Birdland
Saw Simon Stephens play at the Royal Court on Saturday afternoon. Andrew Scott plays a rockstar, coming to the end of a major tour. He has been on the road for years promoting successive albums, accompanied by best friend/bandmate Johnny and fixer/manager David.
Paul has become a monster. Hollowed out and unhinged by fame and the subsequent lifestyle of excess, he basks in the reflected adoration of his fans, but retains no sense of proportion or inner self. As his every whim is accommodated, his jaded soul seeks more and more extreme gratification. He has become cynical and cruel to those around him. He is estranged from almost everyone and from reality. He is unable to form proper relationships anymore. Johnny is the only friend he has left.
By comparison mild-mannered, good guy Johnny seems still grounded. He is looking forward to ending the tour and going home. He has a new girlfriend that he thinks may be the one. He confides this to Paul. Big mistake.
Paul starts out flirty and charming. He is capable of great generosity, is extremely well-informed and articulate, but his unbalanced nature soon bursts through in fits of petulance, deliberate provocation, bouts of intentionally brutal honesty, and scary flashes of anger, eclipsing his presumably pleasant former personality. He forgets his promises to people - whether deliberately or due to the ravages drink and drugs have made to his mind.
In the course of the one act play, a little under two hours overall, Paul manages to screw up even his friendship with Johnny in a particularly cold-hearted manner resulting in a girl’s suicide. In a surprising twist, Johnny pulls off an uncharacteristic act of revenge designed to blacken Paul’s name forever. But even while almost drowning in a mire of his own making, Paul does not repent. He has either positively embraced his inhuman persona or is simply no longer capable of change.
Amusingly for a play about a rockstar, we never hear him sing or handle a musical instrument. His stage performances are represented by some rather sexily posed dance moves between the backstage scenes. It worked for most of us present I think. :-) Dark bird imagery in a feathery sleeve and feathered waistcoat he wears. Otherwise he is clad in a tight black jeans and a rather wet-look, black T shirt, over which he occasionally dons a sparkly blue short jacket. His costumes, in retrospect, do subtly bring sleek, shiny bird plumage to mind.
Apart from Paul and Johnny, all other characters throughout the one act play are performed by only four actors. This helps to illustrate the flow of faces which Paul finds hard to distinguish after so long on the road in so many different countries.
The scenery is simple - the shell of a non-specific concrete building is lit to represent in turn one of many anonymous greenrooms, hotel suites, clubs, etc. Some coloured plastic chairs are the main props. There is a special feature of scenery to the floor of the stage which I was unfortunately unaware of until almost very the end from my seat near the back of the stalls. It was obvious at the point it became most important so in no way impaired my enjoyment overall.
The play itself says nothing particularly new about selling one’s soul to a devil, but Andrew Scott himself truly is a mesmerising performer. One minute relaxed, the next like a snake ready to strike. His character breaks the fourth wall frequently, assessing and addressing his audience. Not as over-the-top manic as his Moriarty, but equally compelling. Just wish I'd been closer to the stage. :-)
Simon Stephens named his play for the Patti Smith song, Birdland, in which a boy who loses his father soars up away from earthly reality in a disturbing dreamlike sequence referencing alien spaceships and birds in an attempt to join his no longer human parent. There is religious imagery and I suppose drug induced trippiness involved. I can see the shape of the girl’s suicide (arms out as on a cross/flying “the cross, like the shape of a tortured woman”) and Paul's talk of skies and star clusters in the lyrics. Certainly in the play Paul is losing his roots in humanity, wrapped in the dark feathery trappings of fame, transforming more and more into a cold alien, until at the end he rises clad in a long sparkly cloak, resembling sparkling constellations… a star engulfed by the stars. If I was cleverer probably I'd be able to pull more parallels from the song:
Click to viewFull lyrics here http://lyrics.wikia.com/Patti_Smith:Birdland