Theatre

Stairway to Bletherin'

Alan Hindle | Saturday 3 July, 2010 16:01

Alan Hindle illustration

In Stairway to Heaven, Makthon is the new boy, doing construction on the pyramid of Cheops 4,700 years ago, being shown the ropes by co-workers Hiksos and Geb. A recent onsite fatality has everybody edgy, and Makthon’s lucky escape from a tumbling ten-ton lump of masonry is tied to his Amun Ra protection amulet. Gradually, under the crushing sun and workload, the boy ferments into religious fervour, is visited at night by ghosts and gods and believes himself fatefully bound to the Pharoah. Meanwhile, all his drunken workmates want is to do is get into his loincloth. As the pyramid nears completion, and Makthon ascends to the depths of madness, the question becomes an obsession- What is the secret of the pyramid? What will happen when the final capstone is in place?

If you piled up all the statistics, crazy theories, historical baggage and archaeological adventurism surrounding the pyramids of Egypt you’d have another, with enough crap left over to knock out a few Sphinxes in the garden like decorative gnomes.

So what were the pyramids really about? You won’t find out from Stairway to Heaven, produced by Fallen Angel Theatre Company.

Here, men shout to express something, because volume equals emotion, and poetry is nothing deeper than noticing stars in the sky. Matthew Ward as Geb attempts awkwardly to provide his character some depth as the doomed older worker who falls in love with Makthon, and at least he tries, but otherwise homosexuality appears to be some sort of indicator of the harshness of life. You go to work and if everybody isn’t stealing olives from your lunch they’re trying to rape you. Perhaps this was true. The boundaries of “sexuality” were more vague back then. Maybe playwright Steve Hennessey’s research found that 3500 years ago construction work was synonymous with gay rape. Or perhaps Hennessey really wanted to write a prison drama and hit upon the pyramids as a way to add a little mystique. But when the gritty climax arrives it’s mediocre, passionless, perfunctory, and badly lit. A half-assed attempt at transgression and a trite use of history.

And what is the secret of the pyramid? I won’t—can’t—spoil it any more than the show does, but I’m certain the architects had something weightier in mind than a philosophy printable on a T-shirt of Egyptian cotton.

Stairway to Heaven plays at the Blue Elephant Theatre, 59a. Bethwin Road, blueelephanttheatre.co.uk until July 10.

In a desert on the other side of the globe, in an altogether more humble structure, lives Monk O’Neil, lover, poet, philospher and grower of tomatoes. One day, X years ago, a mototcyclist on a Harley Davidson crashed outside O’Neil’s ramshackle shack. and, following a brief snack and swig of wine, died. Mort Lazarus is still buried in the backyard (the backyard being the entirety of the Australian outback) under a tree trunk, with only an alarm clock and a metronome to mark his grave. O’Neill, meantime, marks his own passing of time by the steady decay of his body. Like a reverse water clock he keeps track of the years by counting the decreasing dribbles and drops of piss he can pass. Every day is much like another while he recalls all the people he’s mistreated over his lifetime now steadily dying of old age.

Monk seems unable to die. Perhaps Mort was the Grim Reaper, killed by the fierce Australian terrain, and now Monk is as immortal as his character, but his body keeps on rotting just the same.

Mark Little, 20 years on since the fame he attained on the Aussie soap neighbours, looks every inch a crotchedy, out-of-shape old bastard. He totally inhabits a difficult character and the nearly overwhelming script of A Stretch of the Imagination. A dictionary of down-under lingo is provided, and for the first quarter of the show I spent more time rifling that than watching the play. Jack Hibberd, who wrote the show nearly forty years ago, wears his influences proudly. Stretch is very much an antipodean take on Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot, with large doses of James Joyce’s Ulysses. While Beckett is funnier, and Joyce richer, Hibberd’s masterstroke is to realise that Australian colloquialisms are vast and varied enough to construct an entire language from them. Also, while the language is thicker than a blackberry bramble over a hobo’s grave, the theme is as simple as Godot: Death is thankfully inevitable. For Monk, however, death is dead and he’s stuck living with himself and his ghosts.

Little, who also designed and directed the show, seems as large a personality as Monk, and he spews out what could easily be gibberish with casual aplomb. Well, much of it, to non-Aussie ears, is gibberish, but that’s half the fun of Ulysses, too. Letting words flow over you and enjoying the music of nonsense. Which is perhaps what life is about, anyway.

A fun show, and Little is a joy to watch rot.

A Stretch of the Imagination runs at the Cock Tavern, 125 Kilburn High Road, cocktaverntheatre.com until July 17.

People come and go, taking their stories with them. They live, love, shout, interact, then melt away into the darkness. Strangers occasionally join them to watch their arguments and dilemmas.You can pop in, too, to eavesdrop up close and be shouted at. It’s like being back home again!

In the V&A’s Porter gallery sit two of the six specially commissioned structures from the 1:1 Architects Build Small Spaces exhibition. One is a beautiful trapazoid of simple wood designed to be a slightly improbable toolshed. The other is a slim tower, four stories high, a spiral made up of tiny rooms swathed in thick, almost suffocating red velvet curtains, designed and created by Jose Carlos Teixeira.. The Factory, also currently finishing their Spoonfed Round 2 series of productions, have been inhabiting the tower recently to tell three very short tales.

Truth to tell, it was a bit hard figuring out what the plays were about. The first seemed to be about a man plagued by friendly spirits called Smurz who’s brought a woman home to meet them. The second was about a community of inept fire marshals trying desperately to contain a fire in their building without having a single clue what fire is. The third was about a young couple with a filthy toilet expecting an important sports figure dropping by for an official visit.

The show is free and the performances are fun. The middle bit about the fire was an unexpectedly brilliant piece of absurdity, with the actors shouting out new and exciting ways to put out fire, such as starting new fires to take the pressure off the main one, or having everybody hold their breath to create a vacuum and thus deprive the flames of oxygen. The best part, besides being free, is that you can wander into the tower while the performance is going on and observe from within! A hoot. Afterwards you can continue wandering the V&A, ogling the beauty of history and pondering the rudeness of the staff. Obviously not all the staff are rude. Probably only a few. Try to meet the same ones I did to get the full snarly experience.

The Factory’s performances are now done, but The Lab Theatre Collective will be doing their response to the Teixeira Tower July 2-4, the seven sisters group will be performing A Hairy Tale from July 9-11, the Jeremis Irons Arts Collective will be doing re/cycled between July 16 and 18 and Les Enfants Terrible finish the “season” with a whodunit called The Vaudevillians: The Half Hour Calls from July 24-25.

The Factory’s shows were at 1 and 3pm, but check the companies’s respective websites to make sure. Jazz performances also take place every Friday night at 8 until July 25 at the Woodshed mentioned above.

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