UnderPinned: Unfashionably Great

This was originally published in UnderPinned: https://underpinned.co/2019/03/unfashionably-great/

Welcome back to the culture clinic, Freelancers!

Now that it’s March, what do we have to show for the month gone? Sweaty underarms and upper lips? A light smattering of unseasonal freckles from some unwelcome solar radiation? If only we’d paid attention to the desperate banners of Extinction Rebellion at London Fashion Week, we might have noticed the rising climes culminating in that record-breaking 20-degree heat, craftily dubbed ‘Fabruary’ in Britain’s Tabloids.

What disproportionately dominated the news cycle in this season’s Fashion Week was instead the loss of a Lagerfeld. In his lifetime, the self-described ‘fashion nymphomaniac’ was a deeply polarising figure. Lagerfeld openly criticised open-door immigration policies, fat women, women who weren’t Mothers and Russian men; in between arduous shifts of shouting at people and wearing expensive cloaks. He dubbed the art of selfie-taking “Electronic Masturbation”, called ugly people “Very depressing”, and declared that “Whoever wears running pants has lost control over his life.”

As someone sheepishly donning a pair of trousers speckled with patches of dried mayonnaise, I am, for all intents and purposes, an unfashionable and thoroughly depressing individual. Luckily, Lagerfeld is no longer here to scorn my muffin-top, split-ends and reprehensible pantaloons. Ecological emergencies and problematic pin-ups aside, I’m here to plate up this fortnight’s cultural picks for the gloriously ugly, pseudo-intellectual, fashionably antiquated masses.

In an ode to the fashion icon’s distrust of intellectual activity (‘I hate intellectual conversation with intellectuals because I only care about my opinion’), I damn hope you’re ready for some opinions.

For those of you who feel the same as myself – that is, grossly undereducated on the world of fashion – where better to take yourself than on an informative excursion to the V&A for a Q&A with master fashion designer Norma Kamali and style editor Gianluca Longo? While you’re there, the V&A is also hosting a sold-out retrospective of Christian Dior from 1947 to present day, named, ‘Designer of Dreams’.

If that’s still a bit too coordinated for your fantastically mismatched wardrobe, Hampton Court Palace have their golden mitts on the costumes from Yorgos Lanthimos’ Academy Award-winning The Favourite until the 10th March. Get your money’s worth and smear your greasy fingers on the glass panels, and maybe, hopefully, we can absorb some of the glamour via osmosis.

For full throttle, unadulterated glam, take your queerest gowns to The Vaults’ Underbar this Saturday on the 2nd March. If that doesn’t satiate your drag needs, continue the party into the early hours at Dalston Superstore’s disco drag brunch on Sunday morning. As their website boasts, we can anticipate “all flavours of drag nonsense”. The cherry on top of this camp trio must surely be followed by a trip to the Battersea Arts Centre for an operatic vision of the socialite, designer, model, businesswoman and stalwart late capitalist, Kourtney Kardashian. I’m not being hyperbolic – It’s an opera, following on from 2016’s ballet Kim Kardashian.

Veering further away from the righteous path of fashionable, snap-able art, steer your wagons over to Dorothea Tanning’s exhibition at the Tate Modern, running until the 9th June.

If Tanning’s low-lit, mangled surrealist fantasies aren’t leftfield enough for your appetites, then try Austrian artist Fraz West’s retrospective at the Tate Modern; a Captain of absurdity and an all-around kook with a fondness for cosmic paper-mache sculptures, inviting onlookers to extend a curious hand.

Let’s at least try to meet in the middle somewhere between on-trend and outmoded with Max Porter’s newest lit-fic offering Lanny (Faber & Faber, 07/03/19), hotly following his debut Grief is the Thing With Feathers. I’ve been impatiently pacing in waiting for the opening of the Barbican’s theatrical adaptation (25-03-19). Elation is anything with Cillian Murphy.

For a safe bet, pick up a copy of one of VICE journalist Joel Golby’s essay collection, Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant: Modern Life as Interpreted by Someone Who is Reasonably Bad at Living it. It’s been flying off the shelves in its first week of publication and going off first hand-experience, is very popular with ASOS employees. Golby holds very little back which makes for a deliciously chucklesome collection of brazenly honest articles, many of which have previously been published online to popular acclaim.

But hell, if you’d rather subscribe to carbon-guzzling fast fashion, slick white ponytails and run-of-the-mill pulp, that’s fine too.

Image credit: Oscar Price

UnderPinned: Culture To Ease Your Stress

Originally published here: https://underpinned.co/2019/03/culture-to-ease-your-stress/

Stress occupies a spectral position in the life of a freelancer. It waits in the wings and heckles you when the realities of juggling multiple jobs knock you for ten. When ignored, it can manifest horribly. What’s equally sickening is that our fantasies of stress-free living are repackaged and sold back to us in the pages of self-help books with shouty titles, in lattes garnished with CBD oil, Gin and Chronicsand cannabis flavoured gummies sponsored by celestial avant-garde Icelanders Sigur Rós.

Writing on anxiety, the bedfellow of unmoderated stress, in Exposure (Peninsula Press), Olivia Sudjic describes the highs and lows of anxiety following the publication of her debut novel,

Sympathy. Sudjic finds solace in a ritualistic consultation of horoscopes, an act which she feels equips her with ‘Some sense of preparedness, despite not believing in it.’ She continues, ‘At my worst, I see danger everywhere because I am trying to anticipate it. I feel waves of dread, nausea and then that thing lodged in my chest that makes it hard to breathe,’ [p.27]. One of the key contributing factors to this untethered sense of paranoid anxiety, Sudjic diagnoses, is the phenomenon of internet transparency which pervades social media and social interactions.

It’s the assumption that you’re ever-ready, refreshing your emails every 5-10 minutes; That you’ll have an active social media presence and won’t ignore your boss’ texts. She resolves: ‘Greater intrusion. Greater anxiety,’ [p.76]. Whilst Sudjic is quick to place the blame on intrusive technologies as dangerous contributors to the proliferation of stress and anxiety, the internet is equally and undoubtedly a positive space for forging communities and candidly discussing experiences of mental health. This week’s stress-busting cultural tip-offs are intended to soothe and decompress the busy freelancer, but needless to say, they’re hardly medicine. If you feel like your stress is tipping past the point of manageability, please do seek help.

Well done for making it through the week! Welcome to Friday! You’ve been labouring on fifteen simultaneous projects and you’re aching for an evening activity. For the logophiles amongst you, The Vaults are hosting an unmissable evening of poetry with the longstanding collective, ‘Bang Said the Gun.’ Their previous special guests have included poets such as Roger McGough, Kate Tempest, Andrew Motion and Hollie McNish and they boast a confident tagline which promises to appease even the biggest poetic cynics: ‘POETRY FOR PEOPLE WHO DON’T LIKE POETRY.’

For a fur-full and alcohol-free Saturday, The Blue Cross Animal Hospital in Collier’s Wood is hosting an open day with the opportunity to meet the vets as well as acquaint yourself with their four-legged colleagues. Hospital tours are £2 and the warm glow inside your chest is thoroughly gratis. If your own cat gets wind of your activities and starts leaving agitated voicemails asking when you’ll be home, perhaps you should administer a dose of Hemp Oil For Pets™ for ‘separation anxiety, less scratching, stress relief, arthritis support and increased appetite’.

Sunday morning blearily rears its head, you’re desperate for the company of an undisclosed number of small dogs and your jean pockets are weighed down with 35 shiny pound coins. Don’t think twice- sling your trousers and slip on your hareem pants for Puppy Yoga. Is the yogi a Yorkie? Quite frankly, I have none of the answers- the location is only disclosed following the purchase of your ticket.

If Sudjic is still on your mind this evening, head along to The Second Shelf for a collaborative event with Ache Magazine where the author will be in conversation with fellow writer Thea Hawlin, discussing ‘illness, health, bodies, and pain.’ Try a mindfulness playlist on the bus over, or perhaps just the opening verses of Julia Michaels’ ‘Anxiety’ ft. Selena Gomez, for a taste of ultra-transparently-woke Gen-Z poppery (‘My friends, they wanna take me to the movies/ I tell ’em to fuck off, I’m holding hands with my depression’). Take a deep breath and take care.

Image credit: Oscar Price

Theatre Review: The Wild Duck at The Almeida Theatre for UnderPinned.co

Nested in Islington’s prestigious Almeida, esteemed Director/ Producer/ General Golden-Child Robert Icke’s grizzly adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s 1884 play Wild Duck is nothing short of astonishing

CW: Graphic violence

-Words by Elinor Potts

The character of Gregory Woods (Kevin Harvey) greets us at the start of the play, a tortured sage who misanthropically lectures on the play’s central preoccupations, promising that “This is a true story”. After meeting his old school friend, James Ekdal (Edward Hogg), we quickly discover that the Woods and the Ekdals are tethered through a catalogue of complex relations which bind the two families. Furthermore, the memory of prison-time spent by James’ father due to Charles Woods’ financial scheming, still stings.

We return home with James to his pokey studio apartment where Icke paints a quaint portrait of familial love. James’ wife, Gina (Lyndsey Marshal) and their cherished child, Hedwig (Clara Read) are warm and chirpily optimistic despite living on the breadline with James’ father, Francis Ekdal (Nicholas Day). To escape the banality of his old age, Francis retires to the attic where he indulges in hunting sessions in a makeshift forest of old Christmas trees. Here lives the eponymous wild duck, and Francis recounts its remarkable backstory to his granddaughter, coaching Hedwig in the importance of survival in the face of adversity. Gregory Woods listens on, and we soon learn of his mental illness as his deliriously prosaic speeches become increasingly absorbed in self-hatred. He babbles, “I have something I need to do here, which is to open their eyes”.

The expositional first act feels tender and Icke’s renovated dialogue from 18th century Norwegian-Danish is perfectly matched with an excellent cast who deliver rousing and thoroughly real performances. A microphone is strategically used throughout the play to deliver glacial asides, as well as marking ‘END SCENE’; a seemingly innocent creative decision used to fiendish effect in the play’s final scene.

The second half mercilessly lifts the veil of domestic cosiness and revels in the anarchy. The security of love is erased brick by brick and as reality dissolves, so does linguistic and semiotic certainty. As Gina finally admits, “I don’t know if I love you, I don’t know what other people mean when they say those words”. Before the final bloody blow of the denouement, Gina and James embrace and slow dance to a gentle ballad. As the ceiling of the Ekdal’s home recedes from view, we are given a momentary glimpse into the utopian realm of the wild duck’s home, a fantastical vision of Roald Dahl-esque childhood escape with callous calm. Icke’s incredible production of Wild Duck warns us of the power that ill-intended fiction can wield over reality. Like walking away from a car crash, you will leave the auditorium with your ears ringing.

The Wild Duck runs at The Almeida Theatre until December 1st. Tickets are available here.

Review, Stories at the National for UnderPinned.co

https://underpinned.co/2018/11/theatre-review-stories-at-the-national/

Writer Nina Raine attempts to tackle a delicate subject with Stories, but fails to find a way to contribute anything new to the discussion around single parenthood

-Words by Elinor Potts

On face value, Stories at the National Theatre is a play which deconstructs the myths around single motherhood and archetypal notions of family. It is a sad reality that Stories achieves none of this and is propelled by convention and the tiresome thesis that Mother + Father = Good, Single Mother = Bad, Gay Parents= Fickle and Absent.

The play follows the story of hapless late-thirty-something singleton Anna (Claudie Blakley), who, after a string of unsuccessful relationships in her twenties, settles down to have a child with her boyfriend who gets cold feet shortly before going through with IVF. She is an upstanding actress with a strong sense of family, Christian values, and a divine plan which has her firmly placed at the centre of the universe. God’s presence in the play lends to the idea that Anna’s fate is predestined and is overtly referenced as Anna’s brother muses, ‘If God does exist, I don’t think he’s the plot- I think he’s the lighting’, whilst the characters are lit from a single stage light.

There is a cyclical narrative where we first meet the prospective sperm donor, a bumbling artist in baggy clothes, who anxiously offers Anna a bunch of inappropriately symbolic chrysanthemums. Soon, we are confronted with the boorish conservatism of Anna’s father (Stephen Boxer), a shouty, self-involved old man who is particularly fond of cheap racial stereotypes and sperm jokes (‘West Ghanaian… Israeli… sounds like a sheepdog!’). Anna is also disheartened by the bank’s inability to appease her racial preferences and asks, ‘Who’s going to stop me going into a barbershop in New Cross and having a one night stand with a Nigerian?’

The outmoded humour quickly becomes tedious, albeit, with an excellent, multifaceted performance from Sam Troughton as the various romantic interests including a drug-dealing DJ, a misanthropic Northern Irish actor, and a tea-brewing Tory, who, despite not wanting to become a father, romanticises the notion as he pontificates, ‘I was actually reading Knausgaard… the passage where he describes the birth of his child… I was in tears.’ Anna’s father champions a narrow-minded perception of parenthood which discredits any female experience and bemoans Anna’s biological ‘enslavement’, in, “I find it frustrating that women have this biological urge to sign themselves up to what is essentially slavery.”

What is truly frustrating about Stories is that it had the potential to be so much more than it is. Rather than opening up a conversation around unconventional family constructions, it is a moralistic fable which upholds the presence of mother and father above all else. A throw-away secondary narrative flashes back to the character of Natasha, Anna’s landlady (Margot Leicester) during Anna’s footloose and sex-filled twenties.

It’s crushingly cliched, as Natasha confesses the ‘regret’ of her miscarried children whilst on her deathbed. Later, a singular account of an unhappy sperm-donor child in the third act acts as the play’s master narrative which condemns the conception of Anna’s child through sperm donation as ‘wrong’, due to an inevitable ‘identity crisis’. Ultimately, she returns to the avenue of ‘natural’ conception with a man she hasn’t met on the internet and the story concludes as we see Anna smiling knowingly to herself, thumbing a plastic container of spunk.

Cool Brother Zine: live review: fat white family at citadel

Written for publication in Cool Brother magazine:
https://www.coolbrother.co.uk/single-post/fat-white-family/citadel

Toiling against Acton's unrelenting midsummer heat, we found South London’s naughtiest musical collective, Fat White Family. Frontman Lias Kaci Saoudi took to the main stage set at London’s Citadel festival decked in cargo shorts and a white tee, fated for a mid-set decoration with splashes of beer, cigarette ash and sweat. 

In their earlier days, the band showed a predilection for flagrant nudity and on-stage masturbation, with the New York Post claiming that the Peckham bevy once performed covered in faeces. Thankfully, they seem to have scrubbed up on basic hygiene and socially acceptable presentation as Saoudi enacted a pre-gig freshen-up, moodily airing his pits before 'Auto Neutron' kicked off the afternoon’s jaunt through the six-piece’s lip-curling repertoire, heavy wafts of post-punk mingling with the plumes of a punter’s cigar smoke (it was that kind of clientele). A deliriously full sound, Saoudi characteristically thrashed to the sound of a rogue tenor saxophone. After the afternoon’s anti-climax of indie darlings The Horrors [they turned up twenty minutes late, then proceeded to stubbornly perform only three songs for their main stage slot], it was heartening to be reintroduced to FWF's reinvigorated punk presence as they deservingly graced the main stage.

It's easy to spot the band's influences (The Violent Femmes, The Fall,) but they're keen to distance themselves from contemporaries such as Slaves or The Arctic Monkeys. 'Tinfoil Deathstar' follows, succeeded by 'I Am Mark E. Smith' and 'Heaven on Earth.' 'Cream of the Young' riles the onlookers into a sticky, brawling agglomeration of moshing bodies, the chorus nicely substituting as a chant since 'Football's coming home' was soured by Columbia's fancy footwork.

"We'd like to dedicate this song to the boys in the band!" Saoudi purrs, before launching into a fired-up rendition of 'Special Ape,' flexing the Cockney syllables as he asks nonsensically, satirically, "Why do you look at me up in lying on my bed on my right?", still bopping with a tinnie in-hand. ‘Whitest Boy on the Beach’ of Trainspotting T2 fame is next, incrementally punkier but undoubtedly pared back in light of their naked scandals and the regulations of being booked for a mid-afternoon main stage set on the Sabbath day in West London. The afternoon’s orderly anarchism comes to an end with ‘Touch the Leather,’ the final jewel in the sweaty, sticky crown. 

Theatre Review for UnderPinned freelancing magazine: Wise Children at the Old Vic

Written for publication at UnderPinned.co:
https://underpinned.co/2018/10/theatre-review-wise-children-at-the-old-vic/

CW: On-stage suggestions of sexual abuse, miscarriage, and incest.

Reworking Angela Carter’s 1991 novel Wise Children, Emma Rice’s theatrical imagining of the text is an explosive ode to the carnivalesque and a sensuous, bohemian feast of a pantomime. It’s a haunted fairytale which explores the shades between good and evil with darker moments offset by nostalgic musical numbers. The scene is a Brixton car-park in 1989 and our protagonists are twin sisters Dora and Nora Chance, accompanied by a gaggle of pastel-coloured mime artists and leggy thespians. A live band play a bewitching score in an alcove behind the centre-stage caravan and beneath the bulb-lit lettering of ‘Wise Children’, keeping guard of the pair. We meet the sisters on the day of their 75th birthday when they are unexpectedly delivered with an invitation to a birthday party from their estranged father, the actor Melchior Hazard. ‘There may be trouble ahead!’ the company croons, and the narrative sketches their complex and adulterous lineage, through which we meet a diverse host of eccentric and extraordinary members.

The importance of Shakespeare to the text is an intriguing thread which certainly feels appropriate given the timings of Rice’s departure from the Globe theatre. There’s a disdain for convention and a playful approach to gender and role-swapping with Ankur Bahl playing both the young Melkior and, later, the bratty female RADA student with whom Melchior has an affair. Katy Owen’s portrayal of the bawdy Grandma Chance is particularly worthy of praise and nothing short of comic brilliance. She has a stubborn disposition and as the parental guardian of the young girls, she spends her days drinking stout and delivering life lessons to the girls, most of which are conducted whilst Owens dons a plump (nude) fat suit with tastefully bejewelled areola and pubic region. The play’s set and costume design, overseen by Vicki Mortimer, is a visual pleasure, wonderfully camp and charmingly mismatched; wigs poorly fixed with sagging lace-fronts; ungodly high-waisted trousers and lashings of gender-bending and breaking. The musical number at the beginning of the second act confirms this as they sing, “Girls will be boys when they want their own way . . . there’s a sudden realization at the end of the play, that we’re all a bit distracted by the choice of passageway!”. This is Rice at her absolute finest.

Theatre Review for UnderPinned freelancing magazine; Mrs Dalloway at the Arcola

Written for publication at UnderPinned.co :
https://underpinned.co/2018/10/mrs-dalloway-at-the-arcola-theatre/

This adaptation of Virginia Wolf’s Mrs Dalloway isn’t for everyone. For some, it is a chaotic and claustrophobic clamour of self-indulgent Modernism. For others, it is a chaotic and claustrophobic clamour of self-indulgent Modernism. Attending to Virginia Woolf’s essay ‘Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Brown’, Hal Coase deduces that the text’s primary occupation is that of character formation, with an eye to Woolf’s distrust of “theatrical moments which might deliver the ‘final’ truths of life”. Drawing upon the rich catalogue of writings on and by Woolf, her eccentric creations are tastefully draped in muted beige linens with a background of white drapes. It’s minimalist to the extent that it habitually relies on narrative descriptions to project the image of London. Coase’s refusal to wholly visualise the setting is an abstract and painterly decision which is in keeping with the expressively experimental sentiment of the text but is also, albeit, a little lazy.

Before we meet Clarissa (Clare Perkins), the rest of the cast sketch her character by listing her traits until they grow restless at the redundancy of language and limits of knowledge. “There is never enough of someone to make a judgement”, they surmise. The four cast members disperse like birds into the four corners of the room, playing metropolitan ‘found-sound’ on cassette players in a contemporary flourish. Thus, the character of Clarissa Dalloway is born, clutching (fake) flowers, which she bought herself, against an Yves-Klein-blue canvas; one of few temporal markers. Later, a cloudier canvas is brought out to indicate the fading light.

There are several instances of wrongly executed and misspoken lines and the shaky synchronisation feels indicative of insufficient rehearsal. Despite this, there is a supremely accomplished and nuanced performance from Moody who brings surprisingly humorous tones to the characters of Miss Killman and Mrs William Bradshaw. D’Arcy’s monologue as Rezia is also worthy of note, her musical Italian timbre summoning audience tears as she pleads for her shell-shocked husband’s sanity. In its denouement, the play pulls together its aphoristic threads in the aftermath of Septimus’ death. “To love makes one solitary”, is one, “the people we are most fond of are no good for us when we are ill”. In this, the cynicism of Woolf’s earlier mentioned distrust for theatrically delivered truths is lost, operating more as moral lessons than sardonic phrases.

Whilst it might not be as beautiful as Woolf’s prose, Coases’ theatrical imagining of Mrs Dalloway must be credited for its ambition in adapting such a well-loved canonical Modernist text. The adaptation might not be a meticulous reiteration of the original, it’s every bit as cluttered and befuddled as urban life has always been.