Es Devlin's Mirror Maze: 'I'm looking at the man in the mirror...'

Image by Victor Frankowski from Dezeen. 

I used to live near Peckham, and when I walked its streets I remember an assault on the senses. The interchangeable smells of raw meat and fish, booming bass boxes fighting against one another, strip lit hair salons bubbling with chatter and shops bursting with lurid cheap goods.

Theatre Reviews in the form of Kanye West Tweets

The Rolling Stone, Orange Tree Theatre

Conversations with my mum whilst watching Iphigenia in Splott at the National Theatre.

I am on the front row at the National Theatre in the temporary theatre (FKA The Shed), with my mum, about to watch Iphiginia in Splott, a transfer from the Sherman Cymru. Written by Gary Owen, the play is a one handed diatribe against austerity Britain told from the perspective of Effie (played by Sophie Melville), a permanently unemployed and hungover force of nature living in the suburbs of Cardiff. You can find a better description of the show here. Below I am going to share the conversations I shared with my mum from before and after.

Before the show starts

Babies, the apocalypse and 'In the night time (Before the Sun Rises)' at the Gate Theatre.

Robbi Behr's Babies ruin everything Image:Idiots' books

Have you heard of the 'The Motherhood Challenge'?

No, it is not a tautology.

If you liked theatre in 2015 you are going to love theatre in 2016.

I find best of 2015 theatre lists very depressing; reading about how much someone loved a list of shows you will now never be able to see is like that racoon dissolving its candy floss. So here is a list of theatre that I want to see in 2016. I am not going to see all of them because I looked at my bank balance recently but I've done a 'If you like this...you love this' guide for you so you can pick out something nice for yourself. Go on, treat yourself.

Thoughts on Chairs; 'As you like it' at the National Theatre.

Absolutely ages ago I leant a book called Theatre Materials: What is theatre made of? to one of my students. I don't know who it was, but I never got it back, which is a real shame as it's no longer published and it was a brilliant book. Bugger.

Thoughts on men; Men in the Cities and Fake it til' you make it at the Brighton Dome.

Men in the Cities, 1979, Robert Longo.

This Autumn I have seen two performances at the Brighton Dome. Both of these were about men.

It's an odd one though isn't it. This 'new' theme of men.

It makes you go. 'Hang on a minute, I don't understand, I thought everything was about men?'

Hasn't the last 2000 years been about men. Isn't most art about men? Isn't every fucking thing about men?

Thoughts on morality, Measure for measure and how people are strange.

There is a really sweet Ryan Gosling film that he made before he was Drive famous called Lars and the Real Girl. In it he plays Lars, a man in his early thirties with few friends who lives on his brothers garage. He is also in a relationship with a sex doll he ordered online called Bianca, the titular Real Girl. Gosling is still in skinny, pale indie phase at this point and he plays Lars with a thin blonde 'scandiporn' moustache, a greasy combover and a 'jumper'. These things together with the sex doll thing could make the character seem grossly unappealing but you know, he is Ryan Gosling so he is still pretty attractive. Also, I said this was a sweet film, and what might seem like some kind of sexual perversion is treated gently by his family and community. Instead of ridicule and slander, they allow his fantasies to play out, revealing his deep feelings of loss and betrayal after his mothers death and when after meeting a real 'Real girl' he decides to let Bianca go by rushing her to hospital after finding her 'unresponsive', they continue to play along with a funeral and comforting him through his grief. They accepted his strangeness because all people are strange.

The art of saying yes; Phillipe Quesne and his melancholy dragons.

'Would you like me to show you?'

Orestria

Picture taken by Daniel Etter.

I admit, I have come late to the day for Orestria, it's already way past transfer and a hundred or two reviews and meditations. I have even already seen the sorely disappointing Bakkhai, the second 'Greek' in the Almeida's seasonal trilogy. I've well and truly missed the cultural zeitgeist. So my reflections will be personal, with the hope that some universality will be contained within.

On Set Design in the The Trial, Young Vic.

When you put a conveyer belt on the stage, people often say things like; Why did they do that? I think the more appropriate question is; Why wouldn't you do that? English audiences are very suspicious of set design, they feel it is too tricksy, an add on, a bit of frou frou. I heard several complaints as I left the theatre after watching 'The Trial' at the Young Vic (all, I observed, from middle aged men and women, though don't ask me to reflect on this) about the set and the costumes. 'What was the point?', 'Too weird', 'What's wrong with just normal theatre and normal staging?' Were there similar comments being made after the introduction of the revolving stage in Les Miserable? I don't know, I wasn't there, but maybe.

Bakkhai, Almeida.

Hair

The hair did the talking. Sometimes I liked what it said and sometimes I didn't.

Why we should dance like no ones watching and watch like no ones dancing.

I was hanging out with my 8 year old niece the other day. We were driving along (I was driving, I don't let her drive, I am a responsible adult). I was trying to explain my job to her and her dad asked what her most favourite bit of theatre was. She didn't say Matilda which I know that she loved and she didn't say Billy Elliot which she also enjoyed, although she was disappointed the bad lady (Maggie Thatcher) never appeared and she did, at one point, ask why Barry was so upset ('You mean Billy? The main character?').

No, she didn't say any musicals in fact, she said, 'Watching my dad dance.'

Preston Bill, Andy Smith, Z Arts Theatre, Flare Festival, Manchester.

Scenes for a conversation after viewing a Michael Haneke film, El Conde de Torrefiel, Contact, Flare Festival, Manchester.

Actress, Sleepwalk Collective, Contact, Flare Festival, Manchester.

Cuncrete, Rachael Clerke, Martin Harris Theatre, Flare Festival, Manchester.

When you talk about 'The Swimmer' will you talk about yourself?, Antoine Fraval, Martin Harris Theatre, Manchester.

Fifteen words on each show from Thursday nights triple bill at the Flare Festival, in no order of heirarchy.

Flare Festival Opening, Contact, Manchester.