Macbeth's got Shakesappeal

Today I watched a theatrical interpretation of Shakespeare's McGyver. No, Shakespeare's Matlock.  No, Shakespeare's Macbeth.  Ah yes, Macbeth.  The english speaking world spent hundreds of years trying to invent an easier language than that of Willy Shakes, and then along came the Bell Shakespeare Theatre Company and Translation Service and ruined everything, what with their spooky 16th century whisperer skills. 

If it wasn't for Mr Bell, I most definitely would have endured three long hours of what the fuck.  I caught Bell Shakespeare's excellent version of Julius Caesar last year, and I can safely say that any future dealings I have with Willy Shakes will be through their interpretative channels.  In fact it's a constant struggle for me to refrain myself from travelling back in time and whacking Mr Shakespeare with his era's version of a tazer gun.

I don't completely despise his sonnets, its just that the speech is so polite and deferential and neverending as to make no sense whatsoever.  Bell Shakespeare maintain the exquisite use of language, but cut much of the excessive wordiness for which Willy Shakes is famous, and which usually, unfortunately, put me into a voluntary induced coma.

It's interesting that the arts world have a desperate desire to maintain the historical significance of ye ole Shakespeare playeths, yet the only way they can do this is by creating theatre companies as a means of translating the playwright's brilliant yet mostly incomprehensibly complex verbal diarrhoea for the world; most of who couldn't care less either way.

The ancient Egyptians also heavily cached what they had for breakfast and tedious descriptions of how they weaved cloth and what style of sandal they wore to beat up their slaves, Bell Shakespeare, so why you not translate their hieroglyphs?  I suppose the answer is fairly simple: where for art thou marketing opportunities for an Egyptian kid patting a gazelle?

That's right - there aren't any.  If the ancient Egyptians wanted to be lauded they should have spent far more time having rampant sex with the king's consort and engaging in unbridled class war murders and dirty little regicides.  Oh wait, they did.  I think they built some stuff too.

I must admit, the only Shakesappeal for me with the old bard is that he wrote of murder and manipulation and psychological torture, minion versus minion, and death and lying and cheating all over the place, and most characters possess a minimum of around eight personality disorders, so it's right up my alley in terms of entertainment.

The Tragedy of Macbeth reminds me a lot of Australian politics.  A Red Queen receives a prophecy from three witch-like Independents that one day she will win the next election?  A storyline ripe with tyranny, bloodbaths, arrogance, madness, guilt, violence et cetera et cetera?  The backbenches are alive with the sound of people screaming?  Who says Julia doesn't have any Shakesappeal.

With Ms Gillard's current push to fan the flames of a non-existent class war in this country, of which she is desperately trying to construct, I am surprised that she isn't trying get the kindy kids reading Shakespeare sonnets rather than wasting their time learning how to finger paint.

Bogan 'Moth' Pride

What is bright orange, about three stories high and has absolutely no point whatsoever? Just another of the utterly frightful artworks that the ACT Government in Canberra has commissioned, that’s what. No-one knows why these dreadful arty (see: ugly) things keep popping up all over the city, but one thing is clear; the local government is deadset keen on making this entire city one of the leading eyesores of the world.

Talentless artist, Alexander Knox, is responsible for the latest shrine to all-that-is-wrong-with-the-art-world. His work on the side of Drakeford Drive in Tuggeranong pays homage to the bogong moth community, who annually choose Canberra as a stopover on their journey to somewhere more interesting, probably due to the excellent rent on roof crevices, the low crime stats among moth youth and the fact that our major public buildings leave a light on all night.


Intepretative moth dance

Creating a monument that celebrates a major pest that causes significant damage to the economy and infrastructure is an interesting approach to roadside artwork. I don’t know why they just don’t put up a big photo montage of Julia Gillard and save everyone any confusion.

Although I imagine the only damage this giant mutant insect will cause will be a couple of car accidents. And car accidents never hurt nobody. Oh. Wait a minute. I don’t think that’s right.

Why do they keep erecting mammoth artwork that will cause a fucking car accident? Even a person from Queanbeyan would know this is a dumb idea.  Texting while driving is illegal, but ginormous, brightly coloured insects with mutant eyes placed on the side of the road is perfectly fine, apparently, because they’re not fucking distracting at all.

The ACT Government continuously shove road safety campaigns down our throats, yet they continuously commission artwork throughout the city that takes our eyes off the road. I would have thought the most effective way to avoid an accident is to keep your eyes on the fucking road. But what do I know; I’m just a voter.

Unfortunately, I don’t think this profane tribute to icky insects is going to turn into a butterfly and flutter away any time soon.

Doctor WTF Symphony

Apparently you haven't lived until you've been to a Doctor Who symphony.  And after you've seen it you'll want to stick a hot poker in your eye and have your long-term memory bank fumigated so you never have to think about it ever again.  A Doctor Who what you ask?  Total fucking weirdness, that's what.

Last weekend I went to this little sound and light shebang about the time travelling Time Lord in Melbourne for two reasons.  The most persuasive reason is that I was more or less tricked into attending through smoke and mirrors and the sneaky, sneaky method of catching me offguard. 

LIFE LESSON #327: Stay alert at all times in case someone asks you to a Doctor Who Symphony.  The second reason is that I'd already paid, and it went for three hours, and at $23 per hour, $23 an hour is $23 an hour.  Everyone has a price, evidently I buckle for $23 an hour.
 
And anyway, I thought to myself, 'how bad can it be?', given that the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra had put their name and big brass band instruments to it.  Well, um, the orchestra was brilliant...
 
It absolutely did not help that I have no context of the current Doctor series to make any sense of what was going on, which pretty much sums up the whole three hours.  One long WTF.  It was hosted by a British dude who starred on the show as someone who did something.  I don't know, and don't particularly care either, but he was a pretty decent MC.  The conductor was highly annoying and spent his time conducting things and being overly dramatic and flicking his hair in time with the spooky music, which all sounded eerily similar.
 
One thing became abundantly clear to me during this crazyathon.  To be a respectable fantasy fiction actor, you need to be splendid at hand acting.  To do this you need to master the art of staring intently and nervously at your hand, turning it over, back and forth, very slowly, and then stare at it in horror as it turns into a burst of green noxious gas, or an alien life form, or a sonic screwdriver (please don't ask). 

People who are naturally good at this are Doctor Who's.  People who are unnaturally good at this spend their weekends with their head jammed up a bong, or whatever appropriate terminology is used by substance abusers.  As an actor, if you can't master this simple yet valuable trick of the trade, then don't give up your night job waiting tables.  I can do it, but then I can do most things.

The daleks were there, and so were the cybermen.  No, I don't know what cybermen are either.  I do however know that all of Doctor Who's dirtiest, bitchiest enemies thoughout his weirdo history have had the crappiest peripheral vision known to man.  How they became known as formidable is anyone's guess, since it was easier for the D-Man to sneak up on them than a hearing-impaired beagle.

Don't even get me started on sonic screw drivers.  Some things need to remain blocked out.

Picasso, Shakespeare and the cultural elites

I recently spent a whole day with cultural elites, who think Picasso and Shakespeare are marvellous, inspired geniuses and their work is remarkable and breathtaking, and I learnt that cubism doesn't necessarily refer to the cryptic puzzle amazingness of Mr Rubik.  Picasso and Shakespeare are actually two artists largely responsible for the first widespread use of the term "WTF?" 

My first cultural appointment of the day was hanging at the Picasso exhibition in the NSW Art Gallery with the Pablo connoisseurs.  I don't really care for art, and I especially don't care for the kind of art that the pretentious cultural elites are referring to when they pompously spit out comments like, "you have to have an eye for Picasso".  Well fucking excuse me then.

A notable example from
Picasso's 'WTF' Collection

My mistake; I thought I was looking at the artwork of a psychologically damaged man who thinks strategically placed shapes on a canvas will entertain the elitists.  Oh, wait, it does.  I must admit that I appreciate his early work, when he was into the classics; before he got bored and depressed and started experimenting with cubes and odd shapes and chopped up guitars and human body parts. 

He seemed to have quite the eye for limbs separated from the human torso - a skill trauma surgeons and serial killers must have appreciated over the years.  I also observed a life-long obsession with goats - goats on the beach, a sculpture of a goat with a large appendage (perfect for the patio if you have the cash) and a naked man carrying a goat, to name but a few.  Yes it is weird, but it is art, so pipe down.

Apparently the deconstructed guitar is supposed to represent a journey through time, but I think it looks horribly ugly.  And I think a great deal of his later work is mediocre and also horribly ugly.  But listening to the loud know-it-alls on my tour through the his life's work, I heard a story of a man on an incredible journey, with many ups and downs, and I became far more intrigued with why his style changed at particular points in his life than the actual work itself.

And it occurred to me that this is surely why his work confuses the hell out of me; it is a representation of what must have been going on in his head.  Which makes the art critics who deconstruct the meaning of his work all the more absurd.

So, yeah, you do have to have an eye for Picasso; most telling, his canvases reveal that his many lovers apparently had three or more breasts, and noses where their eyes should be.  I'm glad my head isn't so screwed up that I can understand this excursion into his subconsciouness. 

My next cultural appointment of the day was attending the Bell Shakespeare's contemporary interpretation of Julius Caesar at the Sydney Opera House's Playhouse.  It's kind of funny that Shakespeare is considered to be the finest dramatist of all time, because anyone who has been forced to read or listen to any of his work will tell you that they can't understand a thing anybody is saying.

Bell Shakespeare produced an interpretation with much yelling and pontificating and chalk dust throwing (interpretative blood) and overblown theatrics and a girl in high heels played Cassius, like Shakespeare isn't confusing enough already.  But I very much liked it.  Art thou was not bored or confused that much at all.

The cultural left's aversion to Cirque

It must have been traumatising for Quentin Letts to have to review a performance of Cirque du Soleil, in this case the incredible Varekai.  Cirque does not really meet the criteria of ‘suffering’ for the arts that is important to be considered ‘art’ in the view of the cultural left.

They tend to have an aversion to anything with deep pockets & no doubt see Cirque as nothing more than an evil, capitalist cash cow. Because being a successful business in the arts field is EVIL. You have to suffer for your art or it not really art. Something along those lines, I don’t understand how their stupid little brains work.

Although it seems to me that Varekai would appeal to the cultural left. It definitely has one of the hallmarks of their precious postmodernism; like a fairly incomprehensible narrative! Not in a negative way, but in the sense that it is open to interpretation, which is a good thing.

I imagine Quentin sat there for the entire show, biting his nails, trying to find some plausible neo-feminist angle in the storyline on which to base his critique, the pompous twat. But he didn’t find one, so he denied there was any narrative (Cirque’s version wasn’t “intellectual” enough for him). Because fascinating, “intellectual” types like Quentin don’t do “spectacle”, they only do “art”.