Equus
Now what we all want - hardcore nudity! (Cookies for whoever recognises the quotation)
Equus by Peter Shaffer
Gielgud Theatre
So, Equus is a slightly strange play. The depiction of violence and the implied bestiality are as up-front and blatant as anything in recent theatre, and the treatment of an 'insane' psyche is certainly a rather modern preoccupation (a recent play, Blue Orange covered somewhat similar territoty - rather more effectively in my opinion.) On the other hand, there are certain parts of the lay that seem rather dated now. How many hardcore Marxists are there really left any more? (To clarify here - I consider myself to be a socialist, or as good as, but there are some rather obvious holes in Marxist ideology these days.)
Alan Strang worships horses, and his worship ultimately results in an act of sickening violence. His worship is a tangled mixture of underdeveloped sexuality and religious fear (Equus = Jesus = phallus, or at least that seems to be the suggestion of the play.) Daniel Radcliffe plays the part pf Strang, and I can tell you that yes, he can act. His performance is here is highly competent, though somehow I doubt this is the 'definitive' Alan Strang.
There are a couple of reasons for this, neither of which, ultimately is Radcliffe's fault: he is still a very young actor. It's a cliche, but something of a true one, that a film actor's primary tool is their face. A stage actor's primary tool is their voice. The greatest stage actors can use their voice to convey incredible varieties of tone and shades of meaning - and, incidentally, can fill very large theatres so well that the people in the cheap seats up in the Gods can hear them perfectly. I suspect Radcliffe can do both of these things - however, I'm not sure he's able to do both simultaneously. Yet. Don't mistake me - I could always hear him - but the comparison between Radcliffe and Richard Griffiths is not always to the former's advantage. He's not helped in this I suspect by the direction, which seems to push Alan into two poles of behaviour - completely taciturn or exuberantly mad - rather than a variey of tones.
Nontheless, I truly enjoyed Radcliffe's performance. It's possible for Strang to come across as simply insane, and thus beyond help, but Radcliffe gives him rather more depth. The play helps him a little in this regard - from the very beginning we are encourgaed to think of Strang's sexuality. Not because he is a robust young man in the first flowering of his desires - but rather because he is not. Strang's sexuality is an unknown quantity - he himself does not know who or what he desires, and he seems incapable of subduing or moderating his desires - where normal people will tend to downlay their sexuality in ordinary interactions, Strang's sexual presence is always present. Young enough that he still seems uncomfortable in his body, as though it has only just filled in, Strang, in Radcliffe's hands becomes rather uncomfortable to watch. Not only because he is only seventeen (jailbait! Don't look - don't look!) but because he seems perfectly capable of turning his sexuality on anyone at any time.
In addition to this, Radcliffe gives the part a rather pitiful vulnerability. It's not just that he spends lare parts of the play semi-nude or nude,leaving his body open to the view (voyeurisim?) of the audience, though this helps. It's also that even at his most obnoxious, Radcliffe's Strang is more lost than cruel - more innocent than he ought to be, given what he has done. His fascination with horses seems to spring more for a desire to control and understand the world around him, which is horribly confusing, full of mixed messages, than from a straightforward sexual desire. His Strang is so open, so easily confused and hurt by the world he lives in, that it's not at all hard to see why he elicits sympathy and affection from those around him.
Chief among whom is Richard Griffiths as the psychiatrist, Dysart. If you've ever listened to the Pink Floyd album 'Dark Side of the Moon,' you'll have heard the line 'quiet desperation is the English way,' and Dysart seems to suffer from exactly this. He loathes his 'little concrete stained suburb' and is, in a way, envious of Alan's passion, his capacity for 'worship.' Which, unfortunately, is where the character lost me. I rather love Richard Griffiths - he was wonderful in The History Boys and he's equally wonderful here - but the psychiatrists inability or refusal to see that Alan's 'passion more ferocious' springs from a place of utter confusion and pain and fear (at least so it seemed in this production) seems rather obtuse. Griffiths won me over to the character, partly because his performance is so good and he has great chemistry with Radcliffe
In the end I think the play is just a little uneven - not quiet a period piece, but approaching it. I would still recommend it to anyone (over fourteen) - it is beautifully, beautifully staged and boasts some fine performances, but I suspect that the play raises questions which it does not, in the end, truly answer.
(Incidentally, one of the first things I saw when I left the theatre - just across the road in fact - was a pubg called The White Horse. I may have looked a little like a crazy person, laughing at that as hard as I did. I wonder if the cast goes there for drinks?)
I saw this poetry meme going round (thanks
sowritesauds) and had to give it a go: April is National Poetry Month, so when you see this, post a poem you like on your LJ.
In the end, it was too difficult to choose just one, and so I've posted three poems, all of which I love. The first is The Second Coming by WB Yeats. While I can't abide Yeats' plays, I must admit that I think him a truly wonderful poet, and this poem in particular, seems to sum up the 'zeitgesit.' Or rather, reading this poem, I get the feeling that Years understood exactly how it felt to live in a world as confused and horrific as violent as ours, and he gives that sense of disillusionment and yearning wonderful expression here.
The Second Coming
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
The second is by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias. I must admit that I've never been especially fond of the Romantics. In fact, with the single exception of Coleridge, I've tended to loathe them. I'm not saying they're bad - which is a fairly loaded statement to make at any time - but I've tended to find them rather boring (especially Wordsworth and Keats, aside from To Autumn). Coleridge is marvellous - I love The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, and I especially love that he was out of his head on laudanum when he wrote the latter. However, Ozymandias is probably my favourite of any of the Romantic poems - there's something so powerful in it's evocation of bleakness and despair and the futility of human life...it's almost Beckettian!
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled hp and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
.And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my works. Ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
The last poem is Mirage by Christina Rossetti. Christina Rossetti is probably my favourite poet of all, and it's very hard for me to get outside that and explain why. It's partly, I think, the sense of solitude and loss and disappointed hopes in her poetry, which resonates very powerfully for me, but it's also her incredibly playful and weird sexuality, her rollicking joy. There are so many Rossetti poems that I love - Goblin Market, LEL whose heart is breaking for a little love, the Prince's Progress etc - but ultimately I chose Mirage because the first verse seems to capture the feeling of despair more perfectly and completely than I have ever managed in my whole life. I also love the second verse for the Ophelia imagery that shines through - one of my favourite paintings is The Drowned Ophelia after all, and I've often thought that if there was one Shakespeare character I could play, Ophelia would be her.
Mirage
The hope I dreamed of was a dream,
Was but a dream; and now I wake
Exceeding comfortless, and worn, and old,
For a dream's sake.
I hang my harp upon a tree,
A weeping willow in a lake;
I hang my silenced harp there, wrung and snapt
For a dream's sake.
Lie still, lie still, my breaking heart;
My silent heart, lie still and break:
Life, and the world, and mine own self, are changed
For a dream's sake.
Equus by Peter Shaffer
Gielgud Theatre
So, Equus is a slightly strange play. The depiction of violence and the implied bestiality are as up-front and blatant as anything in recent theatre, and the treatment of an 'insane' psyche is certainly a rather modern preoccupation (a recent play, Blue Orange covered somewhat similar territoty - rather more effectively in my opinion.) On the other hand, there are certain parts of the lay that seem rather dated now. How many hardcore Marxists are there really left any more? (To clarify here - I consider myself to be a socialist, or as good as, but there are some rather obvious holes in Marxist ideology these days.)
Alan Strang worships horses, and his worship ultimately results in an act of sickening violence. His worship is a tangled mixture of underdeveloped sexuality and religious fear (Equus = Jesus = phallus, or at least that seems to be the suggestion of the play.) Daniel Radcliffe plays the part pf Strang, and I can tell you that yes, he can act. His performance is here is highly competent, though somehow I doubt this is the 'definitive' Alan Strang.
There are a couple of reasons for this, neither of which, ultimately is Radcliffe's fault: he is still a very young actor. It's a cliche, but something of a true one, that a film actor's primary tool is their face. A stage actor's primary tool is their voice. The greatest stage actors can use their voice to convey incredible varieties of tone and shades of meaning - and, incidentally, can fill very large theatres so well that the people in the cheap seats up in the Gods can hear them perfectly. I suspect Radcliffe can do both of these things - however, I'm not sure he's able to do both simultaneously. Yet. Don't mistake me - I could always hear him - but the comparison between Radcliffe and Richard Griffiths is not always to the former's advantage. He's not helped in this I suspect by the direction, which seems to push Alan into two poles of behaviour - completely taciturn or exuberantly mad - rather than a variey of tones.
Nontheless, I truly enjoyed Radcliffe's performance. It's possible for Strang to come across as simply insane, and thus beyond help, but Radcliffe gives him rather more depth. The play helps him a little in this regard - from the very beginning we are encourgaed to think of Strang's sexuality. Not because he is a robust young man in the first flowering of his desires - but rather because he is not. Strang's sexuality is an unknown quantity - he himself does not know who or what he desires, and he seems incapable of subduing or moderating his desires - where normal people will tend to downlay their sexuality in ordinary interactions, Strang's sexual presence is always present. Young enough that he still seems uncomfortable in his body, as though it has only just filled in, Strang, in Radcliffe's hands becomes rather uncomfortable to watch. Not only because he is only seventeen (jailbait! Don't look - don't look!) but because he seems perfectly capable of turning his sexuality on anyone at any time.
In addition to this, Radcliffe gives the part a rather pitiful vulnerability. It's not just that he spends lare parts of the play semi-nude or nude,leaving his body open to the view (voyeurisim?) of the audience, though this helps. It's also that even at his most obnoxious, Radcliffe's Strang is more lost than cruel - more innocent than he ought to be, given what he has done. His fascination with horses seems to spring more for a desire to control and understand the world around him, which is horribly confusing, full of mixed messages, than from a straightforward sexual desire. His Strang is so open, so easily confused and hurt by the world he lives in, that it's not at all hard to see why he elicits sympathy and affection from those around him.
Chief among whom is Richard Griffiths as the psychiatrist, Dysart. If you've ever listened to the Pink Floyd album 'Dark Side of the Moon,' you'll have heard the line 'quiet desperation is the English way,' and Dysart seems to suffer from exactly this. He loathes his 'little concrete stained suburb' and is, in a way, envious of Alan's passion, his capacity for 'worship.' Which, unfortunately, is where the character lost me. I rather love Richard Griffiths - he was wonderful in The History Boys and he's equally wonderful here - but the psychiatrists inability or refusal to see that Alan's 'passion more ferocious' springs from a place of utter confusion and pain and fear (at least so it seemed in this production) seems rather obtuse. Griffiths won me over to the character, partly because his performance is so good and he has great chemistry with Radcliffe
In the end I think the play is just a little uneven - not quiet a period piece, but approaching it. I would still recommend it to anyone (over fourteen) - it is beautifully, beautifully staged and boasts some fine performances, but I suspect that the play raises questions which it does not, in the end, truly answer.
(Incidentally, one of the first things I saw when I left the theatre - just across the road in fact - was a pubg called The White Horse. I may have looked a little like a crazy person, laughing at that as hard as I did. I wonder if the cast goes there for drinks?)
I saw this poetry meme going round (thanks
sowritesauds) and had to give it a go: April is National Poetry Month, so when you see this, post a poem you like on your LJ.
In the end, it was too difficult to choose just one, and so I've posted three poems, all of which I love. The first is The Second Coming by WB Yeats. While I can't abide Yeats' plays, I must admit that I think him a truly wonderful poet, and this poem in particular, seems to sum up the 'zeitgesit.' Or rather, reading this poem, I get the feeling that Years understood exactly how it felt to live in a world as confused and horrific as violent as ours, and he gives that sense of disillusionment and yearning wonderful expression here.
The Second Coming
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
The second is by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias. I must admit that I've never been especially fond of the Romantics. In fact, with the single exception of Coleridge, I've tended to loathe them. I'm not saying they're bad - which is a fairly loaded statement to make at any time - but I've tended to find them rather boring (especially Wordsworth and Keats, aside from To Autumn). Coleridge is marvellous - I love The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, and I especially love that he was out of his head on laudanum when he wrote the latter. However, Ozymandias is probably my favourite of any of the Romantic poems - there's something so powerful in it's evocation of bleakness and despair and the futility of human life...it's almost Beckettian!
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled hp and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
.And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my works. Ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
The last poem is Mirage by Christina Rossetti. Christina Rossetti is probably my favourite poet of all, and it's very hard for me to get outside that and explain why. It's partly, I think, the sense of solitude and loss and disappointed hopes in her poetry, which resonates very powerfully for me, but it's also her incredibly playful and weird sexuality, her rollicking joy. There are so many Rossetti poems that I love - Goblin Market, LEL whose heart is breaking for a little love, the Prince's Progress etc - but ultimately I chose Mirage because the first verse seems to capture the feeling of despair more perfectly and completely than I have ever managed in my whole life. I also love the second verse for the Ophelia imagery that shines through - one of my favourite paintings is The Drowned Ophelia after all, and I've often thought that if there was one Shakespeare character I could play, Ophelia would be her.
Mirage
The hope I dreamed of was a dream,
Was but a dream; and now I wake
Exceeding comfortless, and worn, and old,
For a dream's sake.
I hang my harp upon a tree,
A weeping willow in a lake;
I hang my silenced harp there, wrung and snapt
For a dream's sake.
Lie still, lie still, my breaking heart;
My silent heart, lie still and break:
Life, and the world, and mine own self, are changed
For a dream's sake.