DVD/150: POLY STYRENE: I AM A CLICHÉ (Celeste Bell / Paul Sng. 2021)

When Marion Elliott died of cancer in 2011, Celeste Bell grieved for her mum while music fans grieved for Poly Styrene, iconic singer with punk band X-Ray Spex.  They had a troubled relationship and Celeste initially resisted exploring her mother's legacy but her journey to connecting with Marian is beautifully captured in POLY STYRENE: I AM A CLICHÉ.

Marian, a mixed-race South Londoner, found a natural home within Punk but still encountered patronising chauvinism from fellow musicians and press. Meanwhile Poly highlighted the rush to mass consumerism with THE DAY THE WORLD TURNED DAY-GLO and the magnificent OH BONDAGE UP YOURS!

A mis-diagnosed bi-polar condition led to recurring mental health issues including her years in a Hare Krishna retreat; her mood-swings resulted in Celeste living with her grandmother but music healed them, collaborating on the X-Ray Spex reunion gig and Poly's last album.

Shelf or charity shop?  Well I contributed to the film's crowdfunding so a definite shelf!  A genuine labour of love, co-directors Celeste and Paul Sng have crafted a personal story that resonates through Celeste's voice-over narration, Ruth Negga's voicing of Poly's diaries and lyrics and a hypnotic pace.  It's always sad when you find out that a hero had pain in their lives and Poly is no exception but despite the mental anguish which plagued her from the 1980s onwards, her unstoppable personality bursts through and she is and always will be a heroic figure who went against the grain to create amazing moments of being through her music. Wonderful archive footage shows her in full voice fronting X-Ray Spex while her offstage candid interviews show the girl who was always painfully honest.  With offscreen contributions from Pauline Black, Gina Birch, Laura Logic, Thurston Moore, Vivienne Westwood and Neneh Cherry among others, Celeste has given us a lasting tribute to her remarkable mother.

A few weeks back Owen and I braved the wilds of Waterloo to see the Old Vic's production of one of the classics of Irish theatre, THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD by J.M. Synge.

Owen was particularly excited as he has long wanted to see a production of the play which he studied once. I had only seen the play once before when Fiona Buffini directed it at the National Theatre in 2001 which I mostly remember as being lit very murkily and featuring a fine performance by Derbhle Crotty as Pegeen, so I was curious to jog my memory of the piece.

The theatre was very busy in the peanut gallery, due to the production starring Robert Sheehan of Channel 4's MISFITS. Hey... if it takes a tv star who can also act well enough to get an impressionable audience into the theatre then that's fine by me - as Malcolm X said "By any means necessary"!Synge's freewheeling black comedy shows the effect on the locals of a small coastal town in County Mayo when, into their midst, stumbles Christy Mahon. Christy is a young man who tells them that he is fleeing from the police after killing his father during an argument on their farm.

Instead of turning him in, Christy becomes the most popular man in the village and in particular, is pursued by Pegeen, the daughter of the town's publican, and the Widow Quin, a tough old broad who is actually chasing Christy because Pegeen's boorish fiancee has asked her to steer him away from his intended. When Christy wins the local donkey race he truly can do no wrong in the eyes of his adoring public but in the middle of the celebrations, another stranger appears... Christy's father who he in fact only wounded.The villagers now turn on Christy, collectively embarrassed at their lionising a 'nobody' - Christy out of desperation attacks his father again but this only inflames the crowd more, even Pegeen denounces him as a liar and a charlatan. It's only the appearance of Christy's seemingly indestructible father that stops them lynching him!

Christy realises that his one chance for fame has passed him by and he dejectedly leaves the village with his father to resume his miserable life on the farm. It is only when he leaves that Pegeen too becomes aware that she has lost her one chance of true happiness as she dejectedly cries "Oh my grief, I've lost him surely. I've lost the only Playboy of the Western World."
Synge's dialogue still twists and turns through the plot, time and again a line of dialogue leaps straight into the mind making it hard to believe it was written 104 years ago!

Sheehan makes a brave stab at the title role - it's his stage debut - but he is more a bumbling eejit rather than the master of his fate that Christy needs to project and he was easily out-matched by Niamh Cusack as the voluptuous Widow Quin and the luminous Ruth Negga as Pegeen. In the past year Cusack was excellent in CAUSE CELEBRE also at the Vic and Negga was a sympathetic Ophelia at the National so it was great to see them both again.

Special mention to Diarmuid de Faoite as the permanently woozy Jimmy Farrell, his second act slapstick pratfall was worth the price of admission alone! Also eye-catching were Kevin Traynor as Pegeen's insufferable fiancee Shawn and Frank Laverty as Pegeen's publican father.

Scott Pask's set design for Flaherty's bar was a revolving delight and wasn't overly-set dressed to detract from Synge's verbal fireworks.

Famously the 1907 premiere at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin saw rioting in the auditorium by those shocked at Synge's portrayal of small town Ireland but while Joe Orton and Martin McDonagh have reworked his themes of the glamour of violent young men and the venality in the Irish character, Synge's play still rightly holds it's place as one of the most entertaining of early 20th Century classics as well as a lasting tribute to a writer who tragically died aged 38 of Hodgkin's Disease only two years after PLAYBOY was premiered.

This week the time had come to go back to the bosom of the Bard, namely Nicholas Hytner's production of HAMLET at the Olivier Theatre.Right from the start, with the roar of a fighter plane and the appearance of Francisco, Bernardo and Marcellus in greatcoats carrying assault rifles, the production sets up a Denmark on a war footing while the second scene presents us with a West Wing-style court with Claudius giving his opening speech to a news camera team while security men and apparatchiks linger in the background.

Yes it's a very 21st Century Elsinore, well alluded to with little details like Hamlet and Laertes having to obtain Claudius' signature to leave the country with their passport as evidence and Polonious showing Ophelia surveillance photographs of her with Hamlet as well as planting a tape recorder in the book she carries in the 'Nunnery' speech scene.It was earlier in the day that I realised this would be my first HAMLET at the Olivier since seeing Ian Charleson - gulp - 21 years ago. I have blogged before that I doubt I will ever see a HAMLET to rival Ian's - his suffering from the AIDS virus which would claim him less than three months later gave his performance a power beyond the written word. Indeed once or twice I found myself moist-eyed remembering him, in particular the "We defy augury" speech which I will never hear bettered.

From his opening scene Rory Kinnear set off on an interesting course: pugnacious and sardonic, a hard-edged melancholia but with a very masculine gentleness in the soliloquies which he spoke beautifully so you almost felt you were hearing them a-new. His was not the most immediately winning of Hamlets but I warmed to his performance and this seals his place at the top-table of current stage actors. It also seemed to be more of a performance than a star turn so he certainly banished memories of Jude Law.The other big selling point of the show was to see Clare Higgins as Gertrude and she gave a memorable portrayal of a professional First Lady who grabs the nearest drink whenever she feels the attention is off her which, of course, sets up her incredulous refusal at Claudius' entreaty for her not to drink in the final scene. It was good that the modern dress choice of the production didn't mean they dropped the end of her speech about Ophelia's drowning - "her clothes spread wide, And mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up" which was absurdly cut in Michael Grandage's production at the Wyndhams last year.

Oh and speaking of that production, sadly here again Gertrude has to suffer the indignity of having practically the smallest royal wardrobe! Mind you, she was spared the indignity of Penelope Wilton's cardigans, going instead for a tight-fitting sheath dress, occasional matching suit and tottering high heels. Sadly while she was being bounced from couch to couch in the closet scene the thought of Miss Piggy suddenly sprung to mind. Don't blame me Clare, blame Vicki Mortimer's costume and the hair-stylist.

Sadly for me, the biggest mis-step in the production was the Claudius of Patrick Malahide. I was looking forward to his interpretation but again, very early on I got the mental image of Mr. Burns from "The Simpsons" and nothing in his vocally thin performance could shift that.David Calder has also a bit of a let-down as Polonious (looking frighteningly like Charles Clarke!) - this is where the Grandage production triumphed in the great double-act of Kevin McNally and Ron Cook in these roles. However Calder was more effective as the Gravedigger. Giles Terera was also a lightweight Horatio - mind you, he was scuppered from the get-go by the awful idea of having him wear light brown hush-puppy boots.

I liked Ruth Negga's contemporary Ophelia very much although I'm not too sure of the directorial conceit of having her wheel a shopping trolley around in her mad scenes. It was however a nice touch to have her distribute her character's props badly wrapped-up as gifts to the others during the "Rosemary" scene instead of the usual straggly weeds.

Hytner has added a tiny silent scene after her final scene where Ophelia is snatched by two secret service men and bundled away. I am not sure if the idea of Claudius having Ophelia bumped off actually works - does he suspect her derangement would lead her to betray him? - but it was an interesting touch.

Alex Lanipekun's Laertes was easily swamped by whoever he was playing against but Jake Fairbrother was a very convincing Fortinbras - again sharing his obituary of Hamlet with an embedded tv news team.

It is a tribute to Hytner's direction that the three and a half hours running time slipped by unnoticed and he kept a grip of the narrative throughout. Vicki Mortimer's palatial boxed set swiftly changed from location to location with a particular emphasis on windows and hidden doors and Jon Clark's lighting design also deserves praise.