What I Did on My holidays part 5: Dinosaurs, a bookshop, and a play by William Shakespeare

The final instalment in my fascinating account of time taken off work last September. The previous episode can be read here.

The next day my friend C— took me to Crystal Palace Park, where I saw the empty space left when the famous Crystal Palace burned down in the 1930s (it was very big) and more importantly the park's collection of dinosaurs. These are models made in the 19th century by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins under the direction of Richard Owen, at a time when dinosaur fossils first started being found in quantity, causing a sensation as they made plain that the world was much older than the Bible suggests and once contained strange animals not mentioned there. I've been fascinated by the Crystal Palace dinosaurs since first hearing about them as a child. Part of their charm comes from their reflecting a mid 19th century understanding of dinosaurs, with the animals being depicted in ways that do not reflect current views of them. As a result none of them are feathered and their colouring is fairly monochrome. Also, Hawkins and Owen made some choices about how the animals' bodies worked that would soon be out of step with scientific opinion, most famously depicting the iguanodons as four-legged and rather fierce looking when we know now they were bipedal herbivores. But there is a definite appeal to seeing the sculptures peeping out from behind bushes, and they do bring home how fucking enormous even small relatively dinosaurs like the iguanodon are.

Then into London, where on autopilot I did a circuit of the shops I typically visit in London: the LRB bookshop, Gosh comics, Sounds of the Universe, and Selectadisc. I bought nothing in these places as these days I find myself struck by the feeling of having too many records and comics, and in any case I don't really know if I actually like comics any more, and can never remember what I am looking for when I am in these places. Also it was hard not to shake the idea that everything these places were offering was available in Dublin, so why carry it all home? Nevertheless, I did stop for tea and cake in the LRB cakeshop (tasty, even if they are now using teabags (O Tempora! O Mores!)) and "availed of the facilities". I realise now that I forgot to check out Fopp, whose prominent display of mid-price CDs might have tempted me, as might their range of DVDs (I've been thinking for a while now I'd like to pick up a copy of problematic Doctor Who fave The Talons of Weng Chiang). But I did my bit to keep the London retail economy going in Foyles, where I picked up two things I have been looking for in vain here in Dublin: William Godwin's Caleb Williams, which I intend to reveal as the next subject of our gothic book club, and (from the handy music shop that nestles within Foyles) Glassworks by Philip Glass.

In the evening I met two old pals from the Bowlie Forum (one of whom is also one of my Frank's APA buds). We discussed the Frank's festival divide (Le Guess Who v. Primavera) and I did find myself wondering whether we might need to set up a festival exchange programme. Then I had to rush off to the Globe Theatre for a performance of As You Like It, one of those Shakespeare plays featuring cross-dressing. In this one as well as having female characters disguising themselves as men for reasons, the play also had some characters being played by actors of the opposite gender, which led to no end of confusion for me. Weirdly though I think it was less gender fluid than stagings in Shakespeare's own day, where having boys playing women who would then be disguised as men was par for the course.

The play itself is fairly light, featuring some funny stuff and some mild danger before a happy ending that sees key characters falling in love with each other while legitimate rulers are restored to their inheritance and estranged siblings reconciled. You could argue it is a bit slight but those Shakespeare semi-comedies are always good fun. The play does also feature one of Shakespeare's most famous speeches (the one about all the world being a stage, which goes on to deliver that whole seven ages of man thing).

Two other things struck me about the show. I've been to a good few Globe performances, but this I think was my first time going to an evening show. As a cheapskate and as someone used to standing for gigs, I always buy groundling tickets for the Globe, which means that you are much closer to the action than the people who have paid more for the seats. This though was my first time experiencing what might well have been the authentic Elizabethan groundling experience: the crowd was full of yappers. There were a bunch of talkative younglings behind me and looking sternly at them with finger on lips only shut their yap temporarily. I did think of going full "SHUT UP YOU CUNT" on them but i) I naturally avoid confrontation and ii) maybe as noted above a degree of audience noise is part of the authentic cheap ticket experience. So I moved to another bit of the space, and so found myself near to a couple of somewhat yappy girls, who at least were kind of good-looking.

The other thing I was struck by was how the Globe has drifted a bit from what I took as its original mission of serving up performances that approximated closely to Elizabethan staging, making their shows both entertainments and windows into the past. For this while the costumery and so on seemed fairly vintage, the musical accompaniment was based on pop songs of our era, breaking the Elizabethan spell. Is this good or bad? You be the judge.

And then it was back to the wilds of South London, where I was staying with C—. After another night of being slept on by a black cat I got up early, made my way to Euston and took the train to Holyhead and the ferry home.

My exertions led to a certain fatigue and, more ominously, I found myself with a cold that I kept wondering about from the point of view of the dread Covid, so I ended up missing both of the Saturday night Dublin events I had rashly promised to attend (the Mindfuzz club night, at which Andy Votel was to feature on the decks, plus birthday party of Dublin's coolest person, at which a live karaoke was due to feature). For similar reasons I missed the Mick Harvey Dublin concert I had become aware of just before leaving for London. I did make my first gamelan class of the autumn session but by then I was back at work and my holiday was over.

Did you have a holiday? What did you do on yours?

[Theatre] "Titus Andronicus"

During the summer I went to a performance in Shakespeare's Globe of William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus. That is the one with a pretty extreme level of violence that for a long time was considered more or less unperformable; as tastes have changed it has in recent year become a bit of a staple. The play follows the eponymous character, a Roman general, as he gets caught up in a vicious blood feud with the captured Queen of the Goths. This eventually features people being butchered and fed in pies to their parent and, most notoriously, the rape and mutilation of Lavinia, daughter of Titus.
Titus Andronicus was apparently Shakespeare's first big hit, and I can see why. It is loud and brash and never short of action. I can also see why it fell out of favour. Aside from its shocking violence, it seems to lack any obvious moral or intellectual point to it. People keep striking out at their enemies and in turn suffer terrible responses to past slights, with no great sense that there is any good person here. Nor is it offering us any obvious message about the evils of blood feuds. Titus himself occupies the central role that a heroic figure should occupy, but he is terribly tainted by the violence around him, violence that he too is happy enough to dish out for reasons that to us are somewhat bizarre (he kills one of his sons in a brawl and eventually murders his daughter to avoid being depressed by her crippled figure).

You can see, though, why this has become a popular play again. For all the high culture associations of Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus offers the violent thrill of a gangster drama or the brutal struggles of unsavoury yet compelling characters served up in something like Game of Thrones.

Music is a big thing in Globe productions, usually with some approximation to an Elizabethan ensemble playing in a box behind the actors. They went away from that for this, with the music being more based on drums and strange long pipes. And they were often played in the audience, combined with the banging of metal on the wheeled metal towers that they would occasionally push through the crowds, with actors on the back. Naturally I was standing, and having to continually jump out of the way of people who were playing the part of thugs a little too convincingly was all part of the fun. The dance at the end (all Globe plays end with a dance) seemed a bit wilder than usual, maybe deliberately designed to remind of one of those mediaeval dances of death.

All in all this was an engaging trip to the theatre, but I think Titus Andronicus could be filed under enjoyable trash rather than something that is actually good.

image source (Independent)

The Sad History of King Henry VI

I went to York. I went to see plays. The people that run Shakespeare's Globe in London were touring performances of Shakespeare's three Henry VI plays to places in England that are significant to the action within them (including to some of the battlefield sites). York is significant because one of the big battles takes place near to it, with the loser's head ending up stuck on a pole over the city walls.

Although the plays are known to us now as Henry VI Parts 1, 2 and 3, they were not written in that order and were not conceived as a trilogy. And they were only given those titles retrospectively by some posthumous publisher of Shakespeare's plays. It seems that our Parts 2 and 3 were performed first, with titles something like The Houses of York and Lancaster and The True Tragedy of the Duke of York. Our Part 1 was written later, as Harry the Sixth, for a different theatre company, to tell the early years of the reign of Henry VI (who ascended the throne as a young child on the early death of his father). This makes it one of history's first prequels, with all that that implies.

The first play is mainly about the loss of the English empire in France as bickering nobles fail to assist the brave fighters there against the treacherous Frenchies, who have managed to enlist the aid of one Joan de la Pucelle, a young woman in league with satanic forces. The play has great bits in it (the Joan of Arc scenes, the heroic English fighters in France who are blatantly maniacal nutters, a worldly bishop, a scene where it is ponderously explained to Richard of York that he is actually the rightful king of England, etc.) but it seems to be one of those plays were loads of things happen without there being any real narrative thread. Strangely, this seems to have been the most popular of the three plays back in Shakespeare's time, with the story of the loss of the French empire and the death of heroic figures like Talbot (a blood-crazed thug) having audiences weeping in the aisles.

In the second play, the feuding of the English nobles explodes into vendetta and then open conflict. Richard of York stakes a claim for the throne, backed by some powerful nobles. He also has his sons behind him, with the thrill power ramping up considerably once this trio of badasses appears. He is opposed not so much by the King, a saintly figure a bit too prone to simpering, but by the King's wife and various other nobles. They all lay into each other in a series of battles. York, an ambiguous figure, also causes trouble by inciting a mob of revolting peasants to descend on London and murder anyone who can read, Khmer Rouge style.

It all turns into a bit of a bloodbath, with various nobles murdering each other and then being murdered themselves by their victims' friends and relations. One of the grimmer scenes is the one in which Richard of York is humiliated and tortured by the Queen and her associates, before being beheaded (it was his head that ended up on a stake on York's' walls, over a guardhouse near to where I was staying).


By the end, Richard of York's son Edward is reigning as King Edward IV, largely because everyone else is dead. Well, his two shifty brothers are still alive but one of them has changed sides so often that no one could take him seriously. And the other (Richard Jr, Duke of Gloucester) - well he is a deformed hunchback so there is no way he could be plotting to engineer everyone's death so that he can become king, right? So all is well, kind of like at the end of a game of Family Business when peace reigns because the graveyard is full.

The portrayal of Gloucester, the future King Richard III, was interesting. In the Globe last year I saw a performance of Richard III, the play that depicts his final rise to the throne and brief but bloody reign. Mark Rylance played the part of this great Shakespearean villain in a manner reminiscent of Derek Jacobi in I, Claudius, someone using physical disability as a mask, in this case to hide his lust for power. In the last two parts of Henry VI, Simon Harrison plays the younger character as a creature of pure malevolence. To a modern viewer, however, the continuous jibes he receives about his twisted form are strikingly unpleasant.

With our more enlightened views of such matters, it seems hardly surprising that someone subjected to such abuse would develop a warped character and a general hostility to the human race. I think perhaps this is what makes Shakespeare's character oddly sympathetic to modern viewers. He is a violent and malevolent creature, to be sure, but with a modern mindset we can see him as made like that by society rather than cruel fate. And with the hostility he has had to endure from his fellows on account of his form, he makes for a perfect outsider anti-hero.

If you have ever been to the Globe in London you will know that music is a big part of the way their plays are presented, with musicians playing before the performance starts and then accompanying the dance of the actors that happens at the end. With these performances the music was a bit stripped down, perhaps because it was a cut-price touring production. Any music in the play was made by the actors themselves. This was either percussive (good for the military stuff) or made by scraping the edge of something to create strange disconcerting droning sounds. The latter in particular sounded almost electronic. Perhaps because the plays were being performed over one day, making them seem like one monster play, they left the actors' dance to the very end.

These plays are on over the summer in a number of places, including back in London. I encourage you to see them, ideally all in one day for the fully immersive experience. If that sounds like too much, you could skip Harry VI, and if you reckoned one would be enough then I say to make that one The True Tragedy of the Duke of York.

Seeing these plays has also got me thinking about other theatre marathons that would appeal to me. One thing I would love would be if someone could stage all eight of the Plantagenet plays (dealing with the reigns of Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI and Richard III) over, say, four days with two plays a day. Another obvious one would be the Oresteia of Aeschylus, the only surviving trilogy of plays from ancient Greece. That one deals with a terrible cycle of murder and vengeance within the kind of dysfunctional family that is so common in Greek tragedy. A performance of all these plays in one go would make for a fascinating theatrical experience.

Links:

These plays are being performed in the Globe and around England and Northern Ireland, sometimes in places of relevance to the occurrences depicted, including battlefield sites. See if they are playing near you here.

Shakespeare on the battlefield: the Globe theatre step out - a piece in the Guardian on the battlefield staging of these plays, with particular reference to Towton, the bloodiest battle ever fought in England. The illustration of Henry VI and the three sons of the Duke of York are sourced from here.

More pictures of York

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The Olympics: I was there

In an unlikely sequence of events, I found myself in London during the Olympic games. But I was not there for them, but rather for a number of cultural events. First up, I went to the Globe Theatre for a performance of Richard III, with Mark Rylance as the titular king. He played him as an evil version of Derek Jacobi in I, Claudius, the harmless differently abled person that everyone writes off until he is having you carted off to be executed. Richard is one of the great Shakespeare villains and it was impressive of Rylance to make him something other than a scenery-chewing monster.

Later that same day, I met some other people (who included my beloved) and went to see Selda playing in the Meltdown festival. The Turkish sensation was the reason we had come to London. If you are not Turkish then if you know Selda at all it will be from the reissue of her first album by Finders Keepers, or because people like me keep putting tracks by her onto CD-Rs. Her first album is an interesting record, in that it manages to effectively combine Selda's folkie-protest songs with an accompaniment that mixes Anatolian psych, early electronics and some traditional Turkish instruments. As previously noted, this kind of thing should not work but in that case it does.

The live concert repeats the same format, more or less. Selda sings, other musicians play keyboards, guitar, drums, and a saz, a Turkish instrument similar to the bouzouki or suchlike. Selda's voice still has it, she has not gone all softy rock or smooth jazz, her band are great, so it was all good.

What was funny, though, was how Turkish it all was. Particularly in London, when you are at some ethnic music show, there is always the question of whether the audience will primarily be Western hipsters or members of the particular ethnicity. At this one there were a lot of Turks present and if they were not the majority the event certainly felt like it was being primarily run for them. Selda yapped away onstage in Turkish between songs, cracking jokes that had her compatriots chortling and leaving us befuddled. And she played the songs so that they featured a lot of call and response stuff, which I and my fellow round-eyed devils found a bit confusing. They also waved Turkish flags from the stage, which some people may have found a bit disconcerting.

That all sounds like a moan, not at all, it was a big bag of fun for this cultural tourist.

We did quite like that the concert started and finished early, meaning that we were then able to go for pints to a divey spot called The Hole In The Wall with which our friend "Dave" had a certain familiarity. It is near Waterloo and serves troglodytes.

The next day my beloved and I saw Henry V in the Globe, in which King Henry V invades France and stuffs the French out of it. It seemed like a jolly business. At the end of the play they did what they always do in the Globe - the cast do a big dance number in lieu of the more normal kind of bowing actors are famous for. The actor who was playing the French princess Henry V marries seemed to step out of character and be really enjoying the dancing - and then I remembered, she is an actor, it is her job to project emotions that she may or may not be feeling.

We also visited the British Museum and, in the company of one Mad King Ken went for lunch in the famous Gaby's Deli. Their falafel sandwich proved to be as nice as promised.
Mark Rylance in Richard III image source

Henry V image source


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