Here's what you need to know about the God
I feel like I should update about Edinburgh because anything Hawksley-related is always a massive momentous life event :P but also sort of feel like the moment's passed and I don't want to dig it back up and keep combing through it like that's going to ruin the memory or something. The show was pretty incredible though, I wish more people could see it. I was apprehensive because I felt it was either going to be the worst most pretentious thing of all time or succeed on every single level and be brilliant. It was brilliant. It's one of those things (like many plays I think?) that sound a bit wank on paper, and you'll never get the true effect of it unless you're experiencing it in the theatre as it's intended.
Blurb from the website:
The God that Comes is a wine-soaked rock & roll cabaret celebrating the god of wine and ecstasy, starring Hawksley Workman. Part play, part concert, all bacchanalian.
This solo performance fuses the chaotic revelry of a rock concert with the intimacy of theatrical storytelling. Hawksley plays all the characters and all the instruments.
The show is a tonic for a society that has lost its sense of balance, and for a people that have lost touch with their animal instincts. It is an invitation to raise a glass together, hear a story, and get lost in the music for a few hours.
So yeah - glam rock cabaret Euripides adaptation is extreme wank potential, right?! BUT NO. Should never have been concerned, really. Should know by now just to sit back and let him do his thing and be completely secure in the knowledge that not only does he never ever miss the mark, he almost always surpasses it. There's got to be a point where exponentially increasing expectations get too big to sustain, surely. HE HAS NOT YET REACHED THAT POINT FOR ME, not in more than a decade of following everything he does. I love him D: and yesss I realise I'm biased and blinded by love and would stubbornly insist he was still great even if he did something rubbish (HE WOULD NEVER), but this was truly one of the most wild immersive breathtaking punch in the guts explosive things I've ever seen in a theatre, like seriously on a par with Ralph Fiennes' Prospero AND YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT RALPH FIENNES. Also free wine, which is always a bonus :P
He's the kind of performer you HAVE to see live, the recordings don't compare. Most people sound better on recordings even though the experience of seeing them live makes up for it, but he's got this implausibly massive and versatile voice and obviously his recordings are incredible and the reason I fell for him in the first place but live he goes from pretty much opera sometimes plastering the audience against the back wall with sound waves then out of nowhere breaks into this growly waily Tom Waits stuff then full on belty stadium rock voice and soaring falsetto and really quiet gentle folk type voice that's not much different to talking and croony lullabies and he cracks and breaks all over the place with ~*~emotion~*~ and you know none of it's because he can't sustain whatever he's doing, he's just got some kind of preposterous inhuman control over himself and every single bit is because that's what he wants you to hear. There's nobody in the whole world I've ever known who can make those sounds come out of their face. It's impossible. And he plays all the instruments ever as well, like he always does guitar and piano at his gigs so I already knew he was a crazy virtuoso on those, and he always talks about how he was a percussionist before anything so I expected the thunderous drumkit battering, but ukulele as well and RECORDER THIS IS MY PET INSTRUMENT AND HE PLAYED IT SIX FEET FROM MY FACE and a ridiculous hilarious scene where the king character is miming a blow job on the god character but there's a harmonica hidden under his dress (mouth organ :P) and just hitting things with things to make noise, stamping and banging sticks and everything. The sound team was superb as well, it was all live loops so it sounded like there was a massive prog rock supergroup on stage when it was just him running round like some wisecracking one man band. It was this perfect balance between wild angry noise and laughter and pindrop silence every time he took a breath because it felt like nobody else in the room was breathing. And the songs, oh my heart. I've had the CD for ages so I knew the songs, but everything was arranged differently live and in the context of the play and not a concept album of course everything hit so much harder. I knew I was going to laugh but never expected it would make me cry so much. SERIOUSLY a man wearing a headless barbie doll like a necklace and playing a penis harmonica. How can this possibly be so affecting? ~*~THE TRANSPORTING MAGIC OF THEATRE~*~
I'm rambling now because I have so many feels and can't express them ARGH but I suppose everyone's got that one person who breaks their brain. We're all swoony fans here. I just wish everyone was a swoony fan of him as well so I could keysmash for a paragraph and everyone would understand exactly what I mean :P If you're anywhere near Stratford in Ontario next month GO TO THIS SHOW. He will blow your mind.
Everything else about the weekend paled next to that, of course :P but VERY CLOSE was the whole floor devoted to Robert Louis Stevenson in the writers' museum. I love him beyond all reason and went a bit funny seeing a lock of his hair and his battered old boots and the ring he was wearing when he died (inscribed "Tusitala" - "teller of tales"), then a mild breakdown at all the copies of people's eulogies for him. It wasn't sad exactly, not sure you can really be sad about a death you know happened 120 years ago, but it was such a beautiful collection and he was so deeply loved and it all made me go a bit unnecessary. This too, on the wall of the pub he used to go to:
MY HEART IS BURSTING. Edinburgh is bad for my health. I want to live there.
Oops, I didn't mean for that to turn into a novel. Suppose the moment hasn't passed after all.
I need to stop getting pins and needles in my hands any time he replies to me on twitter. It's a bit pathetic.
Blurb from the website:
The God that Comes is a wine-soaked rock & roll cabaret celebrating the god of wine and ecstasy, starring Hawksley Workman. Part play, part concert, all bacchanalian.
This solo performance fuses the chaotic revelry of a rock concert with the intimacy of theatrical storytelling. Hawksley plays all the characters and all the instruments.
The show is a tonic for a society that has lost its sense of balance, and for a people that have lost touch with their animal instincts. It is an invitation to raise a glass together, hear a story, and get lost in the music for a few hours.
So yeah - glam rock cabaret Euripides adaptation is extreme wank potential, right?! BUT NO. Should never have been concerned, really. Should know by now just to sit back and let him do his thing and be completely secure in the knowledge that not only does he never ever miss the mark, he almost always surpasses it. There's got to be a point where exponentially increasing expectations get too big to sustain, surely. HE HAS NOT YET REACHED THAT POINT FOR ME, not in more than a decade of following everything he does. I love him D: and yesss I realise I'm biased and blinded by love and would stubbornly insist he was still great even if he did something rubbish (HE WOULD NEVER), but this was truly one of the most wild immersive breathtaking punch in the guts explosive things I've ever seen in a theatre, like seriously on a par with Ralph Fiennes' Prospero AND YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT RALPH FIENNES. Also free wine, which is always a bonus :P
He's the kind of performer you HAVE to see live, the recordings don't compare. Most people sound better on recordings even though the experience of seeing them live makes up for it, but he's got this implausibly massive and versatile voice and obviously his recordings are incredible and the reason I fell for him in the first place but live he goes from pretty much opera sometimes plastering the audience against the back wall with sound waves then out of nowhere breaks into this growly waily Tom Waits stuff then full on belty stadium rock voice and soaring falsetto and really quiet gentle folk type voice that's not much different to talking and croony lullabies and he cracks and breaks all over the place with ~*~emotion~*~ and you know none of it's because he can't sustain whatever he's doing, he's just got some kind of preposterous inhuman control over himself and every single bit is because that's what he wants you to hear. There's nobody in the whole world I've ever known who can make those sounds come out of their face. It's impossible. And he plays all the instruments ever as well, like he always does guitar and piano at his gigs so I already knew he was a crazy virtuoso on those, and he always talks about how he was a percussionist before anything so I expected the thunderous drumkit battering, but ukulele as well and RECORDER THIS IS MY PET INSTRUMENT AND HE PLAYED IT SIX FEET FROM MY FACE and a ridiculous hilarious scene where the king character is miming a blow job on the god character but there's a harmonica hidden under his dress (mouth organ :P) and just hitting things with things to make noise, stamping and banging sticks and everything. The sound team was superb as well, it was all live loops so it sounded like there was a massive prog rock supergroup on stage when it was just him running round like some wisecracking one man band. It was this perfect balance between wild angry noise and laughter and pindrop silence every time he took a breath because it felt like nobody else in the room was breathing. And the songs, oh my heart. I've had the CD for ages so I knew the songs, but everything was arranged differently live and in the context of the play and not a concept album of course everything hit so much harder. I knew I was going to laugh but never expected it would make me cry so much. SERIOUSLY a man wearing a headless barbie doll like a necklace and playing a penis harmonica. How can this possibly be so affecting? ~*~THE TRANSPORTING MAGIC OF THEATRE~*~
I'm rambling now because I have so many feels and can't express them ARGH but I suppose everyone's got that one person who breaks their brain. We're all swoony fans here. I just wish everyone was a swoony fan of him as well so I could keysmash for a paragraph and everyone would understand exactly what I mean :P If you're anywhere near Stratford in Ontario next month GO TO THIS SHOW. He will blow your mind.
Everything else about the weekend paled next to that, of course :P but VERY CLOSE was the whole floor devoted to Robert Louis Stevenson in the writers' museum. I love him beyond all reason and went a bit funny seeing a lock of his hair and his battered old boots and the ring he was wearing when he died (inscribed "Tusitala" - "teller of tales"), then a mild breakdown at all the copies of people's eulogies for him. It wasn't sad exactly, not sure you can really be sad about a death you know happened 120 years ago, but it was such a beautiful collection and he was so deeply loved and it all made me go a bit unnecessary. This too, on the wall of the pub he used to go to:
MY HEART IS BURSTING. Edinburgh is bad for my health. I want to live there.
Oops, I didn't mean for that to turn into a novel. Suppose the moment hasn't passed after all.
I need to stop getting pins and needles in my hands any time he replies to me on twitter. It's a bit pathetic.