How do you capture the scale, the struggle, the elemental extremity of mountain climbing? In the theatre? It’s simpler than you think. After all, they both use the same kit. Touching the Void is based on the true story of two young Brits attempting to scale a never-scaled face of the Siula Grande mountain in the Peruvian Andes. David Greig's adaptation has found its purest home in old … [Read more...]
Propwatch: the jukebox in ‘Master Harold’… and the boys
A jukebox offers choice upon choice. Dozens of records, stacked and ready for selection. Nestling between the palm court quartet and the corporate playlist, jukeboxes soundtracked café culture. Before the walkman, spotify and sodcasting, they let you decide your own mood music. Public yet personal, sweetly selfish – the jukebox flourished in the 1950s, the decade in which ‘Master Harold’… and the … [Read more...]
Propwatch: the invisible magnets in Little Baby Jesus
Most props, most props, you could hold them in your hand. A suitcase. A tooth. A (shudders) doll. They’re part of the pleasure of theatre, the imagination made palpable. But sometimes, sometimes they stay imaginary. In the stonkingly vivid production of Little Baby Jesus by Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu, who won this year’s JMK award for emerging directors, the props are imaginary but so real you’d … [Read more...]
Propwatch: the only types of prop in the world in The Antipodes
Once about the time there was a group of people, telling stories and talking about telling stories. They didn’t exactly know what stories they should tell, or why they were telling them, so they just sat round a big oval table under a big fancy light fitting, and kept riffing about mythic stories, and hearing each other’s personal stories, and not going home so they could continue talking about … [Read more...]
Propwatch: the pig’s head in Mephisto [A Rhapsody]
When historians of the future chronicle the last days of Britain, a pig’s head may enjoy its own footnote. Assuming that there are still historians, academic protocols or indeed anything resembling a future. That porker’s head supposedly shared a brief but intimate moment with former premier David Cameron: the alleged Juliet to his Romeo, the Isolde to his Tristan, the roll to his sausage and the … [Read more...]
Propwatch: the gloves in The Watsons
Does anyone still wear – gloves? Royals, of course, still consider them an essential element in the capsule wardrobe – anything to protect them from the clammy-handed flesh of the commonweal. Driving gloves suit men of a certain age and Rover-loving air of Alan Partridge. And commuters scatter single woolly numbers on public transport all through the winter. But a lady’s elegant, elbow-tweaking … [Read more...]
Propwatch: the bell in Amsterdam
Ping! There’s a bell on the desk in Amsterdam. The kind of calling-for-immediate-attention bell that invites a sharp smack with palm or finger, and drives Basil Fawlty to the very verge of derangement. Ping! It’s a comedy device – an indicator of short-fuse entitlement, an enhancer of retro-farce chaos. It retains its comic tinge in Amsterdam, by Israeli playwright Maya Arad Yasur; which is … [Read more...]
Propwatch: the photo album in Appropriate
In Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, her graphic memoir about her parents’ old age, the New Yorker cartoonist Ros Chast has some advice about hoarding. Don’t hold onto anything you don’t want your kids to have to sort through once you’re gone. In her case, plastic tchotchkes beyond number. In my case, look forward to old theatre programmes and a surprising quantity of wooden spoons. … [Read more...]
Propwatch: the kettle in The Doctor
Is a home without a kettle even a home? ‘Oh David, such a homemaker,’ sighed a visitor to my spartan university room, softened only by a kettle and the complete Arden Shakespeare. But the kettle was hospitality and self-care for a scaredy-cat student; even today it amplifies (and, on grouchy days, paves the way back towards) connection. A kettle is the first step towards home. In The Doctor – … [Read more...]
Propwatch: the takeaway cartons in the end of history…
I love food, but I love cooking even more. The shopping and chopping, the stirring and serving. Cooking for other people is a pleasure, a game, an expression of care. At heart, I’m a caterer. So it was remarkably upsetting to see food repeatedly announced yet never enjoyed in Jack Thorne’s new play the end of history… at the Royal Court. Each of the three acts – set a decade apart, from 1997 to … [Read more...]