Pinter/Beckett double bill: Bristol Old Vic

Richard Bremmer as Krapp - photo by Mark Douet

Ooh, this is a biggie – the Harold Pinter/Samuel Beckett double header is the jewel in the crown of the Bristol Old Vic’s spring schedule, and having been to a performance last night, I strongly suggest you get yourself down to the theatre on King Street and make sure you find out just why everybody is talking about it.

Directed by Simon Godwin, this double bill by two of our most distinguished playwrights has certainly attracted attention, and all for the right reasons. Performed in Bristol Old Vic’s Studio (while the finishing touches are put to the extensive renovations of the historic main theatre), the malleable space easily adapts to fit both productions, thanks to set design by Mike Britton.

The first play is Pinter’s A Kind of Alaska, which was written in 1982, and apparently inspired by Oliver Sacks’ Awakenings, which was about the real life case of Rose R who suffered from Encephalitis Lethargica: a condition that, according to the BBC, “swept the world in the 1920s”, attacking the brain and “leaving victims like living statues, speechless and motionless”.

This is the same condition our protagonist Deborah (Marion Bailey) has just woken up from after 29 years neither asleep nor awake. What ensues is 45-year-old Deborah’s struggle to understand her new reality, her new body and her new situation, and to reconcile that with the 16-year-old her she still thinks she is. Deborah is supported by her doctor (Richard Bremmer) and sister (Carolyn Blackhouse). What shows through Pinter’s script is Deborah’s inability to accept that her younger sister’s experiences of life are so different to her own, that her younger sister is now the ‘adult’, and the confusing tricks that memory plays on you. The audience is left questioning our own sense of reality, and even whether the play we just think we saw is the same play as experienced by the person sitting next to each other – after all, one person’s memory of an event is not necessarily the same as someone else’s.

Beckett’s 1958 play Krapp's Last Tape is a single hander with Richard Bremmer returning in the title role. On his birthday, 69-year-old Krapp listens to a recording of his younger self. But after a life of failure, withdrawal and physical decline, the youthful idealism that confronts him makes the passing of time even more acute.

With wonderful timing, and a precise minimalism of speech, Bremmer brings the stillest of plays to life. It is surely 10 minutes before he even speaks, with the opening being a slow and considered replication of the nonsense things people do when alone to pass the time – in this case, indulging in a ritual of finding a banana in a locked drawer and attempting to throw the skin into a wastepaper basket with your back turned. It sounds silly, but Bremmer’s performance really makes this work, and it could easily be a sketch written by one of the cleverest comedians.

The message in Krapp’s Last Tape seems far stronger than in A Kind of Alaska, with the sense of time, vocabulary and authorship coming through much more clearly in Beckett’s script. But then what else would you expect from the foremost Modernist playwright? Putting the two plays side by side, Krapp comes out as a far superior production – thanks to Bremmer’s studied performance of Beckett’s intelligent writing.

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The Pinter/Beckett plays are performed daily at Bristol Old Vic until 12 May. Click here to visit the Bristol Old Vic’s website for more information. 

Bristol Old Vic has kindly donated a pair of tickets to A Kind Of Alaska/ Krapp's Last Tape as prizes for the What The Frock! fundraising raffle, which is next Tuesday (17 April), 7.30pm, upstairs at The Big Chill, Bristol. Please click here to find out more about What The Frock! and the quiz night and raffle. Absolutely everyone is invited, so start putting your teams together, and I look forward to seeing you on April 17.

We are Women, We are Funny

Funny Women promotes female comedy talent – from finding and developing new acts through the Funny Women Awards, to working with established performers.

Founded in 2002 by Lynne Parker, Funny Women has become a leading comedy brand, promoting new female talent through live events, workshops and training programmes.

At the heart of Funny Women is the Funny Women Awards, which have introduced many women performers onto the comedy scene. Last year saw more than 350 entrants and a tour of showcases that took Funny Women to some of the UK's best arts venues and festivals.

Over the last ten years, Funny Women has recognised that women can achieve a lot by finding their comic voice, so runs public workshops around the UK for women who want to learn about performing stand up comedy in a safe, non threatening environment.

Part of Funny Women's ethos is to raise awareness and funds for causes relating to women – from charities that conduct research into female specific cancers to organisations that work towards combating violence against women.

The Funny Women Awards are celebrating their tenth anniversary this year, and over that period they have been the first to see many wonderful female comedians who are now major names on the comedy circuit.  Funny Women have played a part in bringing more female voices onto the comedy scene, and What The Frock! is looking forward to working with them for Ladyfest Bristol in July 2012.  

Visit the Funny Women website by clicking here.

Visit the What The Frock! website by clicking here.

Visit the Ladyfest Bristol 2012 website by clicking here.

Merle Hoffman – ‘Intimate Wars’

Yesterday, I tweeted a fact I read in Merle Hoffman’s memoir about her experiences at the frontline of abortion services in the United States. “Around 200 abortion clinics in America have been bombed since 1977. And 178 staff have received death threats.” It was retweeted more than 20 times in the first few minutes after I posted it, including by columnists at UK national broadsheets. And people tweeted me back to tell me how horrified they were by this, or to tell me about their own experiences.

Well, if those statistics appalled them, they should read Merle’s excellent and frank book for even more horrific facts about the abuse and threats levied at those who work in abortion clinics in the States. But Intimate Wars: The Life and Times of the Woman Who Brought Abortion from the Back Alley to the Boardroom is far from a look-at-me, haven’t-I-had-it-tough tale. Merle’s memoir is an inspirational, positive and life-affirming testament to what can be achieved by women who work with like-minded people to change the world for the better for hundreds of thousands of women.

A trailblazer in the reproductive rights and women’s health movements, Merle is perhaps less well known here in the UK. Yet she has achieved so much – and became known as the first person to raise the iconic coat-hanger at pro-choice rallies. As a young woman, Merle worked in a women’s health centre in New York, and soon abandoned her intended career as a musician in order to devote her life to fighting for women’s right to choose. More than 40 years ago, she pioneered one of the first abortion clinics and went on to become an international spokeswoman for feminism and women’s rights.

As well as providing a fascinating insight into the history of abortion in the States, as well as Russia – where Merle also set up clinics, Intimate Wars is a frank account of Merle’s own relationships: notably with a much older man, who she later married, and her decision to become a mother when she was in her 50s, and her experiences of adopting.

But despite the positive outcome in Merle’s own story, we must not forget that despite 40 years of hard work from Merle and her colleagues, abortion rights are still under attack all around the world, and abortion patients are still subject to horrific guilt trips and attacks as they attempt to enter or leave clinics for treatment. Abortion clinics spend more money on security than any other type of medical facility – both for the clinics themselves and for the owners and doctors.

Intimate Wars is out in paperback, published in 2012 by the Feminist Press, New York. It is available from Amazon UK by clicking here. There is a website for Intimate Wars, that could be found here. Merle’s website can be accessed by clicking here.

What Makes Women Laugh?

Tonight, I attended a panel discussion at the Bath Comedy Festival about what amuses women. And before I go any further, I need to stress the irony of the inclusion of this event on the bill of a 10-day comedy festival that includes pretty much no female comedians (and not one headlining woman). A scan through the colourful 32-page brochure shows that while men are extremely well represented with coloured photos and portraits, women are ONLY included in group shots, including one instance of two bikini-clad women being draped over an older man.

The two lone events that are about women in comedy are not illustrated by photos of these women, but by a black and white cartoon of a dated WI-type dear in a frilly dress and hat (reproduced twice on facing pages, such is the difficulty of finding two different pictures of women). Poor show, Bath Comedy Festival, poor show. As Lynne Parker of Funny Women said: “We’re here at a comedy festival and there are simply not enough women on this bill.”

Both events were organised by Women On The Make – the first being a performance workshop, and the second a panel discussion. The panel was chaired by BBC producer and presenter Jenni Mills, and included Funny Women director Lynne Parker, Clare in the Community creator Harry Venning, and playwright Hattie Naylor. I scribbled notes throughout, so here’s a few highlights…

Jenni: Who’s your favourite funny woman right now?

Lynne: Because I work with new comedians, my favourites are among the new crop on the block. I love Andi Osho because she’s herself, she’s beautiful, she’s sassy and she’s funny, but she doesn’t play to stereotypes. I also love Susie Bennett, who’s been on the circuit for six years or so. She’s an interesting woman who talks about everyday stuff… and she’s just been signed by Peter Kay’s agent.

Hattie: I’m a great fan of Mrs Merton (Caroline Aherne), but also of Joyce Grenfell.

Harry: Victoria Wood, of course, but also Linda Smith, who’s underrated, and her scripts are a delight to read.

Audience contributions: Miranda Hart, because she belies her physical presence. Beryl Reid, who was hilarious and personified working-class witty and sharp women. Peggy Mount, and I wish there was a modern version of this big and brassy woman.

Jenni: Is there a gender divide in humour?

Hattie: If humour is good enough, men and women should laugh together. I’m very aware of who we expect to be funny, and how people’s appearances affect how we are amused by what they say.

Lynne: Miranda Hart has the physicality of a performer. When she’s on stage, she has a wonderful presence, and she comes on and you look at her and you expect her to be funny. Male or female, physicality has a lot to do with it. Susie Bennett is a big girl, and when she comes on stage you do smile. But it’s harder for women as there are less women stand-ups, so unless they come on with a degree of confidence, they’re not going to be seen as funny. An ugly man doesn’t have the same problem.

Hattie: A lot of the top women in comedy in the US are slimmer and more conventionally attractive. While the funnier women in the UK are odder to look at. [American] Tina Fey is terribly beautiful, very thin and extremely funny. But there’s something terribly odd about everybody laughing at a fat woman, which seems rather old-fashioned.

Lynne: I don’t think it matters if you’re fat or thin. Funny Women works with a lot of different types of women. You can’t generalise what a funny woman looks like.

Jenni: Is there a difference between what men and women laugh at?

Lynne: There is a difference in the way men construct humour to how women do. Women have tremendous bonding experiences when laughing together, such as on a girls’ night out. Women bond among their internal group with smutty stories, while men in checked shirts love to share knob jokes in late night comedy clubs.

Harry: They’re terrible those comedians…

Lynne: …Yes, they are. But they get gigs. Don’t get me on that soapbox!

Man in audience: Does anything other than sex make women laugh?

Lynne: Gay men make women laugh [here’s an article Lynne wrote]. Men like Graham Norton and Alan Carr are popular with women because they can relate to them. But Peter Kay and Michael McIntyre are also very popular with women, and both talk about domestic issues and about the women in their lives, which we can relate to. Peter Kay, in particular, talks about his mother a lot.

Jenni: Do you think there are enough women in comedy?

Harry: No. Clare in the Community was planned to be a TV series [it’s currently a successful radio series], but has been repeatedly rejected, despite commissioners saying there are no women-led comedy shows on TV, or shows about women’s professions. I have one but they’re not interested.

Lynne: I haven’t seen Watson and Oliver [BBC2’s recent sketch show starring two women comedians], but everyone in my group says it’s pants. Miranda Hart was a long time in development with her show, and it took eight years to get on to television. What irritates me in that the BBC in particular thinks they’ll just promote one woman at a time (first Miranda, then Sarah Millican and now Watson and Oliver). The BBC never fully backs Funny Women as they have an all-inclusive policy, yet everything else is done on quotas so why not women in comedy?

Hattie: You have to have a huge team to believe in you to get anything made. And it’s much harder for women to be believed in en masse. It’s no coincidence that we have more women novelists and poets, as they’re solo activities.

Lynne: In comedy, most of the big TV commissioners are women. But I don’t think that helps other women – I think sometimes they’re attracted to the male product, going back to the simple sex issue. We want more women to watch TV, so we put men making fools of themselves on TV for the women to watch.

Hattie: The internet is bound to change comedy, thanks to YouTube. There’s some unbelievably funny stuff on there, which is hugely accessible.

Lynne: The new frontier for comedy is the internet, but I’m a great pioneer of live comedy, which you just can’t beat.

For more events at Bath Comedy Festival, please click here.