Millenni-demic

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Split Britches, being born in the '90s, and playing catch-up with Generation X and the Baby Boomers

As many of you may know, a lot of my recent work centres around mental illness/health and recovery, based primarily on my own experiences. I'm not a doctor; I have no psychological or medical expertise. I do, however, have about seven years personal experience of diagnoses, therapy, medication, occupational health, CBT, and other anxiety and/or depression-related factors. Again, however - that, by no means, makes me a mental health expert. My most recent piece - Prescription - performed at Flourish House in Glasgow (a mental health members centre) for the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival focused on my recent withdrawal from anti-depressant medication; my previous work (for example, Tales About my Brother and The Ultimate Survival Guided for One in Four People) has explored issues such as my every-changing relationship with food and my family, and the insomnia that so often comes hand-in-hand with other mental health problems. Why am I telling you all of this? Well, partly so you know that I'm not picking an issue out of the air of which I have no experience or knowledge, and partly because I think it will sound eerily familiar to a lot of you. Especially, perhaps, if you're a so-called 'Millennial'.

I was recently at a wonderful production by the theatre company Split Britches (Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw) called Unexploded Ordnances (Platform, Take Me Somewhere, Glasgow). Part of the show - without giving too much away - involved asking various audience members what their worries were. One lady explained that she worked with young people with mental health issues, and stressed, with sincerity, her concern that more and more young adults are suffering from anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts and/or behaviour, and that very little seems to be happening to prevent this. Yes, I thought. Yes. More and more in recent months, I have heard about people I'm close to - or just those I'm acquainted with - deciding to pursue counselling or start taking mood-altering medication, or just that they're going through some sort of 'rough patch'. What do these people all have in common? Well, mostly, they were born somewhere between 1987 and 1997. Now, of course, the majority of my friends are my age, so I'm bound to be more aware when they have problems, but something tells me that that's not quite it.

I'm twenty-six now. I graduated from my undergrad five years ago, and decided to go back to the books about a year ago, and am now nearing the end of my Master's. The reason I talk about my mental health so much in my work is that I can; I'm OK with it. It's not going to do me any harm. Just three years ago, however - in 2015 - it was a different story. I had - incredibly luckily - landed a very well-paid, cushy managerial job pretty much straight out of uni. I had my own flat, I went on holidays, I went to the pub without worrying about breaking the bank. I had, however, moved about 220 miles for the privilege - away from my family, friends, and then-partner. You see, money is great; independence is great. But when you're given that level of responsibility at the age of twenty-two, and you're, basically, completely on your own, something has to give. For me, it was my health. Like a lot of people my age in full-time employment, I stopped going into work; I stopped seeing my friends; I stopped sleeping, and I stopped eating. I made a series of foolish, rash decisions, ended up hurting someone I loved, was signed off work for four weeks, and shortly left my job for good. This was perhaps the best decision I could have made - but it's not a decision I should have had to make.

As I said, I'm twenty-six; I'm about to have two degrees; I have over three years management experience, and - still - the scariest thought is having to find employment, and a place to live, after I graduate. An anonymous Baby-Booming parent said to me recently "in my day, we just applied for a job, and that was it". Yep, I bet it was. Both of my parents stayed in their respective jobs for over thirty years before retiring (and that's another issue altogether). I'm not saying they were happy, but they managed it, and have a three-bedroom Victorian semi over their heads to show for it. For most of us, that's - literally - an impossible dream. There will - of course - be examples of the Baby Boomer generation where this is not the case, but I will say that both of my parents were from extremely working-class backgrounds and were the only ones in their entire families to go to university. Again, I do seem like I'm going off-track, but bear with me. These days, we don't just apply for a job and "that's it". You apply for job, after job, after job. You will, most likely, be perfect for the job. More than perfect - overqualified, in fact. The likelihood is, however, that you won't get it. For no reason other than the employer being in a certain mood that day, or having someone particular in mind for the job all along. It's happened to all of us. This is, however, somewhat unique to us twenty-something-year-olds - those of us who have our degrees, our internships, our impeccable references, and probably a Duke of Edinburgh or two. We meet the Essentials AND the Desirables to the letter, but we are still rejected, time after time. My theory - at long last - then, is that this constant, incessant rejection (not just in employment, but in academia, in the actual workplace, in life...) and impossible expectation adds a whole layer of self-doubt and insecurity that just didn't really exist for previous generations. Not to the same extent, anyway. The standard is TOO high, because we've set it too high. And who do we have left to blame for our failures? You got it - ourselves.

I'm doing a Master's - as I said - and the majority of my peers aren't recent graduates; they're in their mid-twenties, just like me. And I don't think it was a spur of the moment decision for most of them - it was a necessity. The world of work just hasn't worked out, for whatever reason, and our Firsts and Two-ones aren't cutting it, either. So, now we're putting ourselves under the microscope again and making ourselves vulnerable to even more criticism - this time of an academic nature. We can't escape it, seemingly. We just have to put our egos through this unforgiving, brutally honest bruising before we're presentable to the outside world.

I recently started bingeing a series on Netflix - Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. The clue is in the title. It might sound like a cynical, slightly sexist, over-simplified depiction of female jealousy, but it's actually quite the opposite. The lead actress and co-creator, Rachel Bloom, is a mental health activist, and has created a scarily relatable, three-dimensional manifestation of Millennial experience in the form of protagonist Rebecca Bunch. Rebecca is a late-twenties, over-achieving, middle-class Jewish woman with a flawless professional record and - you guessed it - a history of mental illness. I hate to say that anything on TV "spoke" to me, but I'm afraid this did - as a twenty-something, middle-class Jewish woman who landed a high-paying job at a young age and cracked under the pressure, Rebecca reminds me of myself to a frightening extent. While the first couple of seasons are more straightforward sitcom, the third season shifts to a more serious, issue-based tone. The show started to deal with well-researched plotlines surrounding therapy, medication, and other serious mental health issues in a surprisingly sensitive manner. There was a moment where Rebecca has a crisis of sorts and - as an absolute last resort - calls her mother and goes back to her family home. I sat there watching, thinking "Yep. Been there". And I mean the exact same scenario - for Jewish girls in particular, admitting failure and defeat to our parents (especially our mothers) is about the most difficult thing you can imagine. I don't know if this was a conscious decision on the writers' part, but, given the recent prominence of teenage and young adult depression, my guess is that it was. The show is also an incredible study of friendship; particularly the unlikely ones that are formed through shared trauma. Unsurprisingly, Rebecca's and other characters' "crazy" episodes tend to manifest in their romantic relationships. This, I'm sure, is a very familiar trope for many of us (I know it is for me) - and being labelled crazy, mental, psychopathic, needy, desperate, or weak is just unhelpful when everything has simply got too much. I don't think it's any mistake that Rebecca is the age and personality type that she is.

The combination of recent conversations with my friends and peers and watching Crazy Ex-Girlfriend has made me worry for the safety and well-being of those around me. In fact, I'm not just worried - I'm terrified. Depression and anxiety is seeping into every aspect of our everyday lives - work, study, relationships, family...of course, that has always been the case, and I don't for a second think my generation has the monopoly on mental illness, but I do think that the expectations have got too high. The standard has become unachievable. We're the ones who have been left behind: very few of us own our own homes - or can even imagine doing so in the next ten years - or have sustainable careers where we won't have to take long-term sick leave after about two years. I've thought numerous times that I won't have to go back to that place ever again - back to 2015 - but I can't honestly say I'm sure any more.

It does give me some hope, however, that shows like CEG have been commissioned and are finding success, and are actually reaching people like me, and - hopefully - my friends. It also gives me hope that the people I love, or just the people I know, feel they can tell me things like this, and I hope this has just reaffirmed that. Thank goodness for the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival; thank goodness for Rachel Bloom; thank goodness for that lady in Split Britches' show...These aren't mammoth steps, but they're something. This is an epidemic that has touched and will touch all of us. It may be invisible, but it's a silent killer if left to fester. I don't feel that I've achieved an awful lot by writing this. But if growing up in the '90s has taught us anything, it's that every Rachel needs a Monica; every Joey needs a Chandler; every Buffy needs a Willow; every Geraldine Grainger needs an Alice Tinker. I know I couldn't have made it through without mine.

Spotting Trains and Glasgow's hidden Kinetic gem

...Somewhat more 'real' than that of Danny Boyle's film...an altogether uglier, less glamorous image of drug-taking and addiction than we may remember from mid-nineties cinema.

Having gone through a slight cultural drought since the Fringe, I knew I would kick myself very hard indeed if I missed The Citz's recent production of Trainspotting. Leaving things till the last minute, as per, I managed to nab just about the last two seats for a Saturday matinée; all evening performances being completely sold out. Dubious as ever to drag my partner to the theatre (his being a musician as opposed to a thesp), at the risk that spending an uncharacteristically glorious Glasgow afternoon in a dark, crowded auditorium, watching a stage version of a book whose film adaptation he didn't particularly enjoy, might not be his idea of fun. Neither of us, however, were disappointed.

Not having read the book, I can't say how close or far this incarnation of Trainspotting was from the original. Several aspects, however, such as the political undertones surrounding Sectarian Scotland and The Troubles in Ireland do suggest that the stage version is more loyal to Welsh's writing. Another motif I enjoyed was the use of monologues - each character (Sick Boy, Begbie, Alison, etc) is creatively profiled by way of ten minute, one-to-one revelations to the audience; an intimacy we are not afforded in the film. The staging and scenography also seemed somewhat more 'real' than that of Danny Boyle's film. The famous toilet-diving and OD-ing sequences, for example, are largely naturalistic and without atmospheric Lou Reed and Blur overtures. This created an altogether uglier, less glamorous image of drug-taking and addiction than we may remember from mid-nineties cinema.

This production is not without its stylized moments, however; Renton's withdrawal-induced hallucinations manifesting in a grotesque game show in which his mother and Tommy appear as contestants, for example. This is also one of the ways in which the play deals with the topic of AIDS. I sincerely hope that this production tours, as it would be a shame not to share it with theatres nationwide. I'm glad, however, that Glasgow got the first look of Gareth Nicholls's masterpiece, and that it debuted in perhaps the most appropriate and deserving venue in the country.

Still hungry for artistic fodder, this week I also discovered one of Glasgow's best kept secrets; the Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre. Slightly belying its name, this exhibit is sort of a cross between visual art, puppetry, and mechanical engineering, by artist Eduard Bersudsky. This unique little world is hidden in a single room in Trongate 103; a centre for contemporary arts next to the Tron Theatre. As soon as you enter, there is an eerie feel of nostalgia and melancholy - created in part by lighting and music - reminiscent of scenes from films such as Edward Scissorhands and Hugo.

 
It is largely based on life in the Soviet Union, and heavily features animal and human anatomic imagery (a group of hard-working rats riding a giant mole, for instance). The automaton-type moving sculptures are made from found and recycled objects such as Singer sewing machines, bells, and old bikes. To say much more would be to ruin the performance, but again, the Kinetic Theatre is well worth a look, and captures an important era in a way you won't have seen before.   

Curtain Call: bringing the stage to the page

Life getting in the way of your cultural cravings? Try immersing yourself in literary auditoria and fictional thesps. 

I've found myself favouring the page over the screen recently. Possibly because the nature of working 'unsociable' hours doesn't lend itself particularly well to indulging in Netflix when I get in; I do have a flatmate and neighbours to consider, after all. Perhaps due to this or my tendency to travel long distances, I stumbled upon a means of quenching my thirst for both literature and theatre without having to leave the comfort of my own home (or train/Megabus seat, as appropriate). As most industry professionals will know, one of the paradoxes of working in the theatre (dah-ling) is that one's vocational commitments - although primarily in the theatre - will often prohit one from seeing productions, the love of which activity being more often than not the reason you pursued this particular career in the first place. This was certainly the case when I was a Duty Manager - the curse of forever being in the theatre, but never going to the theatre. The situation hasn't much improved with my now working between the hospitality industry and my own creative pursuits. My financial situation also has a lot to answer for.

Having finished my latest historical, war-ridden paperback, which had been enjoyable, but nevertheless heavier than a hippo with an under-active thyroid, I was craving something a little closer to home. I reached for Curtain Call by Anthony Quinn, the title being a dead giveaway that I might get along particularly well with this one. Curtain Call, set primarily in London's West End, is a combination of murder, betrayal, fame, sexuality, and a country on the brink of war (WWII, to be precise). So, yes, another 'historical' novel, but not quite so close to the bone as Winter in Madrid. What I want to talk about is how well and precisely Quinn manages to replicate the 'world' of the theatre, and why anyone interested in the art should read this book. Two of the central characters are an actress (Nina Land) and a theatre critic (Jimmy Erskine). Whether Quinn has ever tread the boards or worked on either side of the curtain I don't know, but he's certainly done his research.

He describes Nina's dressing room table as "a battlefield of chaos of pots, paints and cratered powders, littered with the used ammo of lipsticks and blunted eyebrow pencils, glittering puddles of jewellery, corpses of cigarettes twisted in ashtrays and the bomb-site tumulus of a discarded feather boa.", an image - putting aside for the moment the clear foreboding war imagery - so accurate, especially pertaining to a performer whom has enjoyed several weeks at the same house, that it must be from first-hand experience. Moreover, the way the characters find analogies for their lives in works of literature - Nina likening a personal situation to the plot of King Lear and Jimmy quoting Macbeth in his head to describe insomnia - "Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care..." - is true to those who are immersed in such works day-to-day and cannot help but see the relevance of recurring themes, etched into their minds, in the banality of modern life.    

Quinn also captures perfectly the feel of a typical West End theatre; the rapid transition between the Get Out of one huge production and the Get In of another: "The Strand Theatre already appeared to have forgotten her recent triumph. All the signs advertising The Second Arrangement had been taken down, including the lights that had picked out her own name below the title. It was like returning to your old home to find it brutally refurbished, unrecognisable, all traces of your occupancy erased.". This rings all too true of my days in a receiving house - no sooner had Wicked (then its Scottish debut and just about the biggest cultural event in Glasgow) ended than some sort of amateur or spoken word production had replaced and eclipsed all evidence of its existence. C'est la vie.

Quinn perfectly observes the very atmosphere of Theatreland on any given evening: "St Martin's lane was aswarm with the theatre crowds just emerging from their evening;s entertainment, the pavements thronged with men carrying the odour of sixpenny cigars and women wearing fake pearls and implausible hats." - this will be a very familiar image for anyone who's been in or around The Theatre Royal Glasgow at any point. he even goes down to as fine a detail as to describe how Jimmy started his career as a modest rep actor, but lacked success due to his less than typically good-looking appearance. Choosing the pen over the stage being the fate, I daresay, of many a frustrated thespian: "The performer in him had not been wholly thwarted; henceforth he would create his own sort of drama from the stalls, to be enjoyed in print the next day.".

Stylistically, Quinn is more Ruth Rendell than Iain Banks, but Curtain Call is just as much a character study as a whodunit. So, if you're stuck for a free evening or the price of a ticket, or the local listings just don't inspire you enough, I'd thoroughly recommend this little gem to tide you over between theatrical visits.

Curtain Call, Anthony Quinn, Penguin Vintage 2015

A play with music - not musical theatre

Cabaret, Sunny Afternoon, and the disturbing wire-crossing of theatre marketing. 

This is a subject matter that's been bothering me of late. Most of my friends and colleagues know that I'm not a fan of musical theatre. Therefore, they wouldn't invite me to a production of, say, Hairspray or Les Mis. However, what's perturbed me is the idea that perhaps performances are being put into this category for the wrong reasons, and are thus dismissed by many as 'musical theatre', when, in fact, they have been misled. Don't get me wrong - there are some exceptions to my 'No Musicals' rule; I do love Rocky Horror and very much enjoyed the stage version of The Producers when I saw it, but that's in much the same way as I hate raisins, but will happily scoff a well-baked fruitcake every now and then.

Anyway, as I was saying, a classic example of false musical accusation is Cabaret. Cabaret is a theatrical adaptation of the author Christopher Isherwood's real experiences in Nazi Germany and his relationship with the performer Sally Bowles. It is an intensely political and historical piece of work, originally directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse. Yes, like all of Fosse's work (e.g. Chicago), it does feature a lot of singing and dancing - but, as aforementioned, one of the main characters, Sally, is a performer by trade. The film depicts Sally and her colleagues performing their nightly routines at the KitKatClub in Berlin; the cabaret movement being prominent in the anti-Nazi community at the time. Sally does not randomly burst into song as a form of exposition or emphasising an emotion at a particular point in a scene. The songs are relevant to the themes of the film (Money, If you Could See Her, etc.), but they are performed naturalistically and characteristically in line with the theatrical style - you even see Brian (Michael York) watching Sally from the audience of the club. Characters do not perform numbers for one another in musical theatre; the number is the performance.

Why do I bring this up? Well, since this idea occurred to me, I've become increasingly more sceptical when I hear the words "Oh, you wouldn't like it - it's a musical". Is it? Or does it just have music in it? One production I've been interested in since I saw it advertised in the West End is Sunny Afternoon, the story of The Kinks. The Kinks are one of my favourite bands of all time, and the script is by one of my theatrical heroes, Joe Penhall (Blue/Orange), but I haven't yet booked tickets for this exact reason. The play is marketed as a musical, but seeing as it's supposedly a biographical account of the band's rise to fame, won't they be performing their songs in context? There's no reason for them to be used as a plot device - only chronological markers of iconic gigs and recordings. I just can't imagine Penhall penning(!) a 'musical' without irony, either.

I could be wrong - this could be Mamma Mia all over again, but the actors are portraying The Kinks themselves, not fabricated characters who can inexplicably only express themselves exclusively through the words and music of a long-disbanded group (a 'Jukebox' musical). Either way, it would be a shame if the industry continues to neglect this particular genre and pass it off as the cheesiest of theatre styles, in the hope that sporadic theatregoers will see that fateful word and instantly buy tickets because they won't have to sit through all that boring dialogue and careful direction without the promise of a recognisable sing-along every five minutes. Thoughts on a postcard.

Where are my Dragon(s)?

War Horse meets Matthew Bourne meets DV8. A fascinating mix of puppetry, physical theatre, and music. 

Last night, I saw Dragon at The Citizens Theatre in Glasgow; a co-production between the National Theatre of Scotland, Vox Motus, and Tianjin Children's Art Theatre. Like DV8 and New Adventures, this story was told almost entirely without words. The Narrative begins when the main character - Tommy - loses his mother. he soon begins to see a Chinese dragon in a number of forms, the first of which being an apparition in a street lamp, a la Marley's ghost in the door knocker in A Christmas Carol. 

There are many ways in which to interpret the various manifestations of this dragon, one of which being that they represent the contrasting stages of grief. The fact that - to my recollection - there were seven distinct dragons certainly feeds into this idea. The second vision of Tommy's, supposedly formed from a chair in his bedroom, hits him on the head with a book, which Tommy had just thrown in fear. This could be an indirect act of self punishment, representing his regret and self hate surrounding his mother's death. This is followed by a red, fierce dragon; a house-sized, winged dragon that Tommy rides over the rooftops, and a big, white, protecting, Never-ending Story dragon towards the end of the play. These could denote anger, denial/escapism, and acceptance respectively. The idea that the 'denial' dragon forms from the roof on Tommy's house when he climbs up there to escape home life reinforces the concept of fantasy and avoidance with regard to his feelings of loss.

Stylistically, the puppetry used in Dragon is very much like that of war Horse, especially in how the performers become part of the puppets. In War Horse, the people controlling Joey's head, legs, and back end are all clearly visible, which somehow adds to the charm and realism of the production. It's the same deal with the various dragons in Dragon, especially the roof-denial incarnation where the head, tail, and each wing are all supported by a performer; there was definitely an air of Handspring Puppet Company about the whole aesthetic.

Another company that Dragon reminded me of was New Adventures. The initial vulnerability and loneliness of Tommy's character rang true of figures such as The Prince in Swan lake, Angelo in The Car Man, and Edward in Edward Scissorhands. This mixed with the strong, tireless physical theatre of Scott Miller's performance almost made for a classic Matthew Bourne outsider.

An asset worth mentioning from this production is the minimal use of scenery; this is where similarities to companies such as DV8 come in. For instance, the fridge in Tommy's kitchen is nothing more than a performer holding a door, with the lighting timed accordingly. I also loved how the use of performers was embraced, rather than covered up, and the scenery humanised. At one point, a whole swimming pool is created out of people in blue body suits, which has to be one of the most impressive things I've ever seen on stage.

Dragon has finished its run at The Citizens Theatre, but it's off to Dundee next, and I believe it'll be touring more widely after that. It's the perfect introduction to theatre for more mature children, but perhaps a little heavy for the little ones. It is marketed as a children's production, but me and my adult friends all enjoyed and related to it, and I'd encourage anyone to see it if you get the chance.

If you enjoyed Shrek: The Musical, How to Train your Dragon, or any episode of Game of Thrones, I fail to see how you won't get your claws into this magical tail...dragon puns aren't easy, OK?

Let's Get Physical: Frantic Assembly, Matthew Bourne, and why we do it.

After a successful, career-affirming weekend, I feel compelled to share some of my personal and professional highlights from the past six years. 

Recent experience has got me thinking about how and why I ended up where I did, and today I'd like to take you through some of my most vivid and prominent memories - moments which led me in the same direction and reminded me why I chose that path in the first place. I can recall four occasions in particular - two very recent - when I realised (or remembered) why I decided to study, live, and breathe theatre and performance for the rest of my life.

The first occurred six years ago, when I was a wee 17-year-old. I went on a trip with my AS Level Drama class to The Lowry in Salford; an evening I'll never forget. The performance was Othello by Frantic Assembly; a well-known physical theatre company who often re-invent classic stories for the modern stage. In this instance, Othello was a bouncer at a club (presumably somewhere in Manchester, given the accents), and the action took place either in the bar area, the ladies' toilets, or the seedy alley outside. I think it was the moment - spoiler alert! - just before Desdemona dies (having been strangled atop a pool table) when I decided that this was what I wanted to do. Not necessarily physical theatre, or Shakespeare, but just something that made me feel this way again. To be able to create, or be part of, something that would give me the same pride as those performers - from that day on - became my ambition. This gives me an excuse to dig out an essay I wrote three years later, in my second year of uni, about this very performance:

Pieces such as Othello show just how creative FA can be with original, or found, text; their adaptation of scripts shows their ability to take ownership of words. Even in the early stages of rehearsal, the company focus on the type of world they aim to transmit throughout a particular piece. They believe that this is a delicate process, easily disturbed. Later on in the course, these ideas will transfer onto the scenographic choices of the piece; Othello's gritty, contemporary reality is a prime example.

This leads me nicely to the next experience I'd like to share. Fast forward five years; I graduated, travelled, auditioned, free-lanced, temped, and eventually found myself in Glasgow in my current role. I hadn't lived in the city a week - it was my fourth day at work and I was acting as a 'secret shopper' among my own staff. The show this time was Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake. The run had gotten off to a great start, when, during the dress rehearsal, the fire alarm sounded and we had a sudden swan evacuation. This must have been a hell of a sight for unknowing passers-by. It was now Thursday night, so three days into the run. I'd heard great things about Matthew Bourne, and Facebook told me that an old school friend of mine was now a dancer in his company. My knowledge of his work, however, amounted to the fact that it was this very production of Swan Lake that features at the end of Billy Elliot. My ignorance ended that night. For the first time in my life, my stomach was in knots with excitement and emotion throughout the performance. It was the first of many times that I would sit in "my" theatre, and I choked back tears at the end of the show, primarily because this stunning male swan (Jonathan Ollivier) and his fellow cast had made me realise what an exciting chapter I had entered into, and that, in my own, small way, I'd 'made it'. 

My third, and penultimate, reminder of why it was all worth it came over a year later. A serious injury had put a sudden stop to any dancing, sport, or physical theatre I might have pursued. And am-dram just wouldn't have worked with my hours. Having worked in management - albeit theatre management - for most of my career, the creative, performing part of my brain was beginning to get restless. Something was amiss and I didn't know what it was. One Sunday, after months of casual email to-and-fro-ing and the occasional meeting, I found myself at another local theatre, this time on a voluntary basis. I'd decided to try my hand at teaching (something I hadn't done since my second year of uni) and ended up very much involved with various acting workshops. I'd forgotten how incomparable it is to work with young performers; the ideas and engagement that came out of those sessions is something you just don't get with adults. I knew that afternoon that this was what had been missing, and that this would help me to be me again. It transformed that gloomy non-day that is Sunday into something to look forward to; wondering what those minds would surprise us with week after week.   

So, that brings us to the most recent example of that epiphany-like sensation. This happened just two days ago, when, once again, the physical theatre/contemporary dance bug struck. I'd booked tickets to see Matthew Bourne's The Car Man at Edinburgh Festival Theatre (can you see a theme emerging?). For those who don't know, this -like all Matthew Bourne work - is a modern re-telling of Bizet's Carmen (the opera). I know nothing of the original story, but - as ever, this really didn't matter. I was glad to have taken my seat early; the stage came to life about fifteen minutes before curtain up, as the performers began to move around and interact in character. My eye was drawn to the vulnerable, withdrawn Angelo at the edge of the stage, played by Dominic North whom I'd seen as Edward Scissorhands in November. Just seeing him and remembering his last performance was enough to know that this wouldn't be a disappointment. As soon as the house lights went down and the score began, that feeling returned - let's call it The Swan Lake Effect - the knots, the butterflies...and it was as if I was being welcomed home, having been away for far too long. I should emphasises that I've worked and performed in theatres for a long time - this production instantly earned its spot in my 'top three' performances ever. It's a brutal selection process, believe me. 

Why am I telling you all this? Well, whether you're a performer, writer, director, techie, critic, or even a manager - it's important to know why we do what we do. Especially if we reach a rut for whatever reason. As Christopher Isherwood once wrote, "A few times in my life I've had moments of absolute clarity. When for a few brief seconds the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think, and things seem so sharp and the world seems to fresh. It's as though it had all just come into existence [...] I have lived my life on these moments. They pull me back to the present and I realise that everything is exactly the way it was meant to be".

So, if - like me - you ever feel as if you've lost your way in this world of competition, ambition, disappointment, and change; try to remember that first time, and the good times. Trust me - you'll find your way home.     

My Little Friends: Donna Tartt and fantasy casting

Pick up anything from my bookshelf, and I'll create an IMDB page for you, whether there's been an actual film made of the book or not.

Not strictly theatre or film, really - but perhaps something in between. Last week, I focussed on how easily a stage production can be transferred to the screen. Today, I'd like to do the same, but with literature.

I don't know about you, but I physically can't read a book without knowing exactly what each character looks and sounds like - even if they're a till operator or bus driver who appears for a matter of sentences. I actually have to put the book down and search the library of faces that we all have in our heads; even if I just pick a nameless neighbour or an obscure colleague. Otherwise, the scene just isn't complete.

In every single book I read, I have to create the equivalent of a fantasy football team - but with actors. Pick up anything from my bookshelf, and I'll create an IMDB page for you, whether there's been an actual film made of the book or not. You can imagine my intrigue when I finally saw the film version of Iain Banks's Complicity, having already mentally cast each and every character to my own design. I suppose this is why we should always read the book first - we see the individuals depicted only as they are described and how the writer intended them to look (to the best of our ability); not just who was successful at audition.

Let me take the book I've just finished as an example; The Little Friend by Donna Tartt. Tartt's second novel tells the story of Harriet, a young girl whose brother, Robin, was murdered when she was a baby. Harriet takes it upon herself to find Robin's killer and ensure justice is done - her prime suspect being a local boy who knew her brother as a child. What unfolds is a detailed picture of life in southern America; racism; poverty; religion, and family.

Some of the most interesting characters in this book are the Ratcliffs; a group of brothers (Farish, Eugene, Danny, and Curtis) known for their criminal records and disruptive behaviour. The narrative comes to focus on Danny; perhaps the most misguided and tragic of the four. He is described as  "...underfed, tough, with bitten fingernails. He was little more than a teenager, not too tall or too clean, with sharp cheekbones and lank hippy hair parted in the middle, but there was a scruffy, mean-edged coolness about him like a rock star". Originally, I had Lukas Haas in mind to 'play' Danny. Namely because of the long hair, and he was the first person who sprung to mind because of his hick-ish role in Mars Attacks. But as his character developed and his vulnerability and waywardness became more apparent, I finally settled on Josh Zuckerman. I know him best for his role as Eddie in Desperate Housewives; he also made a childhood cameo in The West Wing in Isaac and Ishmael; the one-off episode at the beginning of Season 3.

Josh Zuckerman as Eddie in Desperate Housewives

To me, he is the perfect cute-but-troubled-young-man-who-lost-his-way. As Eddie in particular, he has a slightly unkempt and uneasy feel about him, yet is easy to sympathise with. He can also switch between sweet and threatening in an instant, which is ideal for Danny. Are you beginning to see the method to my madness?

Then there's Danny's older brother, Farish - very much the ringleader of the brothers, with very few redeeming qualities. For him, the choice was easy; Jason Lee. Again, a regular TV actor, most of us know him as Earl from My Name is Earl. Due to his often deep southern drawl, ability to pull off a handlebar moustache, and convincingly evil performance in Dogma, he was always going to be my Farish. Although physically very different - Farish is described by Tartt as "a gigantic, bearded guy, a bear of a guy...Long dark hair, streaked with gray, straggled down past his shoulders". - I don't believe one has to be big (or hairy) to be threatening. Lee emits a sort of cat-like cunning when playing a baddie, and I think this could work very well with Farish. His voice also fits perfectly with the dialogue; harsh, yet melodic, and unmistakably bluegrass when he wants to be.

Jason Lee as Azrael in Dogma (1999)

The third of the brothers I'd like to mention is Eugene - 'the preacher'. A born-again Christian, Eugene practices bizarre methods of worship, including attempted snake-taming. He is often depicted by Tartt as 'the creepy one', especially - no spoilers! - towards the latter part of the novel. For him, I picked someone slightly unusual and lesser known; Ryan Cartwright - a British actor whom I know best for a minor role in Mad Men. Again, this was just a gut instinct based on appearance - "He was running a nervous hand through his hair (which he wore greased back, in the vanished hoodlum style of his teen years)" - but this one stuck, and the more I read, the more perfect he seemed to be.  His character in Mad Men is sleazy, distant, and unsociable, and his mannerisms awkward and unnatural - "Though Eugene was rich in faith the Lord had not seen fit to bless him with charisma or oratorical skill; and sometimes the obstacles he struggled against...seemed insurmountable". OK - he's not American, but who gets through drama school these days without at least attempting an accent?

Ryan Cartwright in Mad Men

The final character I'd like to focus on is Edie; Harriet's no-nonsense grandmother. This one was very easy; Angela Lansbury. perhaps more in her Murder She Wrote days, I don't think Tartt could disagree that she'd make a perfect Edie. Throughout her astoundingly extensive career, Lansbury has honed her if-looks-could-kill poker face and sharp, to-the-point tones to disapproving grandma idealism. Even the way Edie dresses - "Her suit - nipped at the waist, with three-quarter-length sleeves - was very severe, stylish too in its old-fashioned way" - just screams timeless class to me. And isn't that our Angela all over? Matthew Bourne recently gave an interview in which he praised her very highly indeed, and I completely agree; she is everything that is right with British and American cinema past and present, and has moved with the times elegantly and admirably. Therefore, it could only be her to complete my semi-star-studded cast.

Angela Lansbury in full Jessica Fletcher mode

I could go on and on about how I'd cast Ruth Wilson as Charlotte - Harriet's jaded, forlorn mother who has lost her son and whose daughters must now look after her - and Jill Clayburgh as Gum (The Ratcliffs' weathered, doting grandmother who long took over as their mother), but I think you get the idea. Unfortunately, my two top contenders for Harriet - Dakota Fanning and Mara Wilson - are now both too old to play such a part. I also had a young River Phoenix in mind for her school friend Hely, but that presents a completely different obstacle.

So, if you don't already partake - maybe try creating your own 'fantasy cast' next time you start a new book. You might just surprise yourself. And when the film of The Little Friend comes out - and we all know it will - and some clever clogs has nicked all of my ideas...you heard it here first, folks.