Your Pace or Mine? by Lisa Jackson

If you know me in “real life” it probably hasn’t escaped your notice that I’m training for my first marathon ( you can sponsor me at https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/alitweedlie ). As a result I got some great running-related presents for Christmas, including a copy of Your Pace or Mine? by Lisa Jackson.

Rather than a book about technique and speed and winning, Your Pace or Mine? is a study on the other bits of running – the people you meet, the life experiences, the achievements, the crowds cheering, the catharsis, the mental game, the failures and the smiles and laughs along the way. The best bits.

Lisa tells a mean story, and she is at once warm, funny, engaging, encouraging and inspiring. First-hand accounts from Lisa’s running companions and heroes top off each chapter, bringing each lesson to life and reinforcing the power of the running community I have – somewhat unexpectedly – found myself part of.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. While the subject is running, I imagine it will be similarly inspiring if you’re preparing to take on pretty much any challenge. I DEVOURED this book in a week’s worth of commutes, and I got the strangest looks on the Piccadilly Line each morning as I went from giggling, to welling up, to snort-laughing all between Hyde Park Corner and Knightsbridge.

Lisa’s enthusiasm is infectious, and her positive attitude filled me with ambition, and helped with my mental game (after all, marathon running is 90% mental – and the other 10% is pretty mental too). I feel quietly confident that I’ve got the miles in my legs, and I have a good chance of achieving the time I want – and that if I don’t, that’s also fine.

Despite the fact I’m yet to run my first marathon, about half way through the book I found myself full of enthusiasm and entered the ballot for the New York marathon this November. Oops!

Oops.

Well last year’s blogging came to a pretty abrupt halt.

My job can get hectic. Very hectic. Particularly in the summer. So that kind of took over for a couple of months and then I never got back to writing.

So in a nutshell, since I last wrote I have

• Crossed the finish line in the Olympic Stadium at the end of a very hot 10k
• Taken on a new role at work
• Dyed my hair five times
• Grieved
• Visited my old stomping ground, Dartington Hall, as part of a wonderful family trip to Devon
• Completed my first (official) half marathon
• Experienced Punchdrunk’s Kabeiroi
• Had two wonderful reunion with the Dartington crew at Keith Tippett gigs
• Got a place for my first marathon (London, April 2018)
• Had my eyebrows microbladed
• Spent five days adventuring and feasting in Budapest
• Had a kind of lousy Christmas
• Discovered the joy of homemade haggis sausage rolls
• Scored tickets for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child via the Friday Forty (it was excellent)
• Saw some of my favourite university chums when Mairead, Ruth and Ally were in London and got the gang back together
• Entered the ballot for the New York Marathon in November 2018.
• Shared in the joy of friends celebrating lots of their own milestones – birthdays, engagements, weddings, pregnancies, births and more.
• Watched a LOT of films. And I mean a LOT.

 

This year won’t be any less crazy, but I’m trying to make more time for me, and hopefully that will include filling my little corner of the internet with more cathartic, self-indulgent spam. Sorry in advance.

 

 

Woyzeck – Friday 23rd June 2017

I first became aware of Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck while at university. During my fourth year, I was grappling with opera, trying to find an angle that interested me enough to focus my dissertation on it, and my dad suggested insanity. The idea was triggered by the tradition of the “mad scene”, where a soprano would have a scene written in where she has an episode of insanity purely to give her a reason to show off her coloratura skills – think Donizetti’s Lucia Di Lammermoor. And so, I had to start researching operas with alternative representations of mental health issues, from within different operatic sub-genres, and that’s how I discovered Alban Berg’s Wozzeck.

My second encounter with the story of Woyzeck came when my uni pal and theatre director Alasdair insisted I join him at an immersive show called The Drowned Man, telling me nothing else other than to hold eye contact with any actors that catch my gaze. That was my first encounter with Punchdrunk, the first of many visits to that particular show, and the start of a long love affair that has seen me spend more money than I care to count on their shows – particularly when you factor in the transatlantic travel since The Drowned Man closed 3 years ago and left me without a local fix. So it’s fair to say that I kind of loved that treatment of Büchner’s tale…

These two treatments of Woyzeck touched me in different ways, but in both, I found myself invested in the characters, feeling helpless as I watched the tragedy unfold in its inevitable way, so when I saw early last year that John Boyega would be taking on the role at the Old Vic, I knew I had to see it.

A modernised version by Jack Thorne (who wrote This is England and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child), it was very darkly funny – full of bawdy barracks humour which gave the play a rapid pace and made Woyzeck, Marie and Andrews all very likeable. It was well acted by all, and I did like the production, but I struggled to really connect with Woyzeck.

In the other versions I know, Woyzeck’s downfall is caused by a combination of his paranoia, an experimental drug trial he participates in, and Marie’s infidelity, and everything just grows and grows until there’s no way out for Woyzeck. In this production however, Marie never cheats, and it’s all in Woyzeck’s head. While her innocence could have made it more tragic, it makes it almost too simple. The combination of PTSD and the drug trial doesn’t take the audience along for the ride in quite the same way as the relatable, confusing concoction of jealousy, paranoia, stress, anxiety and the rest.

His demise is also very quick. Because there’s so much focus on exposition and establishing the relationships – not to mention getting some laughs in – once Woyzeck starts to come undone, it seems to happen very quickly, clinically, aggressively and with less reason, so I struggled to connect with him the way I did with the other incarnations I know. And that’s not to say the performances weren’t good – they were very strong, and I will gladly go see anything that John Boyega, Ben Batt, Steffan Rhoddri, Nancy Carroll or Sarah Greene are in in the future.  I just didn’t like some of the production decisions.

Overall, I did enjoy it, and it was maybe more entertaining and funny than I expected, but it wasn’t the Woyzeck I wanted. But maybe that’s my fault for not going in with an open mind. I just wanted my tragedy to be a bit more tragic.

Woyzeck ran at the Old Vic from 15th May-24th June 2017. Info on the production can be found here.

 

The Great Gatsby – Saturday 17th June

I love a bit of fancy dress. Especially the kind that lets you look either really great or really terrible while you do it. So an immersive Great Gatsby production with a serious emphasis on dressing up, drinking cocktails and partying sounded like one we couldn’t miss.

It sold out when it ran at the Vaults Festival earlier this year, so my theatre chums and I quickly got our collective act together and bought tickets when they announced a re-run in a new venue later in the year. So having been waiting for it for a while, and with positive reviews from friends that had seen it, our expectations were higher than we probably like to admit.

Presented by The Guild of Misrule and The Immersive Ensemble, the production was not without its flaws, but I’m worried about sounding really negative so before I go into those, I’ll preface this by saying we did have a lot of fun.

It took a while to get going. We didn’t arrive too early – just 15 minutes or so to give us time to check in and buy a drink – but still had quite a bit of time hanging around before Carraway came into the bar and it really “started”. But even when it started and we were ushered through into the main room, it felt like a slow start – there was quite a bit of time allowed for getting seats, exploring the space (which wasn’t huge) and buying drinks. I appreciate that this was probably necessary to give people the chance to get drinks etc, but it lost momentum while we were milling around. It felt like it really started when the cast all started doing the Charleston, and that did kick start the fun. After that, the story started, and splinter groups were taken off into other rooms by various characters, but we always reconvened in the main room for the major scenes, ensuring no one missed these. I think we were unlucky here, as we kept missing being taken away, which meant we felt like we were missing all the special, small group scenes. I did later get to witness a couple of these – at the climax of the story – and the ones I saw were quite intimate and emotional, and probably the most enjoyable bits of the production for me. I know I can’t keep comparing everything to Punchdrunk, but I really missed being able to choose my own story – the groups were largely selected by the actors (understandably for logistical reasons of moving the groups around) but it meant I got frustrated, wanting to follow certain characters but being unable to without forcing my way through a crowd in a way that was unacceptable for this audience.

A note on the audience – there were two girls who hadn’t dressed up, who chatted the whole way through the production, and had no spatial awareness and kept standing in front of other people. Seriously, if you’re not going to get into the spirit of it and stop your conversation, just don’t bother. It’s disrespectful to the actors, not to mention the other audience members who have paid to be there and whose evening you’re ruining.

But onto the good stuff – overall, we had a great night! Despite the humidity turning the venue into a sweat box, the actors were committed and engaging, adding little touches of audience interaction that never felt too forced. I really liked Carraway’s performance, and Jordan was a bundle of fun (though her accent slipped a couple of times). I took a while to warm to Gatsby, but how easy is it to get to know a rich playboy who has emotional barriers? He really came to life in the second act and I found myself feeling quite attached to him by the end. I didn’t spend a lot of time with Daisy due to the particular scenes I saw, but I liked what I did see. George and Myrtle were the kind of characters I’m usually drawn to – a secondary storyline with an emotional hook – and I found George sweet and vulnerable which made the story’s ending more impactful. I didn’t spend much time with Tom, but he seemed well cast and solid in the scenes I did see. I’m not sure what – if any – role the rest of ensemble had beyond dancing, but they added to the atmosphere nicely. The finale was well pitched – moving, but understated.

The production did feel like it was put together with a limited budget – not that it felt too cheap, but it was missing the rich, sumptuous luxury that you expect from a Gatsby party, some of the attention to detail etc. But once I got into it, I stopped noticing such things.

Overall, we really enjoyed our evening, and that was more important than any of the negatives – I’d just urge the company to continue to review how they move the audience around to enhance the audience experience. It’s not the sort of immersive production that demands a second visit, but I would go back – and perhaps try to stand in different places to ensure I saw different scenes.

The Great Gatsby is on until 10th September at a secret London location (but it’s not very secret – it’s on The Guild of Misrule’s website if you don’t want to book without knowing). Info and tickets available from http://www.seetickets.com/s/tour/the-great-gatsby/341

 

Vixen – Saturday 3rd June

I love opera. It’s far from a secret, but it’s not something I talk about much because I don’t have many people in my daily life to discuss it with. But I love it. The way the score, the orchestra, vocal gymnastics, costume and set come together to tell a story is always fascinating and often sublime. When I was at uni I studied everything from Mozart’s Le Nozze Di Figaro,  Handel’s Semele, and Beethoven’s Fidelio to Tippett’s The Knot Garden, Schoenberg’s Erwartung and Berg’s Wozzeck. But since leaving uni, most of the opera I’ve seen as been at the Royal Opera House or the Coliseum, and usually with my parents who favour the classical style, so while I’ve loved each and every production in its own way, the operas I’ve seen have been exclusively traditional – I’ve seen at least 3 productions of Bizet’s Carmen and a lot of Verdi and Mozart.

So when my most opera-savvy friend, Phil (who is himself a singer with the ENO) said that there was a production called Vixen coming up which was essentially immersive opera, I HAD to go.

Based on Janacek’s classic opera Cunning Little Vixen, Vixen is a modern take, translated into English and set in the present day. Instead of being a fox, Vixen is a young homeless girl on the streets of London, just trying to survive. While the translation and modernisation of the text wasn’t 100% successful for me, the production wouldn’t have worked in the original Czech with surtitles, and it didn’t detract from the experience – though I can’t pretend I didn’t giggle when I heard the phrase “Maccy D’s”. That’s probably a first.

Wearing headphones which are playing some of the background and pre-recorded music and seamlessly blending it with the live music and singing, the audience follows the cast – which includes a small live orchestra of violin, flute, saxophone, oboe and melodica/pianica – through three main sets. The musicians are brilliant, all multi-cast as the supporting characters/ensemble as well as playing much of the score, from memory, and often while moving.

Unsurprisingly, the star of the show was Vixen herself, played by Rosie Lomas. Diminutive and childlike in stature, with a powerful and haunting voice. Fragile but tough. While I wasn’t completely convinced by the updating of the text, the setting really worked – though it’s not an opera I know, I can’t imagine the traditional setting having as much impact as this production. The issues Vixen faces are very real – rejection, abuse, love, crime, and of course, homelessness – and the production makes it very clear that Vixen is just one of thousands of anonymous victims of these issues, and they all deserve better.

Is it truly immersive? It doesn’t hit all 5 senses like a Punchdrunk show, but honestly we (by which I mean my fellow Punchdrunkards and I) need to stop comparing everything to Punchdrunk, and it did draw me in and make me feel like I was in Vixen’s world, even if I wasn’t an active part of it like at Temple Studios or The McKittrick. But more importantly, it was so good I don’t care.

If you don’t think opera’s your thing, give it a go – it’s concise, relatable, and excellently produced. If you do love opera, you shouldn’t need any more convincing.

Vixen is on at The Vaults until 10th June. Info and tickets here.