Gimpel the Fool

Gimpel the Fool at Spiro Ark

The final cultural event of the year and somehow it is fitting that it takes place in a small basement room, which by the power of art is transformed into a Polish shtetl; the transformation is attained by the accumulation of simple things done well– props, sound, lighting, clothes, and of course fine acting.

Howard Rypp of the Nephesh Theatre of Tel Aviv brought remarkably subtle gradations of meaning to his adaptation of Saul Bellow’s iconic translation of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s story, playing Gimpel as part Shakespearian fool, part the simple son of the Haggadah, part an almost Christianic innocent, part wide eyed Ancient Mariner. Marvellous and magical.

On the bus home, a man in a big brown hat and big brown coat and a leopard print scarf took out a harmonica and started playing Christmas tunes in a soft, understated, swampy kind of way, not for money, but because he too was a wandering troubadour, cursed to travel the globe telling his tales. It is the sort of thing that happens when you open your mind to the power of art.

who was the mysterious troubador on the bus?

Grudgemonkey, Tutankhamun, Madness and the Dome

There’s a title.

So Friday I was down the Dome – my goodness what a G-dforsaken place that is. It must be built on an old plague burial pit or something, it just feels so dead there, even the air is dead. Cold and soulless.







Inside the Dome, it feels like any other identikit plastic retail and leisure destination environment experience, save that you have to go through airport style bag and body scanners, before being confronted by masked ranks of merchandise stalls trying to sell you fez’s. At first I thought it was a bizarre tie in for the King Tut exhibition, but it soon became apparent that Madness were playing that night, and attendees were obliged to buy either a fez or a cheap felt imitation Blues Brother’s style hat in black. It must have been obligatory because everyone we saw gathering in the malls before the gig had purchased one. But more of those sad fuckers shortly.

I love Múm. I love my mum. But I don’t care much for mummies. For this reason I was somewhat reluctant to go the Tut exhibition, or Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs to give it its full title. But Big Dave was in town and wanted to go, and in that spirit of saying yes to everything I had agreed to come, even agreed to get the audioguide thingy. The words “My name is Omar Shariff” were whispered softly in my ear, in the way that only an old man with a moustache can, and I promptly fell off the escalators. Apart from Omar, there were no mummies, not even the famous death mask. Thankfully.

I enjoyed it, then got a bit bored. As with the First Emperor, the objects were amazing, the effort, the hubris, the Ozymandias effect, all powerful, that same ambiguity that these things were done because of a belief in a living god set to rule the afterlife, and had succeeded, ironically, in creating some kind of immortality, had willed immortality into existence.

Then back out to face the behatted hordes of Madness fans. I’ve commented before about the curse of my generation, namely that at every house party I will now ever go to, there will always be a bloke, probably with no hair, loudly getting drunk on cider, waiting for his moment, his moment being the playing of a Madness song. He will then spring into life, claim his rightful place on the dancefloor (ie area of carpet cleared of furniture) and do the Nutty Boys Dance. This is the only exercise he will ever get. Each year it gets more difficult for him to raise his legs to the requisite height. Each year his heart and lungs hurt more. Each year he aches more and worse on the morning after. But he can never let us down by not doing the dance. Never. He is destined to die doing it. Quite literally.

And here they all were, like cybermen out of Doctor Who when they gather for the final battle, the hordes of the Nutty Boys, in their silly hats. I’ve nothing against Madness per se, they entertained me in my youth when I didn’t know any better and some of their songs were actually all right. But it is their moronic fan base that I object to. These can only be people who hate music. It’s a Pavlov’s dogs thing - hear music - dance badly - behave like twat.

Compare all this with the Adelaide Pub in lovely North London the previous evening and the live debut of Grudgemonkey. It was through the Grudgemonkey myspace page that I finally go back in touch with Ollie P. Probably the highlights of my university days were listening to records with Ollie P. 17 odd years later and Grudgemonkey were channelling all this stuff into one of the most powerful and passionate sets of the year. I could taste electric period Miles Davis, “Is It In” period Eddie Harris, Mizzell Brothers, various Hammond Organ grinders in this very tasty soup. No Acid Jazz light was this, but heavy and funky, honest and authentic, even aggressive and muscular. I can see big things for them in 2008.

Múm - the Scala - 11/12/07

When I saw the latest (re)incarnation of Múm back in August I felt it was very much the start of something,a slightly messy rebirth, band and fans getting used to life post–Kristín. Now, after touring the USA, they’ve developed and honed themselves into an awesome and spectacular unit, though sadly Ólöf Arnalds seemes to have gone missing now too.

This feels a very different band to the one fronted by Kristín – the fragility of her personality has been replaced by something more robust, her playful seriousness has flipped into serious playfulness. Live, there is less electronica – just some samples used for colouration and a bit of knob-twiddling in some of the instrumental numbers, and no fiddling about with strange sound generating devises or digital manipulation. There is less of the brooding sweeping strings, more guitars and drums, and much more melodica. There are some tango like patterns, throbbing beats, and unashamed passion. The sound is more global, and warmer for it.

They mostly play the new album and some reinterpretation of older instrumentals. They don’t play any of the Kristín vocal numbers.

A sold out crowd at the Scala were on impeccable form, quiet during the quiet numbers, crazed in the louder ones. You could tell the band were blown away by the response. It is this feedback loop between audience and band which marks the legendary gigs out from the just great. And the set draws to a stupendous finale – three flutes, then (as members of the support acts rush on) there are five flutes...

then a dozen harmonicas

and finally a fifteen or so kazoo salute. A great encore builds into blistering throbbing sinewaves and everyone goes mental.

This was (heaven!) - an all Icelandic bill, support coming from Seabear (Múmsy but a bit more folky in a fiddly kind of way) and Benni Hemm Hemm (a touch hysterical in a Sigur Róssy kind of way but with brass rather than strings) – both are great and warmly received by the crowd. There is much intermingling throughout the night of members of the 3 bands.

What can I say? Gig of the year, no question.

Loss, An Evening of Exquisite Misery

With some excitement, if not trepidation, armed with noms de guerre and a range of costume strategies, myself and the lovely Persephone and Michelangelo found ourselves in the curiously wonderful world of The Last Tuesday Society.

Persephone and Michelangelo, scaring the tourists and Christmas shoppers

Loss, An Evening of Exquisite Misery, is London’s, if not the world’s, premier crying club. On arrival at the Art’s Theatre we were reminded in strict terms of the official no smiling policy. A pigs head hanging from a noose above the stairs reinforced the message. The place was decorated with tables overflowing with fruit, turnips, onions, water pistols, deceased game birds and plastic bugs. Abused and battered children’s toys sought new, caring owners. A lady in funereal weeds was selling off the family jewellery.

Virtual deguerreotype of Persephone

We took our place amongst Victorian gentlemen, veiled Victorian widows, Victorian gothics, Goths, the undead, clerics, flappers and slappers, tiller girls and landgirls, 50’s rockabillies, romantics, new romantics, old romantics, sad poets, boys dressed as girls, girls dressed as boys, motorcycle Burlesque performers, and who knows what dressed as who knows what.

We were entertained by divine pixie dj’s and djs in full Marie Antoinette costume. We danced (or attempted to) to big band swing, gospel, tango, and I can’t remember what else but it was marvellous and seemed to cover every period of recorded music ever made. We enjoyed poetry readings, a tantric violinist, a singer songwriter telling bible tales, a ska-punk-Balkan band doing Prodigy covers, and an excellent blues/jazz/dub combo. I’m sure there was a lot more if only I could remember.

Divine pixie djs

We drank too much gin.

Gin Drinkers

We found ourselves wearing too much make-up (again).

I found myself back home at 4 in the morning feeling very weird indeed.

some people say I'm a dreamer. but I'm not the only one.

The Masque of the Red Death 4

Red Death IV

On the way to Red Death 3, I was worried about how much more there was for me, whether there would be too much repetition, whether I could face all that traipsing up and down.

Well how much amplified were these feelings on my fourth trek to Battersea, after the extraordinary experience of Red Death 3, probably as full a Punchdrunk experience as it possible to have. And I had had a full on PT session in the afternoon, so I was feeling pretty knackered.

Well I guess the thing about Punchdrunk is that it just never stops surprising you. True I was feeling a bit crowdaphobic and spend as much time as possible lurking in the shadows, mostly in the cellars. And also true that there seemed to be a lot of downtime searching for things to happen. But the scenes I caught were as incredible as ever.

Befitting a man who has just had two gruelling sessions at the dentist, I kept finding myself in the Berenice storyline, about a man obsessed with his new wife’s teeth, so much so that he kills her and extracts them. I had seen the wedding /death dance on the bed before, but it made much more sense to me now as part of the story line and the dancing seemd more dramatic. I caught (twice) the scene were Berenice is carried into the dungeons for further extraction work before being buried alive, follwed by her wonderful resurrection from her subterranean pit.

I spent some time following Ligeia - I think it was her because of a lovely three-partner dance, which I think represented her haunting return to her husband by possessing the body of his dead second wife. Following Ligeia alone in the basement, she turned on me and started to throttle me with the cord of my cape (I thought they were meant to keep you safe) before sniffing my neck and telling me that she recognised my scent, knew it was me before I walked in the room, would carry my scent with her on her journey. It’s Decleor I thought. Good job I had shaved. She also said she could feel my heart beating, which she may have literally been able to do since it was beating so much from her initial attack. Hopefully that’s all she could feel.

I finally found Pluto, the BAC’s black cat, basking by a fire – one time when I popped in it was crouched on the top of one of the armchairs, backlit by the fire, sharp green eyes blazing at me.

Also caught the end of the murder scene in the attic, as the narrator of the Tell Tale Heart wrapped up the body; found her later in the bar still clutching the heart she had removed.

I only caught one of the in-show specials – the Kneehigh Theatre who made a wonderful presentation based on Poe’s poem Annabel Lee. It was staged in a black room, the walls scribbled on with chalk; in the centre was a small beach with candles surrounded by buckets stuffed with sand and the clothes and shoes of the dead Ms Lee. In the corner a troubadour strummed a banjo (I think) and sang the poem. On the beach a man pulled the artefacts from the buckets and laid them out to suggest the body of the deceased, occasionally writing manically on the walls, things like "today I believe in ghosts", before lying down besides the body as the poet does in the poem. He then ripped out his heart, superbly rendered in the form of a rose attached to red streamers - in the violence of the act, the streamers took on a visceral, liquid form. This was superb theatre, the ability to conjure up the sense of a beach and the sea, of a body and a distraught lover, from minimal ingredients in a tiny black space. My only quibble was that the distraught lover was wearing a hoody and jeans, but at the same time it gave the piece a contemporary feel.

The Prospero’s Ball finale was as wonderful as ever, although I sensed that the cast were getting pretty knackered. Some were looking particularly gaunt, and most of the leading ladies were sporting bruises and (non-costume) bandages. All of which of course only made them look more like characters in a Poe story. If the show does my head in so consistently, I can’t begin to imagine what it must do to the cast, physically and mentally. And the run extended til mid April. God help them!

So I had another amazing time. This visit seemed to offer the strongest sense of narrative, and to be the most Poe like. There was a lot more death, a corpsly rather than spectral feel.

Despite it not being as full an experience as the last visit, it was as intense in its own way. I left exhilarated, with a sense of completeness. Not that I had by now seen everything there was to see, but that I had seen most things, or at least had caught as much as it was reasonable to expect. That I had reached a point of diminishing returns.

But I also learnt the joy of repetition. Seeing Berenice married, killed and resurrected twice in one evening, connecting it to the fragments of the same story seen on previous occasions, developing a theme of the inevitability of tragedy, of the endless repetition and recycling of stories that make up narrative art, maybe even suggesting Nietzsche’s idea of Eternal Recurrence.

From wikipedia…

"Eternal return (also known as "eternal recurrence") is a concept which posits that the universe has been recurring, and will continue to recur in the exact same self-similar form an incomprehensible and unfathomable number of times"

"Heinrich Heine wrote the following passage which is said to have been where Friedrich Nietzsche first encountered the idea:

For time is infinite, but the things in time, the concrete bodies are finite.... Now, however long a time may pass, according to the eternal laws governing the combinations of this eternal play of repetition, all configurations that have previously existed on this earth must yet meet, attract, repulse, kiss, and corrupt each other again.... And thus it will happen one day that a man will be born again, just like me, and a woman will be born, just like Mary."


Will I return to the Red Death? Inevitably!