The Dresser

This week I've been enjoying BBC 2's adaptation of The Dresser.

Ronald Harwood’s play, The Dresser, is about a touring theatre company set against the backdrop of the Second World War. The troupe are headed by a mildly talented despot, known to the audience as ‘Sir’ (Anthony Hopkins). The group are a makeshift band of amateurs, only earning their place because better men, better actors are away at war. For them, the irony is that in escaping war with one fascist, they have to work with another. 

The play the actors are currently in is King Lear. Hamlet is the part all young actors want; Lear is the part all old actors want. Where Hamlet is about a character wanting to make sense of the world; Lear is about a character that has made sense of it and realised it’s not for them. King Lear explores what happens to a person when they’re stripped – literally and metaphorically – of their status. It asks what happens to the great and good when it’s their time to leave the stage. Will they be remembered, and if so, for what?

Lear on the heath.

Harwood’s creation, in another nod to Shakespeare, is a play within a play. Sir is playing Lear, but you get the sense Lear is playing him too. At the beginning, Norman (Ian McKellen), Sir’s dresser, informs Her Ladyship, Sir’s wife, about her husband’s uncommon behaviour. During the day a frenzy overtook him, causing him to disrobe in the streets and wail like Lear on the heath. Perturbed, Norman took him to hospital, believing he still lies there. Her Ladyship understands that this is curtains for tonight’s production and orders Madge, the Stage Manager, to cancel the play. Norman won’t countenance such a plan: still in theatre today the cliché, ‘the show must go on,’ pertains. During the Second World War, this was thought more so: with airwave and air raid warnings commonplace, the theatre offered people escape. Famously when Churchill was asked to re-direct art funding to the war effort, he quipped: “then what are we fighting for.” In a period that had yet to birth television, the stage was people’s emergency exit from the horrors of war.

Right on cue, Sir arrives from hospital, explaining how he checked himself out. Despite being clearly exhausted, he vows to perform. Concerned for his physical wellbeing, Her Ladyship protests. Concerned for his theatrical reputation, Norman complies. The dressing room dynamic that follows between Sir and Norman is delicious, the kind of stuff psychoanalytic therapists dream of. 

McKellen and Hopkins.

Norman and Sir's friendship is based on a shared view: they both love Sir. Norman is a working class lapdog: fawning and loving he will do whatever he’s ordered. While Sir sits slumped, appearing physically unable to perform, Norman awakens in him a zeal to rage forwards to the coming of the light. Essentially, it is a vicarious relationship where Norman lives his theatrical ambitions through Sir. After all, Norman knows the lines (he goes through them with Sir); he knows theatrical parlance (everyone is called “ducky”); to all extents and purposes, he is a resident of luvviedom; but for all of that, he is no actor. Unable to obtain his own dreams, he settles for sharing in someone else’s. Only the periodic reaches for the gin bottle shows he has any problem with this.

Just as King Lear moves from vanity to empathy, Sir does too. At the beginning, he is unkind to the other players, believing they’re a necessary evil to putting on a play. If he had it his own way, he would be Midsummer Night’s Dream’s Bottom and play all the parts. Moreover, he alleges that the repertory group are a “band of brothers” but really they’re subservient children to his tyrannical father. In performing Lear’s part with dwindling health, he learns the lessons of the character and returns to the dressing room aware he too has neglected those closest to him.

'In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is King.'

Ultimately, names are the thing in this play. Conventional Norman wants the stardom that his name denies; self-appointed Sir craves the fellowship that his ego prohibits. It is a play of dissatisfaction, one that I found hugely satisfying.

Fans of theatre: don't have regrets the size of Lear - watch this play.

The Dresser is available on BBC iPlayer.

Rome

Another reporter: Which of the cities visited did Your Highness enjoy the most?

General Provno: [prompting] Each, in its own way...

Princess Ann: Each, in its own way, was unforgettable. It would be difficult to - Rome! By all means, Rome. I will cherish my visit here in memory as long as I live.

Audrey Hepburn (centre) as Princess Ann in Roman Holiday.

I’m not a man for holidays abroad. I didn’t go on a plane until I was 17, and then I only went because my History teacher strong-armed me into going, reasoning a weekend in Berlin would be useful for my A Level study. I’ve tried to enjoy the travel experience. After teacher training college, I went on a TopDeck coach tour of Eastern Europe. Arriving in Budapest I met the group I would be sharing three weeks with: all bar one were Australians. Now, I don’t want to stereotype a people; I think it’s wrong to assume all individuals share a nation’s characteristics - (I mean recently I met an Australian male that is thoughtful, intelligent and kind. Although possessing these personality traits has meant he’s been branded a traitor, making him turn to Britain for political asylum) - but in some cases generalisations ring true. Essentially, the lads I had to share a coach with were thick slabs of meat, marinated in misogyny, preserved in protein shakes. 

Despite then experiencing the baths of Budapest, the mines of Krakow and the castles of Prague, I longed for the site of the Mothercare warehouse, the building that lies on the horizon of my family home.

For years I didn’t go abroad; I simply took my holidays at home- like a family from the age of black and white or a Prime Minister from the period of media spin. Then a girl walked into my life. Consequently, this year we’ve been to Paris for her birthday; Madrid for a friend’s wedding and now Rome for my 30^th birthday. Paris, Madrid and Rome: my life now reads like a James Bond movie; admittedly a James Bond movie where the hero’s chief gadget is an illuminative Argos watch. Now I’m an expert in foreign travel, I can reveal that Italy and therefore Rome is the best place in the world. Yes, I haven’t been to 190 countries, and yes detractors may say my opinion is therefore invalid, arguing I don’t have the empirical evidence to make such a claim, but what I say to those people is … your mum.

I went on a David Hasselhoff pub crawl in Berlin. This wasn't even the lowest point of the trip.

Rome is a great city. It’s so great that I didn’t once hanker for the sight of the Zone 6 residential car park (where my new home looks out onto). Primarily, I liked it because the whole place felt old. Even though I’m a secondary school teacher, I’ve always had more affinity with the elderly than the young. As a child when people asked me what I wanted to be when I was older, I’d remark: ‘retired.’ Now with the Tory government's purge on pension this life-long ambition is looking slimmer by the day; the dream of having a mid-morning pint and paper in Wetherspoons the stuff of pie and sky.

On the first day in Rome we went to the Colosseum. The gladiatorial amphitheater opened in 80 AD, which makes it older than Jesus and Des O'Connor combined. The building’s façade is simply awe-inspiring. Owing to time’s degradation, its lack of complete symmetry means it looks like a gorgeously incomplete picture puzzle. On the other hand, the interior is less majestic and more suggestive. After pressure from the Papacy to end its violence, the Colosseum was closed. With the building lying vacant, its assets were stripped and used to build houses, workshops and quarters for religious orders. Fortunately, there is enough in its foundations, shape and arrangement for you to imagine what was. A nice fact I heard on my audio guide was that people were seated according to their value to society: teachers, considered learned channels of knowledge, were seated near the front. Today, we would be put in the car park behind a pillar.

Inside the Colosseum. Picture courtesy of Harriet Woodhouse.

After the Colosseum we went to Keats and Shelly’s memorial museum. The building was Keats’ final residence; he died young in 1821. Shelly, a contemporary of Keats, also died in Italy, which is why the museum twins the two’s legacy. The reason we went to the museum had nothing to do with the fact Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon visited the location for The Trip to Italy and everything to do with the fact that I studied Shelly and Keats at university.

The next day we went to the Vatican. I'm an atheist, but owing to my religious secondary education I’ll forever be imbued with Catholicism. Each morning in school I would have to say ‘The Lord’s Prayer;’ each week I would attend ‘Chapel lessons,’ where a man with a goatee taught us PSHE without the sex bits; each half-term I would have to attend mass, where as a non-Catholic I would have to watch my mates get their fill of Jesus whilst I sat hungry in the pews; each year my guilt over my part in Jesus’ death grew – despite not knowing whether I believed in him. I guess what I’m saying is I have all the guilt of a Catholic without the relief of absolution.

The Ministry for Cover-Ups AKA 'The Vatican.' Picture courtesy of Harriet Woodhouse.

 The Vatican is a hell of a show it has to be said. I thought, given the reputation of Sistine Chapel, the Vatican State was just an impressive ceiling on stilts. The Vatican State is more than that: it is a nation within a city. Its museum runs for miles. It doesn’t just house works by Raphael and Michelangelo, but Egyptian artefacts, Etruscan treasures and modern art collections too. Undoubtedly, the finest piece in the Museum is the Sistine Chapel: originally, Michelangelo was commissioned to paint the twelve apostles, but got bored of the idea so went rogue and produced the most esteem piece of art. Let this be a lesson to the bureaucrats in middle management: let your employees think for themselves and they’ll work wonders.

Following the Vatican, we went to get ice cream from the world famous, Giolitti. Apparently, Gelato isn’t like typical ice cream: it contains less butterfat and is frozen for a shorter period of time. Forget the Blumenthal science though and just enjoy the Nigella sensation of eating the gorgeous thing. I went for two scoops- one Bailey’s and one lemon – with pouring cream on top. They say, ‘It’s better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.’ Those people haven’t tasted gelato. Everything I’ve eaten since has tasted like a big bag of lemons. I wished I’d never had that gelato. Will life ever taste as good again?

The best ice cream in town.

Finally on the Friday we went to the park. For the first time in twenty years I went on a bike ride. The last time I went on a bike ride I fell in a bed of nettles and cried until I was admitted to hospital with dehydration. Aware I was fearful, Harriet supported me by ignoring to tell me the rental man had given me a girl’s bike, then laughed at my feeble attempts to get the pedals turning. Over time though I rediscovered the joys in cycling: there really is nothing better then feeling the breeze on your bald patch and the wind in your sails.

The proverb runs, 'all roads lead to Rome;' going up the M25 this morning for a day of work-time drudgery, I thought, 'if only.'

Joseph Morpurgo: Soothing Sounds for Baby

Stand up comedy isn’t what it used to be. The 1970’s scene was populated by tight joke technicians who knew there way round the mechanics of a joke but were hamstrung by boorish subject matter: their material operating in a tabloid world of thwarted men, stupid women and dumb-casual racism. Also, the telling of the tale was more important than the tale itself: in some instances, such was the scarcity of brain cells, jokes were put on a chalkboard backstage and comics selected the ones they would tell. To use a dismissive analogy, these comedians were drummers to today’s songwriters: they could keep time and cue laughs; however, what they couldn’t do was create a unique sound and vision.

Then in 1979 Don Ward opened a comedy club, The Comedy Store, above a strip club in Soho. With a young audience thirsty for social change, the comedy of the status quo was no longer welcomed. Spearheading this revolution was Alexei Sayle, a young socialist comic from Liverpool. Appointed MC, his job was to create a club in his image: rebellious, inventive and original. Before long comedy had turned on its head, embracing the surreal and ridiculous, Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson – and that rare species woman in the form of Dawn French and Jo Brand. The stand up of the 80's had broken free from its straitjacket and was now revelling in its newfound freedom of creativity and enterprise. This was a new dawn; the old days would never come again.

Sayle at the original Comedy Store.

Fast-forward to today. A landfill Indie tune has welcomed a man to the stage. He strides confidently to the microphone, projecting vim and vigour. He has something to get off his chest. Up until now, he can’t believe this issue hasn’t been confronted. His suit may have been designed on Saville Row, but don’t let that fool you: under the sharp tailoring lies the creases of misrule. Like a Medieval court jester, his occupation allows him to say the unsayable. He will use his moment to prick the powerful, to puncture the orthodoxy, to tear a hole in conventional wisdom. “So have you noticed that men have a separate draw for tools?” The camera zooms to a laughing face from The Only Way is Essex. This is what comedy has become.

Comedy finds itself yet again complacent in a coma of bland homogeneity. Admonished over Sachsgate and fearing further Tory cuts, the BBC’s aversion to risk is being mirrored by its stars on screen. So many of the Live at Mock Michael McIntyre’s Week are from the same management company, leading to a narrow carousel of voices that don’t reflect the diversity of the nation. And The Comedy Store? Its popularity has come at a cost: to protect its brand reliability - not risk - is now its watchword.

"The horror! The horror!"

So, we find ourselves yet again in need of a Don Ward: dependent on a club to re-awaken The Comedy Store’s ghost, to re-house the idiots in need of an asylum.

The Invisible Dot is the first custom-built comedy club to open in London for twenty years. Over the past three years it has been a champion for experimentation, favouring acts that push comedy’s parameters. This year in Edinburgh they promoted stunt provocateur, Luke McQueen; multi-racial sketch act, Daphne; and character comedian, Lolly Adefope. With their diverse stable of acts and idiosyncratic poster design, The Dot is stand up’s answer to Factory Records: a label that you can trust. I’ve been to four Invisible Dot productions over two years: the first was a storytelling show presented by Edinburgh award nominee, Liam Williams; the second was their monthly Live at the Chapel, where the best alternative comedians in the country perform in the hallowed environs of London’s Union Chapel; last year, it was perennial Edinburgh nominee, James Acaster’s ‘Work-in-Progress’ show; and on Saturday it was innovator extraordinaire, Joseph Morpurgo.

The man himself.

Morpurgo has been receiving rave reviews for a number of years now. Originally, he gained favour for his role in Austentatious, an improv group that performs a Jane Austen novel from audience suggestion. Further, his 2014 solo hour Odessa was acclaimed for its original format: the show was centred on a twenty-second local news bulletin depicting a chemical plant fire; the characters from the feature were then inhabited over the hour to create a riveting piece of comedy theatre.

His new show Soothing Sounds for Baby is his most ambitious to date. The title is irregular; it’s hardly Joseph Morpurgo: Live and Unloaded. In fact, it’s perfectly apt for a comic that exults in the esoteric and makes a home of the hinterland. His new show is about the old art of record buying. Over the past year, Morpurgo has visited charity bins around the country and picked out the most ridiculous vinyl sleeves he can find. Using the perverse cover art and batshit inlay as inspiration, he has made heroes out of these forgotten artists by mining their strangeness for laughs.

Morpurgo's stage.

Morpurgo’s dedication to finding appropriate records is admirable but it isn’t the most painstaking thing he does. In moving between the artists Morpurgo needed a narrative structure he could sequence the albums to: being a fan of Desert Island Discs, the Radio 4 castaway show seemed the most apposite way of doing it. Morpurgo then makes himself the star of Desert Island Discs with actual presenter Kirsty Young interviewing him. Does he have Young record an actual interview with him? No, that would be too easy and less funny. Instead he performs a gruelling Cassetteboy feat of splicing together hundreds of episodes of Discs to have Young’s questions fit his narrative. Clearly, this comedy is a world away from the 70’s backstage game of bagsy-a-joke.

Fans of the Radio 4 show will know that the interviewee intersperses their life story with music selections significant to them. Morpurgo does the same by intercutting his love story with record choices. However, whilst the Radio 4 subjects choose A-Ha, Elbow and Abba, Morpurgo chooses The World of Joseph Cooper, Winnie the Pooh read by Norman Shelly and 90’s RnB outfit Y?N-VEE.

What Desert Island Discs should look like.

These bizarre titles are the launch pads for the comic’s surreal flights of fancy. He re-imagines Joseph Cooper as a drunk piano teacher, whom uses Google route planner to teach musical pitch. He treats Y?N-VEE’s unpronounceable band name with hilarious incredulity by putting the group leader in a skit with a record boss. Most inspired though is his observation of Stanley Clarke’s vinyl cover: clad in white suit, the hirsute matador has his elbow propped on a burnished skull – Morpurgo channels the soul lothario to explain why.

Comedy doesn't have to be bland observations about the world we live in; it can be fantastical imaginings that open up new worlds of strange vistas and curious landscapes. In a small studio in Kings Cross stand-up has remembered this and invoked its 80's tradition.

The Comedy Store is dead. Long live, The Invisible Dot.

Joseph Morpurgo’s Soothing Sounds for Baby residency ends on Saturday.

The Murder of Sophie Lancaster: Black Roses

On 11^th August 2007, Sophie Lancaster and boyfriend Rob were set upon. Their crime: being different. On the night of the attack, the pair were in a petrol station. Ostensibly fascinated by their appearance, a group of boys approached them. Rob and Sophie were Goths. Sophie’s 5ft1 frame was elongated by huge platform shoes; her hair dreadlocked and dyed a matted red; her piercings studied and studded into tongue and skull. Rob was her muse: the man that inspired these choices. Juxtaposed against his slender body, his hair and trousers cascaded to a towering flow. In an age of conformity, the local pair seemed foreign, other, unnatural.

The boys said they had a group of friends that they would love to introduce them to. They were in the park; they should come meet them. Seduced by the lure of celebrity, Sophie and Rob walked to their doom. There in the park, Rob was set upon. A Manchester rain of punches fell upon him; a shower of kicks cursed his skull. Sophie magnetised by love came to his aid. These boys cared no jot for gallantry; they gave her the same treatment as Rob. Thirteen days later she died in hospital. Her mother who brought her onto earth was tasked with the task of burying her in it.

Sophie and Rob

Since then, Sophie’s mother Sylvia has been a vanguard for change: setting up the Sophie Lancaster Foundation, she has raked her tragedy to raise awareness on the need to protect difference. Her efforts were rewarded with the law re-classifying any attack on a subculture as a hate crime. Last year she was rightly rewarded an OBE for her efforts to ensure these crimes aren't repeated.

The Murder of Sophie Lancaster: Black Roses is part of BBC’s poetry season. Poetry is often criticised for being too elitist, too unconcerned with the experiences of normal people, a little too in love with itself. Seconded to Afghanistan to write war poetry; commissioned by Channel 4 to versify the experience of female prisoners, Armitage’s social commentary doesn’t deal in such naval gazing. A few years ago, he wrote Black Roses; its success garnered a radio commission; its power necessitated it be re-packaged for TV.

Simon Armitage

The piece begins with Sophie’s mother, played by former soap star Julie Hesmondhalgh, telling us the reason for Sophie’s moniker, black roses. Often Goths are dismissed as suicides-in-waiting, death obsessives that have one foot in the grave; more interested in dark hate than light love. Dress can contrast personality though: although the uniform shouts Satan, their outsider status aligns them with the underdog, making them more likely to show compassion to the downtrodden and dispossessed. Sophie, a vegetarian and pacifist, was an angel in black robes; a girl that cared for the plight of others. She was her mother’s black rose.

Hesmondhalgh inhabits Sylvia’s actual words to recount the story of Sophie’s life. Interspersed between this verbatim testimony is Armitage’s verse, told from Sophie's perspective. What we get therefore is a powerful coalescence of experience: the real of Sophie’s mother and the imagined of Sophie. This howl of planet Earth combined with the cry of the afterlife makes for a truly sublime brew.

Julie Hesmondhalgh as Sylvia

Armitage’s words are channeled via actress Rachel Austin, who as Sophie stalks the gothic landscape of isolated woods and moonlit parks. Her gentle Manchester burr inflects the words with a melancholic beauty, elevating the writing of the page. Explaining her teenage alienation and subdued quietness, she argues there wasn’t ‘an ounce of fat on my thoughts, on my limbs. I read, I wrote. I painted. I drew. Where it came from no one knew but it flowed, it flew. Armitage beautifully characterises what it means to be dismissed as introverted: how within a trapped mouth can lie a garrulous imagination. Paradoxically, maybe people occupy an alternative black universe because the actual one appears too drab and colourless for them.

Rachel Austin as Sophie

After the petals on the black rose have been pulled, Sophie’s voice is shown from her hospital bed: Mum can’t you see that somewhere inside this swollen bloodshot, abstract mess is my heart shaped face, my swan like neck. These black bruises, the black roses of my self-defence. The delicacy of these words ‘heart,’ ‘swan’ and ‘rose’ demonstrate that in spite of the harrowing attack Sophie’s black beauty cannot go undimmed. Armitage is demonstrating that within thin frames exists the incredible capacity for courage: Sophie’s bruises are roses, badges worn to show love's self-sacrifice.

The piece ends with Rob emerging towards renewal and Sophie slipping towards expiry. From her deathbed, Sophie apologises to her mum for her unresponsiveness: Mother, mum. Don’t think me rude if my eyes don’t light up at my favourite things, my clean pyjamas, my new toiletry bag … As you did then, do now. Mop my brow as you mopped my brow. Climb into my bed as you climbed into my bed. Lay at my side as you laid at my side. Lying as helpless as a baby, Sophie bids her mother re-enact her former duties: as comforting as these gestures may be, they shouldn’t have to be performed for a girl in her twenties.

This love song to maternalism, and what is left when it's snatched away, needs to be heard.

Watch it, share it, spread it. Don’t let these voices go unheard.  

The Murder of Sophie Lancaster: Black Roses  is available on iPlayer.