Theatre: This ambitious puppet adaptation of Ted Hughes' Crow really doesn't work
Last month I excitedly mentioned a puppet adaptation of Ted Hughes’ Crow which was flying in to Greenwich. Well it’s arrived, and judging by a preview showing I saw last night it’s a dreadful mess. I was going to review it here, but I discovered that webcowgirl had already pretty much summed it up.
“Two days after seeing Handspring Puppet’s Crow, I amazed that no one saw fit to stop this train wreck.”
There’s nothing worse than actors running across the stage, doing a twirl and running back again. And there was an awful lot of that, and nowhere near enough poetry.
Great review of what is, alas, an ambitious disaster. Tickets available here!
Webcowgirl – Review: Crow – Handspring at Greenwich Dance Borough Hall
21 Jun 2012
London agenda for Thursday 21 June 2012
1. Watch a bunch of illustrators at the Queen of Hoxton create a Hot Mess [Le Cool]
2. Eat wild foods, ugly vegetables and unusual cuts of meat and fish at Foodcyle’s Forgotten Feast [Run Riot]
3. Hear the ‘sonics of rap and R&B into a fearlessly forward-thinking mutation’ with TNGHT [Don’t Panic]
4. What if there are multiple quantum earths? And what if we could go there? Only £10 Transporter beam not included.
5. Walk beside Leg of Mutton Pond [Tired of London]
21 Jun 2012
Assembly's non-Tories call Mayor Johnson's Estuary airport plan "simplistic" and a "vanity project"
“This Assembly believes that the Mayor’s plans for a new airport in the Thames Estuary are simplistic and ill-considered and calls upon him to abandon this vanity project.”
Labour AM Murad Qureshi’s motion passed 15-9, with Conservatives opposed and non-Conservatives in favour. So it’s a predictably partisan response which doesn’t teach us much about the question of whether London needs some airport expansion, or where any extra capacity should be built.
But with the Standard enthusiastically handing out the shovels, it’s important that airport-sceptics make their voices heard.
The Standard – We need a proper modern airport – get on with it
See also:
Does London need another airport?
21 Jun 2012
@ThoughtCatalog gets London badly, badly wrong
Thought Catalog is a popular website with twentysomethings across the US and UK. It publishes articles such as How You Know You’re About To Have Terrible Sex and Things I Wish People Told Me When I Entered My 20s and The 3 People To Fear At Your Unpaid Internship
It’s popular because it focusses on the one subject that matters to today’s twentysomethings more than any other: themselves.
Yesterday they published What it feels like to live in London by Rosie McCap, an American “currently residing in New York City”. It’s a fascinating insight to how newcomers to a city can manage to get almost everything about it hideously, appallingly wrong. Here are some of the things Rosie thinks you’ll feel if you live in London. My gloss in italics:
“Reveling in your ex-patriotism, you will start drinking tea instead of coffee, root for Manchester United, listen to BBC Radio 1 and become an avid watcher of Doctor Who.”
When I live in New York I’m going to support the Los Angeles Dodgers
“In a smoky pub around the corner from your flat, you’ll play darts with old men whose teeth are missing but whose minds are as sharp as a tack.”
Ah those gummy old pub sages – haven’t we all enjoyed the benefit of their toothless wisdom?
“Up-and-coming designers will sell you their fashions from boutique shops on Brick Lane; you’ll get the rest of your clothing from vintage stores somewhere outside the city limits.”
I get my boxer shorts from a vintage boutique in Rickmansworth
“There will be a tattoo of the Union Jack above your hip, or maybe you’ll get your eyebrow pierced in Camden.”
Maybe I will, Rosie. Maybe I will
“You’ll meet British men who are repulsed by your foreign accent…Once they’ve gotten to know you, they will like you, and even fall in love with you. They will treat you like gold. They will take you for a weekend of surfing in Cornwall, and if they love you, they will take you to Paris, or Greece.”
Haven’t been taken to Paris or Greece recently? Your relationship is a husk
Let’s get straight past the annoyance of the “you wills”. That’s just an affectation of style. Simply replace them with “I dids” and the meaning of the post becomes clear.
What’s amazing about this post is that someone can come to London expecting life to be just like Notting Hill or Love Actually, and learn through bitter experience that daily life is exactly like…Notting Hill or Love Actually!
It isn’t. This isn’t what London’s really like. People don’t actually live in this ridiculous, sentimentalised fairy land of “smoky pubs” and “up-and-coming designer clothes”. The post is called “What it feels like to live in London”. Rosie may have felt like this during her stay. But here’s a lesson my generation doesn’t really want to hear: just because you feel something doesn’t mean it’s real.
21 Jun 2012
Open City Docs Fest looks pretty good
It starts today, most of it is round Goodge St/UCL way (or ‘west midtown’ – ugh) but there are farther flung showings. Check the programme for details.
A flavour:
London 2062 – How will we live?
A Spark from Tottenham
A Dramatic Re-Telling of the Tottenham Riots – A rapper and a filmaker frrom Tottenham combine to retell the riots
We Will Be Happy One Day – The dreams peope dream in a poor Polish town
And loads more. If you like documentaries, check it out.
21 Jun 2012
Detroit meets the Isle of Dogs: The 2012 Chrysler at the Canary Wharf Motorexpo
This is a sponsored post in partnership with Chrysler
The annual Canary Wharf Motorexpo is an innovative event. Rather than stuff hundreds of autos in a environment better suited to a sporting match or agricultural show, Motroexpo places most of its exhibits in its natural habitat, locating cars throughout the nooks and crannies of Canary Wharf. (Although a few beautiful vintage convertibles were sensibly indoors.)
Rather than under horrific fluorescents, the crowds can view these motors in the natural sunlight, or, as it was last Saturday, under monsoon conditions.
One of those vehicles that stood out in the rain was the 2012 Chrysler 300C. Oozing Detroit cool, the characteristic silhouette is crisp, clean and refined with the more steeply raked windscreen lending it an aerodynamic appearance in marked contrast to cookie-cutter teardrops. Marked wing lines front and rear are higher than the bonnet and boot they embrace, and emphasise the spaciousness of the passenger compartment. Combined with 20-inch aluminium wheels on the Executive, they give the car a sporty low-to-the-ground appearance. The convex doors are stylishly embellished with chrome-plated door mirrors, while the fixed window on the rear doors helps contribute to improving external visibility.
Simplicity is the rule here. Unlike many rivals which offer a baffling array of engine sizes and trim levels, the new Chrysler 300C, which will become available here in two versions, promises the perfect power output for the car, with two well-judged specifications. The new 3.0-litre V6 turbo diesel benefits from Fiat Group Automobiles’ ground-breaking MultiJet 2 technology to provide a class-leading compromise between effortless power and fuel-saving efficiency.
The 2012 Chrysler 300C, which launched in the UK on 14 June, retains a unique position in the executive sector. By offering the type of engineering, design, materials and driving dynamics that European buyers expect, combined with American style, personality and value for money, the 2012 Chrysler 300C will appeal to head and heart.
Motorexpo attendees were booking Chrysler 300C test drives through the Motorexpo’s central DriveMe facility, which allowed you to test drive almost any car you can see at the Expo, a real innovation. Unfortunately, the Motorexpo has now moved to Toronto – and then to New York.
But, there is a way around that. You still test drive a Chrysler 300C by clicking here. Chrysler can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.
20 Jun 2012
Meursault - Flittin'
We’ve long been huge fans of big-voiced Scottish indie outsider Neil Pennycook and his aptly-named band Meursault. In fact, their previous album “All Creatures Will Make Merry” arguable ranks alongside the great independently produced records of this century, so far.
So the emergence of “Flittin’”, the first track from their next LP, is an exciting event. It’s a stomping folk song with swooning strings, pleasingly on the right side of lo-fi, that manages to squeeze both melancholy and triumphalism into its four-and-a-half minutes. A spidery, morning-light piano version reveals its lovely bones.
Look out for the new album soon on Song, By Toad.
20 Jun 2012
Poliça - Wandering Star
Here’s a new video from US electronica upstarts Poliça, who play an instore at Rough Trade East on July 12th, on their way to Latitude.
20 Jun 2012
XXL - Disco Chrome
XXL is Xiu Xiu and Italian Michael Gira/Nurse With Wound collaborators Larsen. Together they’ve made an album of a predictably unpredictable nature. Disco Chrome, downloadable below, is a passage of odd-rock, with kraut and industrial influence, bursts of discordancy and driving rhythm; the rest of the album, entitled “Düde”, sees everything from surreal, hypnotic minimalism to grinding, circular riffs. It’s July release is preempted by a headline show at Cafe Oto this Friday.
20 Jun 2012
London agenda for Wednesday 20 June 2012
1. Reëxamine Harry Beck tube map, and apparently have a drink, at the Transport Museum [Le Cool]
2. Watch propaganda for the politics of joy & disorder, Brand X [Run Riot]
3. Jonathan liked Best Coast two years ago so maybe it’s time to see them again [Don’t Panic]
4. Watch dinosaurs pitted against cowboys on the big screen at The Valley of Gwangi [Ian Visits]
5. Drink at the Fox and Hounds, Belgravia [Tired of London]
20 Jun 2012
Snipe Highlights
Some popular articles from past years
- The best church names in London, and where they come from
- 9 poems about London: one for each of your moods
- Hope and despair in Woolwich town centre
- Margaret Thatcher statue rejected by public
- The five spookiest abandoned London hospitals
- The five best places in London to have an epiphany
- London has chosen its mayor, but why can’t it choose its own media?
- Peter Bayley has worked for 50 years as a cinema projectionist in East Finchley
- Nice map of London's fruit trees shows you where to pick free food
- Diary of the shy Londoner
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