What has been the most significant news story of the last couple of weeks? Surely it has to be the Jonathan Ross-Russell Brand controversy. (OK, there was some sort of an election in America, too.)
The shenanigans of these two cheeky chappies (Brand and Ross that is, not Obama and McCain) have sparked some interesting thoughts from David Jay over at the Performance Monkey blog. Jay goes to the heart of the issue when he asks, "What are these chaps wearing?" He points out that they are both known for their extravagant dress sense – florid suits for Ross, goth chic for Brand – and comes to a surprising conclusion: "Know what these guys are? They are fops: eyecatching, stuff-strutting, rarely pure and never simple."
He compares these performers with characters like Lord Foppington in The Relapse and Sir Fopling Flutter in The Man of Mode. He makes an interesting point that carries with it a warning Brand and Ross would do well to heed: "If Restoration drama teaches us anything, it's that no one trusts a fop, and that the people who gawk at them nonetheless can't wait to see them humiliated. These characters never get the girl, the fortune, or the joke. In fact, they are the joke. Lord Foppington is everybody's laughing stock, while poor Sir Fopling – who, for all his flash, is endearingly gauche and needy – is gulled and slapped down." Sound familiar?
In other news, Chris Goode has resurfaced on his blog after spending many weeks absorbed by his latest show Hey Mathew. While all theatre-makers await their audience's response with a great deal of nervousness, Chris appears to have been particularly worried about this one. This is because the show was, he says, "an unusually frank piece of work not only in its sexual explicitness, but also in its emotional rawness and its personal exposure". He goes on to describe the comedown from this event in a way that makes withdrawal symptoms from most drugs sound like a doddle.
This show sounds like the kind of thing that Scott Walters at Theatre Ideas might approve of. Walters has also been absent for several weeks, but he returns now feeling inspired by this story of how profound emotional truth can be found in the most banal of places. This leads him to a conclusion that, though obvious, bears repeating in an industry where it often feels as if the amount of admin that needs doing leaves little room to actually make any art: "So often what is lost in the discussion of business models, marketing, fundraising, job searching, and the day-to-day trials of life in the arts is that its power rests not in its flash, in its slickness, in its structure, but in the power that comes when human beings seek to share a real emotion or insight in a way that is deeply felt and powerfully authentic. If audiences could encounter that more often on our stages, I don't think we'd have to worry about what makes theatre special."
And finally, the Playgoer is drawing attention to a bizarre but important controversy brewing in the US. The FCC has, at Google's request, decided to approve the use of wireless computer devices that transmit in the "white space" of the radio spectrum. The fear, put forward by the Broadway League, is that this new technology could play havoc with the wireless microphones that are used in most theatres, performance venues and sports arenas, and which transmit on the same frequency. As the Playgoer points out, these mics are not just used by actors who can't project properly, they are an essential tool in backstage communication: "It's about stage managers giving stagehands the cue on when to drop that ten-ton weight on stage ... so it really can be about lives, not just livelihoods." And let's face it – a squashed actor is the wrong kind of drama for any stage.
