13 for 2018
It’s been a big year. I left my job, moved out of London, put my first book together, and somehow still haven’t fucked up my PhD (yet). Thanks to the combination of a very ill housemate, residual break-up fallout, and some hard-going #MeToo politics, the first few months of the year were absolute dogshit (like, The Worst) but there has been steady improvement since, and looking back now, I think this is going to be one of those years I’m still thinking out when I’m 60.
Anyway, I’ve been to the theatre fuck all in 2018. I caught up a bit towards the end, but if you’re here for some luvvie shit, fair warning: only 4 of these items are theatre-related. Instead, I’ve collected a number of things which I valued above others — telly, film, theatre, music, a podcast. The things that rose to the top did so largely because they helped me either channel my fury or heal my soul.
So, no particular order, etc etc.
Moot Moot
One of the first shows I saw this year, back in January, this was such a popular part of The Yard’s Now festival that they brought it back for a two week run in the autumn.
It’s a hard show to describe. Some critics seemed to’ve completely missed all its subtleties and just treated it as some kind of old-school British tv comedy: Smashy and Nicey, or Alan Partridge, except weirder. And sure, talk radio hosts Barry and Barry have elements of those characters, and they are funny, but they are also stoically soldiering on in a world driven by quantitative markers of success with all the smiling hopelessness of the best Beckett protagonists. Their lack of listener engagement is a heartbreaking analogy for contemporary loneliness.
But then there’s a whole other layer to it too. As drag personas adopted by Rosana Cade and Ivor MacAskill, Barry and Barry’s isolation also speaks of fear and shame and unspoken queer love. Together in a small studio for hours on end, overnight, and with no-one calling in, they are Ennis and Jack from Brokeback Mountain, except neither has the courage required to make a pass. It’s achingly tragic.
That car bonnet shot in Widows
I only saw this a week ago, so a v late entry: Steve McQueen’s remake of an old TV show. It’s a classic heist narrative, soaked through with social commentary — economics, politics, race, gender — and given the kind of artful cinematic sheen that he brings. I’m not sure how much of it will really stay with me over time, but there was one long shot that absolutely will.
The camera is mounted on the car bonnet, as Colin Farrell’s insincere local politician is driven, with his aide, from a run-down block in a poor black neighbourhood, back to his campaign HQ in a leafy, affluent white neighbourhood. But we don’t get to see into the car — the sky reflects off the windscreen for the whole drive — so instead the story is told in the peripheries of the shot, like within a second frame. It shows us the proximity of great wealth to great poverty, the way black faces give way to white. And, throughout its two minutes, we hear Farrell’s character getting a proper full-bodied dressing down by his (young, attractive, otherwise silent) aide. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a film do so much, so beautifully, in such a short amount of time before.
Love Island
So, Jack and Dani have split up (I don’t imagine he took it well) but I’ve given it some thought and I’m cool about it. The real love story of the villa was actually Megan and Wes anyway. He was the soundest guy in there, and while she was the woman who some loved to hate, those people were wrong.
I didn’t miss a single episode of Love Island this summer. Warm summer evenings with the patio door still wide open at 10pm, England not being terrible at football, mini Twister lollies in the freezer, and a powerful sense of communion. I had only lived in Colchester for a couple of months when it started back in June. Most evenings, when I was on the Norwich train home from work, or from a show, I would find a group of women eagerly discussing Hayley and Eyal, or some business-suited 30-something, headphones in, catching-up in miniature on the ITV app. It was nice to smile and nod to one another across the aisle.
Nanette
I missed her when she was on at the Soho last year, and more fool me. But my New Year’s resolution for 2018 was to watch more telly, and I absolutely knocked that out of the park. God bless Netflix.
As a result of Nanette streaming, I think I can safely assume that everyone reading this has already seen Hannah Gadsby’s incredible ‘resignation’ from comedy, and I am saved from having to attempt to summarise or analyse her searing words. Which I’m glad about tbh, because I’m not sure I’m up to the job.
This Christmas I’m planning to log into Netflix on Mum and Dad’s telly and show it to them for the first time. Will have to read the room a bit first probably, so don’t hold me to anything, but it’s definitely a plan.
That middle bit in The Writer
What. A. Play.
Even though it was already written and submitted before Weinstein, Ella Hickson was rightfully celebrated for encapsulating the problems, questions, disappointment and anger of #MeToo. The Writer was unbelievably timely stuff, and felt perfectly focused on culture at the Almeida, often cited as the London venue with the most work still to do to address the kind of power dynamics that can breed bullying and harassment.
Even though I loved it, I think I accept criticisms of the play (primarily its insinuations about gender stereotypes in same-sex relationships) but its central section – a truly intoxicating piece of writing, words that seemed to spill from Romola Garai’s entire body and spread across the stage like liquid, or maybe pheromones – was the moment I realised how special it was, in and of itself. I think it was Chris Goode who said (I’m paraphrasing, sorry Chris) that it was a rare instance of a major mainstream venue programming work which engaged with the politics of form. That the male Director character would later criticise that same section for being inconsequential only made it more perfect.
Stormzy at the Brits
I have watched this on YouTube so many times, that I can pretty much lipsync the whole thing.
You’re criminals and you got the cheek to call us savages
You should do some jail time, you should pay some damages
We should burn your house down and see if you can manage this
I’ve written about his performance design for the next edition of the Exeunt zine so I won’t spoiler that here (that rain, those balaclavas!) but in these few minutes, Stormzy single-handedly reenergised what has become a tired, bloated, and increasingly irrelevant awards ceremony, and showed us that political protest music is alive and well in grime. Theresa May had to make a statement addressing this performance the following day. More money was found to rehouse Grenfell survivors. The response still falls far short of what a compassionate government would have done, but Stormzy provided a blistering reminder of the potency of music and the importance of cultural responses to political injustices.
Leave No Trace
An incredible film, and perfect example of the importance of the female gaze. Leave No Trace is a film without an antagonist. There is no-one trying to fuck things up, no-one trying to get theirs at the expense of others, just a collection of kind people, each trying to do their best for each other.
Watching it was an education. Only when you are faced with a story in which everyone is a good guy do you realise how thoroughly you have been trained – by art, by life – to expect the worst.
But no, the drama in this film (and it is dramatic) comes after trauma, in terms of the PTSD suffered by Ben Foster’s character. And that too is treated in a near-revelatory way. For days afterwards I was thinking about all the other versions of this film, likely directed by men, which would have felt the need to cut to violent flashbacks of sweat and insurgency and exploding helicopters. As it was, we saw only the broken sleep, the fearfulness, and the comforting presence of a dog.
Just this week Jane Campion made a statement which criticised the decision to leave director Debra Granik off the Oscar’s shortlist for Best Director. I hope everyone who reads this watches it and then tells five of their friends. And please tell them to tell five more.
Phobiarama
This show by Dries Verhoeven, part of LIFT in the summer, had all my favourite things in one experience: fear, laughter, surprise, politics, power play, pop culture references. Loud music. Choreography. Big design reveals. Also: a train that you get to ride really fast while being chased by clowns.
It was one of the few things I actually reviewed this year, so I won’t go on at length about what it meant (or felt like), but it was genuinely one of the most exciting hours of my life to date.
Princess Nokia — 1992 Deluxe
This is cheating because it came out last year, but fuck you, my rules.
1992 Deluxe soundtracked my housemove in March/April. I listened to it on repeat for a week as I packed up all my stuff in North London, and again at the other end, as I stretched out into the corners of my new flat. I think what I love most about the album, other than the groooooooove of it, and her fucking incredible, rebellious, arch attitude, is that it reminds me of another past era of my own life, skiving school, smoking weed, hanging out in West Park, falling in love for the first time. I find myself reflecting on teenage me whenever I go through significant changes. I often think about that girl and if she’d be proud of me, or maybe a bit embarrassed. She had a v v v low tolerance for anything remotely wanky, so possibly more of the latter.
My Spotify was hacked for most of this year. It made very little difference tbh; my ‘recently played’ was a bit of a horrorshow and occasionally I’d have to unfollow a few shite playlists, but I’m pretty sure whoever was behind it was basically just streaming the same 5–10 different songs on a loop, trying to game the royalties system. I finally sorted it, reset my password etc, in about October, but even though my 2018 ‘most played songs’ stats were almost completely down the shitter, I had listened to Goth Kid so often that it still came in at number one.
A Star Is Born up till the bit where the twatty manager turns up
2019 will mark 10 years of Lady Gaga’s success, and what better way to celebrate than to win the Oscar for best original song in February. Shallow is an absolute belter of a love song, and A Star Is Born is an absolute belter of a fairytale. Completely ridiculous, absolutely joyful, and all set in the kind of fantasy world where Lady Gaga is somehow not recognised as the astonishing beauty that she clearly is. It couldn’t be more fantastical if they met while jousting on their space unicorns.
But, y’know, sometimes that is precisely what is required. I was grinning from the opening chords in that very first scene at Coachella, and by the time she walked out of that shitty job, then went onstage to sing with him, real tears of joy were pouring from my withered old crone eyes. I honestly think the first hour could be used in some kind of therapeutic environment – every moment until that evil British manager guy showed up was pure perfection.
If I’m honest, I was left wishing for the Debra Granik version, the one which cut that manager out completely, and just showed us two good people trying to work through Bradley Cooper’s addiction problems together, but you can’t have everything I suppose. At least when it comes on Netflix I’ll be able to stop it there and just keep looping back to the beginning for more absurdly improbable bliss.
Decoder Ring
I discovered podcasts this year! Aren’t podcasts great?! I wish I’d known. For years the only ones I heard were by smug American nerds with ukuleles, or smug American politics bros using their Ivy League degrees to out-‘radical’ each other, so I just kind of wrote the whole form off. This year though, as I’ve adjusted to non-theatre leisure time, I’ve had the scales ripped from my ears.
My favourite has absolutely been Decoder Ring, which has only started fairly recently, and which explores a new pop cultural phenomenon each time. There have been episodes on scary clowns, hotel art, canned laughter, and the tabloid phenomenon of Sad Jennifer Aniston. It’s made by Slate, so you have to put up with ads every now and again, but the production values are good, and they’re not afraid to play around with your expectations too – a recent episode on pre-internet conspiracy culture and the legend of Ong’s Hat took an appropriately fantastical turn in the final minutes.
It was the episode about paper dolls that really stood out though. It’s the kind of episode which you can tell was slightly opportunistic; they didn’t go off and research this subject until they found an interesting angle, more like they met a fascinating guy and realised his story needed to be told. I’m not going to say much more, only that I found the matter-of-fact way in which their interviewee slowly revealed intimate details of his life unbelievably moving. I sat there for ages, just staring at my bluetooth speaker, trying not to cry.
Succession
A decade ago we all watched the same telly, because it had only just got good. The Sopranos and The West Wing and The Wire and Mad Men and Breaking Bad. The good telly was still a relative rarity, so we all piled in together, with box sets or torrents or by passing round external hard drives or whatever. Now, Netflix is sinking literal billions into covering every possible audience, happy to chuck a few quid at anything; when you’ve got a decent global market share, you don’t even need to aim that high. For a while it looked like nothing could match the quality of those first big successes of the TV renaissance.
Well, I am here to tell you that Succession, from HBO, is the telly we have all been waiting for since the end of Mad Men. It is phenomenal. The premise is pure Lear: an ageing media mogul must decide which of his children will take over his empire. He’s the kind of guy who just phones the President to ask a favour like it ain’t no thing. There are shades of the Murdochs and Trumps, of Fox and Disney, and this horrendous, pervasive, sneering disdain for anyone who isn’t in that inner circle, even from behind politician smiles. I was gripped within fifteen minutes, watched the whole first season in two days, and have barely stopped thinking about it since.
That one monologue in Dance Nation
Clare Barron’s text for Dance Nation is significantly better than the production it received at the Almeida this year, but one thing that did work, that fucking shone, was Kayla Meikle’s delivery of Ashlee’s big monologue, the one in which she talks about being beautiful and smart, how she will ace the SATs then become a surgeon and a ‘FUCKING GENIUS POET’, how she will only become more beautiful, and more successful, and ‘GREAT AT SEX’.
The text itself asks for her to become taller and more imposing as the scene goes on, with lengthening shadows and fangs, and while Bijan Sheibani’s production kept a lot of that magical realism stuff, I’m glad it was left out here. The writing did everything it needed to do.
“I am your god. I am your second coming. I am your mother and I’m smarter than you and more attractive than you and better than you at everything that you love and you’re going to get down on your knees and worship my mind, my mind and my body and I’m gonna be the motherfucking KING of your MOTHERFUCKING WORLD, and you’re going cum just by eating my cunt, the taste of my cum is going to make you cum because it’ll be the greatest sexual pleasure you have ever known JUST TASTING ME and the words I say are going to be the greatest fucking words that you’ve ever heard and the things I do are going to be the greatest fucking things you’ve ever witnessed.”
A good way to approach 2019 I reckon.
