Took the boy to see "Kung Fu Panties" by Rebecca Northan tonight, and while not my cup of tea entirely it was amusing. I've been a fan of hers since Blind Date. Some clever staging, choreography, a light theatre night out. The audience quite enjoyed it, to judge by the laughter and applause, and to be fair it wasn't your typical night at the theatre.
It did remind me, or confirm actually, a suspicion I had that I might be quite fond of latex tights on fit bodies. But I suspected that already.
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At The Grand tonight, and there was no persuading the boy to attend. After "The Ballad of Ricky and Ronnie" it will be a while before he goes to the Grand again.
A shame, because it was quite good. The first half especially, evocative dance numbers, the sound of waves crashing, the dance (smooth, graceful, swimming, articulated bodies and limbs) reminding one of drowning, shipwrecks, and a clear gauze separates the white dancers from the Chinese (intentional, 2 groups of 6 dancers...) as they watch upon the scene.
The second act, more dystopian, fractured, jerky, "modern" movements, the integration of cultures, dance styles, mixed media, video and lights, more dissonance than harmony.
Of course, it's interpretive dance and how I see it is not, necessarily, how you're going to see it. Well done, well performed, worthwhile. And remember that only fools stay for the talk-back ....
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Sunday, and I've tickets to a couple of the Animated Objects Festival productions. Specifically, The Book of Jonah and Handmade Puppet Dreams by Heather Henson.
Now The Book of Jonah is in the Lantern Church basement in Inglewood, and we should be cued by the abundance of young children in the audience. Very young children, aged 5 and under. But still, we've bought the tickets and we stay. 45 minutes of shadow puppetry with the young kids calling out things like "What's the wire" and laughing whenever the word of God hit Jonah on the head. Interesting, but long, and the voice of God seemed a bit, well, serious...which is probably what you get when you see a puppet production of a gospel in a church basement. Very mildly entertaining I was mentally killing Jonah in a variety of ways long before the whale got to him, and when finally he's eaten there's a 20 minute "interpretive" bit where Jonah's in the whale and the whale's in Jonah and they're both spinning around and spinning around to some ambient trance music.
Not for us. But, with a bit of tweaking it might be an acceptable production for young kids. But absolute bloody murder for the adults.
From there we move on to Handmade Puppet Dreams at the Plaza in Kensington, an selection of short films featuring live action puppets (vs. Stop-motion animation). And these are simply disturbing, weird, weird, weird. The opening number looks as if it were inspired by Pokemon and Dark Crystal, the following productions get even weirder, a (Polish? Czech?) puppet who destroys books and fondly recounts the days before the Nazis and his Gypsy Lover...voiced over in English by the guy who does movie trailers, the puppets cast in that clear poly-resin you see so many "collectible" figurines cast in nowadays. And others. The boy summed it up best: "It's as if we paid somebody else to take drugs for us and watched the results....".
1 Exception: EVERLOVING - it looked CGI, but was shot upside down and under water and in reverse, about bags and scraps of paper that blow together in the wind and form - for a few moments - something approaching sentience before dissolving. I've tried to find a YouTube video of it, to no success. It was exceptional, the rest - well, ...
It's been enough suffering for the boy for a single day, and so I drop him off at home, he's puppeted out and I've a headache that's grown steadily worse throughout the day.
But I'm not done. After the boy's dropped off I find Club Sapien and attend a lecture by Marsian on Puppet and Object Fetishes - People marrying landmarks, RealDolls, cos-play, furries and such. Fascinating subject matter, and I haven't linked to any of the topics here because if you don't know what I'm talking about you should do your own investigations.
And sadly that's it.
Links: Puppet Uprising, PuppetSlam (blog by Marsian), Handmade Puppet Dreams
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And 2 plays in a single day, although this wasn't so much a play as a visual interpretation of the music of Tom Waits. Brilliant and highly imaginative.
Link: Theatre Junction at The Grand, L’Orchestre d’Hommes-Orchestres performs Tom Waits
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