, out September 24 on Organs (Turnstile), is the third single to be taken from Mike Hadreas’ highly acclaimed second album as Perfume Genius, Put Your Back N2 It (an open love-letter to East Finchley it is not). It’s a gorgeous slab of big-hearted, gospel-tinged melodrama, a style for which Hadreas is becoming something of a figurehead. It seems his tumultuous love life is serving as inspiration again, and without wishing to sound cruel, long may it continue. Catch Perfume Genius in the spin-tingling confines of the Union Chapel, September 6. If the BBC wishes to appear astute, this track should feature somewhere in their coverage of the Olympics closing ceremony. Just saying.

Fringe Reviews: Batch The First

O Camden Head pub comedy space. With your strange, L-shaped theatre and mock air conditioning. Ah, the smell of bodies in a cramped room. The fug of sweat and human crackling. Bliss. And heat blisters. On my damp ass. And now, some reviews.

Take Desire Away
As a literary critic A.E. Houseman was famously scathing, describing the process of combing texts for flaws as essentially ‘hunting for fleas’. Fortunately for Mansel David, creator and performer of Take Desire Away, I’m more a forgiving critic.

David’s love for his subject is obvious, and he looks great in his silky, silky cravat. Actually, he’s a good likeness. And if you appreciate Houseman- and there’s a lot to appreciate- then this is the show for you. But possibly only you.

Alternating between desk and lectern to deliver poems and letters, full of high-literary in-jokes, the show is inert. Despite the potency of Houseman’s wit, David’s remorseful sing-songy readings and the relentless drip of English phlegm makes Take Desire Away more of a museum piece than its subject deserves. Mansel David has a few fun moments engaging his hero’s rascally, eyebrow-waggling side, but the emotional power of the poetry, the flashing brilliance of humour in the prose, could have been given fuller reign. I think the show is ‘worthy’, though that may be damning with faint praise.

Black Sunday
The economy seems fairly intact. It’s the stock markets and financial industry that’s hooped, but as the wealthy feel threatened by the instability of their magical world the rest of us have to be punished. And we seem happy to go along with it. The rich get richer and the rest of of us just shrug and say ‘Whaddaya gonna do?’ In Black Sunday we see characters from across this unravelling tapestry of Modern Society struggling to cope with its collapse. James, a successful banker, has been playing at least as fast and loose as his pin-striped brethren and consequently helps sink his bank. We see him get drunk as penance. Presumably the regular folks who lost their savings in his institution are feeling the pain as well. His wife Susan, a Tory politician selling the idea that the public are responsible for the crisis by not having the willpower to resist easy credit, is appalled. How will voters react to her being poor? It’s unthinkable! There are also artists, homeless, pensioners, cops and waitresses in this tale, but the whirl of story focuses on this nuclear meltdown family.

This is a full-length play, which I had not counted on and unfortunately had to leave at the interval. As such, I can’t really give a fair opinion, but I do think the constant breaks in the narrative to rearrange the furniture for the next scene severely disrupted the flow. Also, the writing is uneven. Whenever the socialites Francesca and Barbara appear the writing shifts into a higher gear. It could just be that Kate Tucker, who plays Francesca, as well as the sparring old lady Agatha, is such a sparkling performer she is able to improvise spectacularly. Certainly the scenes in which these rich, spoiled, clueless girls discuss the issues of the day are satirical gold.

Ernest but occasionally very funny. I wish I’d seen the rest.

Doggett and Ephgrave Project Project Stuff
There are many brilliant, inventive, breath-taking things theatre can do that television and film cannot. And there are many things Fringe theatre can do that ‘mainstream’ theatre won’t. Doggett and Ephgrave have decided to go their own way, demonstrating, in a live performance, what television does best: Presenting YouTube videos in a ‘Did You See That? Wasn’t That Funny?’ manner. They also cover amusing signs, the creepiness of 50 year-old pop songs and beards. There are funny bits in the show. Occasionally even from them. However, as a pilot for ITV2 I think they have stiff competition from Robert Webb.

Northern Droll
Sketch comedy, for the sake of simplification beyond accuracy, is one of two things. Long, dragged out and squirmingly uncomfortable, or packed with punchy explosions of nonsense. That’s probably mostly untrue, but I’m going to run with it anyway. Northern Droll, who seem like six funny people, all part of the Sheffield University Comedy Revue which is attempting the engulf the Fringe with three shows this year, want to have their comedy both ways. It doesn’t work. And speeding through your lines as quickly as possible in the hopes that the audience will find the punchline funnier that way, assuming they can hear you, doesn’t work either.

Having said all that, there are some good moments. A few solid bones in the spine that can be tinkered on. When they calm down and enjoy themselves, when they sink into characters rather than spitting out their lines, Droll are funny. Of the lot, Red Headed Guy and Blond Lady are the best, because they calmly exude funny rather than sweat it out. Which is good because Blonde Lady, or Lizzie as she’s known in the world outside my shoddy memory, is also the writer of the preemptive zombie survival Fringe show, 10 Days Earlier. Fellow members of Northern Droll are also doing Friends With Benefit Fraud. But not Red or Blondie, so we’ll see.

Elsewhere
Three Italians besotted with American music take a road trip from New York to Vegas- and land in court, spilling the cannellini beans to the judge. Raffaelle, Davide and Marco- I’ve decided to call them Elvis, Willie Nelson and Corporate Executive Looking Dude In 70s Reggae T-Shirt- are hilarious. The easygoing charm of Willie and the relentless bravado of CELDI70sRT-S’s storytelling carry the thinnest of plots. While the middle is looser than a sloppy risotto, overall this is an absolute gem of a show. More people need to see it, if only for the endearingly Zen Elvis. New word needed: Zendearing. The band/illegal aliens are relaxed and confident, even when (especially when) they don’t really know the lyrics and the music is fun. Short on story, long on character, Elsewhere is a beautiful place to be. And their Elvis fucking rules.

In-depth interview: Kate Flowers of CoOperaCo on her innovative operatic finishing school

Kate Flowers has a name right off the stage, a voice right off the radio, and a dream that’s all her own. She wants to build an opera company, from scratch, where unpolished young operatic talent can be buffed and shined until they gleam in the limelight’s glow.

I went down to Brockley to speak to Kate. She’s a real chatterer with a nice warm Cheshire lilt, and a dash of theatrical glamour (see photo below). She’d make a great presenter on Radio 2.

I asked her to explain what Co-Opera Company is all about, and why she thinks all the hard work is worth it.

Snipe: How did your opera company start?

Kate Flowers: I’m an opera singer, and had a very good career [she’s not wrong, see her imdb page for context.] I lost my voice, just after I’d had my Covent Garden debut and my ENO debut. Anyway I worked my way back, and I was working with young singers who had just been at college. And working with them…they had wonderful voices but that’s a tiny little bit of what being a performer is. It’s whether you can engage with an audience and the people on stage…and I was moaning a lot about it…one night in Dublin we moaned all night and Paul (Paul Need, Co-Opera Company’s Co-director – they do like their co’s at Co-Opera Co) said “stop moaning about it; do something about it. Let’s start an opera company.” That was July 2008.

Snipe: So you’re responding to gaps in the skills of young performers?

Kate Flowers: When I left college in Manchester I was lucky, there were a lot of small prestigious companies around. As a young singer you were able to work on stage with some of the top singers in the world. You were earning and learning at the same time. It was like an apprenticeship. Those companies disappeared in the 80s and 90s. People are going into college being able to sing, but you’re having to tell them basics like what stage left and stage right is, which is basic stagecraft.

Co-Opera Co started running weekend workshops for young singers. Experienced pros, Kate’s contacts from years in the business, came in to pass on their knowledge.

Snipe: So you think there’s been a disappearance of rungs on the ladder, and people can’t get to the top without them?

Kate Flowers: It’s a pyramid. Those people at the top are only there because of everything else…the bulk of what’s happening in opera. There’s also a perception when you’ve spent a lot of time and lot of money on your training…you come out expecting to be able to get a job. We all know that’s a bit tricky. If we can help people realise that to take smaller jobs, work in a chorus [is a good first step].

Snipe: Those high expectations are not specific to opera. It takes a bit of time to learn that it’s not failing if you’re not headlining on your first job. My generation is struggling with that.

Like everything else just now, opera has a brutal job market. And you thought getting a Social Media Account Executive gig was tough…

Kate Flowers: There are very many more singers on the market, being brought into colleges because that’s more revenue. But the singers come out with the expectation that they can earn a living. And there are fewer companies. So people are having to learn to make their own opportunities. We had 400 people audition this year for 5 roles in Hansel and Gretel, and 9 in Don Giovanni.

Snipe: Can you talk about money? How does that work?

Kate Flowers: In 2009 to put two operas on cost £40,000. And we don’t have any money. So we had to ask performers for a contributon. Each year we’ve reduced the amount that people have had to contribute. This year the soloists haven’t had to contribute at all. We toured to 7 venues…each of these made a little bit of profit that went towards the next season. And we pay people out of any profit we make from performances, so they get a little back. Everybody gets the same money the technical staff, the flautist, the singer…everybody. This year the contribution is £500.

If that seems steep, and it might, reflect on the 400 people auditioning for 14 roles. There is also a bursary, in honour of Phillip Langridge, for talented people who can’t afford the fee. The company has expanded and now takes on musicans for an orchestra, costume designers, lighting technicians and administrators – everything you might need to make an opera work. Kate says she and Paul don’t take any money from it all. That’s where the cafe is going to come in.

Snipe: What’s the dream? What’s the future?

Kate Flowers: The ideal eventually, if we win the lottery, is to have a centre of excellence which would be a theatre, working studios and a cafe. The Co-Opera Co cafe. That would make the money. There’s much more money to be made in drinks than opera. We want to build our own company. That’s what young singers are missing. It’s an old fashioned idea, but I think we could bring it into this century and make it something really special.

See also:

Ten things I learnt at the opera, by a first-time opera goer