Men and Women

Theatre first - Oedipus at the Old Vic

This production with Rami Malek as Oedipus and Indira Varma as Jocasta is loud, looks fabulous and is full of dancers…  This is a very spare version of the classic Greek story, a bare script and a narrative that I am guessing took up less than half of the allotted 1 hour and 40 minutes without interval.  The set and production design was spare and beautifully lit. Malik’s Oedipus is smartly dressed, stiff and pretty sure of himself at the start, which makes his unravelling more obvious.  Indira Vardy though is passionate in her portrayal of Jocasta and her moment of revelation was, for me, one of the best moments in the play.  

Overall the production didn’t fully hit the spot for me, mainly because of the way that the short emotional scenes which moved the story along were split between the extended dance sequences, taking the edge off what I felt should be more of a driving inevitability of the tragedy.  Don’t get me wrong, this version of the chorus and representatives of ‘the people’ with their fabulous co-ordinated moves to rave and driving drum beats were fab, and well worth seeing.   I liked that there was humour too, and the themes of pandering to populism  and relying on superstition not fact are also pretty relevant at the moment too..  And this was a young and very engaged audience who loved it, and that is not to be sniffed at.  So, it may not be my play of the year, but this is a lucid retelling of the story and with the amazing sound and dancing it is worth taking a look.

And before then, some art...

Earlier in the day we visited two exhibitions at the Hayward Gallery, both women artists taking a close look at identity and representation.  The Linder exhibition 'Danger Came Smiling' covered nearly 50 years of work, Using mainly (but not exclusively) collage to focus on female identity, women's roles and desires, particularly using pornography and advertising, full of sexualised imagery clashing against domestic settings.  There was also a small section on male desire and consumerism too, with gay pornography justaposed with those high value watches and cars.  Not particularly unusual ideas now, but pretty influential when she started this work in the 70s, and still with a bit of an edge.  It also made me laugh quite a bit too.   

The second exhibition was Mickalene Thomas 'All About Love' again with a lot of collage with paint and other techniques, mainly on a huge scale, dissecting and remaking the image of Black women to find other ways of looking rather than through the male, straight or white gaze. The work was gorgeous, intricate, huge and somehow warm and usually filled with love.  I particularly liked the work reframing Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe ( a work I have always found a bit creepy), this time through a Black female gaze.  There were also similarities with Linder's work in the collages to defuse pornography of Black women.  

The most recent works 'Resist' though had a fair bit of righteous anger explicity expressed, putting continuing injustice to the fore, with a huge work listing the Black people killed by police, and another piece referencing Picasso's Guernica.   

Linder worked on my brain and sense of humour, Thomas got me in the heart instead.