Tag: theatre

Best of 2024: Theatre

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

I watched 55 stage shows this year, and think I had a lower “hit” rate than normal, though it’s possible I’m just becoming more jaded. Here’s what I loved — and didn’t.

The undisputed highlight was The Manikins, a thrilling immersive play performed for a single audience member and probably the best thing I’ve seen since The Drowned Man or Roman Tragedies a decade ago. Like those productions, The Manikins was a startling work — one that fundamentally made me rethink what theatre could, or should, be. One of those shows I expect I’ll think about for the rest of my life.

Lots of this year’s best shows were immersive, in fact: Port of Entry, a lovely production in Chicago, has really stuck with me (I described it in May as having “the best immersive set design I’ve ever seen, bar none”), and Bound was the best Punchdrunk-esque production I’ve seen that wasn’t produced by Punchdrunk (read my full review of that and some other plays here).

As far as proscenium shows go, The Portrait of Dorian Gray was great, with a very clever use of video and live camera. The Years was also excellent, with the incredible Romola Garai a standout. And House, an Israeli-French production about a house in West Jerusalem, was a powerful (and devastating) watch — particularly given the timing of staging it this year, of course.

Three more highlights worth mentioning, all comedy: my colleague Cillian introduced me to Stamptown this year, and their late-night Fringe show was a delirious fever dream. MC Jack Tucker was my favourite part of the show, so I made sure to catch his solo show Comedy Stand Up Hour at Soho Theatre — which was an equally hilarious evening. But my Fringe highlight was Furiozo: Man Looking for Trouble, a surprisingly poignant clown show about toxic masculinity which was, somehow, also very funny.

Also great, in rough preference order: King Lear, The Lehman Trilogy (still excellent on my fourth viewing), The Hills of California, Mnemonic, Bluets, People Places and Things, The Other Place, The Importance of Being Earnest, Dr Strangelove, Alfie Brown: Open Hearted Human Enquiry, Macbeth (David Tennant), Look Back In Anger, Giant, Coriolanus, Or What’s Left Of Us, A Tupperware of Ashes, My English Persian Kitchen, Machinal,, Double Feature

Good/decent/fine: An Enemy of the People, Collaborator, Jordan Brookes: Fontanelle, Rhythm and Ruse, La Bayadère, Roots, Salt The Threshold, Where We Meet, The Last Show Before We Die, London Tide, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Ben Schwartz and Friends, The Comeuppance, Hadestown, Nachtland, Player Kings, The Haunting of Hoxton Hall, The Gods The Gods The Gods, Asi Wind: Incredibly Human, Red, Son of a Bitch

Walked out, or wish I had: Simon Godwin’s Macbeth, Darkfield’s Arcade, Wayne McGregor’s MADDADDAM, Robert Icke’s Oedipus, Waiting for Godot, Passing Strange, Boys From the Blackstuff

Theatre reviews: Where We Meet; Bound; Salt The Threshold

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

Where We Meet

London is currently exploding with experimental theatre, much of it (The Manikins, Bound, Origins) taking ideas from city stalwart Punchdrunk and pushing them in new directions. Where We Meet, currently making its way around various fringe festivals, is one of the more technologically interesting of the new crop.

In a dark room, three dancers are spaced apart, lit with spotlights. Audience members, armed with headphones fitted with location-tracking beacons, are free to roam the space. As they move, monologues appear to emanate from each dancer, growing louder as spectators approach. A visual component is the cherry on top, with the performers’ spotlights contracting as viewers draw near—a clever, if not entirely successful, attempt to beckon the audience closer.

The audio component is a total triumph. The seamless integration of head-tracking technology with the audio creates a convincingly three-dimensional soundscape, anchoring each narrative firmly to its corresponding dancer. It works creatively, too. Listening to the dancers’ stories offers both depth and a welcome narrative lifeline to the interpretative dance. And while the text isn’t particularly profound, the exploration of insecurities does, at times, strike a nerve.

Equally clever is the show’s adaptability. Performers can adjust the audio in real-time, initiating sequences that involve audience interaction. Though not quite seamless, it’s a nice way of letting performers play with the crowd they’ve got — and adds much welcome variety for a show that loops even within a short 35 minute runtime.

Less successful is the lighting component. The lighting design, intended to “[free] people from being self-conscious”, does the opposite. By creating a boundary that contracts as soon as your foot touches it, you constantly feel like you’re violating the performers’ space. Rather than drawing you in, the design encourages you to keep your distance — far from the desired effect.

But the biggest problem is the show’s small scope. The technology cries out for a larger, more labyrinthine venue and more performers, a setting which would let you truly explore and craft your own show. In a smaller context, that doesn’t work so well. Having all performers visible at all times induces a constant sense of missed opportunities, and there isn’t quite enough variety to keep audiences engaged: despite the short run-time, I still saw scenes repeat. Yet despite these shortcomings, Where We Meet represents an exciting step forward: an impressive technological effort that has huge potential.

Bound

It is hard to make a show about grief that you leave desperately wanting to rewatch. Yet Bound achieves it. This Punchdrunkian production — a promenade physical-theatre piece — is a startlingly accomplished production from Amber Jarman-Crainey and collaborators; all the more so for it being (as far as I can tell) her first large-scale production.

Conceived in the aftermath of Jarman-Crainey’s brother’s death, Bound features nine performers roaming the crumbling rooms of the South Bank’s Bargehouse. Each embodies a distinct response to grief: some drink, some wail, some put on a brave face and push through. While moments of interaction punctuate the performance, the characters are largely isolated they’re by themselves, offering audiences the freedom to pursue individual narratives.

The performances are, without fail, astounding — and heartbreaking. Vinicius Salles‘ homeless alcoholic dances with an exceptional blend of despair, longing, and hope, all heightened by occasional, deeply profound, moments of audience interaction. Dominic Coffey, meanwhile, visualises the horror of intrusive thoughts with violent, intense physicality, throwing himself against walls and clawing at his own head in a performance that’s exhausting to watch, let alone perform. And Rosalia Panepinto’s blood-curdling screams are genuinely difficult to hear — yet, reverberating around the building, impossible to escape.

As in all the best immersive shows, that building becomes a character all of its own. Though the set design is minimal — and a bit too reliant on draped plastic sheets for my liking — it can afford to be in a building with such inherent atmosphere. Teetering on the edge of derelict, the Bargehouse has a haunted feeling to it, its bare, crumbling walls evoking grief all on their own.

Bound is not perfect. It unsurprisingly lacks the polish of its more established peers; lighting and music in particular could do with some work. But it’s nevertheless immensely powerful. Bound’s triumph is that it doesn’t just show you grief: it envelops you in it, forces you to feel it. It catapults you back into your darkest times, making you to sit with something we all too often push down. While that’s hardly comfortable — and may prove too much for some — there is something cathartic to it. You leave feeling less alone, armed with the knowledge that these experiences, terrible though they are, are shared.

Salt The Threshold

The Manikins, arguably the hottest show of the year, came out of last year’s Advanced Theatre Practice course at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. The work of this year’s cohort, therefore, seemed worth investigating — particularly that of Manikins’ actor Amber Williams.

Salt the Threshold, created and performed by Williams and Haeyoung Yun, is a fascinating, multi-layered piece that defies easy categorisation. What begins as a humdrum dramedy soon veers into horror, then meta-theatre, then a puppet show. Cramming that much into a 105-minute runtime would typically make for a car crash, even in experienced playwrights’ hands. Yet despite occasional pacing issues, Williams and Yun somehow craft a coherent, compelling narrative.

There’s a thematic core to the play — though it reveals itself slowly — and all the experimentalism carefully works in service of it. Rather than throwing a grab-bag of ideas at you, the pair instead choose to explore a single concept through multiple lenses, to pretty masterful effect. What could have been a chaotic assemblage, then, is instead a nuanced exploration of what it means to be trapped in a failing relationship.

It helps that both Williams and Yun are fantastic performers. Williams commands the stage, seamlessly transitioning between levity and intensity as the script demands. That makes for a fabulous pairing with Yun, a wonderful physical performer who is silent for much of the play yet speaks volumes.

Combined with very clever, and thematically relevant, set design, you’re left with a piece that could, and should, grace a professional stage. Since COVID, those professional venues have too often been full of banal, safe work. Salt the Threshold is an exciting reminder that that doesn’t have to be the case; that there are plenty of exciting theatre-makers in the city with original, fresh ideas — and they deserve to be seen.

Paris 2024 Opening Ceremony review: an absolute disaster

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

Paris 2024 made a big deal of being the first Olympics to not use a stadium for the opening ceremony. Instead, the city would be the stage, the ceremony opened up to the masses via a procession down the Seine. If they pulled it off, it would be a logistical and creative marvel. 

They didn’t.

Paris’s opening ceremony was instead the worst in recent memory, an interminably boring display which undermined itself at every turn. One would never have known it was directed by a theatre director: the concepts of pacing and narrative structure were completely absent, with the show feeling more like a tacky variety TV extravaganza than anything theatrical.

The biggest mistake revealed itself early. Typically, the athletes’ parade is saved for a lull in the middle: long and repetitive, it’s the moment for audiences to take a break. Paris, for some reason, decided instead to interweave it with the main show. That choice robbed the event of all momentum: just as it was about to gain some steam, everything ground to a halt as we cut to a slow procession of ugly barges.

No one appears to have considered the scale of the parade either — or how long it would take to get from point A to point B. That led to some farcical scenes: while watching the torch bearer zoom down the Seine on a mechanical horse was at first thrilling, by the time the background music looped for a second time it was instead excruciating. Twenty minutes later, while watching a now-real horse slowly shuffle down the Trocadero, one started looking up recipes for tartare de cheval.

The sloppiness and lack of planning was visible throughout. The woefully out of sync cancan dancers seemed to have never rehearsed. The barges, instead of being wrapped in Paris 2024 branding, were kept bare and drab. The TV direction cut from one bad angle to another, often choosing to abandon a genuinely interesting spectacle to instead show us a boring pre-recorded video. The sound mixing was awful. And it was obvious that no preparation had been made for the possibility of rain — which made everything all the worse.

To be sure, there were some beautiful moments. The water-splashing dancers outside Notre Dame were very talented. The blood soaked and heavy metal soundtracked recreation of revolution was thrilling. Celine Dion and Aya Nakamura were excellent. And the hot air balloon cauldron was unforgettable. But these moments were brief and fleeting, struggling to make their mark amid the slowness of everything else.

There was a good show lurking in this four hour behemoth. If only the organisers had found it.

2024 Culture Roundup (so far)

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

Here’s a quick rundown of everything I’ve seen/read that’s worth talking about so far this year.

GIGS

Fortuitous timing meant that I saw Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo one week after each other, providing an excellent opportunity to compare the two superstars of our age.

Swift, who I saw first, certainly offers value for money, especially at Parisian prices. Her three hour show cycles through all the hits (and makes you realise just how many she’s got). And a very flashy lighting setup, coupled with computer-controlled flashing wristbands on every audience member and a stage floor that doubles up as a screen of its own, certainly delivers a sensory overload.

But despite the glamour, the whole thing felt oddly unemotional and detached. Some of that comes from Swift’s over-reliance on screens, with little-to-no physical staging throughout the entire show, and a surprisingly small group of dancers who struggle to fill such a massive stage. Those staging decisions make the show feel intangible and distant. Another problem is that the show is, surprisingly, quite unpolished: many of the on-screen visuals use poor quality CGI, and the costume-change breaks are much too long and poorly executed, occurring after a song has finished instead of (as is more often the case) during an outro. Both choices ruin the immersion Swift’s clearly aiming for, taking audiences out of the show and ruining its pacing.

But much of the problem comes from Swift herself, who is so over-polished and tightly scripted that she never feels truly present. There’s very little audience interaction, and even while performing there’s little real emotion — it often feels like she’s just going through the motions. There was only one point where I felt like I saw the real Swift, right at the start of the show. Clearly feeding off the crowd’s adoration, she said “I want to see what happens if I do … this”, before pointing her finger at a section of the crowd, which predictably burst into screams. Beaming, she swept her finger across the arena, the ear-splitting scream moving perfectly in sync. It was the closest thing I’ve ever seen to someone being truly drunk on power, and cemented this idea of Swift-as-otherly-god-figure, as opposed to Swift-as-relatable-human: certainly a spectacle to witness, but not something that makes for a thrilling show.

Contrast, then, with Olivia Rodrigo, a performer overflowing with humanity from the minute she appeared. Throughout a tight, under two hour set, Rodrigo performed each song as if she really, really felt it, bopping around stage and having the time of her life. Watching her felt like watching a real, complicated, funny human being; a perfect fit for her raw and funny songs. And she was a natural performer, too, with a stunning voice and impeccable audience banter. And despite having a considerably smaller budget than Swift, it was much better spent: one sequence, with Rodrigo sitting on a moon that floats out over the crowd, surrounding by glowing stars, provided more memorable imagery than anything in Swift’s three-hour behemoth. A truly five star show.

But despite that, it still wasn’t the best show I’ve seen this year! That honour goes, unexpectedly, to Ustad Noor Bakhsh, for a thrilling performance at the Southbank Centre back in March. The 79 year old benju player from rural Balochistan is a virtuoso in and of himself, playing all sorts of gorgeous compositions; but the true magic came from a largely South Asian crowd with an uncontainable energy. My heart goes out to the poor security guard who unsuccessfully kept trying to stop people from coming to the stage and dancing; but I’m very glad he failed. Bakhsh is playing Glastonbury next month; he’s easily the performer I’m most excited to see.

THEATRE

So far, this has mostly been a year of disappointments. I had high hopes for Machinal, Hadestown, Enemy of the People, Player Kings, and Boys from the Blackstuff; all underwhelmed (especially the latter). Thankfully there was only one truly dire production: Simon Godwin’s abysmal Macbeth, which misleadingly used “site-specific” marketing to disguise a bog standard, dull production, pointlessly staged in a warehouse with awful acoustics and terrible seating. Everyone involved with that should be ashamed of themselves.

That said, a couple of highlights. Port of Entry in Chicago has the best immersive set design I’ve ever seen, bar none, and was an unforgettable and moving production (despite some at-times-ropey storytelling). Yael Farber’s King Lear was wonderful (making up for an underwhelming Branagh production last year), with an incredible cast (Danny Sapani and Clarke Peters in particular) really bringing the text to life. The Portrait of Dorian Gray was a wonderful showcase of how to effectively use cameras and video on stage, and Sarah Snook was superb throughout. And The Hills of California, though lacking the profundity of other Butterworths, was still a thrilling evening.

Other things I saw: The Comeuppance; Nachtland; Double Feature; Collaborator; The Gods The Gods The Gods; The Last Show Before We Die.

ART/EXHIBITIONS

I travelled to Paris in January to see the Rothko retrospective, and I am so glad I did. It was an absolutely stunning exhibition; full of emotion and pain that hit you on a really visceral level. I spent several hours just absorbing it all. It wasn’t perfect — some of the lighting was surprisingly shoddy and Fondation Louis Vuitton is a logistical mess — but it’s definitely an exhibition I’ll never forget.

While in Paris, I also saw Parfums d’Orient at the Institut du Monde Arabe, which was a real gem. Clever use of scent boxes and interactivity made an otherwise hard to exhibit topic come to life, and the curation (which took you through different spaces where scent is used, like the home, the mosque, and the baths) was quite lovely.

And although I’m biased, my dear friend Surya Bowyer’s exhibition Paper Cuts (still on at the Peltz Gallery) was really wonderful — a thoughtfully chosen selection of images of Indians filtered through the colonial-gaze, paired with some gorgeous new commissions and really insightful wall text. Infuriating and beautiful, all at once.

Some duds, of course; most notably UVA Synchronicity which was the clearest example of “shallow Instagram bait” I’ve seen in some time. And Entangled Pasts at the RA had all the potential of a good show, but was let down by a number of stupid curatorial decisions.

GAMES

I finally got round to playing Disco Elysium, which is not quite as good as everyone makes out, but is still really special. Norco, too, was an interesting play. And I liked Botany Manor more than I expected to. Inscryption starts off really strong, but deteriorates annoyingly quickly. Doki Doki Literature Club! is batshit, but it’s free and certainly worth playing. And I’m hopelessly addicted to Hades, despite being quite bad at it.

My standout, though, is not a video game but a cooperative tabletop escape-style game called Threads of Fate. It’s an absolutely genius puzzle game, combining real-life props and diaries with Wikipedia trawling, and all held together by a surprisingly affecting story. It’s so satisfactorily designed, with really thoughtful and tricky puzzles that never make you feel cheated, and gorgeous physical materials. So good, in fact, that as soon as I finished it I went out and bought all of the company’s other games (which you can, and should, do here).

MOVIES

Film is easily the medium where I’ve had the most luck this year; perhaps that’s because it’s also what I’ve most-consumed. Basically all the Oscars entrants were superb. I’m still thinking about Zone of Interest, and Poor Things, The Holdovers and The Iron Claw were all great too.

Of other new releases, Dune: Part Two was stunning (the changes from the book might all be improvements!), particularly in dual-laser IMAX (70mm left something to be desired). Challengers was an absolute riot; that final scene is one of the best things ever committed to film. Perfect Days, Past Lives, How to Have Sex, and Monster were all great too. And I really liked Civil War, which is much more politically interesting than people give it credit for.

I saw a bunch of excellent older releases for the first time, too: Psycho, Cleo from 5 to 7, Paris, Texas, Carrie, The Wicker Man, and Days of Heaven all wildly live up to the hyper, particularly the latter. Hereditary and Four Lions still delighted on rewatch, too. (The Phantom Menace, less so.)

The only “bad” thing I’ve seen was Fungi: Web of Life (a shallow, dull documentary). Plenty of good-not-great flicks, though, including Mad Max 2, La Chimera, Hoard, Galliano: High and Low, Love Lies Bleeding, Evil Does Not Exist, Room 666, The Funhouse, The Searchers, American Fiction, Hoop Dreams, Side by Side, Jodorowsky’s Dune, and The Boy and the Heron.

BOOKS

I’ve not finished nearly as much as I’d have liked; instead I’m midway through a bunch of middling books. 

The two standouts came from authors I’ve previously read and loved: RF Kuang’s Yellowface and David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green. The former is brilliantly funny, very gripping, and almost Nabokovian in its use of a detestable narrator. The latter perfectly captures a very specific time of life, and is full of drop-dead gorgeous lines that permanently change the way you think.

I also enjoyed the Three Body Problem and its sequels; the writing (in translation) is pretty dire but the story and ideas are interesting. Circe was good, too. And I liked, but didn’t love, Cinema Speculation, Rendezvous with Rama, I’m A Fan, The Secret History of Twin Peaks, and Rebecca.

Best of 2023: Theatre

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

I watched 44 (possibly more) theatre/dance/comedy things this year; these were the best (in chronological order):

Woolf Works, Royal Opera House

I’m not particularly familiar with Virginia Woolf’s works — I’ve read Orlando, but that’s it. But the beauty of Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works is that I could enjoy it regardless: the choreography was so perfect that at every moment I knew exactly what was happening. Paired with an absolutely devastating soundtrack from Max Richter (which I’ve listened to on repeat since) and gorgeous set design, this was really unforgettable.

Phaedra, National Theatre

Simon Stone’s good at just about everything, and this was no exception. Everything just felt very real — the overlapping dialogue, the naturalistic set, even the way the cast moved around the space. And it’s a very good story, about a very terrible person.

A Morte do Corvo, Lisbon

Putting together good immersive theatre is hard. Two of the duds I list below are testament to just how badly things can go when the creators miss. Happily, A Morte do Corvo was a hit. The heavily Punchdrunk-inspired Lisbon show grabs you right from the start with a funeral parlour waiting room, setting the mood for the show to come. Once let out, you’re loose in a surprisingly huge set, full of wonderfully detailed sets (complete with hidden areas), terrifying 1:1s, and excellent sound design. The story didn’t quite cohere for me, but the atmosphere more than made up for it.

Romeo and Juliet, Almeida Theatre

I produced an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet at university, which made me pretty sick of the play (seeing something over and over again has a habit of doing that). But this was lovely nonetheless. There was real, tangible chemistry between the leads; the whole thing moved at a breakneck speed towards the horrifying end; and the candle-lit finale was just stunning.

Oklahoma, Wyndham’s Theatre

Patrick Vaill’s performance in this was probably the best I saw this year. It was the highlight of an impeccable production: I’ve not seen Oklahoma before, but my understanding is that this version radically reinterprets it, turning a fun and folksy musical into a genuinely disturbing story about terrible men and terrible America. It had the best use of on-stage camera work and projections I’ve seen outside of van Hove’s work, and that blood-spattered finale will haunt me forever.

Marina Abramovic Institute, Southbank Centre

Was this theatre? I don’t know. But it was excellent. While crowds flocked to Abramovic’s exhibition at the RA, this was a showcase of her legacy — the artists working at her institute who have been inspired by her, now let loose over both the stages and backstage areas of the Southbank Centre. They were uniformly excellent. As you wandered around the building’s corridors, time seemed to move differently — everything was slower, more purposeful, more meditative. And the performances transfixed: whether it was the astonishing physical control of Sandra Johnston, the terrifying policeman patrolling a corridor and smashing his stick against the wall right next to you, or the artist in a metal suit having nails violently thrown at her. Truly unforgettable.

The Burnt City, One Cartridge Place

I went to The Burnt City three times this year, and each time returning to Troy and Mycenae was a delight: three hours of near perfect immersion in a world filled with the most tender, heartbreaking moments you can imagine. Two moments from this year’s visits particularly stand out: the incredible energy of the final show, with the cast swapping roles mid-show and a tangible feeling of celebration and mourning suffusing the characteristically excellent choreography; and the intimate 2:1 I experienced with Hades and Persephone, the perfect culmination to a mesmerising three loops spent with the couple (including a jawdropping experience in a hidden part of the set). While The Burnt City never quite got me the way The Drowned Man did, it was still a magical show. I’m sad it’s over, but very excited to see what Punchdrunk do next.

Ahir Shah: Ends, Soho Theatre

I didn’t see much comedy this year, and I’m sort of glad I didn’t — because nothing would have been able to top this show. A deeply moving and inspiring show about immigration, the South Asian experience in Britain, and historical trends, it somehow still managed to be very funny. Mostly, though, I was impressed that it was a political show which bravely pushed against mainstream leftist opinion about the world getting worse — and did so thoughtfully, leaving me with a renewed sense of optimism for the country and the world.

Bacchanalia, Crypt

Yes, this is the third immersive show on this list. And I think that’s telling! While the continued COVID-recovery has normal theatres increasingly defaulting to fairly bland crowd-pleasers, immersive companies are now leading the charge of interesting and innovative theatre. Bacchanalia is a perfect example: the debut production from Sleepwalk, a new theatre company, it was a small but perfectly assembled show. Led by an almost unbelievably charismatic cast, it took an age-old story and transformed it into something that felt fresh and alive. I’m very glad I saw this, and suspect Sleepwalk will soon be a very big deal.

Infinite Life, National Theatre

Something about Annie Baker’s writing is really special. She manages to make plays where very little happens feel utterly engrossing, mostly thanks to better-than-realistic dialogue and pitch perfect pacing. More than almost any other writer, she manages to get to the heart of what it means to be human, I think, and the thematic swirl that was Infinite Life was a wonderful demonstration of that.

Kind-of-cheating bonus #1: Heresy: 1897, Future Proof

Heresy: 1897 is not quite a theatre show. It’s an escape room, with a theatre component — actors that pop up throughout your experience, steering you in certain directions and shaping your story. And it’s also a choose-your-own-adventure puzzle: unlike a normal escape room, there are branching paths depending on choices you make, such that you won’t experience every puzzle or even every room in a single session. And, if that weren’t enough, the choices you make in this experience carry over to Doors of Divergence’s second show, Madness: 1917. It’s a stunningly ambitious project, and it’s incredible that they pulled it off. With unbelievably high production qualities (the sets felt real!), clever puzzle design and really great acting, it was one of the best experiences I’ve had this year.

Kind-of-cheating bonus #2: Richard III, Schaubühne

It’s a little depressing that in a year where I saw 44 shows, one of the best was a recording of a show from 2015. But, here we are. Thomas Ostermeier’s Richard III was both terrifying and tragic, utterly vile and surprisingly tender. Anchored by Lars Eidinger, it was a show that reminded me of just how good continental European theatre is at its best — and how rarely the Anglophone world manages to produce anything nearly as good.

Honourable mentions, opera and dance: Akhnaten, Creature, Valse a Newton, Resurgam, Free Your Mind

Honourable mentions, theatre: All of It, Patriots, Dear England, Dr Semmelweis, Cabaret, The Effect, Blue Mist, American Ulster, One Night Long Ago

Honourable mentions, other: Derren Brown, Phantom Peak

Middle of the road: Medea, Women Beware The Devil, Peaky Blinders: The Rise, The Motive and the Cue, Penn & Teller, Untitled Wayne McGregor, Return of Benjamin Lay, The Pillowman, A Mirror, Cirque du Soleil: O, King Lear, The House of Bernarda Alba

Dishonourable mentions: Traces of the Wind, The Grim, Untitled Fuck Miss Saigon Play, Rumble in the Jungle Rematch, The Dante Project

Some good things, January-June 2023

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

Theatre etc.

My highlight so far this year is probably A Morte do Corvo, a Punchdrunk-inspired immersive production in Lisbon. I’ve been fortunate with a range of good immersive experiences: Phantom Peak, in London, was very silly but very fun; Heresy: 1897, in New York was a brilliantly difficult immersive escape room (with a coherent plot!); Saw: Escape Experience is too easy but has excellent production value; and The Burnt City continues to be excellent (though I think its impending closure is for the best, it is time for something new). The Grim, meanwhile, was a very unimpressive and somewhat repugnant immersive production.

On the conventional theatre front, I very much enjoyed Phaedra at the National Theatre. (Simon Stone is probably my favourite director today.) The Almeida’s Romeo and Juliet — currently playing! — was also very good. And I saw some pleasant, if not particularly memorable, other shows: The Return of Benjamin Lay, The Motive and the Cue, Women Beware The Devil and Medea. I’m excited for the upcoming theatre season, which looks quite a lot better.

There were two very different magic shows in London: Derren Brown’s Showman, which was very good but not his best; and Penn & Teller, which was fine but a little lacklustre.

Also some good dance productions: Creature by Akram Khan was quite nice but Woolf Works was stupendous. Sadly the other Wayne McGregor I saw, Untitled, was not very good. On the opera front, Akhnaten was spectacular.

Books

Nothing so far has truly blown me away. Small Things Like These came closest — it’s heartbreaking — and The Glass Hotel was also very good. Babel, Trust, and the Biography of X are all also good, but not groundbreaking. On the non-fiction side, Chip War, Parfit and The Alignment Problem are all pretty good but none are essential (though the former might be, depending on your semiconductor knowledge).

Art

Again, a rather mediocre six months. The big shows — Ai Weiwei and Cezanne in London, Yayoi Kusama and Georgia O’Keefe in NYC — were all just fine. Souls Grown Deep Like The Rivers was rather good, as was Lynette Yiadom-Boakye at Tate Britain. But my highlight has to be the permanent collection at the excellent National Gallery in DC — the Rothko/Newman rooms in particular are breathtaking.

Gigs

Four Tet’s Squidsoup show was incredible — just absolutely stunning, with a gorgeous set list and genius 360-degree sound system. Rival Consoles also put on an amazing show at the Barbican — he is incredible at taking you on a lengthy journey through noise. And I’ve already written about Jamie XX’s very fun and eclectic set at Printworks.

The biggest show I went to was Beyoncé’s, having bought a last minute ticket. She was very good with a technically impressive production, though the set was designed without viewing angles being taken into consideration (a pet peeve of mine). And I continue to think she’s a bit overrated — reviews called this the most impressive arena tour ever, but I personally think Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Ball topped it over a decade ago. (Also Beyoncé uses a teleprompter, which is a bit embarrassing.) Still, I had a lot of fun despite not really being a Beyoncé fan, so credit where it’s due.

Movies

Probably the medium where I’ve had the most luck this year. I’ve been watching lots of fantastic older movies: In the Mood for Love, Hiroshima Mon Amour and Casablanca all blew me away. Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire baffled me in a very pleasing way. La Dolce Vita, Vertigo and The Seventh Seal didn’t quite connect with me, but are impressive nonetheless. When Harry Met Sally, Scream, and Legally Blonde are all a lot of fun. Some recent-ish gems, too: Ford vs. Ferrari (which I watched just before going to Le Mans) is excellent; so is Tripping With Nils Frahm, a gorgeous concert film.

Of new releases, Asteroid City is my highlight so far. I think it’s my favourite Wes Anderson, though I need to rewatch it — it moves very quickly. Across the Spider-Verse was very good, though worse than its predecessor; the same is true for John Wick: Chapter 4. I didn’t really get Decision to Leave, and M3gan didn’t quite live up to its potential.

Some of my favourites, though, were rewatches. Some movies, like Shutter Island and Saw, don’t hold up well on second viewing. Others really shine, though. Raiders of the Lost Ark is still fantastic. And rewatching The Dark Knight in IMAX was exhilarating.

Some good things, May/June 2022

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

Books

In the last couple months I read two of the best books I’ve read in a long time: The Dream Machine, on the very early history of Silicon Valley, and Regenesis, on the agricultural future we need to build. Both highly recommended. I also wrote a list of my five favourite books on Silicon Valley for The Economist, you can read that here.

TV

I finally started For All Mankind and it’s as good as everyone says it is.

Restaurants

40 Maltby Street continues to fire on all cylinders. In Cornwall, I had an unbelievably good strawberry and honeycomb dessert at North Street Kitchen, great spider crab croquettes at Pintxo and a phenomenal tartine at Coombeshead Farm. But the highlight of the last month was my trip to Queens Night Market in New York, which somehow managed to exceed my very high expectations. Nansense‘s chapli kebab smash burger was revelatory.

Theatre

The Father and the Assassin was very good, and revived my interest in India/Pakistan history. Ivo’s Age of Rage was also good, but the weakest of his “epic” trilogy. Hans Kesting was great, as ever, but it was very interesting to watch Édouard Louis play himself in Who Killed My Father — I think he probably did a better job than Kesting. The buzziest thing I saw was That Is Not Who I Am, which was very good, but didn’t deliver on the weird gimmick it’s framed as.

Art

The Guggenheim’s Vasily Kandinsky exhibition is great; a rare example of an artist who got better with age. But the best thing I’ve seen in ages was Cornelia Parker at Tate Britain: the art is great by itself, but her intellectual curiosity means it’s even better when you read the accompanying descriptions. Highly recommended.

Some recommended things from the last month

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

Book: Eating to Extinction by Dan Saladino. This is one of the best food books I’ve read. It’s both very poetic and information-dense: I suspect I am significantly more pro-capitalism than the author and I view the Green Revolution as an unambiguously good thing, but Saladino’s writing does make me mourn the diversity we’ve lost and want to help save it as best I can. (Happily, doing so involves buying delicious ingredients.)

Film: Dune in 1.43:1 IMAX. I’d already seen this twice in cinemas, including once in 1.9:1 IMAX. Watching it in full IMAX (at London’s Science Museum) was still breathtaking — the extra height makes a huge difference in conveying the scale of the world. Showings are few and far between but I highly recommend trying to find one.

Restaurant: Brat x Climpson’s Arch. Beautiful tomatoes and cod’s roe on toast; divine burnt cheesecake.

Play: A Number at the Old Vic. More plays should be this short and more actors should be this good.

The best theatre of 2021 (online and in-person)

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

A lot of the theatre I watched this year was online. In the best cases, this was as good — or even better! — than live theatre. Some highlights:

Einfach das Ende der Welt, Schauspielhaus Zürich

The opening act of this was magnificent. After a short monologue a camcorder gives us a detailed, lengthy tour of the empty set, the main character’s childhood home. It’s intricate and beautiful, and gives you a real sense of the people that lived there and the lives they led, while the absence of actors conveys the main character’s intense isolation. And after you’ve spent a very long time getting acquainted with this house, and building up a picture of the characters, the entire set is deconstructed — and the explosive second act takes place on a practically bare stage. It’s really powerful and very clever.

Kings of War, ITA

I saw this live at the Barbican a few years ago, but enjoyed this rewatch even more. Ivo van Hove’s extensive use of cameras in his plays means they translate extremely well to streaming — shots are framed beautifully and the whole thing feels like a good movie.

A Little Life, ITA

I’ve not read the book, and this play was so devastating that I don’t think I want to. Phenomenally acted (particularly Ramsey Nasr and Hans Kesting), thought-provoking, and beautifully staged. (Ivo’s been my favourite director for a long while, but ITA’s streams this year cemented that for me.)

Ibsen Huis, ITA

This very clever Simon Stone play blended a bunch of Ibsen’s work into one, multi-generational story. It worked really well, playing on themes of trauma cycles and history repeating itself. And it made me want to watch more Ibsen than I have thus far.

But some of the in-person stuff was excellent, too:

After Life, National Theatre

This felt like it was made for me: flashy staging, fun and pacey, while still profound and moving. I enjoy basically everything Jeremy Herrin directs — Best of Enemies at the Young Vic was pretty good, too.

We Are As Gods, Battersea Arts Centre

There hasn’t been a Punchdrunk show in London for way too long, and this did an admirable job of filling the gap. It wasn’t the most polished production, but it was really fun, the music/lighting/set dressing was excellent, and the performances were solid. And the labyrinthine BAC is a brilliant venue for an immersive production. Mostly, though, this just made me very excited for Punchdrunk’s new show next year.

The Invisible Hand, Kiln Theatre // Constellations, Vaudeville Theatre

Neither of these have particularly stuck with me, but I do remember enjoying them both a lot at the time. Not life-changing theatre, but a very fun night out.

Honourable mentions: Rare Earth Mettle; Eulogy; Rockets and Blue Lights; The Lion King; Out West.

Average: Macbeth (Almeida); The Normal Heart; Paradise; Under Milk Wood. (This was the year I decided I’d no longer book everything at the NT because it’s just way too hit or miss these days.)

Waste of time and money: Changing Destiny; seven methods of killing kylie jenner.

Best of Enemies, Young Vic

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

This was a very good play about the 1968 debates between William F. Buckley Jr. and Gore Vidal. I knew nothing about the debates beforehand; according to the play, they were a seminal moment in TV history.

It’s very much a typical James Graham/Jeremy Herrin play: flashy and entertaining, fast-moving with lots of cutaways. It’s designed to be both fun and thought-provoking, a depressingly rare combo in modern theatre. Aside from a few overly didactic lines, the play leaves you to draw your own parallels between the past and the present. That isn’t particularly difficult as the similarities between now and 1968 are quite striking.

The acting is universally excellent, too. Casting a black actor (David Harewood) as William Buckley Jr. was clever. It makes it harder to immediately dismiss Buckley as a racist, and forces you to listen to his ideas. It helps that Harewood is very good in the role. But the highlight of the show is Syrus Lowe’s James Baldwin. In fact, his performance spurred me to go and read some Baldwin.

I have a feeling that this will transfer to the U.S. and be a big hit there. Note that I saw it in previews so things may change by the time it opens.