Mira Calix / the Man of Mode

On stage, against a black curtain, stand two musicians, each wearing a black suit and black t shirt. The only light comes from a small bulb set into the music stands in front of them. One holds a violin, the other a cello.

They have been playing a repeated riff for some time. Only now do I realise that their hands have ceased to move, although the sounds of their instruments fill the room.

Further along the stage is a table draped in a black cloth. On the table is a box with a dozen or more wires poking out. Next to the box is a silver laptop. The only light comes from a small lamp in the corner of the table and from the half bitten apple logo on the laptop.

Sitting behind the table, mostly hidden from view, Mira Calix is weaving a ghostly magic as compelling as any Victorian table turner. Instead of ectoplasm, her materials are electricity and sound – electroplasm.

I am in the Purcell Room at the South Bank. Next door, in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment are recreating a long lost opera. In here, I feel that I am listening to the Orchestra of the Age of Disenlightenment, a new variant classical music for our time of confusion and disarray. It is a thick sound, like quicksand, a sound you sink into. But sinking in, you find a strange sense of calm, of space to think in.

Some of the audience, expecting beats and bleeps, walk out. They are young and our society has lost the ability to sit and listen, the pleasure of losing oneself in music. Their thumbs ache to get back to texting and gaming. I am only just relearning the art of stillness, and this proves the perfect gig at the perfect moment.

Earlier we were entertained by Gong Gong, an arty French electro outfit who also used chamber instruments in their act, to more punk-funk effect. Members of the group busied themselves hanging pieces of cardboard or balloons around the set onto which frantic images were projected. It was impossible to dislike them although I won’t be rushing out to buy their music.

Earlier still, earlier even than the couple of hours spent in a very weird pub opposite Waterloo, a kind of Swiss ski-ing chalet, an alpine wooden box, squeezed into a railway arch, where I watched the United game, I was at the National to see The Man of Mode.

The best thing about it was the production, meaning the design and thinking behind the thing. It was set in a very contemporary London of Sunday supplement interior designs, Selfridges, mobiles and laptops, hoodies and free running. Very flashy and stylish. One of the subplots, concerning an arranged marriage, was played by Asian actors cos like you get arranged marriages in some Asian families (they could have gone Charedi but I don’t think the black hats and coats would have fitted the colour scheme very well). Ok, so, I enjoyed the cleverness of how they made the text fit the setting, or was it vice versa.

I had two main problems though. First was the very poor vocal projection of the actors, particularly Tom Hardy in the lead role of Dorimant, and I was in the front stalls – I hate to think what it was like for the people at the back. I couldn’t help feeling he was picked for his physique (he spent large parts of the show with his shirt off) than for his acting. The second problem was that I just did not find the acting sparky enough – Restoration sex comedies hang entirely on the idea of the deliciousness of the seduction game. Of the three women pursued by Dorimant, only Harriet, played by Amber Agar, had a sense of sparkle and energy about her. Again Tom Hardy’s flat Dorimant was part of the problem – the character is frequently described as a “wit” as opposed to a “fop” but you got no sense of this from his performance, nor was there any sizzle between him and the ladies he was trying to seduce, with the exception of one moment when he found his head between the legs of Mrs Loveit. Aside from that moment, you were hard pressed to believe that Mrs Loveit loved it at all.

I wondered whether this was intentional – that in giving the play a modern setting, Nicholas Hytner's direction had gone a step further and attempted to capture the casualness of modern crass sexual behaviour, driven by mass media and boredom booze pills and throw(n)away morality, but I am not convinced. In any event that would be where the comparison between the Restoration period and now would end. For there was nothing casual about the sex in Restoration times – it was a very serious pursuit, a science and an art. Maybe I wouldn’t have been so down on the play if I could have heard half of what the actors were saying! Then again, maybe all the surface flashiness masking the emptiness lying beneath really was a production for our times?