The last time I saw Alexei Sayle was at a benefit gig in Essex in the Eighties, when his rapid torrents of invective and surreal invention was stand-up as great as I’ve seen. Last night’s stage interview about his memoir, Thatcher Stole My Trousers, was reminiscent of those times rather than comparable.
Berlin are, misleadingly, an arts unit from Antwerp, Belgium. They’ve been around for well over a decade and major in artily constructed documentaries that are presented in the manner of experiential installations. Their focus is usually the slow, commentary-free dissection of a geographical quirk or circumstance, hence past films have been about and titled Jerusalem, Moscow, Iqaluit (Canadian Inuit capital), and Bonanza (a tiny Rocky Mountains community).
Of all the nostalgia-fests, of all the retro events, those that involve rave culture have the wildest sense of glee. The atmosphere in the Dome tonight, before a note has even been played – just as when The Prodigy hit this city last year – dials the anticipation levels up to delirious. The crowd is mostly fortysomething and fiftysomething, but many are already dancing as the hall fills, while Peter Hook, ex of New Order, spins quarter century-old dance tunes that once graced the speakers of the long-closed, now-mythical Mancunian club mecca, The Haçienda.
Brighton Festival’s guest director speaks in a sort of rapid-fire drawl, ideal for her debut as a stand-up comic, which she claims was tonight’s Plan A. This half-century veteran of performance art is more slippery than that, proffering a discursive, unreliable, funny and profound master-class in shaggy-dog philosophy, with the festival’s theme of home at its arguable core.
The foyer of Brighton Dome for Brighton Festival director Laurie Anderson’s Song Conversation would have had a PR executive flummoxed; from punks in their 20s licking the rim of a plastic pint to a hobbling couple clutching programmes. The breadth of audience is surely a testament to Anderson’s unique career of performances combining pop melodies with countercultural performance art. As the seemingly ceaseless passings of pop eccentrics litter our newsfeeds, it’s a relief to see the former NASA artist-in-residence and “O! Superman” composer alive and electronic.
The Complete Deaths refers to the complete onstage deaths in Shakespeare’s work, all 75 of them, including the “black ill favour’d fly” in Titus Andronicus. The latter becomes a persistent theme throughout, appearing even as the audience take their seats, a joke shop plastic approximation attached to wire, being poked up the nose of a prostrate cast member. The whole is the work of two respected Brighton-based theatrical entities, the four-person physical comedy troupe Spymonkey and writer/director Tim Crouch.
Brighton’s barely a city. It was awarded the title in 2004 without having to build a cathedral, or become bigger than a greatly swollen version of Brighthelmstone, the fishing village it once was, hemmed in from further growth by the South Downs and the sea. For all the relentless tide of London incomers and tourists, and the bustle of the bohemian North Laine, most of Brighton is quiet and peaceful, hardly urban compared to the capital.
"Wouldn't it be great if you were playing a concert and you looked out and everyone is a dog?" Laurie Anderson mused, almost a decade ago, waiting backstage with cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Anderson has realised her outlandish dream, creating a most unusual concert, apparently tailored to the canine ear. When the opportunity to attend came up I jumped at the chance, as did Paddy, our black Labrador-New Zealand Huntaway cross.
Maybe rock star economists are what we need. Former Greek finance minister Varoufakis’s bullish good looks, charisma and verbal fireworks failed to charm the Troika technocrats who finally banished him from government during last year’s infamous negotiations. But for this regularly applauding, sell-out crowd in Britain’s sole Green constituency he’s fascinating and, to many muttering approvingly, hugely admirable. As actual rock stars mostly absent themselves from their old role of rough, rebellious moral compass, this engaging, irreverent man of ideas may find his time has come.
Smoke and Mirrors is a show based around circus skills. It’s by the Ricochet Project, a performing unit consisting of Berlin-based US performers Cohdi Harrell and Laura Stokes. However, those expecting a spectacle offering visual pizzazz and the occasional laugh will be disappointed. These two are not clowning. Smoke and Mirrors is full of physical skill, precise choreography and attitude, but the 55-minute piece, which won an award for Best Circus at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival, is overwhelmingly stone-faced serious.