I’m always here for a disposable rush from a bit of shiny trash. But if there’s a message to the first part of Taylor Mac’s sock-knocking extravaganza A 24-Decade History of Popular Music – an epic sliver of an epic slab – it’s that trash can be treasure if you’re looking at it right. Mac’s piece has previously been performed over a continuous 24 hours. Each hour is dedicated to a decade of … [Read more...]
Archives for June 2018
Propwatch: the blender in Julie
The talk around us was all about the dishwashers. ‘Look, there’s two of them,’ murmured the woman in front of us. ‘Three dishwashers,’ gasped a guy in the row behind. By the end, I counted four: it turns out there were seven. What else does the kitchen in Julie, Polly Stenham’s reboot of Strindberg, contain? An ostentatiously long table/worktop. A couple of cupboards fitted alongside the … [Read more...]
Propwatch: the flowers in Creation (Pictures for Dorian)
Beauty. Beautiful. Beautifully. It’s just possible I overuse these words. A quick search through my dropbox suggests that in the past year I’ve applied them to: Alina Cojocaru’s acting in Giselle; the final image (watches!) in Robert Icke’s Hamlet; Rebecca Frecknall’s production of Summer and Smoke; the difficult pleasures of Swan Lake; the pacing of The Inheritance; the handbells in A Christmas … [Read more...]