Patrick Sandford: Groomed

If keeping a secret can corrode the soul, and revealing it liberate, Patrick Sandford must feel a sense of scorching release on performing Groomed to a paying audience for the first time.

His story of sexual abuse at the age of 10 by a manipulative but respected teacher, is not easy viewing, but is tempered by using a range of perspectives, including that of the abuser, plus the musical punctuation of on-stage of saxophonist, Tomm Coles.

Simply staged, with a table of props – toy theatre prominent – and a bunch of balloons, Patrick opens the play with vivid dramatization of scenes from his early life. Slightly impish in manner and confident in tone, he theorizes about guilt, desire, pain, and anger with heartfelt passion in language both robust and poetic. We can feel his anguish when he is held under the school-room table, eyes fixed on the grain of the wood. Given the intimacy and heat of the makeshift theatre space, we could be under it with him.

Groomed explores how a truth can be told, a secret be spoken, and how we erect barriers for shelter. Patrick used theatre as sanctuary; there he could hide behind character, find catharsis in a fictional rage. When the Japanese soldier Hiro Onoda was eventually located in the Philippines jungle, having unnecessarily held a military position for nearly thirty years, he was treated with consideration and generosity by his country. The inventor of the saxophone, Adolfe Sax, struggled through an alarming amount of injuries and business calamities but created an instrument of lasting value and immense musical power. Their experiences provide a counterpoint to Patrick’s story and allow him to reflect on decades of unnecessary defending and celebrate his own creative achievements.

There is ambivalence in the way the play is delivered, with switches from first to third person narrative, from violent anger to comic asides, that make for a rather disjointed emotional journey. Lines such as “I was living beside, not in my life” would be even more powerful if spoken straight to us, and an on-stage relationship between Patrick and Tomm could be established earlier. Further performances will no doubt iron these things out. A larger auditorium would enable Nancy Meckler’s direction to have proper impact, with movement influencing pace.

While Groomed doesn’t break new ground in terms of theatrical form, it’s an intelligent and well constructed approach to a story that, sadly, is only too common right now. Generously supported by the charity Mankind, the play works towards opening up dialogue and relinquishing blame in order to change and heal. It does this successfully, without shifting into theatre as therapy, leaving the audience thoughtful and richer for the shared experience.

How Small. How Far.: Garden

Lucy Grace’s one act, one woman show is charming in its simplicity, its honesty, and her sympathetic delivery. It comes to Brighton following a successful run in Edinburgh last year and shares the story of one young woman’s quiet revolution against the conformity of office life, triggered by her theft of a neglected office plant, and the beginning of an exploration of her own wildness. Our protagonist’s vulnerable but guardedly optimistic demeanour is familiar and endearing and her little asides appended to the main narrative, the bon mots that could be read as non sequiturs, the internal monologue that sometimes leaks out into conversation, all make the audience feel like a confidante, like we’ve found a friend. Which is all ‘Lucy’ truly wants to do, even if she is made to conform to expectations of interaction and corporate ambition. To define where she sees herself in The Bigger Picture. Whatever that may be. A dracaena is a sacred plant. Lucy knows this and no one else around her cares. It isn’t relevant. This is important.

One image which particularly lingered was that of Lucy, after spending the night euphorically painting her ceiling to resemble the sky, carefully and deliberately dipping the cuff of her work jacket sleeve into the pot of blue paint, before carrying it with her like a secret into the day. On her commute she covertly insinuates a daub of blue onto a fellow sheep, penned into the 8am to London Bridge, and imagines him discovering it later in his day, possibly having transferred that furtive scrap of sky onto others in the mean time. Though there is of course no pot of paint on the stage, no train carriage, nor supporting cast, it is such a clear and haunting image – as distinct as the white chalk in Fritz Lang’s M – that it felt tangible, marking an aching need to connect, somehow, with other humans, to share a little wonder at the simple, beautiful things left in life in between the downbeats of conformity.

Lucy’s first deviation, stealing a much-abused office pot plant entrusted to her guardianship as part of a ‘greening’ scheme, passed down from HR or some such nebulous entity, is a minor infraction, a socially-aberrant good deed. It is also the first step in a spiral of isolation and (mostly) internalised abstraction that feels like it can only end in crisis, or worse. So much theatre, especially the Fringe kind, particularly the plays that draw on mental health struggles, is a headlong plunge into tragedy. Garden is an exercise in learning to regain trust, in hopefulness, in the potential of magical thinking to sometimes deliver. To suggest there are times when things are okay.

The show’s greatest strength is being funny in a way that encourages us to laugh with the protagonist at other people’s cynicism and literalness. At, in fact, our own, as their reactions would most likely be ours. Yet with Grace explaining her character’s quirky acts we are granted the gift of seeing them not only through the perspective of the people around her, but also with the secret password that unlocks the additional content – narration, subtitles, a red-button voiceover telling you exactly why that innocuous, if slightly odd woman on the train, the one you’ve stood in the same carriage with dozens of times before and never once noticed, seems to have a pocket full of soil. No one who ever loved woodlice as a child and then forgot they ever did is too far removed from the path Lucy wanders down.

It’s a simple, messy, honest little play full of heart and dejection, ambivalence and hope. ‘Lucy’ is an awkward everywoman played with immensely likeable vulnerability, a few props and a neat lighting design. Garden is physically spare, but emotionally rich and proof that you don’t need projection, or speed eating contests, or paint slung up the walls, to make a Fringe show that is engaging and relevant. It’s startling how revolutionary optimism can feel.

Kriya Arts: Hip

I like a traditional boozer: wood panels, carpet, functioning jukebox, and a decent sherry. So it’s no surprise that the Heart and Hand in Brighton’s North Laine has long been a favourite. Years ago I noticed a framed poem on the wall; odd, I thought, it doesn’t quite suit the rest of the décor.

Now, thanks to Jolie Booth’s forensic and enlightening piece, I have knowledge not just of the poet, Lee Harwood (check his Guardian obituary) but also his muse. The poem, titled ‘The Heart and Hand, North Rd Brighton, for Ann’ [sic], is dedicated to one Anne Clark and it is Anne’s world that we’ll inhabit for too short a time tonight.

The show starts outside the Marlborough Theatre, as a promenade with a nod to psychogeography: ‘Here is the Clocktower, here is Pizza Hut.’ Jolie is our tour leader, telling the story of how she squatted a Brighton flat in 2002.

We follow her inside and quietly up the narrow stairs, and enter a 1970s counter-culture happening, with the audience as guests at a bohemian party. Jolie performs a little ceremony, Rumi is recited, incense burned, and we summon the previous occupant of the flat who died four years earlier. Here comes Anne Clark, whose possessions remain in situ: diaries, letters, artwork, records. Jolie rescued the ephemera of Anne’s life from the bailiffs and it has become central to her life now, as a maker of interactive theatre. The setting is spot-on, with a lava-lamp, floor cushions, Little Feat on the gramophone, cheese and pineapple on sticks. There is subtle and evocative lighting and effective use of a hand-held torch – it’s a squat after all.

Once settled, and with the spirit of Anne now present, Jolie begins to show us what the bundles of correspondence left behind reveal, about a woman and a life. We get to feel the yellowing paper of her many letters to friends and family; some of us read passages aloud. An overhead projector magnifies a court summons (unlawful behaviour on the Victoria Gardens) and photographs of the pubs Anne frequented. Most revealing is a timeline Jolie has compiled from thorough reading of the diaries. They show a big gap in knowledge for the last twenty years of Anne’s life; what happened? There are parallels too with Jolie’s own life and experience, as she’s also a longtime diary writer and they actually used the same brand. She tells us that such coincidences appear daily, as if she has triggered something, something connecting her to Anne. People Anne worked with, at Avalon Bookshop, or Wax Factor, provide new background. Her daughter has been in touch. The landlady of the Heart and Hand is coming to see the show.

It’s impossible not to be moved by the stories and the gradual piecing together of a history. We get to choose subjects for deeper exploration from bags labelled Hedonism, Work, Mother, Travel, and more. There’s a description of a proper 1970s threesome, photos of her working at Infinity Foods, a poem about dusting – or rather, not dusting.

Jolie is the perfect host, gently authoritative, in control of her material yet slightly in awe of it. As performance it is fascinating to watch and be part of, and there are some nice directorial touches – the eponymous hip-bone gets used as a telephone, a vibrator becomes a flute (Emma Kilbey and Brian Lobel contributed to the making process.)

Jolie describes the show as ‘ultra-real theatre’ by which she means that the audience is welcome to use their phones, move about, and interrupt as they wish. In this environment there is little opportunity for conversation and the action is quite tightly controlled. It’s a shame, because there is so much more to discover and to share.

We’ll just have to repair to the wood-panelled, carpeted, multi-gendered bar of the Marlborough pub instead. Jolie proclaims, over a Tequila toast to Anne Clark, ‘thank you for trailblazing your way through life.’ In an age of instant communication and fleeting memories, Hip is a hugely enjoyable, engaging and at times profound reflection on what we create and what we leave behind.

Nando Messias: The Sissy’s Progress

As we enter the theatre space in dim light, we see a figure on the stage, sitting on a chair. A body, a human body. A male human body. An ‘effeminate’ male human body. Attributes noted: long legged, skinny ribbed, strong bone structure, light brown skin. Almost naked, dressed just in red underpants, red high heels and red lipstick. Dark hair is pulled up into a bun: not a man bun, a ballerina’s bun. He looks a little bit like Pina Bausch, and his body might just as well be illuminated with a sign that says ‘trained dancer’. I feel OK about using the word effeminate, I think, because Nando Messias does in his writings about his work. He, she, they want to stake out the territory for the effeminate male body, feeling that there is a need within the discussions on transgender to promote the choice to stay within one physical body (in this case, biologically of the male sex) whilst considering oneself to be gendered as the other (in this case, female).

Gosh, he hasn’t done anything yet, he’s just sitting there quietly, and already there’s tons to think about and write about. I could go on, but let’s get on with the show.

The first solo section in The Sissy’s Progress is one of stylised movement on and around the chair; a choreography of gestural motifs that are repeated, built upon, exaggerated. Legs extend and return; hands run down the face or the body; the face moves into anguished poses, then recovers; the hairpins are pulled out, and the hair tugged and tormented. The body slumps over and is wrenched up. It is intense, and at moments it is close to painting a picture of self-abuse. Meanwhile, a nagging soundtrack repeats phrases over and over again, a demoralising litany of bitchy put-downs.

A team of five tuxedo’d men arrive unexpectedly, one at a time. The performer’s body looks extra-naked posed next to the suits; extra effeminate juxtaposed so starkly with men wearing the uniform of the real man: the James Bond tuxedo. Shaken or stirred?

There is ambivalence in this protagonist and chorus relationship. The men are ostensibly helping, solicitous but with an uncomfortable undercurrent. They put the ballgown on the performer’s body, but at this moment the body is topsy turvy, upside down in a head-stand, so the dress sits over the body with feet sticking out where the head should be. It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world. Once dressed h/she performs a kind of Isadora Duncan inspired elegantly desperate dance for her onlookers, who eye her up ambivalently. There is some ensemble movement work which once again invokes thoughts of Pina Bausch.

Eventually, the artist speaks, asking us to follow as s/he leads off the stage and down the steps, wearing the ballgown, and a fluffy stole decorated with balloons, and we end up outside. There follows a celebratory march through the streets around the Marlborough Theatre to the tune of a brass band, the Brighton Pavilion forming a backdrop. This is all good fun, but perhaps doesn’t have the resonance it did when performed in the East End of London, at the very site where Nando Messias was attacked by a group of five men – for The Sissy’s Progress is an artistic response to that real-life experience, ten years in the making. Or at least, mused upon for many years whilst the artist thought up the response that felt the best. This being Kemptown on the opening day of the Brighton Festival, there is already a carnivalesque feel to the streets, and competition on the party dress front. We pass a beauty clad head-to-toe in gold lamé, someone in a red net tutu sporting wings, and various people in dayglo wigs. It feels right and good, and ultra-safe – but it is worth remembering that even jolly old Brighton, the gay capital on England, is not without its share of homophobic attacks – a fact documented and reflected on in another recent Pink Fringe event at the Marlborough, Kate Shields and Rosanna Cade’s The Safety Map project.

The attack on Nando is acted out within the piece in many ways, sometimes obliquely, for example in the image of the five men circling the artist with ambivalent intention; sometimes in highly abstracted movement motifs that express fear and self-doubt in the face of attack; and sometimes in rather more dramatic and obvious image or action. The artist wisely never reverts to naturalistic acting for herself or her chorus, but there’s a point where it suddenly almost ‘gets real’ and this is carried through with great finesse.

Brazilian performance artist / dancer Nando Messias has created a powerful show, uniting the personal and the political, and proving that vital and engaging political performance can be created with visual imagery and physical action. The message is written on and by the body.

Laurie Anderson: Music for Dogs

So here we are in the queue. Me and Ernie the pug, my doggie companion for the evening, plus his human, Eliza. Ernie makes great noises, almost like talking or singing, a kind of wild monkey-chatter yap. Next to us is Tati, a small and rather elderly lady doggie who stands with dignified poise as passing dogs sniff her bottom. A big-pawed spaniel puppy called Angus is with a human friend who has borrowed him for the evening. He’s pretty wriggly and excited by it all. We’re leafleted by a woman who is putting on an artists’ open house called The Dog Show – eleven artists showing dog-inspired art.

Behind us and in front of us are dogs of all shapes and sizes and colours. Quiet dogs and loud dogs. Jumpy dogs and sniffy dogs. Jittery dogs and calm dogs. As we file in to take our places in the tiered auditorium that is Brighton Open Air Theatre, I look around. Wow! So many dogs all together in one place. What an extraordinary thing. Someone is selling doggy treats. Owners are chatting about their dogs’ diets and habits. I overhear someone say that chihuahuas always have trouble with their teeth, so his dog has had her teeth removed.

There are interesting waves of sound. A bass note from a big dog who barks almost continuously; a mid-range mulch of intermittent barks; and peaking top notes provided by the yaps and barks of all the smaller dogs. Sometimes there’s a lull and sometimes a bark is picked up on and a chorus of barks builds. The twilight bark and then some. It’s great – a marvellous doggy symphony. And this is all before Laurie Anderson has even stepped out onto the stage.

And here she is! Just Laurie, a smile on her face, ‘tape-bow’ electric violin in hand. She moves to the mic behind the keyboard which is set up under the awning. She thanks Brighton Festival and she thanks BOAT founder Adrian Bunting, whose ashes are right there, buried in the centre of the stage area, she tells us. She welcomes all the dogs, and has a special few words for the excitable terriers in the audience. I feel slightly sorry that my grand-dog Mabel, a little terrier that I’m sure Laurie would notice and love, is not with me. Apparently she doesn’t get on with other dogs too well (she lives with four cats so maybe she thinks she’s a cat), so it was felt best not to bring her.

And so, although we’ve already had a pretty full-on immersive experience in the arrival and settling in, the concert proper starts.

Music for Dogs is very much what it says on the (dog food) can. It is music, and it is for dogs. But it is also music by dogs. And of course it is for us humans too. A shared experience. Close to the start of the concert, Laurie repeats the story referenced in the publicity. She was backstage at one of her own concerts, looking out at the crowd, and she said to a colleague: ‘Wouldn’t it be great if you were playing a concert and you look out and everyone’s a dog.’

Being Laurie Anderson, pioneer performance artist who loves a new idea, and a renowned dog-lover, her word became action. Or almost, maybe ideally she’d like just dogs, no humans? The first Music for Dogs concert was at Sydney Opera House in 2010, footage of which featured in Laurie’s Brighton Festival show in May 2015, and again in Heart of a Dog (the beautiful film about the later life and death of her own beloved terrier, Lolabelle, seen in Cinecity 2015). I vowed to myself then that I must get to see this concert. The second Music for Dogs was in January this year at Times Square, in her hometown of New York. The third is this appearance at Brighton Festival 2016, one of a number of shows and events curated by and/or performed by the artist (she is this year’s guest artistic director).

It lasts for twenty minutes, which feels about right. The compositions played include the regular Anderson sounds of treated violin, synth/keyboards, and vocals that fall somewhere between spoken word poetry and song, although at altered frequencies to be especially dog-friendly, with some sections featuring sounds that are only audible to the canine ear. Being human, I can’t say exactly when those occur, but there are certainly moments when most of the dogs seem to prick up their ears and stare intensely at the stage area. There is a lovely moment when she suggests that when speaking to your dog, you might like to change your voice – and demonstrates this with her trademark vocoder (or whatever technology it is these days) which brings her voice down a couple of octaves to a deep and rich growl.

Ernie has by now settled down on his human’s lap, quietly listening with ears pulled back. But Eliza and her partner are musicians, so he’s used to sitting in the corner of the rehearsal room or music studio; it’s all familiar territory for him. Nick Cave is behind us, and his dog is quiet too, so there you go. Tati is also very quiet. I’ve never seen her so attentive, says her human, Nicky – who thinks that Tati would like the other dogs to be quiet and listen to Laurie.

Occasionally we get snippets of stories familiar from other Laurie Anderson shows, or from Heart of a Dog. We hear that when Lolabelle got old, she went blind, and she found this very upsetting, until she was encouraged by Laurie and her partner Lou Reed (who is never mentioned by name, just part of a gently inclusive ‘we’ in the storytelling) to play the piano. She says this as if it’s a kind of normal thing to happen. This is the third of fourth time I’ve heard this story from Laurie Anderson’s lips, live or filmed, but I smile anew on each hearing. She has the classic storyteller’s ability to repeat a story exactly as was before, no embellishment, but as if telling it for the first time. People came round to their home to hear Lolabelle play, she says. I imagine it as a kind of Victorian salon evening.

There is also a very nice little interlude where humans who feel that they look like their dogs are invited to stand up and be recognised. A whippet-thin girl to my right stands up with her greyhound. Yep. Over the other side, a wiry white-and-grey haired woman with lots of energy leaps up with her – yes – perky white-and-grey wire-haired terrier.

At the beginning of the concert, Laurie has promised that the dogs will get a chance to really sound off and join in – and now is the moment. Big dogs, medium-sized dogs, and small dogs all get a turn. Laurie barks at the required pitch to help them out. It kind of works out, although there are a few rebels who just bark all the time, and some who just sit back and watch and listen.

Then suddenly it’s over. Humans applaud, dogs bark. A jazz trio takes to the stage to play exit music, which sounds good but perhaps a little redundant, as the evening feels complete, and no-one pays them much attention.

And off we go into the twilight, a happy bunch of creatures who have come together for a very special experience. It feels an honour to have been there.

Total Theatre