A Slow Fire at Jermyn Street Theatre

I try to see Simon Stephens'  plays whenever possible (and to write about them here) so when Jermyn Street Theatre (a favourite) announced A Slow Fire I was quick to pay my £28 for a central front-row seat (A5).

I got a bit distracted on the way there and left myself with little time to eat something beforehand so, yet again, I ended up in the pub around the corner, Three Crowns, where I had just about enough time to scoff a couple of starters and drink a pint of Level Head.

Having seen several Simon Stephens plays I am not sure that he has a style, other than swearing, but this still seemed different, possibly because of the post-apocalyptic setting.

The structure of the play fooled me immediately. The first scene had one of the two main characters try to prise the other man away from a gay relationship. I was not impressed by the acting at this point.

But the joke was on me. This was not the actors acting, this was their characters acting as they relived a hopeful scene from one of their lives. They acted out several scenes and had their favourites that they returned to. These scenes of hope were what kept them going in whatever bleak world they were living in.

And somebody was stealing railway tracks.

This strange but stable situation was rudely interrupted by two separate visitors and things changed.

It was not really a story, rather it was about real people in a series of weird situations and the characters, the actors who played them and Simon Stephens who wrote the words they said made it all work beautifully.

... later ...

I deliberately leave writing anything up to give me time to reflect and this time it took a little while for the obvious truth to dawn.

I was trying to categorise this play by thinking of something comparable and finally it hit me, this has the hallmarks of a Philip Ridley play and, to be specific, it owes an awful lot to The Pitchfork Disney, so much so that the connections must be deliberate on Stephens' part. Both have an odd couple living an isolated life in a dysfunctional world that is not explained, both have two visitors who shake things up, one of those visitors is decidedly weird vocally, there is a brother and sister and there is someone called Presley. All that cannot be a coincidence.

The relationship to The Pitchfork Disney was a nice bonus, a little easter egg for Ridley fans, and A Slow Fire remained superb play that was excellently delivered by all involved.

Tao of Glass at @sohoplace

The simple explanation is that this is a story with music about the making of this production and the Taoist ideas that inspired it.

To add to that the music is by Philip Glass and the writer/directot/performer is Phelim McDermott who had worked with Philip Glass previously on, amongst other things, several productions of Satyagraha and Akhnaten which I had seen and loved several times.

All that made Tao of Glass unmissable and I gladly paid £65 for my seat at @sohoplace, my first time there.

Given the nature of the narrative it is hand to describe sequentially, and that would serve no purpose anyway as it was not really a sequential story. The opening set the scene with Phelim McDermott talking from his seat in the audience as if he was also watching the show.

Narratively we heard various stories about his love of theatre, of Philip Glass' music, Taoist texts, an aborted opera and the show that replaced it, this one.

The narration was embellished with folded paper and puppetry, familiar from his production of Satyagraha, along with Philip Glass music composed for this show.

It was very much aimed at fans of Philip Glass, his music and themes he had explored before and as one of those I absolutely loved it. So did everyone else judging by the extended clapping and standing ovation at the end.