Featured Post

Prayers and thoughts: The Inseparables @Finboroughtheatre

Image
The Inseparables brings Simone de Beauvoir’s posthumously published novel to life. It traces a lifelong friendship between Sylve and Andrée, two unconventional girls who grew up in a stifling world where being a woman meant getting married or entering a convent. With a quick pace and engaging performances from the two leads, it is a journey back into the 20th century that captures two unconventional women trapped in a conventional world that will have you reflecting on how much or little things have moved on in the last century. It’s currently playing at the Finborough Theatre .  We’re introduced to Sylve praying for her country, France, to be saved from the war and indoctrinated into the world of faith and obedience. But too smart for all that, her life was full of detached guilt and boredom. But when she meets Andrée, a new arrival at her school, she is struck by how different she is from everyone else. She was burned in a fire and had a passion for life that nobody else she knew...

Art: Joe Hesketh A Pendle Investigation

One of the most famous witch trails in English history, the Pendle witches are recreated in Joe Hesketh's dark and haunting pieces titled A Pendle Investigation. It has been on tour around the country for a while but has come back to London, to coincide with Halloween and give a few lasting chills to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the trials. There is an old pumpkin still hanging around outside the gallery so you may think you know what you're getting into when you arrive. Alas you will be wrong...

Hesketh turns witches and Halloween on its head and gives a contemporary perspective to the violent story of injustice, superstition, rivalry and corruption. It's an ambitious project but Hesketh creates some unforgettable scenes layered with imagery. Alternatively beautiful and horrific, she also likes to thrown in the occasional visual puns such as the justice holding two breasts as the whole trial went tits up, just to throw the viewer off guard. There are layers of meanings in her work that is the result of paint or marks scratched into the canvas. Blended together it emphasises the horrors and silliness of it all and is a fitting tribute to an event to be commemorated and not sold as sensational for tourists heading to Lancashire looking for smells and spells...

Hesketh is a witch herself and is based in Pendle which is an interesting hook to the pieces, but her other works also on display underscore her real interest in life, people and how she is perceived, particularly as a woman. Not part of the witches series, there are other works that explore some of her other thoughts on these matters. Her works are big and attention grabbing but there is a beauty and originality in them is both intriguing and impressive. It is hard not to spend time looking at them and contemplating what riddles they are suggesting and what was going in her life at the time she produced each piece.

Joe Hesketh – A Pendle Investigation runs from 31st October through to 22nd November 2012 at The Newman Street Gallery and is open from Tuesday to Saturday 10am to 6pm. Other times can be by appointment. With thanks to Simon Desmond for the tour and insight into her work as well...

Popular posts from this blog

Opera and full frontal nudity: Rigoletto

Image
David McVicar's oddly modern production of Rigoletto is back at the Royal Opera House . This modern and minimalist dark production has evolved over the years. It is better lit now but there is still an orgy and full frontal nudity within the first thirty minutes. This enables anyone not in the stalls an excellent view of a flaccid penis and a nicely shaved bush. But as time goes it seems more and more superfluous to the main focus of this tragedy of a court jester who seeks revenge. Here is hoping that the production continues to evolve... Conductor John Eliot Gardiner keeps the music well paced. Dimitri Platanias in the title role sounded great and received a rapturous applause for his interpretation of the role. You get a sense more of the doting father rather than the court jester or cursed man here. Vittorio Grigolo plays the Duke and sounds too lovely to be the cad the role calls for, but it is hard not to like when he is on stage anyway. And it is easier to understan...
Read more...

Fantasies: Afterglow @Swkplay

Image
Nowadays no self-respecting gay play can be staged without full frontal nudity of some kind. It feels like the default response for the modern gay play now that gay rights are no longer an issue .   Afterglow, currently playing at Southwark Playhouse , serves it up in spades. From the beginning, three men are in a bed, naked. There’s what appears to be a very brief exhalation of ecstasy, before the obligatory rush to the shower. But the gratuitous nudity and excellent performances can’t conceal this is a pretty conventional and predictable story about a fantasy couple.  The three men in the simultaneous orgasm at the start of the piece are Josh, Alex and Darius. Josh and Alex seem to live in a New York world where they can afford a rooftop apartment in Manhattan while holding jobs as a theatre director and a grad student in chemistry. As writer S. Asher Gelman based it on his own experiences, perhaps gay plays with full frontal nudity are the way to achieve financial ...
Read more...

Play ball: Damn Yankees @LandorTheatre

Image
Damn Yankees at the Landor Theatre is one hell of a fun, sexy show. A great cast of dancers and singers give this show about a man who sells his soul to get on his beloved baseball team (and give them a chance of winning) new legs and balls. It also helps to up the ante with the sexiness with some healthy doses of cleavage and legs (and that's just the men). The musical is a retelling of the Faust story set in the 1950s when the New York Yankees dominated the game.
Read more...