Pleasance in existential difficulties

By Clemmie Jackson-Stops
Huis Clos (No Way Out)
Jean-Paul Sartre
Translated by Frank Hausser
Pleasance Theatre
Monday March 19, Tuesday March 20, 2007

Taking on the challenge of Jean-Paul Sartre, the Pleasance Theatre has revived one of his darkest and most influential plays, Huis Clos. Famous for coining the phrase, ‘hell is other people’, Sartre’s play is not an easy undertaking for any director.
Three damned individuals, trapped in the underworld, are pitted against one another. Realising their intended punishment for their earthly sins is to remain for eternity in one another’s company, Estelle, Inez and Garcin become each other’s torturers.

Written in 1943, the play is steeped in a dark humour that has barely aged and is still suited to a modern-day Islington audience.
Even so, the tricky balance between comedy and tragedy so finely tuned in the dialogue was somewhat lost in this production. Perhaps a result of the inexperience of the actors, Agnew’s direction failed to find the full force of Sartre’s wit and some genuinely amusing moments were overlooked.
However, this is not to say the acting was poor. Thoughtful performances from all three cast-members just about maintained the momentum of the fast-paced dialogue. Nicholas Karpenko’s portrayal of Garcin’s cowardly and childish character improved as the play progressed leaving the audience with an amusing portrait of the only man trapped in the room, faced with two women intent on analysing his life for the rest of eternity.
Karlyn Stephen as Estelle played up the vanity and glitter of her Sex-and-the-City character well and yet her emphasis on the tragedy of the character overshadowed her wittier moments: ‘Why’s she dancing unless she is slimming?’
With a very bare set containing only three chairs, the actors had to work hard to ensure the pace of the play didn’t slow. And on the whole they succeeded. Acting to a half empty theatre on the matinee performance perhaps took some of the energy from the production but it would be no surprise to see a revival of humour this evening.
Agnew’s directing debut still has room for improvement as some stilted movements halted the flow of the action. In the end, however, although this is undoubtedly an amateur production taking on a complex and difficult play, it is nonetheless enjoyable for it.

Inland empire

Inland Empire
Dir: David Lynch
Starring: Laura Dern, Justin Theroux, Harry Dean Staunton, Jeremy Irons
180 mins (English/Polish)
*****

David Lynch’s new film, the three-hour Inland Empire, is either a work of extraordinary depth and all-round brilliance or a confusing mass of interweaved art installations and pretentiously unwatchable scenes.
Many will think the latter, and in their defence, not without reason. From the outset, the epic production is uneasy viewing, and at times positively painful to digest. Following the plot is verging on futile and viewers will leave as baffled as they are shell-shocked.
The spellbinding Dern plays Nikki, a Hollywood actress offered a potentially career-reviving role in a new movie On High In Blue Tomorrows. When the film’s director (Irons) reveals to Nikki and her co-star (Theroux) that the film is in fact a remake of a doomed Polish production, the nightmare begins.
Boundaries between the events on the set, in real life and in the queasy Polish parallel existence are all blurred as Nikki is plunged into a Lynchian Alice in Terrorland.
Although not a horror film per se, Inland Empire is perhaps the most terrifying piece of cinema in recent history. There is a constant sense of foreboding played out vividly to a dark score peppered with uncomfortable sounds, frightful imagery and the fantastical leitmotif provided by the film’s ever-present talismanic screwdriver.
Some scenes will have you pleading ‘Oh God’ and grasping for the metaphorical pillow. This is one of those rare movies so scary that it actually induces shivers and goose pimples, making you plead for release.
Add, to name but a few, awkward scenes featuring choreographed gaggles of prostitutes, life-sized rabbits acting out a sitcom, and, on one traumatic occasion, a fruity man appearing from behind a tree with a light bulb in his mouth, and you begin to get the picture.
But the more the film draws you in – and that it does – the more apparent its magnificence becomes. For its power to elicit emotion and to leave an indelible print on your mind, Inland Empire is nothing short of a masterpiece.

Felix Lowe

A puppet for all ages

As we filed through the doors of the Little Angel Theatre in Islington, my friends and I began to feel a little conspicuous. Surrounded by a gaggle of excited children and a handful of adoring parents, we were there to see the production of ‘Go Noah Go’ - a puppet show aimed at children aged four plus.
It appeared we were to play the part of the reprobates. Relegated to the back row, a suspicious usher confiscated our fruit juice, and then promptly offered us a special ‘colouring in’ programme. We were five times the average age of the audience, but we were beginning to fit in.
But, surprising as it may seem to seasoned theatre-goers, ‘Go Noah Go’ is a puppet show that appeals to all ages.
Forget preconceptions of amateur puppeteers flailing behind clumsy screens. This is a sophisticated puppet show in which John Agard’s interpretation of the Old Testament classic is infused with Caribbean rhythm, characters and song.
Mother and Father God, played behind two beautifully crafted if slightly austere masks, are angry with mankind. Noah and his family will survive, but only if they build an ark that can weather a flood and save all the animals.
Peter Savizon and Vanessa White Smith alternate between the roles of puppeteer and actor to bring the story to life, delivering the various roles with effortless grace and humour. Each character has its own distinguished voice from Noah’s deep Caribbean lilt to his daughter, Japhetha’s, cheeky East End twang.
Even the wooden animals, a brightly coloured assortment of exotic breeds, are delivered through uncanny bleats, barks and oinks.
But what really makes this show so impressive is the way in which Savison and White-Smith build a rapport with their young audience. The children are entertained with playful songs, hand clapping and dancing, as the magnificent ark - “Long enough for the length of a snake, high enough for the neck of a giraffe, wide enough for an elephant” is built before their eyes. On completion the young audience are enlisted to help load the animals “two by two” on to the ark. Cue much “awing" and "ahing” from proud parents as the intricately carved animals are passed from one mesmerised child to another. And despite a handful of children misunderstanding the process - “Is this for me?” cried one child, as he clutched one of the elephants - the Ark is loaded almost without trouble.
The flood itself is rendered brilliantly, as the children in the front row are used to animate swathes of blue silk that are attached to the ark.
Savison and White-Smith are adept at entertaining children but their flare is equally amusing to adults giving the production a wholesome family feel. It’s a must see for young family’s and, of course, young adults in touch with their more childish side.

Rosie Stewart

Tickets for “Go Noah Go” can be bought from the Little Angle Theatre Box Office on: 020 7226 1787. Adults £9 / Children £7 / Concessions £5.

Liverpool Road revisited

In Islington’s new era of coffee shops, designer boutiques and organic markets, it is easy to imagine that the borough has always been the stamping ground of a wealthy elite. But a Victorian pen and ink drawing unearthed in a Sussex farmhouse has helped to uncover a story of poverty and deprivation lurking behind Islington’s smart streets. Cordelia O’Neill takes a look at the hidden history of Liverpool Road.


Standing outside a plush block of Victorian flats on Liverpool Road, it is hard to picture anyone living there apart from rich city boys or retired merchant bankers, let alone a destitute crowd.

It is still harder to imagine one of the biggest bands of the day playing to Islington’s poorest residents in one of the building’s lavish ground floor sitting rooms.

But in 1867, inmates of Islington’s newly built workhouse put on their Sunday best and squeezed inside a tiny, dirty hall to hear the Mohawk Minstrels band, the late Victorian equivalents of a blacked-up Busted, banging out their latest hits. The only surviving evidence of the concert will now be handed over to the British Museum.

The Mohawk Minstrels shot to fame when brothers William and James Francis quit their day jobs at Chappells music publishers and put on their first performance at Berners Hall on Liverpool Road. In 1874, they were joined by Harry Hunter from rivals the Manhattan Minstrels, who penned their hit, “Johnny, will you come home now” to mark the occasion.

The band eventually cashed in on their success and abandoned Islington for the bright lights of Piccadilly and West End superstardom, but not before playing to the borough’s most deprived residents.

Islington’s much documented housing and social problems are nothing new. In 1867, the borough was designated a Poor Law Parish by the Poor Law Act and the Islington workhouse was built to stem the swelling population of beggars, abandoned children and lunatics on Islington’s streets. It was followed two years later by a second workhouse on St John’s Road in Upper Holloway.

“I just found it tremendously sad,” said Tom O’Neill, who is donating the drawing to the British Library.

“It’s a wonderful drawing, but I looked at all those children’s sad faces and wondered what happened to them all. I’d like it to be in London, where it belongs.”

Felix at the Flicks

Days of Glory (Indigines)
Dir: Rachid Bouchareb
Starring: Jamel Debbouze, Sami Naceri, Sami Boujila
128 mins (French/Arabic)
****
The day this film was released, French president Jacques Chirac said announced a new pension plan for Second World War veterans from France's former colonies. This, of course, tells you just as much about the injustice and discrimination suffered by these forgotten war heroes as it does about the power of this excellent, and important, film.
The Oscar-nominated Days of Glory follows the lives of a troop of North African soldiers who enlisted during WWII to liberate from Nazi Oppression France, a motherland they had never seen. And yet it is the oppression of their white French superiors which casts a shadow over their seemingly incongruous patriotic actions.
Singing La Marseillaise and fighting for Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, these outsiders are thrown into the front line and blown to bits in the last enclaves of Nazi resistance in Italy and France – all while being denied equal rations, letters from loved-ones, leave or a strong pair of boots.
When the first villages of Alsace are finally liberated by France in January 1945, it is not by French soldiers, but by these shivering North Africans. There faces, however, will not feature in the celebratory film reels and, sixty years later, the survivors will live in tiny bedsits in run-down suburbs without the state pension offered to those French soldiers of whiter hue.
Compelling performances from the main quartet of actors, and in particular comedian Jamel Debbouze, who is finally winning plaudits for his serious roles, makes Days of Glory a poignant and watchable story.
Director Rachid Bouchareb triumphantly avoids Hollywoodisation, and as a result many of the key moments, such as deaths scenes, are not overly sentimentalised. The film is not perfect – too many issues are tackled, dialogue is often too sparse, there is a surfeit of long, silent scenes, while the flash-forward finish is a trifle hackneyed – but it is wholly admirable in delivery and intent.
Days of Glory may not make you cry like other war films, but it will teach you a lesson and for that it is not to be missed. Released nationwide on 30 March.

What's on in Islington this week

London Australian Film Festival
March 15-25 2007
Barbican Centre

Australia may not at the heart of the cinematic world but this popular film festival is back for the 13th year running. Featuring established and up and coming directors, the festival will also premiere the digital restoration of the earliest film ever made, The Story of the Kelly Gang. They will also show the first film shot in an indigenous Aboriginal language.


Music:
Joss Stone
Introducing Joss Stone
Released on March 12, 2007
Joss stone’s third album will be in the stores by early next week and happily continues her mix of warm vintage soul, '70s-style R&B, Motown girl-group harmonies, and jazzy grooves performed by a live band. With a new jazzed up image, Stone is as good ever.

Theatre:
Sadler’s Wells
Sasha Waltz and Guests present Dido and Aeneas
14-18 March 2007
With a cast of over 50 performers Sasha Waltz’s production of Purcell’s classic opera is picked to be a visual spectacular. Featuring a water tank with underwater dancers and beautiful costumes and sets, Waltz uses a dancer and a singer in each role to create a unified duet of movement and voice. This will definitely be entertaining if not impressive.

Restaurants
Upper Glas
359 Upper Street, N1
020 7359 1932

This Swedish restaurant has just upped sticks and moved from Borough into what used to be Lola’s on Upper Street. Recently given the thumbs up by Giles Coren of The Times, the restaurant is definitely worth a try, even if it is slightly on the expensive side. The menu is unsurprisingly Scandinavian but if you are feeling brave you will be pleasantly surprised.

The Arts Profile Wilberforce of Nature

Reima Baker runs Precinct Theatre, an acting school and management company for children in Packington Estate. The estate is due to be rebuilt this
year and Reima is in the process of finding new premises. On Friday 24th
March the theatre is staging a play about William Wilberforce with funding
from the Peabody Trust. writes Alice Wright


If optimism could be converted into cash, Reima Baker would be a rich
woman. Her premises are due to be knocked down this year and she has
nowhere to move to but is confident that "it will be ok". She says things
have a way of working out for her and, after an hour in her company, you
have to agree.

Reima gets no income from running Precinct Theatre for child actors on
Packingon Estate but happily allows children who can’t afford the fees to come to classes for nothing: “My mother used to say, ‘If you can’t do good, don’t do anything at all, because it will come back to you.’ And I think she was right.” After being made redundant from the bank where she had
worked for 25 years Reima decided to move back to Jamaica to open a guest
house. But her money ran out before she could make the move. At a loose
end, she started doing some chaperoning for child actors. Then she got a
call from child agent, Anna Scher, offering her a job.

Knowing nothing about the business, Reima was apprehensive. She remembers
apologising to her actress sister’s friends for working in a bank and feels
she has no acting talent herself, although she does a hilarious impression
of Anna saying, "Darling, you'd be wonderful, you'd be marvellous, you're a
people person, darling." With nothing to lose, Reima decided to give it a
go. But when Scher was kicked out of her own theatre following a nervous
breakdown, Reima decided to quit. “She'd been running it for 33 years and
those people on the board were supposed to be her friends. I couldn’t work
for people who can do that."
Reima had started chaperoning again when, outof the blue, she got a call from a woman from CBBC: "They were looking for some kids to do something for CBBC and that's how it started. It was just thrown on me and I thought, if I say no to this I might never be givenanother chance. So I started it from home and then I found these premises."
The Precinct Theatre now offers drama classes for local children, who can
be put forward for auditions if they wish. Looking back, Reima thinks if
she had given it too much thought, she may not have taken on such a
challenge. She recalls people coming into the Theatre when it first opened
five years ago: "They'd say, who runs it and I'd say, 'no-one', then I'd
say, 'well, actually, I suppose it's me.'"
With 70 local children now on her books Reima is passionate about what she offers them. She sent her own daughter, Sekina, to Anna Scher to give her the confidence she felt she herself lacked. Sekina is now a stylist for Tatler and Reima describes her as a hugely poised and capable young woman. She says: "I admire that in other people, because it's something I never had. If I can give these kids a chance to stand up and express themselves and have confidence, that's my pay." Daughter Sekina is more practical. Reima says: "She'll ask me, 'Why are you doing this? You’re not getting paid. Why all the hard work? Why don't you just give it up?' But I couldn't do that. I couldn't give it up. When I see the kids doing well it makes me so happy. They're my kids."